Mac and Mike Podcast Transcript
Episode: Is Libertarianism Going to Destroy America or Help America?
Mike: Is libertarianism going to destroy America or help America? In this week’s episode, that’s what we’re going to discuss.
Welcome back to Mac and Mike. I’m Mike. My friend to my left is Mac. And we want to talk about libertarianism today because we have well-known people—for example, I love Greg Gutfeld and Kennedy, who used to be the MTV disc jockey, and Kat Timpf—all have declared themselves to be libertarians.
But I’ve thought a lot about libertarianism over the past 20 or so years. One of the famous guys, Rand Paul, and his father Ron Paul, were big libertarians. I often thought the saying is “least governed is best governed.” So I went to artificial intelligence and asked: Are there any countries in the world that represent truly what libertarianism is? And you know what came up? Nope. Somalia.
So that is a prime example of the end result of libertarianism taken too far. But there are aspects that are somewhere in between. There are always gradations in thought processes.
I looked it up because there are a couple of complicated words. One branch is called minarchism, which is kind of like what we have in an understanding with Kat and others. We want a smaller government. But then the end result is anarcho-capitalism, which is essentially what Somalia has fallen into. There are no real libertarian governments in the world. There are some that are closer than others, like Switzerland, but even they have quite a few problems.
So, what have your thoughts been? You’re an old fart like me. What have your thoughts been about libertarianism, Mac?
Mac: Well, Mike, shockingly, there are very few people who are registered libertarians. There are very few people who belong to some sort of libertarian organization. Many more people claim to be libertarians than there are those that are officially identified or registered.
And I think that the idea of libertarian is one that people identify with when they have a particular issue that they’re struggling with. We’ve had a war on drugs in this country for a number of years. The war on drugs has caught up a number of very bad people—the biggest kinds of dealers in illicit drugs. It’s also caught up some petty, small-time users.
Libertarians believe, for the most part—all generalizations are false, including this one—but libertarians believe for the most part that an adult should be able to put into their body whatever they want to. Now, that’s a pretty easy thought and a pretty easy approach to identify with, right? If you’re an adult and you pay your taxes and you pay your bills and you do all those things you’re supposed to do, isn’t it reasonable to assume that you have the authority and the ability to put into your body any kind of substance that you want to put into your body? It is, after all, your body.
And the people on the Democratic side that are pro-abortion—don’t they say “my body, my choice” all the time?
But can you—is it reasonable to have all drugs available to all adults with no restrictions? I think reasonable people in a civilized society can have that debate, but libertarians have already decided that’s what they believe in: no restrictions on drugs.
When it comes to abortion, “my body, my choice,” libertarians are not sure what they believe on that. There are people in the libertarian organizations that believe in being pro-choice and those that believe in being pro-life. When it comes to Second Amendment issues, libertarians are probably the most staunch supporters of the Second Amendment that exist.
So there are a lot of ways in which libertarianism or libertarians themselves fall into the ideas that are espoused by either the Democrats or the Republicans. Most Republicans—the Republican platform is a pro-life platform. That doesn’t mean that all Republicans believe in pro-life or dismiss pro-choice, but most of them do.
Libertarians don’t want us to have a standing army. They don’t believe in defense really. They believe in individual rights and freedoms, but they don’t necessarily want the United States of America to be the industrialized defender of the world. That’s appealing to some people.
You have to get right down to the individual question until you understand what libertarians actually believe and are for. Being that there are such a relatively small group of people that have officially identified themselves, I think it’s kind of hard to figure out whether or not libertarian ideas will turn the United States into Somalia or not.
I know this: with the way our two-party structure is built, libertarians have very little chance of actually gaining real power in the United States. The only libertarian I know of is Rand Paul, and he happens to be in the Republican Party. So it’s really a clash of ideas about the size of government.
That’s why it’s called the minarchists and the anarcho-capitalists. Minarchists are the primary movers and shakers. They just keep pushing for a smaller and smaller government. The three things that they want controlled are the courts, the police, and defense—but not the kind of defense we have here in America now. Not this huge military that goes all around the world, but a military strong enough to defend us.
And that’s why they’re big Second Amendment people, because they believe like in Switzerland—everybody has a weapon or is trained in a weapon. Adult males, anyhow, and they used to have to mandatorily keep them in their home in case they had to defend the homeland.
The question is always: How much of my tax money is going to go to the things that we need as a society to hold it together? And that’s the constant tension. Democrats want the government to control everything, and they have become rather socialist and communistic. I’m not saying that in a negative way—it’s a thought. It’s never worked, but libertarianism has never worked either.
So we have this tension where we have a certain group of libertarians or libertarian ideologies in the Republican Party. Libertarianism really can’t exist in the Democrat Party except for maybe body autonomy like you were mentioning about abortion. But then you have that other faction that says the baby is a body with its own rights. That’s the part of libertarianism that gets them confused because you can’t really come to an agreement on that.
By and large, I think the Republican Party is the only home for people with libertarian-type ideas. But it has not been accepted broadly in the Republican Party because again, where do we draw the line?
Mike: If you drew the line like Rand Paul, we would not ever be involved in a foreign war. Not even if people were building weapons and saying they were going to drop nukes on us. He’d say, “Oh, wait till they do it.” And that’s the problem we’re facing with the war in Iran right now.
Then you have the economy. Ayn Rand—if you ever saw Atlas Shrugged, you know there’s a logical outcome. But they end up in this utopia-type situation that’s hidden and sequestered from the world by a technology that prevents the outside world from seeing them. So that solves the problem of the standing army and the military. You don’t need one if people can’t find you.
And of course, when we look at practicality on government services like health care… you were talking about drugs. You should be able to—wouldn’t it be nice if I’m a smart guy, I know when I need an antibiotic or an antiviral. I don’t need a doctor to tell me. Wouldn’t it be nice if I could just go down to the pharmacy and say, “Hey, give me some antivirals or antibiotics.”
We’re not talking at that point about hallucinogenics and other types of drugs that alter our behavior in such a way that now we cross the line and we are affecting other people. And you can take something simple like motorcycle helmet laws. Well, if my tax dollars are going to a health care system of any sort, of course I can mandate that you protect yourself so that my tax dollars don’t have to go for a brain injury. And that’s the reason behind helmet laws.
Libertarians would say, “Oh no, no, you can’t mandate people wear helmets.” But then who’s going to pay? I think it was Glenn Beck—Is he a libertarian too, sort of? He made a comment that I did agree with. He said we can’t become a libertarian society in America until we are ready to step over the dead bodies of those with needles in their arms or starving—because starving people don’t get your money. If they’re seen as malcontents, it won’t work.
The Bible says if a man doesn’t work, he won’t eat. That’s kind of a libertarian idea too. So we’re not going to prop people up with a welfare system anymore. You’re basically on your own as an individual.
They don’t believe in speed limit laws either. And they don’t like the fact that government builds roads. They would rather have privately built roads and have those roads managed privately, and the pricing and the cost to use those roads passed on to the actual users.
They believe that if a human being, an adult, wants to do some sort of surgery on themselves and change their outward appearance from male to female or female to male, they should be able to do that. What about the kids? When does somebody become an adult? If you have a 16-year-old who is very advanced and very intelligent, should they be able to decide whether or not they take LSD or smoke crack? And what’s the age? Is the age arbitrary? Is the age of consent, the age of adulthood 18, or 21, or 26?
They don’t believe in eminent domain. If the government wants to build a highway and you have the key piece of property that stops them from building the highway or the school or the hospital or whatever is for the common good, they believe that the government needs to negotiate a price based on what every other private bidder is willing to pay for it.
Is it righteous for one property owner to be able to stop the brand new interstate highway system that connects the northern states to the southern states in an easy manner and benefits all? I don’t know the answer to that. But I do think there are times when, for the betterment of the community, there has to be some way for government to be able to get those projects completed.
I also believe that libertarians, in their belief that anyone can do whatever they want to their bodies and anyone can drive as fast as they want—where do we make public safety an issue? If someone is taking cocaine or some other illicit drug and goes out on the interstate highway driving 100 miles an hour, is that okay? Many libertarians would say they may not like it, but that’s what you have in a libertarian society.
What happens when the person that’s high on cocaine and driving 100 miles an hour smashes into another vehicle? What if deaths occur? How is that reconciled with the people who have lost loved ones? Is there not some duty of a civilized society to protect those people? I think libertarian thought is something most people kind of gravitate to until you start having a debate about where you draw the line.
Mike: Yeah, I see a Mad Max world when you’re talking about that kind of thing. That’s kind of what was symbolized there—everybody had their own ability to do pretty much what they wanted. But see, that’s the problem in any country the size of ours.
The conversation continues with discussion on Switzerland, taxation, education, welfare, Social Security, human nature and sin, and the practical challenges of libertarian ideas. They conclude that while there are valuable libertarian insights—especially around individual responsibility and reducing excessive government—pure libertarianism doesn’t work due to flawed human nature, and incremental reforms may be more practical.
Mac: Did we beat it up enough?
Mike: I think so, brother.
Both: All right, Mac and Mike out.
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