Special Guest: Tom Woods

Summary

Doug Casey’s Take — June 10, 2026
SPECIAL GUEST: TOM WOODS

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Episode Overview

In a lively and wide-ranging conversation, host Matthew Smith welcomes economist and historian Tom Woods for a candid assessment of the U.S.’s political, economic, and cultural trajectory. Alongside regular co-host and legendary financial contrarian Doug Casey, they dissect the Trump presidency, right-wing dissidence, the deepening culture war, generational divides, and the prospects for American renewal or decline. They also reflect on how individuals might navigate a world afflicted by social, political, and economic confusion.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Assessing the State of the World (00:09–05:41)

• Main Theme: Tom Woods comments on contemporary disorientation: “The world is so oddly fake … we're all expected to believe, like, a series of a dozen propositions, none of which anybody really believes.” (03:11)
• He describes a cultural malaise—wokeness on the defensive after Trump's 2024 win, the performative rise of right-wing Christianity, and a pervasive sense of public insincerity.
• Woods observes that despite occasional dissident victories worldwide, he feels “deeply demoralized” about missed opportunities in the U.S.: “Trump had an opportunity to do a lot of great things … but he's made decisions now that are almost guaranteed to bring in a Democratic majority.” (05:15)
• The importance of having a “plan B”—as U.S. politics remains volatile.

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2. Economics Under Trump: Disappointment & Disillusion (05:41–08:59)

• Trump’s economic policies are critiqued as erratic and ultimately conventional:
  • Woods recounts candidate Trump’s promise to bring down housing prices by deregulation, quickly abandoned for political expediency: “He said he was different. But no, he doesn't want [home prices] to fall either.” (08:31)
  • Solutions like 50-year mortgages are lampooned as classic non-fixes.

“Whenever an American official says we're going to make things affordable, it never means we're going to lower the price.” – Tom Woods (07:48)

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3. Trump, Tribalism, and the American Right (08:59–13:49)

• Doug Casey brands Trump a “skilled and enthusiastic liar” (08:59), while Woods is torn: Trump’s rhetorical attacks initially appealed to him, especially against media and establishment targets.
• Yet, Woods laments Trump’s tendency to direct fiercest ire against uncompromising right-wingers, not “the squad.”
• Discussion veers to J.D. Vance’s controversial remarks on U.S.–Israel interests, the right’s susceptibility to being “snookered,” and the double standard on criticism within right-wing ranks.

“No matter whom you vote for, you always get John McCain.” – Tom Woods (32:59)

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4. The Israel Lobby, U.S. Foreign Policy, and Speech Taboos (13:49–19:29)

• A discussion of the National Defense Authorization Act’s Israeli military provisions, and U.S.–Israel collaboration.
• Woods is skeptical: “I'm not convinced … the costs outweigh the benefits.” (16:21)
• Both he and Casey decry the outsized role of the Israel lobby, and the shifting Overton window about what may be publicly criticized.

“If you say, well, I don't think I like the fact that there are these organized groups that are targeting our American representatives because of how they feel about some foreign country. That's anti–Semitic of you to say that. Even though they just said it.” – Tom Woods (17:47)

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5. The Culture War & Social Media’s Role (19:29–25:13)

• Woods lampoons intersectionality and performative “wokery,” citing social media absurdities and the loss of sincere belief.
• Social media is credited for amplifying groupthink—but also for enabling dissident information flow, especially during COVID.

“Your one little snarky response is like a toothpick in the face of [a tsunami].” – Tom Woods (24:43)

• Both guests agree that connectivity has paradoxically deepened disconnection and pessimism.

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6. America’s Future: Collapse, Secession, or Renewal? (25:13–30:29)

• Comparing the U.S. to the late Soviet Union, Woods notes that break-up is not unthinkable and quotes Thomas Jefferson’s expectation that the Union could split for practical reasons.
• He observes, “the left can't leave you alone,” arguing that left-wing culture is now more imperialistic and intolerant of dissent than the right.
• Doug Casey worries: “People like the three of us are just rounding errors … we’re doing this for the purpose of good karma, not because we can roll back the tide.” (30:02)

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7. Generational Divides & the Culture Crisis (42:59–51:23)

• The stark divergence between younger and older voters is illustrated by the “Thomas Massie” polling split.
• Woods interprets this as partly due to media consumption habits, especially among older conservatives who rely on Fox News.
• He criticizes generational blame games, encouraging young people to pursue mastery and autonomy rather than defeatism.

“With the resources at your disposal, you could become a master of the universe … if you’re not scrolling on your phone.” – Tom Woods (48:34)

• He and Matthew Smith stress the importance of intergenerational mentorship, warning against the perils of division.

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8. Economic Forecasts: Reality Cares (34:41–40:12)

• Woods refuses concrete predictions as a historian but warns of unsustainable government spending and unfunded liabilities: “This problem is not going to be solved because nobody wants to solve it.” (36:12)
• Doug Casey underscores that debt worries have endured for decades, yet the “precipice” feels nearer: “Maybe the collapse of the U.S. is just going to be a blip on this [long upward trend].” (39:06)
• Both note that, for all political pessimism, modern life is often materially better thanks to human progress.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Sincerity in Politics:
  “The world is so oddly fake … Nobody believes what everybody believes.” – Tom Woods (03:11)
• On Trump’s Leadership Style:
  “He’s a guy with a jumbled series of thoughts and impressions that he gets from talking to people.” – Tom Woods (06:23)
• On the U.S.–Israel Relationship:
  “There obviously is something called the Israel Lobby, and it’s ridiculous that they make us pretend that it doesn’t exist.” – Tom Woods (17:27)
• On Generational Discord:
  “Their view of what’s happening in Iran right now is completely 100% wrong.” – Tom Woods (46:22)
• On Cultural Pessimism:
  “It just seems like we're in the final days of the American empire at this point. I'm not sure what comes next.” – Doug Casey (18:47)
• On Doing What Can Be Done:
  “You have to do what you can where you are, with what you have.” – Doug Casey (57:47)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [00:09] — Introducing Tom Woods; memories of early radical/libertarian TV appearances
• [01:09] — Tom Woods on the state of politics, culture, and wokeness post-2024
• [05:41] — Economic policy under Trump: housing, regulation, and disappointment
• [08:59] — Trump’s rhetoric, enemies, and betrayal of right-wing populists
• [13:49] — Israel, lobby influence, NDAA, speech taboos
• [19:29] — Social media, intersectional absurdities, and the culture war
• [24:28] — Social media’s toll on personal tranquility
• [25:13] — The possibility of U.S. breakup, cultural division, secession
• [30:02] — “We're just rounding errors”—on dissidents’ influence
• [34:41] — Economic reality and government spending: no political will for reform
• [39:06] — Progress as comfort amid political collapse
• [42:59] — Material progress vs. cultural disconnection
• [45:19] — The generational divide and its dangers
• [48:34] — Advice to the young: mastery, autonomy, and mentorship
• [54:21] — Elite groupthink and disappointment with Ivy League peers
• [57:47] — Doing your best within your sphere; the Roosevelt maxim
• [58:23] — Where to find Tom Woods’ newsletter and free courses

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Tone & Closing Thoughts

The conversation is frank, wry, and suffused with the world-weariness of men who have chronicled many cycles of optimism and collapse. Both Woods and Casey balance pessimism with a grudging hope—if not for the collective, then at least for individuals willing to think independently, learn wisely, and act within their circles of influence.

Tom Woods’ daily newsletter and free U.S. history courses can be found at tomwoods.com.

“Let the chips fall where they may after you do what you can.” – Tom Woods (57:29)

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For anyone curious about what's gone wrong—and what possibilities remain—for the United States in 2026, this episode provides sharp commentary, contrarian wisdom, and a little gallows humor, all in the signature voices of Woods and Casey.

Transcript

[A]

All right, guys, we have a special treat for you today. We're joined by the great Tom woods, best selling author, host of the Tom woods show, well known libertarian,

[B]

probably the

[A]

most well educated man in this room at least. And that says a lot with Doug here. So thanks for joining us for one thing.

[B]

Right, I know, PhD, but I mean, look, there is no timeline in which I wouldn't rather just be Doug Casey, you know, Dale with it.

[A]

Well, thank you for joining us, Tom. We really appreciate it. I know you and Doug go way back. You've.

[B]

Yeah, I, I have pictures. I didn't realize how tall Doug was, so that didn't help. But I have pictures of us after we had been on a PBS program, McQuistion around 2009. And they brought us on because they knew Doug was this crazy radical and they figure, well, woods should moderate him pretty well, not realizing that woods was a crazy radical. And so we spent a half an hour talking about in Capistan on pbs. So that was pretty memorable. Off the.

[A]

Look for that clip, see if I can find it.

[B]

Oh, it's on there. Yeah.

[A]

Well, that's good. Well, I always wonder, what do you, what do you. The world right now is really strange. There's so many different things we talk about. But I just. What's your basic view of the state of play, what's happening in the world right now? What do you, how do you interpret what we're experiencing both with, with Trump, with our foreign policy, with the way he's manhandling economics? What do you think of all this?

[B]

She's. I don't even know where to begin because there, you know, I write a daily newsletter and I never have a day when I can't think of something to say because there's always something to say. I mean, culturally I'm interested in what's going on with, with wokery. And you know, I think when Trump won in 2024, he had some of the young people on his side. Like it seemed kind of cool to be for Trump, which was so strange. I mean it hadn't been cool to vote for a Republican probably since Reagan. And even Reagan wasn't quite the odd quantity, let's say that Trump is. So that was an amazing thing. And it looked like maybe the woke people were really on the defensive now that, that they were being roundly mocked and maybe that was going down the toilet. But, and, and that there's also this part of the right wing that is interested in, let's say orthodox with a capital O, Christianity because they feel like the Pope is woke. And, you know, the Protestants, well, some of them are okay and others are crazy and. But the Orthodox seem traditional, so there is a, like an attraction to that, to something that they feel like the culture they live in is so weird and disconnected from everything and contemptuous of the past. Like, the past exists only to be treated like a punching bag. So this thing that holds out, like a connection to the past is something that I want. So there's that. But some of that is sincere and some seems, like, performative. It's like a cool thing to do on Twitter to. To be a right wing Christian. So it's hard to make sense of who's really sincere and who's. Who's posturing. Who among the woke is really sincere, but. And who behind closed doors says, yeah, this is obviously all stupid. I'm just saying it because I have to because I'm in the Democratic Party. I mean, there's such. The world is so oddly fake. My friend Kevin Dolan has an article called Nobody Believes what Everybody Believes. And what he means by that is, like, we're all expected to believe, like, a series of a dozen propositions, none of which anybody really believes, like, one of them being egalitarianism. There are certain things you're supposed to believe about egalitarianism, and basically nobody actually acts that way or believes it. And so that's the, that's what interests me. I mean, of course I'm interested in Trump and what's happened to his movement, and I'm interested in dissident movements around the world, and I'm interested in. I don't know the details at all, but the election results in Peru is interesting to me. So, you know, sometimes, just when you think, well, everything's going in the, in the garbage, something happens that gives you a genuinely pleasant surprise. But in the U.S. i just, I feel deeply demoralized about the state of things because I feel like Trump had an opportunity to do a lot of great things, and he's gotten, I don't want to say diverted because it's. It's his choice. You know, he. He's the, he's the decision maker, but he's made decisions now that are almost guaranteed to bring in a democratic majority. And that means the end of anything he wants to do, even the good things, and all for, you know, for. For nothing that was going to benefit the country. Like, he. It'd be one thing if he spended his political capital doing things that saved the world, but he expended it on Stupidity. And now I feel like, well, then here we go. When now we're going to have the Democrats. And I mean, on the other hand, if they get rid of trump, they have J.D. vance, and I think they're not entirely sure what they think about him. So who knows? But I, I was feeling in 2024, like, I sometimes tell my people about authorities I trust if you're interested in relocating somewhere else in the world. But if you tried to tell that to the right wing in November 2024, that fell on deaf ears. Like, we're about to win, man, why would I want to leave? We're about to win everything. And now here we are, not even two years later, a year and a half or so later. And I feel like if I said, well, you better have a plan B in case that, you know, what hits the fan, I think they'd be a lot more interested right now.

[A]

Yeah, no doubt about that. But on the economic side of things, what, you know, it seemed like Trump came in with a pretty radical agenda, and I was giving him, you know, a lot of space with that. Like, you know, we do need to shake things up in a dramatic way. We had Doge, which was very exciting for me at least, to watch that and think about what was going to come from it. All that seemed to have been shelved and, I mean, totally put away. Spending is just ballooned. And, you know, I have a hard time even defining what is the single worst thing that Trump is doing for the economy at this stage. And because there are so many. What are your thoughts on that?

[B]

Yeah, this is also a disappointment. Now, we have to remember that Trump is, is not, and never portrayed himself as an ideologue with a philosophy that isn't what he. He's. He's a guy with a jump, a jumbled series of thoughts and impressions that he gets from talking to people. So sometimes if he talks, if you talk to the right person five minutes ago, that. And he's. He's really great. But unfortunately, he chooses the people he surrounds himself with, and he doesn't always choose wisely. So, I mean, the international trade thing is one thing, but for him to say, when, during the campaign, I have the clip, he said, at least at one rally, that home prices are way too high and that a lot of that has to do with regulation and that he can bring them down probably 40%, just, you know, just by attacking the root causes of the high prices, namely, he thinks government policy. I thought, well, that's fantastic. Somebody's finally starting to understand what's going on here? Then he gets in office and makes it sound like home prices. That's just a, Nobody cares about that. How boring is that? Nobody cares about that. And even if they do, what we have to remember is that boomers rely on their inflated house price to feel rich, you know, and I, I can't take the rug out from underneath them by increasing the supply of housing or pushing house prices down because that'll hurt them. So the way I'm going to help with housing, if I help at all, will be the traditional American way, which is whenever an American official says we're going to make things affordable, it never means we're going to lower the price. That's what a normal person means. Gonna make something affordable never means we'll lower the price. We're gonna make education affordable. It doesn't mean we're gonna lower the tuition. It means we're gonna have more loans for you to take out so you can afford the tuition. And likewise, yeah, I'll figure out some way to get interest rates down so you can afford the loan. Better to pay the inflated price. But when prices actually come down, like in 2008, prices really started to come down. And both sides of the aisle acted like this was the return of Godzilla, like this was not something they welcomed. They, John McCain said, I'm postponing my campaign, I'm going back to Washington to in effect see what I can do to stop these prices from falling. That's the last thing any of them want. And we thought Trump was different, but no, because he said he was different. But no, he doesn't want them to fall either. He'll figure out some, he'll get you a 50 year mortgage and solve it, right?

[A]

Exactly, exactly. I rolled out the 50 year mortgage. It was like, that's not the answer.

[C]

Trump, Trump was such, was and still is such a skilled and enthusiastic liar that you almost have to believe him. You can't believe it would be so, quite so bald faced. But he is.

[B]

And the thing is, Doug, without a moral center, I, I, the thing is I, there are times when I see clips of him and he's, he's funny or he burns somebody really good. And I think to myself, I want so badly to like this guy. You know, I wanted to and I, and I started to like him at one point. And the thing was, because he was going after people I despised and man, he could be ruthless and unfair and whatever, but he was funny and he was going after people who needed to be gone after the Mainstream media, the Bush family, this was all great. But then to see that in fact nobody gets his wrath more than the most right wing Republicans like that. He has never spoken about AOC or Ilhan Omar or any of these people with anywhere. Like the invective you see against Thomas Massie or Marjorie Taylor Greener or Tucker Carlson or Candace Owens. They have a special place in his pantheon of, of, of abuse.

[C]

Yeah. So how's this all going to end?

[B]

I don't know, Doug, I don't know. I mean there are scenarios that you can, but that you can imagine and I don't know how to rank them in terms of like, likelihood. I see that J.D. vance is being accused of anti Semitism all across the influencer spit. Now, it would see if I criticize Trump, I'm terribly disloyal and should be banned and abused and destroyed. But if they criticize Trump, that's okay. That's okay. These are privileged people. They are special people. They can criticize him and they can criticize his vice president too. And what they're criticizing him for is he said that there are going to be times when Israeli and American interests diverge. The most obvious statement in the world, they're two different countries, they have to have different interests sometimes. And in fact, Israel itself obviously feels that way when it gets frustrated with what it thinks is the United States tying its hands half the time. So it obviously believes that too. But JD Vance isn't allowed to say that. So he's an anti Semite for saying that. So then you start to think, well, okay, maybe J.D. vance has the stones to maybe do things differently if he got in power. But you know, you think, but on the other hand, I was just snookered by Trump. So how do I know if any, I know for a fact, for an absolute fact that if, if Ron Paul got elected, the wars would stop. I know that. I know that Congress can't declare war. Congress could declare war. But if the President doesn't, you know, do anything, doesn't actually. That's it, you know, so, so even if Congress got off its rear end and actually passed a declaration of war against somebody, you know, the President's the commander in chief, he can order the armed forces to do or not do whatever he wants. So I know he, I mean, I don't for a minute think Ron Paul would appoint Marco Rubio, who by the way was vetted by Larry Ellison. Larry Ellison and another guy whose name I've forgotten they had. They arranged for meetings with him to make sure that he'd be good on Israel, and then they could support his 2016 presidential campaign. There's no way Ron Paul is appointing a guy like that. The thing is, you just, for whatever reason, you can't get a Ron Paul in there. And some of that is the machine working against him, and some of it is the flat out stupidity of the American public. I mean, we can't just say, well, what can you do? There's a big Israel lobby and they spend a lot of money. You know, if we had a more informed and less degraded electorate, that wouldn't matter. So when Doug, you asked me how does this end? Well, I'd like to say that the dissident right and the anti war right continues to grow and expand. There are a lot of young people who will eventually become older people who will. That means they will eventually start voting, who really, really are against all this stuff. And maybe that will produce something, but on the other hand, maybe produce another phony who gets in there and does the opposite. So I have my hopes and I have my fears. My hopes are that these voices continue to grow. I mean, Tucker Carlson's the number one podcaster around. That has to mean something. But on the other hand, geez, how many times can you be let down?

[A]

I wonder what your thoughts are on the National Defense Authorization that has that part written in there for Israel and the merging of the militaries. What do you think about all that?

[B]

Yeah. Now, so I was. If I had known you wanted to ask me that, I would have. I would have read it myself. So I don't want to be one of these people who comments on something that he hasn't read. But I'll say that a lot of my friends are worried about it, and a lot of the usual suspects are telling us there's nothing to worry about. We're just going to collaborate on intelligence or on this, that or the other thing maybe. But I don't trust a word these people say. And in terms of collaborating on intelligence, most of the most useful, or let's say reliable intelligence that comes out of Israel has to do with issues that really concern only them. I mean, Hezbollah does not matter to me at all. I mean, I hope that all works out, but that's probably number 517,000 on my list of immediate concerns. And then I look at. There's a fairly long list of cases of, you know, Israel doing the opposite of stealing American knowledge and, and spying on the United States. There was a, apparently around the time of 9, 11, can I say, a bad Word on this show is that.

[C]

Okay, yes, absolutely.

[B]

So I, I mean, apparently one US official said it got so bad around the time of 9, 11 that we had to sit them down and say, look, cut the shit. We all know you're doing this. You got to knock that off. So I feel like whatever intelligence we can get, we can get very good intelligence from Turkey, from Jordan, from. From other countries. There's probably a reason that, you know, Israel is not part of that major. The, was it the five eyes, the Australia, New Zealand, the uk, Canada and the US there's got to be a reason Israel's not in that. So all these alleged things that Israel is, is, is said to do for us that would be accentuated by this, this new provision. I'm not so sure that it's so good or that we couldn't get it somewhere else or, or that the, the, the great military innovations that Israel has given to us didn't in some way originate with us. Anyway, it wound up over there and then came back. I'm not convinced. Or at the very least, I think the, the costs outweigh the benefits.

[A]

Yeah, I think there's no doubt about that. I've read part of it myself, but yeah, it's not, it's not really fair to have you comment on it too much, I guess, if you haven't read it. But it's concerning for sure. That's for sure.

[C]

Anyway, I figured, I mean, pretty obvious, I mean, $4 billion has been going to Israel since the days of Anwar Sadat. And The Egyptians get $4 billion a year, too, to be Israel's BFF and probably lots, lots more.

[B]

And then it is more when there was always supplemental payments that they, they end up getting an extra this much or that much for this or that emergency. But to me, it's not even primarily the money because, you know, in the grand scheme of things, the US spends, you know, burns through that on nothing, you know, every single afternoon, probably. It's, it's, it's more that it's, it's not so much that it's the Israeli government comes here and makes the President do things, although, you know, there's a little bit of that. But it's also that we have embedded in our political system. Yes, Mearsheimer and Walt are right. There obviously is something called the Israel Lobby, and it's ridiculous that they make us pretend that it, it doesn't exist, especially when they come out and they openly celebrate that they accomplished something, that they, they got Thomas Massey voted out of office and they openly celebrate that. But if you say, gee, I think it's a bad thing that these groups are, you know, pursue. Obviously they're doing it because they. And this is not my theory. Representative Randy Fine just comes out and says, we've. We got rid of him because he was bad on Israel. And if you say, well, I don't think I like the fact that there are these organized groups that are targeting our American representatives because of how they feel about some foreign country. That's anti Semitic of you to say that. Even though they just said it. You know, they just said it.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

You've got to be so careful about saying anything that is politically incorrect. I mean, it's not just Kanye west who stated the obvious and it cost him a lot of money. But have you followed Raald Dahl, the writer of Charlie's Chocolate Factory and all that famous?

[B]

I haven't. I mean, I know a little bit about his political views, but that's it.

[C]

Well, he's been dead for several decades, and for some reason they dredged up the fact that he just made some observations, factual observations, like 30 years after he died to change what he wrote. Like he had fat people. And you're not supposed to say fat people anymore. This is, this is a whole syndrome of things that it seems. Look, I'm sorry that I'm so pessimistic about, about the world and the future, but it just seems like we're in the final days of the American empire at this point. I'm not sure what comes next.

[B]

Yeah, I don't know either. Well, just today in my newsletter, I was a little mischievous. There's an image that circulated around social media for Pride Month, and it's an image showing a lesbian tattooed woman with her partner, or, I don't know, maybe quote, wife. And the, the wife is dressed fully in, in Muslim garb, like head to toe. And they have a child, they have a baby together who is also dressed head to toe. And they have a disabled other child. And so. And it's, it's. Be who you are. No matter who you love, you can be who you are. That's. That's that message. So everybody on Twitter, slash X had fun with this because they thought, okay, so these two used ivf. Presumably they've had two children. Now, the, They've obviously had to, quote, come out to their families that they are lesbians and they've, they've done all that. They obviously have pro homosexual views on everything. And yet this one, this woman is, is still committed to The Islamic modesty dress head to toe. Now I'd like to know if there is one couple like that anywhere in the world. Right. So it's all crazy and, but the message is, you know, you are, should be free to be who you are, no matter who you are and whom you love. So social media had fun with that image. They took the two women away from the doorway where they're coming in waving, and they replace it with Robert E. Lee, like, is that okay? Is he allowed to be who he is? And it's hysterical because it's this somber, like traditional photo of Robert E. Lee standing there in his, in his garb. And so that's the thing, is that they, they act as if, you know, we just want everybody to be who they are. But these are people who, they would, they would behead us in five seconds, Doug, if they had the opportunity that five seconds. Forget all the, feel free to be who you. And then somebody added, somebody said, well, you know, over in Germany, they put up this, this poster about unwanted sexual advances. And the, the image in the poster of this, this cartoon is of course is a depiction of how sexual harassment is occurring all over Germany. It's a large white woman who's targeting a smaller brown skinned man who has a peg leg and she's grabbing his rear end because, because that clearly I'm

[C]

sure this isn't an AI creation.

[B]

Yeah, right. Because that's, because we all know that's what's happening in Germany. Those peg legged, short brown men are being assaulted by native Germans. It's, it's just crazy. And they don't believe a word they say. They, they would, they would smite their enemies if they had a button they could push. They would eliminate all the Trump voters just like that. But, but they have the gall to couch it in. Everybody should be who he wants to be. They, what they really need to have is a list of exceptions, except these are the people you are not allowed to be because we say so.

[C]

It seems like mass psychosis has conquered.

[B]

Yeah. Who, who's going along with this? Why, why are you doing it? And, and the thing is, I think, I think social media has amplified these problems, you know, because people look around, they see people like themselves echoing these messages and they've got the same kind of avatar and the, you know, whatever the foreign flag in the bio, whatever it is, and they feel compelled because of tribalism to do that also without actually thinking about it. And it, you know, I mean, the thing is, there are good things about social media. I'VE met a lot of great people. I've communicated. I've got my ideas out in ways I wouldn't have been able to do before. But it really solidifies people in their dumb ideas, which is why we just

[A]

need to control it, Tom. We just need to control it. That'll be better. Make sure the good messages get out there and the bad ones don't.

[B]

I mean, the thing is, like, during COVID it was great that we had a way to hear dissident voices, even though they were being suppressed on these platforms. Not completely. You know, I mean, yeah, I had a couple of videos taken down, and it was an outrage, but I still was able to get the word out to a lot of people. Whereas if all we had had was the three TV networks, I think we would have been up a creek. So, I mean, there is there. There is that too. There is that, too. But. But then at the same time, you wonder on the level of your personal life, would it be better for your own tranquility not to turn on an app every day in which just the worst, most destructive stupidity is on display?

[A]

In many ways, Tom, I think it would be better for my mental health if there was a giant cyber attack which took down the entire Internet, honestly, for my own mental health, I mean, because everything online is, you know, full of darkness anyway.

[B]

Yeah. And I. In a way, like, it's like, you know, that a lot of people hold idiotic, destructive views, but that's just kind of an abstraction in your normal life. But when an Internet. But when the Internet comes along, you have to be reminded of it, brutally reminded of it day in and day out. And. And it's like it's an over. It's like a. A tsunami. You know, your one little snarky response is like a toothpick in the face of it.

[A]

Yeah. You know, I want to go back to you mentioned Randy Fine earlier. I just saw a clip this morning speaking of the Internet and stuff that's out there. Randy Fine this morning is saying something along the lines of Israel will be around in 50 years, but I'm not sure the United States will be around in 50 years. So this is a member of Congress saying this, basically having the same view that Doug does, which is not sure it's going to be around in 50 years. What do you. I mean, the question of how this ends. I mean, does America really survive it as a nation state? What. I mean, the. The economic consequences are just on top of these cultural problems that are beneath the surface that seem very real. Especially the difference between the views of the young versus the old. I feel like that's like one of the greatest areas of divergence we see in culture.

[B]

Yeah, well, it's not completely unthinkable. I mean, we think, we think about how dramatically the Soviet empire fell. And all the Sovietologists assured us this wasn't going to happen and then it happened. You know, so sometimes you get oddball things from out of the blue that that happened that are, you know, sometimes bad, sometimes good. But it's not impossible that the United States could break up into smaller units. Like Thomas Jefferson said that he fully expected that the US would probably break into three smaller units. And since he wasn't an idolater who viewed the Union as an idol to be worshiped, the Union for him was a practical arrangement. If it works, great. If it doesn't, try something else. He thought that would happen. And this didn't cause him to lose any sleep. What, whatever facilitates the liberty of the people best, we'll, we'll do that. So the problem is that for Americans, the idea of splitting up has been, you know, made toxic because of Lincoln. And you know, that we were all taught in school that that, that was. The south wasn't allowed to do that. They absolutely were allowed to do that. And so, you know, I mean, the only question is whether it's prudent or not to do it, whether you can do it or not. I don't think there's much, to my mind, there isn't much argument there. But, but ever since then in the Pledge of Allegiance, well, I guess this part was added later or no under God was added later. But, but the Pledge of Allegiance, one nation indivisible. Like every single day school kids get up and basically say we can never break apart. But you know what? Maybe it's the case that the system we have now where every four years we have a, we have a low intensity civil war going on at all times and then every four years we see who's going to be in charge of running the thing. And maybe it would be best to just say, well, you do things your way, we do things our way. And now I, obviously this is not an easy thing to do because you have blue sections of red state. I mean, I get it's not easy to do, but surely it's got to be better than this. The problem is, I personally think the left is more imperialistic than the right. The left can't leave you alone. It cannot leave you alone. As whereas the right wing would say, okay, in Greenwich Village, they're doing things we don't approve of, but, you know, oh, well, what are you gonna do? That's Greenwich Village. Whereas the, you know, the. The.

[C]

The.

[B]

The St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City has condoms thrown at it because it doesn't have the opinions that, you know, Greenwich Village would like it to have. That's a difference. You know, like, there really are people on the right who say, you know, look, there's nothing I can do to change how you're going to act, so you just do your thing. Just let me have my thing and don't bother me. They can't. Like, if. If they feel people are being, quote, oppressed, which, by the way, people in previous centuries would be astonished at how we define the word oppressed nowadays. But as long as they feel people are being oppressed, they can't let it go. They can't. So the question is, could we ever reach a truce in which we say, you know, California. I hate to quote Archie Bunker, but Archie Bunker had the idea that, you know, eventually there would be that earthquake. That would be the big one, and all the crazies would be in California, and they could just go live the way they wanted. Well, okay. You know, Archie was right about that.

[A]

Yeah. Doug, you were going to say something earlier. I interrupted you.

[C]

No, it's just. I agree. Not just 99. I think I agree 100% with everything Tom says. I mean, I feel like I'm a. An intellectual and psychological clone of.

[B]

Well, maybe it runs the other way. Doug, I've been reading you a long time.

[C]

Wonderful. It's so unusual, but it's absolutely wonderful, Tom.

[B]

So the problem.

[C]

The problem is, is that. Is that people like the three of us are just rounding errors. I mean, the stuff that we do, I'm. I fear I'm pretty certain, actually, it's not going to have any real effect. We're doing this for the purposes of good karma, not because we can roll back the tide.

[B]

Yeah. I say, I don't know if I'm gonna win. I mean, maybe I'll. Maybe I'll lose. Maybe everything I believe in will lose. But I. If I just retired and played golf, I just don't think I could do it. I think there'd be a part of me that said, you still have to write what you write, and you still have to speak to people and you still have to do it. I just couldn't. Even if I know it's hopeless, I. I still have to do it. And some of it is. And I know this is very sentimental and very commonplace, but I do have children, and I want to be able to look them in the eye and say, your dad fought. You know, I mean, we. We didn't win, but your dad fought. And.

[C]

Well, I feel. I feel the same way exactly. Although it's actually going to become increasingly dangerous to do what we're talking about, because when the nation unites in a war or something of that type, if you aren't one of the mob, if you're not for us, you're against us. What did Bush say along those lines?

[B]

Yeah, with the terrorists. Yeah, yeah. But I mean, the thing is, in the us, it's, the people are not like the. The people in World War II, where the country says, we're going to war and we're going to sacrifice a whole lot and it's going to be really hard, but we're going to come out of it triumphant and the country gets on board. They got their little ration cards, they're waving the flag and. And all that. Whereas now you say, we're going to war, and people say, for what bullshit reason? Like, what is it now? What the hell is it now? And the thing is, even though, yes, they keep voting for these crazy people, but yet when you ask them, you know, on this particular question, you know, would you rather have American foreign policy look like A or B? They all vote for B. They all. In the poll, they vote for B. But even when they do try to vote for A, they still get B. That's the thing. They still get B no matter what.

[A]

Definitely thought with Trump, you were getting. You were getting.

[B]

You absolutely had reason to think you were getting A. And I have this saying that I came up with that, that has gone all over the Internet. Jeremy Corbyn has used it. Like, there's a long list of people who've used it. And it's, no matter whom you vote for, you always get John McCain. That was my slogan.

[A]

That's you.

[B]

That's me.

[A]

I've heard that from other players.

[B]

I know that's how you know you win when other people don't even know you created it. That was mine, and it's everywhere.

[A]

That's amazing. So what do you mean, by the way?

[B]

Meghan McCain, his daughter. I haven't. I probably criticized John McCain over the years, but the main thing I'm known for is that saying. And she has me blocked on Twitter, and I think it's because she knows I'm that guy. I have never said anything offensive to her like I've never made fun of her or criticized her. I've never mentioned her until today, but I am blocked. So she is well aware of who originated that. That phrase.

[A]

Well, you're also pretty feisty on Twitter sometimes. I see.

[B]

So I can't help it, Matt. I can't. I saw, by the way, that you saw what I posted about the book you and Doug and your son wrote. I had a post about that the other day.

[A]

Yeah, it was great. And thank you for the support you've given us on that book. I mean, the first day when it came out, you had me on your podcast to talk about it, and it was hugely beneficial. So.

[B]

Good.

[A]

Good. Been great.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

The problem, by the way, with Twitter and with all these social media things that if you put a link in your post, they downgrade it because they don't want people clicking the link and leaving their platform. So they really downgrade. So the only way you can get around that is you post a linkless first post, and then in the second post below it, you put the link, but almost nobody sees the second post, you know, so you never. Then you second guess yourself. Maybe I should have put it in the first one. So annoys me that a lot of people saw that first post but didn't bother to. Actually.

[A]

No, it's. Hey, I appreciate it. No, no doubt. It's. It was great. I wonder, do you think it is the biggest problem? Because we've been talking about. Mostly about cultural stuff rather than economic.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, and I know obviously your background there is quite strong. What. What's your. Is your economic forecast any different than your cultural forecast or opinion of what's happening?

[B]

I don't. As a historian, I don't. I don't do forecasting. I. Because I.

[A]

Okay, well, observations of the.

[B]

I just like. Because I can always be right about the past, you know, so I never have to worry that I'll be proven wrong. And. And I. I respect people who make predictions because they can go wrong and it shows you're fallible. There's nothing wrong with that. But the. You know, I used to be really worried about government spending, which is like the most vanilla issue in the world. Like, everybody wants a balanced budget and all that. But I used to be very worried about that, and I was worried about where the entitlement programs were going to go. And, you know, these unfunded liabilities are like this, you know, this. This huge, huge threatening thing. And. And then I realized nobody cares. I mean, really, nobody. Nobody cares about getting spending under Control. Yes, There are Republicans who give speeches about it, but they don't care. Like, they're not going to do anything. Voters don't care. Like, they have made that amply clear. They don't care. I remember years and years ago when the Tea Party was still a big thing, they polled even the Tea Party and even the Tea Party could come up with only one area of government spending where a majority, even of them wanted to see cuts, and that was, of course, foreign aid. You know, which I agree with them. I don't like foreign aid either, but we all know that's a trivial amount of the budget. Even the. Even they don't want to cut anything. So I basically came to the conclusion, well, this problem is not going to be solved because nobody wants to solve it. Like Ron Paul used to say, look, we're going to have a major fiscal crisis sometime down the road. We will not be able to meet all these obligations. So it'd be best to unwind them now before the crisis actually hits. Like, let's. Let's be adults and figure out right now how to handle this problem. Yeah, nobody cares. So I just stopped worrying about government spending. So in other words, when I would. I had a kind of rooting interest in Trump because I wanted Kamala to be stomped on because she's terrible. I didn't. I didn't want the border to stay open. I didn't want my, you know, I wanted. My. My kids are pretty well inoculated against the. The trans stuff, but still, not everybody's kids are. And I didn't want that. I wanted that to be rebuked. And people would say, but, you know, Trump is just going to be a big spender. And my answer was, but so is everybody. Like, I, I can't make all my decision on the basis of that because no one cares. But the problem is reality cares, and that has to catch up at some point in terms of either the interest payments on the debt or, you know, the unfunded liabilities being impossible to fund without a, you know, what. What our friend Larry Lepard calls the big print, where the Fed just says, all right, if that's what you want, that's what you'll get. You know, if interest rates go up even a tiny bit, the. The interest on the national debt is just an unmanageable. So I think that's the thing. And I realize that, yeah, that's what everybody says, but. But unfortunately, nobody wants to do anything about it. And I think a lot of Americans feel like, well, you know, we've had a pretty big debt for a while and pretty big deficits, and, you know, we've more or less seem to have, you know, hobbled along through it. So this shouldn't be any different. But sometimes the future is different from the past. And I'm afraid we're, we're, we're facing that. But I don't know what the timeline is. I mean, to be honest with you, I was surprised the US Economy hobbled along as long as it did before it got a 2008. I would have thought that there would have been one sooner. So I don't know what the timing is, but I know what the culprit is going to be.

[A]

Yeah, no, no one seems to notice that this, this. Sorry, go ahead, Doug.

[C]

No, no, I was just going to say people have been seriously concerned about this since at least the 1960s. Yeah, I remember people were talking about are we going to have a runaway inflation or catastrophic deflation? And just in my own lifetime, I've been hearing this argument since the 1960s, which is to say 60 years ago. So why can't it go on for another 60 years? But I agree. I'm also of the opinion we've actually reached the edge of the precipice. And, and predicting the future is fun. I mean, it really is. It's like a parlor game. But I really would like to figure out to the best of our. I mean, where's Harry Seldon when we need him? You recall from Isaac Asimov's foundation trilogy, he worked out a way to figure out what was going to happen based upon the past. So, yeah, I'm interested in that. But I realize. Listen, Tom, I'm, I'm, I'm such a gloom and doomer. But on the other hand, the ascent of man has gone on since the end of the last ice age 10,000 years ago, and it's been accelerating since the Industrial Revolution. So maybe we're just looking at a, a blip. The total collapse of the US is just going to be a blip on this.

[B]

It's going to be a blip. I mean, forget about politics for a minute. When you think about the way a human being can live now, there are a lot of ways to degrade yourself in 2026, but there are also a lot of ways to live really, not just comfortably, but to, to live a very fulfilled life. I mean, what, how was I going to. I, I don't mean to say that material things are all that matter, because I could live in a material paradise. But have a lot of other problems, have no friends and, you know, have nobody to share it with. Like if I, If I lost my wife, I. All my international trips would. There'd be no. It wouldn't be as much fun, let's just say would be. All the fun of it would be gone for me. So it's not just material things, but for heaven's sake, material things make a lot possible. It makes it possible. The, the. The productivity of labor now makes it possible for ordinary workers to, you know, to. To join a book club, like something as mundane as that, or to be birdwatchers or to have any of these little, little hobbies that would have been like, unthinkable to somebody, you know, let's say in the early industrial revolution or whatever, that I could have that kind of leisure time and be able to do or even just the kinds of things where we have some domestic tasks that are done around the house for us by. They're not servants, but people we hire. And that was. Would have been unthinkable. I would have had to do all these things by myself. And now, you know, I don't want to do my own Laundry. I'm 53. I've done enough. I'm not doing it, you know, and I don't want my wife waste spending her time doing it. I want somebody to just do it for us, you know, things like that either. A lot of things. And that's become possible because we don't need everybody in the fields and we can liberate them to do these other things. And that's just accelerated and accelerated. And so in terms of my private life, I'm able to live much more comfortably with more tranquility, with more leisure time in order to be able to do things that I really do enjoy. I enjoy. A few weeks ago, I went to see Beethoven's Ninth. That thing just elevates me to the heavens. I love that thing. I love being in the presence of that being played. I, I have this, this time now because I have this great inheritance of a capital structure that makes the productive capacity of the country possible, which makes it possible for me to enjoy that leisure time and makes it possible for this orchestra to be able to rehearse and have this beautiful hall. I mean, the fact that nobody even thinks about or stops to appreciate that is, I think, one of the most profound acts of ingratitude in history.

[A]

That's really interesting. I mean, I, I agree with all that. But at the same time, you say people are more disconnected from things than ever. So you say, well, you have time for bird watching now, and yet no one knows anything about any of the birds that are around them all the time anymore. You know, the basic knowledge of an understanding of the world that actually surrounds them seems so small, but so much more knowable than maybe it ever was. You know what I mean?

[B]

Yeah. Isn't it funny that, you know, we have. Well, I don't have mine on me, but we have these devices at our fingertips that have basically all the knowledge in the world and that we could use to enrich our lives in a lot of ways. And, and, and, and some people do, by the way. I feel like I use that very productively, and I'm a better chess player because of it, without a doubt. No question about anywhere I am. I can be doing some tactical puzzles anywhere in the world, you know, and that. Or I could be watching some of the greatest games ever played with verbal commentary from other experts. You know, that's fantastic. But, yeah, there is a sense in which it's the way it's been used. It's. It's not like it's. I don't know, maybe it's made us worse or maybe it's. It's drawn out who we already were. Like, I feel like the technology, technological advances tend to intensify who we are already.

[A]

So it's like wealth.

[B]

Yeah, exactly. It is like wealth that somebody becomes wealthy. You. You start to see what kind of person that person is. Yeah, absolutely. And we're seeing collectively as mankind, what kind of people we are with.

[A]

It's, on the whole, not great. I have to say, at the moment, that's pretty bad.

[B]

So.

[A]

So the biggest problem you'd say, though, is probably because it's what you focus on more than anything else, it seems like, is the cultural problems, the deep cultural problems that we experience in the United States right now. And I mentioned earlier this gap between the older generation and the younger generation. You briefly referred to younger people earlier. How do you see that playing out? Because this tension between, you know, you hear Gen Z talking about boomers, and you hear boomers, of course, jumping on and talking about, you know, the young people don't have grit and all that. How do you. What's your take

[B]

specifically on the, the boomer critique?

[A]

Well, on, on this division. Is it real between the youth and the older generations? And how does it reconcile itself?

[B]

Well, I do think it is real. I mean, the, the polling data on Thomas Massie across different age groups is really one of the starkest things I can recall seeing in a long time, it wasn't even close. The, the younger people, and by younger, I even mean people like all the way into their mid-50s were, were overwhelmingly from. Overwhelmingly for Massey. And yet I don't know what the exact group was, 65 plus or 70 plus were overwhelmingly for the guy they never heard of, the guy that the TV told them to support. That. That's a real thing. And, and I think there are mundane explanations for this. I, I think a lot of the older folks are getting their information from different places, and they, you know, obviously it's always going to be those of. I'm now going to include myself in it. Those of us who are a little older are in general going to tend to be the slowest to adopt innovations. And so they're still, they're still turning on a physical TV and watching Fox News talk to them. And Fox News took Massie off for 18 months so he couldn't defend himself. And they put this no name on, and that's, that's where they're getting their information. I mean, these people, their view of the world bears no connection to reality at all. Like, their view of what's happening in Iran right Now is completely 100% wrong. They have no idea what's really happening.

[A]

Well, we're winning, aren't we?

[B]

Yeah, we won like, 18 times. I mean, it's embarrassing how much we've won. It's just awful.

[C]

Didn't Trump say, you'll be winning so much you'll be tired of winning?

[B]

Yeah, yeah, I know. And I mean, which, which, that was a great line when he said it.

[C]

He's a comedian. He really.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, he is good at that stuff. But, but, yeah, no, the, the divide really is real. And, and the thing is, it's like the boomers have some things to be said for them, and there are some boomers who aren't this hopeless. Of course. I mean, I don't even. Every time I say things like this.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I always have to put in that caveat because I get emails from people. Well, wait a minute. I'm a, you know, and it's like, have some dignity, man. If I said men in general are taller than women, if a woman wrote to me and said, well, I'm six four, I would think you're an idiot. You know, like, do you not understand how statistics work? I didn't say every man is taller than every woman. And I'm not saying every boomer is responsible for the destruction of America, but I am saying that they took a lot out of the system, they benefited a lot. They, you know, they, they, they got their pension, they got their Social Security check. So they didn't understand what these kids are complaining about. They just need some, some grit. But at the same time, I don't all, I'm not all in on the, oh well, the young generation is just victims of, of high prices and there's nothing they can do because there are no jobs or something like that. I don't go for that either. Because with the resources at your disposal, you have the, you could become a master of the universe. In fact, that's what I said. You guys in your book are basically training boys to be masters of the universe. Like, you have the potential to do amazing things if you're not scrolling on your phone. You know, you have the potential to, to do something real in the world and to not have to, quote, get a job. I would never want to get a job. You know, I don't want to be at the mercy and whim of some, somebody who's probably inferior to me skill wise. I want to, I want to command my own destiny. And with the tools at your disposal today, you can do that more easily than ever before. Now, I don't mean it's easy. I'm saying it's easier than ever before. And what you, the thing is you just need to know who the right guides are. You need to know who are people you should read and what are, you know, courses of instruction you should follow. But they should definitely read the preparation because it'll get their minds thinking differently from, I go to school and then I sit by the phone waiting for somebody to call and tell me they think I'm useful. That, that, that worked in 1957, but I don't think it works as well in 2026. So you got to, you got to adapt. But if you do adapt, the, the world is your oyster.

[A]

Obviously, I agree with that. One of the things we talk about in the book is the benefit of intergenerational relationships. And you know, one of the young people should try to foster relationships. You know, obviously you said who, they get their information from the books they read, stuff like that. But also people in the real world who are a generation or two older than you can be the greatest key to your success. Like opening doors for you, helping you understand the world in a way you wouldn't have otherwise. But, so this divide really bothers me mostly because it is partially true. Like all like real wedge issues. You know, there's real truth in it. But it is so dangerous and divisive and I think so negative for young people to adopt this idea, as you were saying.

[B]

And frankly, the divide between, I mean, you know, you're always going to have a bit of a divide between the older and the young because the young will think the old people are old fashioned and then they become older and they start to understand why their parents gave them the advice they did. But this is way beyond that. I, I think there is a, a feeling of, sometimes a feeling of contempt between the generations now because the young people are too lazy and the boomers are too entitled. And like, that's a shame that, that's, that it's, it's come to that because you should look to people who are older for good, sound advice instead of what they're now they're getting is platitudes from when they, when, when their parents were growing up in 1971 or something.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[C]

Well, as they say, talking about my generation. And I'm shocked. You know, it's funny, Tom, when you podcast or, or write which. And I read your stuff every day, incidentally, and everybody that's listening to this now should read your stuff every day. We'll put a link to that. You often refer to yourself, it's kind of funny, I think, as Old Tom Woods. But wait a minute, you're only 53. I'm 80 years old. I believe it myself. And, and to talk about the nature of the baby boomer generation. It's funny. My political introduction to what was going on in the wider world. I mean, high school, let's forget about that for a moment. But in 1964, I was a freshman at Georgetown University and that was the election between Lyndon Johnson, surely one of the worst presidents the U.S. has had. He's in a class with Woodrow Wilson and Abraham Lincoln and horrible, horrible human being. And Barry Goldwater, who I think was basically a sterling person. So anyway, I was a Goldwater supporter and I went to a get together that we had at Georgetown with all of my classmates on the night of the election where they were counting the votes and so forth. And this is in the days when, I guess there weren't a lot of mail in votes. Anyway, this kind of brought me up to thinking how different I guess I was from all of my classmates because. And how naive I was too, because when they were scrolling the states with their electoral votes, they said, Alabama, Goldwater, Alaska, Goldwater, Arizona, Goldwater. And I'm thinking in my stupid naive mind, my God, maybe Goldwater is going to win. That's three out of three. And of course, those are the only states he won. And all the rest of the chimpanzees there with me, they were maniacal for Lyndon Baines Johnson. And at that point I realized that I shouldn't have been there either. Certainly not in Washington, D.C. which I idiotically stayed in for 20 years, or Georgetown University. God, which I stayed there too. I must. I was really inert. I'm ashamed of myself. Anyway. Well, I, I was just talking about my generation and the baby boomers. I don't have any confidence in them at all. I think I associate with one baby boomer that we think think alike. And other than that, not at all.

[B]

You know what makes this kind of reminds me of. There's. I have a Facebook group that's, that's for members of my college graduating class. So I graduated Harvard, class of 94. And I stay in this group as a form of punishment to myself because everything they post, I mean, sometimes it's non political, but they just assume everybody shares their opinions. They just. Whereas if I posted something, they'd all be outraged about it. But they just act as if. Well, of course. All right. Thinking people think this way. And they have every, you know, and I even said to them at one point, in fact, I think I put in my class report, it's a little book that goes out every so many years. I said, you know, I'm a little bit demoralized because unfortunately, it seems like I can predict what everybody in this class is going to say. You know, I know what every one of you thinks about transgender issues. I know what every one of you thinks about Ukraine. But I shouldn't. There should be a diversity of opinion on these matters. But yet I do, I do know what you think, because you all think exactly what Hillary Clinton thinks and all the other pillars of the establishment. And, and I said, you know, I had thought that Harvard was training us to be independent thinkers, but now I look back on that and say that is the opposite of what we were trained to be. And I put that in my class report. And my wife said, I don't know, they're going to print that. And then I got my copy in the mail. Flip to my entry. They put it in, baby.

[A]

Good for them.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, Maybe. Maybe it's not as bad as, as we think. Maybe.

[B]

Well, I can't. I think the white pill in all this, Doug, is that as you kind of hinted before, despite all the folly of man, man has nevertheless progressed anyway.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, that's right. You got it. With that primary trend lips on the

[A]

screen, the primary trend is up. However, the worry is in the near term our lifespans, our children's lifespans. And I think that's a little more concerning than the long term trend.

[C]

Well, a nuclear war, I mean, it's out there. And I'm of the opinion that anything that can happen eventually will happen. And nobody really talks much about biological warfare except in the context of COVID having been artificial. And maybe they'll come up with Ebola as the next thing. And there are people that say they want to wipe out 90% or so of the human race. And sometimes when I think about how stupid my fellow humans are, I say, well, I can understand that. Don't approve of it, but I can understand it.

[A]

Well, I don't, don't want to force Tom into responding to that.

[C]

But oh no, I mean, listen, sometimes, sometimes I go off the deep end, Tom, so strike that.

[B]

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I, I, I am, I am the, I'm one of the biggest Doug Casey boosters in the world. So you say what you like.

[C]

Well, we are in a forum to do that, to do that type of thing, even though we're just a rounding error on the world at large. Of course.

[B]

Yeah, but, well, I don't know, maybe we see things better, but I guess all we could do is hope for the best. I do what I can. I try to persuade people, but when it all comes down, you know, let the chips fall where they may after you do what you can.

[C]

Yeah. You know, Matt and I were just talking about this the other day. It's that Teddy Roosevelt talk about presidents of the US as an individual, I think he's one of the most interesting and generally sterling people as an individual, but as a president, one of the worst. But one thing that he said that he liked and I like a lot of things that he said and did, I don't, of course, but he said you have to do what you can where you are, with what you have. And that's so true. That's the position that we're in.

[B]

Yeah. That said, that's all that can be expected of you. So, so here we are. Well, let me if I know you mentioned you're going to post something, but at my website, tomwoods.com@the very, very, very top, you can click on there and it's the, it's, you're thinking to yourself, I don't want to get any email. I get enough email. Yeah, I know, I know. I know you think that, but that's because you haven't got mine. You get mine, you say, all right, I allow one more. So you can sign up at the very top of Tom woods account. But also on that site, I have a couple of US History courses taught from a, let's say, dissident perspective that I used to charge for, but I took them out from behind the paywall so you can get them for free@tom woods.com. because I hate to break it to you, but, you know, what they're teaching you in the classroom is not entirely, you know, the right story.

[A]

I might have seen those courses. I've done several of them, and I know my son has gone through a whole bunch of them at Tom Woods School. So great, great content. It's really good stuff. So I will link to all that in the notes here. So I encourage everybody, it's worth it to read Tom's email every day. It's always interesting and clever and humorous usually, and I think you'll enjoy it. So thank you very much, Tom, for joining us.

[C]

And I'll underline that as somebody whose life is ruined by having to read emails for a living, but I never miss reading Tom's email every day.

[B]

Thank you, Doug. In fact, good man. Good man. All right, thank you, gentlemen. This was a blast. I appreciate you having me.

[A]

Thank you, Tom. Really appreciate it. Take care

[B]

of.