← Kibbe on Liberty
Kibbe on Liberty
Ep 317 | Make Freedom Popular Again | Guest: Gloria Alvarez
01:09:38
Is the idea of libertarian populism a contradiction in terms or the only way to advance freedom on a broad scale?
Loading summary
Transcript84 lines
- [00:00]
Kibbe
Welcome to Kibbe on Liberty.
- [00:02]
Gloria Alvarez
I am here with my friend Gloria Alvarez.
- [00:04]
Kibbe
We're in Mexico City at the Universidad de la Libertad.
- [00:09]
Gloria Alvarez
And that is the most Spanish you're going to hear from me.
- [00:12]
Kibbe
We're going to talk about what's going.
- [00:13]
Gloria Alvarez
On in Latin America. We're going to talk about our shared philosophy of libertarianism, and we're going to argue about whether or not Mark Zuckerberg is actually a lizard person.
- [00:42]
Kibbe
Welcome to Kibby on Liberty.
- [01:01]
Matt Kibbe
Matt, it's so good to be talking with you again. Last time was New York City.
- [01:06]
Gloria Alvarez
Yes. Yeah, years ago.
- [01:07]
Matt Kibbe
Years ago. A lot has changed.
- [01:09]
Gloria Alvarez
A lot. Everything has changed.
- [01:11]
Matt Kibbe
Everything has changed. Well, the set has changed. We're in Universidad Libertad in Mexico City. We're going to talk about that a little bit as well. But I also want to talk about Free the People and what has happened with your movement, your podcast during these years with the pandemic. And then we can discuss how the libertarian movement is arising with these new experiences that are happening in the United States with the Trump election.
- [01:40]
Gloria Alvarez
Yeah. And how that happens, how that affects what's happening in Latin America as well.
- [01:46]
Matt Kibbe
For sure.
- [01:46]
Gloria Alvarez
For better or for worse.
- [01:48]
Matt Kibbe
Yes.
- [01:48]
Gloria Alvarez
And you're going to be the pessimist and I'm going to be the optimist.
- [01:52]
Matt Kibbe
Yes.
- [01:52]
Gloria Alvarez
And it's funny, because now I'm going to get really pessimistic for a minute, because Free the People was founded with the idea that we could reach people outside of our philosophy and ideology, outside of the libertarian bubble. People that didn't know that they were libertarians but would be turned down by a philosophy that said, you should live your life free as long as you don't hurt people or take their stuff. And we were doing that. We produced short videos designed to reach people and turn them on to this beautiful philosophy. But when lockdowns happened, we had to stop everything, because I personally and Terry as well, were horrified by throwing all that liberty out the window. The ideas of personal responsibility, the ideas of bodily autonomy, the ideas that you would be free to work, to speak your mind, to leave your home, to cross state lines, all of these things suddenly went out the window. And we had this horrible period of what I call lockdown authoritarianism, where for our safety, the government, federal government, state governments, local governments, mayors, were going to tell us in specific detail what we were not allowed to do. And I was horrified by this. And I was horrified by the fact that more libertarians didn't sort of immediately rise up and say, this is the worst of all possible worlds. And I was also horrified that too many Americans just sort of ceded their liberties to this new regime type mindset. So we started doing a lot of education angry screeds about lockdowns and the humanitarian catastrophe that unfolded for particularly people at the margin. If you shut off the economy, certain people will be fine. If you're wealthy enough, if you can work from home, if you're part of what we call the laptop class, you'll be fine.
- [04:00]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah, of course.
- [04:01]
Gloria Alvarez
But if you depend on being able to go to the market every day to sell your goods, if you're in the gray market, if you're just barely making it so that you can just feed your family, that's devastating. And I think in a weird way, it became the haves, the laptop class, the lockdowners versus the have nots, People that were told they weren't allowed to work, people that were told they weren't allowed to feed their families. And I just thought that was outrageous. So we, we started fighting that fight in a way that I can say now, almost five years later, I'm more optimistic about it because that experience has created what I think is a new anti authoritarian coalition. A lot of people came over from the left, people that I would have called classically liberal in the American sense, but they thought liberal. Meantime, freedom of movement, bodily autonomy, freedom of speech, and now they're, now they're trying to figure out where they belong. To me, that's a libertarian opportunity.
- [05:06]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah, for sure. And that's the thing that has been happening, right? The left, with all these political correctness, with the censorship, with the lockdowns, created a lot of people that were not happy with these measurements. So they moved to the libertarian sphere because they're looking for more autonomy and independence. Right. And then the right wing starts complaining about these measurements of punishments and unnecessary prohibitions that in the end didn't save one life. Because I saw the difference between Guatemala, which became a militarized state, where they shut down even the airport, you couldn't get in the country. I lost my father during the pandemic. And it was a headache to go inside of Guatemala inland versus Mexico, where everything was open. And in the end, when you see the statistics, nothing really changed. The amount of dead people. If you compare both countries, the prohibitions, the only thing they did is creating economic scarcity and a lot of unemployment for the most vulnerable. Right. So when you see that, do you think that there's an opportunity for libertarian ideas to really be absorbed by the people, or do you think that people just cherry pick and they use libertarianism, because this is what I'm seeing in Latin America. They use libertarianism when it's convenient, when I don't like authority telling me what to do during the pandemic. But when it comes to civil liberties, I don't like that part. Right. And then they cherry pick about libertarianism.
- [06:51]
Gloria Alvarez
I think a long time ago I realized just how weird I was because I processed the world through my philosophy and economic logic. And I actually like facts and statistics. And I could look at lockdowns from that sort of rational perspective and say the, the data for doing this quite early on just didn't add up. So it was. It was either a lie or a noble lie, but those are the same thing. But I think we realized a long time ago that people are complicated. They don't process the world through economic logic. They very much process the world through their emotions and their relationships and all of that. And that's a reality. So I think in a lot of ways, almost everybody cherry picks their libertarian principles that they like. And sometimes being a libertarian is very uncomfortable because the responsibility part of libertarianism is, you know, the brutal reality of staring yourself in the mirror and realizing, if I want to fix that, I have to fix that. I can't depend on a government or some benevolent dictator to do that for me. But I think this is something that we libertarians have to learn, that it's never going to be. I don't think the revolution looks like something that Ayn Rand or Friedrich Hayek would want it to be. It's going to be more complicated. And I think our job is to actually connect with the emotions that lead people to think about. We need the government to do this. Because maybe it's our fears, maybe it's the fears of an unknown virus, maybe it's the fears of people that aren't quite like us crossing our border, whatever that is. Right. I think we have to meet them where they're at and show that cooperation and freedom and this process of people voluntarily trying to figure things out together, that that's a better way to solve the problem. A great example, going back to the pandemic stuff, politicians in the US and probably in Guatemala took it upon themselves to decide how hospitals and health care providers should manage patients. And they decided Covid's the priority. So we're going to prioritize COVID patients, meaning that heart patients and cancer patients and people that were mentally anxious and had those types of problems, they couldn't get the help they needed. And it's because they were centrally planning something that would have been better dealt with at the local level, actually going to a hospital or provider and depending on the people that actually understood their communities and the needs of the people that they were serving. That is a very sort of Friedrich Hayek point. Local knowledge. Letting each community figure out for themselves, how do we deal with this unexpected crisis versus a central plan that turned out to be catastrophic? I think we always look for opportunities to explain to people why cooperation would have been a better way to deal with it. And so when the next crisis hits, you can say, let's try something else, because that other way we did things was a disaster.
- [10:28]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah. You call yourself a libertarian populist.
- [10:31]
Gloria Alvarez
Yes.
- [10:32]
Matt Kibbe
And every time that I've given a conference in Latin America about what is populism? They always ask this question. My answer is, for me, populism is a manipulation tool, a psychological manipulation tool that can be used by anyone in the political spectrum and basically is telling people things that either don't go with any economic logic or with any history lesson. Right. It's like insisting on things that simply are not true. Like, we're gonna give you free stuff. You are incapable of being responsible for yourself and this authoritarian. But I get that when you call yourself a libertarian populist, you want to create. Create this controversy, right?
- [11:15]
Gloria Alvarez
Yes. Well, it goes to the various meanings that the same word can have. And I could use the word populism, but I could also use the word democracy. I'm a radical democrat because I think when push comes to shove, if you think about the market process that we love so much, it is a wild, open democracy where people are choosing and voting with their feet and deciding what they want, what they don't want. And that outcome is democratic. For better or worse, in my mind. Worse. More people like Taylor Swift than the very weird music that I like. But, you know, the market has decided. The beauty is I'm not mandated by government to go to a Taylor Swift concert, which would be my version of hell on Earth.
- [12:07]
Matt Kibbe
Okay.
- [12:08]
Gloria Alvarez
You probably love Taylor Swift, but.
- [12:10]
Matt Kibbe
No, I admire her for her balls more than her music.
- [12:13]
Gloria Alvarez
But, yeah, And I think that's a fair way to think about it. I mean, she's a tremendous entrepreneur. Yeah. But if you're talking about democracy or populism in the vulgar sense, that a simple majority of the people that show up to vote get to do whatever they want to, to the rest of us, that is the opposite of what I'm talking about. And I think we need to understand that, you know, politics is a corruption of something that could otherwise be a beautiful thing. Because when I use the word populism, and I looked this up, I gave a talk at the Mont Pelerin Society, again, trying to be provocative in defense of libertarian populism. But I actually looked up the word populism, and in the dictionary I found it just means to be popular. It doesn't have all the connotations that you see in Latin America. And certainly populists in the political space have quite often manipulated our emotions. And there's always an enemy, there's a common enemy that you have to rally the people against. But I would consider Ron Paul a populist, maybe an accidental populist, because his populism was based on a deeply felt philosophy, primarily based on Austrian economics, that he had been that guy his entire career. And that authenticity and his willingness to just speak his mind about the things that he believed in, on things like the Federal Reserve, there are now serious people in Washington D.C. talking about ending the Fed. When those chants arose spontaneously at RON Paul rallies 15 years ago, nobody seriously thought that we're going to end the Federal Reserve or that it was a conversation we were even allowed to have in serious company. But that happens now. And that's very much a populist sentiment being pushed from the bottom up. There's not a single person amongst political elites in Washington that want to add the Fed because they feed off the system that inflates the currency and steals from the have nots and gives to the haves. So I think when I say populism, I want libertarians to think about what it would mean to really make our ideas and values popular with grassroots activists, people that vote.
- [14:49]
Matt Kibbe
So if to become popular, libertarians have to choose from their ideas and values, which ones are gonna be the priority. What I hear in Latin America is you gotta come to the right wing and the conservatives because they are more popular than your ideas. So in order to fight the Chavez and the Evo Morales and the Lula da Silvas and the Lopez Obrador of, of the region, you have to sacrifice the civil liberties that the principles of libertarianism so much defend, like, let's say, open borders, decriminalized abortion, gay marriage, all that stuff, like, leave it out because on the economic side you are going to become more popular if you support people like Bolsonaro, Mauricio, Macri, Bukele Pinera in Chile. But what I see in the long run is that these right wing, whenever the libertarians or classical Liberals of the region ally themselves to them to become more popular, and they do become popular because they win elections on those platforms is that in the long run it doesn't work. And then the lulas come back and then Maduro is always in Venezuela and Cuba never stands a chance of being free. So it's like, I don't know if by becoming popular we're going to become effective in the case of Latin America. And the other problem that I see is that, as I was telling you, most of the content of libertarianism, its ideas, its values, its principles, is in English. So. So what's happening with social media is that people become libertarians with a tweet and then they don't know what libertarianism is. And what they really are is super conservative right wing Republicans in the context of the United States, but they're using the label. So the label has become popular, not necessarily the ideas and the values of true libertarianism. Right. And it's all in the sake of reducing some taxes and making some economic progress that lasts for a little bit. But we already know with the example of Pinochet that if you don't do something more cultural that is even more popular with libertarian ideas, then even those advances in economic freedom are going to be destroyed in the long run.
- [17:29]
Gloria Alvarez
Yeah. I think, first of all, I think we need to appreciate that our job is fundamentally to change hearts and minds and culture and shift power for all those decisions. Even controversial social policies that are very divisive to people, everything from abortion to immigration to sexual freedom, these are all things that are better left out of government entirely, in my mind. I don't want the government deciding those things. I want people deciding those things. And culture is a fundamental part of that. So I think our philosophy is not taking sides in culture wars so much as teaching people that the only way that we can live and let live is to shift that power back to people and families and communities. So it's a cultural battle, not a political battle per se. Politics is downstream of culture. And I think that's one thing that I think about. That's why we did Free the People instead of another super pac. We had done politics, we had done grassroots organizing, but we wanted people to realize that responsibility for those choices. But the broader thing, and I was a Tea Party organizer, which was, in the context of American politics, considered a right wing thing. And it actually rose out of the Ron Paul movement, which he was running as a Republican, even though Ron Paul isn't really a Republican, he's a libertarian. But we have a two party system. And you know, that's different in Latin America where you have multiple parties, but you still basically have a left and a right. Yeah, I think that's a challenge. And I was talking about all these people from the left who have become anti authoritarian. Many of them have joined the Trump coalition because where else would they go in their minds? Well, I don't like those guys, so I guess I'm over here with those guys. But there's various factions in the Trump coalition that I think are fascinating and fundamentally different than what we saw in 2016. In 2016, I ran a Rand Paul for President Super PAC. And then when Rand pulled out of the race, I ran a Gary Johnson libertarian super pac. But this time you have, you have like the Elon Vivek Ramaswamy wing, the Doge wing. And you know, for what it's worth, they have quite often described themselves as libertarian. Curious. Like, they wouldn't say I'm a libertarian, but they're like, I'm really interested in these ideas. You had the Make America Healthy wing and not just Robert F. Kennedy Jr. But you know, my, my, my, my friends that were the COVID dissidents like Jay Bhattacharya, they, and, and you know, even comedians like my old nemesis John Mayer, Bill Maher. John Mayer is a guitarist. Bill Maher is actually starting to sound quite reasonable on questions about free speech. So the question is, can we libertarians actually create a space that is based on values and ideas, that is meaningful, where people are, they're always going to come in cherry picking, right? I like free speech. How dare the government prevent me from speaking out against mandatory masks. But that's an opportunity to then extend that philosophy to other things. So I think it's a cultural battle, but I also think when push comes to shove in the United States, in the context of Donald Trump's next administration, there are guys like Jay Bhattacharya who is going to take over the National Institutes of Health. I want to work with him to make sure that we never, ever do what we did to people again through the nih. And that's cherry picking. I'm not going to like everything that Trump does, but now that the election is over, I'm going to try to find ways to push as much of that in the direction of liberty as I can. Same with Doge. Like, they're talking about ending the Fed, they're talking about ending the Department of Education, they're talking about some sweeping reforms that are at least now in part of the public conversation. Not all of that is going to happen. I'm not naive enough to think it will. But if I can get that into the popular conversation, if I can make them popular, that would be pretty cool.
- [22:33]
Kibbe
Regular viewers of Kibbe on Liberty already know how obsessed I have been with the pandemic industrial complex and all of the stupid, authoritarian and downright evil things that the government did to us during COVID 19. Well, I'm proud to announce a new investigative series that looks to get to the bottom of all of that. It's called the COVID up, and I'm producing it in cooperation with BlazeTV. The only place you're going to see this is BlazeTV. So go to fauci coverup.com kibbe and use the code FAUCI line for $30 off your annual subscription.
- [23:11]
Gloria Alvarez
Do it now.
- [23:12]
Kibbe
The truth is out there.
- [23:18]
Matt Kibbe
Why do you think in order to make those things popular, you have to associate yourself with also people like Donald Trump and Elon Musk and this because one thing is freedom of speech, right? But the other thing is a changing hands. Where, for example, Zuckerberg did this video a couple of days ago saying, like, guys on Instagram, on Facebook, the fact checkers are done. Does that really mean free speech or is it going to mean censorship for anyone who is not with the new government? Because it seems that social media in the United States, with Elon Musk and with Mark Zuckerberg, in order to not get in trouble, they're like giving everything to this new administration. So how do you know that it's really in the spirit of free speech? Or it's just like the censorship is changing hands. Because now if you are critical about Donald Trump or things that have to do with hate speech or against sexual freedom, open borders, drug legalization is going to be censored down. Or do you think that this is going to mean that libertarian outlets like yours, it's going to have even more popularity than it had before?
- [24:38]
Gloria Alvarez
Yeah, Mark Zuckerberg is an interesting. There's a complex answer to why he did what he did. One reason he did what he did was precisely what you're saying. It's political expediency. There's a new boss in town and you can go back and read the emails from. A lot of these emails have been FOIAed. So we can now read what Mark Zuckerberg was saying to Anthony Fauci and other people. He was all in on the censorship and for sure the government was bullying him into doing that. But he was sucking up to Those guys, of course, and for all I know, philosophically, he agreed with them. It's hard to tell. I don't think he's a particularly philosophically driven guy. But the other thing that he's doing, it's a business decision in the sense that people, particularly young people, hate platforms where they feel like their speech is stifled. That's a popular. Like the demand for free speech, particularly after the COVID censorship. That is a real thing in the United States. And he's looking at what Elon Musk is doing. Elon is turning X into a much broader platform that is going to compete with Instagram, it's going to compete with YouTube, it's going to compete with Facebook. That the functionality of those platforms. And if X is viewed as more free, none of these platforms are free speech. But if X is viewed as more free in this new functionality, Mark Zuckerberg's looking at the death of his enterprise. But that's driven by customer demand. To think about it in a different way. So it's political expediency, but it's also realizing that the trend in America is demanding more free speech. Will it be absolutely free? No way. And even if you want to do that, there's some moderation that social media platforms have to do for, let's say, violent threats. Yeah, there is some. Like there's. And you want that line to be as bright as possible and you want the censorship to be as minimal as possible. But things got weird when a president of the United States is kicked off of X, but ISIS is still on X.
- [27:03]
Matt Kibbe
Or Nicolas Maduro.
- [27:04]
Gloria Alvarez
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But none of these platforms, until we get a true blockchain based, decentralized social media platform, which the government is very much trying to stop, until we get that, it's never going to be a true free speech platform. So it's a spectrum from less free to more free. But I'm so much older than you are, and I remember when we had basically three choices in media in the United States and it was all top down and our access to information was very much controlled by corporate media. Today is so much better. And I think Zuckerberg, for whatever reason he's doing what he's doing that's better than what he was doing before. But none of us should be naive about their motives or the fact that they will still censor certain things based on political expediency in their own business interests.
- [28:02]
Matt Kibbe
But understanding social media with the huge power that it has, with the algorithms, with the artificial intelligence, to the point that Even the owners of these platforms say that they have no control. I've been writing a book about cyberbullying, suicide, mental health in young teenagers, right? And how this new generation, the Z generation, has more anxiety. Jonathan Haidt has talked about this than previous millennials because of social media. And I think it's better to have a plural voice where everyone can jump in versus only three channels in cable. Right? Of course it's better. But at what point are we dealing with algorithms that can be controlled, especially for the libertarian ideas? Because libertarians are the ones that always are going to be uncomfortable to one or another side, right? We are going to be opposing using your taxes to teach kids in school, 32 genders, but we're also going to oppose using those taxes to teach the Bible, right? And that evolution is not a fact. We are in that corner where we're uncomfortable for both. And it seems to me that both Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are with the wave, right? And I see this with Javier Millay in Argentina. I've spoken with Antonella Marti and I said to her, if someone like Javier Milei gets into the presidency immediately because of the popularity, people are going to support that. And if that means giving platform to alt right members of that party that are homophobic, super pro life, that are twisting what libertarianism means in Latin America, they even fight with each other. Now that the dictatorship of Venezuela is with this opportunity of getting lost because of Maria Corina Machado. You see them fighting because there are people saying, no, no one in Venezuela cares about gay marriage and abortion right now. We just want this dictatorship to get out. And then you see these radicals being like, no. Because if Maria Corina supports this civil rights, she's not the person to go. And you're like, oh my God. And this is the right wing that is supposed to fight against the left wing in Latin America. We're doomed. You know what I mean? So what I see is I told Antonella, if you would have become president of Argentina, as a woman who has done a lot of work for the libertarian ideas to be known in Latin America, with drug legalization, with sexual freedoms, with also lowering taxes, diminishing ministries, people will all be Argentinas will be like, oh my God, Antonella, she's the best. And doing me memes about her and supporting her, the majority of people, they jump in whatever becomes popular. And what is popular right now is this right wing, super misogynistic, racist, controversial, insulting guys like Trump, Bukele, Bolsonaro, Milei this is the time for those boys. Right? And I think that there's a part that libertarians need to do in saying, like, I'm gonna use this in my favor. Like you say, let's talk about ending the Fed and going with the guys of Trump that can listen to me. I think that that's really valid. But how, with this algorithm, with this misinformation, can libertarians maintain the message and the principles for when this wave passes? Because for me, it's like reading Hayek with Road to Serfdom. Right? And when he was seeing both extremes in both sides. And that's what worries me, that, for example, the Vedic swastika for centuries meant the oneness of the universe, the evolution, the transcendence. In one decade, Adolf Hitler made the swastika mean something else. And that's a challenge that I'm seeing right now with libertarians in Latin America. I have the hope that American libertarians are gonna be like, no, sweetie, libertarianism is not a synonym with right wing conservatism that also wants to use the state in order to implement a morality based on the law.
- [33:03]
Gloria Alvarez
You know, we were having this conversation yesterday, and it's kind of a dilemma when it comes to politics because so much of it is cult of personality and you're dependent on a big personality. Let's take Donald Trump as an example. Big personality. I personally very much underestimated the power of his ability to, to get people to follow him. And we just had an experience just a couple days ago where the most libertarian member of Congress, a guy named Thomas Massie, opposed Trump's choice to be the speaker of the House. And all of the loyal Trumpists turned on Massie, who they loved yesterday, but today he was opposing President Trump. And unfortunately, Massie will prove to be right. I 100% guarantee it. And Trump will have proven to be wrong on this. But it's because their leader said, this is the guy that's a problem. And, but that's, that's almost always a problem, the other half of that. So you have cult of personality that is, is probably an essential part of being a political leader. You have to be a strong personality. Yeah. Otherwise you're not going to get elected. You're not going to be able to turn people on to your campaign and your ideas. But at the same time, if we want more libertarians like Thomas Massie to run for office, we have to create a culture, a popular demand, a populist movement for things that are more libertarian. Because most, most successful people that I know that could become great. Political leaders are looking at it and saying my ideas can't compete. There's not enough grassroots support for the things that I believe in. So it's like a chicken and egg.
- [35:01]
Matt Kibbe
I know.
- [35:02]
Gloria Alvarez
So our job, like maybe, maybe you should be that charismatic leader because you have all of, all of those attributes.
- [35:09]
Matt Kibbe
I'm already a Marxist in the Latin American context because in my presidential platform that I offer to Guatemala, the five, the five non negotiable things that I'm offering have all to do with economics and minarchism. I even offered them before me lay like I was the first one in Latin America talking about let's have four ministries instead of 14, let's do flat tax, let's get rid of the unions, all of this. And then I have like these 10 things for people to choose. 5 Where I talk about abortion, prostitution, eutanasia, but as markets for Guatemala, like having income because of that gay marriage immediately I am a Marxist because I'm offering these things and it's all about like if you could just drop these things that don't make you a libertarian anymore. And I'm like, what are you talking about? Go read, read libertarianism, like go and see what are the things that libertarianism stands for and come to me saying that I am not offering those things. But here is the thing. In Latin America, conservatism is more popular, right? Because we are very religious, we are very xenophobic. I would imagine that in the United States States, the ideas of drug legalization, open borders, sexual freedoms with lowering taxes, getting rid of censorship would be more popular. But maybe it's not the case. Maybe the popular ideas are low taxes with high religion. Because when I saw for example Taylor Swift, now that you mentioned her, she, she did a post saying like, I am a catless. No, I am a childless cat lady. I am a childless cat lady that will vote for Kamala Harris. I was like, holy crap. The woman has like 300 million people the population of Brazil in her Instagram, I thought, and then I saw Trump talking about abortion, that he was leaving it for state, like a state decision. I was like holy crap. Maybe this is going to turn the election. Turns out no. So maybe the fantasy of a very open, loving freedom United States only lives in California and New York, but the popular country wants something that is more aligned with those anti values I would call them, right? So where do you think that libertarianism has a chance? Because for me, you guys in the United States are the hope. Every time someone calls me a Marxist I quote either you on Twitter, like, go study Freeda people go read reason. But that's the thing. This content is 95% in English and the things that are getting diluted in Spanish are cherry picking of different things.
- [38:14]
Gloria Alvarez
I think so much of it, and I can't speak to the Latin American context as much, but so much of these controversial social issues that divide, they even divide libertarians, I know plenty of pro life libertarians, I know plenty of pro choice libertarians. And I think to me that is the most complicated issue. But a lot of these issues come down to the way that we present what our ideas. So instead of saying, I'm pro choice, would you otherwise say, I'm for families working this stuff out. I don't want the government involved. You can be in this framing, you can be radically pro life, but still want that responsibility to fall on families and churches and communities, but never like federal legislation that determines that stuff. And interestingly, you know, in the United States, we have a constitution that supposedly enshrined states rights that says that those should, those are decisions that are left back at the state level, back at the local level. To me, it doesn't go far enough because I think it should be back to the family. To the family and the individual level. But I do think that when I talk about immigration, when I was a Tea Party leader, I talked about immigration in the context of if people want to come to our country and follow the laws and work hard, we want them. I would never say open borders because. Because I think it doesn't mean what you think it means in the American context, because there's plenty of lawlessness and we have states like California now that are in fact providing like free health care to illegal immigrants. And it's sort of they're leaning into that stereotype that says that immigrants are only coming to our country to feed off of the government. So I want a simple set of rules that allows for people that want to come to our country and work and follow the rules, which suggest radically simplified immigration reforms. But it's also said in a way that's not scary to people that are worried about, like, mass populations disrupting their communities and economies.
- [40:44]
Matt Kibbe
For years, libertarians didn't talk about these issues. I remember when I would go to the Mont Pelerin Society, they would talk about economic issues and classical liberalism, but the debate about civil liberties was not in place as much. What do you think happened that it became so important to talk about women's uterus or sexual freedom, do you think? Because at Least in Latin America, the fear of the Agenda 2030, which is the agenda of the United nations, which for me is nothing more than the washed out version of the Millennium goals of the 2000s, that then they were not accomplished and then they push it to 2015 and now they push it to 2030 and when they're not going to be met, they're going to push it to 2050, whatever. But there's this massive fear that the United nations, with this 2030 Agenda, in coalition with the left wing, started pushing an agenda that was going to threat the families, the way of living. And this is what has created our politicians talking about abortion and gay marriage in ways that 10, 15, 20 years ago was not important.
- [42:10]
Gloria Alvarez
Yeah, it's another chicken and egg sort of thing where the radical social engineers, the central planners, the social credit system, World Economic Forum type guys very much use these divisive social issues to, to create an us versus them dynamic. And many conservatives have taken the bait and said, okay, we'll do that too. But I think going back to the downside of populism, manipulating people's fears and emotions and their religious faith and all of these things that mean a lot to people, we're being manipulated to fight with each other. And again, like I have all of my libertarian friends across the spectrum of social issues, they're all over the place, but that's how they choose to live their life. It's not how they would want the government to impose those values and those views and mandate them on other people. So I think we have to reframe that debate. Right. I want you to live your life as best you see fit. As long as you don't hurt people or take their stuff. That's it. We're not taking sides in the culture wars. We're just saying you go figure that out with your family and your church and your community and the person you love. That to me is, I'm saying the same thing, but it's said in a way that I hope that people will be like, well, yeah, that, that makes a lot of sense. That's how I want to live my life. So I think about how do we communicate these things in ways that don't scare people, that don't alienate people, that may have different personal choices than we have, but gets them to realize that bottom up, individual, family, community based problem solving is always better than letting a some politician who doesn't give a damn about you do it for you.
- [44:20]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah. And then the us versus them becomes everyone on the libertarian side that is willing to resolve their issues in a decentralized way versus that government, whatever ideology it is that is trying to prevent you from doing that. That's like the populist formula of that us versus them in a libertarian way. Have you seen any changes in the audience and influence that Freedom people has now, after the Zuckerberg video, do you see that? Now Instagram and Facebook is favoring you guys more because I assume that because of defending free markets, because of defending free speech, because of being against all the prohibitions in the pandemic, the amount of audience that you guys had has diminished. It has for me. I think it has for every libertarian.
- [45:18]
Gloria Alvarez
Right, almost 100% diminished. So it's interesting because I had a public Facebook page, probably not as big as yours, because. And my audience doesn't know this, but you're a rock star in Latin America. You have a tremendously powerful audience. But my Facebook page at one point was close to one and a half million people. A tremendous amount of response, and actually a primary way that I would organize my community and distribute our videos and our videos criticizing socialism. We did this series called Socialism Kills and performed tremendously well on Facebook, and it dried up to almost zero. And I think it's too early to tell what Mark Zuckerberg is actually going to do. I mean, he announced these changes. In fairness to him, I don't think they've been implemented yet. But I did post a picture of one of my very libertarian cats on my public page, and I got a bunch of comments that said, I haven't seen your stuff in years.
- [46:25]
Matt Kibbe
Yes.
- [46:25]
Gloria Alvarez
So maybe, maybe. Or maybe it's just that my cat is far more handsome than I am. I think that's possible, too. So we're gonna start experimenting with Facebook again to see if it's real and see if it's sincere. Because, yeah, a lot of the things that we talk about, free speech and just all of the freedoms, I'm not sure we choose. I think we talk about a very broad spectrum of stuff. We'll see if they treat it better. And we're constantly. And you must do this as well. We're constantly experimenting with various social media platforms. We're investing more energy into X now because it's now a video platform as well. And it's clearly freer than Facebook. It's clearly freer than Instagram, it's clearly freer than YouTube. But we have not had as much trouble with overt censorship as other people because of the way we talk about things. We're specifically trying to reach people that don't agree with us. So we're not right wing clickbait, we're not angry, those guys suck kind of messaging. We're trying to turn people on. So the only video that YouTube ever took down, as far as I remember, was a conversation I was having with Ron Paul, who is a doctor, complaining very early on in the summer of 2020 that mandatory masking was stupid at the time, a very controversial position because since then we knew that we actually have the data to back that up. And it was sort of a common sense position because we didn't used to do it. So suddenly we're doing it. Seems political, not medical. But they took that video down. That was the only one they did though. So I think ours has been more suppression as opposed to overt censorship where they actually take away your account or strike against you.
- [48:34]
Kibbe
The Free Life Portrait of an Artist is the new documentary by Free the People, the story of Cuban born artist Carlos Luna who fled socialism under Castro.
- [48:44]
Gloria Alvarez
To find his free life in America.
- [48:47]
Kibbe
You can watch it exclusively@civil.com cival.com throughout the month of December for free at civil.com check it out.
- [48:59]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah, the same with me. It has been Shadow banned since 2018. And like the amount of people that you can reach, my all my social media is frozen in the same amount of followers. Although every day I have new followers, but the numbers don't go up. It's like 1 million in Facebook since five years ago. Right. And it's unreal. I don't know if I start talking and that's what I want to experiment with, right. I'm going to post one thing about civil liberties and then I'm going to post about economic freedom. And if I see that when you talk about economic freedom, freedom and the good things that Trump is doing, how, how is that gonna respond? And I think that that's a good advice for, for libertarians as well.
- [49:41]
Gloria Alvarez
By the way, one thing I'll say is I do think, I'm not naive about these things, but I do think that there's a fundamental difference between Elon Musk's attitude towards free speech and Mark Zuckerberg's. I think Elon means, doesn't mean that he's not a businessman. It doesn't mean that, that he has biases. It doesn't mean that sometimes he has a thin skin and will not take personal criticism well. Whereas I think Mark Zuckerberg was never a free speech guy, social media was. The culture of social media was very much a free Speech culture in the early days. But I think Zuckerberg's motives are more self serving. I could be wrong about Elon.
- [50:24]
Matt Kibbe
I do believe that Zuckerberg, if Kamala Harris would be in the White House and she would ask for even more censorship. I think that Mark Zuckerberg would have given that to her. Whereas Elon Musk is like this rebel that he doesn't care. He's just like focused on Mars and whoever is on power. I also do believe, and I don't know how you feel or think about this, without Twitter would have Trump won again? Do you think that it's possible for a politician and I think of this because of libertarian politicians. Right, yeah. What hope there is if you don't have a platform in social media that is supporting your or an algorithm that is pushing for you. I don't know if Trump would have won without the support of X.
- [51:11]
Gloria Alvarez
So in Barack Obama's campaigns at the time, they very much explicitly said that their sophisticated manipulation of Facebook was why they won the election in 2016. Trump said, hold my beer, I'm going to use Twitter to do the same thing. Which he did. Yeah, Trump technically, technically was on X in 2024, but he wasn't really using it. So was it because, because of X? I would say maybe in an indirect way. X had an important impact on Trump's victory because it allowed for the emergence of the MAHA coalition. It allowed for the emergence of libertarians that were giving Trump the benefit of the doubt and hope that he would keep his promise to free Russ Ulbricht and other things.
- [52:05]
Matt Kibbe
Do you think that's going to happen, that Ross is going to be.
- [52:07]
Gloria Alvarez
I do. I think it's going to happen and I really, I hope it's true.
- [52:14]
Matt Kibbe
There are libertarians who say that if only that happens, then they can forgive anything that Trump do not do. Of all his promises, which I think is really valid because it's very unfair.
- [52:26]
Gloria Alvarez
It's something tangible. And I've said this like I've worked very closely with Ross's mom, Lynn over the years to try to educate people, people on what happened to Ross. But it's important for people to understand that this deal that the Libertarian Party cut, and it wasn't just the Libertarian Party, it was Trump was talking to the libertarian community more broadly, not just the party. Ross Ulbricht is a symbol of a much broader war that the US Government has been been engaging against cryptocurrencies, against blockchain technology, against privacy. So commuting Ross Ulbricht's sentence is a symbol of a much broader shift in government policy. It's not just about one guy as in just as what happened to him is so. And I think there's again heading in the right direction. You know, a lot of the tech bros, you know, the Elon Musk crowd, crowd have been righteously complaining about the war on cryptocurrency and libertarians have different takes on what's real crypto and not. And I'm not going to get into that. But I think there will be a sea change shift in the war against sort of blockchain technologies. And I think that's an essential part of getting to real libertarian solutions. We're talking about social media companies and it's always like one guy that we're hoping doesn't censor us. Yes, top down structures, as decentralized as they are. The only way we get to a real community based conversation where we can start creating like institutional structures that protect against cyberbullying. We're going to have to work that out as people. It's not going to be a better set of rules imposed from the top down, but we're not going to be able to actually create those institutional structures until we know that it's free.
- [54:29]
Matt Kibbe
Because you're talking about this case of Ross and what it has underneath, which is a way deeper issue. I was thinking how would it look to the audience a platform that is a libertarian platform to resolve issues and how different would the topics be from what we're seeing in the Republican and the Democrat side? Because by saying to people, you are the ones that can choose and decide in your families, in your churches, in your communities, issues that go from economics to individual liberties. What do you think are the topics so that our audience can grasp the difference in between Republicans and Democrats of the topics that a true libertarian platform would put out there once those issues are like put aside?
- [55:23]
Gloria Alvarez
Well, first of all, it would be truly diverse. And you know this. We libertarians love to argue with each other. And so it would be a robust debate. And it would also be in the context of, you know, I'm a dorky economist, so I think about everything in terms of Mises and Hayek and you know, Hayek has done this whole literature on how the rules of conduct, the rules of law are not created by governments, they're created by people in communities trying to figure out like what are the rules that are going to allow us to live together and cooperate. And we've been lurched into this technological, radically decentralized, radically Democratized world that we don't really understand. We're all red pilled because we realized that all of those top down structures were lying to us and it was all a lie. And now we're launched into this ocean of information and competing ideologies and people with strongly held emotional opinions about things. We're going to have to develop new institutional structures, rules that allow us to get along in that radically democratized world. And I think, I hope that libertarians would be the ones leading the charge instead of just getting into these angry arguments with each other. But to me, it's like a lead by example kind of thing. You have a huge voice in your community and can you lead by example and saying, guys, let's not just fight about that silly little stupid thing, let's focus on these bigger things that really matter. In fact.
- [57:10]
Matt Kibbe
Sorry that I interrupt you, but the reason why I wrote this book about social media and mental health is because I said I want to stop focusing on the non existent and this abortion debate which is in Latin America held by men mostly. And I want to focus on the existing ones, on the individuals that are suffering, that are committing suicide, that are without, I don't know how to say, but like that have lost this fire for having a life because they are very concerned either by climate change and these things that are bombarding them on social media, feeling like they're never enough. So part of the reason that I'm saying, like, you know what, I want to step out of this debate, I even want to step out from defending how politics is going on in Latin America and I want to focus more on the societies that we're building is because of that, to shift the conversation to something that for me is more meaningful, which is the people that are already here.
- [58:13]
Gloria Alvarez
Yeah. Yeah. So this is a subject I wanted to bring up with you because I know you're a big fan of Ayn Rand.
- [58:20]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah.
- [58:20]
Gloria Alvarez
And I was really turned on to all of this stuff by reading one of her novels when I was 13 years old. And I have this idea that her philosophy at core is one of responsibility to yourself. And in a lot of ways, when I think about the heroes in our novels and someone like Howard Rourke, who had a real influence on me when I was a teenager trying to figure out how to live my life and how to be a responsible individual, it's a form of self help that can very much be inspirational in a way that Jordan Peterson is not.
- [59:05]
Matt Kibbe
Yes.
- [59:05]
Gloria Alvarez
Because Jordan Peterson also has that get up and make your bed and get your ass to work kind of philosophy. But it's sort of dark and dismal. Right. Whereas Ayn Rand's idea of being a hero was very much an uplifting thing. It doesn't mean it's not a struggle. It doesn't mean that the struggle is real, but the struggle itself is how you get fulfillment in life.
- [59:33]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah.
- [59:33]
Gloria Alvarez
And so I think our philosophy, and it's not just about Rand, but it's that broader view of individualism that says it's a responsibility for you to take control of your own life and no one's going to do it for you. But if you do that, it could be quite beautiful. It could get you out of your mental despair. It could get you out of all of these things that lockdown. So accentuated. Right. You know, a lot of depression, a lot of alcoholism, a lot of bad behavior on social media.
- [60:09]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah.
- [60:10]
Gloria Alvarez
But we could go back to this core. Do you think there's something there?
- [60:14]
Matt Kibbe
Absolutely. I think that Rand, one of the harshest things that she said about libertarians, because when she developed the philosophy of Objectivism, it goes to the values of not only hating government suppression is going to make you free. It's about loving freedom and loving being responsible for your own sake, not waiting for others to rescue you and you not being the subject to rescue others. Right. I think that that's the importance of objectivism. That is a hardcore philosophy that goes beyond politics. It goes to ethics, it goes to art, it goes to value. And that's why Randy's so uncomfortable, because she talked about freedom in its whole spectrum, not like just cherry picking, like the right wing ones or the left wing ones. But one of the harshest things that she said to libertarians was if you don't get your act together, you're always going to be polluted by the conservatives. Right. And she wrote conservatism an obituary, which I think is something to pay attention to, because otherwise you're always going to have the left wing coming back and socialism ruling again. But one of the things that I also talk in my book about Rand is that she herself had a massive depression. So how come the woman that created one of the most uplifting philosophies that is unapologetic for the individual as its own end in himself or herself, how is it possible that she was in a horrible depression when her book didn't accomplish the goals that she was hoping for? Right. And how Nathaniel Brandon helped her to overcome that depression? So one of the things that I talk in my book about is if one of the heroes of individual freedom was human enough to face these things. What toolkit can you have in the 21st century in order to defend liberty without becoming depressed or being part of one or the two extremes? Because one of the things that also happens is that the Objectivist standards are so strong that for people living in the real world, it's very hard to just follow them. And then you see them going to the right wing. Jordan Peterson is an excellent example. When he started, he didn't talk about the Bible. So why this radicalization? Right. So I think that there's a lot to learn from Ayn Rand, both as a philosopher and as a human being. Because that's the other thing, Libertarianism, I think in order to become popular, it has to become more human. And that means presenting the economists and the philosophers and the activists that have contributed to these ideas in a very humane way. That's why I'm more concerned about not paying attention to the personalities that are behind people like Elon Musk or Donald Trump, the egocentric part of that. Because I don't believe that this world needs more violence or more lack of empathy. And I know that that's a conversation that people say, like hard blood libertarians and how they talk about these things. But I think it has to be talked in a way that is because of the principles and the ethics of how difficult it is to be responsible of your own life. Because it's not easy.
- [63:54]
Gloria Alvarez
Yeah. It goes back to my point, and this is a realization. You read all these books by Ayn Rand as a kid and you think, I could never be John Galt. And it's perhaps the wrong goal altogether, because John Galt is not a person. John Galt is an ideal type. It's a set of aspirations that we have for people. And you point out that the creator of John Galt herself had plenty of her own demons and own struggles. But that's the reality. People are complex.
- [64:28]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah, for sure. And I think we should embrace together. I think we should embrace that reality instead of trying to strip it away. Like when I go to Objectivists or I used to go to Objectivist conferences, because now even the Unrent center of Latin America has banned me. Because when they gave a price.
- [64:46]
Gloria Alvarez
You're always causing trouble.
- [64:48]
Matt Kibbe
I am always causing trouble. But they gave this price to Javier Milei the Atlas. And I was thinking, like, I don't know if Ayn Rand would be happy with that. And I made a post about it, and that's what got me banned from the Ayn Rand center of Latin America, which is, okay, I was just defending a woman that is dead and couldn't defend herself. But the thing is, I think that embracing that humanity is very necessary because when you go to objectivist conferences, they're like, no, no, no, let's ignore that. Ayn Rand and Nathaniel Brander were a thing for 30 years. That's insane. That is like if you and Terry would divorce tomorrow, you're crucial part of each other's lives, you know? And I think that one of the things why libertarians have been so up there in the tower while the left wing and the alt right are winning the culture is because sometimes we don't talk about the humanity behind the people that we present to others.
- [65:49]
Gloria Alvarez
Right, yeah, I've developed and Deirdre McCloskey helped me with this. I had a great show with her maybe a year and a half ago. And I've been working on this, this, I'll call it an ideological matrix. Because I hate the left versus right thing. Doesn't make sense that Pol Pot and Adolf Hitler are supposedly the opposite because they're exactly the same person, xenophobic, murderous monsters. So I have this idea that it should be from the bottom to the top. And in the bottom is the most toxic anti human authoritarian ideologies, all the deadly isms. But as you get to the top, you get to tolerance. And tolerance is not a very high value in my matrix because you're just putting up with people that you don't particularly care for, but at least you're not like putting them in gulags. But then you get to trade and cooperation and eventually you get to respect, which is a very high bar. Right? But at the top of that matrix is love. And when I use the word love, I think about it very much in the context of how Ayn Rand talked about it. The ultimate mutual respect, the ultimate humanity. And Deirdre, of course, is a former leftist Christian trans libertarian, and I'm coming at it from a different perspective than she is. But we can still agree on these fundamentally human values that are so aspirational and the best of us gets there. If we lead to those values based conversations, I think we can find common ground. Whereas if we're going to argue about whether or not you're a Catholic or a Protestant, that stuff divides us because those are our little special tribes that we all choose to live in. So I would love to read your new book because I think this is where we need to go.
- [67:59]
Matt Kibbe
I want to translate it in English as soon as possible. And also make it available. We'll talk about that later. I think that's the widest of the pills that we can end this podcast with, talking about those things that are uniting us more than more than ever and understanding that libertarianism will always prioritize the individual in its errors in its own capacity. It doesn't mean perfection. It means a lot of pragmatism, trial and error. And it's a philosophy. I think it's more a way of living than a political ideology. Yes, I think that that's a good way to describe it. And Matt, I could stay for hours talking with you. It has been my absolute pleasure to be with you here in Red Pill Cross podcasting with Free the People. Thank you so much.
- [68:54]
Gloria Alvarez
Great to catch up. Thank you.
- [68:58]
Kibbe
Thanks for watching. If you liked the conversation, make sure to like the video, subscribe and also ring the bell for notifications. And if you want to know more about Free the people, go to freethepeople.org.