671: The Rise of Gen Z - A New Era For Liberty Begins

Brian Nichols  0:15  
What does the future of liberty look like? Let's talk about that. Instead of 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. Wow, happy Tuesday there. Brian Nichols. You're on The Brian Nichols Show. And thank you for joining us. Of course, another fun filled episode. I am as always your humble host joining me live from our Stratus ip Studios here in lovely Eastern Indiana. Don't let cyber attacks or outdated Business Technology put your company at risk. Learn more at Brian Nichols show.com forward slash Stratus ip. So let's talk about Yes. What does the future of liberty look now if you've been listening to The Brian Nichols Show for well, a long time we started back in 2018. And now we are creeping towards episode 700. Believe it or not, but yes, over those nearly 700 episodes we have been very vocal about what should the messaging help articulate towards the messaging we want to help form the Libertarian Party we want to see in the future what Liberty entities do we want to see out there reflecting our values. And joining us today to discuss where the future of liberty might be heading Chase Oliver, join the program Chase. Thanks for joining The Brian Nichols Show.

Chase Oliver  1:36  
Hey, happy to be with you and speak with you about liberty and what we can do in the future to spread it.

Brian Nichols  1:42  
Awesome, Matt. Well, hey, thank you for joining us. And obviously looking forward to digging more specifically into the messaging side of things. But first, Chase, do us a favor, introduce yourself to The Brian Nichols Show audience and why is it that I hear a rumor you're possibly considering tossing your hat in the ring for running for elected office maybe as a libertarian for President?

Chase Oliver  2:02  
Well, so if you're not familiar, my name is Chase Oliver. I'm a longtime libertarian advocate and activist who has run for office a few times most recently for the US Senate in Georgia, and forced the runoff between Senator Warnock and Herschel Walker. And now I'm an advocate for a lot of liberty activism going forward, as well as advancing our voting systems so that we don't have expensive run offs. But we also have a responsive vote that has people over 50% actually getting elected. Can hear Yeah,

Brian Nichols  2:37  
I keep getting mute, because I'm afraid that the fire trucks going by they're gonna get caught on the audio. But I know I have a good microphone. I'm not going to hear the fire trucks. I'll hear the fire trucks. But I digress. Let's talk about messaging. Because I think messaging right now is one of my biggest things I focus on here in the show, namely, because I'm a sales guy, that's what we talked about here on the show for forever. It seems like we focus on sales and marketing and messaging, and how do we effectively communicate our ideas. Now, it is no secret, I definitely looked at libertarian leadership of yesteryear, and I raised some eyebrows with our messaging, particularly when it came to 2020. And the COVID lock downs and the lack of some definitive messaging. So Chase start things off here we see where we are today, in 2023. The Mises caucus has taken over the Libertarian Party, particularly not just from the LNC, but also now controlling the Twitter profile as well. Are you seeing things getting better? Do you see things getting worse? Or do you see things being more of the same?

Chase Oliver  3:32  
So let's let's start at the beginning of that. So let's look at where we were at 2020. I agree with many of the people who said that we didn't go hard enough on mandates and, and the like, in the wake of the pandemic, you know, we pushed hard and the personal responsibility message of you know, you have to take care of yourself and your family in the wake of this pandemic, did not push back hard enough against government mandates. I'll be the first to admit that. I think we've seen a pendulum swing in leadership and with that, the messaging is kind of geared itself towards one section of the party, which I feel is kind of a detriment because it's kind of turning off some other people in the party, I think maybe we should have a more diverse views of people on the social media, this is what happens. You know, when one group takes control of an organization, other people might feel like they're a little left out. I'm not as you know, thrilled with some of the messaging because, frankly, from a lot of affiliates and stuff, there's stuff that we have to like, excuse or have to explain away. And I wish it was just more clear, consistent professional messaging. I went to school for PR and marketing, literally, to sell products and ideas and essentially people that's what we do in elections. And I think we could professionalize our messaging in a way that is both principled libertarian bold, but also maybe won't turn off people who are looking for us to be as professional as possible if they want to step outside of the two parties and start voting for us. You know, that's that's the thing. We're at a handicap because the two parties already have their built in respectability, even though they're completely disrespect. hold of the voters. And we have to show that professionalism and willingness to be professional, if we're going to take people out of the duopoly and give them a safe home and liberty. So that's that's kind of where my viewpoint is, as well as being empathic and positive. You know, we can rail against the state all day. But if we're not offering a positive solution that shows why we are caring about everyone's liberty and not just our own. That's not going to translate. And so that is another area where I think we can improve messaging across the party in both local state and the national affiliate,

Brian Nichols  5:32  
empathy, positivity, something we preach about all day long. But I did want to go back to the messaging question, because one thing you brought up, and I think this also goes hand in hand with the question towards messaging, and that is, well, who is the messaging directed towards? And I think this has also been one of the main problems that I've identified, you know, going back to when I was really starting to show in 2018, it was that we never really defined who is our target market? Who is it that we are trying to communicate towards? And when would that, who are we going to have least amount of time, effort and energy needing to be spent in order to get them to quote unquote, buy what it is we are selling, in this case, trying to get them on on board with the ideas of liberty to help sell liberty? So I guess I really say all that to ask Chase, who is our target market? And how do you think we should effectively reach them? What messaging would you recommend?

Chase Oliver  6:25  
Yeah, our our messaging has to be to people who are not libertarian yet, who we think we can reach his voters, but who are still stuck within either voting in the duopoly or so apathetic. They're not in voting right now. We need to engage those people. And to do that we do have to step outside of our echo chambers a little bit, it's fine to throw the red meat to our base, you know, to fundraise and to do things like this. But when we're communicating our we have to understand that, you know, I almost say it's like libertarian ease, right? It's our own language. And we have to translate that language, the dialect to the average voter. And we have to be willing to go into spaces that are not necessarily libertarian. I ran for Congress in 2020. In the wake of the death of John Lewis, here in Atlanta, it was one of the bluest districts in the country. And I was running against five Democrats and a left independent. And so I was walking into a room full of Democratic voters when I will, a virtual room it was it was during COVID. But you know, walking into a zoom to do a forum hosted by ostensibly Democrats, and I did over you know, almost two dozen forums. And because of that, and I know this for a fact, we had voters hearing about libertarianism for the first time in Atlanta, I had somebody walk up while I was campaigning in the streets, saying thank you so much for appearing in this, the young College Democrats debate, because I got to hear about libertarianism for the first time and I really got excited about it. And so I think that's what we have to do if we want to be spreading the message outward is is walk into rooms that maybe are necessarily the most friendly to us, but maybe could form around issue coalition's, you know, eminent domain is a great one of those, there are a lot of people who live in urban areas who might be Democrat voters now. But if we joined alongside of them, as the government tries to domain their neighborhoods to build condos, I think that's a good coalition. And there's people who might be able to come to libertarianism once they see us working with them, and it requires us to put skin in the game. And I think that's how you communicate outward. And who's our target demographic, I say what we really need to engage is the next generation of voters Gen Z. Because if you saw this last midterm, they came out in higher numbers than Millennials did in the same week, 9% of the voting bloc was was Gen Z. Yeah. And so they are coming out in huge numbers. And if we want to party to grow and like actually move forward and blossom in different areas and start winning more and more elections, we have to engage the Gen Z voter because, frankly, the boomer voters dying out millennials and Gen Z there they are kind of many of them are already set in their ways. But if we can get the new Gen Z voters to break with the duopoly on their first major elections, that's going to lead them to being somebody who looks at the ballot, and looks for alternatives for the rest of their lives. We had a whole generation of people who voted for Ross Perot in 92. And for the rest of that for the rest of the 90s. And into the 2000s. We had plenty of fervor and a lot of membership and independent parties. And it was because people felt comfortable breaking out of the duopoly because they saw a figurehead. And I think we need to be providing that option to young voters so they can break out of the duopoly themselves. And we can have a whole new generation of activists and advocates and volunteers ready to spread the Liberty message. And as an exploratory committee is formed around for 2024 For myself, that's a strategy that I'm speaking to libertarians and I've gotten really great feedback on that.

Brian Nichols  9:31  
So if folks listen to the show, they hear the very beginning of every episode we say meet people where they're at on the issues they care about, and I think to your point Chase, yes, spot on. That is exactly what we need to be doing because that works. Right. So I guess to that combining that with you going after now as you identify the new target market, which would make sense, right going after Gen Z. Let's talk about those issues because if you are going to be running let's say you do get the chance to serve as the figurehead for the Libertarian Party. In 2024, you have a chance to really focus on what I would hope would be some of the top issues. So what would you identify as those top issues? And what would the libertarian response to those issues be able to be libertarian solutions, libertarian principles? What are your thoughts there?

Chase Oliver  10:14  
Yeah, so of course, the biggest issue that's going to be in the mind of most every voter, regardless of age ranges, the economy, many of these Gen Z voters are just now graduating from college and getting out into the workforce. And they are seeing the standard of living the cost of living just skyrocketing year over year, as our government prints money out of thin air and devalues our dollar. So I've always been somebody who advocates balancing our budget, I believe that you know, everyone from the 18 year old who's getting their first apartment to someone who's raising an entire family, they have to balance their budget at the end of the day, and our government is economically reckless. And so I encourage balancing the budget, which will eventually slow this inflation down and help us actually get it under control. And, you know, we can also as we get the bile, budget balanced, we can start talking about what central banking does this country and really start educating the public about the Fed and that kind of stuff. But you have to start by talking about the kitchen table issue, which is inflation. Another issue that's very important to young people, is immigration. They don't want to see young people being caged as immigrants who want to just come to this country and work. There is a huge human rights element to this that Gen Z has very much tapped into. And I believe if we can simplify immigration and make it where we are making it easier for people to come here and work, easing the tension of the border, we will see a lot of growth, our economy as well. And the last one is climate change is a huge issue. And we have to we as libertarians have to advocate why government's not going to solve that problem like an open innovation and free markets are going to and look no further than all the green innovation that has existed in the last 10 to 15 years. And that that's the marketplace, that's going to have the highest growth and jobs the next 15 to 20 years, if government can get out of the way and quit over regulating it. I'm also a huge advocate for nuclear power to help solve that issue. And so I think those in addition to the trying to, you know, talk about student loan debt, and getting the government out of the business of student loans, which causes higher education to be so much more expensive, and to grow so much faster than the rate of inflation, those are conversations we need to be having with Gen Z, because there are going to be people inherent in the economy over the next 10 to 15 years. And if we don't give them something that is like solid, they just won't ever have a chance to get a leg up. And I think millennials understand that because we've been living through that for the last, you know, 15 years. And so I think we're ready to try to as millennials, do our best to repair the damage that was done by previous generations so that our kids and our grandkids can have something worthwhile to grow into.

Brian Nichols  12:43  
So I know that was mostly focused towards the 25%, the Gen Z, let's talk to the 75%. The millennials, the Gen X the boomers, who are still out there. And yes, still the majority of the voting bloc. So what would be your main issues? I know it's difficult because they're three very different groups. But let's maybe just look at a a universal message from a chase all of her exploratory campaign, what would just be? I mean, is it the same three top issues you just listed off here for Gen Z? Or would you be taking a different approach? Just main issues from the campaign top down?

Chase Oliver  13:17  
Yeah, I think there are some other issues that are majorly important that the public is very attentive to, with the dogs decision last year, there's of course, the abortion debate. I'm I'm a pro choice person. But I'm also a big believer in the Hyde Amendment, saying that federal funds money, taxpayer money shouldn't be going towards funding any abortion. As a libertarian, I don't believe federal funding should be going towards funding a lot of things, that's just an additional thing. But I do believe in the bodily autonomy, rights of women and their ability to make that choice. And believe that in a world where we have legal abortion, it's safer. And we can actually reduce that just by cultural things such as education, and, and, you know, keeping an eye out for things like abuse that provides many of the instances where abortion takes place. So that's an area where the public is at large is very interested, let's talk about entrepreneurship and being able to start a small business. So many people in my age range want to start a small business, they want to be their own boss. But because of the costs of corporate taxation, in addition to the over regulation of marketplaces, it's very hard to get there. And that's not what you see at the top, you see a lot of corporate welfare and corporate carve outs due to lobbyists that basically help the big guys out there, they pay a much smaller tax footprint than the new emerging entrepreneur. And if I were somebody who were able to guide some legislation, it would be about getting rid of all those carve outs and deductions so that we can take the overall tax rate and lower it to as low as possible so that people who want to start a new business face the least amount of red tape, least amount of corporate barriers with taxation, so they can become the new small business that will grow a medium business and those Medium Businesses can start growing to compete with the large businesses out there. And we can really have a free marketplace because right now, we have a corporate controlled marketplace. that stifles a lot of innovation, and people call this capitalism, it's not it's corporatism. And we need to get back to real capitalism so that the strong companies and the strong businesses can survive, and the weak ones can break off, die off and be bought out by a better and more capable managers.

Brian Nichols  15:17  
Back in January of 2022, I packed up shop and I left Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. And I got out of there because of two years at that point of COVID insanity. And I am now out in eastern Indiana, as I mentioned at the beginning of the intro, and I love it out here because it's not a crazy, I'm sorry, a crazy blue, progressive nightmare where they just went COVID hysteria. So I have to push back a little bit, because we just talked about this the very beginning. But in all those plans, I heard I hear anything about COVID. Is that going to be a part of your campaign? Or is that focused at all?

Chase Oliver  15:51  
Well, unnaturally against mandates, and much of the pushback that has happened from government, but we're actually seeing slowly but surely, you know, I live in Georgia, much of the much of the COVID restrictions have rolled back here. And we're starting to see that in other states. I while I am absolutely against the government push backs on COVID. The government mandates the government control, I believe in 2024, once we are that, at that point in COVID, hopefully, will have been a thing of the past. But what about, we're still arguing about mass mandates, and vaccine mandates and 2024, we have majorly turned in a wrong direction. Because right now, we have been pushing back against this and you've been slowly but surely seeing the rollback of the COVID restrictions in United States, you may have seen him ramping up in other places like China and elsewhere. And I think that is due to citizen action, it's due to citizen non compliance. It has nothing to do with legislation has everything to do with individual people just saying, You know what, we're not going to abide by this, we're not going to live through this. We're just not going to stand for this. And and once you know, it's like the movie A Bug's Life, you know, once the one or two ants start standing up to the grasshoppers, all the ants start standing up, and they can't control them. And that's kind of what we see here. And that's what's kind of saved us is the fact that we have a spirit of independence in this country, where we said, we're not going to stand for this. And so many people stood up to it, protested against it, and push back against it. Whereas maybe other areas of the world were just fine being rolled over. And I think that is something that speaks to the libertarian spirit of people in this country, is the fact that, you know, there are people who absolutely even got vaccinated and who wear a mask themselves, but are like, I never want the government to take that and behavior and make it enforceable or mandate evil. And that is due to a libertarian spirit in this country. So I am absolutely going to be able to talk back against the COVID, especially the overspending. Like that's one of the biggest parts of COVID is the fact that we just created trillions of dollars out of thin air to try to like, buoy, the fact that we just sent all these people home, we destroyed all these businesses. And you can you can insert COVID into a lot of conversations, especially around education. Right. That's one of the areas where we see now more and more people homeschooling and and having educational alternatives, because they saw how the government school system failed them during a pandemic. So I think there's plenty of areas to inject the conversation of what happened with COVID into these conversations and the lessons we've learned from it. But I'm hoping by the 2024 election by November 2024, we will have normal life, we're almost there. I think, I feel like, you know, people are going to do or they're going to do there's less mandating going on. We're already seeing the military removing the vaccine mandate. I think that's a signal that hopefully, we're starting to get back to some sort of sanity. But if we're still arguing about this in 2024, you will have a voice against the government insanity that has been going on. Absolutely. And I And again, I'm a personal behave personal responsibility. Do not get your health advice from politicians, people get your health advice from a doctor. That's what I did. And you know what I've turned up pretty all right.

Brian Nichols  18:49  
Likewise, yeah. And I have to say, I guess I go to what I experienced in Philadelphia, which if I had followed the advice of every single doctor would have been probably the opposite of what I ended up doing. So I guess it also speaks to my not concern. But my overall just I think we need to be aware of that there was a fundamental like different America, in your very progressive blue areas. And that even permeated beyond those blue cities into the suburbs into what you would consider to be more of your purplish colored countryside, if you will not even like the really red areas, but still the areas that were still more not on board with the insanity still echoing a lot of this stuff. So then I say, I say all that the reason I still get concerned is because I see a lot of us kind of just moving past what happened, but also not acknowledging that to your point. While there were some people like us who fought back because of that libertarian streak. There was a very large number of people who did the exact same thing on the opposite aside, where they were more than happy to take this ounce of opportunity to use government to force down the throats of their fellow Americans, they would do it in a heartbeat. Again, I think I'm concerned about that and just ignoring that moving forward, and trying to get them on our team,

Chase Oliver  20:16  
so that maybe not ignoring it. But acknowledging it as we've moving forward. You know, I think there's two seminal events that have happened in my lifetime, that have really changed the dynamic and the political dynamic. The first being 911 changed, really everything in our lives, like we're still taking our shoes off at the airport, we still have a TSA, we still have the national security state from all that. We're still trying to roll those things back. And then the pandemic, which was a domestic issue that allowed government to kind of seize control of a lot of our privacy, a lot of our data, a lot of our behavior, I think we do need to push back against those things. That's libertarian bread and butter. That is to say that, you know, we need to talk about those within the context of, like I said, what happened with education, like what happened to the nation's kids, when for two years, they basically went on virtual learning and weren't really getting even like government school standards, or proper education. You know, what happened when we closed so many businesses, like how many small businesses closed, that will never come back? Again, how many would be entrepreneurs don't exist in the marketplace anymore because of that, because we closed down the local flower shop, but we cut the lawn and garden center billows, open, right. So we need to examine those issues. And we need to be able to be advocates for those issues. And we need to be able to speak to the people who were affected most by it, again, in an empathic and positive way. Like we're going to fix this, if we can elect libertarians, we can actually solve these issues that have maybe affected your life in a way that is very negative. And that's not by taking government control. And using it that is by taking government control and returning it back to individuals. And I think we can messenger like that and the future, both nationally, but even down to the local level, I think libertarians will be very successful. But again, we have to provide the alternative, we have to be somebody who's willing to step up, be professional in our messaging, be somebody who is willing to meet the voters where they are with their language, and not necessarily try to make them speak our language. And I think if we do that, we'll be successful as a party going forward. We've done a lot of great things in the last 50 years, 51 years now, I think we can actually make the next you know, 10 years in explosive growth moment if we seize the opportunity and harness that Gen Z vote.

Brian Nichols  22:28  
Alright, Chase, well, unfortunately, we are already hard pressed for time, which means we have to go towards our final thoughts. As we wrap things up. And I'll kick things off, I think you have to your point meeting people where they're at, on the issues they care about super important. And that's that's easily the most important thing we can do and probably you listener can do right now is go out and actually talk to people in your immediate circles about those specific issues, right, you don't have to be running for office. In order to talk about these things. You can actually go and just talk about this stuff to your average person like a normal person to don't do it like a weirdo libertarian, they people don't want to have those weird political conversations. They want to be talked to, like a normal person. So go in have those normal conversations. If you're having trouble figuring out how to do that. No worries, we have an ebook for you four easy steps you can implement now to help sell liberty to friends and family available over at Brian Nichols show.com. You can find the link right there at the top of the homepage. And also folks, we have like almost to my points that earlier, almost 700 episodes here at The Brian Nichols Show talking about how to effectively sell and communicate our ideas to Yeah, some of the normies out there who are not, to your point Chase, part of the liberty movement. So that's my final thoughts. Use the resources we have out there at your disposal. And there are folks who are willing to help Chase, what are your final thoughts? And where can folks go ahead, find you continue to conversation and also if they want to also explore along with you during the exploratory committee? Where can they explore along the way?

Chase Oliver  23:56  
Yeah, I think if we present a consistent, principled and professional message, we can grow this party and grow our vote totals and grow our elected officials and spread liberty and push the Overton window in that direction. If you agree with me, hey, follow me on social media. I'm on Twitter, Instagram, at Chase for liberty, I'm Chase Oliver libertarian on Facebook. You know, find us on YouTube as well and go to my website, vote Chase oliver.com you can please sign up for our email updates so you know where I'm going to be at as I'm gonna be in Florida all next month, or all this month rather, and, and go to vote J celebra.com. If you want to choose to help spread the message help literally put gas in the tank, you can become a donor and supporter and you're going to see this kind of growing and moving forward as I explore 2024 We'll see what the what things hold in the future. And I've been very, very blessed with positive interactions as I've gotten started in this whole thing and I look forward to meeting as many libertarians as possible. So get there sign up so you know where I'm going to be at and I look forward to meeting each and every one of you listeners who will be In the area where I'm traveling, so get out and say hello.

Brian Nichols  25:03  
Awesome. Well, I know that The Brian Nichols Show audiences all over God's green earth here. So yes, wherever Chase may be, please go ahead and tell him that you heard him on. Or you saw him on The Brian Nichols Show. Yes, because we have not just the podcast version, which I know 99% of you are joining us on but we do have the video version, which you can find over on YouTube on rumble. And on Odyssey do me a favor wherever it is hit that subscribe button and a little notification bell so you don't miss a single time we go live. And by the way, be sure that you have subscribed to our email list. So I can always stay in contact with you just in case we ever get nuked off of our platforms here because yeah, we've had a spicy episode yesterday with Nick Hudson from Panda where we talked about the COVID pandemic unmask it was a great conversation. And you know, of course, I'm probably gonna get nuked there. So make sure you're over on Odyssey and rumble as well and subscribe to us there. Otherwise, folks, that's all we have for you. By the way, we had five amazing episodes last week. Go ahead, give those a check out as well. And by the way, folks, if you got some value from today's episode, please do me a favor go ahead and give it a share. And when you do tag yours truly at B nickels liberty and go ahead and tag Chase as well links all in the show notes along with the transcript, plus all nearly 670 other episodes. That being said Brian Nichols signing off. You're on The Brian Nichols Show for Chase Oliver. We'll see you tomorrow.

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