558: How Have Politics Changed Since the Election of Trump? (Audience Q&A)

Brian Nichols  0:31  
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On today's episode one on one and today we're gonna be talking about some questions that I've been getting in the inbox and on social media. We're going to cover a few of them today. I picked a few and I've put them into a quick little slide here we're gonna go through and the first one I thought was a good one. So I want to make sure I put it first. Because it's definitely gonna take up a lot of time. And that is, how has politics changed since President Trump's election back in 2016? Is this a good thing or a bad thing for libertarianism across the board? And why? So let's kind of start off how has politics changed since President Trump's election back in 2016? We've seen and this kind of goes back to the approach that Glenn Beck really brought up in 2015 is that Trump became prominent in Republican circles because he was the personification of everything terrible, more or less, that the left would cast aspersions on Republicans, conservatives, anyone right of center, more or less. And it got to the point, Republicans were not so much worried about presenting someone who looked like no look like they played the part. That's what they did, really, with folks like Mitt Romney, John McCain, and no, don't even say George Bush for for instance, but Trump was the antithesis to that Trump was going to stand up and to I think it was the term the bubble effect, the Glenn Beck term, where he was going to be this big, sloppy guy with the mustard stain on his shirt. And he was going to say what he thought and if that meant going after people, because they were be the ones going after him or even insinuating they might go after him, while he was going to at least swing the first punch. And this kind of goes back to this belief. And it's great. I understand it, because it's something that you've been wanting. And it's great to feel this, this energy of Republicans, conservatives, and I dare even say, Libertarians fighting back, and that was the culmination of the Trump presidency in 2016. So how did politics change? We really had this split away from the traditional. There was two sides, the left the right Republican, Democrat, but they weren't that different. They more or less agreed on some fundamental basic truths and some principles that seemed right. Again, this is all the narrative that we saw going into the 2016 election, but more or less, you know, they were the ones in control and power and the country kind of went along to get along. 2016 All that changed. It was either you were with Trump against Trump. Trump was the end of the Republic. He was a threat to democracy, Trump was going to save us. There seemed to be battle lines drawn everywhere. But it also exposed people for who they really were, which I thought was fascinating because you had some folks who were diehard air quote, progressives, but they turned out to just be shills for the establishment because Trump took such a hard anti establishment approach. On the other side, you saw some folks who just decided to tie the are named to Trump because it was politically advantageous at the time. But fast forward to 2020. And were they as steadfast as they had seen back in 2016? Not necessarily so Trump and the election of Trump and his presidency. It really it shined a light on not only those who were disingenuous in the world of politics, but also what it did. Was it made people have to, if not necessarily get involved, at least be aware, right, at least know that things were going on. You couldn't just sit back and chill for a little bit and let things just happen around you. It's kind of the old John Mulaney skipped the the idea of the horse in the hospital skit for those of you who haven't seen it yet, or who have seen it, rather, where he talks about, you know, him not really caring and other folks not really caring about who the President was before the horse in the hospital Trump, because they thought that, you know, they didn't really need you because they thought that guy that was in the office was okay, or decent. And that was the problem. And that right there. It encapsulates exactly what was wrong with our American political system. And the electorate that made up it is that a lot of folks just passively would go out and vote for whatever team they thought best represented their ideas without actually doing the research without actually trying to get involved. They didn't care. They did not want to spend the time, energy and effort learning this stuff on their own. So is this a good thing? Or a bad thing? For libertarianism? Actually, it's a good thing, believe it or not, because it's forced people to start to at least get more aware and understand why they believe certain things that they believe. Now, are there still those out there who just go by the seat of their pants and float through life without really thinking or caring about anything in particular? Absolutely. And will there always be those people for sure, but for the people who are paying attention, who are asking questions, I think is a great thing for libertarianism, especially post Trump, because now we're able to present our libertarian solutions, alternative to Trump, especially when people had been so comfortable with just going along to get along. Now they're seeing, okay, maybe this thing that we've called government is actually broken, and we need to look at a different solution. Maybe that different solution involves some libertarian solutions, right? And with that, let's start to present those solutions. I think more people will be absolutely empathetic to those solutions, versus where they back before 2016 Do I think more people will start to identify as libertarian in the future. This was tough, because I go back to the the Ferris Bueller idea of I don't think isms are necessarily a good thing isn't as my opinion or not good. Reason being is because once you become part of the ISM, it's a lot easier to be attacked, and taken over by the idea of groupthink. Right. And this is, that's why I just I do not like the idea of collectivism, because collectivism is nothing more than weaponized groupthink. That's what democracy at the end of the day is, as well as weaponized groupthink, if you get a mass of people all moving in one direction, simply because that mass of people is now moving in a direction. And once an object is in motion, it stays in motion. That doesn't necessarily it's a good thing, because if you're going towards a cliff, you want that object in motion to stop. So do I think that it's a good thing where we are right now? No, but we'll I think it's gonna be more of a good thing as more people identify as libertarian in the future, because they start to identify and ask more of the questions and see, maybe I am a libertarian. Yeah, I think I think you will see, especially now that people are asking questions, that libertarianism, the ISM that is libertarian, if we will, that is going to be something that people will in fact refer back to they will start to gravitate more towards now. Is that happening right now? I don't think so. I think we have lost a great opportunity over the past four years, I'm not going to rehash old wounds. And then I've gone through here in the show about libertarians in positions of power from yesteryear. But we're in a good spot now to help reclaim the narrative. I was just, as I talked about my last episode, we're Young Americans for Liberty revolution 2022 down in Orlando, and talking about the future of liberty and seeing how the conversations are changing. More and more young people even are starting to go to these events and go to these conferences, saying I wasn't even politically involved two years ago. And now all of a sudden here I am starting to ask more questions. Now. I think we could have done a better job back during the COVID lock downs especially. But I think we're going to see that more people especially now are going to start gravitating away from the traditional GOP, the traditional, democratic, just go choose and we'll start to instead look at alternatives be that libertarian or elsewhere. But I think we have a good shot to meet people where they're at on the issues they care about and show that yeah, we've been consistently right throughout not just the past two years, but in many instances for decades. In plus beyond then, especially when you look at what's going on the monetary policy you're hitting impacting right now the impact on cost of living in inflation. We've been right on the impact of and the importance of focusing on the dollar and the impact of our monetary system as it pertains to the just skyrocketing costs that we're seeing, but also the impact on the role of the Fed plays. So yeah, I think, you know, if we continue to show and build the case that we have not just been consistently correct, but the our solutions would have solved these problems were we listened to, and now we start to help build trust with folks. Yeah, I think more folks will, in fact, start to identify as libertarian, what are the key differences between conservatives and libertarians on this actually, is something I was I was not necessarily shocked to see as a question but a little curious, because I have seen more and more this kind of schism. schism is the right word, but a little bit of a split between conservatives and libertarians. And I don't I don't understand why we're doing that right now. Frankly, I think it's not a good time to do that. Are we the same? No. But are we on the same path right now, when we're facing this leftist status, establishment Leviathan that we are currently facing? Absolutely. So do I think it's a super important question? Not necessarily, but we'll answer it for sure. So what are the main differences? And I would say you're gonna see a big difference between look at folks like Tucker Carlson and Josh Hawley and Tom Cotton. And look at instead, folks like Rand Paul, Thomas Massie, Justin Amash, that's going to be your your foil right between what is an elected libertarian, and an elected conservative in the small c, small l sense, right. So the conservative approach to governance seems to be, and I don't want to mischaracterize my friends on the right, but more so government is an unnecessary evil in order to maintain some order of, or level of lack of chaos, if you will, when you look at what's happening in the conversation as it pertains to you trying to maintain some social standards, you see conservatives wanting to use government as a means to do so and to enact what is considered a moral good. And I think that right, there would be the main area, you see a lot of the split. But also, we've seen more of this split from an economic standpoint, where a lot of these more conservative leaning folk in I'd say the more populous conservative camp have started to embrace more of a left leaning economic ideology. And the idea that free market capitalism actually hurts the the idea of conservatism, social conservatism and the ideas of what makes a socially conducive society that is really antithesis on antithesis, but it is foil to what you're seeing is a libertarian argument, which is, you need to have an ability for not just the marketplace to to flourish, but also you need to have the marketplace for people to disagree, and there will be a difference of doing things. And you should not have a one size fits all state, top down enforced morality. And unless there are just basic fundamentals that we have all agreed on, which at the end of the day we talked about from a natural rights standpoint is going to be don't hurt people and don't take their stuff. When you start to enforce beyond that, and you start to enforce on other people's rights to then use their their own liberties freely, then that's where you start to see, there seems to be more of a drawing of lines, I think between the Conservatives and Libertarians as there should be now it's on us libertarians, I think down the road to try to win our where are our friends on on the more conservative side of the camp, but it's not our job to spend our time, energy and effort doing so. Now, that's not to say I don't empathize with a lot of those positions. I just don't think we need government. Government means to go ahead and promote the societal good, or in this case, the conservative societal good that they're looking to promote. You see this done throughout other cultures without using government as a means to doing that Amish are a great example, where they have their own communities that they can go out in force a societal conservative approach to their their culture, but at the same point in time, they're not putting forth some government force now, are there different forces? Absolutely. And are they all good? No, that's not the point. The point being is that once you centralize that in one government entity, it can absolutely be taken advantage of and utilized against you. So we don't want to put those powers of enforcing what is considered good or bad in the one entity, but rather, we want to make sure that's dispersed as openly and quite frankly, as a non non hierarchical as possible. Let it go out and let people do what they need to do in their own lives without having a one size fits all approach. Now and then the IRS Oh, goodness, yes. This is a good question. Is the IRS politically motivated? Or is it just bureaucratic incompetence? Yes, and yes, the IRS is in fact a politically bureaucratic organization, but it is, in fact politically motivated. And we just saw with the addition of 87,000 IRS agents to the agency here, over the The next few years that yeah, that is going to be weaponized. It's going to be used against conservatives, libertarians, anyone right of center. So again, that's why I say to the libertarian conservative question, why are we having this question? We have so many bigger fish to fry, especially when we're watching the IRS now getting more funding going towards pushing, having more agents in their their ranks than this. I think it's the FBI, the Pentagon and the CIA. So strap in there, folks. Yeah, because it's definitely going after the sub 1000 billionaires in America and not against the entire middle class. That's all 87,000 of those IRS agents. It's it's, it is politically motivated. But back to the other part of the question, there is absolutely bureaucratic incompetence, which leads to what are we doing? Why are we giving even more power to the IRS giving more money to the IRS giving more people to the IRS, yet that only enhances the political bureaucratic incompetence and the political motivations to then weaponize this department. So what we should be doing is the exact opposite of what we should be doing. The main goal should be to scale back the IRS to make it as small as possible. And to frankly, eliminate the income tax, we do abolish the income tax, get it out of the Constitution, and, frankly, get rid of the IRS. The IRS is a just, it's a theft organization at the end of the day, and frankly, we are at a point as a society where we we have we have so gotten past and it's another question I did not put in here. But with technology, we are getting past the means of government dictating what we can and cannot do, there's going to come a point where we're technology is is advancing so quickly, that government adaptation and response to technology advancing cannot and will not keep up. Government we know is inefficient is bureaucratic. And with that it has inherent flaws in its ability to adapt, to react, and to adjust course, based on what's changing around it. That's why we talk about our solutions being overtly better than our government solutions that we currently see in place now. Because our solutions when they're presented free free market approach, can react can adapt based on what's happening in the marketplace, whether it's changes in the marketplace, where there's changes in what people are demanding, whether it's changes on the supply side or the supply chain, whatever it may be, we see that the marketplace can adapt, whereas government has so much difficulty in trying to react to these problems. So going back to the IRS, in any government organization across the board, we should be going across the board and cutting and minimizing them to as small as possible. And I think that that pretty much is a pretty simple answer there. I hopefully cover that pretty well. But otherwise, yeah, that that seems to be a pretty straightforward. Yes. And yes, so yeah, that's, um, that's some of the questions I had that I covered here. From The Brian Nichols Show perspective. Hopefully, you guys enjoyed today's episode a little bit different, obviously, no guests today. And we did have a couple hiccups here with some guests as we got back from revolution 2022 to get them on the show. So we don't worry, we're going to have some guests coming on here in the show very soon. And also, we're going to be doing some more in person interviews here in the future, really looking forward to that. And also, I'm gonna be doing a couple more events here. I'm gonna be speaking over at a libertarian event up in Indiana as often as if I'm not living in Indiana here in Indiana on the 27th Hanging out with our good friend there, Spike Cohen, once again, we just got to hang out with down in Florida. So looking forward to seeing spike here in the Hoosier State. And other than that, folks, I had a great, great time yesterday, where I went through and I outlined Young Americans for Liberty 2022 Sorry, there, I had to take a breath. My mouth was so dry, but no revolution 2022 If you did not get the chance yet to check that episode out, please go ahead and do so. But also, if you have not yet had the chance to go and support our friends over at Young Americans for Liberty, please do they are doing amazing things. I cannot thank them and their team enough for what they did for a great event over this past weekend. And I'll make sure I include that recap video here for you YouTube subscribers. So all you've got got to do is click right there. I'll see you over there. And then to your audio listener, please go to your Brian Nichols show.com link there and your podcast catcher will bring you right to the landing page. For today's episode. We're going to find today's episode, you can find yesterday's episode, which will also include the link to the YouTube channel there as well, but also the entire transcript for the episodes and oh, by the way, all 555 Plus episodes of the program and by the way, folks, I enjoy reading all these amazing five star rating reviews I've been getting thank you so much to you guys for reaching out. 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