Liz Wolfe and Zach Weissmueller
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What's up everybody welcome to a brand new episode of part of the problem I'm very happy today to be joined by the hosts of just asking questions Zach Weissmuller and Liz Wolff over at reason of course I've their show is great by the way if you haven't seen it I've been on it several times and always really enjoy it we'll also put the I believe you guys just started a new YouTube channel

channel. So we will put that link in the episode description for today. Make sure you go subscribe over there and check them out. Thank you guys both for joining me. How are you?

Doing great. Thanks, Dave. Yeah, we're not allowed to have you on our show anymore because we have you on too often. And so now we have to go on your show to get our fix. There is. There's no more podcast law is a tricky thing to manage, but we all we try our way to get there's lots of loopholes in there. Don't worry. I think as long as it's like a business expense, you can have me on one more time before before Christmas or something. Once the calendar year resets, we're good. We're in the clear. So don't worry. Yeah, then we we started all over again. Or it's like a

If a major war is started, then we get to have you on also. So, you know, you win some, you lose some. It'll be easier at this point to have me on when a major war isn't started. I don't even know what counts as major or minor wars anymore. Is bombing Russia with U.S. weapons, does that count as major? Because that seems pretty big to me. All right. So there's obviously a lot going on in the world. I'm curious to get both of your takes on this. Maybe I would start with this.

I know. So reason for people who don't know Reason Magazine for many years is like, I think the longest running libertarian publication that's out there, of course, in the new era. Now, I always call it Reason Magazine, but it's now there's obviously there's podcasts and videos and stuff like that. But.

But one of the things that's kind of a reason tradition is that they you you guys always put out before Election Day kind of what's the word? Not a poll, but a, you know, who ever confession reason. Yes, right. Exactly. A weird libertarian ritual of confessing, you know, your participation in the religion of the state.

And one of the things that I thought caught a lot of people's eye was that, Liz, you were the only one at Reason who said you were considering voting for Donald Trump. So I'm curious, did you end up voting for him? And how do you feel about it now?

Well, first of all, I was not technically the only one. There was also Jerry to Chile, which we both independently came to the exact same conclusion, which was like, I don't know about actually getting my butt down to the polls. I don't even know if I'll vote at all. If I do vote, it will probably be for Trump. But, you know, barring anything truly horrifying that he does between the time we have to file this and the time we actually have to go to the polls. Yeah, I did end up voting for Trump.

I feel thoroughly fine about it. Took my kid to the polls with me. I felt bad about my kid having to see the process of voting because that seems sort of inappropriate for children. But yeah, I mean, it was thoroughly fine. I'm a New Yorker. My vote doesn't really count. I think so many people are able to work themselves into a tizzy about this idea of like, my vote is so significant. And so like, honestly, like, yeah, I voted for Trump. Like it didn't matter. I don't really think I think it's

I was fascinated by the ultimate results that came out of New York City, where we saw a drastic shift across, I'm pretty sure, every borough, but especially the outer boroughs like Queens, where I live, where New Yorkers are just so fed up with the sort of like uniparty rule. You know, Democrats have been in power in New York for so long, and New York consistently votes for Democrats for the presidency. And

When you actually look at what Democrat rule gets us on a local level, I'm sorry, we have rampant crime. We have a subway system where people are constantly, you know, evading fare, hopping the turnstile. The subway system is absolutely garbage in total disrepair work.

constantly seen as cash cows. The richer you are, the more likely you are to be seen as cash cows. We have an exodus of rich people from the city and an exodus of children from the city. Cost of living is obscenely high. We have rent control and rent stabilization that makes it hard to afford to raise a family here. I'm sorry, but I am not cool with raising kids and stepping over passed out fentanyl addicts on my way to get on the train. It's just a really bad status quo. And I think it's important to

That on a local level, Democrats get the message that New Yorkers are not cool with this. And then on a national level, yeah, I mean, I just see the Harris-Waltz ticket as a stunningly weak ticket. And to the extent that I think like, you know, votes are self-serving, right? I'm a self-interested, rational actor to the next generation.

you know, as much as the next guy is. And I just won't be able to continue to afford my life and living in New York City and raising my kid if we continue to have these crazy inflationary conditions like what we saw under the Biden administration. I'm sorry, but I'm just sick of it. Yeah, it's hard to argue with any of that. There is really good food in the city, though. That should be pointed out despite all those other problems. I love New York. I mean, I think part

I think part of the reason why I'm hard on it is because I want it to be good and I want to raise a family here. I want to stay here. Yeah, I know. Listen, I mean, I don't live in New York anymore, but I've spent my entire life. I'm from there and I lived my entire life there. And I, you know, I feel the same way. It like hurts.

to see the city not doing well. And by the way, I did move out of the city in large part because of the last thing you mentioned that I got little kids and I didn't want them to be constantly seeing homeless people and these kind of ugly things in life that I would rather put off. And it's nice to be away from that. I really do miss the food though. Man, the food is so much better there than it is in the country.

It's also kind of annoying because I think so many people caricature like what you just said and they're like, oh, well, like you don't want to see, you know, drug addicts. You don't want to see homeless people. And it's like, well,

Well, I mean, yeah, because I think that's a sign of like a decaying low trust society where, you know, we're incredibly wealthy and yet we can't take care of the least of these. And that's very sad. But also there are these like very real threats to safety. And I don't think that, you know, if I'm going to pay such a high price to live in New York, I don't think I should also have to pay such a high price in terms of

of safety and comfort and well-being. And I mean, just expecting better of our politicians doesn't seem like such a crazy belief to me. But a lot of people want to mock it and say that it's, you know, too earnest or sort of an absurd retro type belief. It's not. Yeah, I mean, they can they can mock it, but their city is going to continue to circle the drain as they mock it. This this

exodus of particularly young families out of cities was happening before the pandemic already for about 10 years. People were leaving New York leading up to that. And well, not New York, but at least the sort of inner boroughs. But a lot of the big West Coast cities, which I left during the pandemic, L.A.,

And then, of course, after that, everything just accelerated. And so you can scoff at it all you want, but you need those people. These are the people who are productive and also literally the future of your city. And so if you don't do something other than mock it and actually start addressing these real people's concerns, then

there is going to be no turnaround. We've seen what happens when cities get hollowed out, Detroit being like the worst case scenario. That really can happen. Yeah, you know, this is something I've argued with libertarians about kind of somewhat, I don't know, infamously in the libertarian world over the last few years. But there's always, it seems to me that there's almost, amongst some libertarians, there's almost a...

like a given that's kind of unexamined about where the hierarchy of priorities are supposed to be. And I, you know, like when I would complain about that and say that, like, yo, I don't think that homeless encampments should be allowed to take over major city blocks, whether we're talking San Francisco or Los Angeles or New York City or San Diego has a big problem with it. Like, I just like, no, I don't think public property is, I don't think any of us have the right to sleep in

on public property and certainly like in playgrounds and public parks and spaces that are kind of for children. And the response I get from a lot of libertarians is like somehow I'm being heartless to the plight of homeless people and

all of the government policies that create homelessness, which by the way, on those policies, I'd imagine we're all in agreement, you know, like there's, there's wild government policies that make the price of housing too expensive, that make it very difficult, if not impossible for people to help the homeless when they really want to. And so like, I'm with all of that, although I don't know,

The homeless problem as I see it, it's not exactly summed up by the price of house going. It's not monocausal at all. I mean, Zach and I produced a documentary on this. I believe it was two years ago at this point, maybe a long year ago, where we traveled from Austin, Florida.

to Houston, to San Antonio. And we're really trying, we interviewed a ton of people involved in what is essentially this industry of provision of services for the homeless. Some of them have partnerships with the city, others do it more independently. We found that, you know, there's, it's first of all, it's not really a monocausal thing, but to the extent that,

you can pull a specific lever and have your outcomes majorly affected really Houston's extreme deregulated environment when it comes to zoning and the ability to supply more housing, as well as the fact that the city doesn't really have any natural barriers. So you can sort of keep infinitely sprawling outward. You know, that really made a big difference. And it's not clear to me that that strategy is possible to replicate in a place like Los Angeles, but also consider that like all of the people working to serve this industry are

Yeah.

Yeah, but then, I mean, another takeaway I took from that story, as well as my experience in Los Angeles, I've made about three documentaries on this topic from the one Liz is talking about back into my time when I was in Los Angeles, and I experienced a lot of the same pushback there.

you're talking about, Dave, because, you know, the idea that you're going to paint someone as heartless for saying that you shouldn't let people just sort of decay on the street is sort of messed up in itself. I mean,

I was sitting there interviewing in L.A. a pastor who was running the giant, the biggest shelter in downtown L.A. This guy lost his leg to a staph infection that he got on Skid Row. And people are calling him heartless because he doesn't think people should be shooting up on the sidewalks and then should instead be ushered inside.

And so like one of the takeaways I took from interacting with him and also going to San Antonio was one of the cities that we went to is the housing is one component, but also seems really simple and straightforward, but

Just don't let people like sleep on the sidewalk. You know, there are rules that you have to enforce. The San Antonio shelter had like a drug treatment program and the expectation that you'd be working trying to get them clean. Right. Like that was a stipulation. And like, I'm sorry, but like both carrot and stick matter here.

Yeah, it took it took human behavior into account because it says, look, we're going to build this big place where you can go. We're not just going to throw you in a prison. You can go here. You can either go on our drug treatment program and job training program, and then you're going to get to stay in a dorm. Or if you don't want to do that, we have a big open space where at least there's a roof over your head. It's not going to be as nice.

But there's at least taking some sort of incentives and human nature into account that has been absent in this entire conversation for the past decade, decade and a half. Yeah, well, that's all very good points. And I just I always thought that it was like, is it really so obvious that the humane thing to do is to just let like...

people who have like serious mental illness and drug addiction problems to just allow them to sleep on the street. Like just doesn't, that doesn't feel like the right, but even more than that. So the, what started, what happened with me, so this was in late 2022,

So when my son was born, he had a congenital heart defect and he needed open heart surgery. And so the best place in the world to do it is in New York City at Columbia Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital. So that's where we went. Now I live like an hour outside of New York City, but my mother has an apartment on the Upper West Side. So we went for a month.

while my son was in the NICU, we went and stayed with my mother. So wait, my daughter was almost three at the time. So she was she was about to be three. So we got a three year old. We also have my

pregnant wife. And then we had to deliver a baby, have surgery. So I'm bouncing back and forth, you know, from the NICU to my mother's house to go spend time with my daughter. So we're on the Upper West Side. And there's, I took my daughter, again, she's, she's must be a couple months shy of three years old at this time. So I took her to the

playground down the block from my mother's house. And there is like literally a passed out shirtless homeless person with a needle next to him. And if you could put yourself back in New York in 22, this is like still the height of, you know, there's outdoor masks. People are giving me a weird look because I, other parents are giving me weird looks because my three-year-old is not in a mask. Like this was the time. Um,

And I was just, you know, by the way, I didn't do anything except go on Twitter. You know, I didn't like, but I was just like, I was like, this is insane. Like how do these freaking cops, like whatever New York city, I think it's the 13th biggest army in the world or something like that is the NYPD. Like most countries in the world, the NYPD could take out if they wanted to. And, and,

I'm just like, I mean, listen, could we just like remove these people from a kid's playground? And anyway, some of the responses I got were pretty wild that people were like, well, if you have a problem with it, you should just leave. And it's like, have you ever brought like a two and a half year old to a playground and then tried to just leave? Like, it's not that easy to just like be like, we're not doing this anymore. You know, like that's going to be a whole thing. But look, I think the real point that, um,

to me was that it's just like, listen, I am not like, I'm a bleeding heart libertarian. The reason I'm a libertarian is because governments ruin innocent people's lives. And I'm against that. And I don't like it. But if you want me to have some sympathy for this homeless heroin addict who's passed out, I could get there. Sure. I'm sure he had a much harder life than I've had. I'm sure there's been lots of forces. I'm very, you know, like I, I try to

I'm very lucky that I have the life I have. I've worked toward it, but like things have worked out that were out of my control.

However, are you actually expecting me in this hierarchy of priorities to prioritize that above like the safety of my wife and children? Because that is just never gonna happen. And like any ideology that would be asking me to prioritize anything above my family's immediate safety is going like, sorry, you're gonna lose me. And I don't think there's anything in libertarian principles

that demand that I care more about a junkie than I do about my three-year-old girl not seeing that. - Yeah, I don't think so. And that's the way the prioritization feels in the city. So this is partly what wore me down in LA. That's a very similar situation. Luckily, I mean, I'm sorry you went through all that with these medical issues with your children. I can't imagine that. Luckily, I've never experienced that.

During the lockdowns, those of us with young children know that going to the playground was one of the only things you were allowed to do, except in LA, you weren't allowed to do it. And there were these amazing scenes where there's the caution tape over the playground, but then there's

a man sleeping inside of the caution tape on the playground and nobody's doing anything about it. And that sort of contradiction and prioritization sort of drives you crazy. And then it also undermines the ability of players

us to talk about what would be the humane thing, what would be like the quote unquote bleeding heart libertarian approach. Like, I think we're still in agreement that, you know, the drug war has made things worse in this regard and that

way of mitigating, like some, some rethink on that has to happen. It's harder to have that conversation when you can't, when all the sympathies seem to be going in, in this one direction and everyone then associates the, you know, harm reduction and like alleviating the black market with all the chaos and disorder that they see on the streets. Dude, that's such a good point, man. And I'll tell you, this is, this is,

I've, I've experienced this a lot where there is, man, there's really something to the dynamic of like when one side overplays its hand so much, if you're trying to make a point that even sounds like that side, it's just impossible to make it now. You know, like, it's like, it's like once the, once the riots in 2020 really kicked off, try making an argument about

uh you know uh police reform or criminal justice reform or something like that it's everybody's like what are you talking about bring in the military shut this thing down it's just like no one wants to hear and i i know i've had this experience before where like i've been like i've called things racist and as i say the word out loud i'm like wait don't

I'm not like those guys call everything racist. You know what I mean? I actually mean this was racist. And it's just, there is something where it makes the libertarian argument much more difficult when you have

these kind of the rise of progressive prosecutors who have come in and decided like, you know, for years we could be sitting here saying like, hey, it's crazy that like people face jail time over possession or even distribution of drugs. I mean, come on, like, you know, this is not, this isn't really like a horrific violent crime. And by the way, we have an attitude about drugs that's so phony in this country. Like, what do you,

think, you know, like how many people do you think, like say like the Fox News building, okay, the News Corp building there, how many people inside that thing you think do cocaine? Quite a few. 95, obviously. 95%.

It's all over the place. It's all female sex cocaine. But your favorite Fox News host has probably done some drugs in their life. But then you could turn around and – OK, so we can make these arguments. We can make the arguments. But once these progressive prosecutors come in and say we're legalizing carjacking in effect, no one wants to hear anything. I think what you're – yeah, go ahead. Well, the thing that makes me so frustrated about all of this is it's just like

The actual users, like problem users, actual addicts lose out in many cases when these types of policies are pursued, right? Like lots of people in the actual throes of addiction do not need a criminal justice system that gives them endless license to destroy their lives. Frankly, what you need to do is you need to build up their communities and their families and have treatment facilities that are available to them. That way people can actually get the help that they need. But I also think that there's something really awful when we as city dwellers see

exceed our cities to, you know, people who will essentially transform this into a low trust society, right? Like none of us want to go to pharmacies and have all of the wares locked up. None of us want to see shoplifting under if it's under $1,000, the shoplifter gets off scot free, and nobody will pursue them, right? Like that's not a society that I want to live in where I have to explain to my kid,

why I'm that dumb chump who's always paying for things at the register when he sees other people just simply walking out of the store with the goods. To me, that's just such a, it just shows this like perversion of values and people have this mindset of like, oh, well, you know, who really cares? Who's really hurt by this? And it's like, well, lots of people are hurt by the erosion of sort of like common shared values and principles that we ought to operate off of. But the other

thing that's really crazy is it's like again and again, of course, random progressive male shit posters on Twitter don't really give a shit about this and want to just mock those of us who earnestly care about the future that our kids inherit. But frankly, it's people who are more vulnerable, right? Like women and children who are in positions where it's like physically we can't defend ourselves quite as well. And I don't want a bunch of dudes to then have to step in when they see

erratic people on the subway. Like right now we're waiting for the verdict in the trial of the killing of a subway performer by a Marine, Daniel Penny. And it's not totally clear whether how this will be resolved and how New Yorkers will react to the verdict.

But it's basically this sort of like vigilante killing. But seemingly, you know, one side is trying to make the case that it was done basically to defend the other people on the train who were threatened by this homeless, super erratic, schizophrenic guy. It's very it's kind of this Rorschach for how New Yorkers feel about these issues with public disorder.

But for me, at least one of the most radicalizing things that I ever encountered was when I was living in Austin, when I was pregnant with my son in 2022, I was attacked by a homeless woman. And she she started like coming. She came up out of nowhere and started punching me like sort of to the side, like right beside my belly. And it was absolutely just like.

stunning to me. I ran into the street to try to get away from her. I'm a fast runner and it was, you know, easy to do. But then I was really shocked by the fact that like, it's kind of a strip that's barren and there aren't very many people

people around or establishments. And so I was basically trying to signal to drivers and to cars, like, help me, this woman's following me. And she attacked me. Eventually, the cops showed up. It only took 10, 15 minutes. My husband came too. But there's a certain amount of, I think that really connected the dots for me of like, why is it that I, a law-abiding normal person who's just trying to like,

like grow a baby inside of my belly. And I was carrying groceries at the time, trying to walk home, trying to get my step count up. Why is it that I have to suffer when I did nothing to instigate this? And there's some other person with really fucked up, untreated drug issues or mental illness issues. And like, I'm sorry, but I have the expectation that we have a society where laws are enforced and where you can't just do that type of crazy thing and get off without consequence. To me, it's just like, it shows this

naivete that people haven't considered that people are put into that situation. Right. But like for me, it feels very vivid. Right. Whenever I get pregnant again, I don't want to be in that same type of situation. And I,

I don't think it's unreasonable to say I expect better of our cities. I don't think the answer is just to move out and live on this rural compound like Sweet Zack has done in Florida. But like, you know, it's like legitimately like I don't want to have to do the exodus from the cities. I don't want to give up on them. And I don't think I should be happy. I should have to just because a bunch of progressive voters have tried to ruin it for me.

Yeah, I certainly agree with that. I don't think so. Yeah, I don't think you should have to give up on it either, Liz. And I'm rooting for a renaissance to happen in the cities, despite fleeing myself. Maybe I can come back one day. Will you move back to L.A. if it gets better?

No, maybe Miami or something like that. But yeah, you know, I think like the thing you were talking about, Dave, about being a sort of it's like cringe now to talk about some of these actually real libertarian principles, criminal justice reform or drug legalization. I

Speaking sort of from inside of that movement and seeing what happened, my take on how we got here is that there was an alliance made. It was a coalition between progressives and libertarians to...

promote criminal justice reform and drug liberalization. And some good came of that. I mean, I think marijuana laws were liberalized in a way that I still to this day, even though there's some backlash to that now, I think overall it's been more good than bad. And even some of the criminal justice reforms have been good.

The problem is the progressives really were in the driver's seat. And I think libertarians sort of went along for the ride and let the progressives put forth not only the arguments, but really shaped the policy. And these progressive prosecutors that you brought up are a great example because they

There's some good ideas in the progressive prosecutor package and then a whole bunch of bad ideas that have to. It's like, you know, we're not going to prosecute, you know, possession of marijuana. Good idea. We're also not going to bring down the hammer on shoplifting. Clearly a bad idea. But there was a reluctance, I think, to speak up.

in the moment because some of the good ideas were getting smuggled in and now we're due for a course correction. And that's partly what we're trying to do with the show by engaging some, some critics of how this stuff has been implemented and like having a serious conversation and like retrospective and hopefully, you know, looking forward to, to,

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Yeah, I think that so one of the things that I've kind of tried to focus on, and I think you're like hit the nail on the head where it's like essentially the problem is that whatever arguments libertarians were making, libertarian prosecutors didn't rise up around the country. Progressive prosecutors did. Right.

By the way, I remember when many of them were running not that long ago. By the way, none of them ran on this. I mean, they ran on not giving harsh sentences for small amounts of drugs, and they ran on, you know, like reforming the bail system, which I think there's still a legitimate case

to be made. I mean, it is a little messed up that like, if you have the money, you can get out. But if you don't have the money, you have to sit in jail till your trial. That certainly doesn't seem just to me. And so like they had to, but none of them were ever saying like, you know, vote for me and I'm going to make sure that you only get a ticket if you, you know, steal a thousand dollars worth of things. And, but then that, you know, it really is a flaw in, um,

in theory, in philosophy, because I think a lot of times it's easy for libertarians, particularly when they agree with leftists, to just kind of go along with

the issue. I remember back when I first started podcasting, one of the big topics in New York City at the time was stop and frisk, which was a policy that was, I believe it was really put into place with Bloomberg. Maybe it started with Giuliani and then Bloomberg kind of ramped it up. But this was about as anti-libertarian a policy as you could have where you could just stop

young people and publicly humiliate them with no suspicion of a crime and just go through their stuff, then they would turn around and brag and go, oh, but we've found a lot of drugs and guns by doing this and therefore it's a success. And I was totally against it, still totally against it. But I remember leftists would be making this argument about how it disproportionately impacts minorities. And I remember at the time just being like, listen, I know I'm on your

side kind of on this issue, but this is just bad argumentation because like if like I don't care who it if I don't care if it's 100 percent Asians or 70 percent Hispanics or 100 percent white or whatever, it's either a violation of people's rights or it's not. And if it is a violation of their rights, I'm against it. And if it's not, then I shouldn't have a problem with that.

But because the issue is once you go into that thinking, you're almost kind of like, wait a minute. So are you telling me that if we just increase the number of white people who are being stopped and frisked, then this would be OK? Like if we got it up to match the proportions of society, then somehow it wouldn't be a problem. You know what I mean? It was the same thing.

It was the same with COVID vaccines, right? Right, right. Or they actually, but well, then conveniently, they didn't really seem to care when the vaccine passports were going to disproportionately affect, you know, Black people or immigrants or anything like that. Yeah, we didn't talk about that.

that that was misinformation yes that's right all of a sudden those those concerns go away but I think that there was this was so like embedded in the world view of so many of these progressive prosecutors that they would then apply it to it's like well hey guys look 80 percent of the shoplifting arrests are this demographic and so I have to do something to stop that and we have and it was never like what I think us Libertarians would want the standard to be like

Who cares what demographic it's happening to? It's either right or it's wrong. And property crimes are wrong. That's not a victimless crime. And so like, it doesn't like, look, there might be, I'm not like a genetic reductionist or something. I'm not saying the reason it happens is because these people are just more prone to that. There's probably a multitude of factors that lead to these disparate outcomes.

But that mentality is just poisonous because it's like, and it infects everything. - I feel like- - Yeah, and I mean- - Oh, go ahead, Zach. - Oh yeah, I was just gonna say a really specific example of that is with traffic cameras, speeding cameras. I think it was done in DC, might've been the city, I don't remember which city it was,

There was a study of it and the hand-wringing was about how to disproportionate impact on minority communities. More of them got the automated speed tickets, but then it ignored the fact that the benefit, which was less traffic fatalities, also disproportionately affected the minority communities. So it's very selectively applied in these criminal justice cases, especially because

Often when there's a disproportionate effect on the criminal justice side, there's then also a disproportionate improvement in the quality of life or safety improvement. And we have to be able to have like a rational discussion about this without being afraid of that being, you know, a beat over the head with that. Sorry, Liz. I think I was just going to say, I think I feel a little bit guilty of this because I recall, I think earlier,

in the pandemic, maybe in 20, early in 2021, for reason, writing a piece trying to make the sort of racial equity argument, unfortunately, about how, you know, ideally something that maybe leftover Terrence can get behind this idea of, well, when you attempt to mandate shots, vaccines for all New Yorkers to be able to go out to restaurants and participate in society and be able to go to work and

You are going to have this situation where, you know, we saw the vaccine uptake from black New Yorkers was a lot lower than other groups. And so you will have a situation where a lot of black people are barred from existing in society and going to work in New York. Is that what you want? And I actually I kind of.

having made that argument. I thought it would be compelling to the left libertarians who I think were more sympathetic to vaccine mandates. But I actually think that it was kind of the wrong argument to make because, and I wrote another piece, I believe, that was more based on the actual principle of the mandate being totally, a total violation of bodily autonomy, completely discriminatory, a complete violation

misuse and abuse of power by the state, which I think is the correct argument and the correct tack to take. I dislike that I framed it in the racial equity terms of

You know, I think sometimes libertarians fall into this trap, and I know because I myself have fallen into this trap before, but we fall into this trap of thinking, well, if we sort of use some of these racial equity arguments and talk about the actual impact of these policies, maybe more leftists will sort of understand where we're coming from and be persuaded and come to our side. And I think increasingly, as the years go on, the more I realize that, like, I don't think that that strategy works, really. And I also don't think that it is the correct strategy.

place to be arguing from. I think it really has to be a first principles type thing where it's like, no, vaccine mandates are bad because that is coercion on the part of the state attempting to infringe on people's rights to put what they want into their bodies. And I'm sorry, but we just have to oppose that at every turn.

- Yeah, well, I agree with your point. I mean, I'm sure I've fallen into that as well. I mean, sometimes you're just almost trying to be like, well, look by your own stated values, you should be against this. So like, you know, keep your whole identity and just accept that like, this doesn't work with it. And I certainly, you know, I attempt to do that when I can,

um but it also i do get your point that it's like uh really the problem with even like accepting that framework is then that it just leads to all types of crazy outcomes and and you know it like uh really thomas saul is so good on this i don't know if you guys read his uh his book um was it discrimination and disparities i believe was the the title of it it was a more recent book that he put out maybe like five six years ago um

But it's just so good where it just tears apart like all of these like arguments about like, you know, that you look at like the amount of controls that you'd have to do to really get a sense of like this, just looking at the outcomes of this group or that group. Like he goes through them in the book and like one of them was like the net worth of Asians compared to Latinos. And then he goes, well, now let's just do a control for their age.

because like Asians are older than Latinos on average, which is not something I knew until reading this book. And then you're like, oh, that explains like 80% of it. Like 80% of it's like gone now because older people have higher net worths than younger people. And I guess like the Asian Americans tend to wait longer to have kids and Latino, you know what I mean? And so it's just like, there's just all of these factors that then, and look, as people who believe in free markets, you're,

There's never really been a system with any amount of liberty where you get equal outcomes across different groups. And there's really no reason to expect that you ever would. And there's so many different factors that go into it that it's almost impossible to pick them all apart. Like even ones that aren't for any environmental or genetic reason, you know, like, uh,

i guess is environmental but like irish people are disproportionately firefighters like why a tradition i don't know it's just what they've have kind of gone into over the years it's not and and that doesn't need to be equalized for like whatever that it's fine let them do it as long as we're free it should be fine

It's also just so disrespectful to the individual, right? Like it's collapsing all of the individualism and all of the distinctions from person to person acting as if they're these groups that behave as a monolith. I mean, I think we even see that with some of the political commentary following like Latino voters specifically, which was a huge theme following the Trump results where it's like, oh, turns out Latino voters tend to be a little bit more conservative than we realized. Maybe the Democratic Party was wrong to be counting on them as the solid candidate.

Democratic bloc forevermore. And it's like, well, like, how dare you? Like, how disrespectful? I don't know if I were I think if I were in one of these minority groups, which I guess technically I'm a woman. So I should be I should be I'm a white majority group, by the way, Liz. This is true. This we actually have been moving more in the Trump voter married woman in the Trump voter direction. But no, I just

find there to be something so profoundly disrespectful about acting as if all of these people behave as monoliths and think the same way based off of the same values i think that latino is latino is a very strange one like it's just like based on the language but it's like across this huge geographic and cultural uh diversity um i mean you'd be more sensible to talk about like like

Like, like why are we talking about like, how did the Italians, like, how did the Italian vote go in 2024? It's, it's just, it's all becoming sort of outmoded at this point. And I'm frankly glad to see it. Well, also it always just seems like, and I say, I guess maybe because I grew up in New York city. And so I was from a very, very early age exposed to lots of different groups of people. It almost seems like it's, it's,

like, it seems like when you see people on like on the cable news talking about the Latino community, it's like, you're like, have you ever met one member of this community? Like, you think this is a community you're to think Cubans and Dominicans and Mexicans are a community. Like, I mean, like,

Okay. I don't know. Meet one of them, hang out with one of them because you'll find out pretty quickly. It's not that. And I got to say, man, it is so one of the most fascinating like dynamics since Trump's victory on election day is, um,

So I mean, like, listen, obviously on the face of it, you have these the way they all look at it, like the black vote and the Latino vote. And every single one of them have just demonstrated they have no understanding of these communities whatsoever. I mean, they're literally told you Donald Trump is the most racist, you know, Hitlerian figure of modern American history.

And the real awful thing that makes him so racist is that he called Mexicans rapists and separated families and wanted to build a wall. And then he turns around and gets the best results any Republican presidential candidate has ever gotten with black men and Latino men.

And then it's like the corporate media goes, well, the answer is that they're all sexist. It's like they just have to pull it back. I remember a friend of mine, very funny comedian, old friend of mine, this guy Dave Kinney. I remember...

We were talking about it was during the 2012 election. And I was talking about how ridiculous it is that Mitt Romney kept calling Obama soft on terrorism. We're like Obama is like at this point already. I mean, it was 2012. It was before, I guess, they launched the war in Yemen. But he had already overthrown Gaddafi and had already started the civil war there in Syria, was talking about regime change. And started drone war like he is.

he had been the guy who started the drone wars the drone campaign in pakistan had been raging on for years he had he had announced that the world was now all part of the war on terror is like everywhere in the world had signed all types of crazy presidential powers into like was clearly a hawk he was

more hawkish than George W. Bush. And I was like, and this guy's still out here just calling him soft on defense. And I just remember my buddy Dave Kitty, I thought it was so funny, is he just goes, he goes, well, my card says weak on defense.

So that's what I'm going to go with. You know, it's like they just it's just like they have this script and it's the only thing that their brain can process. And so the answer must be that like black men just really hate black women, turns out. And that's why they voted for Donald Trump. It's it's like wild to see.

But Dave, this is why the super cuts will save us all, right? Like, I don't know if you saw that super cut that Tom Elliott was circulating. He's following the Hunter Biden. One of the best followers on Twitter. Yeah, he's wonderful. I played it on the show yesterday. It was awesome. But like, so the viewers have seen it, like following the Hunter Biden part. I mean, my God, you have no idea.

Nine solid minutes of every cable news pundit talking about how, you know, well, Biden really promised that he would never pardon his total miscreant side and over and over again. And they're just they're so fawning. They're so credulous. And they also just say the same thing over and over again. And it's like, OK, I'm sorry. Supercuts will be the thing that save us all because nobody wants that word.

boring drone like i mean these people are carbon copies of each other you know it doesn't really matter what flavor it is whether it's cnn or msnbc or even frankly like i think fox can be guilty of this at times so not to the same degree as the others but there's just a certain amount of like this narrative takes hold and it's just i mean thank god for independent media thank god for the super cuts i think people are waking up to this total fucking farce it's amazing

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Yeah, I completely agree with that. And I think that it's no, I mean, Fox News is totally guilty of it. Like that was one of the things that I thought was very refreshing about Tucker Carlson when he was on Fox News, which, you know, I really like Tucker a lot. And I agree with a lot of his politics, not all of it. But he would at least be different. Like he'd have a different his own take, whereas like if you watch Fox News or MSNBC or CNN, I mean, the 1 p.m. hour is

completely agrees with the 2 p.m. hour, with the 3 p.m. hour, with the 4 p.m. hour. It is over. I mean, to the point that I could just do the show for you. I could tell you what all of them have to say with that. It's like, I don't even know. Okay. I don't know the schedule, like the rotation right now, but let me tell you what the 4 p.m. hour at MSNBC believes.

I don't know who I'm talking about right now, but climate change is an existential threat, and we live in a white supremacist society. You know what I mean? You could go through – give me any – and I promise I'm right about this. They do agree. And same with Fox News. You could do what every single one of them thinks, and it's just –

I don't know man it's like come on dude if you have like an IQ over 90 isn't that just so boring but it's all gonna die but here's the thing it's all gonna die right because nobody gives a what Jen Saki thinks nobody wants to be streaming her clock record style into their eyeballs all day long it's just not interesting she's obviously a mouthpiece of the administration the outgoing administration which was a total complete failure she's not

Yeah.

I think we're also kind of seeing this with Gutfeld, this disruption within the space of late night, the sort of political late night sector where it's just like nobody cares about Samantha Bee or John Oliver. But frankly, Gutfeld has really good ratings because there's something very fresh about what they're bringing. It's a little bit more approachable. It's a little bit more.

more down to earth. There's an unpredictable element to it. Some of this is just because like, you know, I'm friends with Tim. I think she does good work. I, she just personally appeals to my taste. I think she's hilarious. Uh, and also both Gutfeld and Kat Timp are pretty damn libertarian, but there's just a certain amount of like, I'm sorry, the proof is just in the numbers, right? Like they're beating out all of their competitors in terms of ratings and

And to me, that just indicates that people are so hungry for something totally different. They don't want more Jen Psaki. They want more of Gutfeld and independent media. The proof is also where the presidential candidates went during this election. They went on podcasts. They went on the Theo Von Trump went on the Theo Von and Rogan podcast. And those were like the most some of the most talked about news events. Like how many other interviews did these

I mean, Kamala Harris didn't do many others, but Trump did a ton of interviews. How dare you? The name of Alex. Yeah. Yeah. I know you watch. No, I watched the Brene Brown sit down. So I did, I did watch clips of her daddy when I didn't actually make it through the whole thing, but I kind of had to for, you know, to do the show. I, at least that's what I'm telling myself. I had to, it was for work. Um, no, I, but I think that's right, Zach. And there is, you know, I was, um,

I was kind of having this argument with Mehdi Hassan off camera, who was a real nice interesting person to talk to off camera.

then the camera came on and I was like, Jesus Christ, this guy. Yes. We've all seen him on camera. Oh my God. He was such a blowhard. And like, I'm like, dude, I think I agree with half of what you're saying. So like, just stop anyway. But we had really nice conversation off air. And like, we just got into like, you know, like he, we were talking about like Justin Raimondo and antiwar.com in the nineties and all of this stuff. And, and then we were talking about, um,

It was like a few days after Trump had gone on Rogan. And I was like, you know, honestly, I was like, I think the best thing that's going to come out of this is that when Donald Trump wins this election, it's going to be the death blow to the whole corporate media structure. I mean, it's just like the narrative already writes itself.

like she refused to go on and he did and that carried him into the white house and then he was telling me like what a tragedy it is because he's like well listen they don't they're not giving them tough interviews and they're not grilling him about his policies they're just having conversations and then but you know and so he was kind of arguing well oh

No, we need this this real journalist class to hold the politicians feet to the fire. And like my response to him was I was like, but where is that? What are you acting like? Are you telling me that like if you know and me and many has I think have a lot of fairly similar foreign policy views. But I was like, do you think that if

Donald Trump were to go on a CNN interview, they're going to ask him about like the OPCW whistleblowers who said that Assad didn't actually gas his own people and that none of the physical evidence really indicated that he did. And then Trump went on a bombing campaign there afterward. Like, did you get to that'll never come up. CNN has no interest in asking him that because

They love that he bombed Syria. You know what I mean? Like that was one of the few things they really celebrated Donald Trump for. They'll ask about January 6th for the umpteenth millionth time. They'll ask a million gotcha questions. And so from my perspective, I'm like, well, good. At least let's wash all that away. And now at least we have a standard of like,

candidates are expected to go do an unscripted three hour show where you have to at least be somewhat unguarded and give like, I don't know, I see this as just a clear improvement over the old order. I don't know what your guys thought. No, for sure. And I think that it is after this election that there's no going back because if you I don't know if you listened to the postmortem that

the Harris campaign did on pod save America, but they spent a good 20 minutes or so just talking about how big a fuck up it was for her not to have gone on Rogan and how this would have been just would have been something everyone was talking about. And it would have been the one chance on this abbreviated campaign for people to, uh,

people outside of her bubble to actually get to know her as a real person. And yeah, he would have, you know, talk, you know, your journalists challenging people like he would have challenged her, I think, on some things that nobody else was talking about. So that was the risk for her. But clearly, given the outcome, it's a risk that she should have taken and that if the Democratic Party does course correct, they will be taking in the future, I think.

Yeah, well, I think, you know, I don't know. You know, I look in hindsight, it's easy to say it was a mistake for her not to go. I'm not so sure. Like, it's it is possible. Yeah, I mean, I think look, I think there was something about Kamala Harris that was there. She had an intense relationship.

um, desire to guard against you ever seeing who she really was. And I don't know exactly why that is. It's some type of insecurity about it. I think that the truth is that Kamala Harris was, is not a person who has deeply held views about policies. I just don't think there's, there was ever anything that I thought like, oh, she really cared about this. And she wanted to just kind of like, um,

you know, repeat these, these canned lines about that, that turned into a punchline about I'm from a middle-class family and all this kind of nonsense, which is kind of bullshit. Right? Like, I'm sorry. She was like the child of academics. Like I, it depends on how expensive your idea of middle class is. Right. But like the whole, Oh, I worked at McDonald's to pay my bills. It's like, okay. Like, you know, as like a college job, right? Like,

Yeah, fairly normal, by the way. Like none of this is like anything that makes me like, wow, what an awesome person. I do think that there's, there are, there are certain candidates who are,

really believe in something and have something to say. That doesn't mean like that, you know, any of us agree with them necessarily, but they have convictions, you know, like Bernie Sanders has convictions and he has this thing that he wants to say is as awful as most of it is. But like he could go do a long form show. I think there's certain candidates like Kamala Harris are just not built for that. It's true in media too. I mean, I remember, you know, there, there are, there's something I was always like kind of

fascinated by in a weird way but there when you do like the cable news scene like the panels and stuff which I did for for years there are just people who are on cable news every day who like have nothing to say I mean they they we do these segments that were so ridiculously short you know like everyone gets like 30 seconds to chime in and there'd be people who were like

just basically filling it. Like they didn't even have 30 seconds worth of stuff to say on it, let alone have like three hours worth of stuff to say. And I do think that that's going to be a big part of this kind of reshuffling is that you're going to have to now, like the Democrats are going to have to figure out how they can run a candidate who could theoretically go on a Joe Rogan or a similar type platform. And I do, you know, and also get over that, also get over the,

oh, this is icky. Like Bernie Sanders went on the Joe Rogan experience and then got attacked by his own side because Joe Rogan is a fascist or something. That way of thinking is, I think, gone now. But guys, isn't that just AOC? Like, hate to say it, but like,

I'm sorry. Isn't that just, she's about to turn 35. She's technically going to be eligible this time around. She, I mean, she's good on Tik TOK, but can she do three hours? I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. I think, I think she can. And that's what makes me so afraid, right? Like, I don't think she's as much of an empty suit. I mean, she's obviously super attractive and very good in the short form, very fiery feisty. But I also think her DNC speech this past year was,

kind of showed that she's actually like, she's very talented at giving speeches. She's very talented. She gets people going in this longer format too. And she also is, I don't know, I think she's expressed some amount of interest in like, hey, if you are somebody who voted for me and you voted for Donald Trump and you're a ticket splitter in this way, tell me why, like, tell me about it. And she's kind of interested in mining,

the commonality and whether there's almost like a part of Trump's populist approach that she can co-opt, right? Like I, I'm a little afraid. Uh, I think I, I, okay, first of all, I think she's going to run. Um, I just, all the, all the signal from her seems to be that she's, that's what's in her mind and including the take in her, uh, her, um,

pronouns out of her Twitter bio. I did. I did think that was a very interesting little nugget. Um, I don't think she should be underestimated. Uh, I've been saying this for years. There's something about it. You know, it's like when people would be like a Donald Trump, they'll be like, well, he had like three bankruptcies or something. You're like, okay, listen, he,

he oversaw multi-billion dollar companies. Come on, that's a little bit impressive. Like however you feel about the guy, you don't have to love everything about her. The AOC made herself, first of all, she was a Congresswoman at like 29 or something like that and made herself like maybe the most famous Congresswoman in the country. That's kind of impressive. Like however you feel about her. And there is, you know, look, like what pops into my mind is if you remember when she was first elected

When she first came on the scene, she really stumbled on the, when she got grilled over Israel, Palestine. And I think, by the way, I actually kind of agreed with the first point that she made, but then she really did not know anything and couldn't back it up and fell apart, like really fell apart after just like a couple follow-up questions, like specifically, what do you mean? And she's like, I don't know really what I mean. So I do, I,

I don't know. I don't know how good she would do in that environment. But I would say there's look, the Democrats have a short bench and look, it shows.

how bad their bench is, that everybody for the last three years, as we were all speculating about who would actually end up being the nominee, because clearly Joe Biden is not going to have much of a chance of making it. And we all obviously skipped over Kamala Harris because nobody thought she would be the candidate. But everyone went to Gavin Newsom. And like the obvious problem, as you guys kind of touched on earlier here, is you're like, yeah, but how could the governor of California win?

run on his track record i mean that and the reason people are going to him is they're like because who else is there and bernie sanders is too old elizabeth warren totally lost her appeal with with the left wing

John Fetterman's a little too dumb, honestly. It's too weird. It's going to be Fetterman. If we're going by, you can handle yourself on Joe Rogan. It's going to be John Fetterman. I'm planting my flag there right now. I mean, it's crazy. You might be right. I mean, I don't know. You know, maybe it'll be someone entering from out of nowhere or someone who we're not thinking about. It could be Whitmer. It could be Shapiro. Yeah.

I Whitmer, I think maybe there's some possibility, but I just don't know whether she's quite charismatic enough. I it seems like there's been a little bit of Democratic schizophrenia where it's like Hillary needs to run on the essence of womaness and really needs to emphasize that she's a woman and that she would be the first woman president, that she would be historic. Whereas with Harris, I think they somewhat smartly decided to be a little bit less narcissistic, in fact.

and a little bit less focused on like, oh, you know, I'm with her. And we're like, okay, well, what exactly is she going to do for you? I think they still ended up botching that very terribly. But I think they're sort of trying to figure out like, how is it that they ought to brand a lady candidate? And it's not clear to me that Whitmer has a really big selling proposition beyond that. I mean, her governance in Michigan has been all,

All right. If you look past some of the COVID stuff, which I'm not really willing to do. Michigan's kind of an interesting place to attempt to govern. And so like, you know, I think that they could like I'm just thinking from the Democratic strategist perspective, like maybe that's what they're thinking. But I just ultimately think the AOC, they don't even have to emphasize any of the diversity stuff. It's apparent that sort of how she got her start. She started off more progressive and now it seems like she's shifted more and more toward

figuring out how to play nice with the rest of the party in a way that just is frankly pretty pragmatic and looks like somebody who's angling to win the total support of her whole party.

Well, the other, you know, the interesting kind of factor here too to me is that you've got, I mean, look, if you were going to say, look, Donald Trump's a one-term president going forward, one more term. And okay, so after it, obviously probably J.D. Vance would be positioned to perhaps take the mantle and run with it. You have guys like Vivek Ramaswamy who ran for president this time and clearly has ambitions, you know, in the future. But then there are these two figures that,

in Bobby Kennedy and Tulsi Gabbard, who were both lifelong Democrats and yes, switched over and came here. Now they've both obviously have not been confirmed yet, but they've both been given major roles

You know, and I assumed they would be in his administration in some way, but I am actually fairly surprised and quite pleasantly surprised that, I mean, he gave them both really important positions. And if they have something tangible that they can point to, is it possible that they could run as Democrats? I mean, it seems a little unlikely to me. It seems a little difficult to be a Trump supporter and then come back to the Democratic Party. But it is possible, particularly with Bobby Kennedy, I think it is possible that

if he has like tangibly great results that he can point to at the health department and can then kind of, you know, kind of replay on this, like he is Bobby Kennedy's son and Jack Kennedy's nephew. And maybe there's a possibility there. I don't know. I mean, he did run as a Democrat at the beginning of this presidential cycle. So you think he would be embraced by the Democratic Party overlords ever? No.

No, no, no. I mean, I think that's that's probably a deal breaker. It would have to be for him to win that nomination. It would have to be like Donald Trump winning the Republican nomination in 2016, where you just overwhelm them with with popular support to the fact that if you remember back in 2016, who was it? Reince Priebus, who was the head of the RNC at the time. But they were

floating out the idea of changing the rules at convention to try to stop donald trump from getting the delegates he needed like they were trying to do whatever they could and it was just like

It wasn't 56% of the room wanted Donald Trump. It was 96% of the room. You know, like there was no, you just can't really fudge anything when it's such overwhelming support. So no, Bobby would have to do something like that in order to win. Again, I'm not like predicting that happens. I'm just kind of thinking on the spot here, like where do the Democrats go? The one thing I will say that I'm pretty solid in is that

Okay, as you guys have probably seen already, the woke stuff is getting thrown under the bus because that is the only thing that the corporate media and the Democratic establishment is prepared to throw under the bus, which kind of reveals the whole thing in a way right there. There was never really a deep conviction about this. This was always something that they thought they could weaponize and get away with. They can't throw under the bus like the deep-seated corruption in the Democratic Party or the country or anything like that.

But it does, I do think that in this environment of like the long form three hour podcast, I just think wokeism can't,

It's like plants trying to survive without sunlight or something like that. Like it just really can't work. It's a, you, you really can't, you know, like if you think on your guy's show when you had, um, chase Oliver on and Liz, you asked him really just a few questions about the trans and the kids position. And it immediately just falls apart because there's really no argument behind any of it. I think the woke stuff relies on shutting down, uh,

conversation, calling someone a bigot if they don't agree with you. But it's just going to be very, very, I mean, I don't know if you guys have ever seen, there's been a few people who have tried to really make woke arguments on Rogan's podcast. It was, what was the guy, Adam Conover?

Is that, is it, it was Adam ruins everything. Is that the guy? Yeah. Yes. So he tried to make it and I don't know, you know, the clip I'm talking about, Zach, I do. I mean, it went really bad for him because there's just like, there's just kind of no defending that. And so I do think that stuff is going to have to be abandoned, which is what's interesting about AOC taking the pronouns out of her bio. Like it's almost kind of like, okay,

Four years out is enough time to be like, if I do that now, maybe there'll almost be no real memory of it by 2028. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Paint Your Life.

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I ended up getting a lot of heat for the Chase Oliver back and forth, which was kind of funny to me. And I think it's a little bit, it's not quite just that these types of views fall apart upon questioning. There was also, I think, this very palpable sense when speaking with him that,

That he was attempting to portray his positions as sort of the appropriate libertarian positions where, of course, this should be fully within the realm of, you know, the decisions made by doctors and parents and consultation with the children. And, you know, there ought to be no safeguards to prevent against, oh, I don't know, like

really young children going on puberty blockers and moving in the surgery direction and receiving surgery as minors, which is totally different than what I believe. But there was this interesting sense that I got from him, which is that he was almost this like attempting to represent a type of libertarianism that I find to be very tired. It feels like the libertarianism of quite a few years ago before some of these culture war issues really came online and on stage to

to the degree that they have, where it just felt sort of retro, this very like live and let live type thing, which like, yes, I mean, I'm a libertarian. Of course, I believe live and let live. But it's also fairly easy for me to look at areas where the culture has really attempted to

I think in my view, just like do harm toward children. And there's a lot of parents who have been swept up in this craze. And I think it's libertarianism doesn't exactly give you a super clear cut solution as to when safeguards ought to be in place to ensure that children's lives aren't ruined by parents who are co-opted by this really messed up ideology. Right.

which isn't to say that there aren't cases of like authentic, I don't know, gender dysphoria. And I think it's totally fine for adults to make that decision. But there's just a certain amount of it felt like he was trying to act like this is libertarian gospel and this is what good, true libertarians believe. And it's like, well, I don't know, man, I think you've lost a lot of us on this one. I believe I don't want the state to be all powerful and able to trump parental rights. And I think there's very complex questions. It gets very thorny about, um,

what sort of power the parent ought to have and what sort of power the state ought to have. But it's just very clear to me that this is an area where a terrible ideology has really made a lot of parents believe in that they're doing something very benevolent toward their kid, which I really don't think they are. It's very concerning to me. It's a very difficult, it's a difficult situation to kind of

extrapolate from Libertarianism 101 what the correct answer is. - Yeah, it's not totally clear to me, but his answer just felt kind of condescending where it was just like, wait. - Look, I completely agree, but especially when this ideology has so clearly been pumped

through these essentially government programs. I mean, like, like all of college is a government program. I mean, the whole thing is like, they're all either like directly funded with taxpayer dollars or the whole system is propped up by government issued laws.

loans you know what i mean that would never be issue i mean first they were government-backed loans and now they're just issued directly from the government and so when you have that you're like well what is that exactly i mean it's certainly not an organic market phenomenon um so it's not exactly clear but also i mean the thing to me in your questioning was then when chase went off on his thing

where he said his niece or something like that, like wanted to get a tattoo at 16. And we were like, no, you got to wait till 18. And you're like, wait a minute. So are you are you actually reduced to arguing that it is a more significant, irreversible decision for a 16 year old to get an ankle tattoo than for a 12 year old?

to like suppress puberty I've got 20 tattoos and I haven't chopped my breasts off I'm sorry these things are not anywhere close to comparable and it's kind of insulting to me to claim that they are yes I mean like I'm sorry and like and by the way I agree with the 18 for tattoos okay but also whatever but I can also say like no a 16 year old getting a tattoo is so much less important of like ah

I mean, come on like there's not an entire activist class that has been focused on trying to tell you that you know If you don't get a tattoo you might kill yourself, right? Like there's the well, I yes and I I did I Debated a left libertarian Who like I don't have anything against the guy but I debate is bright guy But I debated a left libertarian on trans issues once and and he said

At one point he was like listen if kids are telling you this is how they feel then you know that's real like that's organic and coming from these kids and my response was I go let me ask you a question I already know the answer to do you have kids and

And he was like, no. And I was like, exactly because nobody who actually has kids thinks that kids are not malleable and that all of the ideas that come from them are just truly organic and came out of them. Like it's one of the things I think that you, you realize when you have kids.

And that it's a very awesome power that you're not supposed to wield in a tyrannical way is that you can just totally mind fuck your child. It's like a really, you know, like there is almost in some ways there's no more awesome power that you'll ever have over anyone because it's

you can totally manipulate them. You just have this advantage of having a fully developed brain where they don't. And there's something where it's like such a betrayal for you to use that in an unjust way. And like, no, I'm sorry, but when you see these 12 year olds who are like, I identify as a girl and also so does my, so do my two brothers and my mom just happens to be a trans activist. You're like,

I'm sorry. I'm not buying this. Go ahead, Zach. Well, yeah. I mean, I think the reason Liz and I both are not only willing but eager to engage in those kind of topics is because...

They can really derail libertarianism, basically, because when you're talking about kids or we were earlier talking about homeless people in the throes of addiction or you're talking about people with severe mental illnesses, these are all cases where it complicates purist libertarian theory because these are not –

wholly rational actors. And so somebody is making a decision on behalf of a child. We want it to usually be the parents, although the parent can make an abusive decision where we would say in that case, yes, that is the role of the state to protect people against abuse. And when that gets, when, when there's confusion about that,

It makes it harder to make the case in... When we are talking about adults, when we are talking about protecting someone who just...

Just wants to, they're, they're an adult. They're fully rational in a sense. And they want to live as the other sex. We, we, one of our upcoming episodes is with Brianna Wu, who is a leftist journalist, trans woman who now is over it. She's over the left. Um, she not over being trans to be clear. She was still, uh,

Although we had her podcasting co-host on TAF who does regret transitioning or has at times regretted transitioning. So that does happen. But now she's kind of stuck where she is because she's gone so far. But Brianna basically watched what happened with this election and the role that...

the trans issue played in it, where the Trump campaign was spending tens of millions of dollars in the final stretch running those ads saying, "Kamala stands with they/them, Trump stands with you." And it was like testing off the charts with the voters.

And she's like, "We are, people like me, are gonna lose it all because we're fighting these battles over children, over playing in sports leagues where it's not appropriate, and going into locker rooms with anatomy that people don't want to see. We need to choose our battles a little more wisely here and realize when there has been overreach."

And I think in the same vein, libertarians need to think about that. We need to think about are we applying our principles consistently, but also are we sort of stretching in a way that just undermines everything?

and makes it impossible to sell anything. That's such a good point, man. And by the way, this was, you know, I did a debate. If anybody wants to watch, I did a debate on just asking questions over the immigration topic. And this has always been one of my big, like I have...

have a whole argument about why I don't think open borders is the correct libertarian position. But even aside from that, that like you just said it, Zach, in such a great way, like my, my central thing is always like, guys, we will let be laughed out of the room and never heard from again. If you approach the American people with our answer is right now under current situations to just open the border, like that's it. I mean,

100% of the right wing will never listen to you. And 90% of the left wing will never listen to you. And there, there just is something like that. And, you know, with the, I've always said for, for years, you know, there's always like this profound nurture verse nature debate in, in psychology and sociology and any side, like on the hard right side,

you'll find people who reduce everything to nature. So, you know, genetic determinism or, you know, demographics equals destiny or, you know, the, you know, international Jewry or like whatever the root, the complete argument is in genetics. And then on the furthest on the left, you find this, like the polar opposite, that everything is just environment and there's no constraints

of biological reality. And I'm just saying, anytime, if you ever go full nurture or full nature, you're going to end up in a really bad place, like in a really bad place where your argument falls apart, because to deny the other force is just insane. And like, there's not that you can,

By the way, if you're an adult person who was born a man and wants to live your life as a woman, as I've always said, you own your body and you should be able to choose what you do with it. And generally speaking, extra libertarian belief, don't be a dick to that person. You shouldn't be a dick in life. That's not a good thing.

Which is a rule I think I violated with Chase Oliver, Sal. I wish I'd been a little nicer. Listen, I violated the rule plenty of times myself, but it's still a good rule to aspire toward. But to sit here in a conversation and then you're going to say to me like, trans women are women. And it's like, eh.

okay, come on. Like what claim are you actually making here? Like, are you actually telling me that this isn't a man living their life as a woman? This is a woman. No, I'm sorry. However, any of us feel about it, objective biological realities are, are still there. Listen, um,

I got to wrap up because we're over time here. Liz, Zach, thank you guys so much for coming on. Guys, please go check out their show. Subscribe to Just Asking Questions if you haven't already. We should definitely do this again. But guys, if anything else you guys want to plug, please feel free.

We're just so grateful. Thank you, Dave. We can't wait to have you back on our show. Yeah, really grateful. And just anyone who wants to support us, please just subscribe to the channel because we just spun off. And the faster we can sort of build that up, the more we are going to be able to do in the long run. Well, it's a fantastic show. I enjoy every time I'm on it. I really enjoyed having you guys on as well. Thank you to both of you again. Thanks to everybody for listening. We'll catch you next time. Peace.