863: Has the "Live and Let Live" Mentality Hurt the Libertarian Movement?

Brian Nichols  0:00  
All right, standby, buddy, we'll get rockin and rollin Coco.

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 Nichols here on The Brian Nichols Show. Thank you for joining us on of course, that are fun filled episode. I am as always your humble host joining us from our lovely cardio miracles Studios here in sunny Eastern Indiana. The Brian Nichols Show is powered by our friends over at amp America, folks get all the news you need to know without the corporate media bias or fluff head to amp america.com. We have news pieces, we have opinion pieces, we have podcasts, and more. One more time amp America also, The Brian Nichols Show is powered and yours truly powered by our studio sponsor, cardio miracle, folks, if you are looking for the best heart health supplement in the world, it will lower your blood pressure, it will help lower your resting heart rate while improving your sleep and increasing that pump at the gym and a slew of other amazing benefits. Stick around and we're gonna talk about cardio miracle later in the episode. But for today, we're not talking about anything from a policy, but we will talk policy but not anything specific in terms of solution oriented stuff that we talked about here in the show quite frequently, but rather, inside baseball time now rewind. What a week and a half or so ago, I did an episode talking about why I am just so frustrated with the greater libertarian movement. And the overall theme of that episode was libertarians suck at sales. Now this all kind of was culminated culminated yeah, by the whole Chase Oliver, winning the LP nomination here at the Libertarian Party convention back about three weeks or so ago. And the ensuing backlash from said nomination not just internally in the Libertarian Party, but also externally with some very large voices in the podcast space. And most recently, over on Tim pools, the culture war podcast where Jeremy Kaufman, Karen and Carlos and we had who else was oh, yeah, Michael rectum. Wald, we, the guy who was the Mises caucus chosen candidate to hopefully lead the LP to success in 2024, who was yes defeated by chase all of her at that convention. So they had a roundtable conversation with Tim Poole, as well as Phil Labonte from a Tim cast. And they talked about what happened. And where is the Libertarian Party moving right now. And to help discuss that in some detail today, plus, maybe where we can get better, where we can learn from some stuff, not necessarily in terms of how to be better libertarians, but how to effectively communicate your ideas, build coalitions, and actually, I don't know talking people who want to hear what we have to sell. So joining us today from the aiming up podcast hosts, Brent, and welcome to The Brian Nichols Show how you doing, man? Doing great, man,

Brent M (Aiming Up Pod)  3:29  
thanks for having me on.

Brian Nichols  3:30  
Great to have you on the show. And that is, yes, elephant in the room after I appeared on your podcast back a few weeks ago. And man, it was a blast. So Brent, do us a favor, introduce yourself here to The Brian Nichols Show audience and what would our guests find if they go over to aiming up podcast and listen to yours truly?

Brent M (Aiming Up Pod)  3:48  
Yeah, thanks for that man. Yeah, and I'd really did enjoy our first conversation appearing man that was great. At aiming up, the entire focus of it is aiming up. Right. So it's about improving yourself and improving the world through having conversations like these, right? So it's not going to be a single issue podcast. It's not a niche sort of thing. It is the basically, it's anything I'm interested in with the intention of improvement, right? Self improvement, societal improvement, right? So that's philosophy, whether it's going to be I do have some tech topics, right? I'm a tech executive by day. So I'm interested in tech things health and fitness, nutrition, supplementation, like all across the board, but my real what's the nearest and dearest to me really is philosophy. Right? It's particularly moral philosophy around so I'm kind of a nerd in that space. And that's how I'm sort of plugged into the libertarian spaces right? So I come from a position where you know, initiating force and fraud is is a completely verboten according to, you know, what I can deduce about the moral philosophy and it starts and ends there with me. So that's the quick tour. And

Brian Nichols  4:52  
that's really a lot of the stuff we dug into on the show. And by the way, you You challenged me on some stuff and I really appreciated that because You often Brenden elephant in the room right? Libertarians pardon the expression really like this whole circle jerk that we have when we go and we sit together talking about issues talking about economics and policies and, and problems with seeing the world, we like to pat each other on the back and say, oh, yeah, your ideas the best and reality. It's only the best in our little world, right? And we have zero ability to communicate that to a larger audience. And I think right now we look at what just happened with the LP nomination and the ensuing backlash, and we're facing that reality head first. And this goes to the conversation I want to have with you today, right is let's talk about where not just the Libertarian Party, but the libertarian movement is in 2024, and where we're heading as we go beyond the election in November. And I think it really does come down to something you you hinted at in terms of not just talking about the podcast, but also you personally where you get value, and that's talking about the morals, the principle of libertarianism. And with that, where we sometimes and pardon the expression, again, we let autism get in the way. And I think this speaks to where today's conversation, we're gonna have a lot of fun because one of the main points of contention and let's just call it out for what it is with the chase Oliver candidacy is that despite his his libertarian credentials, right, yes, he ran for US Senate in Georgia as a big L libertarian, he got a number of votes. But let's talk about Chase, not just his role as a libertarian, but as what he represents, and I look at Chase, and again, I've had chase in the show, I think he's probably a good guy. I really didn't get to know him too, too. Well, candidly, but when you look at what's promoted from Chase to the public, with the libertarianism, it is a cultural leftism, a moral leftism, that's what I see and what I seen and to just make sure folks don't think I'm just calling this shit out here for no reason. You look at how Chase approach the COVID-19 Insanity, right? With this tacit admission that we need to put masks on our face at all times, even when you are walking outside and not around anybody or, you know, hey, we're gonna be very, very, very safe for Thanksgiving, I'm only gonna have five people over and make sure we're all socially distancing wearing masks, or just this tacit acceptance that we can bring i are what they call gender affirming care. I'm using very, very big air quotes for the audio listener here. But like the idea of gender or gender affirming care, where I think I look at it as a dad, and I say, Oh, you mean you're sexually mutilating a child? Okay, gotcha, let's, let's call it for what it is. That's what I see. At least right now. I know there are a lot of folks in the libertarian world who say, Brian, you're completely wrong. You look at this issue and you're you're letting your principles are there. You let your morals impact your principles here. And libertarians need to be hands off on everything live and let live don't hurt people don't take their stuff, which I agree with that don't hurt people and don't take their stuff, Brent, but I really have issue with this live and let live because this live and let live mentality is exactly what got us to where we are today, this idea that I can't have an opinion against somebody else's way of life, when I look at it and say I fundamentally foundationally disagree with it. And not saying it's impacting me directly, but it's impacting the place, I live ie society, right? I want to be able to bring my daughter out to an event and not have to worry about seeing some grown man waving his genitals around in a pride parade saying this is progress. It's not progress, I look at it as actually a very much a backwards approach to how we should be engaging with each other. So that is the starting off point of where I have had some frustrations and where frustrations over on the culture where podcasts really were expressed between the folks and the panel. So before we go into some specifics, Brent, all that I said, Did I get some stuff wrong? Did I get some stuff? Right? Getting your feedback? It's

Brent M (Aiming Up Pod)  8:48  
not about you got some stuff wrong or right. All right. I think it's gonna be Oh, I'm getting a bunch of feedback. Why do I hear you great. Okay, cool. Let's feed back to me. So I'm going to try to actually I'm gonna take this out while I'm speaking. So the feedback, right? It's not about right or wrong. Like as far as what you got, right? I think it's in two camps. For me, right? I have two two sort of categories of things. One is what are ethical concerns? Right? And this goes back to like the non Aggression Principle, like, like what, you know, fundamentally, what can you do without committing a ethical violation? And then the second component is that culture war thing that you talked about, right, which I think if we appropriately had things in the right category, with respect to ethics, you would have a lot easier time dealing with the culture war issues, right. So it's a whole tragedy, the commons thing, because because most people would say, Hey, man, if you were to have a gay pride parade and do all sorts of crazy stuff, and you're consenting adults on your own private property, right, like, knock yourself out, right, but we don't live in that world. And I think that's where things get get mixed up and things get confusing for people. Because we don't live in that world. It's not an Capistan, you know, quote unquote, right? We don't live this. I acknowledge that that that is one of the fundamental drivers of the culture war. And I'm not saying the culture war isn't important. It definitely is. I struggle sometimes when libertarians engage in culture war battles, because number one, I think they're ginned up on purpose. There's a lot of people that want to keep people fighting amongst ourselves. So right around things that are, I don't want to say they're unimportant, because they're not unimportant. And there are real harms around a lot of culture war topics, but it's something that is very easy to fall into ideological tribes on. And the more it gets inflamed in the media, and the more we talk about these things, it's like the Streisand effect. You just invite more of the behavior I think we talked about in our podcast, we did, like, just constantly talking about it. Not every issue there. Every issue is different. But I see some things and maybe it's a gradient, right. Some things are more important than others. And there's a lot of things I see that aren't super important that people get really hyper focused on. And I don't think it from a strategic standpoint, it does much good towards our shared aims. I hope that makes

Brian Nichols  11:09  
sense. No, it makes sense. And let me maybe laser focus, because I think sometimes where libertarians will get in, and this is not us, by the way, I'm just talking about the general libertarian conversation is that we get stuck in the grand platitudes, right. And then you bring in specific use cases, or examples. And then that either is meant to try to invalidate the entire rule. Or on the flip side, it's ignored as though it's not happening happening to possibly impact the rule, right. And I think when we start to really laser focus on the whole topic of kids, right, kids is where the conversation changes, at least for me, where, listen, if you're an adult, you're 18. Plus, I don't care what you do, like, I'm going to vocally argue against your beliefs, if I think that they are backwards, and they're going to hurt you in society, like I was trying to stop you from doing it. But I'm going to, I'm going to absolutely plant my flag and say, No, the very least I'm not gonna be able to fast forward 100 years. And when people are looking back saying, what happened, they can see that there were people who were very adamant and saying, This is insane. This is crazy. But back to the idea of government force, as soon as you start to bring government force, you start create unintended consequences, unintended incentive structures, right, we all acknowledge that. But when we talk about kids, we've always looked at kids in a different perspective, because they by by just their very nature, they are innocent, they do not have developed brains, they are literal, like little mushy human beings who are little sponges, absorbing everything around them. And I just I fundamentally, principally a principled stance and moral stance, saying, I just think that's wrong when we start to bring the adult issues to children, or trying to, to create this impression that our values as adults are the same ideas and values that children have. So like an example, I have a 14 month old, she loves Thomas, the Tank Engine absolutely loves it. I used to love Thomas, the Tank Engine, right? But I'm not going to be a conductor, or I'm not a train conductor, when I'm four years old, or I'm 14 months old. I'm a kid. And yet there are people that are in our world in the libertarian world who if they see a kid expressing themselves in such a way, like, oh, that's who that kid is. Versus they're a child. They are a sponge, they are reflecting back which their environment presents to them. And I just, I get really frustrated when there are certain libertarians who they will let the overarching and to your point, right? This this utopian vision, take over reality. And they almost refuse to live in reality and acknowledge that kids are kids and that we've always treated kids differently because they are children. So when we talk about this, and particularly let's bring it back to chase, this is one of the main things that has been chases thorn in his side is and there's a perfect example of this. He was over on the just asking questions podcast, but Zack smiler Weissmuller, however you say his name is Zach from reason, and Liz Wolfram reason. And Liz asked Chase, a very fair question about the whole idea of gender affirming care and chase kept on going back to the principled argument. And again, I'm using principles very loosely here. He was saying, Well, this is a choice between parents, the kids and their doctors. And she goes, Okay, well, what if, you know, it was a choice between a parent and a doctor that the kid needs to have their arm cut off? Like, is the state allowed to step in there and say no, and again, there was no answer. It was a kind of a round robin conversation going in circles. But this is a thing we have to acknowledge is a very real issue. And if we don't acknowledge it, and don't address the fact that we've seen what the number of kids who are now ident defined as something other than their biological sex explode over the past five years, and not draw a direct correlation between that what's happening in social media and the Tick Tock generation, what's happening in the gender affirming care in the health care industry with all these, these quote unquote experts that the science right showing us that this is normal, this is the way things are supposed to be. You have all these different factors coming into play. And yet I see so many libertarians, like a chase, plant their flag and say Mina, no, this is just a health care issue, not acknowledging all the both cultural, moral, but also systematic institutional attacks that are happening on reality. And I think that's something that we need to grapple with.

Brent M (Aiming Up Pod)  15:42  
Yeah, no, I completely agree with you that it's a real issue, right. But I think it's a complicated issue. I had Jacob Winograd on my podcast earlier this week. And we talked about essentially the same thing and I lent land in the same place, is that is a real issue. And it causes real harms to real people. Like, that's just baseline. But anyone who says that this has no, you know, potential negative consequences people is absolutely insane. That said, one of the things I think libertarians could could work on, is consistency across the board. Right? So when you're looking at the gender affirming care, quote, unquote, issue, yeah, that's a real thing. And it causes real harm to real people. But there's this elephant in the room, which is a lot of the same people that I've interacted with, it seems to me it was I don't have data around this. But I noticed a pattern, I'm pretty good at picking up patterns. A lot of the folks that are against the whether it's the culture war issues around, you know, LGBT and gender affirming care, that sort of pocket, right, they seem to be driven, at least in some part by religious conviction, right, they've got a particular religious belief that informs their overall worldview. And I think sometimes that is a problem, because that is essentially driving it as opposed to sound moral philosophy, right. And the same people who are screaming about, hey, we need to protect these kids, we need to protect these kids are hitting their kids. They're yelling at their kids, right. And they're calling themselves libertarian. So and we have the data, right, we have tons of data that the trans thing is new, like we don't have hardly any data, nobody knows what the long term impacts are going to be. But we have tons and tons of data on spanking kids on yelling at kids on hitting kids like that. It's infinite number of, you know, hard studies like Kaiser Permanente. By the way, if you know them, they're both an insurer and health care provider, and they care deeply about reducing costs. That's where the ACEs study came from, if anyone knows about ACEs is around adverse childhood experiences and correlations with negative health outcomes, and they have some very, very strong data over like 50 years, you know, 10s of 1000s of people huge cohort causes real harms, like really bad harms to children, right? It causes really broken adults, and I don't see him in fact, not only do I not see the same people jumping up and down and saying, we need to protect these kids. They're saying, if you don't hit your kids, you're you're doing a bad thing. Right. And also claiming the libertarian mantle. That's not everybody, right? But but there is a cohort in there. And so for me, like I said, starting and ending with with, you know, ethical, sound moral philosophy and ethics, like, like men, you might help your cause if you are consistent, right. And so it's hard to take you seriously over here on an issue that may be driven by a religious belief. And

Brian Nichols  18:35  
Brett really quick, let me just highlight something there that I think there is a little bit distinction, right, is that there is not a group of libertarians who are tanky or who are taking the spank your children plank and making that a leading part of their platform as a candidate, much as what Chase is doing with this idea of gender affirming care. And I think that speaks to where, and putting my sales hat on right where I just I start to cringe because even if we want to go back to what you're saying, and I think you're absolutely spot on, like we have to be against harming children across the board, that's a no brainer. But when you see one group of libertarians, who they seem to be okay with it and pretend that it's a healthcare choice, and now they're leading with that as a underlying part of their platform. That's where I really I had to stand up and say like, no, that's that's not what I'm not only do I not believe in that. I don't believe in hurting your kids. I don't believe in spanking your kids. I don't believe in you mentally abusing your children. I think that's across the board. Children are special because there's that inherent innocence with children. So that speaks to I think where I'm having a little bit of an issue is not so much I agree with you. We need to be consistent in our stance against harming children. But when I see Chase, leading with this whole idea of gender affirming characters being a health care decision between a doctor and parents in the kid, I'm just like, No man, that's an excuse to validate this exception to a rule of potentially harming in the argument that they're making. It's actually helping preventing harm. And that's it. That's where it gets really backwards in my book.

Brent M (Aiming Up Pod)  20:04  
No. And I agree. And like I said, I'm not trying to argue with you on that particular point. I'm trying to zoom out a little bit. And to your point, you're right, there's no libertarians that are making that a plank on a political party. I guess the the thing that annoys me is that no, libertarians are making it a plank that you should make. For example, if you want to be consistent here, you would want to make hitting your kids illegal, right? You can't hit anyone else in society, but a child. That's the only thing that's legal to do. And I don't see libertarians standing up and saying, No, we need to put an end to this. Right. So it's more of like, like I said this from from a perception, you're big into sales, right? And you understand brands and you understand public perception, right? And so when you have that perception, like whether it's true or not, and it obviously is true in some cases and not in others, right. I don't know exactly how the split breaks down. But there are some people that are just driven by ideological, religious grounds. And that then, and they will try to use libertarianism to sort of like shoehorn that in sort of, like, sneak it in the back door. And I think people are on to some of that stuff. Right. I think that's what turns people off. And I think maybe I've got a different perspective here, because I'm not religious in general, by the way, and I've told everyone this, like, I'm very supportive of religion, and Christianity is a wonderful thing on net, obviously, there's harms associated with that, too. But I think it's a great thing for society, I think a lot of societal ills have been caused by the, you know, ripping down of that sort of, you know, liberal Western democracy informed by you know, a Christianity which had the tenant that the individual is sovereign, like, like, that's really important. And I think moving away from that has caused a lot of societal harms. I think this is actually a result of some of that, right? Um, so I'm not saying I'm not trashing religion at all, I'm just saying, like, this is what I see as an outside observer is it I get this little weird feeling this, like, you're trying to play a game with me? Right? Like, if it gets talked to the same person, they say, you know, hitting kids, it's, it's actually virtuous? Like, we must do that, as good parents spare the rod, spoil a child, like,

Brian Nichols  22:00  
let me let me just challenge a smidge here on this, because do you really see, again, this might be my ignorance, I don't see this, I don't smoke sorry, I don't see people going out of their way to validate or justify spanking their kids. And even if there was, they are in such a minority, that I don't see them, especially when compared to the folks who go out and they are openly, dare I say, proudly promoting this idea that we need to not only bring gender affirming care to children, but the kids know best. Right? And that's I think, where the distinction is is that I don't know, am I not seeing it? I'm just not seeing this religious fervor in libertarianism trying to validate and justify hitting kids.

Brent M (Aiming Up Pod)  22:47  
I just don't see that. Yeah, it's not on the surface, right. It's not something like people are like, Hey, man, I hit my kid today and get you know, give me a like, like, that's, that's not what's going on. It's like, it's through discussions I talked to is that though,

Brian Nichols  22:58  
why is that? I don't mean America like is that not because we inherently acknowledge that it's wrong, morally wrong? Like it's not popular? Because it's wrong? I

Brent M (Aiming Up Pod)  23:08  
don't think that I think that number is actually a societal narrative that gets embedded, which is like, there's we all understand not not anymore. Things. Things have shifted. And by the way, I'm old. I'm like, almost 50. Man, so I'm giving you old guy perspective, but it seemed like least when I was coming up, and up until you know, maybe even I haven't really focused too much on this recently, the last 10 years or so you talk to people, and it's like, well, yeah, I spank my kids. Not very, but it's always like this thing where then they put their hand like not very often. And, you know, that's probably not true. Like if you actually get inside people's families, like if you hit kids, you probably hit kids a lot more than you want to admit to. And so they've got this sort of dichotomy that goes on where it's like, yeah, I'm told that it's a good thing. But I also think everyone recoils from it, right. I think there's something in us that just knows you're not supposed to be hitting the kid man. And so people always try to like, well, I'm minimizing it. I don't do it very often. By the way,

Brian Nichols  23:59  
I think you're right today.

Brent M (Aiming Up Pod)  24:00  
But what if I talk to people these are like specific conversations I've had with tons of libertarian to talk to people all across the board. And about this specific issue. Like there's two big big ones circumcision and spanking like those, like, you start talking about those, and you start uncovering some sort of gross stuff underneath. And I definitely talk to these people and then they really push back like no, it's in the Bible. I'm supposed to be hitting my kid my my parent. And then there's this weird thing that humans do psychologically, which is we normalize what we experience. So if you have a parent that does bad thing next to you, then we've you talked to them. It's very weird because you actually aren't talking to the person I'm not talking to Brian anymore. I'm talking to Brian's parent that's living in his head right that which excuses that behavior because it doesn't want to wrestle with the fact that the person who cared for me and brought me up actually did bad things to me. And so it's I think it's a very complicated topic, but but I'm telling you, I definitely see it. I don't know who you are. Obviously, the Libertarian Party is very big or the libertarian movement is very large, and there's tons of people there's a lot of variety that's in hear it's in the concept of liberty, right? Like you can be who you want to be, as long as we abide by these particular tenants as far as force and fraud. So it's a big tent. But I've talked to lots of people, and it does seem that sort of really religious component, at least in America, right? Invariably, when you have the discussion, then they start well, no, it's actually fine. Like, I hit my kids and spank my kids, you got to do it. And if you don't do it, you're, you're it's viewed as being almost abusive, because you're being too lenient, right? Oh, you're just not giving any structure. There's no discipline. It's like, bro, like, you can provide structure and discipline without hitting and yelling at your kids. And so I've had these conversations a lot, a lot, a lot. And so maybe it's just I got, I'm an outlier. I've connected with way too many of them. But there's definitely something to it. And I'm just telling you like from it from a marketing perspective, I think the consistency around these issues with respect to kids would go a long way towards making people feel comfortable, like, Oh, you're actually legitimate because you're you're protecting kids across the board. So that hey, man, take it for what it's worth. That's just my two cents. No, no.

Brian Nichols  26:01  
And I really appreciate that, Brian, because we do. I think this is where a lot of libertarians need to kind of get out of the echo chamber and start talking to real people. Because we get so stuck in D isms, and I actually I was on a podcast recently on my buddy, Randy Whitlow skis podcast, and I went scorched earth on this, like the the lack of in libertarians are notorious for this is they let the ISM take over the identity. And instead of going based on common sense, and right, like true, like just living in a real world. And again, this goes to if your ideas can't live in real world, you don't have a vision, you have an ism. And that is where I think we have a lot of folks in our art camp who they just they get stuck behind the ISM to justify whatever gross behavior they might want to do. Now, just to go back to something you brought up, you mentioned that there is kind of like this this instinctual, like, you keep it down low if you do hit your kids, right. Like I shouldn't say that loud. And this, I think this is where the real the I wouldn't say a disagreement, I think it's a disagreement. You think this is my main point, right? Is that it's there's a reason people don't promote that openly. Because there is an inherent social stigma, it's not good. And that's a good thing. I think stigma is a good thing. Like, I used to have a man back when I was in college, I used to get so many folks mad at me cuz I would, I would be like this whole Amnesty International like, and the stigma and like, what, but stigmas are important because stigma tell you when something is considered good or bad. And usually there's a reason behind that. So the fact that you're right, people aren't going out and openly screaming and celebrating hitting kids. That's good. That's a good stigma. I don't see that stigma when we're talking about bringing gender affirming care to kids. Right. And that's, I think, where my my main issue comes down to I agree with you. I think if libertarians want to have success, they have to promote this idea of ending harm for kids across the board. But then we go back. It's just it's semantics, right? What's hard mean? And stigma, right? Stigma is where that harm is identified. If it became so obvious that gender affirming care, transiting the kids is a bad thing inherently at its core, then there wouldn't be the celebration, there wouldn't be the promotion of this. And going back to Pride Month. I mean, we're recording here, middle of June. That is something that it has made me frustrated beyond belief. Because back 10 years ago, I was all about supporting my gay friends who wanted to be able to talk about, you know, oh, man, I had a rough new time being able to celebrate who I actually am. But they weren't doing that when they were four years old. They weren't doing when they were two years old. They were 2022 24. Like, I remember the conversations being so different. Just 10 years ago, when I had a buddy of mine, who we had a roommate who was talking about possibly exploring himself and trying to figure out how to see a boy or a girl, we were all like, this is weird. If I were to have that exact conversation, today, I would be a bigot. All of us would have been bigots fertilized being like this is weird, because the stigma is gone now. Right? And that is where I think as a society, I'm really nervous, Brent, because the more and more that we as a society get away from embracing reality, embracing what is actually right and what is actually wrong. It makes it more difficult to talk about the specifics, right to your point to talk about hitting your kids in conjunction with talking about the dangers and such a no harm of gender affirming care to kids. Like we should be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. But when you remove the stigma, and you make it so well. Just live and let live, do your thing. Whatever you want, whatever floats your boat, right? Like, that's where you start to lose the ability to now talk about things because the people you're talking to they don't look at that as a big issue. They're like, Well, dude, who aren't you bigot? Do you hate you'd hate gay people? Do you hate trans people? Are you transphobic It's like no, I'm not afraid of trans people I'm afraid of what's going to happen to our society that doesn't embrace reality.

Brent M (Aiming Up Pod)  30:05  
Yeah, and I definitely agree. And first of all, can we at least acknowledge this is a complicated topic? Oh, yeah. I hear so many people on all sides of the issue just like I got this crystal clear, bright I know the answer to this and it just it feels so and I think that's part of the reason it's being highlighted so much is because it's so complicated is so divisive. And I don't know the answer by the way, like I'm just giving my opinion like I always take the Rick Rubin approach like Man Hey, this is my thoughts right now on this are a diary entry man. This is just for right now. This is how, by the way, Brent

Brian Nichols  30:38  
I think I'm a little I'm a little heated on this cop topic agenda. Right before we log down I read this story on it was a Reddit our trans. My little here. I'm gonna screen my screen really quick. Present screen. I love stream yard. Love it. Not really, it was giving me headaches earlier today. Where is my page? Okay. My little one, three years old, three years old, started to express that she feels like a girl. She feels more like mommy than daddy, she has asked to be called a new name and wants to use pronouns have she heard this is a little boy, by the way. It's been a few months since she changed her name, we want to make sure that if she is trans, she feels loved and supported. Is there anything we should do to help with this, we are respecting her name and pronoun choices and helping others to do so as well. She hasn't expressed any desire for a wardrobe change other than a few dresses, which she got before she changed her name, things like that right there, man that just it makes my blood boil. Because I have a 14 month old. I just couldn't imagine being this parent and putting this as my perspective, man, it just, it makes me sick.

Brent M (Aiming Up Pod)  31:46  
Yeah, that's really tough. Because you've got people that there's a couple of components. I think on the left, particularly if you look at the psychological traits of somebody who who is on the left, right, like they're, they're over indexed on compassion, right. And so, you know, the bleeding heart liberal thing, that's a real, that's a real thing, right. And you can be in trouble getting either direction, right? Too far right and too rigid or too wide up, like there's got to be a conversation between left and right, right. And you have to sort of try to rein each other in. And it's very, that's a perfect example of how you can just completely get carried away in this stuff. And out of like, a couple of things, probably some sort of compassion for your kid who you think is going through a hard time. And number two, that's probably some social credit, right? Because you if you're in that camp, where there's a lot of this stuff going on, and it's praised, rightly, so there's no stigma, it's actually being praised, then you consciously or subconsciously, insert and sort of steer a kid that might be talking like that, or be exposed to these ideas, and then decide, like, I want to play with it, cuz that's what children do, right? You got children, right? They, they play with identity, they, they're trying things out, they're constantly evolving the personality, and at three years old, you are in no position to make a fundamental decision like this as far as like, oh, I want to, like, in the fact that you don't have an honest conversation and talk through it on a three year old level. And then maybe like, hey, like, people just make the crazy like oil that I identify as a firetruck? Is that okay? Like you bring reality and you can you can play you can have fun with with make believe and, you know, imagination and all that sort of stuff. But I think you can get in some trouble. Obviously, if you just let that stuff run amok, right. So I'm not trying to say that there's, there's no harms here or anything like that, please don't want anyone to sort of take that away as well. But also, you know, I'm also trying to lead with compassion and also remain empirical. Right? So let's let's be evidence based, let's be science based, as much as possible, walk through the issues without and I'm trying to find maybe I'm just trying to thread impossible needle, which is to try to not be inflammatory, because I see a real problem on this. And other issues. When you raise the temperature to eight, the other side's got to go to nine, then you got to go to like, it's just the spiral is never ending. And I'm trying to be productive. Like I said, I'm trying to it's aiming up is all about, like trying to improve the world. And I don't think we improve the world by shouting at each other. But I also don't know how to have a productive conversation about this. And maybe that's why I'm trying, right? Like I'm trying to be reasonably I'm trying to be the adult in the room and like, Man, can we talk to each other? And I think one of the problems is, is that we're not talking to each other. We're talking to people like you said, the echo chamber thing we're talking to people who believe like us, then you stand around a circle like king of the hill with a beard. Yep. Yep. Like you're not saying anything. You're not providing anything helpful the conversation because it is such a like we mentioned earlier, it's such a complicated conversation such a really fraught with peril conversation. In we've got to sort it out somehow, right. And I don't exactly know how to do it. All I'm saying is like, I'm here, I'm at the table. I'm willing to have conversations with anybody but I think we probably should be having conversations with people that are on the other side of the chase Oliver's of the world, and, you know, way more extreme than Chase right. I think that's important. So we're talking to to each other, not about each other and, you know, add each other. That makes.

Brian Nichols  35:04  
It absolutely makes sense. Brent, and I'll add a caveat to that is that, I also think it's, it's fundamentally important for us to have those conversations, but to do so, and make sure 1,000% that not just you, not you, but like the person in the conversation, and the person you're speaking to, are doing so in good faith, right. And this, this is where I think we've seen so many issues is that you have one side who is trying to have a good faith conversation. And the other side is waiting for that, that one golden opportunity to just jump right in and get there isn't pushed through. And I mean, Brent, I'm just going to, again, call it out for I see, at least, that seems to be coming predominantly from the cultural left is like, I just I look at where we are today, right? You look at the Gen Z's who I think it's 25% of them identify as LGBTQ, that number was in the single like low single digits, a generation before, that speaks to something is happening across the board inherently like in a negative stance. And I just think we gotta be able to talk about it. Now, I can enter into that conversation with a leftist, a cultural leftist in good faith, but they're gonna look at it as though I'm attacking. Right? And go back a couple months ago, a month ago, wherever it was the whole if you're a lady in the woods, you saw a bear or man, right? Like, I made a joke about that on Facebook, the feminazis jumped in, right? Like just like hair on fire. How dare you don't understand? I'm like, no, no, I do understand. Yes, I was being your tongue in cheek, but you want to have a real conversation about it? Of course not. Of course not. They want to lead with the emotion. And I don't know, man, like, it's very difficult to build policy based on emotion, because I don't know, in sales, I know that the two emotions that we like to sell on our fear and love, the love of what the value of the change is going to bring, or the fear of inaction from making a change. And I don't know, man, I'm not seeing a lot of love coming from these, these policy prescriptions. And I'm not seeing a lot of positive change in that world, I'm seeing a lot more confusion, I'm seeing a lot more chaos. And I'm just looking, again, to your point, look at the empirical data we have something's not right when you have literal, like generations of kids, a generation later saying I don't know what I am. And the only things that have changed are the way that they communicate, and the power structures that are promoting this stuff. And the stigma being removed. Right? That's where I'm just like, Okay, well, we we've entered into good faith conversations, but it's only one team that's playing in the good faith conversation standpoint. And I'm scared, by the way, Brent, because as soon as the right I'm gonna use the cultural right here, realize across the board that last night in a good faith conversation, then what's going to keep the right from being a good convert a good faith conversation, what's going to stop them from saying, You know what, all right, here we go time to fight fire with fire. And that's where I get really scared, because as soon as we get to that point, what's stopping the cultural right from starting to take over institutions, and now using government force, not just to stop the stuff that they see as immediate harm to children? Let's talk about maybe taking this step further. Right? What's What's the say? The cultural right to your concerns, from a religious standpoint, don't start to bring some of the not so great stuff from religion to public policy and making everybody adhere to it. That's where I think I look at where we are right now. And I'm just, I'm seeing the writing on the wall. And one, I mean, I'm not trying to draw comparison between us and 1920s, Germany, but my goodness, man, it makes my stomach you go into not just seeing where we are today.

Brent M (Aiming Up Pod)  38:35  
Yeah, yeah. And I share your concerns, by the way, like, I'm, I know, you know, about the state of just the world in general, particularly the United States, because obviously, I live here. But what I will say is, I think, you know, this is just a fundamental difference in where you and I are swimming, right? Like you, you're doing your thing, you're on the policy side, you're on, like, that's where you're at, you're trying to influence policy, trying to figure out how we can change things through through political action. And I'm, I'm sort of really micro. And my whole focus is on how to be a better person, how to engage with people better, and to model that and try to encourage people to do the same thing. So what I would say, is like, maybe something that might help, I'm not saying this is a silver bullet. But maybe you reach out to people that have a completely different opinion on this topic than you do and have a direct conversation. And then where you agree upfront, like you said, Good Faith conversation is important. Oftentimes, like I had this guy, Eric Biggs on he's a Marxist, right? Love the guy. He's great. We got off on the wrong foot, but because I didn't inflame and I said, Hey, like, come on podcast, let's talk about things. From the beginning. I said, we're gonna agree that you and I are not adversaries in this discussion. We're partners, and we're searching for two things, what's true and what's good. So truth and virtue. That's our Northstar. We might have a difference of opinion about what constitutes true and what constitutes good but at least we're aiming the same direction right and let's have a discussion. And I think that helps to defuse some of that emotionality that sometimes sidetracks these calm realization so so I think you know, getting getting out of that bubble man, like talking to ourselves is not going to do anything. It's not going to bring anything good to the table. I think ultimately, thinking is a team sport as humans, right? We are distributed computers, right? I'm, I'm a tech nerd, right? So this literally distributed computational system, and each one of us has a node, and each one of us has things we know, there's things that we get wrong, and we need others to correct us. Right. And we have to, and that's what that's why people that are completely isolated, go insane, right? Like they were,

Brian Nichols  40:32  
I mean, interrupt your train of thought, but like, not only do we need people to correct us, but you yourself need to be correctable. You have to be able to acknowledge I don't know everything, and maybe I got some of the shit wrong.

Brent M (Aiming Up Pod)  40:42  
Man, if I could tell everybody one thing it would be embracing I don't know a hell of a lot more often. And I think this is maybe goes hand in glove with the idea of having less inflammatory conversation with people. How about you don't be addicted people online? How about it, because it's so easy, especially on Twitter, just some snarky shit back and pop that and also, you've seen awesome that just thread this, like 700 responses over something as dumb. And it's like, no human beings don't talk like this, right? Like, just act like a decent person and be curious in the world and be humble and say like, Man, this stuff is hard. We're all trying to figure it out together, assume best intentions from your discussion partner, as opposed to ooh, this tribal thing, or they're on the other side. So I'm gonna, you know, need to get your list of arguments over here that in there, you're just deploying art, you're not thinking. It's like somebody else has done the thinking we have our set of arguments here. They have their set of rebuttals here. And it's just it's, it's you people might not might as well not even be involved in the conversation. Because you can swap out me or Brian or who I like and put somebody else in and thinks exactly the same way has the exact same set of, you know, arguments that's been teed up. And it's like, you're not even part of the conversation. And that's really frustrating for me. So I think people can do a lot better, we can be so much better than we are. So sorry for the side rant man. But that's, that's really something I'm passionate about.

Brian Nichols  42:04  
And by the way, I like to the point of my show, too, right? So we Yes, we want to build policy. But we also want to do what meet people where they're at on the issues they care about. And with that, I want to be able to take our ideas and sell them to dare I say, the normies, right, the common sense folks out there who are still out there, by the way, and they are in larger numbers. And I think we realize and understand that, yes, we can still have a dialogue with the folks who we disagree with, and try to find that common ground. But I think we will find more success in selling our ideas to a group of folks who inherently are just aware that shits not right, right, like something is broken inherently in our system, in our culture in our politics. And we need a solution or solutions, both in terms of policy, but also those those social and moral prescriptions that have been completely forgotten. Now, I'm not saying we need to bring those in from a government perspective, but we want to talk about them right and be in be comfortable in selling those solutions. And I was a Ben Shapiro, Ben Shapiro on his show, Love him or hate him, I don't care. But he had a great, great line. And he said, get ready for revenge of the normies. And I think he's right, because there are so many folks out there who just look at the way that the country has gone the way that our culture has gone. And they're just saying, Nope, nope, I am not doing this. I just saw a video. It was a baseball game. He was a high school baseball game, the announcer says we are not going to sing the national anthem. We're gonna go ahead and get the game started play ball. And what happened? The entire crowd stands up and starts doing the national anthem on their own. Now I can see the Libertarians all look at them worshiping the sky cloth. Good for them all the bunch of drones, right. Good job. Congratulations, you you feel good about making your statement on the left hand side of the aisle. Look at all those those racist bigots there. You're worshiping the country that hates minorities, and they hate Gazans like all that fun shit that we've been seeing on the social media. And then what's their brand, there is the normal person who says it's a group of folks who just want to show that they're proud of the country they live in. And they want to sing the national anthem. And they don't want to be told one way or another, that they're, they're crazy for just being a normal person from 20 years ago. And that is the person I have built my show around trying to sell these ideas to, because I do see that there is this desire for the common sense extremist, right? Like please bring back some common sense to Washington. That's why I look at people like Thomas Massie and Rand Paul and Mike Lee and Vivek Ramaswamy. I look at them with a positive lens versus some folks in our LP who look at them as just next door to Mitch McConnell, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, like if you cannot fundamentally acknowledge that the first group is inherently better than that second group, then I'm sorry, I'm not going to be able to build too many bridges with you or help build a better solution for our future with you. I want to coalesce with people who at the very least acknowledge we have problems, we need to bring some solutions to the table both policy wise, cultural, moral, but we don't do so through the threat of force or government violence. But we do so by helping change people's minds. Yes, meet them where they're at on the issues they care about lead with empathy, but also lead with your values. And don't be afraid of speaking what you believe. Because the more that we speak out, and we talk about what we actually believe, I dare say it gives more people out there who believe the same thing but are sitting quietly did do the same. Because Brent, we don't need to go back 10 years ago, canceled culture. The me twos like all that nonsense was taking place. And people were being removed from society and polite conversation left and right. So it led to a lot of folks sitting on their hands being like, Yeah, I'm just gonna sit down, shut up, go to work, not say shifts. I don't want to ruin my family. I don't want to ruin my life don't want to ruin my career aspects. And now we see people like Jennifer say, who was like, hey, Levi, what the hell are we doing trying to mess up like our approach to marketing to women? We shouldn't be doing this. They're like, well, that's a little bigoted. And then she's like, Well, what about this whole COVID? Insanity? What are we doing here? Why are we making a COVID mandate for Levi and they're like, now you're getting, you're getting a little too snippy there, Jennifer, she's like, Fine, screw you. And she leaves, right? People like her people like Elon Musk, Love him or hate him saying, You know what, I'm going to put $44 billion into Twitter to make it a solution that I see as a value to our public discourse. There are people now who are standing up and saying enough, and I want to at least talk to those folks and say, well, what's the feedback you're getting? And why did you get to the point where you are aware, just a short decade ago, we were all terrified of even speaking out. So I said a lot there. I'm going to say that's my final thoughts for today. Brent, how about this? Give us your final thoughts bring us home? Where did I get things wrong? Where did we get things? Right? What do you want the audience to take away from the episode today?

Brent M (Aiming Up Pod)  46:54  
Yeah, I'm not gonna focus on what I think you got wrong or right. Because number one too much? Not too much. No, no, I think honestly, sincerely. I think that, on some of the issues we talked about today, I don't feel confident enough in where I'm at, right? Like, like, I don't have a strong view, like this is the absolute solution. Right? Um, so I'm gonna zoom out a little bit get meta, right? And I'm really going to encourage you to do this and anyone else? Because like, hey, yeah, Revenge of the normies. Cool. Well, guess what, how do you change somebody's mind? That might have a fundamentally opposite opinion as you on a particular topic or a particular view? How would you how would you do that? We wouldn't do it by you know, talking to people that think exactly like you, right, you would go to that camp that's most diametrically opposed to you, and have a public discussion, put it on YouTube. And then those people that might be only listening to that person's material, right, and just getting, you know, straight, like we've talked with the ideology, they're getting their list of arguments they like, like, that might be the only time that they're actually hearing a strong rebuttal, or at least a questioning of the thesis they're putting forward right. And so by virtue of having these conversations number two, I think you're dropped the temperature, right? If you because it's very difficult to have a face to face conversation, like you and I are having even if you want to mentally oppose, and they're just hate each other. You

Brian Nichols  48:14  
know, Anakin Skywalker is hating Obi Wan here today.

Brent M (Aiming Up Pod)  48:18  
So I think that's really important. I think I'm going to focus on doing that more. I have like a whole string of libertarians on my podcast, like, I love it. I love these people. And I'm just like, I say, I'm

Brian Nichols  48:27  
sorry. No, no, no,

Brent M (Aiming Up Pod)  48:29  
I love it. I do. It's, but it's like, it's that whole thing. Like, I'm trying to reach out to people that think differently than me. Because number one, I don't think I know everything. I think there's something valuable to gain from their input. And I think they have something to learn from me as well. Right? And so I'm really gonna focus on that I would encourage everyone to do that, like, stop in Dec online, like try to engage people with curiosity, like maybe you ask, like, Oh, that's cool. We have a difference of opinion. Why do you think that if you start a conversation that way, I think you're gonna get a lot farther towards repairing some of these, you know, high level things that you're worried about fixing? Right? So I think I think people need to take responsibility. And we talked about this probably in the podcast, which is around personal responsibility and liberty, those two concepts are hand in hand. Like we've got to not pointed a politician to say, fix my life, we gotta be like, Hey, we're all in this together. Let's have some important discussions. And let's try to be decent to each other and kind to each other and curious about each other's views. And let's talk about things and stop throwing the flames, man, because it's not doing any good. So, yeah, I don't like to have no solutions. It's a very complicated space to work in. But that's just my high level like mental mental model around it. And I just encourage people to do it. Because I know when I adopted that, a lot of my interactions change and things got better. I learned a whole lot more created better relationships with people that are on different sides of particular issues. I felt like I better understood where they're coming from. Oftentimes we build up a straw man or some stupid thing. We think somebody believes you actually talk to them. You get a completely different story you get so It builds understanding of builds trust, it builds empathy. And I think we need more of that in the world. And so So keep doing what you're doing man, like, I think that you have a value valuable position here, you're doing something important in that space, you're swimming, it's just, that's my mental models is kind of where I'm coming from very much bottom up, starting with myself, and just just trying to encourage people to just be better to each other. And I think we can, you know, maybe we can't fix everything. There's always be problems, we're human. But I think we can make better

Brian Nichols  50:25  
agree, no, and by the way, like, nothing you said I disagree with, that's why I call that out. Um, one of the little mottos I like to promote here in the show is the good people bring out the good and people I want inherently a society of better people, or more good people. But I just wanted, you know, just one thing you said there, Brent, maybe this is where the I'm gonna say disagreements that I have a disagreement because it different tactics is that for you use, you're talking about like going out and talking to the folks we disagree with. And it's more so what's the outcome from that? It's the folks who are watching that. So you're not saying we're going to go in and talk to the Marxist and get him to be a libertarian, you're going to talk to the Marxist. Get the ideas out there, your ideas and his ideas, and then to the broader audience. That could be their entryway, right there, their gateway drug into libertarianism. But my perspective, and this is more of my tactic, right is I get that I see value in that. But I also see a lot of value in going after the folks who identify this as our ICP, right? Our ideal customer persona, our ideal voter persona, if you're going into libertarian politics, and understanding who that that Bob is right? Like, who is Bob? What is Bob believe in? And is Bob more likely to jump on board with our ideas first versus the left? If so, that's my ideal persona, that target. And I kind of look at it in that perspective, because I want to help create a culture of liberty with folks who are inherently already kind of leaning towards our way of doing things. And I just my guts telling me that that's going to be more of that common sense extremists that Normie who looks at where we are today, and they say do 20 years ago, like this wasn't even on the radar. And slippery meat slope, like, here we are, how did we get here? I can talk to that person, I can say, hey, I totally hear you man. Like, I'll empathize with you. I'll walk through how we got here with you and where you personally went through your journey, but to the leftist, I think they're gonna find that there's nothing wrong with this. This is great when you're talking about like, people can express themselves for the first time and they're not afraid to live their life as who they are. Right? Like we've heard the, the platitudes, and I think that is where it's not a matter of one sides better than the other. It's a different tactic. And I actually think, to this conversation, here we go, Brent, here's how we're gonna wrap this up in a nice, neat bow. We need both right? We need folks like you going out and having the conversations with the lefties who you're going to help bring their audience to the table and change the minds there. Right, get the folks who are maybe more of the militant leftists maybe not to be as militant right? Maybe they're just the soft, squishy leftist, I can work with that, or at the very least, I don't have to be concerned with that. Whereas I'm moreso going after who are the folks that are the low hanging fruit who are the folks that we can get from where they are today to at least more on our side based on principles and understanding of commonalities to start, I guess building a coalition more or less with us right and in that nature, prove out our values by the solutions we bring to the table both policy wise and morally and culturally show them that we can make things better but do it incrementally now I know incremental ism and libertarian world is just like one of the worst things ever but I do see that kind of being the way we make some progress and the actual progress not the leftist you know, pushing people off a cliff progress or lining them up against a wall. But that's a different conversation for a different day. Brent we are already over time by like 25 minutes I'm so sorry. I kept you longer than I promised I'd love to hear on Father's Day weekend. So I know you gotta get back to playing dad I do too. So how about this let's go ahead and make sure folks can go ahead and support you your podcast the aiming up podcast, which yes, your surely was on back a few weeks ago. So where can folks go ahead and find you support you and check out your awesome show?

Brent M (Aiming Up Pod)  54:12  
Yeah, thanks for that just at aiming up podcasts on all the socials Instagram, Spotify YouTube wherever man so at aiming up podcast law that

Brian Nichols  54:22  
Brent is has been a great conversation and I know folks in the audience they get value from these types of conversations as well. So if you did in fact get some value folks, please go ahead give today's episode a share on your do tag yours truly at B nickels Liberty you can find me on Twitter, on Facebook, on Instagram, all the social medias you can find The Brian Nichols Show over there. Brent we have a B gets better. That's your handle right for Twitter. Twitter, yes, Twitter x whatever the hell Elon is calling at aiming up podcast both of those links are going to be available in the show notes please go give Brent some love go give his podcast some love and and frankly Brett I love what you do because I know cuz I was kind of doing that and I got, I got burned out. I had one episode back 29 T Yeah 2019 It was called Aska democratic socialists and I had one of my buddies on the show who was a raging Bernie, bro. And I curated a bunch of questions from the audience to ask him like, we played that game. And I just got got burnt out. And I started to find solutions being a better route for me personally. And I was like, please say that there's somebody else out there who's going to be able to do what I was doing without getting burnt out. And there you come. So thank you, Brett. And any final words for the audience today, Brent?

Brent M (Aiming Up Pod)  55:32  
Yeah, just just please prove me wrong, folks are like maybe the sense that I might be, I might be being a little overly naive, in my approach, prove me wrong. I would love to be proven wrong. I would love to see that there's actually value in taking the approach I'm taking so But I agree. There's space for both of us, man, we're both doing a different thing. And I love you, man. I consider you an ally for sure. Top to bottom. So likewise,

Brian Nichols  55:56  
likewise, brother, for sure. All right, folks, that is going to wrap up today's episode again, please go ahead. Give us some love on the podcast and video versions of the show, podcast, Apple podcast, Spotify, YouTube, music, wherever it is, you get your podcasts and for the video version of the show YouTube rumble, Twitter and Facebook, we're uploading the entire video version of the show in their entirety over on those platforms across the board. Just give us some love. Hit that subscribe button, hit the little notification bell so you miss a single episode that is brand new to your RSS feeds. Head down below into the comments. We want to hear your thoughts. Am I completely out to lunch? Is Brent completely on the right path here or is it vice versa? Or heck? Do we both bring some good points here to the table? I think it's the latter. Go ahead. Let us know down below in the comments. And of course, if you are listening to us on the the podcast version beyond hitting download all unplayed episodes, which is yes where you can access all 160 episodes of the program. But also please go ahead and give us a five star rating and review that helps us and the podcast Gods reach more people across the board. We really appreciate it and you would join literally the hundreds of other folks who've already rated the show five stars would be appreciated. And one final plug. Please support the folks who support us our amazing sponsors cardio miracle amp America eagles, CBD liquid freedom, energy, tea, and more. All those sponsors found at our homepage Brian Nichols show.com or attached with today's episode in your podcast catcher that's all we have for you Brent any final words as we wrap things up today,

Brent M (Aiming Up Pod)  57:23  
just the kind of people out there that that's my main thing man like search for the good search for the true and and be nice to people man that that that's where we start loving about good people

Brian Nichols  57:32  
bring out the good and people. Yes, be kind be good. And with that. Thank you for joining us here on The Brian Nichols Show. With that being said Brian Nichols signing off for Brent from the aiming up podcast. We'll see you next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai