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What is up, everybody? Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem. I'm running solo for this episode, but thanks everybody for tuning in. Robbie the Fire Bernstein will be back with me tomorrow on the members-only episode.
Yeah, a lot to talk about today. Before we get into it, I do quick, just a couple of obligatory announcements. I am coming to...
What do we got next? I'm sorry. I should remember this. Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky on January 30th, one night only come out. And then the next two days, January 31st and February 1st, I'll be in Fort Wayne, Indiana the following week in Key West, Florida. All of those dates with Robbie the Fire Bernstein, comicdavesmith.com.
for all of the ticket links. And then, of course, as I've mentioned for the past couple episodes, I will be participating in an Oxford-style debate on February 11th against Josh Hammer. We will be debating the U.S.-Israeli relationship and its effects on U.S. foreign policy at Princeton, which is just a
sad, sad comment on where we are as a society that I will be debating at one of our prestigious college campuses. But I hope to see some of you guys out there. I am looking forward to it and I think it'll be, it'll be a good time and an interesting event. So, all right. All that being said, obviously, uh, the, on the last episode, we foreshadowed this a little bit
But late last night, or maybe not late, I don't know. I think I just, I'm an old man. I think I just go to sleep too early. I guess it wasn't that late. But yesterday evening, Donald Trump did come through on his promise that he made at the Libertarian Party National Convention. I was there and watched Donald Trump make this promise. I spoke before he did. And, yeah.
Yeah, he came through and with a full pardon for Ross Ulbrich. That was something that was it was not clear that that was going to be the case. A lot of us thought, I believe, you know, I'd actually have to go back in and listen to it again. But I believe the language he had used at first was about commuting his sentence. I think I believe that was the initial sentence.
promise. Um, and he, we got more than that. We got a full pardon. Russ Ulbrich was released from prison last night. He is home now. Um, or at least I assume I, to be fair, I don't actually know that he's home. I know he was released from prison. I don't know if he wanted to make a couple of stops, uh, before he went home, but from my, he's a free man that much. I know. Um, which is just amazing. It really, I just can't overstate how, um,
how incredible it is. As I mentioned on the last episode, I don't know Ross Albrecht and I've never met him or had a conversation with him. I do know his mother fairly well and I've had many conversations with her and I'm just so happy for Lynn Albrecht and that her nightmare comes to an end is just such a wonderful thing. And this is something that was... Look, it's an accomplishment that a lot of people should...
should share credit for. And I think nobody deserves more credit than Lynn Albrook herself. You know, Lynn just...
worked tirelessly. And it was just unbelievable how relentless that woman was. I mean, I saw her, she was out at so many different events for years and years and years. I mean, I remember, you know, it was, um, I think it was during the Obama administration that I first met Lynn and the whole thing just seemed completely hopeless. I mean, she was out just this mother who was trying to get
Her son freed. And but at the time, it was like he lost in court. I believe he lost on appeal. It was just like, listen, the feds decided to make an example out of this kid. And what happens when the feds decide to make an example out of you? Well, you lose. That's it.
What are we going to do? You know, I mean, like it was it was so sad because you would see it whenever you spoke to her. I mean, you would just see in her eyes, in her soul, the amount of pain that this woman was in. I mean, I met Lynn before I had kids and I remember being struck by it then.
Um, but there's just after having children, I think it, you know, and I have little kids obviously, but there's, there's something where you just understand it a little bit better. Like imagine, imagine being in that situation where your kid is just rotting away in prison and has had their life robbed from them. I couldn't imagine anything more painful than that.
I mean, I don't there's there's nothing you could do to me that would be as painful as like living through that being done to one of your kids and just being helpless. And she just never stopped. She never stopped trying. And of course, you know, Donald Trump was already president for four years and didn't pardon Ross. And so for this.
You know, when you had essentially, you know, even going into this year when the choice seemed to be between the current President Biden and the former President Trump, both of whom have had the opportunity to and have not pardoned Ross, the thing seemed equally helpless.
And then it got reinserted as a major issue during this campaign. And so Lynn deserves the most credit and as well as a whole bunch of like activists who kept this cause alive during those years when it did seem hopeless. It seemed to me at the time that the free Ross thing was more of like,
like, it was more of like a tool that libertarians could use to point to what the state does to people and how it ruins people's lives. But I, you know, at least from my perspective, at the beginning, it never really seemed like it was practically achievable that we would actually get this guy free. That really changed. And it changed in large part when Angela McArdle
invited Donald Trump to the Libertarian National Convention and made this one of her, you know, I don't know how to say, I was going to say central demands, but maybe that's not exactly the right way to put it, but made it clear that this was something that libertarians cared about and that he would win a lot of support if he promised to do this and ultimately was, you know, able to help him to get him to come through on this promise. So like,
Angela McArdle deserves a ton of credit for this, as well as Michael Heiss and the entire Mises caucus that, you know, put her in to the chairmanship of the Libertarian Party.
Of course, also, I should mention, I know there's other people who probably deserve a lot of credit, too, but I should mention that, of course, it was Rand Paul in the Senate and Thomas Massey in the House of Representatives who kept bringing the issue up to Trump. And I know that Rand Paul sent him a letter
I think just yesterday or the day before and asking him to please come through on this promise. I know Thomas Massey has relentlessly worked for this cause. And in fact, him and he was on Tim cast last night and he read a letter that Ross had written him from prison. So like he was in communication with Ross Ulbrich and, and, and I'm sure with Lynn too. And so, you know,
Look, it's just that this was kind of, I would say, and maybe we'll get a little bit more into this topic, but in terms of the libertarian movement, what's often called the liberty movement, just a lot of...
A lot of credit all around. I mean, this was an issue that it's not just like it was like the libertarian activists and the the Libertarian Party. And then, of course, the the few best members of Congress in the Senate who are the libertarians. They are Rand Paul and Thomas Massey, who also happen to be the best two members of Congress during covid and pretty much everything else. But.
They really all came together, you know, and when I say they all came together, I don't mean literally they all came together, but I mean that like there were all of these different components to this project and all of them were necessary in order to get it to come to fruition in the way that it did with, you know,
A man's life being saved and a mother's tragedy being ended. Just kind of a beautiful story. And I think something that libertarians feel very encouraged about, you know, obviously we're kind of up against it. We, you know, libertarians amongst libertarians, the within, you know,
debates about theory and philosophy, it's pretty much a consensus that the range of debate is about whether like 95% of the government shouldn't exist or 100% of the government shouldn't exist. And then we debate within that spectrum, no pun intended. So
My point is just that libertarians in general are up against it. I mean, we live under the biggest, most powerful government in the history of the world, and we either believe that 95% of that or 100% of it should be gone. That's pretty daunting. It's a tall order, and you're probably not going to get all of that done very easily short of some major revolutionary change. But
to get a win like this just feels nice. Um, particularly when it's somebody who we kind of personally know. Um, I mean, again, I don't know Ross, but I know his mother and so many people in the movement know her because she was just everywhere for many, many years now, um, for the last decade, I guess. Um, and it was just, it was great. You know, it's a signal from Donald Trump that he followed through on this promise. Of course he did not have to. And, um,
He did, and that says something. I'm going to read what he wrote yesterday. It was this, I will say, and I was...
You know, I was, as I said to you guys recently, I was cautiously optimistic that this would happen. I had, you know, I have some people who are like close to the administration who I'm in communication with. And then there's the things publicly that have been said. And everything that I had heard was indicating that this was going to happen.
So I was kind of, you know, now I've been around this game long enough to know that when you're relying on a politician's word, that's not necessarily the safest place to be and that you never know what other types of forces are going to come.
persuade a politician once they're in power. And so I was, you know, I was, as I said, cautiously optimistic about this, but I did, it did seem like it was going to happen for a while. I did not think we were going to get this, uh, not just a full pardon, but the message that Donald Trump sent. And, uh, here it is. Okay.
Donald J. Trump tweeted, or perhaps he was at Truth Social or Twitter, I don't know. He posted yesterday at 7:12 p.m., "I just called the mother of Ross Ulbrich to let her know that in honor of her and the libertarian movement, which supported me so strongly, it was my pleasure to have just signed a full and unconditional pardon of her son, Ross."
The scum that worked to convict him were some of the same lunatics who were involved in the modern day weaponization of government against me. He was given two life sentences plus 40 years. Ridiculous! Now that, I must say, was particularly rewarding for me personally. Not just that he credited the libertarian movement
for, you know, pushing him to do this, but that he called the people who put Raws away scum. I just loved that. I love that so much. You know, in a lot of ways, the last, so it's not quite 24 hours as I'm recording this now. What is it? You know, 30 hours or so. I've just, I've been thinking a lot. Well, I spent a few hours of those sleeping, but I have been thinking a lot about, you
the libertarian movement, this accomplishment and libertarianism in general. And, you know, so I was right before I, I, we came on here, I was just recording, uh, another episode of, uh, Pierce Morgan. So I was on, I was on Pierce Morgan, which was, you know,
It's fun. But, you know, it's always just too many people on these panels and you just don't get enough time. It's like five people and all this. But I was arguing with one of the guys there. And one of the things he brought up
Just found this to be so interesting. So he's like, he's arguing with me about or with the panel. I don't know. I got a few words in. But at one point he was talking about how Donald Trump pardoned all the people from January 6th, including the violent ones and how horrible this is because these people are freed now. And some of them like fought with police or something like that. And I guess the argument was like, oh, he I think Piers Morgan said at one point he should have pardoned the president.
the nonviolent protesters at January 6th, but not the ones who got in the fights or smashed windows or whatever. And the guy, I can't remember his name, but the guy said at one point, he said, how do you sleep at night knowing that these people are free? And I just, I found this to be a very interesting way to look at things. And so my rejoinder to this, my counter was like, well, how do you sleep at night
knowing that nonviolent people are locked in a cage. I mean, like, I'm sorry, but I just cannot. It's always been to me. And maybe this is where the, you know, the kind of bleeding heart libertarian thing comes in. But
It's interesting. You know, I remember one of the first pieces when I first discovered libertarianism, one of the first pieces I ever read was this article by the greatest libertarian thinker who's ever lived, Murray Rothbard. And it's called – great piece, by the way. I highly recommend people go read it. It's called The Confessions of a Right-Wing Liberal.
And I loved this piece. I still do. I reread it not that long ago. But I remember the first time I ever read that, how much just seeing the term right-wing liberal. And I just loved that because it's already just like...
It's like a paradigm shattering label. You know, like that's just to most people. They're like, well, you can't be both of those things. You have to be one or the other. Right. Liberal is over here on the left and right wing means over here on the right. And, you know, I remember this is all like early 2000s.
libertarian reading when i was first diving into this but i remember when ayn rand was criticizing rothbardian libertarians what she called them and she meant this as a term of derision like she was insulting us i mean i wouldn't have not me i wasn't a part of it then but she was insulting you know what what i ultimately am now and she referred to us as right-wing hippies
And that was supposed to be like an insult. Like, you know, you pretend to be right wing, but you're really a bunch of hippies. And I remember the first time I read those words, just thinking to myself, like, yeah, that's, that's perfect.
That's exactly what I am, a right-wing hippie. All right, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is My Patriot Supply. Guys, the last few years have been a turbulent time for America. And even though a lot of people are very optimistic that Donald Trump is in office again, the truth is that no leader and no system can guarantee your protection. That's why I protect my family with My Patriot Supply. Their four-week emergency food kit gives you the nutrition you need to stay strong in a crisis.
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I think there's no better like describe her of how I view the world than being like a right wing hippie, which does sound like a contradiction to a lot of people, but I don't think it is. And I think that particularly, particularly after the last decade of kind of insane woke ism, there is this understand understandable,
correction to that or an understandable reaction to that. And you see it all around you. You see kind of like the rise of hardcore right-wing ideology. And in many cases, that's just, you know, I was tweeting about this earlier, but it's like, I understand why that happens. I understand it. And I understand that when you're seeing things like, when you're seeing
Like a dude in a dress giving a lap dance to an 11-year-old. And then you're being told, but not by random people online, but by all of the most powerful, you know, power centers in society that you're a bigot if you call this out.
you're a you're a racist or whatever not racist but you know the transphobe or whatever if you have something to say about this or even things like you know i was on um uh that uh chick riley gaines joined uh the panel while i was on pierce morgan because you know it's pierce morgan so just more people keep coming in when you're in the middle of a panel it's so weird um but so uh
If you're not familiar, she was the one who was like, uh, she was the female swimmer who was like essentially robbed of her, uh, like trophy. I don't remember exactly what was she going to get gold, but she got silver. Cause that Leah Thompson, the guy just was, took the first place in women's sports or whatever. But anyway, she was talking about how, um,
you know her story is that she was like forced to change with this guy so like they would have the women's swim team and then there's this guy who identifies as a woman with full male genitalia as she tells it and all of the girls were like forced to change with her and they were all like this is insane like and it's like even as she's telling the story i'm like in my mind i'm just like oh i mean
I don't want to be careful in what I say on microphone here, but if anyone ever tried to force my wife or daughter to change in the presence of a man when they were uncomfortable with that, I'd be ready to kill someone over that. And then to be called a bigot because you have the impulse to...
What ends up happening, though, is that then you have this woke thing and then it leads to the rise of like hardcore right wing ideology in response to it. When you see.
a man in a dress giving a lap dance to an 11-year-old and then everyone tells you you're a bigot if you have a problem with this, people, like, the tweet that says put him up against the wall is going to be a lot more satisfying than a tweet about individual liberty and how, like, well, while I don't agree with your choice, you have the right to do this, but you don't have the right to inflict it on children. And, like, you're not going to get, like, a calm...
sober, thoughtful reaction to that type of stuff. You're going to get people racing in the other direction, you know, and I understand that. I understand that. I do, however, think that at a certain point, it's incumbent on adults to be adults, right?
And to actually think about what kind of society we want to leave for our children. You know, if you're like, if you're going to be in this world of talking about politics and talking about policy and talking about things that matter, I do think you have an obligation to,
to try, like, I'm not saying you can't ever shit post or you can't ever talk shit online or you can't ever like troll or say things like, I'm not saying that I'm guilty of it as much as anybody, but I do think there at a certain point, you also have to like, try to rise above that and not just be contrarian or reactionary and actually think about like, Hey, what are we trying to do here? You know, I was, um, I was having a phone call. I was on the phone with, uh, Connor Freeman, uh,
The other day, who's great, by the way, really, really love that guy. He's if people don't know, he's at the Libertarian Institute and antiwar.com. He's been on the show before, and we're going to have him back on again soon. But I was on the phone with him. Very, very smart guy. And he's a private conversation, but I don't think I don't think Connor would mind me.
saying this publicly, but he said something that really made me think. And it was about a little Twitter interaction that we had had where I was talking about
One of the, you know, for libertarians who know this is an issue I've been kind of going to war with other libertarians about for a few years now. But I was talking about like the libertarian position on public property and, you know, how I don't believe that it is the correct libertarian answer that like homeless people should just be allowed to sleep on the streets and form homeless encampments. And I don't think they have a right to do that. I don't think any of us have a right to do that. And.
So anyway, it came off of Liz Wolf, who's also been on the show a couple times. She had posted something like she posted a picture of like a junkie sleeping in a playground. And I had responded with something about physical removal, kind of like a nod to Hoppian theory. And.
You know, I was talking about it with Connor on the phone and he was basically saying that he was like, look, I completely agree with you on the policy. Of course, I don't think that homeless people should be allowed to sleep in playgrounds. They should be removed from there.
However, he said he was like, there should also be some message of compassion. It shouldn't just be that like, hey, libertarians are the hardcore people who are for kicking these homeless people out of here. There should also be some message about like what we would do to deal with the homeless situation or what policies lead to homelessness and all of this. And, you know, I had to concede as he was saying this, that.
Perhaps I've been a little colored by the years of battling wokeism and that includes battling like goofy woke libertarians. But at a certain point, you're like, yeah, I don't want it to come off like my only message here is like one of cruelty. And anyway, that's just something that is like a broader thought that I've had for quite a while. And there's.
In this case with Ross Ulbrich, especially having Donald Trump, the most famous, you know, the leader of the right wing in America, calling the prosecutors scum for locking him up, which was something, you know, like I was I was hoping Ross's sentence was going to get commuted. I was blown away by a full pardon. I was grateful that he, you know, um.
That he gave credit to the Liberty Movement. But then, you know, calling him scum, it's that what's the old Vince McMahon, you know, meme where he's just getting more and more excited. That was the last Vince McMahon face was me when he calls him scum like, ah, this is just too great to be true.
But I did think it was like a really interesting time to kind of bring up some of these issues and to challenge people to like actually consider this stuff and to think about this, like in terms of who we are as a society and what we support. You know, back to the guy on Piers Morgan, you know, who's saying, how do you live with yourself?
How do you live with yourself knowing that someone who fought with a cop is free four years later? Like, I just like think about that for a second. Like four years in prison is a long time to spend in prison. And the idea that you should be losing sleep over someone getting in a fight.
That they're not what doing five years, 10 years, 20 years in prison. Like, is that really, does that make sense? And meanwhile, you're not even thinking to yourself, like, are you losing sleep over the fact I'll say this, right? You know how, like, if you ever, even just like when you were in school, if you ever read about like,
slavery or the Holocaust or some genocide or some horrible war. Just read about one of the many atrocities in human history. And you would just kind of have a feeling of like, Jesus Christ, human beings actually did that?
Like, this is just so like there was slavery and other people just accepted this. They just accepted the idea that you could own a human being and treat them as livestock. And like, Jesus Christ. Now, how did people like lose their minds so much that they accepted this? Well, I've always, you know,
I've always kind of been interested in the idea from back 20 years ago when I first became a libertarian. The thing that would always be interesting to me was like, what like that is going on in our society right now that we just have a blind spot to? That if we were alive, you know, in 100 years and people would look at us and go like, you know, how the hell did you guys put up with that? And we'd be like, oh, wow, I never really thought about it like that. And
You know, the things that always struck me as the most obvious was war and imprisoning people for nonviolent victimless crimes.
it just seemed so obvious to me like as i started reading all this libertarian stuff that it was like yeah look it's right there we're doing this right there we still have slavery we just have it by another name it's it's like the people are i mean what are you when you're in prison you're a slave you're a slave of the government down to the fact that they do labor you know i mean like but you're a slave your your liberty is taken you're thrown in a cage to be
raped or tortured or beaten or threatened like an animal, you know? And then you think to yourself, like, well, what
What like if you just stripped away everything else, you know, and we were just talking about morality, like what's right and what's wrong. And I were to propose to you this idea that we're going to throw human beings into cages, shackle them, rob them of their lives, of their liberty. And again, like I said, I'm being slightly hyperbolic, but like.
When I say to be raped and tortured, I mean, you know, this is like accepted. It's like if you watch like any cop show, like Law and Order or something like that, it's like a punchline.
In the shows, like they use the good, the good guys who are the cops in the shows, they will use this threat against sometimes innocent people. Like, like this is how much we just culturally accept this. Like, you know what I'm talking about? Like when they're, um,
You know, they'll be like they'll be interrogating one like wimpy guy who maybe knows something about the crime and isn't telling them or something like that. Not even like the guy guilty of the crime, but like they'll just be interrogating some guy and they'll be like, oh, we've got you on this and on this. You know, guys like you don't do very well in jail. And that's just like.
That's just like a, I don't know, totally accepted. Yeah. The cop here is just threatening you with the fact that you will probably be raped in this dungeon that they're going to throw you into. Okay. So like,
Okay, if I was just talking to you about morality and none of this stuff existed and I was just saying like that's the situation. And then I were to ask you like when is it morally acceptable to throw someone in a cage to maybe be raped and tortured and have their life and liberty robbed from them? When is it acceptable?
And I mean, like, what could you come up with? Yeah. Okay, fine. You could say like, maybe like murderers or like brutally violent criminals. Maybe you could get there with like property damage and things like that. Okay. I mean, that is a real violation of somebody's rights. But I mean, Jesus, to get there over a victimless nonviolent crime, like it's just, and that's what I love about Donald Trump calling these people scum.
Is that it's like, yeah, think about that. Like who, morally speaking, not legally, who are the real criminals here? Ross Ulbrich for creating a website or these prosecutors who would give somebody two life sentences plus 40 years for
for creating that website. And to be clear, you know, that's a, oh yeah, Natalie put in, it's a great point, Natalie, that don't drop the soap. Yeah, that's a punchline. It's a punchline. That's like, yeah, ha ha.
People get raped in jail like this is just it's madness. It's it is the example of the thing in 100 years that you'd be reading about and that they don't do this anymore. And they go, how the hell did you ever do this? And you're like, oh, yeah, that does. I guess when you look at it like that, it is kind of indefensible.
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They ship anywhere in the world. Once more, sheathunderwear.com, promo code PROBLEM20 for 20% off your order. All right, let's get back into the show. So yeah, anyway, but what you're talking about this now, in the case of Ross Ulbricht,
You know, it's so absurd that so he he basically he created the Silk Road, which is like a website was a marketplace. OK, and so the accusation was that people were selling drugs on that marketplace and people were laundering money on the marketplace. And therefore, he's responsible for it.
It would be on the level. You remember when Mark Zuckerberg in his little announcement that he's going to let people speak on Facebook, when he said a couple of weeks ago that we have a real problem with child trafficking on Facebook or whatever, like, I don't even know the, I don't know anything about that, but imagine if someone were to ever say, that's why we're going to give Mark Zuckerberg 60 life sentences in jail or something like that. I just pulled 60 out of my ass. Cause you know, it's on a much bigger scale than the silk road was, but like,
It'd be like on the level of like, you know, somebody made a phone call and was plotting a murder. Therefore, we're going to throw the CEO of AT&T in jail for multiple life sentences. Like, this is just insane. No one would ever think this way. But OK, as long as we got Donald Trump calling these people scum.
This is something that the American people should be thinking about because Ross Ulbrich is just one case and he is far from the only one. And particularly after what happened with the January 6th people and what happened with Donald Trump himself and the charges he was facing. I mean, you see how much this is a part of what we call our justice system, where when there's somebody who they have an ax to grind against,
When there's somebody they want to make an example out of, or maybe just for political reasons want to remove this person, the system can be so vicious, just unbelievable. It is insane how many people are sitting in jail cells right now in this country over victimless nonviolent crimes. It's in the hundreds of thousands at least.
You know, you're talking about crimes like the crime of owning a gun, not hurting anybody, not shooting anybody, not threatening anybody, but just having a gun. Or maybe you had a gun and then you, you know, drove from like,
I don't know, like Philadelphia to Camden, New Jersey or something like that. And now you've crossed state lines with an illegal weapon. And now you're looking at like multiple decade sentences. How many people are in jail over drugs, over distribution of drugs? I mean, like, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, it's insane. And if you want to actually like get down to a point where we're not just like
We're not just being reactionary against the woke and we're not just owning the libs and we're not just saying like the thing that feels like the most hardcore badass thing we could say. Don't get me wrong. I've done that myself a time or two. I understand the appeal of it, but there is something that is immature about it. You know, it's like at a certain point, you kind of like have to be the adult in the room and think about what type of society we want for our kids.
Then I would say one where like nobody's kid gets treated the way Ross Ulbricht does, that nobody is at risk of ever the fact that the fact that it could ever be the case in the United States of America, that you could get a double life sentence plus 40 years.
for creating a website for a nonviolent victimless crime. That is madness. It is insane. And it's enough that every American should look at that and just be appalled. Like that should never be allowed to happen in a professed free society. It's a disgrace. And
You know, I'm just really glad Donald Trump pardoned him, but I'm so glad that he also like brought attention to like who the real criminals are here. I didn't even know the bit about him saying that some of the prosecutors were the same people involved in coming after him. I didn't know. I didn't know anything about that. But that does, you know, it, um,
It's interesting, and you'd understand why that would give Donald Trump a little added motivation to want to call them out for that. But the truth is that they've been doing this to the American people for years. And I do think that this is something that all Americans should look at and think about, no matter what side of it you're on.
I mean, look, personally, like I'm just making the appeal right now that it's just it's just wrong to do that to anyone for anything short of like a brutal, violent crime. Like, look, by the way, it's debatable whether this is the best way to handle brutal, violent crime, to be honest. Like, it's kind of crazy. Like.
I don't know. Maybe there's a better solution we could come up with. The whole idea of prison to me seems like something that should have existed in the 1600s and we found some better way now. But, OK, I'm not going to go to bat for like brutal, violent criminals. So fine, if you want to say they get thrown in prison for long sentences, OK. But my God, for anybody like a nonviolent victimless crime, it's just insane.
it's just pure evil to support this but even if you could move beyond just the moral argument of it i mean think about it like this like to left-wingers look who's in charge of the government right now you really want the government having that type of power you know i mean like you better be really confident that it's only going to be used in your favor if you're going to support that type of power and to the right-wingers
It was like, hey, you guys might be in power now, but you just saw what it was like when you weren't. And you have no guarantee that you're going to be in power forever. You've got two years of having the Congress and four years of having the presidency, all but guaranteed. But that's
that's not that long and you might think to yourself man like this is a power you really would not like your political enemies to have and wield over you and then if that in itself should be enough of a reason to oppose this stuff um it is just you know it it's just the case that
This stuff, if the government has this power, it will be weaponized for political reasons. That's how it works. Things that politicians have control of are, by definition, political. And you do not want your political enemies to have this type of power, to violate people's basic liberty and humanity in this way. And it's just the case that, like,
People get, people get railroaded by the legal system all the time as go look through the amount of like DNA records that have overturned convictions. I mean, there's people that are straight up like on death row and have been let go because the technology came out years later to just prove that it was not them. They just got totally railroaded by the system. And it's, it's tragic. It's, it's,
At a certain point, we got to decide who we want to be as a society. And if we want to be the freest country in the world, like, is that what we want? Or do we want to be the country that leads the world in throwing their own people in prison the most and the harshest and for the longest period of time? Because you cannot be both.
You can be one or the other. You know, you can lead the world in freedom or you can lead the world in imprisoning your own citizens. But you can't have both of those. So that is just something that I, you know, I felt like now is the time to bring it up. I think it's great. It's great that this happened. It's great that he called them all scumbags. And that's something that people should really think about.
It's, you know, for Lynn Albrook's nightmare being ruined, there's so many other mothers out there whose nightmares are, you know, just still going. And again, I will say that, you know, even Donald Trump is not good on the war on drugs and he's not, you know, and so many right-wingers aren't, particularly in America.
This era where there's been essentially there's been a ridiculous absence of rules and law enforcement in major cities across the country. And I don't get me wrong. I think all of that stuff is insane. It's insane to like essentially.
get rid of the penalties for violent crimes. Nobody here, at least, is suggesting that if you carjack somebody, you shouldn't be arrested and prosecuted for that. And I'm certainly not suggesting that there shouldn't be penalties for shoplifting, property damage, things like that. But it would, I think that, especially in 2024,
When it comes to like the issue of drugs, because of course this was one of the charges that Ross Albright got was that people were selling drugs on his website. Therefore he facilitated the sale of drugs. You know, it's interesting by the way that this never applies to the powerful. You know what I'm saying? Like nobody ever makes the argument that like, Hey, you know, all of these drug dealers are trading in dollars. Like they're using cash.
Therefore, I think the chairman of the Federal Reserve should go to prison for four life sentences. Isn't that convenient? It never seems to apply to the actual powerful people, right? Nobody, like I said before, saying the owner of telephone companies or even the big tech platforms or anything like that should be criminally prosecuted for what somebody did on their platform.
But, you know, on the topic of drugs in general, and I think that I'm hoping that the new generation could perhaps be a bit more enlightened and a bit more grown up than like the baby boomers who were just I mean, you know, for coming out of the hippies, they really just became like the most even though like the most.
Just had a very simplistic and kind of stupid way of thinking about all these things. But look, I'll just say this. Okay. And I say this as somebody like I'm not endorsing drug use. I don't, I don't use drugs.
I mean, I don't know, you know, depending on your definition, like I am helplessly addicted to nicotine and caffeine and I do enjoy a nice bourbon. So I'm not like, you know, I'm not a square or something like that, but.
I'm a guy and I've talked about this on the show before. I was a serious pothead for many, many years, starting at a very young age. I smoked weed every single day, all day long, as much as I could afford to from basically like 13 to 30 something. And
It's something I regret. I would not advise it for young people. I don't think, you know, every day smoking weed all day long, I don't think it's good for you. And I think that a lot of people who do smoke weed like that would benefit from cutting down or stopping altogether. I think that a lot of people make excuses to themselves and a lot of the people who...
smoke weed like that, they know they'd probably be better off not. But it's hard. You fall into habits.
I'm certainly like, I don't, I don't do any like hard drugs. Um, and so it's not, I'm not like saying like, oh, drugs are great. Or I'm not downplaying the negative effects of drugs. I'm just saying, let's have a, like a bit more of an adult, honest conversation about drugs. If we're going to be throwing people in jail for life over them.
Okay. And first off, just to the point I made before about like the powerful and how this never like it seems to affect them. You want to talk about drug dealers that you want to talk about drug use, but what you're not going to look at big pharma. You're not going to look at the fact that they've made, they've institutionalized putting children on methamphetamines. We're not going to point that out at all. Go by the way, do a little bit of research on the history of Adderall.
in the history of some of these add drugs look into what they are look into how they came about it is insane insane that they prescribe them to eight-year-olds liberally it's like a but oh are any of those people going to go to jail huh are they i don't think so it's also just like
You know, you can recognize what I just said about drugs not being so great for you. And maybe like, you know, a sober life is a better way to live than one where you're using drugs recklessly. Now, you could also argue, and it is true that there's a lot of people who use drugs recreational, but they do it in moderation and they don't mess up their lives. And I don't know, you know, who are you or anyone else to tell them that?
that they're doing it wrong. If they're enjoying it and they're still being productive and being good members of their community or whatever. I saw somebody, because again, this right-wing kind of overreaction is so popular these days. But I remember I saw someone...
tweeting and it was a tweet that like really blew up and a lot of people were agreeing with that where they were like i've never met a successful pothead in my life and as somebody who's not like an advocate of uh smoking weed it's like well you just that's more of a comment on who you know than it is a comment on pot because i know a lot of them and it's like they're i know a lot of very very successful people who smoke weed so again it's not
I'm just saying, let's talk about this like adults. Let's talk about what's really going on in our society. And even drugs that are seen as so taboo, like cocaine, for example,
Um, you know, how many people in the Fox news building do you think have used cocaine? You know, on, in the, in the Fox news where the boomer cons get their news from. Okay. And they're watching, you know, Sean Hannity or whoever. And there's just very, you know, if the topic were to come up on air, it would be like drugs, the scourge of society. How many of them you think are doing a bump in the bathroom at the bar after the show? What do you think it is?
It ain't zero. Let me tell you that.
And the answer is a lot. A lot of them are. But we're somehow supposed to pretend that that doesn't exist. And then we'll create a system where you can, if you're caught, and I mean, look, in some areas, these laws have been like changed a bit, but it is still the case that like, if you're caught with like even possession of like cocaine, depending on the state that you're in, you could be looking at like,
10 years, 20 years in prison. Now, it is true that the majority, because this is the way the system is set up, it is true that the majority case, if you have no record and that's all you've been caught with, you're probably not going to actually do 10 to 20 years. But there's still something to be said where you're looking at that type of sentence.
And then you're in a position where, of course, you just have to take whatever plea deal they offer you because your life is on the line. You know, I think about what think about what 10 years in prison is not like in some abstract sense with someone else. Like if it were you or your family member, that was something you were looking at 10 years in prison. What is that? Well, that's robbing your life from you. That's it.
I mean, you put me in prison right now for 10 years. That means I'm away from my kids from ages, you know, three to 13. I come back in their life when they're grown. You know what I mean? I mean, not grown, but not little children anymore. You'd be just destroying my life to do that to me. I'm sure that's true for everybody listening. And like,
So, of course, so we have this system set up. And what is it basically? It's that, oh, OK, so all of those people at Fox News who use cocaine, by the way, and many of them drink and smoke pot and take pills and things like that. How many of them are going to go face one of these really long jail sentences for that? Zero. The answer is zero. None of them will. But who will? Oh, poor, poor kids. That's who's going to get that's who's going to get this.
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And so like this system of prohibition on like nonviolent victimless interactions is
On every level, just evil. It's just so wrong. Like, it's just, you know, it's like you're talking about slavery here and enslaving people for the crime of enjoying a substance that, by the way, many of their fellow Americans also enjoy, including the ones in the upper echelons of society. They just don't ever face the consequences for it.
And then the other factor, which is just why this stuff is so disastrous, and what's so interesting to me, I know I mentioned this briefly the other day when I was talking about Trump's terrible idea about designating the cartels as terrorists. And I was like, oh, you're going to combine the war on drugs and the war on terrorism. That ought to really succeed. But
You know, I think I made the point like about prohibition. And one of the things that's really interesting is that this was even taught in government schools like this was, you know, it's kind of it reminds me of, you know, the like even in government school, I was taught, at least as a kid, that and I don't know what they're still teaching today, but at least this was taught when I was a kid, was that it was kind of common wisdom that.
We fucked up after World War One and we were way too harsh on the Germans. Then we enforced the Treaty of Versailles on them. And this led to the rise of the Nazis. Even in government school, that was like admitted, you know, and they'd never admit anything else about a lot of these other wars. But at least that was kind of acknowledged. And yet that never stopped us from like, say, when we were doing the exact same thing to the Russians after the fall of the Soviet Union from being like, oh, but didn't we learn we're not supposed to do this?
And the other one is prohibition. That prohibition of alcohol was, at least to me, was taught the correct way. There are so few things in history that were actually taught to me the correct way in school, but this was one of them. And I'm sure I'm not the only one. Like, I'm sure a lot of people, at least around my age,
Got the same thing, that it was like, look, here was the plan. Alcohol leads to all of these negative outcomes. And so they thought the idea was we would prohibit it and that would make things better. But all it did was what? It drove it underground. And then now you had the rise of Al Capone and all the gangsters. And they went from their ethnic neighborhoods into taking over entire cities because now they had this great revenue source.
And because it was a black market there, you couldn't, you know, just be involved in a legal trade. You couldn't just have like, oh, here's my warehouse where I keep all of my alcohol. You had to like make it in a bathtub. And then what happens when something's in a black market? Well, number one, people end up dying from alcohol poisoning and stuff like that because it's an underground market and it's not being like verified and they're not out in the sunlight. And then the other thing is it brings in this criminal element because, you
Well, if you got a lot of money's worth of alcohol, but it's illegal, you don't have government protection anymore. If somebody robs it from you, you can't call the cops, right? Like if you have a bunch of heroin and someone steals it from you, you can't call the cops and report it.
So you got to have a gun and you got to be ready to go to war with that other gang because you got to protect it yourself. Like it was like for all the exact same reasons why prohibition was such a disaster. And by the way, you can look at it where I believe it's still to this day was the highest homicide rate in American history was under prohibition. And then when prohibition ended, it immediately started drastically declining because for obvious reasons.
And that's the other thing that you get with this war on drugs insanity is it's such a huge part of the gang culture that is responsible for so much of the violence in this country. You know,
Whenever there's like a shooting or something like that, the topic of gun control always comes up. But if you actually look and you know, though, when people who are advocating for gun control, they'll often cite the number of like firearm deaths in America and then compare it to other countries. And they'll be like, look, there's like 30 plus thousand people a year die from guns in America. Like, why don't we?
have a prohibition on the guns because that's the way people think you know more prohibition that'll that'll solve the problem um now forget all the flaws and that argument you know like two-thirds of those deaths are from suicides and gun control doesn't really seem to affect the suicide rate very much and many of that but the the the bulk of the gun violence comes from the gangs
Like that's where it comes. I think something like 70 or 80% of it comes from the gang culture. And yet nobody ever looks at that and goes, oh, you know what? The answer to this is to end the war on drugs, to totally undercut the gang source of revenue. But that's what worked with the Al Capone gangsters. That's what put them out of business. And then by the way, once they were put out of business, when the prohibition of alcohol was, uh, when that was repealed, you know where they went?
They went into prostitution and gambling. The other prohibitions. They went into the other areas where there's prohibited consenting, you know, like activities with no victims. The other nonviolent victimless criminal area, which were things like gambling and prostitution. And then so you can argue, you know,
As people often do, they argue against these things from like a moral perspective. So you go, first off, you go like, hey, drugs are immoral. Drugs ruin people's lives, you know, and things like this. We shouldn't have them. They should be illegal. But they never want to contend with the other two more important dynamics, which is one. Well, how about the morality of throwing somebody in a cage for that? I mean, like, like lying is wrong in most cases.
And generally speaking, you shouldn't lie. But if someone told the lie and then I came up and I hit him in the side of the head with a baseball bat, the conversation wouldn't be like, do you think lying is wrong or not? The conversation would be like, do you think hitting people in the head with a baseball bat is wrong or not? So forget the conversation being like whether drugs are good or not. The conversation is like, how evil is it to throw a human being in a cage to be raped and tortured over drugs?
And then the other conversation would be about like what effect these prohibitions have. What effect does that have? Does it make the problem better or worse? And I think that's something that like is worth paying attention to. And it's, you know, it's something that libertarians have been talking about for many, many decades and has largely been ignored by the left and the right.
But I don't think it should be. And in the same sense, like I know, I know, I understand where to a lot of right wingers, this comes off as like blasphemy.
Like this just comes off as like, oh, you're for legalizing degeneracy or something like that. But I would say to those same right wingers, you know, 20 years ago, you guys weren't all in on the Patriot Act and the war on terrorism and all the, you know, the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and all these other things that libertarians warned you against going all in on. And now looking back at that, you know, we were completely right about that stuff.
And in fact, that the war on terrorism in the Department of Homeland Security's number one enemy over the last few years has been Donald Trump supporting right wingers. And it's just something it's something that I think is important to think about, especially when you look at a case like this and think about what Donald Trump said. Who really is the scumbag here? Ross Ulbricht for building a website or the prosecutors who gave him two life sentences plus 40 years?
You look me in the eye and you tell me who's the bad guy in that story. All right. Uh,
Let's see if there was one. I think there was like one or two other points that I wanted to make. But, you know, sometimes when it's just me and I'm just ranting like this, sometimes they get lost. All right. I'm going to wrap on that. Thank you guys very much for listening. Comic Dave Smith dot com for my the ticket links to come see me and Robbie the Fire Bernstein on the road. Catch you guys next tomorrow with a brand new episode. Thanks for listening. Goodbye. Bye.