Guest: Dan Berhman - Taking Gaza Is Not MAGA: Trumps Neocon Pivot & Why Taxation Is Theft

Music. An idea whose time has come cannot be destroyed by armies or governments.

It's too pervasive, and we still have tools to spread the message. Music. Welcome to the Free Thought Project Podcast, a hub for free-thinking conversations about the promotion of liberty and the daunting task of government accountability. Here are your hosts, Jason Bassler and Matt Agarist. Hello again, Freethinkers. Welcome back to the Freethought Project podcast. My name is Jason Bassler and joining me once again is the Freethought Project editor-in-chief, Matt Agarist.

So thank you all for joining us. We have another wonderful show lined up for you today with a great guest, who has been a longtime friend of the Free Thought Project. In fact, I'm not really sure why in, you know, what is it, seven years now we've been doing this podcast. We've never had him on the show to join us before. But first and foremost, before we get into all that, I do need to express my concern and condemnation with some of the biggest news on the internet right now.

Now, I'm sure you guys have already heard, but apparently, according to Trump, the US is going to take full control over the Gaza Strip. Now, obviously, guys, there's a lot to unpack with this, and we're going to go ahead and talk about it during this podcast. But as I said in last week's show, you know, things are moving very fast. It almost seems like Trump and his administration are taking a page out of Mark Zuckerberg's playbook with the whole move fast and break things kind of mentality.

But yeah, you know, this is, it's certainly worrisome, this new occupation slash, you know, ethnic cleansing to turn the Gaza Strip into the Riviera, as Trump recently said. And it's, I believe, completely short-sighted and definitely not the America first rhetoric that we had gotten during the campaign. And, you know, this is all coming as well from the same empire that killed over a million Iraqis in the war on terror.

And just a couple of years ago, set up the reconstruction bank for BlackRock and JP Morgan in Ukraine. And we can't forget the Biden administration left $8 billion worth of military equipment in Afghanistan for the Taliban. So, you know, what could go wrong, right, guys?

But Matt, how are you doing today? And man, what is your take on all this before we introduce our guest today?

Ah man i think it's that's how we make america great again right we we start talking like uh i mean so the left for years has called trump hitler and you know all this stuff and you know it was complete hyperbole it was bullshit but now when he's when you talk about taking a country over like that belongs to these people and then cleansing that country of these people some of his staff have already started to use the word cleanse which is it's fucking mind-blowing to me like now those analogies

might be a little bit closer to true right and and i've seen mostly support from the of this move by most of his supporters there's a couple of uh of outliers there on twitter like some big supporters of his who are like what the fuck trump but now i'm watching most of his supporters fall in line and get right behind him on this most, fucking crazy move I've seen made by a president in recent history. Yeah, well said, man. And I think it was a recent interview within the last 24 hours or so.

Somebody asked him, like, what Palestinian people is this going to apply to? Like, who exactly is going to be removed? And I don't know, again, if this is just Trump, you know, being hyperbolic and just some of his, you know, over the top rhetoric. But he said all of them, straight up all of them. So, I mean, he said they'd be thrilled to relocate, quote, they would be thrilled. Yeah, well, I hate to break it to him. I don't think that's the case at all.

And of course, we have a lot to talk about with this. So I won't go too far down this rabbit hole. But I did want to before we get started today, plug two things really quick, guys. Number one, our new children's book, Little Free Thinkers Know Your Rights is back in stock after you guys showed up to support us and it sold out.

Now, it is our first children's book and it teaches kids their constitutional rights, including free speech, the First Amendment, the Bill of Rights, due process, probable cause, and much more. It's for kids 6 to 10, and you can find it on our website, littlefreethinkers.com. So if you appreciate what we do, it's a great way to support us while also educating your kids or friends and family with kids. So definitely check that out, guys, littlefreethinkers.com.

And second, I want to urge anyone listening to this episode to also check out our previous episode after they're done with this one of course last week we had the brilliant researcher and investigator Ashton Forbes on the show to discuss his area of expertise which is the disappearance of Malaysia flight MH370 it was a extremely powerful podcast we covered quite a bit of ground definitely worth checking out and trust me when I say it's a wild one. We got into some pretty interesting theories.

And I know personally, I certainly learned a lot. And while you're at it, guys, please subscribe, rate and review this podcast, especially if you're listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. We're always trying our best to bring you guys high quality conversations, but we do need your help to get the show into more people's ears.

Well, let's go ahead and introduce our guest this week. Our guest this week is Mr. Dan Taxationist Theft Berman. Dan is a libertarian commentator, international speaker, a well-known activist known for his strong anti-taxation stance. He's also an entrepreneur, an author, and just recently released his new book, Taxationist Theft, How Politicians Rob you blind. Dan also ran for president as a Libertarian in 2020, and is just generally a busy guy.

And I think that barely scratches the surface on all the things you really have your hand in, Dan. But you've been a longtime friend of the Free Thought Project, so we're definitely excited to have you with us. Dan, welcome to the show, and yeah, thanks for joining us. Yeah, thanks for having me on. Really excited to be here. And yeah, I don't know why we haven't done a show like this before. But yeah, I know like your activism has always inspired me since I kind of got

on track with all this stuff. So it's good to be in good company. Thank you, brother. Well, yeah, that feeling's mutual. And as I said, you know, you've helped us out over the years. Geez, I don't even know. I mean, I'm sure we could go down the list of all the stuff that we've kind of worked on. But yeah, this is long overdue. And I know we did have a brief moment to catch up. What was it last July at Freedom Fest in Las Vegas?

But I wanted to have you on the show to talk about this vast array of projects you're working on or involved with and talk about some current events.

And hopefully, with a little luck, we can get into some philosophy today. But as I mentioned in the opening there, the biggest news on the internet right now by far is Trump's bold claim that the US will be taking over the Gaza Strip and displacing millions of people in the process.

I'm sure if you guys watched the footage of Bibi Netanyahu, which was circulating around Twitter yesterday, his face and body mannerisms when Trump made that announcement, he seemed just as surprised and maybe even a little bit dismayed about it as everybody else. So I wanted to ask you, Dan, what is your take on this whole situation? Is this Trump making these grandiose claims, or do you think this proposal really has teeth? And is this part of a larger plan

that maybe was already agreed to with Netanyahu? What are your thoughts? Yeah, I mean, I kind of take everything with a grain of salt that he says, you know, I was I was skeptical of, you know, that he was going to pardon Ross. And of course, you know, as soon as he was inaugurated, I was posting all day, hey, we're waiting. Where's where's that pardon? You know, expecting and and what's interesting is like all the apologists were like he said in the first day, he still has 24 hours and then oh,

the day didn't start until, you know, 12 o'clock. So he has until 12 o'clock the next day.

So it's you know and eventually he did which is which is pretty awesome and you know i i don't want to i've kind of come to this like position where like i don't want to be anti-trump because like i realize he's done some great things but at the same time it's almost like you know he has he has the one ring now right the power that nobody should hold and you know him being a person who likes to say all these crazy things and have these great

grandiose ideas it's really kind of dangerous what he can actually do with that now. And all it takes, you know, it's like the road to hell is paved with good intentions, right? He might think he's doing something good for a friend of his, Israel, but in reality, he's not, you know, that's a bias. He's not seeing all the bad things he's potentially getting ready to do to everybody else on the other side of that. Well said, man. You know, God, I'm right there with you.

Who knows? It's really hard to take Trump for his word at this point. You know, like he said so much stuff over the years and yeah, you know, I will give him credit where credit's due. Freeing Ross was huge, you know, and I think we've talked about it on this podcast before. Like it's huge to us. I do think it will kind of leach out to the greater public and they'll kind of understand like why we were so adamant about getting Ross free.

But like, I don't know, like to the general public, does that really mean anything. I guess there's an argument to be made there that it was maybe insignificant in the larger picture, but I can't be completely blackpilled with a lot of this stuff. I think there's probably enough people that hate on Trump with the TDS, Trump derangement symptom. And I don't know, I want to have nuance when it comes to this conversation, right? Because yeah, there's some big things happening.

I mean, he just announced the end of the Department of Education. So I mean, that seems significant, you know? But yeah, there are a lot of issues with this. And the whole executive order thing, I mean, he has really gone to town with these executive orders. Now, I don't know exactly how many he's actually issued over the past, what, I guess it's been about two weeks now. But I did see an interesting tweet by our previous podcast guest, David Knight.

And he said, it's time we stop calling Trump's orders executive orders. The executive has limited enumerated powers. These are personal dictates, as in dictatorship.

I think that's an interesting point because the left for the past four years has said very little about some of these executive orders that Biden has issued, and especially ones pertaining to the CBDC. I don't even know if that's on the left's radar at this point. I don't think it is. But even still, it seems like you make your bed and you sleep it in. So that's become a norm.

These executive orders has become the norm. And when we give the president that much power, eventually the other shoe's going to drop where, yeah, the Republicans are going to have power again, or the Democrats are going to have power again. And we just place ourselves into this position where it's going to continue to kind of escalate to this point where, as David Knight just suggested, it is going to be more closer to a dictatorship.

So I'm concerned, man. And I guess another question to kind of expand off that would be to get your opinion as to where the next four years of this Trump administration is headed. Do you have any faith that Trump and Doge will keep their word and continue to cut government waste and the agencies and these departments that are participating in the over-regulation of our lives?

I don't know. What do you think about all these libertarians seemingly on board with Trump, even though his first four years had so many anti-libertarian policies? Yeah, it's definitely going to be interesting. I think, you know, it's interesting. We always see the same thing, right? It doesn't matter who gets elected. There's always, you know, the group of people who elected them, and they see them almost as like a deity, right?

They can do absolutely nothing wrong. and sometimes those people wake up and they're like hey maybe i made a bad decision here i the first time i ever voted for a president was 2008 i voted for obama and it took me about a week to like realize i voted for him because you know we we were you know we had bush he was going he was creating all these wars i was done with it and i thought obama was the anti-war guy and it took me just a couple weeks to realize

that that wasn't it but i see the same thing with so many people I've met so many people who the first time they ever voted was for Obama in his second term, his first term, people who voted for Biden because they thought, you know, he cared about people. He was going to fix the health care system, all this other stuff. And now we're starting to see people who voted for Trump and they're like, this isn't exactly what I voted for.

But regardless, there are there are those people who refuse to think for themselves. And they just some of them just aren't even paying attention. Right. They don't know what Trump's doing, but anytime anyone comes to tell them, hey, did you know Trump's doing this and it's really bad? They don't care, right? That's the guy I voted for. That's the guy I love. That's my deity. That's my guy, right? You better not say anything about him or else you're wrong and you're a bad

person. And unfortunately, there are a lot of people who believe that. And so I think ultimately, anytime any of these people get in power, it's important that we, the people, keep them in check, right? And I know we often feel like completely powerless against this, but we have to realize like if enough of us get together and understand what's going on and put on resistance, they're like these leaders will do what we say. You know, as long as like Trump, I mean, especially Trump, right?

Trump is like he goes to his he goes to his events where he's got, you know, tens of thousands of people cheering him on whatever he says. Like, I think in his first term, he said, I could shoot somebody dead in the street and they'd still vote for me. That's absolutely true. And so many people cheered him on for that. So now he's got it in his head. Oh, this is great. I can say these things. And when he goes to another event and he says, and you know, we're going to take over the Gaza strip.

Like what is, if everybody cheers him on in his head, he's like, okay, I guess that was a good idea. I should go through with it. Right. So but if if if he said this to an audience of his own people and they're cheering him on for everything and then he says, and we're going to take over Gaza and everybody boos, like, what do you think he's going to do? You really think he's just going to keep going through with that or he's going to be like, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding.

I'm not really going to do that. Like there is ultimately, they will bow to the resistance, but we really have to put on that pressure with that resistance. Because if we're just, you know, if we're just going about our day and doing everything the way that we always do it. He's not even getting the memo that there is a resistance, right? He's, he doesn't even hear about it. So, so there is a certain degree of, it's our fault for not pushing back.

And we need to kind of understand that and take that responsibility. But also, you know, going to your other point where, you know, we, we, you know, the executive orders, like, you know, yeah, it's, it's, you know, when, when the Democrats were supporting Biden, yeah, he's being a dictator, but he's my dictator. So that's cool, right? He's doing all the things that I agree with. We have to understand that no matter what, no matter, like when we entrust more

power to these people, eventually that's going to be handed over to someone, someone else. Right. And we've seen the same thing, like the same thing is already happening with, with Trump, right? People are demanding Trump has more power so that he can undo all the things that Biden did. But all that's doing is that's creating a precedent where whoever replaces Trump is going to come in and say, I need even more power.

I need even more, you know, discretion with executive orders to do even more things so I can undo everything that Trump did. And they're not going to undo everything because that's not the list, right? Plus, there's probably a few good things that they're doing that we don't want to undo.

And so if we just like say like, yeah, have that power and we'll trust you to be the good person that we think you are, having not actually seen you perform with that power before, It's a very dangerous situation. So ultimately, like we need to stop giving power to politicians. And to those that do have power, we need to actually push back and resist or else, you know, they're just going to do whatever they want.

Very true, man. And that executive fiat that the newer presidents in the last 25 years have ruled by is crazy. I was reading some stats the other day, and I think that for the first century or so, even more than that, like 120 years or something like that, the first 25 presidents only signed like 12 executive orders per year.

Right trump is on his 45th one and two weeks into this presidency and this is this is a power that he inherited from biden that biden inherited from obama or from from trump and then trump got from obama and and from bush and going all the way back right it just keeps getting closer and closer to an actual dictatorship like david knight said in that tweet man it's wild and now we have with Trump, you know, we got Doge.

And Doge sounds like a fucking awesome thing. It's the Department of Government Efficiency. We're going to go in there and fucking shake down government. They're getting rid of USAID, which is fucking cool, right? But, you know, like, they've done some, or recommended some good things, right? And Elon Musk comes with Trump now. And, you know, since the, before the president, before Trump was elected, Elon was going around saying he reduced waste and spending.

Yet this week, you know, he's calling for ramping up the fucking war on drugs again. He even suggested using the U.S. military involvement to stop the fentanyl epidemic. I mean, if he was actually concerned with any type of efficiency whatsoever. He'd at least know history, right? At least the 60 fucking years and billions of dollars just squandered in a drug war, right? I mean, more militarism and bigger police states not going to fucking do anything

but empower the cartels and hurt citizens, just like it fucking always has. Yeah. Why, why do you think that like Elon is taking this stance? Do you think this is just like political pandering or do you think he like has a motivational move behind this considering his very, very deep ties to government through all these contracts?

I mean, it's really hard to tell, like, you know, some people will say, you know, this guy's bought and sold for, like, they'll say Trump is, is, you know, paid for by, by AIPAC or something like that. These are all definitely possibilities, but there's also the possibility that, you know, like Elon has said and done a lot of great things and, you know, maybe his position on the drug war is drugs are bad.

And like, I don't know the whole history and I haven't, you know, he, he spends his time reading about, you know, rockets and AI and everything else, he's probably not spending a whole lot of time learning about, you know, all the failures of the drug war. Maybe he needs to read a couple books on that. Maybe he has good intentions, but he just doesn't understand. That's a possibility too.

And I think anyone who speculates on that without, you know, maybe there's, maybe he's said something in interviews that I haven't seen, but I think, you know, we could speculate on that all day. It really doesn't change much unless we actually have the means to, you know, if I sent him a book, he probably wouldn't read it. But if we have, if we have a chance to get the information in front of him so that he could say, oh, interesting, this is really a bad idea. I'm going to change my position.

That would be amazing. But it's, you know, is that going to happen? Or is he actually, you know, bought and paid for, in which case, it doesn't matter which information we give him, he's not going to change his position. That that's kind of a question, you know, I don't, I don't think many people could answer that aren't within his close circle. But it's definitely something that we should find out. And if it is just a lack of information, like, let's give it to him.

You know, he does seem to be a pretty smart guy, you know, when it comes to a lot of different things. So, you know, maybe it's just a lack of information there. Yeah. I kind of have a follow-up to the head. I mean, he did smoke weed on Rogan, right? So he's kind of pro legalization there a little bit, right? Well, there, there's always like, I mean, it's, it's always some degree of hypocrisy, right?

But I remember there was a friend of mine, he, you know, he, he was a big drug lawyer and he talked to a judge off the record out of court. And he asked this judge, he's like, look, you've been sending all these people to prison for cannabis possession, right? And like, you know, I know that's the law here in Texas. I know you're just doing your job, quote unquote.

But what would you do if your wife got cancer and found out that, you know, that that cannabis could actually help her with her treatment? Would you allow her to have it? And he was like, well, of course. So that hypocrisy is is always kind of there. And to a lot of people, you know, because of the propaganda and everything, there are a lot of people who really believe drugs are, are like the worst thing ever. Like I've met people who are like, anyone who smokes pot is a thief.

They'll, they'll, they'll, you know, they'll rob their own mother to get money to buy weed. And it's like, that's, that's not the case. Right. But the propaganda has kind of created that. So, you know, it's, it's, that's something we as an entire society kind of have to unlearn. And there are a lot of people who, you know, we're, we, We know all the information in our little circle, but there are a lot of people out there who, you know, they're really trusting, you know, decades old propaganda.

It's wild, man. I guess it's the same reason people stay lined up behind their political zealot that leads them into power whenever they have the ring. Right. Doesn't matter what they do just so long as they hold it. But so, yeah, back to the USAID. Right. You know, Doge said they're going to end that. And which is huge, right?

Like considering it's very longstanding history of acting as a front for CIA regime change operations all over the world and watching Democrats in the street fucking cheer for like, like protest against it. Apparently it was funding the New York Times and Politico as well. Yeah. Like 7,000 different journalists I read. And so like they had a, it was a propaganda arm for the world, dude. I mean, you have 7,000 journalists in your pocket.

That is fucking crazy. I mean maybe that number might be inflated It's in the thousands though. I saw they were paying something like $6 million in quote unquote subscriptions. Yeah. That sounds like money laundering. Yeah. So that is definitely a net positive. But Whitney Webb, who's a former podcast guest, she had to burst my bubble when I was all happy about that. Right.

Like everybody's celebrating. I mean, in our circle that the USAID is getting shut down, except for the fucking weirdos in the streets protesting it. But she's pointing out that the real story is that Musk just basically gained access to America's private banking information through the Treasury payment system. And X is trying to move towards becoming this everything app, a model similar to China's WeChat, which is just basically like a mass surveillance blueprint for fucking slavery.

This seems like a shift from one form of control to another, right? And given that Musk isn't required to divest from any of his business interests, I mean, how much of this move do you think is really about government efficiency versus consolidating his own power? Are we sleepwalking into some fucking crazy shit right now? Yeah, that's definitely, it's an interesting question. I've seen kind of the same information going around.

What I think is interesting, though, is so everyone's like, okay, he has access to all this data. And there's kind of an assumption that that means he can just download all that data and upload it to X and do whatever he wants with it, right? There's definitely going to be some, some, I mean, there's definitely like potential conflict of interest questions there, but there's also, you know, what's he able to do with that information, right?

Like there are probably, you know, I don't know how many dozens of, of IT people who work for the treasury who have access to all that information on any given day. Right.

And we're not usually worried about them even though they can see all this data because they have certain policies in place they have rules prohibiting them downloading that data and doing anything with it right and that's that's according to law like that's what the government is not allowed to do the government is not allowed to even sell that officially to any of these organizations or you know they'll sell some of it but but some of the really sensitive stuff They're not allowed

to sell that at all. Right. So to to assume that Elon is then going to be able to access that information and use it for something else to empower his own platform. I think that's a little bit far fetched. Of course, it's possible. And he'd be breaking the law. And once, you know, once Trump's out of office and the Democrats take back over, he'd be basically facing the same FBI that went after Trump for it.

So, you know, there's, there's a totally twisted potential of, of what could go wrong if he does try to do something nefarious with it. But so, so I don't think it's a huge risk, but at the same time, it's like, it is somewhat of a risk and we should keep our eyes on it. And, and, you know, I'm not certain that we should say like, he shouldn't be anywhere near there. Cause at the same time, it's, you know, people are, people say this, right.

They say nobody elected Trump. He shouldn't have, or sorry, nobody elected.

Musk and he shouldn't have this power but nobody elected anyone who works directly under trump right trump got elected and he hires a bunch of people and sure there are some people who get senate approval and they have a little bit more power but he could hire you know an intern or an aide or somebody who work in his office and he can say you know go deliver this message go do this thing and they can go do that thing and you know whether it's you

know if it's if it's trump saying okay do whatever this guy says and here's an actual order and he takes it to the treasury. And this guy walks into the treasury and says, I have a letter here from Trump saying, do whatever I say. That's pretty much legal. And so he could give that power to anyone. Trump, sorry, I keep saying Trump, Elon, he could give that to really anybody off the street if he wanted to.

And of course, you know, whoever that is, is going to be scrutinized and what they do should definitely be scrutinized. So I think there's, there's a little bit more nuance to it and we should definitely, you know, be paying attention. But I think also this, this comes, this comes with part of the like auditing and transparency, right? If we're expecting a lot more auditing and transparency, we should know exactly what Elon is doing.

We should know if he's extracting information and using it for something else. We should have transparency into that. Maybe, you know, maybe it's as much as like, Hey, let's, let's Bernie Sanders pick someone, right? Send, send someone who's on your side to follow Elon around all day and watch everything that he does. And if he does something wrong, you can announce it to the world. And that's, that's our transparency, Right. If that's what you want to do, I think that's perfectly acceptable.

But, you know, to automatically assume that, you know, there's something wrong about giving someone this power. I mean, which sounds kind of contradictory because it's like we shouldn't give the government any power. Right. That's kind of my position. But once that power is kind of assigned, it's like looking at the legal framework, like there's not anything.

Too unusual i think about this but definitely like you know there's there hasn't been anything legally too unusual about what's been going on for the past 20 years and of course that that thing that's not unusual has been shielding all kinds of people from you know prosecution for all kinds of corruption and everything else so there's definitely something that needs to change in terms of like the auditing and transparency but i think jumping to conclusions is is definitely something we

don't want to do because that kind of that that kind of really just breeds breeds like these hateful debates between both sides, and they're not very productive because it's all just based on assumptions. Yeah, it muddies the water. And I agree with that. And I appreciate that nuance that you're able to provide there. And I think there's certainly layers to this as well. I guess the part of it that I feel is the most problematic is that, well, I made a tweet.

I made a tweet. I think it was yesterday. Can you imagine the incessant, never-ending screeching from MAGA if unelected Bill Gates was handed the keys to the federal climate system by Biden, you know, by the Biden administration, like Elon Musk recently was.

And, and yeah, I was thinking about another post here sometime soon, but like, I really do think that the make America great motto should be replaced with it's okay when we do it because it really feels like that's kind of the circumstances we find ourselves in with the right right now is like, they're so able to justify anything that happens.

And, yeah, obviously, there's a lot to unpack with everything you said as anarchists, because, yeah, we don't want any of these people doing anything with government authority. Although, you know, if they're repealing some of this, you know, overregulation in our lives, then, you know, I think we're OK with that. But there's also other things here that is kind of driving me crazy at the right really isn't talking about.

I mean, from my point of view, and I feel like I'm screaming from the rooftop talking about this, is that. Trump is re-escalating and rebranding not only the drug war, which we just touched on a little bit, with, you know, designating the cartels as terrorists and, you know, Elon's rhetoric and stuff like that.

But he's also re-escalating and rebranding the war on terror now, which is going to be kind of intermingled with the drug war, with these, you know, cartels being designated as terrorists. Not to mention the fact that we just, I hate the collectivist, we, the U.S. Just recently bombed Somalia. This is the first time Trump has dropped any bombs in the second half of his administration. He already dropped more bombs than Obama and Bush on Somalia.

So I'm seeing, you know, where Biden was kind of deescalating the war on terror and it seemed like that was beginning to become a thing of the past. Well, now it seems like it's ramping up again, full blast.

And on top of both of those things, now he's getting us into a trade war with these tariffs and, you know, we're issuing tariffs to Mexico and Canada and, you know, other countries. And I guess the right seems to be eating that up as well and able to justify it. But this is all just bad news, in my opinion. I think the right has turned a blind eye to some of this stuff. In fact, I talk about it and they call me an idiot. They tell me I'm stupid on Twitter. They tell me that these are bad takes.

And well, yeah, of course, it's a bad take if you're a Trump bootlicker, you know, if you're an authoritarian worshipper, of course. So what are your thoughts on these tariffs, man? Like, is this Trump just playing ball? I've seen some libertarians suggest that it's going to be. You know, just posturing for a short period of time until, you know, Trump and the U.S. get their way with some of these tariffs. And then if some of these countries, you know, kind of roll over,

then we'll be in a much better position. But like, what are your thoughts on this? Yeah, let me, before I answer that, I kind of want to go back to something you said. Sure. Right after my last monologue, you mentioned Bill Gates. And like, I do this all the time because I try to be conscious of the things that I say and my own biases.

But so I'm going to call myself out on my my own bias like there are a lot of things that musk does that i like so i kind of consider him in a favorable light and sometimes that shows bias but you made a really excellent point about bill gates and i actually saw an interview from him a couple days ago maybe where he said you know it's really interesting to see elon musk who comes from the private sector and now he's

going into government and i see this all the time you know all these all these business men, you know, they come into government and they think they know what to do and how to handle things. And I'm like, well, that's the pot calling the kettle black, right? That's exactly what you are. And, and you're, you know, you're, if I can call him a failed businessman, even though he's a, he's a billionaire, like everything he creates is trash.

In my opinion, he uses monopoly force to, to get people to buy it, which is the same, you know, method he's done once he gets into government saying like, yeah, we're going to force people to take vaccines. We're going to force you to buy our products, right? Or we're going to force the government to pay for it and then give it to you. He's engaged in a lot of this stuff. And I'm sure there are people on his side that are just like, oh no, he's great. Kind of the same bias that I have.

So I just wanted to call myself out on that, but also to acknowledge your point about Gates and that whole bias. So your question about the the tariffs. This whole thing is really interesting because we were during the campaign, I think we were promised that he was going to eliminate the income tax and replace it with a tariff. And we were going to use the tariffs to, you know, basically fund the whole government.

And I see a lot of people, you know, supporting this idea, you know, going back to, I think it was during Andrew Jackson where, you know, the government only had tariffs. That was its only source of income, and there was no debt. It was paid off completely. There's a few really interesting things about that. First of all, what we're looking at right now is a complete 180 on that, right? Yeah, he says, you know, let's get rid of the income tax, but he kind of throws that around as a joke now.

And there was a bill that was proposed, or sorry, that was a flat tax. It's the there's a bill that was proposed and this goes around every year for the past while where it's it's a proposal to it's the flat tax, right? It's a fair tax to create a national sales tax and repeal the income tax. So a lot of people think that this is Trump's doing and this is like this is his promise to get rid of the income tax. No, this bill has been around for a while and it fails all the time.

But what we're hearing out of Trump now is, yes, we're going to have tariffs and we're not really hearing a whole lot of, you know, even, you know, encouragement that, yeah, yeah, we're still going to get rid of the income tax. Right. Except, you know, he kind of made a joke about it in one of his speeches. Somebody from the audience yells, just get rid of all the taxes. And he's like, yeah, why don't we get rid of all of them?

So, so this whole thing is interesting, but there's, there's a lot of things to like point out about this. He's backtracked on the tariffs where he says, you know, before it was a sure thing. Now it was a sure thing that was going to fund the government. So we could get rid of the income tax. Now it's just a bargaining chip. And I think he said that, you know, his whole thing is he doesn't want the tariffs.

He knows those are a bad thing. He just wants to threaten with tariffs to make other countries lower theirs. That's great. If they lower theirs, if that's all you're doing with it. But if you actually create them, that's a problem. But if you don't create them, then you don't have this other tax that's going to be able to get rid of the income tax. I say get rid of both of them. You don't need either one of them.

But that's another story, Right now, the people who also support him are talking about, you know, this this time with Andrew Jackson, where like all we had was tariffs and and, you know, that could fund the whole government. Well, the problem is back then we didn't have a Federal Reserve and we didn't have so much government spending. So if you wanted to get to that system, yeah, sure. You know, you could run the entire government on tariffs, but you'd have to cut like 90, 95% of the spending.

And even what we're talking about with USAID, like USAID had a total budget of something like $60 billion per year, which sounds like a lot, but it's really not. The U.S. Military spending is $900 billion. It's almost a trillion, right? It's like about 15 times as much as USAID. And what's interesting about that is even after Biden's, you know, quote unquote, ended things in Afghanistan, that budget didn't go down.

It stayed where it is. Right. And that could contribute to, you know, why why Trump is saying like, oh, yeah, we need we need a foreign enemy because we got to spend all this money. Right. That's how that's how politicians think we have this budget has to be spent. And it might not just be him. It might be the generals and all these other people saying like, yeah. And of course, these people are all paid for by the companies. Like, where's that money going?

Right. We've seen these crazy expenses where I think the IRS was spending like $40,000 per muffin to keep stocked in an office where 95% of their employees were working from home. That sounds like money laundering, right? That's the same thing that's going on with the military industrial complex. When you look at almost a trillion dollars a year, that money is going to these massive military contracting companies.

And most of that's going in their pockets, right? They're paying $15,000 for a Scrooge. It's money laundering 101 again, right? So, so all of these things and all these promises, there is a much bigger picture. And like, you know, we, we need to start, we need to start cutting all these things and tariffs are, they're not going to pay it off. And here's another interesting thing about, about the debt, right? Cause people are thinking like, oh yeah, the tariffs will pay off the debt.

I think Trump estimated something like the tariffs bringing in 600 billion a year. That's assuming we continue importing as much as we are. If our imports decline because of this, which is kind of the stated goal, that means we're going to bring in less than $600 billion. And if that's going to replace the income tax, the income tax brings in something like $3 or $4 trillion, right? So almost 10 times as much as that $600 billion is coming in from income tax.

You're going to have to cut 90% of the government if you want it to be able to survive on that. But then there's the other question of paying off the debt. And I mentioned the Federal Reserve. It's literally impossible to pay off this debt. The way that it's been created, the money itself is what's backing the debt, right? So if you were to pay off the debt, you have to destroy the money. Like that money is backed by debt. So as soon as you start paying off debt, the money disappears.

We go into deflation, which is just as bad as hyperinflation. The money starts disappearing and you get to a point where you realize, okay, there's $37 trillion worth of debt and there's only $2 trillion worth of money in circulation.

They're like it is an absolute impossibility in fact if you took all of the world's gold reserves which is an estimated something like 10 million ounces which works out to about 17 or sorry 27 trillion dollars that's 27 if the u.s government were somehow to be able to tax the world and take all of its gold they still wouldn't be able to pay off that that 37 trillion dollar debt that's how ridiculous it's it's a mathematical impossibility to pay off this debt so anybody who thinks we're

going to come up with these tariffs and we're going to be able to to you know do what andrew jackson did in you know whatever year that was where they didn't have a federal reserve it's i mean it's a dream it's a fantasy it's a great fantasy but it's a fantasy well yeah fantasy is a part of the Trump supporters playbook, I think. And that's not mentioning the unfunded liabilities of Medicare, Medicaid, the student loans, I mean, all that stuff.

And yeah, he's also MIA on the ending the taxes on tips, which that one seemed a little more realistic than getting rid of the income tax. So I... Yeah, I'm not too hopeful about it. I think anytime they talk about repealing the income tax, that's just right wing Republican rhetoric that they say just to get elected. You know, I don't think it should ever be. I will say this though.

I think when he did say it just before he, I think, I think he was saying it after he got the, after he got the, the win, but before he took the inauguration, before he took the office, when he said it, I think there was a lot more public support for it than there has been in the past. And that kind of gives me hope because ultimately we can talk about my book later.

Like what I'm trying to do is encourage more people to take that position that all taxation is theft yes like we're closer to that and once once we hit a critical mass with that like whoever is in off they're just going to have to make it happen our our representatives the president everybody else it like they can say it jokingly as political rhetoric but if they don't follow through there's going to be hell to pay from the people

who are now realistically expecting that so i think we're pushing that overton window and and that's that's something that's something you know, even though he told the lie, presumably that's, that's what he did. Even though he told the lie, it's good to see that there were a lot more people willing to support that position than, you know, than there have been in the past. And hopefully it's not just the people who are, you know, yeah, whatever Trump says.

Right. Yeah. Well, I agree. I certainly agree with that. And, you know, let's, let's actually talk about your book now, man, that was a perfect segue. You set the table for us. And as you noticed before the show started, I am wearing my taxation is theft hat. So I feel like we definitely have to touch on this. So yeah, let's get into some philosophy here. And you could also intertwine some information about your new book at the same time, which,

of course, you were kind enough to send out to me. And thank you for that. When I was doing a little research for this podcast, I had a good laugh, man, because I didn't realize that you actually changed your middle name to taxationist theft. That's so freaking epic. That's awesome. And yeah, I don't know if you want to take a second to get into it, but you didn't do it legally, but you did it lawfully, right? Right.

Yeah. So basically like the presumption that people have is if you want to change your name, you have to go to the government and you have to ask them for permission and they could deny it because they don't like what the name is. But in reality, that's like, that's how their system works. That's how their machine works. But that's not exactly the law or the real world, right? You can change your name just by declaring it. And, and which is what I did because it's my name, not theirs. Right.

And I did it just to make that point. And as I run around telling everybody, my name is Dan taxationist, that Furman, and people start calling me that as you did when you introduced me today, that becomes my name. And it doesn't matter what it says on any government document. Now there's a question of, well, does, but does the government recognize that name? Well, first of all, I don't care if they recognize me at all. And in fact, I'd prefer they didn't, but they will actually recognize it.

And a lot of times what they'll do is they'll call it an alias, right? And we see this a lot with like, you know, rappers or, you know, people involved in gangs who don't use their legal names. Those are their aliases, their AKA, right? And that's actually used to identify them in government systems like courts and everything else. So you can change your name and you don't need government permission.

And interestingly enough, there's actually like a whole history of why we have last names in, you know, around the world, the government has actually come in like, okay, how do we identify and track all these people? Nobody like, you know, in places where there was no concept of last names and their, their solution was to implement last names. And in some cases they would actually like create dictionaries of last names and go from town to town and say, okay, this is your last name.

And so now you have like towns in, I think the Philippines where like everybody's last name, if you're from that town, it starts with the same letter. Because it came out of a dictionary. Like there's, it's a really bizarre history, but like, and to us, it's social security numbers, which was to take it a step further, right? So we have all these government systems which track us and what they're doing is they're creating these identity profiles.

And this is the thing we're always worried about big tech, right? We're worried about Google associating all of our information from over here with everything on the internet and tracking us across it. That's what the government's already been doing with our social security number. And they've used it to connect all of our bank accounts, all of our jobs, all of our sources of income, and they use it to tax us and steal from us.

Yeah. And somehow that's been normalized just because it's the state doing it. And we think that there's some type of, I don't know, benevolent behavior, some virtue there for some reason. I guess that's the government schools, right? But as you pointed out, anybody else doing this would just be kind of creepy and weird and absolutely illegal.

But okay, so I do want to get into a little bit more of this philosophy, although you just did lend some to us there and you shared some of that interesting information, which got in and know half that stuff about the last names. But we've touched on this topic before with a few past guests, probably too many to name by now, but I always love hearing people's different answers because philosophy and logic is always so important to me. But can you explain why taxation is theft?

And can you explain also and maybe what motivated you to write this book, Taxation is Theft, How Politicians Rob You Blind, which is massive, by the way, I think it's like 567 pages. So yeah, go ahead. And if you don't mind getting into that a little bit and also tell people where you could where they could find it.

Yeah, absolutely. So I'll do that before I forget. You can get the book at taxationistheft.info. And if you pay with crypto, you get 10% off. And actually, I think you've got a discount code that you can give people. Yes. That in the caption below. All right. I can't think of it off the top of my head. It's also available on Amazon as an e-book. But if you buy it through taxationistheft.info, you get the discounts. You get a 10% discount if you pay with crypto because we're trying to encourage

that. And of course, you don't pay any sales tax because I'm not a tax collector for the government. So why is taxation theft? To me, it boils down to one simple question. Because you can call it a tariff, you can call it a user fee. Everyone has these things about cigarette taxes aren't really forced because you can decide not to buy the cigarettes. I like to boil it down to this. It's a violation of consent.

Right i have an agreement with somebody to exchange my labor for their money and when a third party comes in and says wait a minute we want a piece of that that is a violation of consent of our contract because we didn't consent except for the you know the threat of force that we wanted to have this agreement now the same argument could be made well you could decide not to have a job but you need to earn a living right and you can look at you can look at the same thing with cigarette taxes.

I want to buy it from this person. There's a third party coming in saying, no, the two of you may consent to this transaction, but we prohibit that. We want a piece of it. Unless you're giving us some extra money, you're not allowed to do this. And so it's a violation of consent. And probably a lot of people think of income tax as the absolute worst one. Property tax is actually the worst one, in my opinion, because this is your foundation of survival, right?

If something like COVID happens and you can't go to work, the jobs are shutting down, you don't have any source of income, you can't pay your rent, how are you going to keep a roof over your head? And this caused a lot of people to panic. But if you owned your own land and you owned your own home and roof and you were able to grow your own food, that wouldn't have been a problem for anybody. But it's more difficult to do that now because you have to pay a property tax.

And if you're living on the land completely self-sufficient. You still have to pay the government a tax, which means you still have to go into town and get a job to pay that tax. And as you continue to do that, you're spending less time at home. It becomes more difficult to grow your own food, maintain your own home. You're going to have to pay other people to do that now, right?

So what they've done is they've created a system which takes away our ability to sustain ourselves and forced us into this, into trading our labor just to survive. And if you consider a lot of people say taxation is slavery, I say not exactly, but in this case with property tax, it is. And if you consider what slavery is, because people are like, yeah, but I'm still free. I can still travel the world. I can leave the country. I can do, you know, I can go buy groceries. I can do whatever I want.

Slavery was not about captivity. Slavery was about the extraction of labor, right? If, if slave owners 400 years ago could have extracted that labor without having to beat anyone or punish anyone or keep them in captivity, they would have. If they could have gotten that free labor any other way, they would have. And today, the way they do it is by imposing taxes on us, which make it impossible for us to survive without those jobs because we have to pay the government.

Yeah, that brings me to my next question, man. We all know that taxation is theft. We all know If we act on that belief publicly, like we refuse to pay taxes, we disobey their laws, guess where we end up? In a fucking cage, right? And most of us, like myself included, don't want to risk never seeing my kids again over these principles, even if it is the right one, right? So we're stuck in this system of coercion where compliance isn't consent.

It's basically just fucking become survival, right? Right.

So my question is, what kind of advice would you give to people who want to resist, but know that full resistance could cost them their freedom? So I would say two things. The first is very important, and that's to share the information and understanding that taxation is theft. And I think, you know, as we talked about before, a lot of people are kind of coming to this realization now.

But that's very important, because once we hit that critical mass, then the government will bend to the will of the people, because there are a lot more of us than there are of them. But when it comes to like actually like what can i do in my personal life.

There's actually and there's a lot of it in the book there's there's a lot more that i'm putting into a second book right now you you have to understand what these systems are and how they work and you know we we see let me give you a good example people know that when you get charged with a crime you get a free lawyer from the government and that was put there very specifically by the founders of the constitution because they knew that people in power like

to take their dissidents and charge them with any crime possible, put them through a legal system that they have absolutely no understanding of just so that they can railroad them straight into prison so that they become less of a problem. And that's exactly what we have today. Except the problem is that even the lawyers have been brainwashed by these systems over over a hundred years to not fully understand how they work.

And I've seen this, I have, you know, personal friends and a lot of acquaintances who are lawyers and I challenge them on all these like legal principles and how the government actually works. And it is astounding how little they actually know. They've gone to law school, but they were taught procedure, not like the underlying philosophy of how the law and the courts actually work, or even what tricks the government use to make sure, you know, people are fast tracked to prison.

And so we understand this in the criminal justice system, right? If you hire the right lawyer, what you did might not be illegal. You might not go to jail for it, right? When it comes to taxes, there is a lot of misinformation, false beliefs of what the actual danger is. And this is one of the big ones with the income tax.

And I'll give you a couple little tidbits here. First of all, out of the over 100 million Americans who do not file their taxes every year, only 2,000 people per year are prosecuted by the IRS and the Department of Justice. And those people are not prosecuted for not filing. Those people are prosecuted for fraud. And that's for the people saying, I've got 30 kids and things like that, or making up fake receipts and all this kind of stuff. Those are the people who go to jail.

Simply not filing, usually what's going to happen is they're going to take whatever information they have, they're going to file a substitute for you, and they're going to try to collect on it. But if they don't have any information, they don't have anything to go on. You're probably never going to hear from them. And I know a lot of people who this actually happens to. So really, there's there's a lot of false fear out there. I mean, people are just scared to death of the IRS.

I remember when I when I first when I was a kid, I was afraid to like even tell people in public that I hated taxes because, you know, I was afraid the IRS or the FBI or someone's, you know, tapping my phones and they're going to come knock on my door saying, hey, we heard you've been saying you don't like paying taxes or you've even been considering, you know, figuring out a way not to pay them. Like that's been a real fear. And I know a lot of other people have the same fears.

Once you understand these systems and how they work, they become a lot less scary. So, so, you know, those two points I think are very important. First, you know, share with everybody else and help, help the entire country and the entire world understand that taxation is theft, then it's a violation of your consent and a violation of your human rights.

And then also to understand how the systems are being used against you, because one, that's going to quash your fear that you have of being persecuted for even sharing this information. And two, it's probably going to give you a lot of tools where you can actively avoid paying these taxes like over 100 million Americans have. Great answer, dude. Yeah. 100 million, huh? I want to be one of those.

Maybe I will be. but you're totally right about the fear aspect of that man because i think it was maybe a couple years ago i got a letter from the irs about two days before i was going on vacation and i was like fuck like i do not want to open this right now and like potentially ruin my vacation and so, yeah sure enough i like waited until i got back but the whole time i was on vacation i was thinking about i was still there in the back of my mind like

what is that letter like what is it are they gonna cage me for something you know and i remember that old analogy too that people like tom woods and Lou Rockwell used to share. It was like, you know, if you get a call or a letter from like, I don't know, Comcast or something, like you don't think twice about it. But like, if you get a letter from the IRS, like most people sweat that, you know, most people are going to be worried about that.

And if these people are supposed to be working for us, I mean, that's kind of the wrong dynamic, right? Much like when a cop's in your rear view mirror. I mean, how many people actually feel safe, right? I think most people are panicking and they think, oh shit, oh shit, what am I doing? What did I do?

Did I do something wrong? And, you know, it just becomes kind of the prevalent mentality because we've just heard so many horror stories about the government's monopoly on force and their monopoly on legality, too. You know, I mean, yeah, it's not unheard of. And we've covered plenty of stories over the years of people just getting railroaded by the government and the judicial system.

So also one last point here, and it's like, anybody else think it's a little crazy that it's 2025 and there's still this entity in society that says, give me a 30% cut of everything you earn or we'll put you in jail? And everybody just kind of acts like that's normal. I mean, I don't know how...

Well, it's, it's a, I do know how, but it is strange that we've evolved so much, especially with, in the age of information with the internet, like, it seems like this is something that just needs to die eventually, you know, but who will build the roads? I want to, I want to add something to like exactly what you just said, like, because this is a fear that people have, right?

If I don't pay them, I'm going to go to jail. and the the reality is once you understand the system is you know you hear people say there are no debtors prison prisons in the united states even if you know even if the irs does get wind that you you earn some money and they claim that you owe some money and it's a tax and it's assessed and you owe that money to the irs first of all there's a there's a system you can get on called non-collection status where are currently not

collectible cnc where they cannot actively take money from you or harass you or take any property or anything. That's a real thing. But to the point about debtors prisons, just because you, you like people think like, if I owe money to the IRS, I can go to prison. You can't, there, there is no prison for that. But there's, there's this one little thing called tax evasion, which is completely not that tax evasion is you have the money.

So if you don't have the money, right, the IRS can't do anything. Now, if you do have the money and you're trying to hide it from the IRS, you don't go to jail for not paying. You go to jail for evasion, which is a complete. So that's kind of a loophole that they that they got around to, you know, well, if we can't throw them in jail just for owing, let's figure out something we can throw them in jail for.

But to your point, if you don't, to my point about what you said, if I owe them money, I could end up in prison. That's not really a thing. There's some more nuance to that. But the fact that you even have that belief or that fear, and I know you're smart, and I know you understand what our rights are with police and all this other stuff. Even that you have this misunderstanding kind of shows how deep... Their propaganda has, has reached. And, and most Americans have this same belief.

And that's, that's really what I'm trying to get out there is, you know, the IRS is not as big and scary as, as most of us think they are. Yeah. Well, they could be soon. We get those 92,000 agents in there, right? I'm just joking, man, man, Dan is, is all this information in your book. Yeah. A lot of it's in there. There's it's, it's hard to tell what I've said. That's, that's maybe a little bit newer, that's going to be out in the second book.

What I like to say is that this book is really, it's a primer of a lot of the information of how the system works. And my next book, which is coming out soon, is going to be called Hacking the State. And that's going to be more of a how-to guide, which, you know, and I have to give this disclaimer, as soon as you, even if, as soon as you read my first book, you're going to be like, I want to go out and fight the IRS and throw away my driver's license and all this other stuff.

There's a disclaimer in the book. Don't do it. There's still so much you need to learn. And I've been learning this for 20 years and, you know, I had plenty of hiccups along the way towards the beginning of it, but I can, I can happily say I haven't paid any income tax in about seven years. I haven't had a driver's license in 16 years, I believe, and haven't paid a single parking or traffic ticket, even though I've gotten plenty of them in that time.

Hey, free thinkers. This is Matt Agarist, and I'm going to take a quick pause to remind you of something really important. First off, apologies for the interruption, but if you're still here, that means you're resonating with what we're doing. And we need your help to keep it alive. Independent platforms like ours don't survive on corporate sponsorships or mainstream media funding. We survive because of you.

If you're finding value in these unfiltered conversations and real solutions, the best way to support us is by liking, subscribing, and sharing this podcast with your friends and fellow freethinkers. It's a small act, but it's a powerful one. It helps us break through the censorship and algorithms designed to silence voices like ours.

This isn't just about supporting a podcast it's about standing for freedom exposing corruption and building a movement that inspires real change and if you want to go beyond liking and sharing we'd love for you to become a member of the free thought project just head over to the freethoughtproject.com and click on the tftp membership link at the top of the page as a member you'll be directly supporting our mission and helping us to stay independent it.

Your support is what keeps this platform alive and fighting. So thank you for being part of this journey, for sharing these ideas and for standing with us.

That's amazing, dude. It's been awesome having you on, man. We're at the end of the show here. But I just want to say, man, what I really appreciate about you is that you don't just live in some theoretical and Kapistan bubble like so many of us do in the libertarian movement, right? You apply this nuance and you think through these issues and live in reality where government overreach is real.

And so are the consequences of resisting it, right? But you brought that balance right from the start of this conversation, man. And that's something that's sorely missing out there, as you stated in the beginning. You know, it's so polarized these days. But dude, you're a wealth of knowledge, man. And anyone who wants to truly understand how politicians are robbing them blind needs to run out and grab your book, Taxationist Threat, How Politicians Rob You Blind.

And don't forget the promo code that's going to be in the episode description under here. Before we wrap, though, Dan, where can people follow your work and support what you're doing and learn more? And before you answer that, if anyone ever doubted that you've earned your middle name, taxationist theft. I think you just proved them wrong, brother. I think, let's see, I'm on Twitter at Dan for Texas. I'm on TikTok, which I think is at Dan Berman.

And I think on Instagram, it's also at Dan Berman, B-E-H-R. There's an H in there. And yeah, that's pretty much where you can find me. There's danforfreedom.com, which has a little bit more information about me personally. There's taxationisttheft.info, which is where I have a lot of my anti-tax propaganda.

There's, there's a whole shop on there. There's a Q and a section for people who are, you know, learning to push back against the system myself and a few other experts are in there answering questions.

And then of course there's, we didn't, we didn't talk much about this, but drinkbloodoftyrants.com, which is a beverage company that I started, which is kind of a tongue in cheek, you know, a joke at the Thomas Jefferson, the tree of Liberty must be watered from time to time with the blood of tyrants. And it's kind of a fun way to bring this whole philosophy into the mainstream without being too political. Hell yeah, man. We're going to have all that information under the podcast description,

so you guys don't have to write that down. But that's awesome. Dan, it was awesome, brother. Till next time, man. Yeah. Music.