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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
What's up, what's up, everybody? Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem. I'm very excited for today's episode. Real quick, before we start, guys, Friday, one night only, May 5th, I will be with Robbie the Fire Bernstein up in Toronto at the Parkdale Hall Theatre. The shows are almost sold out, so if you want to grab tickets, make sure to go do that right now, comicdavesmith.com.
I haven't been to Canada yet. Since, oh, I did one little day trip there, but I haven't performed in Toronto since like pre-COVID days. So Canada, I had to put you on timeout for being tyrants for a few years, but I'm coming back to you now. So you have a second chance.
Chapter 2: What recent UK incident is discussed in the episode?
All right. Today's show, very special guest who I'm very happy to welcome back to the show is Jeremy Kaufman, somebody who I always really enjoy talking with. For many of you, I'm sure already know Jeremy.
Jeremy is an entrepreneur and a political commentator and activist, a champion of the Free State Project up in New Hampshire and a strategy for people who don't know the Free State Project is a strategy for libertarians physically,
uh consolidating in order to improve liberty in new hampshire they've made some huge strides and had some huge victories and he is um also a uh you're the chair of the libertarian the libertarian party of new hampshire the most i think fair to say the most successful and also the most perceived as controversial state
affiliate libertarian party maybe not a state affiliate anymore maybe it's the entire libertarian party now i'm not exactly sure but we'll get to the bottom of it how are you sir i am doing great i think that was all i think that was all correct i you know i think the libertarian party of new hampshire is actually the only libertarian party still standing you know the woke the woke leftists have sort of taken over the rest of us
Yeah, yeah, well, we can get into some of that stuff. It sure is, oof, it sure is something.
I don't know who likes talking about the Libertarian Party, you know, either. I think decent people kind of recognize what it's become.
Yes, I agree. That's why we have to like, you know, we'll, we'll, it's the spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine go down. We'll talk a little bit about issues that matter, and then we'll give you a little bit of LP talk as well. You know, I was thinking about you, but well, because, so I'm, I'm a, You know, obviously, I'm interviewing you on the show today.
And earlier I was on the Piers Morgan show and we did a panel that was all about this horrible stabbing in the UK, which is from last year. But the body cam just came out. So that's the whole topic. And I was on with Mark Lamont Hill. And, uh, um, what was the guy's name? I can't remember. It's like watch cat Ali or something like that.
They're like two, two real, like kind of race hustling leftists. Yeah. And I don't know why, I guess I, cause I knew I was going to be talking to you later. I was literally while I was filming and I was just thinking about talking to you about it because I, I just like,
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Chapter 3: How does Jeremy Kauffman plan to change the Libertarian Party?
This is a case that's way worse than like any of the racial hysteria cases that have happened over the last. This is worse than Trayvon. This is worse than George Floyd. This is worse than any of these cases. And we're not going to see anything like this. And, you know, we still have today in America, not even just in the UK, you know, massive
racial discrimination, like this idea that wokeness has been defeated, I think is completely false. I think it's fine to say that it's been on the retreat a little bit, but it has not been defeated. We still have, quote, institutional racism.
And then this is the funny thing is the right struggles to really address these issues in ways that aren't embracing the leftist view inherently in how we even talk about them. When we say, oh, well, you're being racist. This is an example of institutional racism or systematic racism or whatever. And so even when we're arguing against them, we're meeting them in their own frame.
But of course, they don't play by their own rules. Their rules are completely one-sided, and they only use these rules basically against the right. And so I think this is still a major problem. I think the idea that it's over is completely ludicrous. And I think this is also a winning issue for libertarians to talk about, The Libertarian Party of New Hampshire does talk about these things.
Free staters are comfortable talking about these things. We have a multitude of ethnicities here in New Hampshire, but I think there definitely is a recognition that things vary a little bit by ethnicity in terms of beliefs.
And so I think all this stuff has to be in bounds and the right has to find a way of talking about it in ways that aren't just talking about it inside of a leftist frame, which is self-defeating.
Yeah, I think I think that's right. It is a bit of a challenge in a way, because even as I laid it out to you, I mean, I'm essentially doing like the Dems are the real racist thing. But I don't know how else to describe this other than even as you said, as you pointed out, far more egregious than Trayvon Martin for far more egregious.
Like whatever you think of those situations, let's let's grant like. The most charitable interpretations of both. We'll go with the one autopsy for George Floyd that says the cop killed him. We'll go with his murder conviction. The absolutely should not have had his knee on his neck for that long after he was subdued. Still, still.
He was a guy with a criminal record who was committing a petty crime. And the idea that he had an interaction with law enforcement that went bad after that is not like just on the scale of outrages. He wasn't just a college kid walking downtown who just got stabbed five times. And you can just I guess the point is that.
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Chapter 4: What are the contrasting views on Donald Trump presented?
when when you post about how well hey you know it's better to be straight than to be gay or you know it's better to have children that do not have children you know they then condemn you for passing judgment and it's like well you know i i think i can tell what you really want here because you know you just want everything to be allowed you want everything to be permissible you know your morality is essentially that if it's agreed to
uh you know that it's okay or that it's good and that's certainly not my uh you know morality um you know i i you know so i wouldn't i wouldn't agree with this kind of thing um you know and then also i may this may be a break from some of the libertarians but i think this idea like people are different you know the average cop look i think they're bad cops i think they're cops who abuse their authority i'm not like a holy pro cop guy in the slightest
But at the same time, I recognize that this is a job for, you know, an average individual, essentially, okay? And the idea that I want... I'm not saying their conscience should never enter into it, but to some extent, the idea that they are just following orders is not a wholly wrong idea to me.
We want cops to be enforcing the law, not constantly making entirely subjective judgments and just doing what they want all the time. And so, you know, to me, like something like in the Chauvin case, like, well, was he trained to do this? Is this what he was supposed to be doing? These are highly relevant facts to, you know, to how I would judge a case like this.
Well, I certainly, you know, in a weird sense, even as you say it, I mean, you know, people mock the Nuremberg defense of just following orders. And of course, it was ruled at Nuremberg that that is illegitimate. But also, this is kind of a bit of history that's lost, is that we did accept that defense for millions of Germans. Like, literally, they only prosecuted the top-level Nazi guys.
And then essentially, at a certain level on down, they went... without saying it, they went, yeah, just taking orders is actually a legitimate defense. Cause like, but it was almost like a, well, what are we going to do? What are we going to do for every member of the society?
Um, but that being said, it also doesn't, that doesn't then remove the morality or the moral equation of what any Nazi may have done to somebody else. You know what I mean? So I get your point. I wouldn't say that it's wholly irrelevant what the training is. Um,
That being said, I mean, I guess the answer is if the job of law enforcement is going to be something that the regular person does, well, that's kind of why me and you are libertarians and want there to be kind of as few laws on the books as possible and as little interaction between that regular guy and the citizenry as possible.
Yeah, I'll give you an example then. I don't know if you'll find this thought experiment interesting, but it's an area in which my thinking has changed as a libertarian. Honestly, I came from, I probably wouldn't consider myself a classical liberal anymore, but I came from that school of we want all the laws to be written down, we want everything to be fair.
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Chapter 5: How does the conversation address the issue of racial dynamics?
and I'm sure you can relate to this, as a father, it makes you almost care about money more than you otherwise would have to because I feel like I have to keep making a ton of money to make sure that I can afford to opt out my family from all these public spaces that are such nightmares and get them into a more expensive community, a more expensive school, a more expensive thing because the state of...
The public everything is essentially that we we we either like have to have maximum rules for that that need not apply to you or we essentially have to have no rules because it would be offensive for us to enforce any rules again to people who are not you. It's kind of infuriating.
No, this is a huge problem, and it's so many things. It underlies so many things. Even something like housing costs, I think, is frequently driven by this, where... You know, a lot of the reason, you know, of course, if you talk to the residents, they would never say it this way.
But if you really dig in, you know, a lot of the reasons that these areas are expensive is why have they zoned out cheaper housing? Why they zoned out apartments is because they don't they don't want, you know, lower class people living in that area. And but even truthfully, it's not even just lower class people. It's just this portion of the lower class.
and you know and there's no way of dealing with them like there are you know i want to be clear that like there are plenty of people who are lower in income who you're nonetheless you know they're not littering and you know they're not committing crimes and they're not making their neighborhood worse so i want to be clear that it's a minority of them that are doing this
But they are disproportionately lower class people and there's and they ruin their neighborhoods. I mean, they create like such outsized negative impacts. And it's it's it. So it affects property prices. It affects our public transit. It affects our school systems. You know, it's it's everywhere. And, you know, I see it as like one of the root problems that we're not.
addressing or not getting to, you know, is how we deal with this. And it's something that makes everything more expensive, too. And we're talking about, you know, affordability is obviously a big issue with younger people. And part of the reason the nice areas are expensive is because this is a way of solving this problem.
But there are potentially much cheaper ways of solving this if we had the will to do it.
Yeah, yeah, no, I agree with that. So you had mentioned kind of, you know, your attitude toward Trump and MAGA. And I think there's a big gap between me and you on this issue. So let's kind of talk about this a little bit.
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Chapter 6: What criticisms are made about the current state of the Libertarian Party?
He's like, look. We've just got to vote Republican up and down the board. This is how we get what we want. The more that we show that we play ball, the more that I can negotiate on. And it's not, of course, we have almost 100 libertarians elected here, but he's the guy we coordinate around.
And he's the guy who and the more that we show that, hey, we're playing ball with the team, the more that he's able to. get our priorities passed. And it doesn't mean that we get what we want 100% of the time. Sometimes our Republican, you know, we were very close to getting Campus Carry passed this year, and it was other Republicans who shot it down.
We were very close to getting this other like school, it's not even school choice, we already have a grade school choice, but this like school swap program, and it was Republicans who shot it down. And so, you know, and this is disappointing, That our priorities are not happening, not even because of the Democrats or because of other Republicans at times.
But, you know, what Jason would say, and I'm going to do a video with him in a couple of weeks on the Free State Party channel, which I'd encourage your audience to check out, is... is explaining some of this stuff. And it's like, it's hard. Libertarians are disagreeable. We're independent minded. We like to speak our truths and say where we're at, but I just don't see a better strategy.
And this is like, you know, I don't like it, but like, what am I supposed to do other than hold my nose a little bit? Cause I just don't see a better way. I just don't see a better strategy. Like if I start being like, you know, Trump suck, like it's not like it would, things would be better if Kamala was president, even though there's stuff I don't like with Trump.
It's not like that would be better, you know?
Well, let me say it like this. I just earlier today listened to your interview on our good mutual friend Tom Wood's show over there, and you were kind of talking about how at the startup phase, you want more radicals, and then as you're getting bigger and bigger would be the time to moderate the message and things like that. So I think that it's quite...
It might be quite reasonable in the state legislator in New Hampshire where you have a real presence and you really have been building momentum to be like, listen, guys, this is the time where we're going to have to moderate. In fact, I think I remember talking with you years ago about how I almost go that like like more of the like Nick Sarwak types in the Libertarian Party.
I go, they kind of would have a point if Gary Johnson had gotten 32 percent of the vote. And you were like, guys, we just need to like get a few more points here. But when your big win is that you got 5%, it's like, no, dude, this is the time to be more radical because you kind of have to go for it.
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Chapter 7: How does the Free State Project aim to influence politics?
But this doesn't seem sustainable over time, you know, unless we're expecting just infinite productivity gains to always save us. And so something new has to come about. It's inevitable. The pressure and the incentive to create something new is higher than it ever is before. This is also what I'm working on.
I don't know how much you want to get into on the show, but it's actually a big part of what I'm working on with with the Free State Party, which is my new which has been my new my new venture. And if we're talking about saving America, you know, it's got to be centering around someone who can actually solve these problems.
problems which as much as i would like to happen in this purely voluntary way i think if you're talking about saving america you need someone with like a little bit more of like an energy like a malay or even a bukali who i want to be very clear is not a libertarian in many ways but there has to be someone who's willing to uh you know look i trump disappoints me in this area i wish he was stronger he doesn't do enough uh you know but but we we are in a system that is so against us
That is so weighted against us where it's not it's not just the government, but it's like it's all of the bureaucracies. It's all the universities. It's all of these institutions. And this is, again, also why, despite not liking a lot of what Trump does, I'm not eager to condemn is because he's like the first thing I've seen in my life. And I didn't even get this at first.
I wasn't like a huge Trump fan in 2016. I was by 2020, but I was not a huge fan of Trump in 2016. It took me a while to get this, to understand that he's the first person. he's the first thing that is disruptive to the system that threatens the system, like even a little bit. And, and so I'm just not eager to jump away from that until I see my ability to jump to something better.
And someone like Massey, again, who I love, like, His popularity, I'm glad he's getting more popular. I would love if he could become president, but he's not getting popular by talking about cutting spending, right? He's gotten popular by talking about Epstein stuff and the war in Iran.
And I think a lot of this popularity is coming from people who are happy to support him because they see him as oppositional to Trump. But if it ever came to Massey enacting a right-wing libertarian agenda, would turn on them in a second because they don't want to cut food stamps or spending or shrink the regulatory state.
They just like that he's sticking his thumb in the eye of Trump, which I'm not saying Trump is entirely undeserving of. So I'm not here to condemn Massey and say he's entirely undeserving.
But Donald Trump is the guy, like, when Thomas Massey did vote against the giant spending bill in COVID that caused so much of the inflation, Trump's the guy who's going to demonize him and send all of his people to attack him.
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Chapter 8: What is the significance of Israel in the political discussion?
We're not going to subsidize it. That would certainly be my preferred answer to this kind of thing. not an endorsement of what Israel does, nor is Israel, I would much rather live in America than Israel. I'd rather live in America than Germany.
I also wouldn't have a problem saying that Germany or Israel are both nations I would prefer to live in compared to Palestine or compared to much of the Middle East. And so to me, on the continuum of Western civilization versus barbarism, You know, Jews are closer. Israel is closer to the kind of nation that I would want to live in. Again, not endorsing. The whole thing just seems like a mess.
It just seems like it's you have this intractable conflict that both sides continue to sort of break what I would consider to be decency or the ways that I would want, you know, ideally that both sides would be behaving. And and you now have this conflict where. It's very intractable. There's a lot of hatred on both sides.
And, you know, I would prefer to just not be involved in it at all and let them sort of fight it out. I hate that this is... Agreed.
Agreed, yes. All right, listen, let's use that because it's a good transition because we're coming up against the end of time here. But I do want to at least talk about the LP for a couple minutes here. And you just said intractable conflict that is a waste of time. And so this does seem like a fitting... A fitting transition.
So you did this thing, which I'm sure a lot of the listeners had seen, where you went and you ran for chair of the Libertarian Party on the platform of abolishing the whole thing, which, of course, is a suicide mission. I mean, you're well aware that obviously you're not going to win a room full of people who are all dedicated to doing a thing that we should stop doing this thing.
I got 7%, though.
You did get 7%, which is pretty hilarious. It is. But you had this moment where you kind of went off and it went viral of you kind of calling out the LP membership to their face and saying that, like, look, a lot of you guys are the problem for why you... I mean, look, I've said... I said when I was on Liam McCollum's show the other day where I was just making the point that, like, for example...
It's not like I like let's say I am like a more right leaning libertarian or you're a more right leaning libertarian. And, you know, you you go do podcasts and talk about this stuff or I go do podcasts and talk about this stuff. And then Chase Oliver is a more left leaning libertarian.
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