693: Building Trust - Libertarians and the Black Community

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Brian Nichols  0:23  
a fresh perspective with Jeff Charles. Yeah, 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. Well, hey there folks, Brian, The Brian Nichols Show. Thank you for joining us on another fun filled episode. I am as Paul wager homophobes recording you live from our Stratus ip Studios here in lovely Eastern Indiana. Don't let cyber attacks are outdated Business Technology, put your company at risk. Learn more at the Brian Nichols show.com forward slash Stratus ip. So let's talk about a brand new fresh perspective. And today we're going to hear from the one and only Jeff Charles Jeff Joining us here on The Brian Nichols Show. Thanks for watching. Thanks for walking. Thanks for joining us here on today's program. Yeah, I

Jeff Charles  1:15  
didn't have to walk too far. So

Brian Nichols  1:16  
we didn't want to get you all the way over here. Now where are you hailing from Jeff.

Jeff Charles  1:20  
I am in Austin, Texas, the best city in the world. So it's not

Brian Nichols  1:23  
too far of a trek, I guess from Indiana. But yeah, well, we'll keep you there thanks to the beauty of technology. And we can, at least as we're recording today sit comfortably in our own our own area. So with that, let's kind of kick things off here talking about your fresh perspective. Jeff, introduce yourself to The Brian Nichols Show audience and specifically, your role leading that podcast and what you're talking about as a libertarian.

Jeff Charles  1:46  
Yeah, so yeah, my podcast is called a fresh perspective with Jeff Charles, that I've been doing it for about a year now. And basically, I take on the news of the day with a more I like to give a more nuanced and deeper dive on the issues of the day. I'm also a contributor for red state.com, and liberty nation.com. And also I contribute to Newsweek opinion as well. And I just started a new substack called Chasing Liberty.

Brian Nichols  2:11  
So talk to us about being a libertarian, and being a black American, right, because I see a lot of folks I came from Philadelphia, I lived in predominantly minority neighborhoods, and my neighbors were all black Americans and just talking to them, majority of them grew up Democrat, and they just kind of registered as Democrat, and they never really think twice about it yet. When I talked to him about principles, I talked about values, I hear a lot of libertarian themes, a lot of distrust of government, a lot of you know, understanding that the police state is not something that we should look to, to increase over and over and over again. So there's a lot of recurring themes I hear with a lot of black Americans and the libertarian movement, but there doesn't seem to be a correlation in getting a lot of black Americans on board with libertarianism. So Jeff talked to us, what would you say would be a good starting off point when I'm reaching out to black America when we're talking about libertarian ideas?

Jeff Charles  3:02  
Yeah. So I mean, there's a lot to unpack there. Right? You know, and I come from the conservative movement, even though I have been more of a libertarian, and within the liberty movement, there is always this debate, you know, should we take over the GOP? Or should we focus on our own movement? And, you know, I started out as more of a conservative. But when I got into political commentary in 2017, I had already started gravitating more towards libertarian thought, because realistically, that is what conservatives should be that that is what they claim to be, in a lot of ways. There's a lot of overlap between libertarianism and conservatism. So as I grew my platform, I was using my voice more to get the Republican Party to kind of live up to its ideals, and also engage more with non white voters. And that was, those two things were my focus for quite a while. I mean, because a lot of Republicans are dissatisfied with their party because it doesn't they they're not conservative, like they say they are. The, I would say the weaknesses, especially when it comes to reaching out with black voters are the same with the conservative movement, and with the liberty movement, and from a sales and marketing perspective. I mean, you're gonna understand what I'm saying. You can't win over people who you're not willing to talk to, right. And the thing is, with black voters, the Republican Party basically abandoned black outreach a long, long time ago, it actually started right after reconstruction. So even though conservatives in the black community have a lot of overlap, as far as what they believe about the government, about capitalism, about freedom about liberty, they they haven't been able to win over black voters. Really, it's because they haven't wanted them I mean, just to be blunt. They don't show up in person they they they don't engage with with the black community. They They only elevate elevate certain voices that do more to repel black voters than to attract them. With the liberty movement, though, that movement has been kind of growing, it's always been a little bit smaller, it has been growing, but they do want to be able to reach out to a wider swath of voters. And I've always said, you know, if you put a conservative candidate in a Libertarian candidate, and they're both actually trying to reach black voters, I think more often than not, the Libertarian candidate would probably win. Because the ideals lined up a lot more black people tend to be more conservative or moderate. And that's a that's according to polling, the data has shown that they vote Democrat because they don't view the Republican Party as an option. Even though they may share a lot of bliss. I mean, I've talked to many black people who said, you know, I agree with with a lot of Republican Republicans say, but I don't feel like I belong in that party. I don't feel like I'd be welcomed. And frankly, they perceive the party as racist. And some of that the Republican Party has brought on itself, because it hasn't bothered to show up in person to actually break bread, and engage and show people that they're not racist. So I'll leave right there for a second.

Brian Nichols  6:11  
No, that that was a great starting off point. And thank you for kind of giving that context right of having the understanding of where I guess the context is the the starting off point is, because I think a lot of folks, especially in you're talking a lot about the Republicans who really just haven't made the initiative and made the effort, I think right there that speaks to where a lot of the problem comes from, right? Because if you aren't entering into those conversations that people are having, if you aren't meeting people where they're at on the issues they care about, then why should they care about whatever you're talking about. And we see this in sales and marketing, you hit the nail on the head there. This if you lead in with what you think the person needs to hear versus what the person is actually looking for in terms of a solution, or you're just simply falling on deaf ears. So let's address the main issues then that black Americans are currently facing. Where can we now you mentioned the liberty movement actually going out starting to have conversations, break bread, engage in these these kinds of environments in conversations as well. But what are some of the areas that we know we would have more success focusing on to start out with with black America?

Jeff Charles  7:17  
Well, I mean, when it comes from a libertarian perspective, there's a lot of advantages, especially over conservatism. Libertarians aren't as keen on the police, as conservatives, who are I mean, conservatives, there's still a very deep strain of, frankly, authoritarian thought when it comes to the police, they will excuse a lot of what the police does. Libertarians don't have that issue because they're more consistent. So Black people are concerned about crime. And they're concerned about police brutality and police abusing their authority. So libertarians can lead in with that talking about ending qualified immunity, talking about looking at laws that shouldn't that make certain behaviors crimes that should not be crimes that will cut down on a lot of the issue as well. Economics, black men in particular, love capitalism, like we are very entrepreneurial. Libertarians want to come in and remove the the obstacles that the government's placed in front of all entrepreneurs, to make it easier for people to start small businesses and grow them into larger enterprises. So those are two right off the bat education. Libertarians are very much about school choice conservatives are too. And if they were smart, they would be going into these neighborhoods saying, Hey, dude, you're the party that governs your area right now does not want you to be able to choose where and how your children are educated. We do. Now libertarians want to bring it more to where the government is very minimally involved in education, if it's even involved at all, because we trust the parents more to educate their children than the state which is which really, if you study the history of public education, it has been about indoctrination from the beginning. I know we're talking about it now. But it's been about indoctrination from the from the beginning. And I think black people are starting to realize that more and more as time goes on. So those are just three issues, economics, education, law enforcement, those are areas where libertarians have a lot of commonality with the black community.

Brian Nichols  9:16  
Let's talk now to our conservative friends. Because I know we have a lot of folks who listen to the show that would identify more in that conservative camp. So you mentioned you came from more of a conservative lens and now you find yourself more than libertarian perspective, make the argument to them, tell them why it is that you've made the jump from conservative over to libertarian because I think we're seeing more folks starting to have that internal debate, which way should I lean? Should I go more into the hardline conservative approach? Or should I look at this brand new thing that I I've heard so much about but really haven't had the guts to take the jump to the next step yet?

Jeff Charles  9:51  
I'm going to answer that question by telling you a short version of my story of how I got here. Please guys, I guarantee you the Conservatives love Listening to this are going to be nodding their heads quite a bit when they hear it. So like I was saying, I use my platform mainly as a way to push the Republican Party to be what it says it is. How often do you hear them say, hey, when we get into Congress, we're going to start rolling back these regulations, we're going to shrink the size of government. And then I was asked a question, when was the last time Republicans have shrunk the government in any significant way? Who was the last Republican president to do that? What when was the last time Congress is dominated by Republicans? And that happened? Yeah, it hasn't. Yeah, they've cut taxes here. And there. Sometimes, you know, they'll get rid of some regulations. But in general, they have not shrunk the size of government. Republicans have grown the government under President Donald Trump, who I mean, I call balls and strikes with Trump. The federal government had 9 million employees, when he first took office, when he left, four years later, it blew up to 11 million employees. So I'm the CIO. So you see, Republicans and shit, here's the thing. So I'll just go back to what I was talking about. So I wanted to, to, to add my voice to the many who are trying to hold Republicans accountable. Because it especially if you have more of a libertarian bent, which I think a lot of conservatives are actually libertarians without knowing it, then you know that that's the only other party that's viable. So it makes sense to use that strategy. But over time, I just started to doubt whether this, this could actually happen. Now, the Libertarian Party, which I'm working with, but I'm not necessarily a part of it, I'm more concerned with the movement. But back then the Libertarian Party was something that could not be taken seriously. It was a joke, and it kind of deserved that reputation. But I always said, if that that liberty movement actually starts to mobilize into something that can start winning political power, then I might be tempted to go on over. But for the time being, I was using my voice in the way that I was talking about. But the same thing kept happening, Republicans kept saying, we're going to shrink government, then they get into office, and they say, Oh, well, we were just kidding about that. You didn't see us laughing when we said that. And so in November. So in November, I went to the ballot box, and I was fully expecting to vote Republican, even though I had gotten to the point where I was disgusted. I was going to vote for Governor Abbott because there was no way I wanted Baito to be the governor, and yada, yada yada. I got up to the ballot box, Brian. And I just just something just clicked in my head and I was like, I can't do this anymore. I voted for Mark Tibbets, the Libertarian candidate, I knew that was gonna win anyway. But I couldn't put my name on him. I couldn't endorse him. And he's done some stuff that I liked. But in general, he's just regular Republican. And I voted mostly libertarian down the ticket. I voted for some Republicans and I have voted libertarian in the past, but I voted mostly libertarian this time, and I walked out of there. And I kind of went through like a dark night of the soul because I am more of a public figure. I do content creation full time. I am a journalist, I'm a commentator. You know, where's where am I going to take this? And then I was thinking, Well, you know, I can use this to promote liberty. But then I had also been watching what was going on in the Libertarian Party with the Mises caucus taking over over the past couple of years. And I was seeing the changes that they were making, and they they seem to be serious about what they were doing. But what really got me going is I started doing it with my partner, Donnie, we do Twitter spaces, we call them liberty spaces. It's an audio platform where you can have conversations and people can chime in. And we just talked about liberty because she had gone through gone through this too. And she had gotten to where I am now before I did, and it only, we only did it for like, we were only doing it for about a week and a half to two weeks when people from the liberty movement started reaching out to us. We had people from the Mises caucus reached out, we had people from the from the party reach out. And the thing is, is that is when in December, when I saw the Mises caucus roll out their plan, their plan going forward called decentralized revolution, which is all about focusing on local and not really focusing on federal or state as much you still focus on it. But the idea is that we have to take a long term strategy to promote liberty at the local level. And then you build the infrastructure up from there, the federal government's gotten, I mean, Republicans and Democrats are not different enough for me to care which one wins the presidency or a Congressi. They're not different enough from each other. We hear about the unit party and conservatives complain about this all the time, and they are right. So when I saw that it resonated with me because I had always been preaching to my audience about the importance of local politics. Your mayor is much more influential on your life than the President is. Your City Council has more of an impact on your life than the then Congress does. And so if we focus locally, and we get the right people pulling off this at the local level over time because this is going to take decades, this is not a sprint, it's a marathon. Then we get people who can push back when the government wants to go overboard when they want to enact unconstitutional COVID mandates telling you that they have to stay home. If you have the right person to sheriff who won't enforce those laws, then you're able to push back. So everything just kind of came into alignment. And now I'm seeing that this movement is something that can be taken seriously. And I've gotten emails from readers. I've gotten DMS from people, some people are mad at me for this. Honestly, that'd be there. Conservatives were mad at me even now. But I've had people reach out and say, You know what, after this past midterm election where we didn't get that red wave, and yet they still have the same leadership that led them through those losses. McConnell McCarthy and what's her face? McDaniels? Daniel? Yep, yeah. People that a lot of Republican voters and conservative voters are disenchanted, they're disillusion they're pissed off, some of them are losing hope. I've had a few reach out and say, I feel like I don't even have a voice anymore. What do I do? I don't want to give another cent to this party. I don't even want to give them my vote, maybe some individuals, but this party is horrible. They are liars. And that's what I'm getting from these people. And they're like, What do I do? And I said, You know what? You're right. Your voice doesn't matter at the federal level. Because Republicans are in league with Democrats to do the exact same thing. Republicans will just do it slower. Michael malice always says conservatism is progressivism driving the speed limit. And that's what we've been saying. So I've been telling him, you know, what, you know, where your voice does matter. Your mayor's gonna care, your city council will care. You get the right people in those seats. You focus on your community, you focus on the culture in your community, your friends and family, you focus on getting the right people in office for sheriff, judges, city council, Mayor, that's where this starts. And that's where you can actually start making a difference. So yeah, that was a whole rant. But that's kind of the that was, well, how I want to answer that question, because my story is not unique. Because a lot of people were wondering, maybe they haven't gotten to the liberty movement just yet. But they're in a position to where they're like, I don't know what to do anymore. Some of them want to give up and I understand why. But I don't think we have to, I don't think we have to give up.

Brian Nichols  17:15  
Well, that was a great infomercial for my brand new free ebook, How To Win your local election. Thanks for that, Jeff. But also, we have our candidates go to where we have, we have a lot of local candidates, right. And this is the the thing I'm hearing the most from folks is I get to talk to not me that the candidates, I get to talk to people in my community, hear directly from them what their problem is, and know I can help address it. And that's so empowering. And to know that they can actually implement a political solution, in this case, a more liberty based solution. How empowering an awesome is, I love that, right? Like I had one kid, he's running for mayor in a small town in Indiana. And he got to sit down with this kid who this one kid was talking about, like, the mental health issues that he's been experiencing, and just like the depressing environment of his community, and like using that as a story to tell, like, Hey, we gotta help our kids. Like, if we want them to stay here and start families here, we have to start addressing them now, because they're depressed, and they're not finding the value and the energy and spirit that that you'd want to have that connection with the community. So what can we do to invigorate that right and, and to be able to know that now, with him focusing on this issue as a main pillar stone of his campaign, he can actually do something about it, right, he can help bring the resources or in this case, help pull back where government has been failing, and at least empower people to make the the ability to change on their own, or to start to create more opportunity where it didn't exist beforehand. So that's why we're trying to do what we're doing here to Brian Nichols show, Jeff, frankly, with the winning local, and trying to make the real impact in your local community. That is absolutely 100% Correct. That is where we will win. And that's also Jeff, where we build trust, right? Yeah, I talked about this at the beginning of the show, you know, black America, they don't trust libertarians that they might like libertarian ideas. They don't trust us. And the reason they don't trust us is because we don't really have anything in terms of skins in the wall to show that we're just more than talk. Yeah, so yeah, building a resume by winning local, we show them Hey, don't listen, I know that sounds crazy, this whole idea of like, you know, getting rid of the Department of Education, like what who's gonna teach our kids check out this town over here, they did something really cool where they like, you know, they got rid of all their property taxes. They said all that money you have in property taxes, you go spend that on wherever you think kids would go, you know, have the best education and increase the scores. XYZ percent right and tell that story. That means a lot more than just saying, here's a great idea about school choice. Because as great as the idea is, good ideas aren't enough. You can't just good idea somebody to death. You write them. It's real, and you'd make it make it tangible for them. So thank you for focusing so much on the winning local, that's exactly where we're going to have this the most success.

Jeff Charles  20:04  
I love what I'm hearing. I mean, and I have a sales background too. I was in sales for most of my life before I got to where I am now. And what you said is, right, I mean, because the way I was always, the way I was always trained is when you approach a prospect to sell your product, you introduce yourself, you give your positioning statement, and then you give your proof statement. So if I say, you know, I help businesses do such and so I help businesses increase their productivity by by whatever. And then I also follow that up with as a matter of fact, I just got done helping such and such business grow their bottom line by 10%. We need that proof statement. We don't have that yet. Because, honestly, a lot of people don't even know what libertarians are, they don't know what we believe. They have maybe an idea, but a lot of what they believe is based on misconcept conceptions and and also lies peddled by Democrats and Republicans. You know, they think that we believe all kinds of crazy stuff that we don't believe, although some of our beliefs are kind of crazy, but most of them are not. But if you have that proof concept to say, hey, and such and such channel, like you just said, you know, education, you know, academic performance went up and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you that now you do have more notoriety now people can see Oh, Libertarians might actually have some solutions. So we need that. And the best and easiest way to do that is at the local level. So actually want to check out your book me because that sounds amazing. And speaking of books, I've got one coming out too called Chasing Liberty. So I'll

Brian Nichols  21:33  
pull what that okay, hold up, we're gonna get there in a hot second. So let's do this. We're gonna go to final thoughts, because we are hard pressed for time here. So I'll kick things off, right? And that is this episode to anybody who's considering running for local office. This is why right? This is why the answer is yes. This is why you don't sit there in a couch and you're like, Should I do it? No, you're going to do it because you need to be the change not only you wish to see in the world, let's let's bring that in, right like world, country, state, city like locality, right? We've just we've just shrunken that into the microcosm where you need to address your time. And that is where not trying to make the world better, for sure, make your community better first. So let's start focusing there. And I empower you to do that. But if you're, if you're you're scared, which I get it, it's a brand new world if you've never run for office, and frankly, we need folks who've never run for office to run for office, if you're the mailman, if you're the school teacher, if you're the business owner, if you're the entrepreneur, run for office, be the normal person who's trying to bring some just common sense solutions to the table versus the lifetime got politician who runs for office for 40 years, runs on a pose gets to do whatever the hell he wants in that locality. And then when he retires, he goes off to his grave with oodles of cash that he's probably embezzled over the years. And nobody has any idea over because he ruled with an iron fist. And his budget was a one line item that nobody really ever really looked at because he was the one who looked at it. So be the change. Don't just settle for the status quo. That's my final thoughts. Jeff, what do you have for us and obviously, hit us with the deets there for your book, or a brand new book that's coming out?

Jeff Charles  23:07  
Yeah, so my book is called Chasing Liberty, a journey from partisan politics to the fight for freedom. It talks about basically a lot of stuff that I just said here, but it gives more detail as to how I left and what I think the solution is, what the problems are, and what the solutions are, as well. So I'm very excited about it. But I would just say, I mean, you know, if focusing local is the most important, but I'd say it not losing hope, because these are battles that we can win. We haven't lost yet. As a matter of fact, I think that we I think that if you're a conservative or your your libertarian listening to this, what happened in the midterm elections in November needed to happen. I think that a lot of us needed to feel the pain before we wake up. And unfortunately, there are a lot of people who are still asleep, because they're still more comfortable. But that's going to happen too. And I but this is where we should be taking heart. This is this provides an opportunity for us to say, Okay, what's going wrong here? Maybe we realize that voting verb that focusing on the Republican Party, is the definition of insanity. We've been doing it for decades, and they haven't done anything. They haven't done much of anything. I mean, there have been some individuals who have done good things, but the party has an apparatus is not worth supporting. So when we're talking when I talk about promoting liberty at the local level, I'm not really talking about party. I don't care what letter they have next to the name if they're an independent, but I know they're going to promote liberty, fine, I can support them. If they're Republican, same thing. If they're libertarian, fine, I don't care what letters next to their name, I care about what they're going to do once they're in office. And that is up to us to make sure that we have an influence over so I would say get involved in your local communities if you're not already and if you are, get more people involved in your local politics and in your local community, your local culture and everything. So I guess I'll leave it there.

Brian Nichols  24:59  
Amen. Well, folks, there's your episode for today. And if you don't know what the call to action is at this point, well, I don't know what to tell you. But here it is. One, share today's episode and two, if you're thinking about running for office, specifically local office, well, yes. In fact, take the jump, make sure you you if you are looking for help, though, you reach out to folks like Jeff, like yours truly, we're here to help want to see a liberty movement have success, and we're going to have the most success when we focus local. So with that being said, Please go ahead, follow yours truly on Twitter at B. Nichols Liberty can follow Jeff at Jeff Charles Jr. on Twitter. We'll include both those links in the show notes. Speaking of show notes, if you're joining us on the podcast version of the show, which I know 99% of you are click the artwork in your podcast catcher, it'll bring you over to the website where you can find today's episode, the entire transcript from today's episode over 690 other episodes of The Brian Nichols Show plus you can find the video version of the show on rumble on Odyssey and on YouTube. And if you are joining us on YouTube, please do me a favor hit that subscribe button little notification bell so you don't miss a single time we go live and right about here. I think it is you're gonna see a brand new video popped up. Last week I sat down actually it was me over on the Lions of liberty podcast network with our good friend John odermatt. And Jeff, just for you. I actually sat down with John and we discussed my brand new ebook How to Win your local election. And by the way, folks, if you want to grab your free copy, it is free. And it's over at Brian Nichols show.com forward slash win local but it's all we got for you today. With that being said Brian Nichols signing off. You're on The Brian Nichols Show with a fresh perspective with Jeff Charles. We'll see you later.

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