494: What are the Top-3 Issues Libertarians Should Be Focusing Messaging Towards? (with Clint Russell)

Brian Nichols  0:06  
The focus on winning arguments, we're teaching the basic fundamentals of sales and marketing and how we can use them to win in the world of politics, teaching you how to meet people where they're at on the issues they care about. Welcome to The Brian Nichols Show. Well, happy Tuesday there, folks, while you're here on The Brian Nichols Show, and thank you for joining us. And of course, another fun filled episode. I am as always your humble host, and today I have a returning guest the first time he was on, he was talking all things COVID locked down. Today, we're gonna be talking a little bit of getting out of the Liberty bubble, Clint Russell Liberty lockdown. Welcome to The Brian Nichols Show.

Unknown Speaker  0:47  
Thank you for having me, Brian. It's always a pleasure to talk to you, sir.

Brian Nichols  0:50  
Always a pleasure to have you on my friend. Thank you for returning to the program. And thank you for bringing a voice of reason of common sense and, thankfully, of civility, because I think that's one argument that we see, you know, lambasted out there quite often as us in the liberty movement can be a little rough and tough. Clint, you've been engaging in conversations with people left, right and center, about the ideas of liberty, meeting them on the issues they care about and bringing Liberty solutions. You're doing a great job over at the Liberty lockdown podcast, which you so aptly host and you obviously been doing a lot of work since you were last here on the program. Talk to us what's been going on in the life and world of Clint Russell?

Clint Russell  1:33  
Well, I've been doing a lot of lot of conversations with some of the detractors to the Mises Caucus as of late, basically trying to convince them of the falsehoods that they've fallen prey to, in my opinion. So that's been an interesting experience. I really think that there's just a ton a ton of I guess, the, the disinformation board at the federal government will have to handle some of this moving forward. So hopefully, I don't have to. I'm just kidding. Yeah, so that's what I've been doing as of late and I don't I don't mind it. You know, it's funny that I've been viewed as the reasonable kind of Peacemaker person, because I don't, I didn't really get involved with this for that purpose. But I feel like oftentimes, when you have have an extended conversation with someone, you can get past some of the more vitriolic stuff and just get down to brass tacks. And when you do that, oftentimes you can see someone's humanity and deal with them on that level, as opposed to, you know, whatever label group that they're a part of. And I think it's a healthier, more productive way to do things.

Brian Nichols  2:35  
Well, I mean, you just had a conversation with our buddy here over on the we're libertarians network, Cody, John's, over on, it was Dan Smith as system is down podcast. And it was a debate on the accusation that the weakest caucus is a cult. And I thought that you and hoti had, easily one of the most like, symbolic, not symbolic, but the most like perfect examples that you could put to like how you can have a civil conversation, a civil dialogue, not lead the conversation, hating each other. And actually, I think leaving the conversation, better understanding the other side. And that's something that's so it's so incredibly missed, not just in the political conversations we see in the business world, we just had a conversation here yesterday with Steve Harrison, he wrote the book can't sell won't sell, which was talking about the left's takeover of AD, the Adland over in the United Kingdom, and how you see that permeate into not just the the ads that we see on TV, but then into how they focus not so much on the consumer, but rather, on the socio economics, causes or the cultural causes of the month that they're supposed to be promoting. And they're not focused on helping sell a product or or promote a solution, they're not helping a focus on helping show the correlation between a product meeting the solution that they're looking for, and then actually the better outcome, what does that actually mean for the customer? So I think that's where when we first you know, had this conversation lined up, and I was kind of thinking, what should we talk about today? Well, let's let's do this. Let's, let's get out of our bubble. And let's pop the bubble, the proverbial bubble and get out and talk to some real people. And let's focus on what we would say is that the top three to five issues, and we'll kind of walk through this today and see what we come up with the top three to five issues that you've identified, and we can walk through the specific ways that we could take these issues. And now bring them to the individuals out there who are our target market, talk to them as if they are real people, because guess what folks they are, and then meet them on these issues and talk to them like rational, normal human beings. How do you see that'd be the most effective way?

Unknown Speaker  4:50  
Well, I think that's certainly the most effective way you know, politics is all about your life like that's, that's the reason we care about it is because it impacts our life. Both of us have moved on In the past year to greener pastures, because politics deeply interfered with our life. So I think that that's the way to reach people. And as as for the top five issues, I think that we can start, clearly, cost of living. I mean that that is that is obviously the biggest problem that's affecting everyone in this country right now. And you know, even though I'm financially free in my late 30s, I even I feel it, it's brutal out here. The cost of gas to housing, to rent to food, it is absolutely outrageous. And and libertarians have an answer for that we actually had the answer. decades and decades ago, and no one listened to us. But I think this is the opportunity instead of saying, I told you, so now advising people on you know exactly why this is happening to them, and exactly how we might remedy it. So we can bounce that back and forth, if you'd like. Or we can just keep going down the list.

Brian Nichols  5:57  
Yeah, well, let's, let's do that. Let's go back and forth of the cost of living because the cost of living conversation I actually, I think that gets overlooked with the inflation conversation, right. And inflation, it's so easy to talk about, because it's, it's obvious right before your eyes, you see, you print $7 trillion over the past two years, and all of a sudden, the direct implication is all sudden, everything is hitting record prices that we've never seen before in the grocery store. But right there in the grocery store, or you're at the gas pumping, you see it up there when you're pumping your gas, or we look at the cost of homes, right, anybody who's gone and moved to a new place. That's inflation, right. But to your point, it impacts the cost of living. This is making it human. And I love that approach, Clint and talk to maybe some some of the examples we can tell over the past, you know, we can even look at just a snapshot the past six months, the stories, right of people that have experienced the hardships that is associated with the increase in the cost of living. I mean, that alone can help sell a solution in terms of getting away from this traditional way that the government has been using the Fed as its, you know, just imaginary money tree, it's out there. It's it's not realistic, and it's hurting real people.

Unknown Speaker  7:17  
Oh, terribly. I mean, it's absolutely crushing people. And, and this is a bipartisan issue, which is why talk about it. And you're exactly right. The reason I didn't frame it as an inflation conversation is because a lot of people don't understand what that is. So I can just talk about your cost of living, you know, how are you doing financially? Do you feel like you're doing better? The answer for almost everybody is absolutely not, I am not doing better. So instead of getting into the economics weeds as to why I can just talk to them about well, this is pretty messed up, right? What should we do about it? Well, the guys that are in power that that decided to lock us down and print money and borrow money and force people out of their jobs because they wouldn't inject something in their body. Because the supply chain was broken, because they fear monger at us into thinking that locking down the global economy for an extended period of time was a good idea. Just go like you can pivot off of that. Like once you get some common ground of, hey, our cost of living is brutal right now, hmm. And then just extrapolate from there. You know, the obvious rejoinder would be from the White House would be the Putin price hike, which is just completely nonsensical. So I think you can you can probably persuade people that that's obviously false pretty quickly just by saying, Well, you remember that the cost of living and the supply shortages at the grocery store that we were experiencing during lock downs, right? Well, that happened long before Russia ever invaded Ukraine. So let's let's move past that and start to deal with the actual problems. And the actual problems are pretty evident. I mean, this isn't conspiracy theory stuff, we've printed trillions and trillions of dollars. Well, we locked down the economy which damaged the supply of goods and if you have a reduction of supply and an increase of the supply of money, well, what do you think's gonna happen? And it's, you know, try and try and break it down into like, layman's terms instead of going the Austrian School of explaining what inflation is

Brian Nichols  9:11  
and then and then you can go and tell the real story so a note who this is going to hurt the most the people that the left the progressives are supposed to care about the most those who are poor or have fixed incomes and I my God, there's a gentleman up in Northern New York, he's a family friend, older gentleman, great guy, Vietnam that, you know, just just as nice and as genuine as they come fixed income in his late 70s. And his heating bill for I think it was January or February in this past year. It was I think, over $500 to fill his tank, and he looked in the post it breaks your heart because he's like, I don't know how I can keep doing this. And, and it you can hear in that post, there was more than the political sentiment the the topical conversation there was also the human element. I don't know if I can keep doing it, how long can I keep doing this you can hear the angst, the frustration, the fear, and the uncertainty of unknowing what the future holds. And I think that would go to, in my personal opinion, the other main topic of conversation that I still am astonished that we're having, and it's this this conversation about the lockdowns about our government response to to COVID-19. And not just the insanity over the past two years, but also focusing on those who have been so negatively impacted by these policies, business owners, anyone who was fired for refusing vaccine, I mean, the the people who have lost their their social media presence, their careers, their reputations, their livelihoods, all for taking a position on Yes, a controversial subject. But at the same point in time, it's a subject that we were all dealing with an experiencing in some way, shape or form. I think it's okay to have your own opinion on it. And yet people were destroyed over it, Clint. So I would say my second opinion that we should be focusing on and the conversation we should be leading with is not just COVID-19. But the people that have been hurt and telling those real stories of people who have had to stand up and really take some slings and arrows. And I mean, thankfully, Clint, right, two years later, two years. Yeah, here we are, I think we're at the end of it, I think, you know, Fauci just said, we're no longer in the pandemic phase to the scorn of all the academia out there. But I think we're at the light at the end of the tunnel, but we can't, we can't let this ever happen again. And we have to make sure that we get some justice for those people who have been so just wrongfully hurt.

Unknown Speaker  11:43  
Yeah, and that's, I mean, that's probably why I come across more often than not very angry. And it's not because of me. Like, it certainly did impact my life deeply. And that pissed me off, too. But what really frustrated me is that my job was as a private money mortgage broker was to handle the passive income, you know, investment funds of 100, plus retired people, like that's what I was doing. And I had to stop doing that, because I could no longer evaluate risk. And as a fiduciary, I could no longer in good conscience, do what they needed me to do, which was reinvest their capital into trust trustees in the real estate market. So I had to stop. And those people had to scramble and try and figure out ways to survive all simultaneously, while they were trying to keep up with the increasing cost of living. And it's just brutal. It's a brutal one two punch that every investor is dealing with. There's this constant drive to chase yield right now, which is why we're in the everything bubble. In that people, people realize that their cost of living is increasing. And they're trying to find any way to make up that difference. And oftentimes what that what that creates, in fact, almost every time what that creates is people making bad investments in the Austrian School, we call it malinvestment. But that's where we're at right now. Terrible investment. Options are abundant. They're everywhere. And, and because we don't know what the Fed is going to do when it comes to interest rates. Everyone's just guessing, you know, they could decide to pull up Paul Volcker and hike interest rates to 20% to break the back of inflation, which would crush everything, every investment class. But they could also decide that, well, we're starting to see the telltale signs of recession, and we're going to pull back and we're going to increase QE and we're going to increase the bailouts to people and in which case, we're going to have more severe inflation. So I can't evaluate that. And because of that, I can't and I'm a professional investment advisor. That's what I did for my career. So I don't blame anybody. And I can sympathize with their plight, you know, the situation they're in is catastrophic. And your point about making sure we don't forget these people and forget what was done to them. That's my whole mission. That's the whole purpose of my show is like to make sure that that they aren't forgotten that this is remedied in some reasonably ethical fashion and that it just never happens again, because it was suicidal on a national level.

Brian Nichols  14:10  
global level. I mean, well, look at what's happening in Shanghai right now. Oh, my God videos coming out of there. Just horrifying good friend of the show. Lily Tang Williams tagged me in a post over on Instagram here a couple days ago. And just the horror, you hear the screams of people throughout Shanghai. Now for anybody who has been not paying attention over to what's happening in Shanghai, China has reinstituted lockdowns and I forget how many cities but the number I saw, it's probably gone up. I think it was like 60 Millions mod people who are living under lockdown perpetually for the most part for the past

Unknown Speaker  14:46  
MIOSHA. Shanghai is 30 million. So I don't know how many other cities there are, you know, they're all smaller than Shanghai, I'm sure but it's enormous. I mean, it's absolutely enormous

Brian Nichols  14:55  
and tragic. I mean, the fact that you're seeing people literally starving to death the videos of bags of cats and dogs that are being brought away to be slaughtered to turn into food because people are starving. Like they're it's it's just it breaks your heart. And the fact that we've let this happen is, is I think also, I don't want to say like it's, there's a blessing in disguise here. But there is like, because it showed it's opened up a lot of people's eyes to the horrors of what a truly tyrannical government can look like, and how we get here, right. And I'm just astonished that this has happened so quickly, Clint like two years, it feels like it was a blink of an eye, honestly, in some cases. Now, in other cases, it feels like it's been an eternity. But the fact that we've gone from where we were in 2019, to where we are today, and 2022, that they're different planets, like completely different realities. And I think at least right now, more people in 2022, are weary of government bureaucrats. They're weary of politicians. They're not as trusting of their elected officials, and rightfully so we saw a lot of local elected officials be the ones who in many cases enact in the most severe of the lockdown across the United States. You you went from California, to Florida, I just went from Philadelphia, to Indiana. Why? I mean, I think it's pretty obvious for anybody who hears the the similarities between the states that we left in the states that we fled to, but this is across the United States. And frankly, we're seeing this right now happen across the globe, people are self segregating. And I think this also goes maybe, and I'd love to hear your thoughts here. I thought of this as the number three. And that is people are starting to get more involved in the culture, wars, maybe not wars, cultural conversations I want to go with, because I mean, the culture wars, it feels aggressive. And it kind of is, but frankly, for the past, I mean, I want to say like 50 years, we really haven't seen much in terms of an alternative to your traditional leftist, progressive cultural approach to the way we should be a society the way we should be a civilized society, Clint. And yet now we're seeing not just pushback, but like absolute rejection. We're seeing it from parents, we're seeing it from the corporations that are being kicked back by parents from the garbage is being put into their kids programming at the school level across the board. So talk to us in terms of when we can bring these Liberty solutions to people on the issues of the culture wars, specifically, let's talk about parents taking back their their kids rights, and really establishing their roles as parents over the government.

Unknown Speaker  18:00  
Well, I don't want to make this sound overly simplistic because the the economic issues which we talked about, and you know, topic, number one, make my solution to Topic number three, very challenging, but the obvious answer is homeschooling. I mean, if you're in the financial position to do so, getting your children out of these indoctrination centers, it should be priority one, you know, if you can get past the economic burden, then this becomes your top priority, in my opinion, because these are, these are proven to be, you know, just leftist Mills, they're just churning out kids that, that reject all of their parents teaching, and then they go on to college and become even more indoctrinated as such. And it's, it's a catastrophe. I mean, you have families that are being broken, broken apart. Because of this, you have drug addiction and suicide that skyrocketing because of this stuff. So it's very serious. And I don't I don't Other than that, I mean, getting involved on the PTA level to make sure that your curriculum is not so woca fi that your kid is questioning their own gender from five years old, like these are, these are pretty basic demands, but they are still portraying these concern parents is, you know, potential domestic terrorists and radicals and all sorts of nonsense, which anybody who's even remotely awake knows, is BS. So I'm grateful for it in that regard, you know, it's certainly parents, by and large, were not involved in their parents education for many, many decades. And they just kind of relied on the state to handle it. And I think that we've, we've now seen what happens when you turn a blind eye to probably the most important thing in your life, which is the development of your child. Yep. I'm grateful. And I'm grateful that that a lot of people you know, I think we have more people that are being homeschooled than ever. It's like doubled in the past two years and, and it should be increasing from there, hopefully.

Brian Nichols  19:50  
Yeah, I will. I was over on Tim Poole. We were talking about this with the the Florida bill the so called Don't say gay bill, and how the real little conversation that we should be having is is not so much, you know, like, whether or not and the fact that is even the conversation. This is why Ron DeSantis was so brilliant the way he framed this was because he made the left take a position on teaching kids K through three, sex ed are talking about these issues at that level. Now you can have a position on that, right? But he's making you now take the position. And I think your your normal parent, your average parent is saying, Okay, I don't necessarily want to even have that conversation with my child. But if my child is going to engage in that conversation, at least let me be the person determining how that looks. What that looks like. I don't want my five year old learning about this stuff. Because they're a five year old when I was like five, I thought it was gonna be a train conductor. I was all about Thomas the Tank Engine, like sign me up,

Unknown Speaker  20:54  
because I thought I was gonna be a ninja turtle.

Brian Nichols  20:58  
Exactly. Like we got Thomas, the Tank Engine and Ninja Turtles here. But like, is that where we ended up? No, right. But we are letting children make decisions that are literally going to last for ever, when they are at the most the most innocent in the most vulnerable parts of their lives. Any any sane parent hears that and they're going to not just be against you, they will actively go after you as they should. Can you blame them? It's their kids. And this disparity between government schools and government actors believing that both the kids when they're in government schools, there are kids versus the parents saying no, these are my short, like literally my children. Like that's, that's, I think, going to be one of the big conversations and frankly, the big sticking points we're going to see going forward, especially in 2022, the midterm is going to be wild, it's gonna be so wild. And hey, we're gonna be sitting on the sidelines watching as things burn. Clint. So with that being said, what are some of the last few things if there's anything we missed that you want to make sure we bring up in terms of Top of Mind issues that we should be talking about with people we had cost of living COVID lock downs, and making sure people a never have happened again and be are held accountable. And then we talked about parents rights slash, you know, taking back a little bit of this culture, war, anything else, Clint that you could think of? I

Unknown Speaker  22:18  
think that probably the most front of mine, for the vast majority of people that we haven't covered yet is just this, the social cohesion or the lack thereof, you know, the fact that we are falling apart? Yes, culturally. And this, this gets back into the culture, war type language. But I think it's real. And I think this is a very real phenomenon that because of the indoctrination centers, aka the public schools and the colleges, are creating these kinds of social justice warrior type kids, you are seeing that the the cohesive nature of our society is not what it once was. And this is a huge, huge problem. And it's like, it's not, it's not going to be an easy fix, we're going to be dealing with remedy ramifications from this for probably the rest of our lives. But I think that that's that's one issue that, that libertarians have a solution in the sense that we could say, yeah, the government is too big, it has been involved in the, the dictating of how we are formulated as children for too long. And because they have their own goals, which oftentimes stand counter to the goals of the parents involved. That's probably a mistake, we probably should not have been doing that. And, and I think that, that paired with the, the increasing, I don't know if it's even real, but the racial divide, when it comes to the way people talk, we're putting race front of mind, as opposed to our own humanity, as to evaluating people as an individual, which is what used to be the progressive outlook, was to just think that we're all the same regardless of skin color. And now, colorblindness is viewed as racism, I think these are all actually regressive issues, as opposed to progressive issues. And I think that the libertarians have have answers in the culture war. Many of us try to avoid these subjects. And I think that it's a mistake, because these are having very serious impacts on people's day to day lives. And we do have something to say about it. And you know, if you don't, that's fine, but I think the vast majority of us do, and it doesn't do us a good service. It does. It does a disservice not to address it.

Brian Nichols  24:29  
100%. And honestly, Clint like that is why one of the main things I've been trying to teach her the program is stop responding to narratives, start setting narratives, because as soon as you're responding, and you start, you're explaining, you're losing because people, and this is what Trump did so well, right. Trump controlled the conversation by going from one shiny object to the next. And he never got it to the point where people could get stuck on the issue with him like yeah, what he was saying didn't make sense, but by the time they were already like getting things figured in, he was already on to the next thing now, that's where Trump also failed. That was because his solutions weren't real solutions. They were just, you know, Trump isms and use like, oh, this sounds great think they'll buy that great. Let's try it. Versus we actually have principled, real solutions that we've been working on for generations at this point. And my God, I hope I'm not hurt any feelings, but like we are almost to a fault at times, you know, ready to talk about our solutions and how they will work and how confident we are that they're going to work? Well, now it's time to put up or shut up, right, and to actually bring our solutions out of our bubbles. And that's been a theme today is to get out of our bubble and actually go talk to real people, but also requires us to now talk like normal people and not to, not to just good idea, people to death, and not to get stuck in regurgitating our favorite economics book, because that doesn't sell people on anything that just shows them that you really, really are passionate about the thing you're talking about which that's great for you, but how does that help them? What's in it for them if we can show that and we actually address the real concerns that people are facing versus the concerns that we think they should be facing the concerns that we want them to be concerned about? Well, I think we're gonna find a lot more success. And hey, you can find a lot of success there, Clint, over at your amazing podcast, the Liberty lockdown podcast, and yeah, you can go ahead and find it on YouTube or your favorite podcast catcher. But what can folks go ahead and expected they go ahead and subscribe to this very interesting show?

Unknown Speaker  26:32  
Well, every Thursday I have on Judge Andrew Napolitano, which is always a highlight of the week. He we've now done, I think three or four episodes, but he's gonna be on every Thursday moving forward. So that's very cool. I still do kind of a Joe Rogan style interview, longer form interview with guests of all different political walks of life. And sometimes it's completely detached from politics. And But oftentimes, it's it's because libertarianism is, you know, the kind of modus operandi for my show. That's, that's where I go with most of the conversations. And unfortunately, because politics has gotten so deeply impactful on our lives, it's pretty much unavoidable. And to your point about, you know, get it the way I would frame it as the Libertarians need to get out of the hypothetical, like we are dealing with the real ramifications, ramifications of statism. And we have answers. And we also have the diagnosis as to why we're in the position we're in. So you don't need to talk hypotheticals like this is actually happening to people in their real lives. And that's why it's such a fertile ground from which we can work, you know, like, this is our this is our opportunity, I really believe that this is the greatest opportunity in my lifetime, to try and help people. And if that's if that's what you are motivated by, well, then you should wake up every day just raring to go. So that's what you'll get with Liberty, lockdown, just to let people know to tower gang, which is another spin off kind of crazy show that I do. We're going to be having an event with Robbie, the fire Bernstein and the entire target and crew doing a live podcast as well as Robbie stand up in lady lake this Saturday, which is I think, May 9, and we still have a few tickets available. So if anybody's listening and would like to check that out, go for it.

Brian Nichols  28:14  
There you go. And that's, that's a call to action if I ever heard one there, Clint. But yeah, you know, one thing I will say as we wrap up is, we've always had a hard time being able to take our ideas and make people see the ideas as being relevant to them. Well, good God, over the past two years, we've had a government tyrannical takeover of personal autonomy, bodily autonomy, medical autonomy, we've had the government printing trillions of dollars. So we're seeing an impact directly of not only the monetary policy, but now the direct impact on the economy, supply chains. What happens when you lock down economies? Now we have direct case studies and examples. Oh, and by the way, people who you talk to have all lived this stuff every single day for the past two years. So it's real to them. So now, literally every issue that we go out and talk about almost on the regular now it's really relevant. And it's really real. So yes, to your point, this is not just, I mean, yes, there's a lot of bad things that have happened over the past two years. But with it, there are a lot of opportunities for us to engage with people that frankly, were never open to engaging in the past. Now, I think we have a really good shot to get them to not just see your ideas as ideas, but as like real tangible solutions. So hey, right.

Unknown Speaker  29:24  
On top of that, we have a proxy war that could very well lead to world war three and we are the anti war movement. So yeah, there's every every aspect of people's lives right now are being touched by politics in a way that libertarians can answer and we should have an answer

Brian Nichols  29:39  
it world war three. That doesn't sound good. Yeah. No, it doesn't. The fact that that's even the point where we're at right now. Yeah. 2019 couldn't, couldn't come back quick enough of the could. Oh, God, I wish Oh, yeah, folks, if you want to get back at 2019 will let us know. Please go ahead and give us a tweet. I'll include a clip on social media. They're in the shownotes along with not just the links to his podcast over on YouTube, but also on your favorite podcast catcher, but I will also include the entire transcript from today's episodes. Also, you can go ahead and check out all 480 Plus episodes of The Brian Nichols Show the Brian Nichols show.com. Yeah, actually, I think we're over 490 episodes now at this point when we're getting there. Yeah, Episode Five is right around the corner. That being said, Clint, any last words for the audience today?

Unknown Speaker  30:27  
Nope. I just want to thank you so much for having me on, Brian. And we'll do it again soon, I'm sure.

Brian Nichols  30:31  
Absolutely. All right, folks. Well, that being said, thank you for joining us on another fun filled episode of The Brian Nichols Show. With that being said if you enjoyed the episode, please go ahead. Give it a share. And when you do give your surely attack at V. Nichols liberty by the way, make sure you head to our Brian Nichols show shoe store. We have our don't nuke me, bro, Joe Biden t shirt. They are going to be going into the vault soon. Make sure you grab your version before it's locked up and away for good. But with that being said, it's Brian co signing off. You're on The Brian Nichols Show for Clint Russell. We'll see you tomorrow.

Unknown Speaker  31:02  
For listening to The Brian Nichols Show. Find more episodes at the Brian Nichols show.com

Transcribed by https://otter.ai