Right now, we'd like to welcome to the Armstrong and Getty show fan favorite who we used to call Tim, the lawyer Tim Sandford. He's the vice president of litigation for the Goldwater Institute.
Welcome Tim, Thanks for having me that guys.
Our main question, of course, is what is the libertarian opinion on solar eclipses.
You're against the.
Fantastic So I follow your Twitter feed, which I think is everybody should follow because it's damn damn interesting. You were upset when local university to you you're in Arizona paid Ebram x Kendy how much money to come.
Talk at a university?
Thirty five thousand dollars for a one hour speech. And he is famous for what well, he's of course the primary intellectual in the anti racism movement, so called because in fact he's a proponent of racism. It's just racism against a different group of people, so it's therefore okay. He's quite open about this fact. He said the only remedy for past discrimination is future discrimination, and he's in
favor of that. And so that was the propaganda that he was willing to stew for an hour at Arizona State University and charge the Arizona tax payers thirty five thousand dollars for it.
Yeah, he's the guy that invented this whole idea of there's no such thing as being not racist. You're either racist or anti racist, which is yes.
And therefore there are acceptable forms of racism, and that means hating white people is acceptable, whereas anybody else it's not acceptable. And you know, of course, this is nothing new, this sort of this doctrine that it's okay for the so called oppressed to be racist against those who have allegedly oppressed them. You know, that's well over a century old. It was you know, fashioned first in Germany in the nineteen twenties.
Right, So this transitions nicely into the fact that DEI training, kind of similar to the ibramex candy philosophy, is catch and fire all across the country, or has over the last several years, businesses, universities, schools, all that sort of stuff, and the Goldwater Institute is playing a role in that.
What are you guys doing?
That's right? And now Arizona passed the law not long ago, and a few other states have copied this law that prohibits the government from requiring people who work for universities to take any kind of training in what the law refers to as divisive concepts. That is, the idea that you are responsible for the crimes committed by others of your racial group in the past, or that you ought to feel guilty, or that the or that you know the country is evil because of these things, et cetera,
et cetera. You know, if you want to spew that kind of thing, you're perfectly free to do so, but you shouldn't be able to make me pay for it. And so the Arizona legislature passed this law prohibiting mandatory DEI training and prohibiting the government from spending tax para money to develop such training even if they don't actually
require it. And a FU has basically thumbed their noses at this, and they've been requiring their faculty to take and pass this training program in DEI, and not just take it once, but every every few years. You have to retake it to make sure that you haven't, you know, somehow become a racist in the interim.
What sort of things will they will they, I don't know, require you to believe with this DEI training, this particular quality.
The The de I training consists of things like explaining why you know certain forms of expression or you know, microaggressions, why you need to watch what you say in order to because there are people with different backgrounds who have different perspectives who might interpret what you say in a way that is offensive, and so forth and so on, and it's it's the usual sort of thing that we've
become accustomed to in the past decade or so. But the big problem here is that this is a form of right thing, a form of indoctrination that is basically requiring you to step up and agree. And it's no different than if the school were to require you to take training in a religious view If they said you are required to sit here and take our day long training on why the earth was created in four thousand and four BC, and why the Gospels of the literal
Truth and every other religion is false. We would obviously say, you know, people are free to believe those things, but they shouldn't be able to force taxpayers to shoulder the burden. And that's exactly what's going on. Anti racism so called, is just a new religious viewpoint. It's a dogma that
can't be shaken by facts or logic. It's just been a belief that people adhere to for personal reasons of their own, and they're welcome to that, but they shouldn't be able to force tax payers to subsidize it.
This is a ViBe's question, not a legal question. Do you feel like the DEI thing peaked a while back and it's in retreat, we're on the march.
I do think that, I do think that it has peaked. I think it's going to be around for a while. Of course, because these things never completely go away. They didn't go away after the first time that the ancestor of DEEI was defeated in the April of nineteen forty five, and it's stuck around and it's come back, and I think it'll stick around even after this. But I do think people are tired of it and they're sick of it, and I think there are some great examples of this.
There was oh my gosh, I'm blanking on the title of the movie, but there was a movie that satirized the cultural attitude in particularly the East Coast, toward race and how everything just has to be categorized in back and it was nominated for an Oscar, and there are other comedies and things that are starting to make fun of this, and people are just tired of it. I think the culture is turning away from it and saying enough of saying that it's okay to be racist against
white people. Why don't we just, you know, accept the idea that all people are created equal and that it's wrong to engage in retaliatory racism.
I hope you're right about that, that it is on the retreat.
It feels that way to me too, but it might be you know, the people I follow versus the rest of the world that it's People talk a lot about being in a bubble or whatever.
It's hard not to be in a bubble, wouldn't you agree?
I mean, you got to work at it, you really.
You have to really seek out other sources otherwise you just keep you know, we all talk amongst ourselves to each other and agreed, And.
It's funny because we all thought that the advent of blogging and Twitter and Facebook would would make it easier to get outside of our bubbles, and I guess it does, But it also makes it easier to stay inside your bubble if you choose to.
Oh, absolutely.
Yeah, which a different topic, and I want to get back to the DEI, but do you have any opinions of where you think artificial intelligence is going to take us?
Oh so far my dealings with artificial intelligence it consisted of me yelling at Alexa for not understanding my question, or just this week, you know, yelling at at like a madman at Walmart's chadbot for not delivering my item within the week that it claimed it would. And I feel like an old man screaming at clouds. So yeah, no, I don't really think it's at the stage or we can predict where it's going to go.
Man, it's certainly not there yet. Yeah. I was yelling at the old.
Enough to remember when virtual reality was going to be the wave of the future, or the Segue was going to revolutionize life.
Yeah, yeah, well Segue, Yeah, definitely. Segue was supposed to be huge and didn't do anything. But like I've done the Apple Vision pro and I think, man, I think this could be a big thing for learning or whatever.
Yeah.
I was screaming at the automated thing at the pharmacy yesterday, what can I help you with? And whenever that the computer says what can I help you with? I always know you're not going to understand my question or my problem, and they never do.
Never Jack Jack. Yesterday, Alexa asked me if I wanted her to tell me when it was snowing. I live in Phoenix, Arizona, so I said, yes, please tell me if it's nos.
I lost my temper on one of those things the other day. My kids found it hilarious. I was really screaming personally.
It's fun of having them, having the fun of having them as losing your temper. That's that's why I like it.
Back to the DEI training, so I understand that pretty clear cut on why you don't want taxpayer money going to various colleges to teach people that racism is the way to fix things. Is there anything to be done in private corporations other than culturally?
I do think so, but it takes something that private corporations lack, and that is courage. Unfortunately, history has shown that the last institution you can look for to defend freedom is private businesses. Private businesses, large corporations especially, are moral cowards, and they very much enjoy profiting off of the latest trend. No matter how antithetical to capitalism and
how self destructive it might be. And look at how industry funds the universities, donating money to these campuses where the teaching is almost uniformly anti capitalists, and all that private industry is doing by doing that is feeding and generating its own destroyers. And the corporate world. What if there is anybody in the corporate world with a conscience and the clarity to see the importance of moral issues
and political issues, they need to cut it off. And this is another reason why you asked earlier about optimism. I'm kind of optimistic in that I think the backlash against the universities because of the anti semitism that we've seen lately, I think that's a very healthy development.
Yeah, that's a really interesting observation that corporations, especially big corporations, almost all ways do the cowardly thing and whatever the latest hot trend is, even if it's anti corporation, how do they, after all these years, think this will get us on the right side of the young people and then the love our big, giant, evil corporation.
It is never what I saw far.
I don't understand. In the nineteen seventies, the companies like Exxon would run advertisements about how their fuel was the basis of civilization and it's the good thing, and that was great. They need to do that stuff again. But instead every day it's more apologizing for the very fact that they exist, feeding the alligator, hoping it will eat
them last. And I think if corporate America woke up to how stupid that is and took a stand in self defense and said, you know what, we own this property, it's ours. We have the right to do with that. We will want. We have economic freedom, we have the right to make contracts and profit from our hard work. We are generating and perpetuating civilization in this world, and we have right and they deserve to be respected. I think if a corporation stood up and said that, I
think people would rally to their support. I think Americans are sick to death of the apologizing and they and they would love to see somebody in the corporate world with backbone, and they just they just don't see it.
Well, I think you're absolutely right, and the first corporation that does that is going to get so many huzzahs. You can lay out a screed pretty well. I know you never had any interest in getting to politics. But I could see you on a stage really getting people fired up if you ever decided to go that direction.
I couldn't take the pay set.
Yeah, this might be Tim talking in his personal life rather than representing Goldborger on this question, Tim, I thought about this over the weekend.
I almost texted you, but I thought I wanted to ask you on the air.
So the Supreme Court, with one of the rulings fairly recently unleashed the world of legalized gambling across this country, sports betting, and there's a basket. Tim's not a sports fan. There's a big basketball tournament going on right now known as March Madness. It has turned into the biggest legal gambling event in American history, maybe a world history.
Where do you come down on.
This?
I'm assuming that the libertarian view is why would the government get in the way of you wanting to gamble?
Yes, In fact, that's so much my view that I kind of was puzzled by what your question could be. Of course, people should have the right to bet whatever they want on the sporting event if they're stupid enough to do that.
Right, So I assume that would be the view and that's my view too.
I hate the idea of the government being able to tell this now we probably shouldn't, but the reality is you just said, stupid enough to do it. Lots of people lose lots of money and get themselves into trouble.
What's society's role then?
Yeah, So now you've hear it on a point that I think is really important, which is you cannot have freedom unless you are willing to let people sail.
Right.
If you aren't willing to let people pay the price for their bad choices, then you are also not willing to let them enjoy the rewards for their wise choices. And what the what the free market says is people should be allowed to make their own decisions and be rewarded for their wise choices and pay the cost of their unwised choices. But if you go around wiping everybody's noses, then you are eventually going to have to take their
freedom away. If you promise to pay for everybody's you know, whatever it might be healthcare costs, for example, that's going to create what the economists called moral hazard. It's going to encourage people to engage in unhealthy activities because why not, right, you're going to pay their medical bills, so they might as well do whatever they feel like. Well, eventually you're
going to go bankrupt that way. So pretty soon you start saying, look, I'll pay for your health care, but you must promise me not to you know, eat red meat or whatever it is. And eventually you start putting so many strings on all of the benefits you're giving people that you're taking their freedom away, and that is inevitable, it's inescapable. So you cannot have freedom unless you are willing to let people make bad choices and suffer accordingly.
So my answer to that is if people bet the farm on a basketball game and they lose the farm, then they lose the farm. And if that puts them at the point of poverty, then they need to come to me and ask me politely if I will give them a second chance, and it's up to me to decide, based on their character and their past behavior, their responsibility, whether they've turned over a new leaf, etc. Whether I'm going to decide to help them out in that crisis.
And that is the only humane system in the world. People act like there's something cool about that. Quite the reverse, because my doing that respects that person as a human being, respects their humanity, and treats them like an equal human being capable of running their own lives. It's the allegedly compassionate people who go around trying to take away people's freedom and then pay their bills, who are actually treating other people like their children, who are treating other people
like their animals, who can't make decisions for themselves. Now, I'm saying that people should be free to make their own choices and joy their profits and suffer their rewards accordingly, and I think that the ultimate outcome will be better for everybody. I don't think you will have people starving in the street. The three or the society. The more generous it is, It's always been that way. We are incredibly generous as a society precisely because we are so free.
That is the fantastic answer that I knew I would get by asking you about this. Where do you want people to follow you or turn to you or your substack or whatever.
You can find me at Sandford dot typepad dot com or at Timothy Sandford on Twitter and just google me. I'm all over the place, one of the most interesting people around Armstrong and Getty