Libertarians say, 'I told you so'

0:00Connections with Evan Dawson is supported by Accelus Blue Cross Blue Shield. Sometimes, where you live can make the support you need feel out of reach. But at Accelus Blue Cross Blue Shield, they know how to care for the people in the communities they serve. Because they're a part of them, too. With proactive outreach and the most doctors and hospitals in their network, every member, every neighbor, everybody benefits. Learn more at AccelusBCBS.com. From WXXI News, this is Connections, I'm Evan Dawson. Well, our connection this hour was made with and I told you so. Looking around, seeing ice agents breaking the law on American streets and shooting American citizens, while American warplanes lead another war in the Middle East, with prices remaining high and tariffs eating into the money of average Americans. One group is saying that they tried to warn the American people, who is that group? It's the Libertarians. Katherine Mangu Ward is the editor-in-chief of Reason, the leading Libertarian publication in

1:00the country. And writing last week for The New York Times, here was her assessment. Quote, Libertarians can be annoying with our constant belly aching about privacy and taxes, our obsession with the First Amendment, and our fear-mongering about jack-booted thugs. But in light of how the past year is unfolded, consider cutting your friendly neighborhood Libertarians some slack. After all, we did try to warn you. An immigration, speech and trade, Americans are living in a Libertarians' nightmare. Massed federal officials are swarming areas far from the border, shooting American citizens, and whisking away children in the name of immigration enforcement. Armed National Guardsmen walk the streets of several cities under the banner of vague emergency mandates to maintain law and order. Legal visa holders are being deported for expressing their opinions on everything from Gaza to Charlie Kirk. Teriffs on China have been set at 10, 20, 54, 145, and 30 percent in just the past few months. These stories are examples of a terrifying pattern and an undeniable vindication of the long-held Libertarian view that the steady growth

2:04and the size of the federal government and executive power would lead to precisely this kind of runaway authoritarianism. End quote. But Ward goes on to say that Libertarians have really been relegated to the fringes of American politics. Why is that? Instead of growing instead, as Libertarians are nowhere near their recent high-water mark when former New Mexico go governor Gary Johnson was angling for a spot on the national debate stage and polls showed many Americans taking the Libertarian movement more seriously. So what's going on in this moment? My guess this hour will have a lot to say about these issues. He is the former chair of the Munner County Libertarian Party, host of the free solution podcast. Kevin Wilson, welcome back to the program. Nice to see you. All right, great to see you too. And still a Libertarian these days. Still Libertarian. Maybe more Libertarian than ever given everything I just read. Yeah, no, I mean, I don't like saying I told you so. It brings me no joy to say that. Like again, we're in a world that like there's very clear abuses of executive power happening. There are mechanisms for limiting

3:05government and unfortunately we haven't taken them. And it's been a bipartisan ratcheting up year every year to expand the power of the federal government. And we see some of the dangers of that of giving too much power to a centralized authority. And unfortunately we're we're reaping the fruit of that now. So I want to hit a number of issues that Katherine Mangroward writes about in her piece of the New York Times. If listeners of you want to read that piece, we're going to share it in our show notes coming up here. But before we we get there, I want to ask about her contention. She says the major parties have pulled away from the Libertarian elements of their coalitions, small government free market types for the Republicans, civil libertarians, for the Democrats, preferring instead the instant gratification of grasping power and wielding it as aggressively as possible for the period they hold it. Libertarian voices have gradually gone quiet in the halls of the capital, bullied into silence or primaryed out of resign or out or resigning in despair. So what she's saying there is even though she feels like she's been

4:10right about this, libertarians are feeling like you had been warning the American people. This is a very in the wilderness time in the American political scene in both major parties and for the libertarian party in general. You agree with that part? I do agree with that part. And in the ironic part of when Americans trust their government less, they end up wanting more government sometimes because there's so much tribalism right now between Democrats, Republicans, they fear what will happen, sometimes legitimately what happens if the other side gets power that they want to lock it in for themselves. There's Chris Rufo before Trump was reelected, talked about this like, oh, we Democrats are using this power against us, we have to use against ourselves. Everyone in this in our political landscape is Boramir from Lord of the Rings. Oh, if I use the one ring, I'll use it for good. I'll save Gondor. But no, it's going to corrupt you. It's going to end up, the power is going to end up in the wrong hands anyway, but we need to do is cast a ring into the fire. You just went Lord of the Rings there. I did. I'm hoping your listeners pick up on that. I think they probably will look,

5:15it's the idea that you can have a noble idea that ideally people don't abuse power or people don't even want that much power to begin with. It takes a lot to say, I don't even want the power. But what you're saying is everyone says that, but then they turn and say, well, I'll take the power, but I'll be the one to use it for good. Yeah, they think they'll use it for good. They think they'll use it to stop evil forces, but when's up happening is it ends up corrupting. And again, in our political landscape, building new tools for that power to be abused. Again, some of the powers that President Trump has been abusing were also abused in the Biden administration. I think it was on the show talking about student loan forgiveness of the Biden administration really stretched and squinted at some old laws to try to get what they wanted done. Trump's doing the same thing with the tariffs, and he's just caring less about it. We have a long press in of President's doing this, and the only way to resolve that is for the other branches of government to actually stop it. And actually, I want to back up and say not

6:18the other branch is stopping that because that leaves passivity for everyone listening today, because that's not my message. It's you need to hold other branches of government accountable to make sure that when the executive does illegal, awful, unconstitutional, liberal things, that there is someone willing to stand up and put a stop to it. This is where I think a number of people will say, okay, you might be diagnosing problems well, but the solution they don't agree with. And here's the grounds for that. Instead of just reducing the power of government in general, why not just ask Congress to do its job? Why not just ask Congress to become the equal branch of government it is supposed to be, and then you will not see all the concentration of power in the executive. I mean, that is part of it, right? Like literally Congress should do its job for stuff. If Congress wants tariffs, then let them pass a law, put their name on something. How about a war? We're a war. Yeah, the war in Iran. We can't even get a war power resolution passed right now. Unfortunately, the president can arbitrarily go in, spend billions of dollars,

7:23kill many, many people, and take us to war for who knows long this commitment is going to be, and there's no congressional authority. In the meek response from Congress is like, well, we tried to war resolution and we couldn't get there and we really should do something about it, but that's not, it's totally backwards anyway. Congress isn't supposed to like, oh, tell the wag their finger at the president for going the war. They're supposed to approve it. That's supposed to happen before the president commits our resources, our military and American lives to adventures overseas. It is interesting, the polling of Americans on what they want from their government, and this is something else that Captain Mangu Ward writes about. She says, the good news is that Americans are increasingly waking up to the dark reality of our overbearing federal government. A Gallup survey released in October found that 62% of Americans said the federal government had too much power. That is up from 51% just a year ago, and it's a record high since the question was first asked since 2002. For the first time in nearly 20 years, Democrats are more likely than Republicans to say that government is too powerful.

8:28And then she says similarly, Americans of all stripes have markedly turned against Mr. Trump's ICE enforcement actions. There could be a libertarian can still dream, she says, a grassroots movement to shrink government that doesn't end up co-opted by one of the major parties as the Tea Party was. So I want to ask you a little bit of your historical assessment here. I remember in Rochester covering Tea Party rallies in probably 2010, right? And were you at those rallies, by the way? Not in Rochester, in Rome, New York, I was at a Tea Party rally. Okay, so I was living at the time. So you remember at the time. And what Ward is saying here is that the Tea Party might have had libertarian roots in a movement, but it became co-opted. Is that the story that you, what's the story of the Tea Party as you see it? Yeah, it did get co-opted, right? Because we have an electoral system that's set up to be a two-party system, both because it's the first pass-to-post system and just because like the institutional power of Republicans and Democrats like harden the barriers for entry for other folks. And we saw that with this why the libertarian

9:30struggle to get on the ballot even more after what Cuomo and the New York State legislature did a few years ago. But you sort of end up channeling into those and people end up being more loyal to the tribe than to the ideas that energize them in the first place, unfortunately. Okay, did the Tea Party did it have any lasting positive effects as you see it? I mean, I think initially it did raise a lot of good conversations about the national debt on the power of the federal government on spending and even got many Republicans to think about civil liberties. And there's a lot of great folks, elected like Rand Paul, who's who's great for Justin Amash, who was a great congressman, but unfortunately, could not win re-election after he voted to impeach Trump. Peter Myers, another one from the same district. Mike Lee, he really changed his feathers quite a bit. He was... Mike Lee was in the libertarian camp? Yeah, he was in the Tea Party camp. He was in the Freedom Caucus camp. He was more authoritarian. Yeah, he really, really changed. And so did a lot

10:34of Republicans. They got in line, which is unfortunate. And this is, you know, I'm just come out of age. This is college and I'm like, okay, cool. The Republican Party is about like freedom and liberty and responsible spending. This is what I'm all about. And to see how much it's changed in the last 10 years is disheartening. The Republican Party. The Republican Party. Okay, the Democratic Party, they have their own issues, for sure. And I would love to see the liberal side of the Democratic Party make some headway. But unfortunately, there's a lot of liberal voices in the Democratic Party too, who see the same thing. They see the rise of fascism or proto-fascism in the Trump movement. And they think, well, we have to do whatever it takes to stop it. And so there's a bit of a liberalism happening on the Democratic side because of fear. So the mere image of what's happening on the Republican side. All right, let me grab our first phone call. This is Adam and Wayne County. Hey, Adam, go ahead. Adam, are you there? Hey, yes, I am here. Sorry.

11:40Yeah. So I always have a base policy per se when it comes to these libertarian leaning folks that claim to be, oh, we're so grassroots. We're we're third party. Well, you know, you just waste your vote. And you know, this isn't a three party system in America. We have two parties. So people say, pick the lesser of the evil. Well, you're basically wasting your vote as I said again, but I'd like to offer a little bit of constructive criticism and say that you could be for issues, but you can't really push them forward until you get someone in power. So you why waste your time on Larry Green with the e or what what what what is it? Very sharp with an e sharp with a e. Yeah, sorry. So I remember listening to this guy on your show

12:44before Evan and I know friends that, you know, claim to claim the claim to them, but it's really it's not productive right now and look where we are. So all these I'm an independent. I would like to say I'm a certain independent. I always have been since I was 18 and could vote, but I don't I don't I've been right one out of three of the last elections, I guess. You know, and at least I at least I got a chance, but he's third party people. You just go ahead. You know, have fun. Have fun being a hipster being cool. Man. That's a good good. That's all right. Add hominem attacks here, man. That's a brutal first call for Kevin. No, no, sorry. Okay. So let me ask you a couple questions, Jason. Actually, he's, um, he's implying that look, you're not going to win elections. You know, what's the point? So tell me what the point is as you

13:47see it, even if you know that the party that you prefer isn't going to currently win elections. So there's a couple points. One, we could win elections. Libertarians have one seats around the country a lot oftentimes local seats, but there's a state seat that they had one a few years back about out in Montana. Um, sometimes there's party defections to Justin Mosh, which to the Libertarian party wall, a member of Congress. Yeah. The other part of it is if third parties start to get a lot of votes, there is a lot of incentive for the major parties to co-opt libertarians as part of the coalition. This is what was attempted in in 2024. Actually, the, the, the Trump campaign tried to co-opt part of the Libertarian coalition by promising the free Russell Richt, right? So there's a lot of people who they, they found that to be an important issue. He paid lip service. He in fact went to the Libertarian National Convention and tried to convince people to do that. Uh, so that's part of it is that A, we could win. B, there's an opportunity to have our issues co-opted. I, I, I think it's a fair point. And I think if you

14:47have issues that are important for you and you're able to successfully work within the major two parties and get it done and get changed and get, uh, get candidates elected who can make your policy preferences happen. That's great. Like I'm, I'm kind of rooting for the, the abundance movement to make some headway on things like zoning reform and permit reform and being able to build stuff quicker. Like I'm rooting for them. That's not my movement. But like I, I hope they're successful in doing that. It's just, I've chosen a different strategy. Yeah. And let me also say to Adam, who, I understand the cynicism about third parties because it is a big, big road in a mostly two party system. Um, but here's an example, Adam, that I think about a lot. I, conversations probably a decade ago with a guy named Jesse Lenny, who is with the working families party. And Jesse talked about the decision that the WFP made, not to run their own candidates, but try to influence the democratic party and to push them to the left or to push them in more progressive ways when it comes to workers rights, worker protections, wages, things like that. And the way he described it is,

15:48you could run, and this is a decade ago. I don't want to speak from now, but you know, he told us you could run somebody, probably not going to win, or you could be pragmatic and try to push a party from within. And that meant asking then governor Cuomo, you know, where are you on certain issues? We might endorse somebody else. The WFP is still kind of doing that. There was a lot of surprise in the mayoral primary and Rochester last year when they endorsed Mollique Evans and not Mary Lupian, but they had their reasons for doing that. And it's the same kind of question in congressional races, etc. So a party can try to win elections, but a party can also try to push it to gender and exert influence in that way. Fair. Yeah, that's fair. I get it. I, you know, whatever, and I'm not exactly waiting for the WFP here, but like whatever strategy makes sense to get your policy preferences to make the community, the state, the world a better place. I would think that you're rarely rooting for the WFP, but here's the interesting thing. My guess is when you and I first started having conversations on this program, it was much more comments for

16:51comment for libertarians to say, all right, if I don't have a good libertarian candidate, I'm probably voting for a Republican. Small sea conservatives might be good enough here. These days, I don't know. I mean, much, it's a very different Republican party. So for libertarians who don't have libertarians in races, is it default Republican? Is it not vote? Is it something whoever's less authoritarian? What do you do? Sometimes it's that. I mean, this is up to the individual. I voted for all parties. I mean, I voted for like kind of across a lot of different candidates and races. So it sort of depends. And I'll try to pick the less authoritarian one. Right now, it's about less authoritarian. Yeah. If we don't have a libertarian candidate running, sometimes that means voting Democrat for me. Sometimes it means voting Republican. It depends. There's some state issues. I'm not with the Democrats on. And that's the choice you have to make. Or I may just not vote at all in that race. I may leave that part of the ballot blank or write someone in or something else. It's

17:55just, um, and that's, that's how I choose to use my voice is I don't have to play that game. I don't have to pick the lesser of two evils. If there really isn't one candidate better than the other, I will just not not participate. Okay. Um, I want to ask you coming up here about ice. I want to talk about tariffs and some of the other things have been raised here. We're talking to Kevin Wilson, the former chair of the Munner County Libertarian Party. Um, and host of a free solution podcast and someone who has been talking about libertarian politics for a number of years on this program, uh, what sparked this conversation was a piece from the editor-in-chief of Reason Magazine, a leading libertarian publication in which Catherine Mangu Ward writes, we told you so she said, this should be the moment the libertarians are taking an ideological victory lap. Not because they're happy about what they're saying on the international and national scene, the opposite. But because libertarians are saying on almost every issue that you talk about every day, we were on the correct side of this. So we're kind of exploring that. Uh, listeners, if you want to join the program, I'll take Demaila's call here in just a second. It's 844-295-TALK, 844-295-8255-263-WXXI, if you call from Rochester, 263-999-4. As always,

19:01the email address, connections at WXXI.org. You can join the chat if you're watching on the YouTube channel. This is Demaila and Rochester on the phone next. Hey, Demaila, go ahead. I'll say thank you for taking my call. Yep. I've been in the dependent for decades now. And I just, I started out as a Democrat because I guess my parents started out as a Democrat and exported. But then I switched over and they say, I'm an independent. And the thing else, I disagreed with earlier call, it was like, I've been called a libertarian, I've been called a conservative, I've been called a liberal. And one of my extremely conservative friends, who were a huge Trump supporter, but one of the best guys you have meeting in life, he told me, so you know what you want? He said, you're physically conservative, but you're socially liberal. And I thought about it and he's pretty much right. He's right, but here's the thing. I don't join groups. I don't join parties. And the thing

20:03is that, but the libertarian, do you have a footing? It has lyrics. But all we need are great people, from that great people in the Democratic party, they're great people in their Republican party, who have morals, the values, ethics, principles, integrity, loyalty, and standards. And what the libertarian needs to do is go after those people and say, look, put your principal first and come with us and let's put principles and the constitution and the country before everything else. That just might be all. Okay. You're male. Thank you. Kevin. What do you think? I love it. I mean, I love it. And again, we do have candidates who have done that. When I ran for Congress in 2020, that's the message I tried to bring. Didn't get quite as big of a percentage of the vote that I was hoping for. Larry Sharp certainly does that as well. And he's running for governor again, although interestingly, he's also trying to compete in the Republican primary as

21:04well. So we'll see how that goes. But yeah, I mean, there, there's a lot of folks think like you who are frustrated when they see sometimes not the best people represented in the political parties or in the political conversation among Democrats and Republicans. And they're hoping for a better alternative. And that's what the libertarians try to provide is in situations where there isn't a good alternative where it seems like you're faced with two bad options that there should be somewhere else. People can turn if they want to represent their principles and values with someone else. Demail, thank you very much for that. Let me get some emails have come in here. Rebecca in Rochester says, please stop, sir, the last 10 years Republicans have never been the party of responsible spending. Remember when Republicans gave us a federal government surplus? Oh, no, that's right. That was the Democrats under Clinton in the 90s. Republicans proceeded to squander that surplus. And that was a lot more than 10 years ago. Republicans are the party of huge tax cuts for wealthy people. Then and now and always libertarians are Republicans in disguise. That is

22:09Rebecca. You're right that the last budget surplus came under Clinton. Although there's, you know, some help with the Republicans in Congress at the time with that too. And the Republicans 10 years ago used to talk a big game about let's cut taxes and let's cut spending. And then when it came time to actually do it, it didn't quite happen the way that we're hoping. I mean, there's some sequestrations and things, but they've completely given that up now. It's kind of my point is they don't even pay lip service to limited government. They don't pay lip service to we need the cut to debt. They've they've Trump talks about he said that tariffs were going to eliminate the deficit might even cut into the debt. I think most of the mega movement is of the Steve Bannon mindset of like, well, the interest rate is still low. So we should spend while we can like that their actions speak louder than words. And I know we talked about doge on the show before that wasn't a serious effort to cut government spending. It was a cultural thing. Yeah. And I will say to Rebecca, I take the point that it's probably frustrating for Rebecca to hear journalists

23:13talk about this sort of small sea conservative paradigm and then look around and be like, well, it's never been put into practice. They had the presidency and both houses in Congress in the 2000s under Bush. They didn't balance a budget. They didn't cut into the debt. They didn't do the things that they had promised that they would do. And that was a generation ago. So you're right. It's not just the last 10 years. But here's where when you say libertarians are Republicans and disguised just my analysis that Rebecca is libertarians have always been concerned about civil liberties. The conversations I've had for years on this program libertarians are warned warned about the Patriot Act warned about government surveillance libertarians have been concerned about a government overreach. You know, raids of people's homes and property. And the authoritarianism in the Republican party that is much more common now than it probably was a generation ago does not reflect anything of what I've seen with libertarians. I'm not doing lips. I'm not doing PR for the the libertarian party. I'm trying to draw I think consistent ideological distinctions. So I think

24:17we're back as criticism is fair. But only in so much as the size of government taxation etc. What do you think? Yeah. And to be fair, there are some folks who call themselves libertarians who end up kind of just being Republicans. They vote Republican every time. But you know, I would say like the Republicans also accuse us of being, you know, Democrats in disguise as well. Because, you know, we do care about the civil liberties. We do care about criminal justice reform. We do care about the drug war. All these things that Democrats also pay lip service to. But when it comes time to actually making those reforms and things like immigration to like Obama and Biden had opportunities to make bigger reforms and immigration and that Democrat Congress is in there as well. And they squander those opportunities. They could have limited government power. They could have done immigration reform in a way that would have made things clearer and more effective and limited a future presence ability to like abuse their power and to hurt families and immigrants. And instead, they wasted the opportunity. They did not successfully limit the government's power when they could have. Well, let me go to a phone call from New York City.

25:21This is Tom there. Hey, Tom, go ahead. Oh, hey, no, I'm not New York City. It's Newark. New work city. Well, you know, Newark is a city. Yeah, and I felt I had to respond because of the last Wayne County call. In a lot of times, I misunderstood. I took them to say that I think the third party is pointless because, well, we know, you know, people are so used to party systems. But it's interesting that when I'm out here and I listen to you be local, um, uh, Trump supporters talk about what they want. It sounds to me like many of them really truly are libertarians. I mean, they want less government, of course. But they want just core responsibility and they want some social programs available, safety net programs. And they want, um, you know, they're right

26:24and where you're right start by first. I hear that from a lot of people out here, but yeah, they still are, um, tall and Trump supporters for the most part. Uh, I don't really get it because I really think that there, there are almost more libertarian than Republican. Well, Tom, I appreciate that. I mean, some of that probably is just identitarianism is stronger than maybe the average person thinks your identity in politics is really strong. It's hard to change people's views on that. But I mean, that's one idea. What do you think? Well, that's true. And it feels like a betrayal to go against like your, your tribe, right? That's, that's part of it. And I mean, and then the other part is fear. Like, what if Kamala Harris is worse? What if all the things I've heard about her bringing communism to America are like true and like the only way to stop it is Trump. And I heard so many, even big L libertarians say, like, well, it's so bad this time we got, we got to vote Trump this time because I've seen people put giant eight foot signs for our candidates in their

27:27lawns in still at the last minute. Nope, nope, gonna vote for Republican or Democrat because they're so afraid of what might happen. And this, this fear ends up being a race to the bottom. Yeah, I, some of that is probably, this is just a guest time. Some of that is probably decades of the Rush Limbaugh effect. Rush Limbaugh every day, telling millions of Americans that Democrats are anti-American, that they're actually communists, that they are there to control your lives in every aspect of it. And that takes root when people listen day after day after day to the point where even in the future when, you know, when the wolf is at the door and you're going, we might have to let the wolf in because like, what else? Like that, that other thing could also be communism. And you're going, well, I mean, it's powerful. We're closer to communist China than we've been in decades thanks to President Trump. So, I mean, yeah, we've kind of really pulled a switcheroo there. And, but, but that's, but that's how a lot of people act though is, it's, it's out of fear. Again, I, I had plenty of criticisms of President Kamala Harris or her campaign

28:31rather in President Biden. And there's a lot of good reasons not to vote for them, but I think those criticisms also applied to Donald Trump and his candidacy and his track record in government as well. And to me, I'm sick of having to choose between two choices they didn't like. And that's why I support Libertarian candidates like Chase Oliver in the last election. After we take our only break, we're going to come back to your phone calls, your emails. Kevin's here. Kevin Wilson's getting a lot of response to your libertarians. You got people talking at least. How about that? It's great. He's the former chair of the Mender County Libertarian Party, host of a free solution podcast. We're talking about the recent piece of the New York Times from the editor-in-chief of Reason Magazine, Katherine Mangu Ward, who said the libertarians have been right about the biggest issues of the Trump era. And that they should have been listened to and that they should be listened to going forward while we're talking about what those issues are and we'll continue with your feedback on the other side here. Support for connections with Evan Dawson comes from Mary Cariola Center. Life skills developed confidence displayed. Independence realized. This is what happens every day when direct support

29:38professionals at Mary Cariola Center empower residents to become active members of our community. With care, compassion and commitment, they help individuals with developmental disabilities live fuller, more independent lives. Learn more at Mary Cariola.org. History isn't just something that happened a long time ago. It's happening right now. This month we're going to introduce you to women in our community who are doing the work and making change happen as part of our Women's History Month series. Listen for those stories here or find them at wsxinnews.org. This is Connections. I'm Evan Dawson. Keith in Victor, I think, today. Hello, Keith, go ahead. Evan, how you doing? Very good. I think the biggest problem isn't the party. It's the need for term limits because from the moment they get elected, their main goal is to

30:41get reelected. That's it. You get people like Chuck Schumer who've been in politics today. He graduated Harvard. You don't get any change when you have the same old people. If you get a libertarian and people like them, they're going to keep both them in. You need to create a political turn or turn over to get different people with different ideas. Keith, thank you. What do you think, Kevin? Yeah, I kind of go back and forth in term limits. I get your point, Keith, it's well taken. There's this thing. Why aren't we doing a lot of votes in Congress right now? Part of it is to protect the members. They don't have to put their name on something controversial. It's a lot easier to just, well, the executive takes care of that. They take care of tariffs. They take care of war. They take care of immigration. We don't have to put our name on these

31:43controversial issues that's going to show up in an attack ad in a few months. I'm not accusing any specific member of Congress of anything, but it is a pattern that many people have observed about Congress and their unwillingness to do as much legislation on stuff in part because they're trying to protect their re-election status. What do you make of the idea that, well, we need institutional experience, institutional knowledge and, you know, that's kind of why I go back and forth in term limits because I think having institutional experience also does allow you to stand up to executives more effectively. I don't know where I stand on it, but I think I understand Keith's point, though, of like we can also get churned and if they're not worried about re-elections, because we see this right now, like the only Republicans who are saying anything about the Trump administration on any issue are folks who have decided not to run for re-election. Let me continue right down the line here. So this has got a couple of comments on YouTube, and I wanted to get where it was that boy-o-boy. Bob here says, Libertarians were the ones

32:45say that basically our Libertarian until a loved one gets a major illness and then they quiet down with the whole sink or swim theory. So what do you make of this idea that you're Libertarian until you've got someone with a catastrophic illness? Yeah, I mean, people say that about having someone commit a crime against you, too. You're Libertarian until someone robs your house and then you become a conservative. And Democrats say the same thing. I don't think that's necessarily true that the individual experience may vary, but there's I think to me, room for like a reasonable safety net in some situations and that the margins of that is what is really up for debate. So I know that at the moment there are Americans who go bankrupt because they get a major injury or illness that they can't afford. Even when they're insured, that can happen, right? So do you think that should be a possibility? Do you think that having a major illness should be a reason for you to be financially ruined? So I think the thing we need to think

33:47about is the trade-offs of building the system that actually does this, right? Like do I think someone should be ruined? No, of course not. That's awful and we should have ways to protect that. But like what the conversation introduces is, oh, therefore should government pay for all of like medicine, right? And there are different trade-offs to that. I think people don't consider like how do they make it work in Europe? Well, they tax the middle class like a lot. And also, they have wait times. You're going to have trade-offs everywhere. We're either waiting more or you're not getting service or you're paying more. And America decided that the trade-off was we pay more for this stuff and try to fix it after the fact. And there's some upsides that as well as downsides. What's the ideal system? I mean, the ideal system is that we have no scarcity and everyone can get everything they want whenever. But like living in reality is I think we are, we have a system of healthcare that ends up being expensive in part because of a lot of compliance costs, a lot of regulation, a lot of lack of transparency in the medical and insurance process.

34:48And I think having a process where prices are clear and there's opportunities to have support when you do have an emergency is a good combination. I think we need to iterate on the system we have and not throw it out the window. Okay. I was going to say I too would like a unicorn every day of my life, but I will live in reality. We all love to live in Star Trek and everything's taken advantage of me. But I'm challenging you not to give me the unicorn answer. And I think what I hear you saying is no Medicare for all, no single payer. You don't want that. You want some version of the current system that provides better support, but also more transparency for everyone involved. Yeah. And again, we start to see interesting and unique ways in which the free market takes care of that with like things like eye surgeries, right? Like there's a lot of, a lot of that that takes place outside of like the health insurance system. And now the prices have gone down. Access is like way better than it was 20 years ago. Or we look at things like pharmaceutical and we see what Mark Cuban and what he's trying to do in terms of trying to bring access to

35:52medications for a lot of people. I think there's innovation, innovative stuff happening in the market that are opportunities to give people more access because getting more access doesn't always look like government is paying for it. Sometimes it's innovative people thinking about different ways to connect people with medicine and services that we haven't thought of before. Listen on YouTube. Viewer on YouTube says, hey, Kamala voters were right about Trump as well, not just libertarians. Fair. Okay. I don't know. You're not wrong. Yeah, the down Trump was bad. He worse than I thought actually. I don't admit that. Like I thought it was going to be a lot closer to the first Trump administration. It's been worse than I thought. Rick writes in to say, Evan, my real problem with libertarianism is that it comes across to me as another way to support anarchism as anything goes philosophy. I would like to understand how libertarianism would address issues that need government attention or intervention, like racial discrimination, environmental

36:54dangers, and similar challenges to our collective well-being. That's Rick. Yeah, so I mean, not every libertarian is an anarchist. I'm not an anarchist. I think there's a role for the state to play in a few different situations. One of those being like, let's talk about the environment, right? We talk about things like negative externalities. If you are polluting, if you're damaging someone's water, you're damaging someone's health, yeah, there needs to be regulation that. Again, not every regulation looks like the government is going to ban this industry. Some regulations look like imposing higher costs on industries for doing that. Sometimes it's regulation, but there's different ways of being able to solve that. I mean, there's different things like with crime as well. If someone is trying to kill someone else or has killed someone else yet, there's a role for the government to try to intervene in that situation and to stop people from hurting others. The thing that keep in mind is that most of us are on the spectrum of liberalism, and it's just a matter of degree, not whether or not a government should be doing

37:57most things. Well, what you should be doing then, here's Charlie who says, Evan Libertarians always remind me of that kid who would sit on the side while the rest of us were doing something pretty fun, and someone might get hurt. The kid on the side, the Libertarian would sit there with his arms folded and say, I told you so. I wish Libertarians would just come out and say exactly what they stand for. I know where I stand on the topics. Libertarians never shut up about what they stand for. Charlie is saying he's not sure what exactly you stand for. I mean, just go ahead. Do the elevator pitch. Go ahead. Yeah. So I mean, like what we stand for is a limited government. We think that you should be able to make your choices as you wish, as long as you're not hurting people or taking their stuff. That's the elevator pitch. Okay. So how about on the issue of, let's talk about ICE for a second, because in the piece that sparked this conversation, Catherine Mangu Ward wrote in the New York Times a lot about the concern that Libertarians have about ICE, and this is part of what she says. She says it can be no surprise that ICE officers are roaming the streets of American

38:58cities today with an unclear mandate, military style gear, and a dire misunderstanding of the constitutional limits limits on their behavior. And ICE officer was recently caught telling a protester who tried to film him. You raised your voice. I erase your voice. Do you agree with her that ICE's behavior is not just thuggish, but unconstitutional? Yeah, 100%. Yeah, that we, the the behavior from ICE officers is totally unacceptable and it's not merely a training issue. It's a mandate coming from the executive that has no perceived constraints on its power to be able to act on what they think of as their immigration mandate. Now, as they've started to do this, Americans have woken up and seen like, oh, this is what power exercise against us actually looks like. And I thought it was just going to be some other people, some distant, like illegal immigrants somewhere that I didn't have to think about that was causing problems to someone else. And what they're seeing is like, oh, no, this is my friends, my neighbors, my coworker who has a visa, that's what they're seeing. They're seeing what power looks like exercise against us. And

39:59that's the type of thing that needs to be limited. And when I say limited, I mean, Congress should not fund that. Like we'll start with that. Congress should not fund it. They keep doing it anyway. And there should be explicit limits on what immigration enforcement could do in the United States. And consequences for officers who do things like killings and protesters or detained American citizens or even detained legal residents of any other situation where they have people in jail for weeks in completely unacceptable conditions like there needs to be some accountability for that. And that's where I come back to you should the government do some things. Yeah, sometimes government officials should go to jail for abusing American citizens and for people who are here. Two of the loudest voices of Republicans who've been elected to Congress who are speaking out against ICE have been Congress members who left Congress after the Trump movement was ascended. That's Adam Kinzinger and Justin Amash, as you said, Justin Amash became a libertarian. So they're not even in Congress right now. Rand Paul in the Senate has been a consistent voice

41:02against the authoritarian sort of behavior that we're seeing. Otherwise, we are not seeing Republicans in any meaningful way challenge what ICE is doing. In many cases, they're cheering ICE. Does it has that surprised you? I'm not trying to tee up an easy question. Let me put this another way. Yeah. This is the actual situation in which we see masked agents armed agents of the government who are not police officers. They're agents of the federal government and they've killed two Americans in the streets who are not posing a threat. And they are telling people, according to conservative judges, all kinds of unconstitutional stuff every day. You're not allowed to film police or agents of the government what you are. They can knock you down and they can put you in a car without any process. They can lock you up as long as they want. They're not allowed to do those things or doing those things. Is it surprising you that so few Republicans are objecting to that? Yeah, it bums me out. And again, many of these Republicans are correctly worried about like jackbooted dogs in the streets, violating their rights. Okay. Yeah. Heck yeah. Let's do something

42:07about that. And then when they have the opportunity to wear the boots, unfortunately, they're taking it way farther than any recent government has done. Does this go back to your point at the beginning? You believe that in general, people who see what's going on with ICE are appalled by it unless it's their team. And the people who say that they would never do this most of the time would do that if it's their team wearing the boots. Sometimes. Yeah. Again, I think that the Democrats will forgive a lot of stuff when it's their team wearing the boots as well. And we can talk about some specific examples, but I don't want to lump in all Republicans because there's a lot of Republicans who see this stuff and like, oh, wait, I was talking about how that was bad a few years ago. And they as much as people tend to be loyal to tribes, they also want to be internally consistent as well. And I think most folks want individual liberty. They don't want to see our government acting like a third world dictatorship. And they want to put an end to it. And what they're hoping is that the Republicans just like snap out of it and like, oh, yeah, we've gone too far here. Like, yeah, the immigration like crackdowns, sure, but like, let's, let's, you know,

43:10keep it within constitutional bounds. I think that's what everyone's just kind of hoping for, but like, you can't just hope for that. You have to hold people accountable when they're not doing anything to fix the problem. Here's a different Bob who says that the says Evan, the left-leaning members of your audience today seem to think that libertarians are just Republicans. They've said libertarians are Republicans in disguise. As an actual Republican, I can tell you that libertarians are nowhere near Republicans on immigration. Many libertarians want open borders. Do you want open borders? I mean, pretty close, honestly, but it's, and I know like, this is, this is where we really are different from Republicans. And I think it should be as simple and straightforward as possible to come here, live here, have a job, start a family. You know, I can't get myself in the mindset like I met and hung out with many immigrants in Rochester. These are holders. People who became citizens. People were still permanent residents. And they're just

44:10trying to do the same things the rest of us are trying to do. They're just trying to have a job. They're just trying to have a family that just hang it out, building community, doing the same stuff the rest of us do. And I don't know why would you want to send those folks home? I don't get it. They make our country a good place. Okay, I'm not asking about sending people home. No, I'm talking about policy going forward. Should there be any limits on immigration? So the process should be straightforward as is what the limit should be. Like you should go in, declare yourself, have all your paperwork, accurate, right, to the best of your ability. There's refugee status. There's a process for that. What we've done instead is we've made it nearly impossible to be a refugee in the United States. We've made it nearly impossible for someone to navigate the system. And that's why you see folks who like have been married and living in the US for decades and are trying to go through green card process and then get deported suddenly when they show up to their legal immigration hearing. Like that's the type of stuff. I think most people, including most Republicans, don't want to stop. Like no, we want the system to be fair. We want there. We want people who are coming over, not declaring themselves, sneaking over, like doing that. Like

45:12we want that to stop. I think that's what most people want to stop. And even me, I'm like, okay, yeah, sure. If you're if we have an easy process or you're not going through, yeah, there should be some consequences for that, right? But right now it's so difficult that a lot of people who even follow all the rules get caught up in that system where they think they're coming over legally, they think they've done everything right. And they're still getting deported. They're getting ripped out of their homes, ripped away from their families. And that's the thing that's unjust. I think most, again, even your average public, we should probably have a fair system. And the loudest voices online are the ones who are cheering it on. And I think that's that's actually a minority of folks, but they they sure do take up a lot of talking space. In general, then your view, anything many libertarians view is immigration makes this country better and we want more of it. Yeah. Not less. Yeah. I do. Okay. I think I think you know what? Well, we'll expand on that slightly. America's a great place. It's so awesome that everyone wants to come here. And I think that's great. People who are excited to come to America because they think America's a great place.

46:13Cool. Let's let's bring all those folks over here. And especially a lot of them are smart. And they want to do cool things and build businesses. Yeah. Bring those folks over. Debra says, I don't believe the American people made a choice to have insurance and medical care become a profit, a for-profit system. That was capitalism and the government officials who are beholden to corporations. Medicine should be not for profit and not and should not be profit driven period. When you scare people with taxes on the middle class and don't explain where it's going, you would do a disservice to the community. No where is perfect. But the people in Norway and Scandinavia are pretty happy. Debra says, yeah, but they pay like 60% of their income in taxes. Like again, I I think he's right on the happiness right because I think they're happier than we are. They like it. Again, there's tradeoffs. I think a lot of times the conversation ends up being disingenuous where we think like, oh, well, just the rich people will pay for it. Like no, that's not what's happening in Scandinavian countries. Everyone pays for it. And that's fine. But be honest about it. All right. Like there's there's tradeoffs for that. It gets expensive.

47:13Costs are controlled. Even less, you just don't see the costs of that because it's all covered by the government. And their systems are in financial jeopardy frequently because of this issue. Right. So like again, I'm open to that debate. I'll talk about it. But like there is a tradeoff to that. I mean, like part of the tradeoff is if you break your leg, you don't lose your house. That could be pretty good. Yeah. That's part that is part of it is you do that. It might take months, sometimes to get treatments. And in sometimes you do actually still have to pay. A lot of people don't understand that too. But it depends on the specific countries. So we have to talk about the specific thing. And again, in the United States, the tradeoff is like, well, you pay, you might pay more out of pocket. Most people have insurance, but you might not. But there are different ways to be able to access that. So here's one that I don't know anything about. Linda writes to say, why would or why do the libertarians want Ross Ulbrich, basically a narcotics dealer to be freed? So I'll caveat this is I don't feel very strongly with this. But what they felt is that

48:15Ross Ulbrich had created a system that was essentially a fair market that existed outside of government control. Who is Ross Ulbrich? So he had built Silk Road. Silk Road was basically an internet marketplace where you could buy anything. So I mean, sometimes it was just normal stuff, computers, whatever. Sometimes there's trading Bitcoin. Sometimes people would buy heroin. And the thing he was accused of was related to trying to pay for an assassination. So yeah, but there were a lot of libertarians who thought that the only reason he was sent to jail was because the government didn't like having something outside of their control. And that was too dangerous. So that's that's put a lot of folks feel about it. I died. I kind of ambivalent on it. You don't have strong views on Ross Ulbrich. No, I don't. Okay. Last couple of minutes here, the question is where this goes forward here. And in Catherine Manguward's piece, you know, as she notes that a lot of Americans in general say they want less power in government,

49:16the question becomes who might be the kind of political leaders. They don't have to be libertarians. They don't have to be Republicans enough to be Democrats, but who is on the scene? Who embodies those values that gets you excited? Is there anybody? I mean, so of course, in terms of actual politicians, there's a few that I like, although they're still some issues. Again, Justin Mosh, Rand Paul, I'll give you a couple of Democrats to the governor of Colorado. Jared Polis. Yeah, he's definitely more in that direction. Yeah, which, you know, I think he's the only Democrat I've seen retweet the Libertarian Party before. But but yeah, so there's there's a few folks out there both in the Democrat Republican Party who who do give me hope. But I think it's I'm not sitting here waiting for a hero either, right? Like it's we can't just hope that someone comes in to save us. We can't just hope that like Congress is going to do their job like, you know, and we just sit here and wait for that to happen.

50:16Like you need to get out and write to your members of Congress about specific legislation to hold the executive branch accountable like war powers resolutions. Like there's an interesting bill a while ago. I think they are equal one act that required emergencies this sunset after 30 days if a present doesn't declare it. Terror, clawbacks, things like that. Like we need to start demanding better of our members of Congress, our senators ends at the New York state level to start to think about how do we have liabilities when we're very dependent on the federal government if the federal government funds a lot of state activities. What does that mean in terms of like how we can operate independently of a federal government that might be rogue or not acting in our best interest. I didn't even get to tariffs and we're going to get the music here. So 30 seconds or less here for people who live in small communities who lost their manufacturing and they see the president say these tariffs are going to unsure more manufacturing back. That's what we're going to do. What do you say to them? He's lying to you. That's that's what it is. It's not going to happen.

51:18Unfortunately, things are just changing like he's made you a promise that he's not able to keep. So big thing though, cast a ring into the fire. We don't need all this executive power back to the Lord of the Rings. Heck yeah. I just read it again recently. I'm excited about it. But cast it into the fire. We don't need executive power concentrated and bring power back to the people. Working people see more of your work or hear more of your work, Kevin Wilson. Follow me on Twitter at Kevin Wilson Rock. I occasionally do podcasts on a free solution too. Follow me there. Former Chair of the Munder County Libertarian Party. Come back to talk anytime. I really appreciate it. Love it. Thanks for having me. Thanks very much. More connections coming up in just a moment.