Thomas Massie’s Dead-End Libertarianism w/ Ron Dodson: Ep. 486

obvious accesses of twenty sixteen era woke politics. But at a certain point in time, it becomes necessary to turn that critical gaze inward to your own guys, to guys that you like, to people that you wish had won. And that's why I think this episode is an important companion piece to the show I did with Carl yesterday examining Thomas Massey's loss in Kentucky, not Tennessee. As I said in my last monologue, because nothing we said there's wrong. I stand by everything I said, and in many cases

this analysis pairs very nicely with it. But there's a lot to take away from this. Obviously, the fact that Apac, Miriam Adelson and co. Spent nearly three thousand, actually over three thousand dollars a voter in this election. I mean,

that's dramatic. But I think we need to look at Massy individually as a man and as a politician, and then extrapolate that to some problems on the right, and like our part of the right, not just the neocons, not just the conservatives that we love bashing, and look I like bashing them too. I've made a middling career

out of it. But in all seriousness, we have to understand that there are times when we or our friends, people we like, display the exact same beautiful loser tendencies, the desire to destroy yourself over an unwinnable fight, to sacrifice your chance of power, your chances of success, for outdated political modes, right fighting the battle of ten years ago. And that's the argument that the author of the piece that Ron Dodson and I went over makes great article

for Compact linked in to description. Effectively, Massey was a man out of time. He comes from a time when the Republican Party didn't have an identity, where it wasn't bound around a central idea or central figure. I think he's correct. Now, that doesn't mean that Donald Trump is exactly who I would want to be occupying that central role, or that I think massew was wrong and should have lost not at all. But to say when there is a time for unification, well either you get on board

or you get axed. And I think it's important to mention that Massey did not do a great job appealing to other people or making himself friends right now. Obviously he made an enemy of the Israel lobby, and that's something that as we go forward, will be less and less of a problem. Look at the demos of who voted for him. Look at how much money it took to unseat him. But now that's a gamble that cost you money. Criticizing the president on war powers that cost

you something. And do I think he was right one hundred percent? Do I think he was right to challenge Jpack one hundred percent? But you have to look at this in the cold light a day. You have to look at this. To be honest in an amoral context, you have to look at this seriously, not just flying off the handle because it feels good, not just allowing yourself to sort of be defeated forever because of your

perfect consistency. And I think really the way that mass shows this is in his be honest libertarian holdovers right, the things he kept from twenty thirteen, the Ron Paul era stuff, which led to him making stumbles on areas he didn't need to, as regards immigration, as regards the Second Amendment, as regards stuff like that, where if he hadn't, if he had simply said, you know what, we're done doing this, he would have been in a better position

enough to matter. Who knows, it's hypothetical, but I think it's important to look at that. It's also important to really be frank about the gap between what you care about and what the median voter cares about. That doesn't mean whatever that issue that came to your mind isn't important,

doesn't mean that you're not right. But to say not everyone cares and not everyone cares in the same way, And I think Massew's failure largely speaks to that, particularly among the kind of people who vote in Republican primaries, which is old people. Right, he would have had a tough road to Hoe no matter what. But he put himself in a weird position, in a really weird position. And honestly, look, three thousand dollars a person does a lot. But I don't think it did all of this. I

don't think it did everything. There's more to this story than the APEC money. Now, that's a big part of it, right, I'm not going to say that it it's insignificant. Clearly it's a major part of this. And clearly this is unsustainable. You can't buy out every race to this tune forever, especially if current demographics continue. But that said, ass he

wasn't a perfect candidate. He wasn't a perfect guy, and he made a lot of mistakes, a lot of mistakes we can learn from because effectively we're watching the Republican Party being built into a monolith, being built into the Party of Trump. And the Republican Party really hasn't had an identity. It had an identity during Bush, but really

that's a holdover from Reagan. That's an old paradigm, and I think it's important to look at the party being made in Trump's image, and wonder, well, what happens next? Right now there are a lot of friends working at once. You know, the rising anti Israel sentiment across the board under fifty five, Well that's a major shift. But also the party is being stifle act more and more so with Trump loyalists. He is the message, he is the base, and clearly he has a ton of power. He decided

this primary. He took a guy who swung at him, and let's not forget Massey swung at Trump over corruption, which is an issue I don't particularly care about, and honestly, I get the feeling that most voters, particularly Republican voters, don't really care about. And so that set the ground, right, that set the battlefield, and whatever happened from there, we

have to remember that. I think it's also important to recognize that Zionism is different to different people in the sense that for a lot of people, and for a lot of the people that are nominally pro Israel, it's

not really a position they think about that much. It doesn't occupy the same central nature that it does perhaps for you and I. For many people it's reflex it there's a lot more to do with the politics of the American nineteen seventies and with general fox New sentiment than it does any specific I'm like thought, any specific rationale, and that's not good. I don't think that should be

the case. But it's important to remember that if you define yourself on that, if you're putting yourself out in public as a politician on that grounds. But it's sort of irrelevant to a lot of people. Now, should it be?

I don't know how any times I can say this, but I still got comments on the last article or a last episode. Rather if people misunderstanding my position. I wish Massey had one. I wish that we could kick Zionism out of American politics, but at least right now, we can't and we have to understand that. We have to understand that while the battlefield is changing, it is

not transformed yet. It is more transformed than I would have guessed by a dramatic, dramatic degree, but it's not yet an interesting point that It's also going to be very interesting to watch how the Republican Party exists in Trump's image after the man himself is gone. Kind of saw it happen with Raken, But I think and I could be wrong, This could be a classic Jbird bad prediction. But I wonder if there is a possibility that we

don't get a massive upset in the midterms. Maybe this is due to redistricting, maybe this is due to just changing voter attitudes. But there's a real possibility that there isn't a big price to pay. There isn't a big consequence coming out of this race, which could, I don't know, lead to an interesting situation, a situation where yeah, people aren't happy, but fundamentally there's been a greater gap placed between voter sentiment and the makeup of the House. Now

broadly speaking, I actually support that. I'm not really a big democracy guy, And if I had to pick, I'd like a Republican controlled legislature just because it keeps certain bad things from happening. And the bad things that would have happened probably would have happened no matter what. So it's directionally preferable. But that's its own interesting thing. That we may well be moving away from the era of

midterm snapbags. We saw that actually in twenty twenty two, even in twenty twenty right the Democrats, and maybe there's some shenanis there if you're more conspiratorially minded, that their dramatic Biden results didn't necessarily translate down ballot. So it's entirely possible that the House is going to become more stable. We're starting to see this sorting taking place, and again maybe that means everything is from a certain perspective centralizing.

Trump has expanded the role of the executive. He's been fighting on that, and so maybe that's where power centralizes. I don't know. It's an interesting question, and if we're looking at this frame of paradigm shift, maybe that's part of it. That the actual landscape of where politics happens shifts. We've already seen that as regards issues like abortion and largely the Second Amendment being kicked down to state levels.

It's a very interesting series of possibilities and one that I think we, as the new writer, are uniquely suited for. We are winning, We are in the ascendent. Our values are becoming more popular, but they're not there yet. But given a long enough span of time, if current trends continue, yeah, will be more important than we are now. So just a series of thoughts on that. This article again is

not what I agree with in every instance. There are things I disagree with, things that I would phrase differently, But it's well written, it's thought provoking, and so I

think it's worth your time. Again, make sure that you do not make the mistake that Massi does, assuming that people care about what you care about, and assuming that the conflicts which formed you, which okay, may not be Ron Paul Revolution, maybe COVID, it may be something else, are uniquely applicable because look, the boomers don't get it, but also we don't get them, and at least for the time being, although maybe for less time than previously anticipated,

they still matter. It's sort of a I guess, a rain on the parade type of podcast, but nonetheless a really good one. So as per usual, right find me anywhere you listen to podcasts. I'd appreciate reviews. I don't know if they help, but they do make me laugh, so maybe leave a review. Call me a slur in my blocket, but I do appreciate it. You can also check out our sponsor, Axios Remote Fitness and Coaching jd

You guys, good work. You should support him also if you want the episodes early in ad free the monologues two days before everyone else a few bucks a month on Patreon, substack er com road. It's uh, how I do this without further ado, here's Ron Dodson. All right, Ron Dodson, welcome back to the jay Bird and show how you doing.

you're back talking a podcaster. Listen and learn in all seriousness, right, Ron, When you and I were talking about this, you sent me a really interesting article from Compact by Daniel McCarthy that we're going to go through and suffice it to say,

this is very interesting analysis. I don't necessarily agree with McCarthy on everything, but it's well written and puts forward some really interesting points because I think that, especially for the people listening to this show, this election was a referendum, referendum on Zionism, and that is partially true, I think, especially for younger people, that's what it became. But in the co text of the GOP and in the context of older voters, that wasn't really the issue at hand.

And as I spoke with Carl Dole last time, one of the things that I brought up is there is an assumption that just because you care about something, everyone cares about it. And it is true a lot of people, particularly older people, reflexively support Israel, but that's not really why they voted against Thomas Massey. And so again parts of this article I disagree with and I agree with, but it's an interesting point and one that I think

we need to consider. So before we jump into it, Ron, is there anything you want to say?

age podcast on political philosophy and history, it's fantastic. So whether you agree with Dan, and Dan would say if he was sitting right here, he would say that, whether you agree with Dan or not or his conclusions, I think it's he's the type of thinker that's very beneficial to go through to see the gears that are turning in his head so that we, you know a lot of I know you have a younger audience, certainly younger

than me. These some of the things he's going to reference are lived history for me, and I think it's good to just kind of get in there, get your uh, get your hands dirty in it, and and go through it and then be very informed in your agreement or disagreement. So that's my encouragement. And uh, and give Dan the benefit of the doubt. He really is a good guy and he's one of us on the right, but very thoughtful guy.

Massey was a symptom of that weakness. He arrived at Congress at a time when the GOP was divided and directionless, and at first Massey seemed to be part of the answer to that party's woes, but the alternative he represented was stillborn. For reasons, the Kentucky Congressman supporters and critics alike should take the time to understand. Doing so will help them appreciate Trump. During the George W. Bush years, the Republican Party seemed to have a coherent worldview, one

derived from a broader consensus among educated Americans. Democrats as well as the Republicans had learned to cherish capitalism, though leaders in both parties believe government had a benevolent role to play in making the best of markets. Bush Republicans favored policies to promote home ownership, for example, the cornerstone of the opportunity society.

literally had no one to staff his administration. Uh, you had to have a strong, coherent party. An old school that that for the longest time, the Democrats have done a much better job, uh than we have. So uh, so let's take that last thing first, Bush, is do I mean Bush, listen to me. That's our next point.

Trump is very much trying to to uh and and not always completely coherently, but but he is trying to uh make the party of one voice, and that seems that's harder on the right than it is the left, because the right has always had structurally more diversity than the left. Uh. We are the faction of truth and truth truth with a small t is often uh a product of perspective, and the right has done a better job, especially in its more historic leaning branches, has done a

better job of recognizing that. And so there's there is this there is this sense on the right of we we ought to have a bigger ideological tint. The problem is, if you're going to destroy the old ways that that have been that basically the post FDR, pro post war consensus, Leviathan, you're gonna have to do it from the point of

a singular voice. That's Trump's point. He is doing it in a messy, pardon pardon the pun way, Uh, but that that and everyone on the right was calling for this, and now when he's doing it now, people have their hands in the air again. I didn't I thought Massey was hilarious when he during his concession speech, he said, sorry, it took me so long, but I had my opponent

was in Tel Aviv or something along those lines. That's that's funny, and I agree with that, but you know, there's cost to a unified voice, and and maybe that's it. And then we need to remember the reasons for the rise of the Tea Party, which Massey was a was a part of. It was not a it was not a coherent movement at the time. Uh It brought from a lot of Massy was kind of like you know, uh Ron Paul was hugely popular after after two thousand and eight for a lot of good reasons. He was

so honest and such a breath of fresh air. And Massey really rode those coattails. And yet that's always going to be that perspective is always going to be a bit of a a prophetic voice from the outside looking in. That's not a you're just not going to rule or create a governing coalition from that standpoint, which is what the rest of the essay kind of goes on to

talk about. But I just wanted to stop it right there and say, hey, you know, remember the history here, and then I don't know if you want to talk about you know, during the George W. Bush years, you know, the Republican Party seem to have a coherent worldview. Yeah, it had a coherent worldview that we're saying was was wrong, one of incredible neo conservative leanings of of of of massive cosma, you know, massive cosmopolitanism, of globalism and so

on and so forth. So, I mean, that's what I've got. I just wanted to stop and kind of catch us up right there.

I'm on here to talk about. But you're gonna get But then you are gonna you are picking a fight.

in a massive identity crisis. And yes, the author gets into this, I just want to sort of lay the ground the Tea Party really was a negative identity. It is simply not that not Obama and many different people were able to project themselves onto not Obama. But if you really drill down to it, these were disparate people who didn't really have a lot in common. And I think that's particularly important to bear in mind considering what

is the right now in America. Yeah, sure there's some positive vision, a lot of it is at its basis anti woke. Now it may have flowered from there, but realistically, if we're looking at what ties people together, it's effectively that let me carry.

of that in American politics. So, and I think that'll show the further we go down.

not retaliatory. It was swiftly revealed to be an open ended commitment to turning that tribal society into liberal democracy. The war Bush began in Iraq was the same, secure in the knowledge that liberal democracy was both right and inevitable for the entire planet. Hadn't for Francis Fukuyama said so, there was no fear that prolonged occupation might prove futile. Hadn't we turned Japan and West Germany into good democracies

after World War II? In fact, faced with a choice between rebuilding the American way or rebuilding the Soviet way, those peoples had acted according to their own priorities, not ours. Afghanistan in the eighties also opted for American aid over Soviet tyranny, then promptly succumbed to the Taliban Once the Soviets were beaten the Bush Republican ideology. Sorry do you want to interview?

This is just he's very much like you know, Barbara was, uh, and he's kind of a affable guy, which is at least on the surface. He didn't it didn't bother him to kill hundreds of thousands in the process. But there's this rule. There seemed to be this weird disconnect there about that. So you know, America's policy going into the Global War on Terror post nine to eleven was schizophrenic.

discredit itself. It sort of blew up any sort of common cultural basis it was running on, and also was faced with this sort of like rising generational figure of you know, brock Hussein Obama carrying on right, the Bush Republican ideology was discredited by the Bush Republican party's performance, couldn't win the wars it started, and the consequence of promoting easy credit for uncredit worthy home buyers was a

housing bubble and catastrophic collapse of major lending institutions. Meanwhile, it turned out that the capitalism enriching the world in rich China along with everyone else, even as it diminished the exceptionalism of American wealth, nor did it built door

did it win its cultural battles at home. Progressives pursued the imposition of same sex marriage on the entire country through every means possible, and after they got it, which finally happened during the Obama years, they escalated the struggle to war over the very meaning of the term man and woman. So a couple things there, right, There were a lot of reasons to hate the neo conservatives. I One might view them as as traitorous, having divided loyalties,

and that's certainly true that cannot be emphasized. But also they lost an immense amount of capital in the Culture War. The country jerked to the left after they blew up the Republican Party. And look, I don't wish they were still in power. I don't wish that Bush or someone exactly like him had won in eight It's not my point at all, but to say that's part of the reason they are viewed as anathema because they lost Conservatives a whole lot of ground that can't be overstated. It

basically added fuel to the fire right. You have the financial collapse, which pushed a lot of people away from the Party of Big Business. Now we can all acknowledge that turned out to be a shell game. Obama was just in bed with the banks as anyone else, just as in bed with the insurance companies as anyone else, if not more. I'm not saying that that proved to be a wise calculate But this is a point that Scott Horton makes that these foreign wars, these foreign adventures, well,

they cost us a lot. Here it discredited the Christian Conservative to be honest. Even to this day, the kind of like normal conservative evangelical is still measured up against the failures of that era. Right, it did definite damage to the nation, but it also did damage to the American right. It fractured it. There was no central point around which to rally. Sorry, Ron, I'll throw it back to you.

being governed. And you know, philosophically, we can all jump on it because it was overly universal universalists that you know, well, we just had in Liberia hard enough, right, making reference to the fact that Liberia was given a very American style constitution and that turned into a hell hole. But we could do it this time with with Afghanistan. And I have no problem obviously with us enacting, you know, exacting justice after being attacked. You know, if everything was

as it supposedly was. And I'm not a I don't have any dog in that game. By the way, there's people way more, way more down the rabbit hole of all the details of nine to eleven. I'm I was too close, you know. I'd just gotten married and we were my wife and I were trying to get pregnant and look for a house, and we just bought a house, and then nine to eleven happens on the way anyway to a fertility appointment. I mean, I remember it like

it was yesterday. It's just too close. And by the end of the day, I'm thinking about going as a as a thirty four year old guy at the time. Where can I go in? Is there a way for me to get into OCS as a thirty four year old And so it's a it's just too I'm too close to it still to be able, like some of the younger guys are, to go back and really look

into the details of what truly happened. All that to be said that the war we chose to have, instead of enact exacting justice, which didn't fully happen until until Obama, we decided to create this global war on terror, which was I think a disaster on every front. So it and and as Dan says, it couldn't win these wars, and so there's just a huge lack of prudence that's

on display. And part of that is because there wasn't a unified There wasn't a truly conservative, rightist vision of who the American people were that the government was protecting. This goes all the way this and so instead we turned into this ideal that we were trying to fight for and sorry, that just doesn't work well.

And one of the other questions we'll get to this later. I do want to get through this article is obviously what comes after Trump? And you sent me a podcast just briefly featuring the author of this piece in The Spectator, and one of the things that The Spectator, the host of the podcast at the Spectator was saying, is that it's from his perspective, which I don't necessarily agree with, we're in kind of another seventies right all over again,

and the hope is for another Reagan figure. And I don't necessarily know if that can be done again for any number of reasons. But it is interesting if we talk about paradigm shift, something that's come up multiple times recently. Darryl Cooper John Fieldhouse in pee Quinonas did an exceptional episode about exactly this, is that you do get stuck in one for roughly a generation or two, that that

is the solution. And it seems as if we are stuck in the paradigm of Reagan really one way or another, and we haven't shifted out of that point for another time. We'll come back to it later, put a pin in it.

was very much it was Protestant. It was we're protesting. It wasn't a vision for what America is other than whoever wants to be, you know. And so I think you're exactly right there. Okay, we can we can move along. We need to do a pod some time on Reagan because it's it's a bunch of contradictions. Uh and and if you live through the seventies, man, it is something was going to happen because the seventies were weird.

with the Tea Party, but they were kissing cousins. The explosion of the Ron Paul Revolution was certainly there was a lot of opposition to what we now call the deep state, right the excesses of government spending, but a lot of it was anti foreign intervention. The idea that we are a country we should care about that, not foreign wars. And a lot of the guys that are sort of in between you and I Ron in Age, the sort of elder millennial types, cut their teeth there,

like I can think of George Bagbee. A number of other kind of prominent friends of mine who aren't on the Internet all came up during that era. And there most definitely was a foreign policy element of anti Bush, anti Cheney, and I think that's what pushed a lot of people into libertarianism. Effectively, I'm basically a conservative guy, but I don't want to waste my tax dollars blowing

up children halfway across the world. Right, but Thomas Massey was aligned with a movement that did have a clear vision for foreign as well as domestic policy. In eight, the Texas republished and Congressman Ron Paul had found surprising degree of grassroots support when he mounted a presidential campaign explicitly criticizing the Bush era policy agenda, including the wars. No other GOP contender for the White House dared to

criticize the eight. Republican Party looked to figures like John McCain and Rudy Giuliani to support a post Bush foreign policy, yet Paul defied them and propounded an alternative. His strictly non interventionist views were of a piece with his opposition to virtually all domestic federal activity beyond what the strictest

interpretation of the Constitution would allow. Republicans didn't adopt Paul's view and mass, but with Democrats and fully control of Congress since the six midterms and Barack Obama in the White House, a strictly oppositionist ideology could find a niche

in the GOP. The twenty ten midterms brought in a wave of new Tea Party Republicans into office, and along with them came a handful of more or less explicitly Ron Paul Republicans, including the congressman's son Rand who was elected to the US Senate from Kentucky two years later. With Obama on his way to reelection and the Republican Party at such a loss for leadership, Mitt Romney would be its most would be the most its presidential primaries

could produce. Thomas Massey won a special election and subsequently a full term in the US House, overlapping only briefly with Ron Paul, who retired in January twenty thirteen. Anything to add to that history.

to fear, the party's backbenchers. The House GOP caucus was a riot of factions, none of which possess enough authority to wield power. The Senate was a little better if Mitch McConnell's long tenure as Republican leader in the upper chamber was secure. Individual senators increasingly became brands unto themselves. The party division were on full display in the twenty sixteen presidential primaries clout it up with so many candidates the debates had to be broken up into separate tiers

based on polling. Interesting point there.

Fox or CNN or whatever. With the Internet and these personalities, you began to see this atomization of this factionalization of even within the party, of these of these personalities, and so you got these different brands that really came to prominence in this period.

that really exploded. Obviously, you know Obama leveraged that heavily, but really in twenty sixteen, that is when we see the explosion of conservative politics online and effectively, what we've also seen is that if you can get a big enough following, you have a golden parachute for good or for ill. If you become an infamous or fai amus congressman or senator, you can become a figure in conservative media.

Matt Gates, Marjorie Taylor Green, any number of people have done this, and so setting aside whether I like or dislike those figures, it's not important. That's an incentive. It's a major incentive, especially when there is no central leadership, there is no party line per se. It's dog eat dog, everyone out for themselves, and there is an incentive to differentiate yourself because well, that's how you get paid rand.

everyone else in the party. This was a necessary function at a time when the party had to be forced to confront its failures as the Party of the Bushes, and when it kept trying to avoid that confrontation by nominating a McCain in a Romney. But most Republican voters to stay nothing of. Lawmakers were never going to accept Paul's strictly libertarian constitutionalism as their own paradigm, which I think is something that a lot of libertarians right now

don't want to admit. Look, there's a lot of cases where doctor Paul is right He's a great guy, and he is what I wish America could have become. But it's not going to work functionally. This system is too far away from his vision. It can't be bent into that, especially not with a libertarian attitude towards power. I will leave that there. Draw your own conclusions.

to that founding ideal. And I'm not speaking of an a Jafa sense, So I'm speaking in a Hamiltonian, Washington sense, Madisonian sense can only be done within the walled garden of a protective, extremely powerful Article two Executive. Hapa goes so far to say, basically a king because only then libertarianism in and of itself excused power too much, and you've got to have someone someone has to bear the sword, the political sword. And this is the again, this is

the libertarian paradox. Okay, so you didn't have to say it I did.

in the House. He may have been much less intervention interventionists than the typical Republican, including the typical Kentucky GOP voter, but that wasn't something that mattered much in an ordinary primary or red state general election. Conventional wisdom among Trump's detractors says he only won the twenty sixteen nomination because the Republican field was so divided, But the field was, of course no more divided for Trump than it was

for every other candidate. Why shouldn't someone else have succeeded because of the large field. The most that can be said for this canard is that too many candidates were all trying to be the same thing, while Donald Trump defiantly stone stood alone in being different. Yet even that would not have helped if he hadn't been different in the ways that voters liked. They liked his hardline views

on immigration. They liked his willingness to denounce the Bush foreign policy in terms hardly less vivid than Ron Paul had once used. Though Trump's objections were not about whether the wars were constitutional, but about why they weren't won.

the Middle East disastrous? One hundred percent? They were. Many people died, tens of thousands committed suicide, didn't get anything we wanted to And that matters more than functionally the moral implication. That matters more than, to be honest, the budget deficit. That is what is the operative concern winning or losing. Now that's not how I view things, but in a functional how do people feel about this? That's really what matters. And is there such a thing as

a pyrrhic victory one hundred percent? Like that's not what I'm talking about either, But that's really what matters. And that's why I think Trump's early anti interventionism was so popular, because it fed into the general feeling that we're being screwed. This country isn't cool anymore, it isn't winning any and so it is a mistake to assume that because Trump was popular for anti interventionism, this sort of piece of

policy is equally as popular. And again this is not my opinion what I would like to see America doing, but his analysis holds up.

of the decision. You. You know, there's the old saw in competitive in team sports that you can only you can only beat the teams that are on your schedule. The US is the global Hedgemen. We picked the schedule, so you've got to win your game. Every game is a home game. You picked it, and and other than I guess nine to eleven. But we chose how to to to prosecute that justice, so to speak, and we

chose poorly. We chose to Uh. I think this even goes back the preseason was go four one, you know, and was that was that in hindsight, you know, moral and prudent, and did we do everything we needed to do there once we got in, you know, everybody we did. We chose not to go to Baghdad once we destroyed every bit of military hardware they'd had, and that again

the government. You know, I'm not a big mass democracy guy, rather obviously, but I also know that the electorate isn't so dumb as to not connect winning with the what it takes to win, and so, you know, I really think that's hugely key. And then I think Dan describes Trump's worldview here. Trump thinks in terms of winners and losers. That applies to wars, and then that translates to trade, immigration, political races, television framing, real estate. All of that is connected.

And so I just I think this is kind of the key section of this.

change that. He would restrict immigration, conduct foreign policy along different lines, and give up worrying about how to be a kindler, gentler Reaganite. He was prepared to be neither. He would abandon small government rhetoric as well as claptrap about how diversity is our strength. He didn't care if he gave offense. Neither did the voters. He supplied a new vision for the party, one just as well adapted to the era of globalism as the Bush Republicanism that

came before. Only this vision was adapted to the dark side of globalism, not the hopes and pipe dreams of the late nineties. The Tea Party in the Ron Paul inspired Liberty Republican movement of the twenty tens have been galvanized by the financial crisis, but MAGA was animated by the crisis of globalism itself, the question of what a nation could even mean in a world of mass migration and fully mobile capital. There might well be another financial crisis,

but the crisis of globalization is ongoing. Though it may be more salient and sometimes than others, it never goes away, and I think that this is a really important point. Trump is often, i guess, criticized from all angles, and there's this idea, particularly among the sort of liberal establishment and also the kind of neo conservatives, that once he's gone, we can go back to normal. Right, that's done. Globalism is in crisis. It's plain to see. I mean, even

look at the news out of Iran. Globalism is in a bad spot. And sure a system takes a long time to break down, but it is breaking down. I mean, look, even Biden realized that we needed to enshore critical parts of our defense infrastructure, and you could not say that Biden was a Trumpian figure. Clearly this is simply this is the win, Like, this is what is happening and in my mind, and we've referenced a couple times this

podcast from the Spectator, which is quite good. The author conducts himself well, but the host and the other man across from him are both Tories. Right, they are talking about how kemmy badenoch a woman. I have strong opinions about that. I will not be going into for the sake of my YouTube channel. Will serve as a THATCHERI right, we'll serve as a way to write the ship and get back to normal. But fundamentally, the material conditions have changed.

We no longer live in a world where globalism is possible in the same way, and so regardless of what happens of Trump and what happens to MEGA, there's no real going back to normal, at least from my perspective.

It won't be back like it was, you know, in the Middle Ages, but it will be more way more so than it is than it is now. And this crisis of globalism is a the fact that it erodes what makes people unique is I'm I think I think the the even the non online right are starting to see that. Are you know, it's a you just want to live your own way. That's fundamentally, that's fundamentally conservative, or at least fundamentally of the right, that that we need to be able to find our own way. And

this erosion is uh. I'm not saying anything. Your audience, you know, doesn't. We're all singing from the same hymn book. But the but the but what is needed, and what Trump has brought is an ability to convey that in a way that the bottom half of the electric can understand. It's not just about cheap TVs at Costco, especially when at Costco it looks like this, you know, a scene from Star Wars CANTEENA so okay, I probably said bad things.

Failed attempts at replacing Bushism still haunted the party, too unable to win over the party as a whole, but defiant of any attempt by stronger leadership to bring order to the party's wilderness. Trump had a tough time in his first term as a result, and his party suffered staggering losses in the twenty eighteen midterms, though Bush, Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama had all suffered disastrous

midterms of their own. Not only was it incumbent on Trump to restore party discipline, it was the duty of factions within the party to help him to do so, a duty they owed to themselves as much as to the party's voters and the country. The hard work confronting libertarian leaning Republics was to find its place where they and their principles could fit in the remade party. That was work that would require compromise in the near term

to realize long term objectives. And nowhere was that more true than foreign policy, where the path to a less interventionists, if not non interventionist, disposition, would not be a straight line. Liberty minded Republicans would also have to make their voters' priorities their own. Massey wasn't an open borders libertarian, and he wasn't beaten by Ed Gallrain on Tuesday because he refused to support Everify. But Massey hadn't made himself seem

indispensable to the immigration restrictionists in the party space. He had made himself the poster boy for balancing the budget. That wasn't what voters cared about the most, nor were the Epstein files, who release was another cause Massy made himself synonymous with. So I think the immigration point he brings up is vital and on the Epstein issue that is highly stratified by age. That is an issue that matters two younger people more so than older people. And

Trump twenty twenty four base was a weird synthesis. And the podcast bros, the more conspiracy minded that care a lot about Epstein, that care a lot about JFK. They are a part of that base, don't get me wrong, But they are not the sort of base that wins you a primary in Kentucky. And that's important to remember now, Don't get me wrong. Do I think if Massey had been stronger on immigration, or at least publicly, if he hadn't gone after the president, would he still have his job?

Quite possibly, Look maybe the Israel lobby hated him so much because of his comments on foreign wards and also the Epstein stuff. That's definitely possible. But I think we have to admit that as much money as APAC dumped into this, Massey did a lot of the work on his own. He made him.

plainly visible to the public. And at the point where Massey made the claim that Israel has an undue amount of influence and then the Israel lobby dumps three thousand dollars of voter to make sure that he doesn't win, I mean, you kicked him out of his role, but did you prove him wrong? Right? And this is another important.

If you don't follow him, you need to. But he chose to leave in auh and and take his chance as being more influential outside the game. But and he knew what he was doing. Tulsi has decided to stay inside and play, you know, be an influenced there. The most would say Tulsi's been pretty much sidelined, especially since the president has no longer takes a morning uh intel briefing every day. But that's that's what Massi was. You know,

Massy picked is when he called the president corrupt. Again, I'm not saying, you know, I'm not making a judgment here whether that's the correct statement or not. But he picked his poison and he's now I hope for where where you know, if he has good points to be made, I hope he has it set up to where he can be an influence outside because he had to know that this was coming.

a bit. I knew that I was I had some heat come at me, and suddenly I went a while without getting a piece published again. Not I've got great platforms who I have great relationships with, but you've gotta you've got to be a big boy, and you've got to the folks if you're listening to this podcast, you're trying to be mature and educated about politics, and this is politics. You you you know, if you're going to uh, is the juice worth squeeze? You've always got to ask

yourself that. And so you know, if we all you know, Jay here for instance, has built a very good platform not only on being very talented, but also having prudence, having interesting people to interview, and making good points without just you know, taking a blowtorch to everyone and everything. You know, there's there's a prudent way to go about this, and you need to consider that all you guys who are listening as you seek to have a voice.

necessarily help you. And it doesn't mean that you have to become a sort of like Limsey Graham, you know, obsequious lickspittle for a certain nation, not at all, but taking a dramatic stand on a divisive issue within your own base when you are not in a position to assume that will pay off for you, well, you shouldn't be surprised when it doesn't pay off for you.

his party's stances on war and peace. There's more to foreign policy that I ran in Israel, after all, and even at a time when the country is embroiled in a Middle Eastern conflict, Trump is changing America's posture to the world and historic ways liberty Republicans could have been part of that process, helping to make peace through strength and reality. Some libertarian leaning Republicans in the administration are

doing that. The representatives who should have been Maga's peace wing in Congress chose to treat this moment like two thousand and three. Instead. To change government, including foreign policy, requires more than a single Senator or a couple of House members, requires a party led by a president. Anything

else is just a protest movement. Libertarian leaning Republicans like Massey had a golden opportunity to make their case to the party base in the twenty tens, and having failed to expand beyond the numbers Ron Paul reached in eight and twenty twelve, they had a second chance to be part of a coalition that actually had a mandate to remake the party thanks to Trump. Instead of being targets for Maga, they could have played a part in picking Maga's targets. Rand Paul and Thomas Massey chose not to.

Fair Enough, Massey made his choice and has received his judgment from the voters. Rand Paul goes before them in twenty twenty eight. But how is losing a primary meant to advance the cause of liberty or restraint in foreign policy? They couldn't capitalize on the quote libertarian moment quote what do they expect to achieve by themselves in an era

of MAGA dominance? And I think that that's a really important point because look, I spoke last time about how the sea is changing on the issue of Israel dramatically, So this very.

of the right. But if we're talking about Boomer democracy and how you just have to understand those are white Jews in a sea of Arab chaos and that's how they see it. And now you can make your arguments, but you got to realize that's the reality.

For many people, sure there's the crazy dispensationalist stuff that you and I have spoken about before, that one hundred percent exists. But for a lot of people, Israel serves two functions. One, there's a little bit of displacement going on there where it's like they do all the cool stuff that we can't do. I wish you could do that.

go and kill everyone who might have been involved. Go see the movie Eric Bana Munich, which is about that. And suddenly we're like, can we have some of that competence that that gets? And if you grew up in that and I did not, I that's a little before my time. I mean, I've heard of all those things. I was cognizant, but that really wasn't on my radar.

I was more a child of the eighties. They they that was hugely attractive to the folks who again came to political fruition in uh In in that time period, the late the late sixties and early seventies, starting really starting with the Six Days War so well.

and totally synthetic. Supporting Israel has become a part of what it means to be a conservative in the same way that opposing abortion, in the same way that getting really mad at Colin Kaepernick. Which there are reasons for both of those positions, but it's sort of amp smell, right, it's not rationally thought out. It is simply part of it in the same way. So often able to point this out in the left right, why do they hate Elon Musk? Why do they call him an in cell?

Is it because he actually is an insult? No, it's literally just.

and look, that's really difficult to change. Carrying on, the Republican Party of the Future may become less supportive of Israel if present trends among younger voters continue, but anti Zionism already has a home in democratic primaries, where it fits perfectly with the anti colonial's, anti western principles of the left, although it troubles many friends as well of

foes of Israel's. To say so, Israel itself is part of a much larger question about people's homelands and historical justice in the globalized conditions of the twenty first century, Americans have to take a side on that question, which has the greatest bearing on domestic as well as foreign policy. MAGA knows where it stands, as does the left. Full on open borders. Libertarian neoliberal globalists know where they stand too.

The likes of MASSI are a lot less certain. The Young Right it's views on Israel, notwithstanding, don't seem to be in much doubt unless it is anti Zionism overrides it's anti globalism. I disagree with this framing slightly. In my mind, anti globalism and anti Zionism aren't necessity are in opposition. And if you look at the America first, and I don't just mean Fuentes, I mean you know

what he calls the young Right. To me, it's pretty clear that for people under fifty five at least according to the data we saw out of this very primary, those could be wed quite handily, and in fact, much of the strongest opposition from Massi and others kind of more on the conservative side, really has very little to do with the jewishness of Israel. Be careful why I'll express this, but it has to do with exactly that

America first proposition, why are we supporting you? Which I think is a very strong argument and one I see often expressed. There are people, many of whom are my friends, who are right wing Hamas supporters. I don't see that as being nearly as common. What I see is basically the same reaction to Ukraine, which is, you, guys, sort

your own problems out, don't bring us into it. This isn't my fight, Particularly when the Israel lobby dumped a ton of money on a primary that, even if people didn't particularly like Thomas Massey or his message was kind of out of date. It is a little weird, right. It feels like something that shouldn't be allowed for a country that receives a lot of money to be using

the money they get from us directly or indirectly. I understand to control our politics, right that rankles people naturally, and that is both anti globalist and also by no means anti colonialist or anti Western. That's the point of difference I think I have with the author on Yeah.

that's kind of the new Right in a nutshell. And I think Dan is saying that it's you know, if you choose to be anti zionists, that's fine, but don't allow the anti zionism to clap to overcome this larger

anti globalist uh priority. That's a much anti globalism is a much stronger organizing principle than simple anti zionism anti if because and and here's where I'll jump in is before before this, I mean, the level of influence and control that the UK, especially in the Intel services UH tried and often was successful in manipulating the US was uh breathtaking. Uh. You we've seen shoot just in the last few years. What what Ukraine? How the Ukraine? Uh,

the Ukraine listened to me, that's old school. How Ukraine manipulated us into uh endless uh uh you know, dollars and and and so forth. So we are susceptible as a factionalized democracy to foreign influence. That's part of it.

That's a structural problem. And therefore Dan is saying we need to make sure that this anti globalism sits at the top of the pyramid of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, so to speak, for the New Right, because anti Zionism, while valid, can distract if that becomes your organizing principle. I think that's the point that Dan is trying to make.

I how would I put it? Maybe America should not be dragged into Israel's wars. We all agree with that US policy should serve US interest and those US interests should be defined by the citizenry of the US, not just it's trading or internationalist interests. Right, aid and commitments should be you know, limited and scrutinized. But Israel's claim to exist as a nation state is not the very that should not sit at the top of the organizing principle of the new Right.

ten or twenty years ago. They would do more for their cause if they tried to make the best of MAGA. Trump has turned the GOP into a real party again for the first time in decades. That party has a chance to change things for better or worse, which it will depend on who is in the mix. That is true for the country too, and is the point of self government. It's hard work, and I think that that

is an interesting codea on this again. It is very easy to point out the mentality of being a beautiful loser when it's someone you don't like, But I think we have to be very frank about the fact that, guess what, you may have that instinct as well, or someone you like may have that instinct as well. And again, given the choice, I would have picked I would have picked Massy in this primary for any number of reasons.

We have to understand, going back to the beginning of this article, that by being a twenty thirteen libertarian, he massively alienated people on issues that actually matter. He wasted his social capital on libertarian bs right, whining about ice, whining about the budget, whining about all these things, and he spent it in some good places. Right. That also alienated him with the base, but in a way that

was probably worth it, like with the Epstein files. And if he had not spent down his capital over again immigration in the budget, maybe he would have had enough to fend off this attack. Maybe he could still be a solid anti war Republican, which we are in sore need of. But instead he chose to die on old hills, die on hills that nobody except for him cares about.

think pieces. And it's not long, it's thirty four minutes something like that, but I highly recommend it. It's worth the listen. And again it's not so that you agree always with what these guys are writing. You like good writers because they help you. They just help you get your thinking clear as you decide what position you have. It's just incredibly important.

things that you know, we're very comfortable pointing out. But there's other parts of this and simply those two factors, and if we are going to win, if we are going to succeed, we have to have kind of the uncomfortable conversation with ourselves, with people we like, with people directionally we agree with more because we're not there yet. If again, present trends continue and anti Zionism or at least non Zionism becomes a winning issue in the Republican Party,

great awesome. But until then we have to play ball in a different way. And that's what I think needs to be understand from this article. So, Ron, this has been a fascinating discussion. I appreciate you sending me this article. It's genuinely great. If people are interested in you and your work, I know you've mentioned it a couple of times, but where can people find you?