Semper Liberanda. Host: Citizen None Podcast Libertarian, Constitutionalist, Aristotelian in some ways, Socratic in others.
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Joined November 2020
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Citizen None #3: The Brett Cooper Tea Party!
About all the tea spilled on @imbrettcooper ....but the real question: is she libertarian??! Tune in for a look at the growing voice of the next generation.
Also featuring @TheQuartering
rumble.com/v6ezcn1-citizen-n…
I’m sorry, what again is the evidence?
No links to court docs.
Charges brought — any convictions? Or sure, because without convictions you’re just poisoning the well.
Even so, abuse? Evidence? Outside sources linked?
No.
No one is providing counter factual evidence.
What we DO have evidence for, is Amy Acton during COVID, and even last year talking about it.
Lying.
Repeatedly.
About COVID, about her response, about the historical record.
And facts.
This means you need external evidence to verify ANY claims coming from her.
Nonsense
And...@NRO obtains the legal docs. Whichever ad makers and strategists greenlit this without determining whether or not Acton's story held up should be tarred and feathered. Political malpractice of the highest order. nationalreview.com/news/amy-…
This is representative of a continued misreading: of @benshapiro and @realDailyWire conservatives, and of @realDonaldTrump as well.
The right doesn’t collapse when you disagree with a conflict.
Matt doesn’t agree with engaging in the Iran conflict.
Ben doesn’t want it to last this long — he wanted it to be fast and over.
Both of them want it to be done already.
Neither are neocon positions, if neocon is to have any meaning.
For that matter, nobody I have heard at DW support nation building.
It is, in fact, the “new right” that is pushing this leftist mentality of all or nothing.
Ben’s point is that the average American doesn’t care enough about the Iran war to vote based on that one issue.
X is not real life.
This has been borne out in real elections this year.
Americans are most concerned with things like affordability, immigration, fraud and corruption. They’re worried about getting taxed (or wanting to tax others).
Iran is a component in affordability right now, but it is not THE reason most people vote the way they vote.
We waste precious time on an issue that is not important to most Americans.
This appears right from all available evidence.
You can disagree. But now you need to bring evidence and reason to demonstrate what is wrong about this analysis, rather than assertions.
This hits close to the heart of the problem. The fact that one can’t even say, in certain circles, that many Americans on the right are not fans of the conflict in Iran (but also not intrinsically anti-Israel and certainly not pro-Iran/Islamist) without immediately getting pejoratives hurled one’s way is a problem.
The neocon surge since that conflict started is a bubble in which a host of assumptions that have long since been rejected in the Trump era resurfaced as if self-evident truths.
Make no mistake, this is going to lead to that bubble popping, as people misread the situation: those assumptions have no solid support on the right anymore.
And that will, in turn, lead to more misunderstandings and fallout.
Thinking about a realistic path forward in the midst of this mess on the right, which will likely only get much worse after the midterms, was why I went to Jerusalem recently and gave this speech:
americanmind.org/salvo/israe…
Sounds like LA
AUSTIN, TX- Austin’s drug crisis is so bad that the city recently handed out taxpayer-funded Narcan kits after 5 people overdosed in one night.
Not only are officials stating that overdoses are surging and requiring higher dosages of narcan to reverse, but the city now has free “narcan vending machines”, as well as “harm reduction centers” that hand out needles and glass pipes to drug users.
This is the same pattern I’ve reported on in Seattle, Portland and San Francisco and I spent the last week digging into how much the city has been funding these various programs (coming soon).
The city handing out narcan kits and depending on regular Austinites to reverse overdoses, is a bad sign of where the city is headed and Austin is unfortunately looking more like San Francisco and Seattle everyday.
70%+ of funding for the Super PAC looks to be from Texas Oil magnates, hedge fund managers, etc.
Maybe 5% or less comes from AIPAC affiliated people and and people like Miriam Adelson (who contributed like $2m of a total $25-$30m).
Tell me again how a clear minority of donors control the candidate and are the only opposition you faced?
Maybe you’re finding excuses for being a poor candidate.
Corn chips should be fried in lard.
Better yet, put down the chips.
Protip: fried foods in saturated fats taste best while fresh and warm, losing flavor as they cool. They don’t hold as well imo.
I had some of those tortilla chips that are fried in beef tallow that cost $13 a bag. They're not that great. 🤷♂️
The anger over rising manufacturing costs should be directed at all levels of government: fix regulations and fees, break union power, and get back to work.
The tariffs are not the problem, they are underlining it.
Sometimes supporters of tariffs say you can avoid paying more by buying American. Nope. foxnews.com/politics/america…
Netflix laying off 1,000.
But they have not hired 345 foreigners instead.
So far 250 petitions approved.
Only 55 are new hires.
The other ~200 were already employed.
Even scaled to 345, that would be at most 85 new hires this year.
Netflix isn’t firing 1,000 to hire 85 foreigners.
NETFLIX LAYING OFF OVER 1,000 WHILE FILING RECORD H-1B PETITIONS FOR THE COMPANY
You don’t hate these companies enough @USLaborIG
As liberty minded people, we should be far better on issues like the inflation through the Fed.
Since the Fed:
$25 trillion spent on the military.
$100 trillion spent on handouts and other services.
Which one is driving inflation?
We took in roughly $120 trillion in taxes.
Which one is 20% of revenue, and which is 93%?
Military spending does not drive inflation per se.
Antiwar positioning is based off a well intentioned but incorrect anthropology.
It assumes all conflict must be provoked.
But doesn’t allow that the provocation may be self motivated.
One may decide to fight because it is high on their preferences.
Praxaeology allows for this. I wish it were more applied to foreign policy.
When I was a youthful libertarian in my Ron Paul days I got taken in by the "antiwar" crowd. It seemed to make a lot of sense. If you leave others alone, they'll leave you alone. Non-interventionism seemed to make sense.
I was naive. And deeply wrong.
That schoolyard philosophy doesn't even work on the playground. It ignores the entire human history of conflict. It also ignores American history when we have been attacked without warning and without provocation in dozens of situations. I can give dozens of examples but I've been doing that for years and people rarely change their minds so I won't waste my time here.
I steeped myself in all the libertarian literature and revisionist history from all the leading libertarian authors and economists and believed it. But there was a moment during my readings that started tipping me away from this view, and it was when I started reading some of the revisionist literature on Winston Churchill. Ralph Raico's "Rethinking Churchill." I was eager to listen to some critiques because I thought I was opening my mind to new ideas you didn't hear in mainstream academia. But it turns out there's a reason they don't teach it in academia, and that's because it's hogwash.
I remember specifically riding the bus in NYC in 2012 and reading Raico's description of Churchill as monstrous and a murderer of the Boers, which I was trying to keep an open mind about to expand my understanding of history. But it was the moment that Raico described a young Winston playing with toy soldiers that was meant to be evidence of the famous Brit's bloodlust that turned me off. Who hadn't played with toy soldiers as a young man and dreamed of glory in battle? That's a perfectly normal and healthy instinct for a young man. It impacted me. This was character assassination in purpose of blind ideology, not historical analysis. I started to wonder what wagons exactly I had hitched myself to.
Then in subsequent years I spoke out a little when the Ron Paul institute would blame Ukraine and the West for Putin's wars of expansion, and the violent antibiotic reaction to even the faintest criticism at the time started making me question deeper the true motivations of the antiwar crowd. This wasn't some principled non-interventionism, or else it would be equally applied to Putin's wars of expansion. No, this was anti-Americanism. It was only wrong when America did it. And then I saw a libertarian antiwar rally in DC with Russian flags flying in the background, and after having debated commies on Russia Today and investigated them for several years I had finally figured out what was going on.
The antiwar movement is an anti America movement. And this is why it fits so neatly in with the Pro Palestine leftist activists, and why you'll see so many libertarian "leaders" chumming up to leftists like Kasparian or Uygur or others. They all have the same opinions about the most important issue: America (and Israel) are the great evils of the world (aMeRiCa iS tHe BiGgEsT tErRoRiSts). It's a grift, and when it's not some low IQ podcaster in thrall to foreign interests, it's just someone who wants cache in the cult of Rothbard. It's trite, boring, and relies on sophistry that appeals to the type of people who think Candace Owens is a brilliant crime sleuth.
I'm not prowar or anti war. I'm pro winning wars. Wars are inevitable. It's better to win wars than lose wars, and the United States is powerful because it's won wars. Maybe we could have fewer wars, but also maybe we can't... or maybe we should have MORE wars if that means the American people would be safer, freer, and our rights more protected. That's what matters to me. America First means that our Constitution, our way of life and liberty, and our prosperity comes first. If that can be done without war, then good. If it can't, then so be it.
It’s not antisemitic to say modern Judaism is heresy and rejects the identity of the triune God, no.
But there’s no particular reason to be hyper vocal and out front about that in the current climate, except to agree with and appeal to those who simply think “the Jews are bad”.
It’s also not unchristian to say the same about Romanism, a largely idolatrous religion, and Mormonism.
But those two seem to be holy cows on the right, and the only heretical religions we can harp on are Islam and Judaism?
Judaism has more history and lineage with biblical Christianity than any other religion, save Orthodoxy (ironically named) and Rome. But all diverge on fundamental doctrinal points, making them heretical. No difference on that end.
This was an error during the Medieval era and Rennaissance as well. People were so hype about the Reformation, they ran into the other ditch, and trashed Jews for not Godly reasons at all.
How about we don’t have these errors, act like adults with grace, acknowledge truth and stop trying to dunk on everyone?
DISAGREEING WITH JUDAISM AND THEIR BELIEFS IS NOT ANTISEMITIC. I’m so tired of people dancing around this and calling anyone who is willing to say “this is not of Christ, these people hold antichrist beliefs and need the gospel” an antisemite. They are the mission field!
Candace Owens is a tool of Satan and full of hate, anyone who hates Jewish people because they are Jewish are not acting in love or Christlikeness, anyone who blames them for everything is a fool! But there are 2 extremes!
Christians are called to love , and love tells the truth. My gosh I feel like I am taking crazy pills. Jesus HIMSELF called out the Pharisees and told them they would die in their sins apart from him.
You wouldn’t mind evangelizing and calling a spade a spade with Islam or any other religion who rejects Christ. Why do I have to handle this with soft mittens to not be called an antisemite?
This is not antisemitic! Stop being liberals and crying antisemitism like they cry racism and homophobia .
“I never knew you felt this way Lizzie” of course I do I’m a Christian, why don’t you? They don’t get a free pass without Christ the need the gospel!
The thing that all libertarians seem to have in common, whether screeching leftists or Austrians, is getting absolutely 6th-grade-level butthurt when someone they see as libertarian or anti-war getting questioned or attacked.
I loved Tom, he was responsible for tons of my reasoning 15 years ago. But back then, he almost exclusively put forward primary documentation and supporting evidence for his positions.
Seems with the rise of certain types of libertarian social media accounts, he has joined the Daves in being, essentially, the jocks and bullies of libertarianism.
In other news, the country spends only 9% on food…
70 years ago, it was 18%-20%.
150 years ago, it was 30%-40%.
🤔
For the AI buildout to pay off, Americans will eventually have to spend about 9% of GDP a year on AI services. Sit with that number.
That is roughly what the entire country spends on food.
A Columbia paper presented at Brookings estimates AI revenue would need to hit $3.5 trillion by 2032, about 8.8% of GDP, to justify what is being committed today. That is bigger than any investment boom in US history, and 7 times what Americans spend on phone, streaming, and internet combined.
Now look at computers. Prices fell for 50 straight years, but business spending on them as a share of GDP plateaued in the 1980s and never climbed again. Cheaper and better did not mean an ever-larger slice of the economy.
AI will almost certainly raise productivity. Whether it delivers the revenue investors are pricing is another matter. That gap is what the buildout is underpricing.
If anyone is still wearing masks in 2026, you are functionally retarded.
Unless you’re performing surgery. I mean, seriously, keep your bodily fluids in.
Why isn’t anyone honest about the fact that Joe and his department had zero jurisdiction and wouldn’t have, and it’s not because it was Charlie Kirk?
If I were Tucker, I would say that preying on the ignorance of your audience is evil.
When Jesus healed the sick, He was demonstrating his divinity, fulfilling prophecy and demonstrating the monergistic act of salvation.
He showed in a visceral way that humans are sick, corrupted by sin, wholly incapable of healing themselves.
They need the miraculous work of Christ to heal them.
The devil is a smooth-tongued serpent. Crafty. What he says may sound nice to some, but does not at all sound like the Word of God.
Can we add that using your large (relative to most libertarians) platform to dunk on people you don’t like is a bad look.
Tom Woods, Clint Russell, Dave Smoth, have all decided to collectively retard conversation around anything they don’t like.
If it’s not pacifism, it’s neocons!
Daily Wire lie, because we won’t engage in good faith argumentation.
Ben Shapiro is working for Israel, because we literally short circuit when trying to understand his thinking — though he has explicitly laid that out many times clearly.
Trump is a backstabber, because he’s not doing what we want, and we projected an expectation of what he would do onto him, rather than actually hearing what he was saying.
Trump hasn’t actually surprised me much. I’m not in favor of every decision he’s made.
But he’s done more for liberty, safety, and setting up the ability to retake the country than any President in at least 40-50 years.
Opposing him is generational stupidity for those who favor freedom*
*if you think he did or supported COVID lockdowns, you’re living in an NYT editor’s wet dream still. Gross.
Dave Smith is part of the problem.
He is lying about the US going to war for Israel. This is a much bigger lie than saying “libertarians only care about weed”
He has thrown out all previous libertarian understanding of the incentives of empire in favor of “it was blackmail”
Rubio used the legal excuse of “defending an ally” to avoid a congressional war powers resolution. Libertarians jumped on those gov quotes like it’s real.
We spent two months prepping assets in the biggest build up since Iraq and we attacked Iran on the last day of a negotiating window we set. We didn’t get dragged in by Israel. This was the plan, it was coordinated.
Libertarians are using the legal excuse to trick you.
The US is not in the Middle East because of Israel. We entered the Middle East in great power competition with the Soviet Union. Our enemies became Israel’s enemies. The seven countries list Wesley Clark talks about was a list of former Soviet client states.
These countries at a key energy/trade crossroad became open for the taking after the fall of the Soviet Union, that is what accelerated our focus on the Middle East. Not Israel.
Israel advised us against invading Iraq. And no it’s not because they wanted Iran instead, as if it was their choice anyways.
If it weren’t for countries like Israel and the Gulf states we would be stuck managing our mess forever. Thankfully now that Iran is humiliated and neutered the rest will be strong enough to take the region off our hands.
Meaning Trump is accomplishing a long term libertarian goal of setting up a realistic Middle East exit strategy while libertarians are working with globalists leftists to spread Russiagate 2.0.
Making the Daily Wire seem like stand up patriots in comparison.
And yet we could have more effect working broadly with people to:
_- do something about CEQA, which adds $1k+ to each home
- streamline reviews and require feeer approvals, which also adds cost due to delays
- stupid affordable housing mandates, which reduce supply, increase prices of regular units (because forcing a developer to sell units at a loss means you have to make it up somewhere), and slow down building
Builder I heard recently said there’s basically $200k minimum cost per house to get to a legal dirt lot you can build in and sell. Then you still have to build.
Even without the inflation, housing costs would be and are insane.
And 2019 you could buy at home in Orange County California for under $800,000
This is what massive Congressional spending does, it drives up the prices of everything because it doesn't have the money it takes it from you.
Logic is from the Western tradition.
Eastern thought allows for “mystery” (hence mysticism): the confluence of things that seem like should not both be, but are.
Muhammad:
-owned, sold, and traded black slaves
-called Ethiopians "raisin heads"
-said Muslims are the "best of peoples"
-said disbelievers are the worst of creatures
Never seen someone contradict Muhammad this much all while saying "Alhamdulillah for Islam". Either a troll or this is a world record.