607: Can this Libertarian from Louisiana Help Change the Future of America!?

Brian Nichols  0:02  
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. Carry of America we're gonna find out. Hey there, folks Grinding Gear on The Brian Nichols Show. Thank you for joining us on of course, another fun filled episode. I am as always your humble host joining you live from the Stratus ip Studios here in lovely Eastern Indiana. Don't let outdated technology or cyber threats put your business at risk. Go ahead and learn more at Stratus ip.net Or go ahead and get your free consultation over at Brian Nichols show.com forward slash Stratus ip Stratus ip Business Technology simplified Alright folks. So before we get started want to go ahead and give a shout out to today's sponsor. And that is the one and only right strategies over if you head the Brian Nichols show.com You can join our good friend Morgan Barnwell. Oh, are we still not there we go. You can join our good friend Morgan bond well over at right strategies, who's going to help you folks out there who are running yes for elected office. And first thing go ahead and pull my screen up here Phil work one second. There we go. So yes, and the right strategies, and yeah, Morgan's gonna, in her team help you if you're both a small business owner, but also if you are a candidate, and the challenges that you face in the digital landscape, specifically, if you're looking for some help running either marketing campaigns, anything in your branding, anything with regards to product design, and also expert graphic design work, by the way, also writes strategies has an amazing SMS texting feature, giving you an efficient, affordable and smart way to focus your marketing budget by helping you reach 1000s of voters and customers making a powerful impact on the growth of your business and on your election success. So if you want to learn more, head to Brian Nichols show.com forward slash Rs, and you get your free campaign or marketing plan report card, but make sure you go ahead and let Morgan and her team know it right strategies that I sent you. That's Brian Nichols. show.com, forward slash R S. Alright, folks. So with that being said, we got to go on to the show today to talk about this one libertarian down in the great state of Louisiana. He said he's going to try to help change the course of America. Let's see if he can Rufus. Craig, thanks for joining us here on the program. Thank you for having me, Brian. Absolutely. Rufus. Thank you for joining us. And thank you for us. Yeah, we are fighting through some of those technical issues there. As we start things off, you gotta love technology. I can sell it, but apparently I can't run it. But hey, we've made it work. And thank you for joining us. Yes, you're down in the sixth district in Louisiana and you're running as a libertarian for Congress. Now. Louisiana is a little bit different in terms of the way that the elections take place there. So this isn't a traditional Red Team Blue team goal team but rather it's a an open primary system where majority takes all so talk to us. There's actually a chance for a libertarian to have some success now.

Rufus Craig  3:11  
Oh, well, I'm doing my best we are preferred called Jungle primaries. Okay. Is every man in the first heat and if nobody gets 50%, the last top two guys getting the runoff, runoff actually December. So everybody else know who their congressman is with Louisiana. We might not know till December.

Brian Nichols  3:30  
Wild. That's so wild. So rough, it's your run for office as a big L libertarian. There's a lot there to unpack because I think a lot of folks they've been conditioned they think hey, it's Red Team Blue Team. That's the only teams I really hear about on the news or read about in the paper. What's this? Libertarian is gold porcupine to a third party that's out there. And specifically, why should I consider Rufus Craig, for Congress down in Louisiana six?

Rufus Craig  3:59  
Well, I think the libertarian political philosophy is superior to what the other two teams are selling. I've been I've been working, trying to establish a viable third party for 25 years now. This is actually my fourth run for Congress. It's we need a third party. Everybody I've talked to and you talk to people all the time, they say, Oh, we wish we had a third party and I say, Oh, we do. We got one. Take a look at us. When I first got involved actively in the Libertarian Party, we had about 4000 registered libertarians in Louisiana. We are over 16,000 Now in counting. Fortunately, when I'm selling it, party affiliation does not disqualify you from voting. So it's easy. You can be a libertarian and it doesn't mean you can't vote in primaries,

Brian Nichols  4:54  
which is good because we see traditionally that's a big challenge. Yeah. Is that what it means? And for law folks out there, right? If you were only stuck, we see this a lot of states like I'm from New York, you get stuck in only your specific primary, which I think for a lot of folks, they would prefer that if they think of the law, I'm trying to get the best person for my political party, but to this point, it's kind of getting rid of the power that political parties would traditionally haven't in determining who is and is not on their ballot, is that fair to say?

Rufus Craig  5:24  
Say that's fair, you know, there's gonna be a breakthrough. And when there is I think it's gonna make a big difference in America.

Brian Nichols  5:32  
Well, let's talk about that. Where are you seeing right now, some of the top conversations where libertarians can differentiate ourselves, because right now, a lot of folks out there, they're saying, Well, I'm here in the red team, I'm here in the blue team, a lot of it sounds the same. What's the difference? What what is the libertarian case, to not just be a third choice, and just another choice, but specifically a real viable solution? That's gonna help solve a lot of the problems we see out there? What do you see?

Rufus Craig  5:59  
Well, the thing that inspired me to initially get into politics was the national debt. In the end of Bill Clinton, first, the second term, the federal government was running the surplus, the economists and they said hallelujah, they can pay off the debt. And we want to pay interest all these banks for the money that we borrowed. Since that time, the national debts grown from $7 trillion to $31 trillion. And neither the Republicans or Democrats have a clue what to do about all this money. They spent, Hey, Daddy, we got this credit card, we don't know what to do it. The first thing, I think the thing that libertarians have, first and foremost going for us, is fiscal responsibility. We need to quit spinning so damn much money. The only bipartisan bill come out of Congress this year is the 800 and some billion dollar Defense Department budget. They all agree we could spend plenty of money on bombs and bullets, but they don't. They don't seem to have a clue how they will pay for all this stuff. So we need to we need somebody in Washington that says enough is enough. We need less government less spending. Let's not spend our children and grandchildren's money, because we want to give bombs to the Ukraine.

Brian Nichols  7:15  
Roof as I see in your your sign behind you, you're a pro choice libertarian. Now, I know this has been a big point of contention in the greater libertarian world for the past year or so specifically, as we've seen some of the conversation around the pro choice argument change in the national conversation from a platforming standpoint. Now, candidly, over here, and frankly, on this show, we're much more in the pro life position, but I definitely am open. And I've had many of folks in the program who are making the pro choice position. So with that, please tell us why is it that that's being one of the main integral parts of your campaign?

Rufus Craig  7:51  
Well, being pro choice means that I think that every person has the right to make their own decisions. I don't know what's best for you. I don't know what's going on in your life. The government sure don't have a clue what's going on. And so, you know, being pro choice is not the same thing as being pro drugs. Being pro choice is not the same thing as go smoke, heroin. Being pro choice is not same thing, go get abortions. I think abortions are an aberration. It's terrible. But it's not my choice. It's not my decision. And the government shouldn't compel people to do one thing or another or not do one thing or another. The prohibition does not work for anything telling people not to do it doesn't stop them from doing it. It just makes it a crime. It makes it more difficult. It causes a lot about bad outcomes. So when I say I'm pro choice, I'm pro choice on every single

Brian Nichols  8:52  
radical position. I would say a lot of folks would be like, on everything, no, yes, on everything. But hey, let's talk about this choice. And this is the choice we've seen a lot of Americans take and that is just blindly supporting whatever it is, they're being told we should support in terms of any foreign intervention. And right now that latest foreign intervention is over in Ukraine, I forget how many billions of dollars were up to being sent over in foreign aid to Ukraine to fight off against Russia. Rufus. What's the libertarian position on the war on Ukraine, specifically, when it comes to our tax dollars going overseas?

Rufus Craig  9:28  
Well, you know, I've spent a lot of time thinking about it. I worry about it. I wonder what exactly the end game is and what our policy is, you know, from from a purely philosophical perspective, the only proper use of force is defend yourself and defend your friends and family and others. You know, are we helping the Ukrainians defend themselves were Russian it appear so but I mean, I don't really know enough to know all the deep, dark secrets of how we got there. Should we be spending our money on it? Probably not. It's kind of heartening to see the Europeans stepping up. A big problem in the 1940s was the Europeans just didn't really take care of their own business. And we had to go there straightened out for I'm a little concerned, we're falling into the same trap. But it is what it is. So to say. I hope that it works out without anything really terrible happened to this. But, you know, I wish they would figure out how to make peace without shooting at each other.

Brian Nichols  10:38  
Well, yeah, and this is the unfortunate reality is a lot of the things that we talk about, we care about whether it's the pro choice argument, the pro Second Amendment argument, the Free Speech argument, none of it matters if we're all dead, which I think is frankly, why we want to avoid nuclear war at all costs. Now, that's definitely I think, a conversation that we all should be having right now. But let's also focus on some of the other issues that are obviously gonna be impacting our day to day another one of those issues is immigration. Now, I'm originally from upstate New York. I know we're seeing it up there on the Canadian border with a folks coming from a lot of these, uh, you know, South American countries over the border up there. Drug trafficking, drugs smuggling, the southern border is got, you know, I think millions of folks pretty much hanging out down there on a yearly basis getting ready to jump over to America. So it's a huge problem, especially for a lot of these border towns. The issue was renewed when a Governor Ron DeSantis sent a bunch of migrants up to Martha's Vineyard and a bunch of progressive leftist freaked out. But hey, they were able to show that they cared for about an hour until they sent them to a military base. But what's the I guess the solution to have this stop being an issue where one side playing political at our political points and try to score political points and another team is trying to respond? How do we actually solve this immigration issue from a libertarian perspective?

Rufus Craig  11:57  
Well, to make sure we're clear, the problem is not the immigrants. Those folks are leaving a bad situation trying to come to a better situation, which is America, they are coming here because we offer opportunity and in the possibility of taking care of their families. The problem is Congress has failed to to properly address and reform immigration law. And now if you come to America and you apply for asylum, it takes two years for the process to work, that's stupid. It's that that needs to be fixed. They need to have more border agents that are checking people, if if you want to get a visa to come here and work, it should be a lot easier than it is now. You know, it's a crime to hire an illegal immigrant, there's 11 million in America working real soon must be a lot of criminal Americans. I guarantee if you go down to Fort Myers, Florida right now, if ice went down there, and they could sweep, sweep up 10s of 1000s of illegal immigrants. But I'm certain that my friends and Fort Myers would be upset, because there'd be nobody left to pick up the trash. So the problem is not the immigrants. The problem is the immigration system. And the immigration laws need to be fixed.

Brian Nichols  13:12  
Election state I heard from a lot of our friends on the left and right over the past four and six years, I guess now with 2016 2020, our elections are stolen or this election was stolen all that fun stuff. Aquarians have been like, Hey, we've been talking about the elections being unfair for 40 years. So maybe it's nice to actually see you guys joining us at this conversation. But they're not really having the same conversation. We are and yet the election issue is definitely top of mind both from the libertarian saying we deserve more ballot access, or at least the ease of right to join you on the ballot, but also from our friends on the left and right questioning the integrity of our elections. So what's the libertarian solution there, Rufus?

Rufus Craig  13:53  
Well, you can pack a lot into that question. First said talk about fair elections. Fortunately, I'm in Louisiana, we had a strange confluence of events in 2004, where we changed our election laws. And oddly enough, Louisiana is last and most things, but we have probably the most progressive, open election laws in America. In order for a person get on the ballot for President, for instance, you need 500 hours need signatures. But as far as free and fair elections, that's essential. That's that is the foundation of America. Without that we don't have a democratic republic. We've got a banana republic. I tell my friends on the right to talk about rigged elections. And so you want to see rig come look at the congressional districts and Louisiana. We have six districts, five of only Republicans need to apply one of them only a Democrat need to play well. There's not even a Democrat Democrat on the ballot in the sixth congressional district. Two Republicans one live Rotarian, what does that tell you about the elections. And then as far as election, legality or whatever you want, I can only speak for Louisiana, I have observed our process from the warehouse, to the precinct to the precinct count, and back to the warehouse. And it would be far cheaper to buy TV ads and get your vote straight up. And it would be trying to cheat to win, particularly a large election like a congressional election.

Brian Nichols  15:29  
Talk to us about the importance of market based solutions. Because we see this right now a lot of folks have this desire for government just to do something in response to whatever problem or issue that they see out there. And I did an episode on this a couple of months ago, weeks ago, time is just silly. But it was the danger of do something politics and how way too many folks use the power of government to put their, quote, solution in place, only to find that solution making the problems worse, instead of just relying on the market based solutions that were in many cases, solving the problem they were seeking to go after the first place.

Rufus Craig  16:14  
You know, to me, the the biggest most glaring example of government intervention, messing a policy up is the war on drugs. Richard Nixon declared war on drugs in 1971, the Congress outlaw our criminalized drugs in the 1920s. The amount of drugs, the number of people using drugs, the amount of money involved with drugs has all gone up. Because of government intervention, if, if it was a marketplace, for instance, you could go down to the dope store, get dope. Okay, you don't have to buy go find some gangster hide. Now you don't have to be afraid for you. If you just go get your dough. Two things would happen. One, the dope addict, would the drug addict, the person with the illness would know what kind of drug they were getting. They wouldn't be died from fentanyl if they won't inherit. The other good thing is we wouldn't know who was doing it. If you want to help somebody with a mental health issue, which is what drug addiction is, you got to know they're doing it. So if I saw you know, like, Hey, man, Brian, I've seen you down at the dope store, buy dope everyday this week? Are you okay? Is there something I can do to help you know, we love you come on home is everything's good. That would go substantially a long way toward eliminating drug problems. So it would take the government out of it, and it would put people and communities back in it. market would be back in? Hell healthcare is another great place in the marketplace solution will work. How about if you knew how much it was gonna cost to go to the doctor? And how good the doctor was? There's two things in a marketplace, you absolutely have to know, how much does it cost? And what am I buying? You can't get that in the healthcare system. Because the government's in charge. It's all secret I make available to people next time. He's a doctor's office, ask every single person you see that works there. How much does this cost? You won't get an answer, because they don't know. How good is the headline news? The best, you know? It's crazy.

Brian Nichols  18:21  
Oh, yeah, no deer in the headlights, you ask them that question. And even Hey, if you go to the ER and you ask them, they might tell you that the Tylenol you're they're gonna give you is like $80. And that might be a couple of red flags in that case. Now let's go over the the final issues I wanted to address today. And that is the importance of local based solutions. Now, we look at the federal government. And again, going back to the problem of do something politics, the federal government is the epitome of do something politics. And what we've done is we've put all the power in this one upper echelon that can have pretty much an overreaching authority across the entirety of the United States, override and supersede both local and state laws, and in many cases, violate the rights of those individual citizens of those states based on some demonic democracy, was it 50 plus one from an entire United States perspective, or 300? And what 30 some odd million of us now So Ruth has talked to us about the importance of local elections and local politics.

Rufus Craig  19:20  
Yeah, I might just even digression that we've been talking about the importance of local involvement. In 2016, we had a catastrophic flood and in my part of the world, the cabin, the parish, the county next door to where I live, 80% of the houses got water in them. When the water went away, when you started digging the muck out and picking up the trash, it wasn't the government. It wasn't the local government. It wasn't the state government. It wasn't the federal government. It was you and your next door neighbor, actually, like during the course of their thing called a cage Navy was created, where people went around, that was their thing. They were a loose organization of people who wouldn't help other people. That's how that's how things get done, despite what the politicians might take is each person taking responsibility for themselves. But also, more importantly, that understanding that we have responsibility for our family, for our friends, for our next door neighbor for the rest of people in our community. You can't sit around and wait for the government to come do it. You got to help yourself and help your friends period.

Brian Nichols  20:33  
All right, Rufus. We're getting hard pressed for time, which means it's time for final thoughts. I'll give my final thoughts first. And that is, folks, now is the time if you are looking to take a step and try to engage in conversations with folks who are starting to enter into kind of this like, quote, buying time where they're looking at different alternatives or looking for different solutions. Well, now's the time now's the time for us to start engaging in conversations. Having those water cooler conversations outside of how badly my Dallas Cowboys lost the Eagles last night. We're not going to dig in that again, Rufus. It was a tough night. But also we're going to talk about specifically the way that we can help address the issues that are mattering right now to people meeting them, where they're at on the issues they care about. That's my final thoughts, Rufus. What are your final thoughts for today?

Rufus Craig  21:24  
Well, my files are says that when I've been out there on the trail, I hear a lot of people talking about what I call important but not particularly significant issues. To me, the big issue is we live in a nation is $31 trillion in debt. Neither one of the parties that currently are spending our money have a clue how to deal with that problem that they created. We need a third party, we need a libertarian to come in and say, enough's enough children, I'm taking your credit card away, and you've got to, you got to figure out how to live on your means. If I can get that one message out, I'll be happy. People need to know that we're cruising toward a catastrophe, and neither Republicans or Democrats seem to care. They only care about getting reelected. If you're happy with what they're doing. And you step in a voting booth. If you're unhappy with what they're doing, and you step into a voting booth, and you vote for Republican or Democrat, as you exit that voting booth, I would like you to remember Einstein's definition of insanity, doing the same thing over and over again, thinking you're gonna get a different result. If you want to get a different result, you need to vote for a libertarian. If you're interested in helping me in my campaign, you can go to vote ruthless.com We take donations, however humble they are, we will truly appreciate them. I have a wonderful campaign manager named Mallory, who is working this thing great. I'm gonna do my best on a limited budget to promote liberty and the Libertarian Party. Thank you for having me, Brian. It's been a pleasure.

Brian Nichols  23:04  
Absolutely, Rufus. Thank you for joining us. And folks, yes. If you want to go ahead and learn more. We'll we'll include all those links there in the show notes. Plus, we'll include all Rufus is social media links in the show notes and all you got to do I know 90 some odd percent of you would listen to us here joining us on the audio version of the show. So click the artwork in your podcast catcher. We'll bring you right over to Brian Nichols show.com where you can find today's episode Oh, the aforementioned links plus you can find the entire transcript of today's episode and by the way, you can find all 607 other episodes we have here. The Brian Nichols Show and oh, by the way, we have a video version of the show did you know that well if you didn't hear you can go ahead and subscribe three different places number one YouTube which I know it's the unfortunate reality that's where a lot of your folks all lives. So YouTube head over there, subscribe, hit that notification bell or if you're like, Hey, I'm trying to get away from the YouTubes the Google's the big, big tech empire. Join us over on rumble or on Odyssey you can find us at be Nichols liberty or just search The Brian Nichols Show. You'll find us over there just hit the subscribe button. And again, that little notification bell so you're not missing a single time. We have a brand new video with awesome candidates like we have here with Rufus Craig. And by the way, last week, we had two other candidates. We had New Jersey we had Indiana we've had folks from all over United States Louisiana now so make sure folks that you've hit subscribe over on your podcast catcher so you're not missing all the awesome episodes. We have airing your five days a week at The Brian Nichols Show and oh by the way one last thing folks, if you got value from today's episode will do me a favor, please head to the Brian Nichols show.com forward slash support and either join us on Patreon as a supporting listener at $5 A month or feel free to go ahead and give us a one time Pay Pal donation. Did you get some value from today? We'll go ahead and let us know and help us keep the lights on having great guests here like Rufus Craig on who will leave you educated, enlightened and informed. So with that being said, it's Brian Nichols signing off. You're on The Brian Nichols Show for Rufus. Greg.

Unknown Speaker  24:57  
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