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Kibbe on Liberty
Ep 321 | New Hampshire Is the Libertarian Laboratory of Democracy | Guest: Eric Brakey
00:54:34
Matt Kibbe sits down with Eric Brakey, executive director of the Free State Project, to discuss why this effort is so important, how effective it has been, and why every libertarian, regardless of where they live, should be invested in what happens in New Hampshire.
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- [00:00]
Matt Kibbe
Welcome to KB on Liberty. I'm talking with my friend Eric Braecke, the new executive director of the Free State Project, and we're going to talk about all of the advances made in New Hampshire by libertarians. It is literally the libertarian laboratory for democracy. Check it out.
- [00:35]
Eric Braecke
Welcome to Kibby on Liberty.
- [00:52]
Matt Kibbe
Senator Brakey, how are you?
- [00:54]
Senator Brakey
I'm doing well. Matt Kibbe. It's nice. It's been a year since we spoke last. Good to be on with you.
- [00:58]
Matt Kibbe
And you are allegedly retired from politics.
- [01:03]
Senator Brakey
Allegedly. For now. I don't know. It's a still young. It's a young retirement. So there's a long life ahead of me where I could make the mistake again of jumping into politics.
- [01:15]
Matt Kibbe
And we've talked about this before, but let's just remind people that you were a state senator in Maine, which started off your interest in politics was as a Ron Paul kid, and you caught the. The bug.
- [01:30]
Senator Brakey
Yeah, Liberty bug inspired me and passed the torch to all of us in 2012 and been running with it ever since.
- [01:38]
Matt Kibbe
And you've been a longtime attendee of the Free State Project and Porkfest and what's the winter event called?
- [01:51]
Senator Brakey
So we just had our Porcupine Day, but I think you're thinking of the New Hampshire Liberty Forum, which we've. Which usually we've done in February, but this year we decided to push into April.
- [02:02]
Matt Kibbe
Okay.
- [02:03]
Senator Brakey
So when it's a.
- [02:04]
Matt Kibbe
But it'll still be snowing.
- [02:06]
Senator Brakey
I hope not. We'll see. It is New Hampshire, but you'll get.
- [02:09]
Matt Kibbe
Like two feet of snow that, you.
- [02:11]
Senator Brakey
Know, I will say for all the people who say New Hampshire gets a lot of snow, I did just see that Florida got a boatload of snow dropped on them. So, yeah, we had a bit of a chuckle of it up. Up north.
- [02:20]
Matt Kibbe
You guys are more prepared, perhaps.
- [02:21]
Senator Brakey
Yeah, we know how to deal with snow.
- [02:23]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah, but you were a state senator in Maine and you were quite often sort of that lonely voice of Liberty there. Did some good work, upset all the right people. But you have moved to New Hampshire.
- [02:38]
Senator Brakey
That's right. It's been 10 years of work in Maine politics, from the Ron Paul campaign through three terms of the Maine Senate, who runs for federal office, including a run for US Senate against Angus King, where I ended up was named in the Twitter files. So that was a fun experience, I guess.
- [03:00]
Matt Kibbe
Tell the story. Oh, I don't know this story.
- [03:04]
Senator Brakey
Oh, well, when Matt Taibbi released the Twitter files, he noted that there was this US Senator from Maine who apparently sent in a lot of Requests to censor critics on. On the platform that was then called Twitter. And they were all. It was like me and my supporters who were critics of him. I guess it started because on the anniversary of the 911 Twin Tower attacks, when I was running against him, he came to a ceremony in my town, my city that I represented, Auburn Main. And he was. So this is in 2000. And he compared the 911 twin tower attacks to Russian election hacking. He said it was the same kind of attack on America. They used to fly planes into towers and now with a computer, they will hack our elections. And I thought that was a little insensitive. And not just insensitive, but I thought it was dangerous. Right. This kind of. This escalatory saber rattling based on a.
- [04:10]
Eric Braecke
Lot of false propaganda and quite insulting.
- [04:13]
Matt Kibbe
To people that died on 9 11.
- [04:15]
Senator Brakey
Yes. Yeah, both.
- [04:16]
Matt Kibbe
And perhaps all of the soldiers and innocents who died in the response to 9 11.
- [04:20]
Senator Brakey
Yeah, it was insulting looking backwards and dangerous looking forwards. And so we happened to have someone there who recorded that. We released it to the media. None of the local media would pick it up, but Tucker Carlson picked it up and so did Breitbart. And it became kind of big on social media and some of the conservative national media, Angus King, responded by going to Twitter to try to get them to take down the video. And then they didn't end up taking down the video, but there was an exchange where then they provided Twitter with a list of problematic accounts that they wanted them to investigate to see if they were. Maybe they were Russian meddlers or something. And a lot of them were my supporters who were very critical of him. And we thought it was interesting because. Well, it was interesting no matter what. But he's also on the U.S. senate Intelligence Committee. And so it's. I don't know, it was, I think, a clear kind of abuse of power in this. In this moment of censorship that was. That was being pushed by so many in Washington, D.C. and sadly, he's still there. He's still. It was interesting to watch him on the Intelligence Committee grilling Tulsi Gabbard about how Edward Snowden is a traitor or this or that. So hopefully. Well, what can you do?
- [05:44]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah. Before I go on, I have to ask, are you a Russian asset?
- [05:48]
Senator Brakey
Not that I'm aware of.
- [05:50]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah.
- [05:50]
Senator Brakey
I mean, I've never spoken with any of them over there. I don't know if they put me in their asset column or their liability column or if I'm in any columns at all. But you and Tulsi I think it's an interesting phrase. Right. Russian asset, because it doesn't actually imply that you actually have any relationship whatsoever with Russians. It's just like maybe if you're advocating for a pro America foreign policy of like, what business of ours is to be involved in all these color revolutions in Eastern Europe. And if you question that, then if that also aligns with Russia doesn't want people meddling in nations near their border. Like, we wouldn't like it if people were overthrowing the government of Mexico. Like, does that make you an asset? I don't know. It's a pretty.
- [06:35]
Matt Kibbe
Well, you should know Hillary Clinton is a regular avid watcher of this show, so she's probably taking notes now. And you've been added to the list. But I want to summarize that story because it sounds a incumbent Senator on the Senate Foreign Relations Intelligence Committee jawboning companies to suppress the speech of his political opponent in the middle of an election.
- [07:10]
Senator Brakey
Yes, I was actively campaigning against him.
- [07:12]
Matt Kibbe
Can that be legal?
- [07:14]
Eric Braecke
Is it constitutional?
- [07:15]
Matt Kibbe
Because it sounds, speaking of Russian assets, it sounds like something Putin might do to his political enemies.
- [07:22]
Senator Brakey
Yeah, it's certainly not the kind of thing you would hope to see happen in America. Yeah, I think we've seen a lot worse, even though by many elected and unelected officials in our country. So, yeah, you would hope it's not legal, but no charges have ever been brought and the people reelected him twice. That was just the most depressing thing of all.
- [07:48]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah, well, unfortunately, you know, this, like so much of politics is driven by what people don't know. And it's quite impossible sometimes to know what your legislators are actually up to because they spend a great deal of their time making sure that you can't find out. Which, of course, is part of what the Twitter files was all about. But it's interesting. Maybe Elon and Doge can dig some things up.
- [08:17]
Senator Brakey
I'm looking for. It does start to feel like with what Doge is doing, it does start to feel like the Twitter files are going to be peanuts compared to Day in the park, the federal government files that are going to be coming out, everything we're seeing, I know it's probably going to be a little while before this is posted, so this could be, could be dated well beyond all the new things. But to see kind of USAID kind of slashed and burned and things starting to come out there, it's very encouraging to see. It's like all of Washington, D.C. is getting an enema.
- [08:50]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah, yeah. And it'll be out by then, I have a new episode of our series, the COVID up coming out on Blaze tv. And the timing is pretty perfect because simultaneously we're discovering, and by the way, these aren't actually new discoveries, but the few people, including Rand Paul, who is talking about usaid, and they're basically money laundering from the defense and intelligence agencies to fund gain of function research, that is a colossal scandal. And again, as you said, this, this is the beginning of a process. I think we're all going to be taking a lot of red pills discovering even, like me, crazy paranoid libertarian, I'm going to be shocked at how evil and corrupt our federal government is.
- [09:45]
Senator Brakey
Well, and it's so encouraging because I remember, and certainly I was a little skeptical. I think many were very skeptical when you first heard about Doge and Elon Musk being put in, you know, to lead this commission or whatever we want to call it, that didn't actually really exist. People were like, what is this? Just like an advisory committee. You're going to put together some report and it's going to go to the president or it's going to go to Congress and they're going to. And nothing's going to happen. Right. We've seen reports on government waste and corruption, all these things before, and it just sits there. And inertia is, is the rule in, in Washington D.C. nothing ever changes. So this is very different and it's very exciting. I don't know where it will lead to, but it is, I mean, it's nice to see the bad guys worried.
- [10:38]
Matt Kibbe
I actually read the executive order that creates doge, and it's, it's, it is a sophisticated and clever and 100% legal reorganization of an existing department that was created by Obamacare, an existing department that had responsibility for computer, the integrity of computer systems and data. So they're basically using something that Barack Obama handed them to gut out waste, fraud and corruption. And I'm here for it. It's beautiful.
- [11:14]
Senator Brakey
Live by the sword, die by the sword.
- [11:16]
Matt Kibbe
But, you know, so we can, and I've been talking to various people about hopeful optimism about doge, about usaid, the Department of Education and other things. And by the time this runs, there'll probably be other government efficiency campaigns that we can talk about. But your project is the go bag in case we don't fix Washington D.C. and we should all be skeptical that we'll ever fix Washington D.C. you've moved to New Hampshire and you're now the, what's your title?
- [11:51]
Senator Brakey
Executive Director of the Free State Project.
- [11:53]
Matt Kibbe
Yep. And Your guys argument from day one is we can't fix Washington, but we can fix New Hampshire.
- [11:59]
Senator Brakey
Yeah. And it's nice to see when there are good things happening in Washington D.C. i think that ultimately it's going to. Maybe this is just a cynic in me, but I think ultimately it'll result in marginal improvements at best. Ultimately the corruption and the power structure is so entrenched in Washington D.C. that it's hard to imagine that maybe the stars align and we see some nice changes. But it's hard to imagine what we as individuals or libertarians in organized groups could really do to have much impact on Washington D.C. overall. I mean we've succeeded in a few cases over the years getting a few good people elected to Congress. Between Rand Paul and Thomas Massie, we Justin amash for a while. We've had a few new names and voices who've come in and who've left.
- [12:54]
Matt Kibbe
I keep Mike Lee on that list too.
- [12:56]
Senator Brakey
Yeah, Mike Lee's pretty good. I give him a B plus, which.
- [13:00]
Matt Kibbe
For a senator is.
- [13:01]
Senator Brakey
Yeah, most of them I give D's and F's. So there's a wide chasm between him and the rest. But. But as libertarians, wherever we are in the country, we are lucky if we are perhaps 5% of the electorate in the populace. And 5% is not enough to make real significant changes to the politics and the culture around you. And even if marginal changes happen on the federal level, if the building blocks of this country are not in order, if our own local communities are not in order, then that's not a recipe for success. So the Free State project is, as you know, mass migration movement of libertarians to New Hampshire. It's been going on for 22 years. Thousands and thousands have made the move and the results over the last generation have been pretty profound. Today we have 98 liberty legislators elected. They're leading the charge on abolishing taxes, on expanding school choice programs. Defend the Guard has been been a big push that New Hampshire has led the way on calling our National Guard troops home from wars that haven't been declared by Congress. But not just the politics of the state are transforming in a really nice way. I will note that change happens from the bottom up. We don't have Liberty Congressmen or US Senators yet, but I imagine that day will come. But the culture is changing too and the communities that are being built in New Hampshire are, are amazing. And you take a moment like we went through with COVID even though in New Hampshire we had a governor who was not the best governor when it came to Covid and was doing executive orders like a lot of the, you know, the Democratic New England governors do. Though I don't think he was as enthusiastic about it perhaps as some of them.
- [14:57]
Matt Kibbe
He wasn't Gretchen Whitmer.
- [14:58]
Senator Brakey
He wasn't Gretchen Whitmer. He wasn't Janet Mills. Yeah, but he was still. He was not Ron Desantis either. But the fact that you had strong, robust libertarian communities and networks in New Hampshire meant that it was easy to disregard these executive orders and you weren't going to be socially isolated by people like so many good people I know in Maine who were, even if they didn't agree with it, they felt basically locked in their homes because all of the community around them was bought in and they felt isolated and alone. That was not the experience of libertarians in New Hampshire because of the strong communities there.
- [15:37]
Matt Kibbe
Thank you for joining me today on.
- [15:38]
Eric Braecke
Kibbe on Liberty and for being part of our fiercely independent audience. Every week, my organization, Free the People, partners with Blaze TV to bring you this show. My guests bring smart perspectives on everything from current events to timeless philosophical debates. If you like what you hear, go to freethepeople.org kol and support Kibbe on Liberty so we can continue to produce these honest conversations with interesting people. Now, let's get back to it.
- [16:07]
Matt Kibbe
The neighborhood snitches during COVID is creepy beyond description because it reminds me of stories that Lee Schoolin told about growing up during Mao's cultural revolution. Yeah, her biggest enemies were her neighbors. It wasn't the government, but that's a rabbit hole. I wanted to ask a question. I think Carla Gerke pointed this out and maybe you can enlighten us. There's a reason why state politics is transformative because of the migration and repopulation of New Hampshire with liberty minded people. But federal politics is different. And she said that students who are going to university in New Hampshire can vote in federal elections. Do you even know this?
- [17:02]
Senator Brakey
Yeah, I mean, I don't think that's unique to New Hampshire. I think that's everywhere. Although I know that many of the Republicans in the legislature want to do something about that. I'm not sure what. I imagine legislation trying to prohibit out of state students from voting in New Hampshire elections would probably be challenged in federal court. I think that there have been past federal court decisions kind of cementing a lot of these things. I mean, I know that in the state of Maine, for example, it's in the state constitution that students who are. I'm trying to Remember the language that's used. But students who are there on seminary are basically out of state. Students couldn't vote in Maine elections, but federal courts came in and ruled that the Maine constitution was unconstitutional, believe it or not. So I imagine it's worth fighting, but I imagine it will.
- [17:54]
Matt Kibbe
It doesn't really make sense, particularly in an era where absentee voting is ubiquitous. But I don't know, it was a curious explanation for the disparity between your state legislature and some of your senators.
- [18:11]
Senator Brakey
Yeah. You know, and I'm still trying to, as someone who's new to New Hampshire, I'm still trying to make sense of it all. Like, why is there this, this, this, this, this swing block that either they're voting Democrat on the federal level and leaving the down ballot blank, or they're voting Democrat on the federal level and voting Republican on the local level. Maybe it's like Democrat voters who really don't want to have an income tax in New Hampshire.
- [18:35]
Matt Kibbe
Right. And I mean, that's real possible. Right. Because you get split ballot voting in a lot of purple states and I guess. Is New Hampshire purple?
- [18:45]
Senator Brakey
New Hampshire is purple. And I think we've been fortunate. And I think the Free State project plays a large role in this. That over much of the last decade on the state level, it's been consistently trending red. And we all know not all Republicans are created equal. But because of the very strong block of liberty Republicans that are within the legislature, that's now one of the strongest ideological coalitions in the Republican majority. So as long as Republicans are in charge and libertarians keep growing their voting bloc within that caucus, we're gonna see that the legislature keeps steering the state towards liberty solutions to the problems that we face.
- [19:24]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah. I assume you're fluent in the left strategy of taking certain states and introducing their most radical ideas, single payer healthcare in Vermont and using a state as a laboratory and eventually succeeding in passing their ideological agenda and then exporting it. Because once a state is doing it, once it's passed into law, it sort of normalizes it, even if it's a crazy idea. Is that part of the New Hampshire strategy?
- [20:01]
Senator Brakey
Yeah, absolutely right. We have these 50 laboratories of democracy, but we don't have a libertarian one. New Hampshire is becoming the libertarian laboratory of democracy, where we can look at policies like constitutional carry and school choice, which New Hampshire really did help kind of push, kind of early adopters of these policies that have now kind of. These policies are getting adopted now all across the country. So I certainly think that for every Libertarian in America should have a stake in what's happening in New Hampshire, even if you have no intention to move or be a part of what we're doing here. Because the opportunity to take libertarian ideas that have lived in white papers for decades and to put them into reality and have a demonstratable use case for them that they work, they're effective, school choice works. Putting parents in charge rather than bureaucrats in charge of a kid's education results in better outcomes. Once you can demonstrate that, it makes it that much easier for Tennessee and Florida and Texas and all these other states to point to that and take it up and pass it.
- [21:15]
Matt Kibbe
So what is two different categories? What is the most successful legislative change that has happened in New Hampshire and then what is the most promising legislative proposal that can happen in New Hampshire?
- [21:31]
Senator Brakey
Well, yeah, if you ask any free stater you're going to get, you'll get a million different ideas on that.
- [21:37]
Matt Kibbe
What, really? There's diversity of opinion amongst libertarians?
- [21:40]
Senator Brakey
Yeah. Yeah. We don't herd cats. We just let them roam and build whatever libertarian projects they want to build. For me, I think that this is maybe the sexiest thing in the world. But it is amazing to see coming from Maine that year after year when Liberty Republicans have been running the show in New Hampshire that the budgets actually cut spending gets cut from budget to budget in Maine.
- [22:14]
Matt Kibbe
I don't know. That's pretty sexy.
- [22:16]
Senator Brakey
Well, maybe nerds like you and me.
- [22:18]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah, I'm sorry for budget dorks, but.
- [22:22]
Senator Brakey
I know in Maine the best we could hope for is can we try to keep this budget in line with inflation? The dream of actually turning the clock backward and actually cutting spending from the previous year was never even on the table. And New Hampshire, that's become regular par for the course. When Republicans have the go of it, they're really kind of cutting spending. And of course, that's allowed them to do things like completely abolish all remnants of the income tax in the state. So we always said that New Hampshire had no income tax.
- [23:00]
Matt Kibbe
That's pretty sexy, too.
- [23:01]
Senator Brakey
Yeah. Well, and that's tangible for people, right? We always said it had no income tax. There was a little asterisk next to that because there was this thing called the interest and dividends tax. And so investment income was taxed, but now that's been phased out. That's dead and gone. And that was decided by this election. If Democrats had taken back the legislature and the governorship, that was one of their first things they wanted to reinstitute before it was phased out and people got used to the idea of it not being there.
- [23:30]
Matt Kibbe
So that's was it. This is a tangent, but I didn't follow the New Hampshire state politics. Was it viewed as possibly swinging control to Democrats?
- [23:41]
Senator Brakey
Yeah, there was a lot of concerns. Well, first of all, Governor Sununu, who is a popular governor who I could critique from a libertarian perspective on many things, but we got a lot of good things done under him. He wasn't running again. So you had an open seat for the governorship. Kelly Ayotte did win. Former Congress critter. Not so great on foreign policy, but pretty good on.
- [24:08]
Matt Kibbe
She was a senator maybe.
- [24:09]
Senator Brakey
Yeah, she was a senator and a neoconservative. So she's not gonna.
- [24:14]
Matt Kibbe
Will New Hampshire be invading anything soon?
- [24:18]
Senator Brakey
You know, I do want to liberate the second district of Maine, but that's as far as my imperial ambitions go. Yeah, maybe a few cities in Vermont, but. So she's not going to be helpful with us on Defend the Guard, which is to your earlier question, one of the most promising things that we're building momentum for. But the New Hampshire House of Representatives was almost evenly split between Republicans and Democrats these last two years. I think Republicans had a four seat majority, so reallyout of 400 members. So it really was who showed up that day who was really in charge. And there was a big concern that is Trump going to be popular enough to carry the ticket without Sununu running again? What's going to happen if Democrats took the House, which is the most libertarian body in the world? I would argue we could have a strong presence in the Liberty in the Republican caucus, but if it was a minority caucus, it would be for nothing. And then at the same time, the New Hampshire Senate is a strong Republican body, but it's very establishment Republican. And we only had one Liberty Republican there, which wasn't even enough to get roll call votes. So when Defend the Guard came to the New Hampshire State Senate, they just tabled it.
- [25:46]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah.
- [25:46]
Senator Brakey
Never took a roll call and they would never go on record. What happened in this election was it was a bigger success than anyone imagined. Republican governor, Republicans expanded their majority in the House from four to 40. And Republicans in the Senate now have a super majority of 2/3. And our liberty Republican senators went from 1 to 5. Including winning a Liberty Republican won the biggest city in New Hampshire, Manchester, which was ironically where the Democratic candidate for governor had been the mayor. So she lost her own city. Things are changing.
- [26:26]
Matt Kibbe
How did, I don't know this. How did Trump do?
- [26:30]
Senator Brakey
He came, I Think closer than they expected.
- [26:34]
Matt Kibbe
And that probably helped, right?
- [26:36]
Senator Brakey
Yeah, it helped. I think in the last few weeks, Trump, they realized there was some polling came out that showed Trump competitive in New Hampshire, which surprised them, and they sent JD Vance up to do a rally. But they didn't really focus resources on New Hampshire, which, you know, I'm not going to critique them. They obviously didn't need to. They won without New Hampshire. So, yeah, you know, their strategy worked. They didn't need New Hampshire. But if they had, I think it came close enough that if they had prioritized New Hampshire and invested resources there and treated it like a swing state, I think they would have probably won.
- [27:11]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah. But either way, Liberty Republicans are in a much better position in this session.
- [27:19]
Senator Brakey
Yes, yes. And now it looks very likely that some of the big changes that are going to happen this year, there's a very strong chance that New Hampshire becomes the first New England state with a right to work law, which would be huge. It's been something people have been fighting for for, I don't know, half a century, and there's never been able to kind of break the compulsory union lock on New England. So New Hampshire has the prospect of being the first. There is a strong push to expand Education Freedom Accounts to a universal system. Right now it's limited, based on your family income as a percentage of the federal poverty level. Many of our Liberty legislators, including Jason Osborne, who's the House Majority Leader, who came to New Hampshire as a participant in the Free State Project, he's been a real driving force for school choice. And so it looks very likely we might get to Universal Education Freedom Accounts there and then Defend the Guard is a big push. Of course, I imagine we're going to run into roadblocks with the governor if we get it that far. But I'm very confident for the very first time we'll be able to get a roll call vote in the Senate and put those politicians on record.
- [28:38]
Matt Kibbe
Let's remind people what that is because it's sort of a complementary, I think, very innovative strategy that would work even better if you have a federal executive branch and a president that's not desperately wanting to start new wars.
- [28:56]
Senator Brakey
And thankfully, we have a now we have a Secretary of Defense who's publicly on the record of supporting Defend the Guard, and hopefully we have an incoming Director of National Intelligence. Maybe by the time this show airs, we'll know. Tulsi Gabbard, who at the New Hampshire Liberty Forum last year, last time we spoke.
- [29:14]
Matt Kibbe
That's right. Yeah.
- [29:15]
Senator Brakey
She went on the record in support to defend the guard.
- [29:18]
Matt Kibbe
The first time I interviewed her was there. Yeah. And yeah, my prediction. And I shouldn't do predictions because you end up looking stupid. But I think that she will win this fight and squeak through.
- [29:32]
Senator Brakey
I think Susan Collins coming out and supporting her in the Intelligence Committee was a good sign. I don't know what's going on behind the scenes to make that happen, but I'm glad that it's happening. I was very disappointed in Ron Wyden for all his talk of being an opponent of mass surveillance all these years, and he came up with some bullshit partisan excuse not to vote for Tulsi.
- [29:57]
Matt Kibbe
The Democrats are looking so hypocritical on Tulsi and RFK Jr. In particular because I forget which senator is. But one of the guys that's attacking RFK now was at his freaking wedding. So it's like you guys are just hacks.
- [30:12]
Senator Brakey
Yeah.
- [30:12]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah.
- [30:13]
Senator Brakey
I wonder what Bernie's going to do on Tulsi. Because Tulsi, of course, resigned from the DNC in protest of how they were treating Bernie Sanders and then came out and endorsed him for president against Hillary Clinton. And I just, you know, in my mind, if Bernie Sanders does not vote for Tulsi after all this, then he's just. He's become a total partisan hack and he has no honor.
- [30:37]
Matt Kibbe
I'm afraid that he's a puppet and I'm afraid that they have him on a leash now. But that would be the ultimate betrayal if he abandons Tulsi after all she sacrificed for him. Yeah, but this is Washington, so strap in. That's what they do.
- [30:55]
Senator Brakey
Yeah. What they got on him. But he's. Yeah, he's certainly. I've seen a lot of people on social media who've realized he's not the man they thought he was.
- [31:05]
Eric Braecke
If you've made it this far into the show, it means I must be doing something right. Key Beyond Liberty is just one of the amazing products we create at Free the People. We tell emotionally compelling stories and produce educational videos for the Liberty Curious. Our award winning documentaries personalize all things liberty. Independence, creativity, hard work, integrity and perseverance. After the show, check out our work@freethepeople.org and if you like what you see, donate to support what we do. That's freethepeople.org now back to the show.
- [31:42]
Matt Kibbe
My theory, and this is a theory. I'll go full Joe Rogan and say I don't know anything. But my theory is that his wife's corrupt dealings with that University probably have something to do do with the taming of Bernie Sanders, but we'll see. Maybe he comes out and does the right thing. I've said very many nice things about Bernie over the years because he's done some really interesting things on foreign policy. I used to agree with him quite a bit. Not anymore. He's lost his non interventionist chops and that again, it feels like his masters have tamed him somehow. Yeah, but yeah. So Defend the Guard is again like it's almost our go bag. If the chief executive has ambitions to start yet another war without Congress authorizing it, which is typical. I can't remember the last war they authorized.
- [32:43]
Senator Brakey
Yeah, I think it was World War II.
- [32:45]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah.
- [32:45]
Senator Brakey
I mean if you're only counting actual declarations of war and not AUMFs.
- [32:50]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah, but there's been no wars since World War II, as I recall.
- [32:54]
Senator Brakey
Yeah, it's been total peace and prosperity ever since.
- [32:56]
Matt Kibbe
Peace and prosperity. No nation building.
- [32:58]
Senator Brakey
Yeah. Not a single soldier has lost their life overseas in some boondoggle that they didn't even care to vote on. But you had asked me earlier to explain Defend the Guard and say it is the constant. So the thing to understand for folks who are completely new to this is that the state National Guards have accounted for about 50% of troops on the ground in the wars in the Middle east over the last 20 years. The state National Guards answer to the states unless they are mobilized under constitutional purposes by the federal government. And the Constitution says there are only three purposes for which they can be mobilized for combat deployment, that is to suppress insurrection, repel invasion, or enforce the laws of the union. So I always go to Syria as the example. I think it's a clear cut example. Right. We've been over in Syria now for 11 years. Are we suppressing an insurrection? We fomented an insurrection. So that was the purpose. We were fomenting one. Are we repelling an invasion? We did the invasion. We weren't repelling it. We weren't invited there. Are we enforcing a law of the union? There's no law of the union you can point to, not even an AUMF. So they try to point to the 2001 AUMF after the 911 Twin Tower Tax, which was very broadly written in a very dangerous way. But even as broadly as that was written, it was to retaliate against Al Qaeda. And the mission in Syria involved giving weapons and aid and arms to Al Qaeda. So it is like the height of cynicism to point to retaliation for the 911 twin tower tax for why we need to give weapons to Al Qaeda in Syria. So there's no authorization whatsoever. And yet our troops are over there. But because it doesn't meet a constitutional purpose, that means the states have every constitutional authority to say we withdraw our consent for our soldiers to be sent over there. Bring them home. And this has really rattled a lot of chains in the Pentagon. They mobilize some four star generals to go out and lobby in the states about why this is such a bad idea. But it's been growing in momentum. New Hampshire was the first state to pass it through a lower chamber in the last legislative session. It also passed the Arizona Senate and the Idaho Senate. Now this year it's really gaining some steam. I just saw that. Thanks to our mutual friend Nick Franklin Freitas in Virginia who led the charge there. I read this. It's so kind of hard to believe. I wonder what the context is. But they say it passed 99. 0 in the New Hampshire. I'm sorry. In the Virginia House of Delegates.
- [35:44]
Matt Kibbe
Oh, I didn't know that.
- [35:45]
Senator Brakey
Yeah, that's what they're saying.
- [35:47]
Matt Kibbe
Nick's a pretty big guy. He was probably just intimidating them by standing there.
- [35:52]
Senator Brakey
Maybe that's it. Yeah, I'd love to hear directly from the horse's mouth kind of what happened there. That's pretty impressive. And I'm hearing a lot of other states where you're starting to see this pass through legislative chambers. So we haven't yet had it passed through both chambers in any single state. That'll be key. But I think that once a single state passes it, the dam is going to break. Because the big thing is, and the big argument against it is that states are afraid to go it alone. They're afraid of being retaliated against. The federal government controls so much through the mechanism of they steal our money and they ransom it back to us with strings attached. And so the argument against Defend the Guard is always, what if the federal government cuts our funding? I think that's a terrible argument when we're talking about sending our sons and daughters off to fight and die in wars that have no clear mission and Congress doesn't care enough to declare. But that's what they always fall back on is what about the money?
- [36:53]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah. When did Pete Hegseth endorse Defend the Guard?
- [36:57]
Senator Brakey
When it passed the New Hampshire House of Representatives. He was on Fox and Friends and was asked about it and he said it seemed like a great idea to him as someone who had served in the National Guard and had experienced These missionless deployments.
- [37:12]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah. And the same thing happened with Tulsi Gabbard at the New Hampshire Freedom Forum. And this is one thing that the defendant Guard guys are pretty good at is just asking the question. Because sometimes I suspect there's plenty of other legislators that, should they be asked publicly, might be forced to admit that it's a very good idea. But it's more convenient not to talk about it.
- [37:38]
Senator Brakey
You piss off a lot less people that way if you can just say nothing.
- [37:41]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah, well, that's very exciting. By the way, Nick, I think he's still in session right now because he's going to come on and talk about Defend the Guard.
- [37:52]
Senator Brakey
Great.
- [37:53]
Matt Kibbe
And he can give us the. He can explain what he did. Yeah, I think he just stared at them.
- [38:01]
Senator Brakey
Well, when I see 99. 0, I wonder if it just went. If they got an actual roll call vote or if it just went under the hammer and they're, like, anticipating how the Senate's gonna kill this thing. We don't need to go on record, but at least I know that's the kind of stuff I saw all the time in Maine. So we'll see what happens there. But it was a great, great news all the same. See, it passed another chamber.
- [38:22]
Matt Kibbe
So one of my favorite events of the year is happening again this year. Pork Fest in northern New Hampshire. And do you happen to remember the dates? I don't remember the dates off the top of my head.
- [38:35]
Senator Brakey
Yeah, I want to say June 16th through the 22nd, plus or minus a few days. Anyone can check that out for themselves@porphfest.com.
- [38:46]
Matt Kibbe
Somebody look up pork Fest. So we get the dates right and free the people will be back there again. And I know over the years I was trying to. I don't remember the first time that I went to Porkfest, but it was probably something like 15 years ago. And I've been fairly regular. I love that place. It reminds me of the Grateful Dead parking lot, except for all of the tie dyes. There's also some pretty well strapped individuals and. Safest place on the planet.
- [39:19]
Senator Brakey
Yeah, it is a totally unique event in the liberty movement. And I mean, it's been. You know, I've been going off and on since 2012. I never imagined I was going to be running the thing. Certainly not when I remember in 2021 when I was working at Young Americans for Liberty, and last minute I decided to go and I didn't have a camping spot, and I asked the universe for help, and Matt Kibbe reached out and I appreciate. I Still appreciate that you letting me stay at your campsite there.
- [39:47]
Matt Kibbe
It was a gathering of vagabonds. Yeah.
- [39:50]
Senator Brakey
Yeah. That was a good year. We were all kind of. It was still. We were still in the throes of all the COVID craziness was that the year.
- [40:00]
Matt Kibbe
That's the year was sold out and insanely popular because it was literally the only gathering, not just Liberty gathering, but maybe one of the few gatherings because we were still canceling concerts. And was it 2021 that Freedom Fest got screwed over by their conference hotel in Las Vegas? I think it was 21. Yeah.
- [40:21]
Senator Brakey
And young Americans for Liberty got. I think actually it was the year before. Yeah. Yeah. Got screwed over in Texas, too. It's. Yeah, it was hard to do big conferences during those years, but in New Hampshire, the Free State movement pressed on even in 2020. I mean, 2020 was a little less organized and a little. And was smaller. But there was a decision made. We are moving forward. We are doing this, and we haven't. We haven't missed a year in 22 years.
- [40:52]
Matt Kibbe
And they were right and almost everybody else was wrong about gatherings. But 2021 was just cool because it felt cathartic and it also felt like there was a real sense of community there. The sense of community there is always quite strong. But I think since 2021, it's been more diverse and more strong as a community. And I. I couldn't recommend for people, particularly if you like to camp, but you don't have to camp, but there's nothing else like it. If only we could get the surviving members of the Grateful Dead to play there. That would be my ultimate dream come true.
- [41:31]
Senator Brakey
And we're in the process right now of booking speakers and getting things organized this year. The theme is Taste the Revolution, and we are putting a special emphasis on food freedom. And we are really glad. We just came to an agreement with Joel Salatin, who's going to be coming and joining us to kick off the week. I know you know Joel Salatin, but amazing figure in the food freedom movement. I remember seeing him years back at Freedom Fest debating John Mackey about whether vegetarianism or not vegetarianism. He's a big advocate for eating meat, just doing it ethically and avoiding the factory farm system. And he's really built amazing model to be able to do that. So we're looking forward to having Joel Salatin there. Connor Boyak is coming to Porkfest. He's the author of the Tuttle Twins series, and also he's very involved in his policy work. With the Libertas Institute in Utah. So he's gonna be coming, he's gonna be giving a main stage talk, but he's also gonna be doing a reading of one of the Tuttle twins books for our Porcupines program. We've been doing a lot in recent years to build up programs for families. And this is, I mean, one of the things that's really kind of evolved over the decades of Porkfest is as a lot of the original Pork Fest goers got older and had kids and now they bring their kids. And so we still have a lot of the traditional Pork Fest content, but we've been developing a lot more for kids of all ages, both the younger kids with readings of children's books.
- [43:18]
Matt Kibbe
It's an extremely family friendly event.
- [43:21]
Senator Brakey
Yeah, my favorite was we did a mock legislature last year with the 10 to 17 crowd and had them. They formed political parties, they submitted legislation, and they went through the whole process on taking a bill through the whole process to becoming law. I, I won't say what bill they put forward, but I was impressed. They are very, decidedly not Fans of Washington D.C. at Kibbe on Liberty.
- [43:53]
Eric Braecke
Freedom is a lifestyle 24. 7, something you live and breathe and wear every day. If that describes you, you need the very best liberty swag in the market today, just like this shirt I happen to be wearing. Go to freethepeople.org kol and check out our exciting merch. You too can love liberty and look cool.
- [44:16]
Matt Kibbe
So I was just hanging out with Joel Salatin fairly recently at something called the Link Liberty Film Festival in southern Vermont. I'm going to screw up the town. Beautiful town. And it's the intersection of maha and natural foods and stewardship of the earth crowd. Beautiful community. And also the libertarian community, which has some pretty potent critiques of, you know, starting with any number of pieces of legislation that Thomas Massie has introduced to stop the government from hurting small local family farmers, beef producers, raw milk. I mean, he's got a litany of legislation that tells a very libertarian story about how it is that the government in collusion with these mega corporate farmers, just screws a little guy and undermines our food in the process. And I think New Hampshire is ripe for that version of the libertarian revolution as well.
- [45:27]
Senator Brakey
Yeah, there's a very strong and robust, I mean, like, well, there's strong and robust communities around so many liberty issues in New Hampshire, but there's a really great food sovereignty movement there as well and looking forward to getting them involved. And one thing fun, we're doing this year is we're bringing back an old pork fest tradition. We're doing the one pot cook off, which is basically people can participate by making food dishes to share from their campsite. And it's a great kind of incentive for people to go around, taste different things that people have prepared, get to know their neighbors in this libertarian pop up village and vote on what was the best dish. So that's going to be a fun, engaging way to get people involved.
- [46:17]
Matt Kibbe
I'm reminding myself on camera that I am supposed to connect you with the food sovereignty guys that were there in Vermont and also the organizer of the film festival because I think you guys should be collaborating and this. I wish I could remember the name of the time, but just look it up. Liberty Film Festival. And it's right on the New Hampshire border and you guys should be working together.
- [46:38]
Senator Brakey
Awesome. I'd love to connect.
- [46:39]
Matt Kibbe
All right, so food freedom. And by the way, Connor Boyak, I hope he does his real world conspiracies. Tuttle Twins, my favorite in the series. And it'll red pill the hell out of you because you're going to discover like, it talks about things like Operation Mocking Bird, where the CIA was buying Hollywood star. Tell me if this sounds familiar. The CIA. Or maybe the USAID was buying news outlets and reporters and Hollywood stars to dictate and amplify their preferred message about what Americans should be allowed to hear. Does that sound familiar or is it just a wild conspiracy? Well, what's funny about it, and in this book is that, well, thanks to the church committee and documents that were uncovered, we now know that that's precisely what they were doing and they supposedly stopped. So I wonder what that program's called now. I don't know. I don't know.
- [47:41]
Senator Brakey
I'm sure they're not doing anything improper. Wrong.
- [47:44]
Matt Kibbe
They said they wouldn't.
- [47:45]
Senator Brakey
Yeah, they seem like good people, trustworthy people, transparent, all of these agencies.
- [47:53]
Matt Kibbe
You should ask your senator Angus King, your former senator.
- [47:56]
Senator Brakey
Yeah, he's not my senator anymore. Now I've got two new US Senators to complain about.
- [48:02]
Matt Kibbe
Everybody does.
- [48:03]
Senator Brakey
Yeah. Yeah.
- [48:04]
Matt Kibbe
Well, not everybody except maybe Kentucky.
- [48:06]
Senator Brakey
Yeah, Kentucky's got one US Senator to complain about.
- [48:08]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah. So anything else about Porkfest?
- [48:14]
Senator Brakey
Just that people should get their tickets@porphfest.com. it's going to be a great year. We are still bookings, speakers and there'll be more announcements to come. I would also like to plug the New Hampshire Liberty Forum coming up in late April. We just announced that one of our keynote speakers for our Saturday evening VIP Dinner is going to be Jeff Deist, former president of the Mises Institute and former chief of staff for Congressman Ron Paul.
- [48:41]
Matt Kibbe
That name keeps popping up.
- [48:42]
Senator Brakey
Yeah.
- [48:43]
Matt Kibbe
Interesting.
- [48:43]
Senator Brakey
It's like he planted a lot of seeds there that keep growing into great liberty trees all around the country and the world, but most concentrated in New Hampshire, of course. And we're actually doing something new that we're adding to Liberty Forum this year, which is we've asked people out in the liberty world to identify challenges that we face on the road to emerging free societies and to propose potential solutions to those challenges. And they're writing a paper and they're going to come present it, and there's going to be a following brainstorming session with participants to kind of how do we improve this solution? Is this a viable solution? What more could we do here? And so we've got a real range of interesting presentations that are going to happen from ranging from the head of the Greater Idaho movement is going to be coming to join us. This is a movement of folks in eastern Oregon who are trying to break away and join Idaho as a way to get away from the progressive government that doesn't represent them. And so that's intriguing, especially as I think about how the second district of Maine should break away and join New Hampshire. 2. We have someone who submitted a paper and on how do you overcome challenges with dating in a libertarian society and trying to build good, strong families to a whole host of things that we're going to be looking forward to. Kind of this new series of events.
- [50:19]
Matt Kibbe
Libertarian dating advice.
- [50:21]
Senator Brakey
Yeah. And this one is being led by a woman, so it's not a libertarian male autistic.
- [50:28]
Matt Kibbe
So all of our awkward men should definitely go to that.
- [50:30]
Senator Brakey
They could learn a few things that'll be helpful. Yeah, yeah.
- [50:33]
Matt Kibbe
I'll try to get that on my schedule to see because I went last year and it was a fantastic event. And that particular thing, like policy proposals that become workshops where you tap into the distributed skills of the crowd. It reminds me of other things I've done like that. It's a very productive process.
- [50:53]
Senator Brakey
Yeah, that's an experiment for us. I'm very excited. And there's a lot of house. There's a lot of excitement around it. And we've got a lot of great proposals that came in. So we're looking forward to that. And we are going to. For those who've been to Liberty Forum in the past, we are still doing our kind of traditional main stage Liberty Forum content. You'll see normal the speeches and panels that you may have seen in the past. But we are focusing on areas of kind of where we've seen advancements around Liberty for real advancements in recent years. So I'm sure we're going to have a great conversation on cryptocurrencies and Defend the Guard and a lot of topics we're putting together as we speak.
- [51:33]
Matt Kibbe
The crypto conversation will finally answer the question is, do libertarians just argue or do sometimes they cooperate too?
- [51:41]
Senator Brakey
We argue a lot, but at the same time, I don't know. I mean, for all the arguing that's going on, people really have built some very impressive parallel infrastructure to challenge the Federal Reserve. And so much of it was early adopters in New Hampshire.
- [51:57]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah, I joke, because the Free State Project sort of stands out as proof that free people can in fact cooperate and not just argue about the best shitcoin to buy.
- [52:12]
Senator Brakey
It's easy to argue when all you have is digital communication with people. If all you are is on Twitter, it's easy to just argue. It's a medium for arguing. But the value of the Free State Project is getting all these people in the same physical space. And I think that's where the best collaborations emerge.
- [52:32]
Matt Kibbe
Cool. So shameless promotion. Tell us where we find you. Free State. Any of these things that you've talked about. Just remind people.
- [52:41]
Senator Brakey
Yeah, so you can follow me and the Free State Project on X. That's where I think we're most prolific. So that is for me, it's SenatorBrakey for the Free State Project. It's FreeStatenh. And go to the Free State Project website, FSP.org, there you can sign up for our newsletter. We have a great newsletter. If you're not getting it, you're missing out. And you can also learn about our events, both the Porcupine Freedom Festival, the New Hampshire Liberty Forum. In reality, there are Liberty events taking place almost every single day in New Hampshire. From cryptocurrency meetups to rucking groups, to knit and bitch sessions, to whatever your interest is. There's a Liberty group for that. You can see that on our Liberty calendar. And you could come and plan your own customized porcupine vacation. Come to New Hampshire for a week and experience what it's really like living in the Free State.
- [53:30]
Matt Kibbe
Cool. Free. The people will be at porkfest this year. We don't know what it is yet, but we're going to organize a number of happy hours and community events at our space. Terry and I are going to be talking about something on the main stage. She's probably going to be girlsplaining to me how the world really works and people should definitely see that. So we'll be there.
- [53:52]
Senator Brakey
Glad to have you back.
- [53:53]
Matt Kibbe
Thanks. Thanks Eric. This is cool. Thanks for watching.
- [53:57]
Eric Braecke
If you liked the conversation, make sure to like the video, subscribe and also.
- [54:02]
Matt Kibbe
Ring the bell for notifications.
- [54:04]
Eric Braecke
And if you want to know more about free the people, go to freethepeople.org.