577: Without Choice, You Can't Have Liberty - Meet the Libertarian Choice for Alabama's 7th Congressional District

Brian Nichols  0:03  
focusing 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, Your Honor The Brian Nichols Show. Thank you for joining us for another fun filled episode. I am as always here, and today, we're gonna have a good one with a good man, that's gonna be a guy who's run for congress down Alabama. Before we get there. I'll go ahead and give a shout out to today's sponsor that is Young Americans for Liberty, folks, please, you know if you have the itch to go ahead and try to help make liberty when will I do have a great opportunity for you head over to the Brian Nichols show.com forward slash y'all where you can join our amazing friends over at Young Americans for Liberty and their amazing push for operation when at the door. You want to go ahead and starting Yes, yeah, this past week, September 1 through November 8 election housing gas completely covered by Young Americans for Liberty 20 $100 a month and these are folks who are actually getting real Liberty warriors into Office whether it's in states like where I am Indiana concealed carry there bring principle libertarians and principle Liberty leaders with regardless of the political letter next to their name into office across the United States. So you want to get involved head over to the Brian Nichols show.com forward slash ya L and go ahead and get your signups all registered over there one more time. Brian Nichols show.com forward slash why al they're doing amazing things had a great time down at Young Americans for Liberty revolution 2022 back in the beginning of August, and they're doing amazing things. So get involved with more time Brian Nichols show.com forward slash why al really excited to have Young Americans for Liberty. Here's a sponsor on the program this month, folks. With that being said, welcome to the program, looking forward to digging into things. And with that, looking forward to having a candidate on the show. And that is one candidate who's running for office down in Alabama as a big L. Libertarian, Gavin Goodman. Welcome to The Brian Nichols Show.

Gavin Goodman  2:11  
Hi, Brian. Thanks for having me.

Brian Nichols  2:13  
Absolutely. Looking forward to have you on the program. And Gavin, I definitely looking forward to giving you a chance to talk about having yes, that big L next to your name. But before we get there, let's go ahead and introduce you first. I was doing some digging. It turns out you're from the great state of New York just like yours truly. And you found yourself down in Alabama. So there seems to be a fun journey there. Talk to us what how are things looking in terms of where you ended up in New York say, Oh, way down Alabama?

Gavin Goodman  2:37  
Well, like many New Yorkers, I was not very happy with the political landscape. My father is a defense contractor. And he had been in and out of the city of Huntsville, which is a NASA city. And he said, Oh, you're gonna love Huntsville, you gotta come and check it out. So eight and a half years ago, I moved down here and haven't considered leaving yet. But yeah, it's been a wild ride that got me here. I came to run a brewery ended up forming my own marketing business and got involved with the Libertarian Party and haven't looked back since.

Brian Nichols  3:14  
Awesome. Well, and let's talk about that. Because right now, and I've been having this conversation with folks over the past four and a half years, there has been a growing sentiment of there needs to be something different. And it's not just a matter of something being different, not just another another choice out there but more so there has to be a true better different way of doing things but better it has to be better. And folks have been looking for what is that better alternative and I've been leading for a while now that I firmly believe that libertarian small l libertarian ideas, they bring the best chance for us not just as individuals, but as a collective. And no, we don't want to talk about collectivism. But no truly as a people you want earth if you will make it all Kumbaya, that's a chance for us to actually get the most prosperity on the table is to embrace the ideas of personal liberty, embrace the ideas of non aggression. And with that we see people live this way naturally, not hurting people not taking their stuff. Now, there are always exceptions to the rule. And it's our constant battle to fight back against those exceptions. And with that, getting people on board with their ideas. So talk to us, you know, Gavin, you've been going through and you reaching out to people specifically as a big L libertarian, what's been the feedback you've gotten that what are people saying when they're hearing your ideas presented with a libertarian message behind it?

Gavin Goodman  4:33  
It's so incredibly positive. I can't even begin to tell you though people might not know the word libertarian. They certainly understand the policy and we'd like to say that in Alabama, we are policy over politics. So, you know, we were willing to negotiate and work with establishment politicians if they are limited government and liberty leaning to try to find common goals. Not many of those in Alabama, I'm afraid, though. And when we get out there, and we're talking to voters, what we're finding is most of them are so tired of the establishment, they're so tired of the story that they've been sold for years, you know, the solution to their problems is just give the government more power and money. And don't worry, we'll make all your problems go away. So when when we're really digging into the issues, we're talking about legitimate principled solutions that every libertarian can get behind. And, and it's it's working. The statement that I like to say is Liberty works. And we just have to show people and and that's what we're doing here in Alabama.

Brian Nichols  5:45  
Love to hear it. Well, let's talk about some of the top issues that folks down in Alabama are bringing to you, because I'm seeing it right, I moved from Pennsylvania out here to Indiana and state by state the things that are impacting people are unique in many cases. And I know from being in Philadelphia to where I am now. I'm so glad to have the issues I have today versus the issues I was having out there on the East Coast. Talk to us what's been going down Alabama, and what are folks talking to you about?

Gavin Goodman  6:12  
I mean, there's there's lots of issues that are that are pertinent to Alabama, you know, the medical freedom, that's a big one. And, you know, that ties into both the the abortion issue as well as as COVID vaccines. And we're talking about them and explaining that any any government that you give the power to mandate or to ban, you're giving them so much more power than you actually want as as free individuals. So we have that discussion. We also talk about issues of regulation. Regulation can lead to some some real problems. And when it talks when we talk about promoting free economy, and the real issue in Alabama is is cronyism, Corruption, fraud. Alabama was was just named the third most corrupt state in America. And the people in Alabama are very aware of it. And they don't know how to solve the problem. And so what we've been talking about is, is highlighting how this this corruption exists and how to overcome it.

Brian Nichols  7:22  
Corruption is it runs rampant in both parties, right. And this is something I think why folks have been reaching out to an alternative to find some different way of doing things because they see in all of the leading to political parties, there's corruption, whether it's, I guess, in your state of Alabama, which I didn't even realize third, or most corrupt all the way back to both our home state. I mean, man, we grew up there with Sheldon Silver as the state assembly speaker, who was as corrupt as the day is long, and he ended up I think he's in jail currently for allow the corruption issues that were underneath his administration that doesn't even touch the governor's that we've had ranging from Eliot Spitzer to all the way most recently, Andrew Cuomo. So with that being said, Yeah, corruption, definitely runs, runs high on people's concerns. And I guess, talk to me about the economy. I'm hearing here in Indiana, right, a fellow red state, even still, you know, despite it being better off than a lot of the blue state alternatives. It's still facing a lot of issues that we're facing, not just a federal or national issue, but also an international scale, being from supply chains, you know, impacts of the way that the government shutdown local economies, but also the impact of the Fed spending trillions and trillions will not spending printing trillions and trillions of dollars, and the the long term impacts it has not just on inflation here at home, but also overseas abroad.

Gavin Goodman  8:45  
Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. You can't just shut down the entire economy and then expect it's all gonna come right back. And you can't just keep printing money and expecting that the price of gas is gonna remain the same. You know, that those are those are certainly issues that the establishment does not want to address in a serious way. Yeah, their spending is out of control. I like to say in Alabama, what we're talking about for economy is shrinking the size of government, decreasing regulations and looking at the new industries that are going to really lead the way in a new economy, you know, that has to do with decentralized currency with crypto, that has to do with cannabis legalization that has to do with sustainability. You know, I'm a huge sustainability guy. It's one of my main platform plants. I worked at a wind turbine company, right after college. The government is is the problem for why sustainability and that industry is not not thrived because the government chooses winners and losers. They want to subsidize certain certain technologies and let other technologies fail when the free market should be the one that's deciding what is the best solution and And people should have the right to be personally responsible for their own energy production, production and consumption. So the issues are all over the place. It's it's, it's all encompassing. And so that's that's why when we're talking about change, we're talking about it at a really fundamental level. But I like to say, you know, libertarians, we like to talk a lot about like tearing stuff down. But you can't, you can't talk about breaking something if you don't have a plan for fixing it. So we've been talking a lot about fixing things and and what do we really need to talk about and it's, it's, it's putting more control back in the hands of the people initiative and referendum is a huge issue for us here in this state, giving people more power. But then the main issue for us as well as ballot access, Alabama has the most restrictive ballot access laws in the country. And we have managed to overcome one of the one of the largest hurdles that any state affiliate has to overcome, we had to produce nearly 80,000 valid signatures to get on the ballot. And it's the first time the Libertarian Party has done that in 20 years here in Alabama.

Brian Nichols  11:05  
Wow. Congratulations. That's that's that's quite a feat. Yeah, for sure. Like that. That's a big deal. And I don't think folks realize how, how much of an uphill battle not just the Libertarian Party faces, but just across the board, any candidate outside of the traditional two party system. It's a nightmare. We were seeing this up in New York right now with our friend Larry sharp. He's been facing an uphill battle non stop from what they've been doing from a balloting issue up there. And that's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the corruption again, in New York State. But going across the board, it doesn't seem to be any state in particular, we always seem to have an issue with like here in Indiana. I know. For example, one thing we're always facing as a challenge is straight, straight ticket voting. And yet for somehow we still were able to get 12% in a governor's election back in 2020. Namely, because we had one candidate who was running saying the lock downs need to end and that was a Libertarian candidate and Don rent rainwater. So let's quickly if we could go that route towards because I know people are tired talking about the lockdown. But here's the reality, folks, this isn't going away. I was just scrolling through the news this morning. I already see some of these blue cities already promoting the idea of enforcing some, some maybe not lockdowns, but maybe some restrictions here and there, especially when it comes to masking and you know, social distancing, of course, because trust the science tem, Gavin, talk to us what's been the response from folks on Alabama in terms of the lockdown, not just from the societal standpoint, but also from the economic standpoint?

Gavin Goodman  12:35  
Well, let's talk about some of that. Some of that money that came in to support Alabama, and then our governor took it and threw it into a corrupt prison system. You know, the the problem in Alabama, when it comes to lock downs is that it completely goes against what makes sense. Alabama is a rural state. locking down the state doesn't make any sense. You know, the we all know that the mask mandates kind of completely went against the science and they had the information. It was in Alabama, I don't I don't expect to see another lockdown. But yeah, it was not well received by the left or the right in this state. And it was dramatically pushed, there was little dramatic pushback. And the Libertarian Party, I mean, we stand against mandates, if you choose to wear a mask, that's your business, you know, if you choose to stay at home, that's your business. And I also support an economy that it makes sense where some jobs can go remote. I mean, in my city of Huntsville, where it's, you know, majority defense contractors, most of them are still working from home, because they've seen an increase in productivity and decrease in cost. That's, that's how things should are supposed to work. So, you know, silver lining, but yeah, no lock downs, Alabama, we're not really talking about him, because it's not an issue. We don't expect it to become one again.

Brian Nichols  14:01  
Yep. That's a good thing. Right. And I mean, I get in a little a little heated back and forth with some of my libertarian friends. Because objectively speaking, right there is and you're you and I are testaments to us. There is a reason we are both in red states versus in blue states. And I think not acknowledging that elephant in the room. It doesn't do us any good, good service. And we're going out and speaking to your average voter because we have to acknowledge that elephant in the room first, like yes, objectively speaking, that's why we're here. But in your case, we can get things better. We want to get things not just in the state of being perpetually, okay, but rather we want things to actually progress towards good. And in this case, we see that progression being going back more towards what we know works, and that is the embracing of individual rights. So one thing we've seen being a big infringement on individual rights has been economic uncertainty, and we've seen this really being pushed from the top down it seems over the past few years, especially With the Fed printing trillions of dollars, and then you have the World Economic Forum, which the great reset was supposed to be a tongue in cheek out Jones references now it's a book written by Klaus Schwab head of the WTF. So, yeah, now it's getting a little weird because the thing that was supposed to be conspiracy theory is now leading in the best sellers category. So Kevin, you know, this is kind of a big deal. Um, talk to us about what you're seeing folks saying to you, when it comes to standing up and getting our economic independence back.

Gavin Goodman  15:32  
You know, I think that the problem is, the largest bloc of eligible voters in this country are non voters, there are so many people that I feel like they've been beaten down for so long. They don't they don't have a solution. They don't know what a solution is that they see what they see on TV. And they say, Well, maybe those experts know what they're talking about. We've been working closely with the with the Mises Institute, and one of our excellent candidates, John Sophocles is running for Senate. For US Senate. He is a an economist by trade. So really, we have to talk about market solutions. If we're libertarians, we have to talk about market solutions. There. There is there is a way to get ourselves out of this, number one, get the government to stop printing money. I mean, let's I mean, that's, that's a huge one. And inflation is going to be the big crisis of the next five years. And if we don't start addressing it, now, it just gonna extend that time. You know, I would say also what what we have to do is get, get people educated about what, what, what are what are these things that they're proposing? What are the actual outcomes and what they're proposing, that's nothing new. The establishment is proposing the same old garbage they've been proposing for the last 150 years, and it hasn't worked. So we need to show them that there's new ways to solve these problems.

Brian Nichols  16:59  
All right. Well, folks, if you're enjoying today's episode, by the way, folks, I'm going to ask you please do me a favor, make sure you go ahead and give today's episode a share. And by the way, go ahead and give Gavin some love as well. We're gonna get social media at the end. But Gavin, as we are getting towards the back half of the episode, I'd be remissed. If I didn't ask about the future, right. And you talked about this earlier, folks, don't just want to hear the problems. They want to hear the solutions want to hear? What can we do to actually make things better? So let's talk about the future and where a pro Liberty future would actually bring us? What would that look like? So let's just say, you know, the tides all go in libertarian favor this election season in 2022. What would be some real wins? We could see some tangible wins and maybe it doesn't have to be just strictly Big L libertarians, it can be pro Liberty folks winning across the country. What do you see as some wins we can have for Liberty moving forward?

Gavin Goodman  17:55  
Well, I'll tell you this, if if there's some big wins in Alabama, we have over 60 candidates, Big L libertarians running in the state. We are running more libertarians than the Democrats are running Democrats in this state. It is crazy. Also, of those 60 Plus candidates 50 are running in two way races, either I think 43 are only running against Republican and the rest are running only against a Democrat. Without choice, you can't have liberty. So let's say we do see some big wins. For us a big win would to get a lot of these candidates elected, get them in office start deregulating start proposing legislation that's gonna promote liberty and freedom. But another one is to retain ballot access. One of the one of the other stipulations after that 80,000 signature mark that we had to hit was we need to we need a 20% and a statewide race to retain ballot access with party status, or we got to go back to the beginning and spend another quarter of a million dollars to get to get back on the ballot. You know, I would like to see that not happen. I'd like to see us not have to spend that money and retain ballot access. If if we can start seeing the tide turn with Liberty. You know, I've always said Tomorrow, we're not going to wake up to a libertarian revolution. It's not going to be 100% libertarian in every in every seat. But if we can start to take slivers of seats, and we can start talking about our positions and our policies, and we have to be the filter of Liberty, we can cut the pork out of legislation, we can make sure that that the government is doing its vital role of protecting liberty. And, you know, I think that we're actually going to see some really big wins in Alabama. I encourage everybody to go to vote Liberty alabama.com learn about our 60 Plus candidates, you know, maybe maybe donate some money, that'd be nice. You know, it's it's the thing that keeps us going. More and more people are recognizing If the establishment does not have their best interests at heart, they have been misled you know, and that's that's on the left and the right and you know, I call it my upset uptrend upside down bell curve. You got people on the left, you got the people in the right got the authoritarians on the top, but I think most Americans are centrist libertarians. They want to leave their neighbors alone, they want they want to provide for their family, and they want to see prosper prosperity in their communities. So that's, that's what we're going for. This is it's it's never going to be flick a switch, but but the progress that we're making as, as a collective, as a party, as a community, I'm seeing tangible changes, and, and they are gonna start taking us seriously. We're not just the silly third party. And libertarians are not fighting for a three party system. We're fighting for a system where we're voices can be heard across the spectrum, you know that the problem with the establishment is they want to silence any third party voice, any minority voice. So we need to make sure that all voices are heard. And that's what we're fighting for.

Brian Nichols  21:03  
Well, folks, if you are finding some value from today's episode, I'm going to ask you to do me a favor, please go ahead and give Gavin's campaign some love. Yes, we'll include all those links in the show notes. And now it's time for some final thoughts. And I'll start things off because, yeah, we talked about going back to the root of all this, where's it come from? It comes from a lot of the problems the Fed ultimately. So you got to go ahead and show folks where the the pain and sufferings come from head to the Brian Nichols show.com forward slash shop, and I grabbed your magic money tree shirt. So if you haven't checked it out yet, yeah, here it's on screen for our YouTube watcher. We got our magic money, actually, by the way, YouTube, and honestly, if you didn't know that, so our magic money tree, which is in fact of the fed with all of our dollar bill trees, our magic unicorn and leprechauns. And, folks, you can get this in a variety of colors white, black. What's funny, no colors is purple ish. I know there's a heathered gray nozzle color. So yeah, if you might go ahead and grab your color varieties here of the magic money tree shirt had the Brian Nichols show.com forward slash shop? Yeah, because at the end of the day, I think humor makes people ask more questions that were the very least if they can laugh at what they're experiencing, and they can understand that the concept behind it it helps us out so get people to laugh so much money tree helps there. That's my final thoughts. Gavin, final thoughts for the audience today?

Gavin Goodman  22:21  
No, you're totally right. Liberty is fun. And and this shouldn't be, you know, doom and gloom all the time. We have a lot of fun in Alabama. You know, last year for our convention, we did an outward facing event called legalize freedom, all about cannabis legalization. We had Afro man come, we had spike Cohen on stage talking about this. We had an amazing time. And you know, I I'd be remiss if I didn't say check out some of our candidates like Ruth Paige Nelson running for lieutenant governor Portsmouth Shepherd running for Alabama Senate, Jonathan reels someone else running for Congress here in Alabama. These are some great candidates and and we're getting the message out and people are listening. Look at some of the press that we've gotten in Alabama. Every article that comes out, we are taken seriously. And they're they're excited that there's choice. More and more people are aware that the establishment they've got this game rigged. They've divided the lines, they've already given up seats, they've abandoned the field and places and libertarians and other third parties getting out there and bringing awareness. It's fun. It's exciting. And we're making change. So

Brian Nichols  23:28  
yeah, it's a it's a great time to to share some some liberty. And folks are out there right now asking questions there. There's an open market and I think that's the most important thing. And frankly, that's what we've been talking about here in the program. That's why what we're talking about from a sales and marketing perspective are so important when it comes to addressing political changes. And folks if you want to go ahead and be a part of the mission that we have here The Brian Nichols Show there's two things you can do option A, you can head over to the Brian Nichols show.com forward slash support and either number one become our guest a become a monthly supporter $5 a month you can be one of our superfans over on Patreon. Org. Number two, make a one time Pay Pal donation. $5.20 bucks, 100 bucks, I don't care, whatever you can do, every little bit goes back into The Brian Nichols Show to help us keep on having amazing folks like Gavin here on the program where we can talk about the effective solutions that we have bringing those to the table and how do we do that by meet people where they're at on the issues they care about and folks like Gavin who are going out and actually leading the charge folks, if you enjoy today's episode, please do me a favor. Go ahead and give it a share. When you do please go ahead and give Gavin a tag and yours truly as well at beat Nichols liberty. And by the way, folks, if you want to go ahead and check out the rest of all 575 other episodes in The Brian Nichols Show. All you got to do is click the little artwork in your podcast catch up, it'll bring you right over to Brian Nichols show.com where yes, you can find today's episode with Gavin plus all 575 other episodes, all the transcripts for all the other episodes and by the way, you'll also find links to our YouTube And ology channels when you're over there, give those a subscribe a little notification bell hit that so you're not missing a single time we go live. But with that being said, Folks, that's all I have for you. With that being said Gavin Goodman. Thanks for joining us here on today's episode of The Brian Nichols Show. We'll see you tomorrow, folks for listening

Unknown Speaker  25:15  
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