Not Even Mad: John Ganz & Nick Gillespie

Summary

The Gist — "Not Even Mad: John Ganz & Nick Gillespie"

Date: April 9, 2026
Host: Mike Pesca
Guests: John Ganz (FDR Democrat, author, Unpopular Front Substack), Nick Gillespie (Libertarian, Reason magazine)
Main Theme:
A deep dive into the fallout from the recent U.S.-Iran conflict, the effectiveness of Trump’s foreign policy, critiques of libertarianism and its paradoxes, and broader reflections on political power, all done in a spirit of spirited disagreement without anger ("not even mad").

---

Overview

On this episode, Mike Pesca brings together John Ganz and Nick Gillespie—two commentators with starkly different ideological backgrounds but a shared willingness to interrogate their own sides—for a conversation that tackles American foreign policy blunders, media narratives, the pitfalls of Trump-era governance, libertarian critiques (“We told you so!”), and the complexities of public and private power in the U.S. All with as much warmth and humor as the subject matter permits.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The U.S.-Iran Conflict: What (if Anything) Was Gained?

Timestamps: [08:35]–[15:11]

• Pesca sets the stage: Trump threatened and then partially delivered on war crimes-level rhetoric and action against Iran, only for the situation to de-escalate into a ceasefire that seems advantageous to Iran.
• John Ganz argues that Trump’s “bluster” yielded little, and that the U.S. gained nothing, making the episode “a strategic victory for Iran.” He likens the result to Nixon’s bombings in Vietnam: “we bombed them into accepting our concessions,” but didn’t change the negotiating outcome.

  "I think it's extremely... they're going to claim that these extraordinary threats are what got us these concessions, but they're not really concessions." —John Ganz [10:39]

• Nick Gillespie agrees, underscoring that the intervention only “secured the existing regime in Iran,” making a liberal Iran less likely, further isolating the U.S. internationally, and highlighting the lack of coherent foreign policy debate in American politics.

  "America is like the worst fucking ally you can ask for, you know, because... the minute you get into trouble, we'll throw you over the side." —Nick Gillespie [13:10]

Notable Quotes:

• “...the long-term effects of the... instability and the amateurishness of what [Trump] accomplishes.” —John Ganz [12:16]
• “If you want to pull something useful out of this, in terms of domestic politics, [it shows] the absolute zero, less than zero understanding of anything serious about Donald Trump and all of his policies.” —Nick Gillespie [14:14]

---

2. The NYT Swan & Haberman Report: Sourcing and Spin

Timestamps: [16:48]–[24:00]

• Pesca guides analysis of a New York Times report on Trump’s war decisions, focusing on evident “spinning” by sources—especially J.D. Vance—and whether the piece lets players off the hook.
• Ganz suspicious of NYT framing, notes exculpatory efforts for J.D. Vance (“so cards up that Vance and his team were major sources for this story”), and points out historical parallels—advisors acting as if the president were fit despite private doubts about Trump's basic understanding.

  “They are reflecting on that in private… saying, he's basically kind of unable to understand the advice we're giving him.” —John Ganz [23:13]

• Gillespie adds the story echoes NYT’s role pre-Iraq War and questions the incentives: “Are [the reporters] useful idiots, or going along [to] get access?”
• Pesca brings literary criticism to the story's “third person omniscience,” noting it only arises with deep insider sourcing.

---

3. Presidential Temperament, Advisors, and Historical Continuity

Timestamps: [24:00]–[35:52]

• Discussion turns to the capabilities of Trump and his advisors—how little direct, forceful advice was given, and the disturbing degree of passivity or sycophancy in the current administration compared to the first term.
• Gillespie laments decline in trust and confidence in government; compares the growing trend of risk-averse, unprincipled bureaucratic culture across recent administrations.
• Pesca and Ganz dissect Trump’s inability to grasp complexity or second/third order effects, with vivid anecdotes from the NYT piece (“Rubio jumps in and says, meaning it’s bullshit...and [Trump] still doesn’t get it.” [27:34])
• Reflections on the “third way” of Trump’s foreign policy, where dropping bombs is seen as bold but without ground invasion—a path Ganz says is “not new,” referencing Taft and LeMay as precedents for air power over diplomacy.

Notable Quotes:

• “We're coming in for a second stress test… Cars that are 50 years old don't hold up under repeated engine tests.” —Nick Gillespie [36:54]
• “We dodged a bullet that originated in Trump’s own gun.” —Mike Pesca [35:52]

---

4. Libertarianism: ‘We Told You So’ or “Don’t Blame Me, I Voted for…”

Timestamps: [38:01]–[46:06]

• Mike raises a NYT op-ed by Reason editor Katherine Mangu-Ward claiming “Libertarians, we told you so.”
• Gillespie reflects: admits his own tentative support for Trump (over Harris) in 2024, which he now regrets (“Trump far exceeds however bad I thought he was going to be the second time around” [40:40]), but defends core libertarian critiques as proven right on centralizing federal power, tariffs, tech-industry collusion, and immigration.
• Ganz pushes back: finds the libertarian movement “galling” for acting surprised, arguing many promoted Trump despite his clear anti-libertarian record. He draws a distinction between “beltway” libertarians with sincere anti-authoritarian principles and the populist right’s more reactionary “dark libertarians”—including tech figures like Thiel or Silicon Valley pseudo-libertarians—who have become enablers of authoritarianism.

Notable Quotes:

• “I was, I've been perhaps too critical in the past of libertarians and did not expect for them to be as principled as they were. And I admire them.” —John Ganz [43:26]
• “There's definitely a strain in the libertarian movement that lends itself bizarrely to a kind of embrace of post liberal critiques both of capitalism and of politics and of freedom.” —Nick Gillespie [46:06]

---

5. The Limits and Double-Edges of Libertarian Critique

Timestamps: [46:06]–[67:40]

• Ganz and Gillespie debate internal contradictions in libertarianism: its “blind spot” for private (corporate) tyranny vs. government tyranny. Ganz argues the tech-right and “real-world” libertarians enable Trumpian authoritarianism, whereas establishment libertarians are less culpable but perhaps naive.
• Discussion branches into labor unions, public vs. private power, and the challenge of “big government and big business” being mutually dependent (“coterminous”).
• Pesca and Ganz note that for all the libertarian defense, most famous figures do not favor labor organizing and government regulation that are historically needed to restrain private abuse.

Notable Quotes:

• “Businesses can have the same overwhelming power over the lives of individuals as governments can and in fact often have more tangible results...most people don't fear the federal government, they fear their boss.” —John Ganz [57:37]
• “You can quit your job, you can quit your job. It's much harder to quit a particular country.” —Nick Gillespie [58:27]
• “To the extent that we talk in larger terms...as directional rather than as sets of doctrine you either buy in 100% or you reject 100%, we would have more productive conversations.” —Nick Gillespie [69:01]

---

6. Roundtable Wrap-Up: ‘Goat Grinders’ — Little Things That Annoy

Timestamps: [73:16]–[79:39]

Each guest (and the host) shares their current pet annoyances (in tech and culture):

• Nick Gillespie: Annoyed by the needless incompatibility and friction caused by Apple, Google, and Amazon ecosystems:

  “At every moment, they do something to make the most mundane and what should be a frictionless task, just a pain in the ass...” [74:59]

• Mike Pesca: Frustrated by the impossible-to-parse relevance of Twitch streamers and online influencers:

  “There are all these... influencers, these Twitch streamers...but I never know if this is one of those situations where some editor somewhere elevate someone who doesn't deserve it because this guy is good at getting attention...” [74:59]

• John Ganz: Bemoans the constant, often regressively disruptive software updates, with special mention to Evernote:

  “I had a note taking software...It worked perfectly...now it's unusable. I just think the constant need to upgrade things just means that things that work extremely well get cast by the wayside...” [77:16], [78:36]

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Pesca, on the episode’s aim: “We promise to uphold our reputation for refutation while at the same time vowing to be not even mad.” [07:59]
• Gillespie, on the illusion of ‘checks and balances’: “[Trump] was stress testing all of the institutions of America...now, you know, we’re coming in for a second stress test…” [36:50]
• Ganz, bluntly summing up Trump’s decision-making: “He’s an extraordinarily stupid man and he has no business in office...” [34:43]
• Pesca, on the outcome of the Iran standoff: "We dodged a bullet that originated in Trump’s own gun." [35:52]

---

Structure and Flow

• Opening: (skip ad spots) Pesca sets the scene: rapid escalation in Iran, U.S. response, international implications.
• Roundtable Discussion: Three-way debate, with each speaker given room both for monologue and reasoned pushback.
• Deep Dives: On foreign policy, the media machinery, and nuanced (self-)critique of political identities and institutions.
• Closing Segment: Each participant vents a cultural or tech frustration ("Goat Grinders"), lightening the mood and reinforcing the show's premise of debate without rage.

---

Recommended Listening Segments

• How the U.S. handed Iran leverage over the Strait of Hormuz: [09:57]–[12:49]
• NYT report dissection and media skepticism: [16:48]–[24:00]
• Liberty vs. power: can libertarianism reckon with private tyranny? [56:38]–[62:47]
• ‘Goat grinders’ – the segment on tech annoyances and internet malaise: [73:16]–[79:39]

---

Tone & Language

Conversational but intellectually rich; irreverent yet fair; skeptical of all party lines; wry humor interspersed with policy analysis. The speakers spar but never descend into hostility—"not even mad" is upheld throughout.

---

Conclusion

The Gist’s "Not Even Mad" edition uses the chaos and complexity of Trump’s latest international debacle as a launching pad for a freeranging but focused discussion about power, ideology, and public life in America. Through lively debate and clear-eyed critique, Pesca, Ganz, and Gillespie find the overlap between sharp argument, mutual respect, and—just occasionally—shared comic exasperation.

Transcript

[A]

If you listen to the gist, you probably share a certain sense of curiosity, the kind that enjoys following an idea wherever it leads and asking bigger questions along the way. Which is why I want to recommend another podcast I think many of you would enjoy. In fact, some have enjoyed it because I've talked about it before. It's a great podcast called no Small Endeavor, hosted by Lee C. Camp, Liz, a professor of theology and ethics. And on the show he brings together scientists, writers, psychologists, and philosophers to explore a deceptively simple question, what does it mean to live a good life? Guests have included Malcolm Gladwell, happiness researcher Lori Santos, and other thinkers who've spent their careers studying how humans flourish. What I like about the show is the range of perspectives Lee brings to the table. Each conversation looks at life's big questions from a different angle, whether that's science, philosophy, faith, or culture. Need somewhere to start? Try the recent episode with conservationist Paul Rosalie, who has spent decades protecting the Amazon rainforest. It's a fascinating conversation about purpose, sacrifice, what it actually takes to devote your life to something bigger than yourself. Follow no Small Endeavor on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening now. It's Thursday, April 9, 2026 from Peach Fish Productions, it's the Gist. I'm Mike Pesca. Now, if you told me a week ago, two or three years ago, that Iran had closed the Strait of Hormuz and was threatening to fire on tankers. Indeed had. And that the United States same time was engaged in a mass bombing campaign aimed at decapitating the regime. And it had, I would say. I get it. I understand Iran acts, the US can't allow the strait to be closed. That explains the conflict. And as you know, I'd have exactly confused action and reaction. But even though Iran has reacted to the United States, not vice versa, it doesn't change absolutely everything about the acceptability of the Strait of Hormuz being controlled by Iran and closed down. The US cannot allow this. More importantly, the countries of Europe should not allow it hurts them a bit more than us. It is not in their interests to allow it. They could blame America, which did not get them on board beforehand. Wouldn't have, couldn't have if they if America had asked. But again, this situation not in their interest. If it's in the world's interest to get Iran to reopen the Strait under the scenario where Iran started it, it's still in the world's interest to get Iran to reopen the Strait when they didn't start it. Furthermore, Iran's closure of the strait is illegal under international law. Oh, I know right now you're definitely yelling illegal. You want to talk about illegal? The United States started it with their attack on Iran. It's almost certainly a violation of international law. But again, they started it is true and explains things and doesn't excuse things, but it also doesn't change the interest of the parties involved. The US Looks bad in the eyes of the world. The US can take that. But the leaders of the world, which can also get a lot of mileage by blaming the United States and they should do it politically. They will do it. But I would also like them to focus what is in their interests. Public opinion in conflict tends to hinge on who the near term aggressor is and the United States is seen as that aggressor. It shapes everything it shouldn't. The focus can distort the picture and it elevates the question of who struck first or over other important questions like who has the capacity over time to threaten to coerce to achieve their aims, possibly extremely nefarious aims that are contrary to the interest of their rivals. There is an argument that acting earlier to prevent a rival from gaining that kind of leverage, the leverage to do horrible things, is the right thing to do. But of course under that scenario, you want to be acting in your near term interest. You have to think about the long term. Yeah, I also get it. Just like I said before, the United States broke international law. The United States is not the model of long term thinking in this conflict. A very good Swan and Haberman report in the New York Times that we'll be discussing on today's show suggests that Donald Trump's horizon was more like we bomb them, they capitulate, we win. And there wasn't much thinking beyond that. But again, Iran controlling the Straits of Hormuz. It's leverage they could use whenever and however they want. It just can't be allowed to proceed. The solution tomorrow is not oh, you shouldn't have done that thing last month. It's all part of my conversation on this episode of Not Even Mad. My guests are ideologically unaligned but temperamentally congenial. John Gans, a self described FDR Democrat. He writes the unpopular front substack. And Nick Gillespie of Reason magazine. You don't get a more prominent libertarian voice than Nick's. And if you listen in the Not Even Mad feed. So not this one, but if you subscribe in the Not Even Mad specific feed, bonus content things you won't find here, like Nick starting out of the gate quizzing John about his Twitter handle, which is Lionel trolling. So if you love sideways references to mid 20th century literary intellectuals, that's the content you need. Otherwise, keep it right here for not even mad. If you found yourself asking can the President really do that? Then check out the new season of you Might Be right, the chart Topping Politics podcast hosted by former Tennessee governors Phil Bredesen and Bill Haslam. That's right, a Democrat and Republican governor. And fun fact, the show is named after Howard Baker's guiding principle to always remember the other fellow might be right. Now that's a quote that just can get behind. In each episode, the governors tackle timely policy conversations with world and US luminaries like Al Gore, Judy Woodruff, Rahm Emanuel, and more. If you need a place to start, check out their recent episode that poses the question, should a president be able to take control of a state's National Guard to restore order even if a governor disagrees? That is a thoughtful debate. It's featuring Rosa Brooks, former senior advisor to the US Department of Defense, and John Yoo, former official with the U.S. department of justice, to discuss the ability to federalize the National Guard and the unique role the Guard plays in times of crisis. It's well worth a listen hear balanced perspectives without the shouting matches found on cable news. Follow you might be right on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts and tell them I sent you. Hello and welcome back to the show that would die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don't want that to happen, but I am not even mad. Today we speak of how much worse are we off really? Than what the status quo ante was in Iran. We will ask did the Libertarians warn us? And maybe a little Mom Donnie talk. That could be a bonus. As we do so, we promise to uphold our reputation for refutation while at the same time vowing to be not even mad. This week, the we, as I refer to what we will do, are one Nicholas Be host of the Reason Interview podcast Editor at large of Reason Magazine, coauthor of Declaration of Independence. Nick, thank you for joining me again. I always appreciate it.

[B]

Always a pleasure, Mike. I realize you are scraping bottom when you turn to me and I appreciate that.

[A]

Well, it's. It's new.

[B]

I'm not even mad about.

[A]

We found a new bottom. Thank you, Nick and John.

[B]

Oh boy.

[A]

John Ganz is here. He's been on the gist. He was talking about his book when the clock broke. Con men, conspiracists and how America Cracked up in the early 1990s. He is also the author of the Unpopular Front Substack, which is actually pretty popular. So congrats on that, John.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

President Donald Trump has threatened various war crimes, including, and I'm parsing his language now, annihilation, genocide. This is pretty helpful because I always know it's hard in a genocide conviction to prove special doliolis, which is the special intent of I intended to kill them all. But he's just quite helpfully providing that for any future considerations at any world courts that might come up. We have also seen him announce a great cease fire that will include managing traffic in the Straits of Hormuz, which was shut down by Iran and now I suppose will be paying Iran some money so as not to hold the world's oil hostage. There are many things to examine in this cease fire pause. But I'll just ask each of you, do you think that there was any, anything that was gained by Donald Trump's, I'll call it bluster or threats leading up to what this announcement was on Wednesday night when we didn't get full scale annihilation?

[C]

John, you can start Gaines since the, the war started or since this threat started.

[A]

Oh yeah. What I meant is, was his rhetoric of I'm going to kill everyone. Did that change the, change the situation whatsoever from what we got on Wednesday night?

[C]

I think it doesn't seem like it. It doesn't seem like it because the cease fire, if you can call it that, because it seems that the Iran and the United States have two very different ideas of what's going on and we don't even know if there is a cease fire in place. Seems very favorable. At least the principles that they presented to Pakistan and Trump seems to agree to have. I mean, it's very fluid situation. It's hard for me to even speak meaningfully about it seems extremely favorable to Iran and I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say it's sort of a strategic victory for them. I mean, they did not have this control over the Strait of Hormuz before and now they seem to be claiming it and seeming to say as a guarantee against future aggression. One can't really blame them. I mean, what else are they going to do? They obviously don't have the conventional resources to stop attacks by technological powers like Israel and the United States. They ask for a cessation of future hostilities. I don't think Trump is in a position to guarantee that Israel does what it wants and I don't think that he is a great abider of agreements, but no, I think it's extremely, I mean, they're going to claim that these extraordinary threats are what got us these concessions, but they're not really concessions. I mean, it's a little bit like Nixon's Christmas bombings of North Vietnam, where, well, he went and actually did it. But we returned to the negotiating table with essentially the same agreement as beforehand and as an advisor of his said bitterly aftermath, we bombed them into accepting our concessions. So I don't know if this was productive diplomatically. And I think you have to look at, in a larger context of the world, which is that the United States has really isolated itself diplomatically and it's conduct during this war. I mean, you know, our traditional allies in Europe are horrified with, with the way we behaved and the way we're speaking. I think there are long term consequences of that. I think. You know, I think one thing that's very difficult to appreciate about Trump's foreign policy is the, the long term effects of the, of the instability and the amateurishness of what he accomplishes, essentially. So you have, I, I for one think that the entire situation in Gaza October 7, and the war after that was brought about by the amateurish interventions of Kushner trying to broker this Abraham Accords, which had nothing, you know, nothing to solve the Palestinian issue. So I think that these careless, amateurish and ad hoc way of carrying out foreign policy is gradually going to make situation more unstable in the future.

[A]

Yeah, okay. So, so turning to Nick, I just want to Cab in the October 7th part.

[C]

Sure.

[A]

I was with you up until then. Not to say I agree with you, but I think there was meaty discussion. If we go into October 7th.

[C]

I'm just making a general point about the, the terrible nature of the foreign policy decisions.

[A]

Right. And there's a lot of evidence for that, but go ahead.

[B]

I tend to agree completely with John, unfortunately for the show, Mike, that there is nothing that is better because of the, you know, of Trump's bombing of Iran and there are lots of civilians who were killed. And the worst part of it, apart from things like, you know, really underscoring again and again, and America has been a terror. America is like the worst fucking ally you can ask for, you know, because we'll, we'll pump you up for as long as you're useful to us, and the minute you get into trouble, we'll throw you over the, over the side. You know, when we've shown that in the entire 21st century, you know, whenever possible. But this more, apart from all of the other stuff that John already mentioned, it actually kind of secures the existing regime in Iran. Like, if you want a liberal Iran or a post Islamic Iran, that seems to be further away than ever, you know, so on top of all of the death and destruction and the wasted energy, you know, it, I mean, it just is mind boggling. If you want to pull something useful out of this, you know, in terms of domestic politics, is that it shows the absolute zero, you know, less than zero understanding of anything serious about Donald Trump and all of his policies, but also more broad. And this is something that's much bigger than Trump. We are so long overdue for a foreign policy discussion since the end of the Soviet Union, but also since 9, 11 and then again since the end of the Iraq war and the end of the war in Afghanistan and things like that. And there is nobody anywhere in either party or across the political spectrum is really, you know, staging that conversation. And it's going to get worse and worse.

[A]

I do think the United States is worse off for the war in Iran. I think probably because of the execution, but also arguably just because that there was an undertaking to declare war in the way we did in Iran. I think the June bombings did degrade the capacity to make nuclear weapons. And that is important. It's not just that five presidents have said it, five presidents have said it and meant it for a reason. And to deny them these weapons is important for peace throughout the world. So I said I always had as my North Star at the end of this, will they still have that thousand pounds of fissile material or 60% weaponized uranium? And the answer seems to be yes. And Donald Trump seems horribly uninterested in finding any way to secure it except to say we'll monitor it from space. I don't know what good solutions there ever were. Sending in troops was something he always swore he wouldn't do. But I think, and this is, and we could move on to some revelations from Maggie Hamer Haberman and Jonathan Swan in the New York Times, I think that the best evidence is that he really did think that because of the United States impressive and superior air power, which we do have, there'd be a knockout blow, a knockout blow early. And this is why I thought the Strait of Hormuz wouldn't be a problem. And I guess he just thought we'd go in and take the fissile material. But that wasn't the case. I know each of you have read that piece do you have any revelations from it or was it just good fleshed out reporting of stuff you suspected or already knew?

[C]

John, I actually have some serious suspicions about this piece in terms of its sourcing and the way that advisers of the President come across.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. Let's see if ours match up, but go ahead.

[C]

The, the exculpatory effort that that J.D. vance seems to have done in this piece is remarkable. It has a heading that says J.D. vance was a skeptic of the war from the beginning and so on and so forth. It is so cards up that Vance and his team were major sources for this story. Haberman is not that great at hiding our sources. We all knew that Steve Bannon was a major source in the first administration and he's really trying to wash his hands of this debacle, which he may have had some warnings about. I mean, you know, that is in keeping with things that he said in the past. But we also know that he was quite, he said some quite bellicose things in private, in the councils of state about this war. So I think it was just a, I mean, look, I am not doubting that they corroborate. I mean, this, the reporters are serious, the New York Times, serious outlet. Of course, I'm not doubting that many of the things were true, but I'm saying that the way the story was constructed was to make Vance in particular and the kind of, I don't know, paleo con isolationist wing of MAGA look like, oh, well, we didn't really want to go for it and we told him and then it went badly and so on and so forth. So I think that the politics of the piece are clear. Does that, does that make it devoid of any value whatsoever to understand what happened? No, but it has to be read with a skeptical eye. And I am very skeptical of how Vance is trying to present himself for the future. And I'm also skeptical that it's going to work.

[B]

Frankly, I don't, I mean, I, you know, I agree with you kind of reading it. This is clearly a story that, you know, the person who benefits the most from it is J.D. vance.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

And you know, the jockeying is already beginning for who's going to be, you know, the, yeah, you know, Van Buren to Trump's Andrew Jackson, you know, but I mean, do you think the New York Times knows that or, you know, the reporters, Swann and Haberman know that and they are useful idiots or they're going along with it because it seems to give them access or what. Because it, you know, for me, the story which, you know, very, you know, also puts the blame on Netanyahu and Israel, for me that seems like a stretch. Trump is a big boy. He knows what he's doing and he wanted to do this. He likes to drop bombs. I think he's made that clear. And it seems to me in a weird way it lets him off the hook in, in some way because it plays to this idea that. Oh, you know, well, actually it's, you know, Bibi Netanyahu is brilliant. He speaks such good English and he conned another American president. But I'm just curious, right.

[A]

It does position him as someone without deep critical thinking skills.

[C]

But also, we all knew that.

[A]

Yeah. Well, if the question is, does the story let him off the hook? Not for that, but for actually getting tricked or hoodwinked into these decisions.

[B]

And you know, in a weird way, it made me think of, you know, the New York Times role in the run up to the Iraq War where, you know, it was a, an open door conduit for all sorts of, you know, administration beliefs in this, that or the other thing. You know, it just, I, it seems so in, like non credible.

[C]

So I, I don't think that, that it's in, it's. Maggie Haberman or Swan are particularly concerned with these factional, with sorting out these factional issues. They want to get the story. They have their sources, they realize that they're, it's going to come with a, a certain direction, but I don't think it's in their interest or they have much of a worry about the fact that they're being spun to a certain degree. I just don't think that it's part of, in their mind, part of their, their remit. Let me think that.

[A]

John, let me just interrupt and help the audience. If you haven't read it or even if you had, here's some of what we're talking about. The story describes what was said in open settings, so that is a recitation of things that other people could corroborate. But there are phrases in the boring story. They talk about General Cain's way of briefing the President, which was not to give directives or binaries. And this apparently confused the president. But listen to the phrasing. He could appear to some of those listening to be arguing all sides of an issue simultaneously. So this doesn't seem to reflect General Kaine himself talking to the reporters. But then when we come to JD Vance, listen to this phrasing. The vice President thought a regime change war with Iran would be a disaster. His preference was for no strikes at all. But knowing that Mr. Trump was likely to intervene in some fashion, he tried to steer toward a more limited action. In other words, we have, I think in literary terms, this is third person omniscience. And how do you get there, except knowing what was in J.D. vance's mind, that is, J.D. vance was a source, which seems fine. There's another possibility, since you guys raised Bannon, he didn't mind being a pretty well understood source in Haberman stories. It elevated him. And I'm not sure that if, if they read the quotes back to Vance or the description, which they sometimes did, I'm not sure he'd be jumping up and down saying, don't put that in there. He might be saying, yeah, that's good press for me. John, you were saying, no, no, no,

[C]

I think that, I think that's true. I think that, you know, another thing occurred to me. All reading this piece, which I thought was egregious and reflected badly on everybody, is basically, you know, we have a lot of documentation history of, of what deliberations of presidents and their advisors look like. And this is not all that different.

[B]

Right?

[C]

You look back at Kennedy talking about the Diem coup or the Cuban missile crisis, kind of similar deliberative structure. You know, you have all these different people giving their opinions. However, basically you have everybody who's aware that the President of the United States is a person of pretty diminished capacities in judgment and intelligence.

[A]

Right?

[C]

They are reflecting on that in private and sharing their reservations and saying, he's basically kind of unable to understand the advice we're giving him. And Dan Cain is saying, well, he couldn't really understand what the military advice was because he wasn't giving political advice. He was just describing the capabilities of the United States. What they're basically saying, all these advisors are saying, we treated this guy like he's the President of the United States because he is the President, United States. And we didn't want to question his judgment. But we also recognize that he was a moron and he couldn't really understand the kind of advice we were giving him. And he couldn't come to any kind of decision. So it's just a strange and surreal thing where you're saying they're going through this play acting of saying, yeah, we know we deliberated with the President and then we came up with this decision. But we also suspected all the while that he wasn't able to understand our advice. That's extraordinary.

[B]

Isn't it odd too, then that they wouldn't be giving him very specific advice instead of being like, okay, here's a range of things like maybe you should do this, or, I mean, what gets implicated. And I've written over, you know, this actually started when W. Bush left office. The Wall Street Journal asked me to do like, a negative analysis of Bush's presidency. And I talked a lot about how Bush had begun taking us from a high trust society to a low trust society because he just lied about so much, so many things that happened under Bush. And, you know, that has been a continuing theme for me. And when you look at all, you know, polling and data and, you know, just basic, you know, look at your window reality for at least 50 years, people have less trust and confidence in government. And, you know, the, the, the vision that you get or the, the picture that you get of the people surrounding the president. And this also is true. There's a continuity with Biden, particularly towards the end of his days, you know, where there is like, nobody around, you know, nobody at the highest level of power who is willing to fucking say this is right or wrong or like, I feel strongly about this.

[C]

And I, I, you know, I don't

[B]

know how you inhabit a country where, well, nobody at any level is willing to actually say anything that they mean in the moment when it matters.

[A]

I don't know.

[C]

Well, you got to look at the personalities of the people involved. I mean, sycophant and, and power hungry. And it was different. Yeah, it was different in the first Trump administration where I think the discussions that you're having did happen and people also steered him with specific, and that

[A]

was, and that was mentioned in the piece. McMaster would say, no, this is going to be a disaster. But I have to say who also,

[B]

by the way, I mean, I, you know, as a, you know, a libertarian critic of, of government and power more generally. It's also not like the first cabinet was good, where he got good advice, you know, but I agree there were more, there was more vocal power. And, you know, the other thing

[A]

maybe complicate this by saying not to let anyone off the hook, think that at least reading this story, it does come down to Donald Trump's either habits of mind or inability to understand complex information. We have always said he's a guy who doesn't understand second or third order effects. Literally in the piece, Netanyahu says first order effect. Maybe not, but I think the first order effect is we're going to drop a lot of bombs. We have the best bombs and we're going to kill a lot of people. So he understood that. And he, his brain probably went back to Venezuela saying, oh, there are some negative Nellies in the room and look how well that that went. But they. Netanyahu comes in, he gives, of course, a video presentation. This seems to register with Trump. And then they break down Netanyahu's presentation into four parts. The first was decapitation. That's the first order effect that he seems to get. Killing the ayatollah that I understand. Second was crippling Iran's capacity to project power. Maybe now he's losing it. Third was popular uprising in was regime change. Then a later briefing, and I think it was Ratliff of the CIA says, this is farcical to think things three or four going to happen. So you have someone there saying, it's not going to happen. This entire plan is not going to come to fruition.

[B]

And it's deeply depressing when, you know, the head of the CIA is, is the person kind of speaking truth.

[A]

But as far as communication, there's a detail in there that after Ratliff says farcical, Rubio jumps in and says, meaning it's bullshit. So they have to translate a couple syllable words to his. Very limited.

[C]

I noticed that as well.

[A]

And he still doesn't get it.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, he cannot. He. I mean, look, the idea. I think. I think you have to put this into the context of the administration's political situation in general. He is moving fast to his failed presidency. The President has extraordinary powers in foreign policy. He seemed to have a success in Venezuela. He has a lot of latitude. He can project a lot of power. And it probably looked extremely appealing to solve a problem that has bedeviled American presidents for 50 years. And he thought in his, you know, that he could do it right. And this was.

[A]

And Iran was weak, and we wouldn't know how weak until you really punched him.

[C]

You really punched him really good. And, and then, you know, that I think that went into his calculations, the difficulties he's been having elsewhere, the success in Venezuela, the fact that, you know, I think that he looks up to people like Netanyahu who seem to be extremely willful. It may be in a very simple sort of way, he's attracted to other leaders who have this very brutal style. So I think that he thought, listen, this guy sounds authoritative and knows what he's talking about. And his advisor, his own advisors couldn't, couldn't dissuade him of the fact that it wasn't a good idea. I mean, but this US Presidents ignoring, I mean the CIA, I mean it as an intelligence gathering body, it has made some big mistakes, but it's also gotten some things right and been ignored. I mean, it was, it was on the money that the United States was not doing well in Vietnam and it was, and its findings were suppressed, but

[A]

it didn't with anything bigger than Iran and the Shah.

[B]

Well, or the collapse of the Soviet Union.

[C]

Collapse.

[B]

One of the things that is kind of, of interesting to me and this, you know, developments really of the past couple weeks totally dispel this. But you know, there was that moment last year when, when Trump bombed Iran and he just said, you know what? We're, I'm doing this one big thing and that's it. And you know, I live in a world where, you know, you either people tend to either be maximal interventionists and you can call them neocons or what. I don't think that's helpful at this point in the conversation. But you know, hawks who are like, we should be invading more countries and staying there longer all the time. And then there are people, and I'm more comfortable with this group who are either, you know, called isolationists or non interventionists where it's like we, you know, we're, all we're doing is mopping, you know, we're just, you know, getting slammed by the payback from previous interventions. And Trump for a while seemed to present a third possibility in that dialectic of just saying, you know what, we're, we're not going to invade countries, we're going to drop bombs, we're going to have military force, et cetera. And for a while I thought like, oh, that might actually be a new way of thinking about American power. And I'm not necessarily saying it's good or bad, but it was distinct. And I wonder if he, you know, because last year, you know, he seemed to like the way the big bombing in Iran went. He was like, oh, you know what, we can do this. Like, we don't, you know, we don't really have to risk anything. We can just drop a bunch of bombs and look good and then, you know, Iran presents, you know, that, that scenario and it doesn't go as, you know, as, as kind of, I think

[C]

this is where we're going to have our first disagreement. Nick, I don't think this is a, this is a new development in American foreign policy thinking. I mean, this, this first of all, this tradition of being hawkish but not caring much about nation building or democracy is a very old one. And, and it's, you know, some people call it nationalist or sovereignty. It doesn't care about international agreements, but it's quite belligerent. And it also comes historically with a real interest in US Strategic air power. So you have people like Robert Taft.

[B]

Yeah, no, I, I read, you know, I'm a semi student of Taft because he's, I find him an incredibly dark figure in American politics, but also an influential one who people have forgotten about for various reasons. And I read your recent piece about that.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

So I, I agree. You know, there's always more continuity in American politics than we want to.

[C]

And, and Curtis LeMay is another figure you could reference. And also, I would argue that this, I, I would say that the idea that we could, that US Air power can solve problems halfway across the world is also not, not even in theory, but also in practice, what we've tried to do many times. I mean, the Vietnam War began with the application of air power. That didn't work. And it, it ended with the application of air power and it didn't work. We tried to enforce, you know, no fly zone in Iraq. Air power, U.S. air power. We, we go back and forth being, well, we can do things by air power power alone. And I think that every, almost every American president, if you think about it, has been seduced by the idea that the US Air Force is this all powerful and Trump is no different.

[B]

Yeah, I agree. But again, I, you know, I think certainly Bush and Obama were wedded to something more than just air power. Clinton is an interesting character because he really, you know, he dispatched more troops and dropped a lot of, or had a lot of interventions that were smaller imprint. Yeah, but, you know, Trump coming out, you know, you know, is almost certainly the last baby boomer president seemed to have, you know, moved away from the idea that I'm going to fix anything. He was happy just breaking things. Yeah. But you know, in any case, that I, maybe this is a positive thing, is that people will understand that, like, it doesn't work that way. Like, you can't just drop a bunch of bombs and think things are going to get better.

[A]

Well, one exception about Trump is my reading of most of the decisions of the presidents. And by the way, I do think the NATO international coalition air intervention in Bosnia probably did prevent something on the order of tens of thousands of deaths. But that was followed by, I would

[B]

disagree, but yes, weren't our own.

[A]

Yes, but for the most part, and maybe this because, is because biographies of presidents are often written by people who smile upon the presidents The President has been the temperate force in the application of power. So, bombs away. LeMay was in the room during the Cuban Missile crisis, and it was JFK who sought a different path.

[B]

Right.

[A]

They weren't the most belligerent of the people in the room. And so far, America, for all its flaws and all its international entanglements, or what did he call it, Excursions. It could have been worse, is my point. But for the temperament of most of our presidents, this current president seeming to be the exception.

[C]

Yeah, I think that, that he's an extraordinarily stupid man and he has no business in office, and his advisors seem to be aware of that, but still treat him with the deference, as if he was the President of the United States of America, which on paper he is. But in his first term, he had advisors who were resistant to him and he didn't like it. And he set things up to demand absolute loyalty from people. So he's not gonna put up with the kinds of stymieing that was done in his first cabinet. He's not that stupid. He knows when he's being tricked or directed by these people or managed. But, you know, he, he, he can sense that, but he's, he's definitely unable to, to, to judge the kinds of information that are required to make a decision this momentous. And I mean, we're extraordinarily fortunate that, I mean, look, the, we don't know if the ceasefire is holding, but the way things were heading last night and the day before, the, the types of rhetoric being used all over the world were very disturbing. Me.

[A]

We, we dodged a bullet that originated in Trump's own gun.

[B]

I, you know, the other thing.

[C]

No, yet it's been fully dodged.

[B]

What? Yeah, and what worries me too is that, you know, I don't want to live in an America where Trump is president, but I also don't want to live in an America where not maybe not the department or the Secretary of, of Defense is, is a good guy because he's not, but that the generals are the moderating force or are seen as wise men because traditionally they fail us too. And you know, the Trump, you know, this was popular in the, during the first term where it's like, well, he was stress testing all of the institutions of America and you know, and he did, and they held. And now, you know, like, we're coming in for a second stress test, which I don't know. You know, I drove enough shitty cars with blown out gaskets to know that like, like, you know, cars that were, you know, cars that are 50 years old don't hold up under repeated engine tests.

[A]

Yeah. I would say that given all the alternatives, generals in general have more impressed me than civilian leadership. And even in this recounting, General Kane has in fact or did in fact try to brief him as fully as possible. It just didn't or couldn't gain purchase on the rocky shoals of Trump's intellect. Okay, let's go now from a story where one of the subtexts was JD Vance saying I told you so to a story also in the New York Times where the super text, also known as the headline was we told you so. And that's the libertarian saying it. We have one here and we'll be back with him and his more left leaning friend. Right. When we return on not even Mad. We're back with not even Mad. I'm joined by Nick Gillespie and John Gans. And Nick, I came across as I'm sure you did, an editorial, an op ed in the New York Times written by Catherine Mangou Ward, who is your colleague, and for all I know, she's my boss.

[C]

She's your boss.

[A]

Maybe you helped name her as your replacement. Was that the line of succession?

[B]

You'll feel I, let's say I did hire her as maybe an assistant or associate editor at some point in the aughts and then she succeeded Matt Welch as the editor of the print magazine and I was doing the website and the video platform. And then when I stepped down to make content rather than edit it, she ascended to the, to the editor in chief of all of Reasons journalism.

[A]

This is amazing. I, you know, I convened, not even mad, just to get a pretty compact history of the editorial masthead of Reason magazine. And there it is. So this editorial, this op ed, is called Libertarians, we told you so. And it was, you know, she starts off by saying we as libertarians can be pretty annoying as we go around prattling on about free speech and jackbooted thugs. But weren't we right? So my question, it's not a very fair one to you, is how is that different from the classic don't blame me, I voted for Milton Friedman bumper sticker or replace. Yeah, replace any other person who couldn't actually win the election.

[B]

Well, I mean, it's accurate. You know, I think both, you know, Reason and a lot of libertarians had a consistent critique of centralized power that applied particularly well to Trump. And you know, having said that, I'll also cop to when, you know, in 2024, when faced with either Kamala Harris or Donald Trump. I, you know, I didn't vote for either of them, but I said that I would prefer Trump because I felt like we, he was, he was a threat that could be handled and that he, it would actually provide more of a, of a pivot from the trend that we were on. And I think there was a lot of continuity, actually between, there has been a lot of continuity between Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden. Now back to Trump, but I'll eat that word.

[A]

I thought it was clearly a pivot. I thought it was, you know, a revolutionary pivot. But you're saying no, no.

[B]

I mean, because if you look at it in terms of, you know, the size, scope and spending of the federal government, it continues to go up. It continues to assert more power over more things. And I think one of the things that, you know, is a real hallmark of Trump's second term, besides increased spending, is, you know, the kind of national socialism of, you know, buying shares in companies. The tariffs, you know, the, one of the primary functions of tariffs is to make businesses come to you, to beg for special carve outs and things like that. The, you know, it's a terrifying apparition, you know, in the inauguration of Trump for the second term, where you have all of the tech overlords huddling together, you know, at the same table, you know, there to pay their respects to the leader and things like that. So, you know, in many, many ways, Trump, Trump far exceeds however bad I thought he was going to be the second time around. Having said that, I think the libertarian critique of, you know, centralized power, of building content or building relationships between big business and the government. The government talking about monitoring social media, the government cutting, not just illegal immigration, but legal immigration, all sorts of things. This is as bad as it gets.

[A]

So, John, just so my listeners know, you have written very often in critical ways of libertarians and, and some of the libertarians that you write about this, the, the dark libertarians. Curtis. I was going to say Curtis. Sleeper cutter Curtis.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

They might not be people that even Nick identifies with, although part of libertarianism is there's a definite lack of gatekeeping. So my specific question is not on the specific. My specific question is not on the bill of particulars. I bet you agree with all the things that the Mango Ward identifies as odious, you would agree with. But is her solution more or less playing it straight, saying this is the way forward?

[C]

Well, I want to take issue with, with, with, with. With. With something here. First of all, I just find it, I found this article, galling because I don't think that the libertarian movement as a whole, it may have a consistent set of principles, but it applied those principles very oddly. And I don't mean to pick on you, Nick, but it's strange if you, if you held those principles, how you could judge Trump, who has been quite open, as bad as authoritarianism from the beginning, as being someone in any way keeping with those principles. His, he's always been a hawk on immigration.

[B]

Right.

[C]

He's always terrible on tariffs.

[B]

Yeah, terrible. Terrible on civil liberties, particularly with, with some exceptions. For instance, his, you know, signing the First Step Act. He, you know, some criminal justice reforms.

[C]

Yeah, he was actually came to regret.

[B]

Absolutely. And in 2016, he was, he was better on drug policy and drug reform than Hillary Clinton. He actually.

[C]

Okay. You know, so with, with that being said, and the other point I will bring up is. Yeah, I have a career. Okay. I want to acknowledge that some people in the libertarian movement, through the second course of Trump, the second term of Trump, I'm very impressed with them. A lot of people, Cato, who have been very principled and have stuck with those principles. And I was, I've been perhaps too critical in the past of libertarians and did not expect for them to be as principled as they were. And I admire them and I admire what they're saying about ice, and I admire what they're saying about immigration. And I think, okay, these are really principled people. At the same time, you have to deal with the paradox, which I've never fully understood and I've tried to get my head around and maybe you as a libertarian can help me. Is at the same time I'm reading people at the Cato Institute writing all these trenchant critiques of ICE and the unconstitutional things are doing. You have the fact that the man who killed Renee Goode had a Gadsden flag on his house. So there's two parts to libertarian movement in America. You have the kind of circles you're in which are sort of, let's say, beltway elite libertarians.

[B]

I disagree with that conception, but go ahead, let's just put it out there.

[C]

That have a, you know, a very high minded critique of federal power and belief in the Constitution and a principled liberalism, small L liberalism. And then you have libertarianism as a section of the populist right more broadly, whose actual policies and beliefs are, can be quite paradoxically authoritarian and have been enthusiastic about Trump from the beginning and incredibly reactionary. Yes, incredibly reactionary. And not because, not despite, but because of A lot of the things he said and done and, and, and you have this, what we can call them parallel libertarians, whatever you want to call them, have been kind of proto Trumpian from the beginning. You have people like Murray Rothbard who said, who, who envisioned somebody like Trump many years ago. And then you also, to add into this whole thing most of the people in the tech right who are kind of the, creating the technological basis for the authoritarian state that Trump wants to set up and I think is failing to set up, come themselves out of the libertarian tradition. So I have a libertarian in front of me. I have the opportunity to ask, how do you, how do you explain this? I mean, on the one hand, you know, what is the responsibility of the libertarian movement? I don't, I think, I mean, I know that writers don't write their headlines, but I think as a critic of libertarianism who's aware of the, this history, I was galled by the lack of self reflection in that article.

[B]

I can't speak to, you know, the article per se, other than, you know, that I work with the person who wrote it and I agree with it. Obviously we don't, you know, nobody writes their headlines at the New York Times. But to get to your larger point, I think what you are seeing is the move towards a critique of liberalism, that liberalism has failed. You know, the idea that people should have more power to make meaningful decisions over their political life, their private life, their cultural life and things like that. Somehow this is the God that failed and that we need to move on from it. And when you look at people like Peter Thiel, maybe Marc Andreessen and some other people coming out of Silicon Valley, they have come to a similar conclusion that people are not bright enough or smart enough to understand the stakes of things and they don't have meaning in their lives. So they start talking, you know, they come up with a kind of weird bastardized version of Rene Girard and the need for religion at the center of meaning of life because capitalism isn't going to do it. And you see, Tucker Carlson once was an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute and now he is the, you know, you know, he hates libertarians and he wants, you know, he, he just had a guy on who was talking about how Christianity is actually very socialistic and we need to be more socialistic. So there's definitely something, a strain in the libertarian movement that lends itself bizarrely to a kind of post, an embrace of post liberal critiques both of capitalism and of politics and of freedom. And that you Know, that is worth tracing. I don't feel responsible for it because I've never written anything positive about any of those elements. And to me, you know, the genius of, you know, of a kind of libertarian approach is that it's, it's ultimately cosmopolitan and forward looking and it's all about mongrelization rather than kind of purification.

[C]

I appreciate that. So, so you landed on your qualified support of Trump on your own, not because you had any kind of intellectual.

[B]

No, no, no. And it was also, it's, it's partly that the, you know, I think there is also something that is, you know, especially now that Trump is in office again, we can, you know, we, we just wave away a lot of Biden. You know, a lot of things that were happening under Biden where, you know, spending was increasing, regulation was increasing, the reduction individuals to, you know, membership in identities like a few racial and ethnic or, you know, other demographic identities that are going to be kind of enforced by the government. These are bad things. You know, things were not getting better under Biden. He. Things were not necessarily getting better under Trump in the first term. And I saw, you know, if I'm faced with a Kamala Harris or Donald Trump In November of 2024, I assumed that Trump would be held in check and that it would help, you know, what was called a vibe shift, that it would snap a kind of COVID you know, fever dream of more control of every part of our lives. And that did not, that did not happen.

[A]

I would say that all the elements in coalition politics always have something or other to be upset about. And the born again Christians, of course, have their critiques of Trump's immorality, you know, and then they concoct.

[B]

They really don't.

[A]

Well, I mean, stories.

[B]

When's the last time, Cyrus?

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

No, I'm just saying they don't say it out loud.

[B]

I mean, the fact that like, you know, the, what used to be called the religious right backed Trump at like higher levels than somebody like Ronald Reagan, who also was not religious, is kind of stunning. And they're not interested in anything that is similar to, you know, a kind of libertarian embrace of freedom of conscience, conscience or pluralism.

[A]

So my point is this. There are many factions in America that could find good reason to critique Trump. This could have been written by, I think by a certain kind of born again Christian, you know, the kind of Christian who might now identify as a progressive, saying, we tried to warrant you. There could have been a we tried to warn you article from even people who were very into Jewish causes. Because even though Trump seems to be this great friend to Israel, he has allowed many anti Semites in his orbit. So we tried to warn you could have been written by many people or many factions. But the libertarians, what I think they would have to answer for. What about the parts of Trump's agenda that he did try to deliver? Katherine Mango Ward makes a nod to Doge. That's where my mind went. And I said to myself, when you have a big tent, what you do as the religious right tried to do is hold their nose at the stuff they didn't like, especially the rhetoric. But say, look, eyes on the prize. We're going to get a couple Supreme Court justices and guess what? The Dobbs decision reverses Roe versus Wait. Well, assess Doge. What about what Doge was supposed to do? And isn't it the, isn't it the case that Doge was a pretty pure distillation of what libertarians want? And how should we judge the failure of that program as saying something larger about the libertarian project?

[B]

Okay, you know, the way in which Doge was good, the idea that government should be more efficient in all of its particulars is very important. Where I think Doge, Doge failed, you know, first off, there's a conceptual failure, which is that if we are, we are now spending over $7 trillion a year and that number will probably never come down as a federal government budget. Before in 2019, the federal budget was something like 4.5 trillion, $4.8 trillion. If you are not serious about saying, okay, now that Covid is over, we should be going back to a pre emergency level of spending. It doesn't matter how much more efficient you make any particular program. And then, you know, and I the fact that Elon Musk was running it and you know, the, the depositions that have come out of the people working at Doge, you see how stupid and mindless the people were. You know, people who were good at Excel spreadsheets and then just doing search and replaces for words. You know, things like DEI and zeroing things out as opposed to accessing any of the thousands of policy experts in, you know, in Washington who have spent decades coming up with ways of trimming waste, fraud and abuse in government spending. None of those people's phone rang. None of them. When they went to Doge meetings. They were checked out. You're asking so you know, Doge, operationally, directionally, I think it makes sense. Operationally was a disaster or you're asking an interesting question, Mike. Is it that this is always the way it's going to be. That like government efficiency is always just a code word for, you know, getting back at enemies. I don't think it has to be. And there are times, for instance, in the 90s, you know, and I referenced before I've written about loss of trust and confidence in government, you know, and the way Gallup asked that question is like, do you. But do you trust the government to do the right thing in most circumstances? There was a period in the 1990s when after Bill Clinton had, he had two years with complete control of Congress, got everything he wanted and it was such a failure that he elected, for the first time in decades, a Republican majority in the House and the Senate. By the end of that decade, confidence levels of measures of trust and confidence had gone up a bit in the federal government. They had actually changed spending. They had made a bunch of policies that seemed to be pretty effective and fair and there was a consensus for them. So this kind of thing can change, it can happen, but it's not going, you know, that is certainly not where we are today. But I think.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, I'm just going to hand it to John and team up with. You don't even think that's a good goal. Goal, I take it.

[C]

Well, no. I mean, I am a New Deal Democrat. I don't. I believe that the institutions that the United States government and Congress have created have purposes and we can't just go willy nilly ripping them up because we decided we don't like them. I mean, they serve the people of the United States and increasingly people all over the world. I mean, God knows how many people are going to die because of the destruction of usaid, which may have not even been constitutional to begin with.

[B]

So first of all, in principle, and let's say it's not usaid, it's a couple of programs, something like pep, pepfar, which gave, you know, AIDS drugs or HIV drugs to Africa. Yes, most of USAID was probably useless. Like John, you would not, you would not say everything the government is spending money on right now has to be preserved and then we add on.

[C]

Well, no, not in principle.

[B]

Right, yeah.

[C]

So that's. I am not a believer. I'm not a believer in small. Yes, exactly.

[A]

But, but, but just to be exact. Sorry to interrupt, but Nick, would you take, do you accept, do you think it's a fair tradeoff to have canceled all those other USAID programs coming with it, knowing that that also has meant the end of the PEPFAR program, which probably led to the deaths of hundreds, thousand, maybe, maybe.

[B]

And you know, it also this, we get into a broader discussion of things too, where it's like, is the USA responsible for everything good and bad in the world? And at what point do whole other countries, whole continents start taking responsibility for what's going on there? So it gets complicated. But I, you know, I don't doge. Ultimately, for me, the biggest problem with it is every time you try something and you do it so poorly that you discredit the idea that government should be smaller but more effective. That is a, that's a loss across the board.

[C]

I mean, to me there's a larger problem here, which I don't think libertarians can address that trip well, is that there is a blind spot in libertarian thought about private tyranny. I mean, Elon Musk is a person of, I think we can agree, of highly authoritarian temperament who comes out of the private sector. He's, he is incidentally now connected, connected to government. I mean, a lot of the perspective tyrants which you even seem disturbed by are people created by business and not, not from government. So I don't think, I think that the.

[B]

What is the tyranny of Elon Musk? You know, running Tesla or SpaceX or Twitter or X as opposed to Elon Musk working through the government, government to do things. I mean, this is, I, I agree that, well, business is kind of poorly, but there's a qualitative.

[C]

Businesses can have the same overwhelming power over the lives of individuals as governments can and in fact often have more tangible results. I mean, most people don't fear the federal government, they fear their boss. Do they face surveillance from the federal government? Yes, some abstract way, but very often they're being surveilled by their bosses. You know, so I just don't understand why. Because it has a TM after it. It's, it's somehow acceptable for power to be exercised over people. But when it's the government, libertarians become very allergic to it. When we actually see, and I understand that there is a libertarian story about how actually these great corporate behemoths are because of a mis. Apprehension, misallocation of the market. And if the market actually functioned, it wouldn't happen. But I mean, we live in the real world.

[B]

You can quit your job, you can quit your job. It's much harder to quit a particular country. I, and, and I'm not saying all jobs are good, all bosses are great.

[C]

But, but, but, but again, the same, the same market forces which are supposed to be so liberating and provide everybody with all these opportunities. And they do to a certain extent also create compulsions where people don't, can't simply walk away from employment and so on and so forth. You know, it's not, it's, it's like the old, you know, the, the law says both the factory owner and the, and the homeless person are not allowed to live under the bridge. You know, like there's these formal things and then there's the actual world, which

[B]

is that powers apply here.

[C]

I will, very often that power is private.

[B]

I will agree with you absolutely that, you know, a blind spot in libertarian analysis, I think for a long time is that fix, if it fixates only on government as the only source of power and the only source of tyranny or repression, let's say, then it is, it's malformed because it's going to be focusing on, you know, one thing to the exclusion of other things. And certainly we can say, you know, organizations like churches, I was raised Catholic. The Catholic Church exerts a huge amount of influence over people. And from a libertarian perspective, it's worth looking at how that power operates. I think it is fundamentally different. Political power versus cultural power and even oftentimes economic power. They operate under different rules. McDonald's doesn't have the ability to shoot its workers or it can't cover things up. It can't go to work.

[C]

Well, historically speaking, companies did have those. It required it, well, it required a lot of things that you libertarians aren't particularly fond of to stop those sorts of things, including labor unions.

[A]

Not, not a lot of people.

[B]

Actually, I, I like labor unions. I don't have a problem. And I, I, you know, this is where, when you say libertarians don't like labor unions, you know, you have to

[C]

start here we get into the, Here we have to get into rhetorical gains game, the rhetorical game that always gets played, which is that there is always, well, those aren't the real ones, and then there's always a more subtle exception. But for, for the, the fact of the matter is, is that in the history of libertarian thought that corporations, market power is fine and labor unions come in for more criticism, Is that fair to say?

[B]

I'm not sure about that. And I'm, I'm not, I'm not just trying to be difficult.

[C]

That's astonishing.

[B]

No, no, no. Because when you look at the critique of the robber barons or of railroad barons and things like that, that comes out of public choice. Economics reads like something that Gabriel Kolko, the Great socialist historian wrote. And in fact in Reason in the, I guess we started in the late 60s, this was either in the very late 60s, early 70s, we ran a bunch of critiques about how the problem with business. And this is, is a libertarian conundrum that is. Is more difficult to solve than. I think a lot of libertarians want to agree but that what happens is that once you become successful in particular types of businesses, one of the first things you do is sue for regulation from the government. And this is what happened among many of the robber barons. So you know what, what we're called as the robber barons, particularly railroad, the heads of railroads and things like that. And you know, that is a critique that fits in public choice economics, which is absolutely a function of libertarian critiques of power that even people like Michel Foucault responded favorably to. And socialists like Gabriel Cocco in his analysis that the Progressive era tells a story where it's like corporations were out of control and then brave progressives came in to lobby for government regulation. And he actually showed in multiple industries, particularly the railroads, that it was actually the railroad barons who were calling for the regulation because they, they were suing for peace with government to fix a market at a point where they were particularly in a, in a good, in a good position. So I, I'm John.

[A]

I'm not seem to, I'm not.

[B]

Well, yeah, this is where there is, there is a potential limitation and there's a great historian, economic historian at George mason named John V.C. nye, who wrote a book called it's either Wine War in Taxes or War Wine in Taxes where he argues that in Elizabethan England that the, the beginning of big government, or what might be called big government and big business were coterminous with each other. That brewers and the Crown kind of colluded to say, okay, we're going to rig various markets. We'll collect. You know, the Crown said that the brewers said we'll collect excise taxes for you and it'll live happily ever after. That might be true that you do not have what you know, big government without big business and that they're more conjoined than libertarians want to admit.

[A]

As someone who's not a libertarian, I will say this, and I appreciate the context, Nick, but from the outside, the boat, the most well known libertarians do not seem fond of labor unions. I don't see Rand Paul or Thomas Massie or Andreessen or Thiel. Or Thiel, I should say.

[B]

Or yeah, I would not include the latter two as clearly libertarian. Not clearly, but you know, throw in somebody like Milton Friedman, you know, was not. And I think a lot of it has to do with if it's compulsory or not. You know, for me, that's the, that's the main issue. And then there's another question about public sector versus private sector sector.

[A]

True, acknowledged. I wanted to give you the context, but I don't even think that was your main point, John. Right.

[C]

No, no, my, my point is, is that that many of the, the, the abuses of, of, of private power that even this moderate libertarian position would, would acknowledge required for their remedy. Two things that libertarians tend to view with great suspicious. One is unions, which as Nick has told us, there's an alternate tradition that's maybe more friendly to it. And second, which I don't believe there's an alternate tradition, but you can enlighten me, is government regulation. I mean, in the United States we have an enormous amount of law bureaucracies that are involved around the restraint of private power and to ensure that employees have some kind of legal redress or, you know, class actions or states have some kind of legal redress, that we don't just have the unencumbered power of corporations or private businesses over people's lives and most, most people acknowledge that those institutions are important. Now I agree, and I think it's a very interesting body of research that libertarians have created. I'm not saying it's all without intellectual merit that shows that, you know, that regulations can be captured or even. I think that these people who think that antitrust is the, is the solution to every single problem under the sun have to keep in mind that, you know, very often the antitrust regulations could be captured by corporations and, or, or become choke points for corporate power as we're seeing under this. So I just think that the, the lack of the, the belief, I, I would say that the overall philosophical belief that the market it and the private individual have, are the solution to every single problem doesn't ring true to me considering. I think that we have to at times come together and exercise collective power to restrain institutions that are much bigger than the individual. And I think that that's what's going on in government when it's working well, and I think it's going on when unions that are working well. Those things have their problems. No one would doubt it. But I, I would say that my suspicion being from where I come from in politics, runs towards unrestrained power of private industry and its chieftains. And now we can see what the other thing Is this competition?

[B]

Can you talk to what we're going through now? Are we in an era where it's the unrestrained power of private corporations that are the cause of our problems or our concerns? Or is it. Is it government or is it the mixing of corporate power and state power? It is some, because to my mind, it's, you know, it's. It's either government power, which continues to grow, or that mix of corporate and state power which, you know, is. Is the issue.

[C]

And I think.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, I think. I think it's some of each. Just enough for every ideological tradition to be able to say, we told you so. It wasn't us.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, we have. We have the. We have the.

[B]

And we can also. We can. We. I, you know, broadly, we can agree that, you know, I told you so is rarely a, you know, a recipe for growing a political movement.

[A]

Right.

[B]

You know, to, to be.

[A]

It's good for escaping blame. And I'm not saying Catherine was being disingenuous, in fact, necessary to brand libertarians as something other than a big part of the Trump agenda.

[B]

The other thing that I will agree with, and I feel like I may be conceding too much in all of this, is that to the extent that

[A]

the agreeing to appear on the show, you have. But.

[B]

Yeah, well, I obviously should. I have no standards.

[A]

But.

[B]

No, but that the emphasis on economics as the kind of be all and end all of human activity, which I think is starting to fade in the libertarian movement, but that is a problem, because economic activity, you know, the market does not govern all aspects of our lives. And in fact, you know, you know, John Gray, the British philosopher who spent a lot of time interpreting Michael Oakeshott, a conservative philosopher, and Friedrich Hayek, a more libertarian, you know, social theorists, who he broke with, but he talked about how, you know, free market economics or free enterprise is the application of liberal, classical liberal principles to economic activity. And it's a subset of the liberal philosophy, which is directional, more than absolute. And it's saying, you know, that individuals should have more freedom to make decisions about things that matter in their lives, including, you know, where they live, who they marry, what they eat, what kind of businesses they form, et cetera. And I think to the extent that we talk in those larger terms, and if we talk about libertarian and socialist or conservative or reactionary as directional rather than as sets of doctrine that you either buy in 100% or you reject 100%, we would have more productive contemporary conversations. Because one thing that Trump is definitely showing is that you know, right and left, which are always up for grabs and are always kind of changing valence, like it's not clear what they mean. A lot of what Trump is doing is something that Bernie Sanders would be comfortable espousing. And, you know, this. We, we need to be talking about things more specifically.

[C]

I would take issue with that. I would have to take issue with that. There's a difference between creating an oligarchical crony state. I know in, from the, the point of view of, you know, your intellectual evidence, maybe not, but I think you can admit that there's a difference between kind of creating an ideological, an oligarchical crony state where the government is controlled for the interest of, you know, this, this kind of camarilla of corrupt interest or something that tries to govern and maybe it's not possible, but in principle tries to govern the economy on some kind of rational basis for the common good are two different things. Now they may apply control in the economy, but it's different. I mean, it's, it's, it's like saying, well, you know, the National Socialists and, and the Norwegian Social Democrats are essentially the same thing because they kind of control, they want certain levels of control of the economy. Now the direct are very different. The kinds of societies they envision are very different. I don't think that Bernie Sanders, although he may like, you know, certain things like the government taking an interest in private corporations or having some control over investment or something like that. I don't think that you can say, oh, well, Trump is really doing a lot of things that Bernie would have done. I think it's a very different form of politics. Otherwise I would find things to like in Trump, but I don't. So, so I think that you can't really say. I mean,

[B]

John, can I ask if, you know, if, if I am willing to say, you know, that the market is, you know, is not the be all and end all and that economic freedom is not the only freedom with which libertarians should rightly be concerned? Would you also grant that every growth in government, every growth in government power or in taxing power and things like that is necessarily good, good for, for the common person?

[C]

No, absolutely not. I don't think every state, the, the state intrinsically is a good thing and it's all, and the state should be all powerful and it's not totally alien to my way of thinking. And again, I'm sympathetic to a lot of things libertarians are saying right now about Trump. I just think that they have inconsistently applied those principles in the past.

[A]

All right, let me end it right there and congratulate myself for letting the animal spirits run free and the market of ideas decide for themselves. Or maybe I provided light guardrails in the. In the spirit of a good. Yeah. Central planner.

[B]

This was a sandbox that you.

[A]

My favorite. My favorite point was. I thought, when was it, nick, who said, McDonald's doesn't kill you if you leave? I thought for sure John was going to say, who's being naive now, K, for the fact that Grimace was once a Pinkerton. Okay, we've come to the point of our show show where we will discuss the little things that annoy us. And I'm finding it hard to pick up that with the sang Fra exhibited here, anything can annoy either of you guys. But we call this the goat grinders, the things that get our goats or grind our gears. And Nick, would you like to start? Is there something a little thing that's annoying?

[B]

Yeah, I mean, there's lots of little things, Mike, but. And I apologize if I've used. Used this in the past, but just given the conversation that we've had, one of the things that I hate is the way that all of our, you know, the. The tech empires, so say Apple, Google and Amazon do. And yeah, we'll stick with those three. Do little things to fuck you over. When you. Instead of making things seamless, it becomes difficult. So, like I'm. I have an Apple iPad, which I can't buy Amazon Kindle books on. Like, I have to buy them elsewhere and then send them to the Kindle. Then if I want to use Android, which is owned by Google, on my Amazon Kindle HD Fire, whatever it's called, I get a shitty version of that. And then if I want to even use something like cut and, you know, cut and replace on Google's Gmail, et cetera. Like, I have to go through a rigmarole to do that. So I. I understand that these different kingdoms have different rules, but at every moment, they do something to make the most mundane and what should be a frictionless task, just a pain in the ass. And that grinds my goat every time it happens, which is about 50 times a day.

[A]

Universal control X, people. This is all we need. All right, I'll go next. And what gets my goat ground is there are all these, I'm told, these influencers, these Twitch streamers. And I know Hasan Piker, that guy I know. But I'm asked to consider new people in the manosphere or the Twitch sphere all the time. And I Never know if this is one of those situations where some editor somewhere elevate someone who doesn't deserve it because this guy is good at getting attention by being outrageous, but they're going to flame out. And I never needed to pay attention in the first place. So I understand I have to pay attention to Hasan Piker. And Nick Fuentes is made it apparent that as odious as he is, he's the kind of person who maybe will sway a mind or two. But Aiden Ross, I think there was a guy named Aiden Ross who was involved in pukinakua doing what was called an anti Semitic dance. Do I need to know about Aiden Ross loss? Someone listening to this who's in his late 20s are like, my God, you're asking if you need to know about the Beatles in 1964. There's another guy I was told about named Asmon Gold. Again, he just seems like a straggly haired unwashed loser, but that does not preclude him from being some sort of important, I'm not going to say thinker, but you know, Yacker who takes a little bit of my brain space. So there are three things that annoy me about, about this. One, that I really don't need to pay attention and I'm being asked to. Two, that I do need to pay attention and look at the guys I have to pay attention to. Hasan Piker was bad enough. And this is a variation on the other one is that I do have to pay attention, but I'm spending all this time or I'm being the kind of person who fights it, who resents it, who is literally like, oh, video games, they'll never catch on AI. They hallucinate too much. I don't want to have to be locked into being that person too. There seems to be no way out. And the good old days of, of Chris Matthews being the only somewhat odious person who have to pay attention to are gone.

[B]

Jesus Christ. What a better world though, isn't it without.

[A]

Without Chris?

[B]

Yeah, I don't want to be eliminationist,

[A]

but like he's still getting a tingle up his thigh. John, what's your go grinder?

[C]

Well, it's kind of similar to Nick's. I don't understand the Silicon Valley need to constantly make updates to things that work fine. I had a note taking software called Evernote. I wrote my entire book with it. It worked perfectly. It was a beautiful piece of software, allowed me to do everything I need to do. And now it's unusable. I'm not saying that In a. In a. In a. In a figurative way. It is literally I cannot use it to do what I did before. For a while, they allowed me to use the old version, but for some reason, they decided, no, you can't use the old version anymore. You got to download the new version with all these stupid AI tools in it, which I don't need. And I just think the. The constant need to upgrade things just means that things that work extremely well get cast by the wayside, and we're not making improvements. And I just don't understand how we can live as a civilization when we're throwing away perfectly good tools all the time to get worse things. So that really drives me crazy. And I. And I think it's related to both of your issues, which is just how much the Internet sucks. I mean, it provides me with a living in a lot of ways, but it's like an ocean of garbage that I'm trying to fish out of.

[A]

Of.

[C]

And it drives me crazy. It really does.

[A]

The use of Evernote Nevermore. Well, I want to thank both my guests and share their annoyance. I think we bond more over annoyance than anything else, such as shared interests or a love of beauty and esthetics. And they have been John Gantz, who's the author of when the Clock Broke, Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked up in the early 90s. Check out the unpopular front and the podcast about 90s movies that he does

[C]

with Jamelle Bowie called Unclear and Present Danger.

[A]

Unclear and Present Danger. If it has an on in the title, John is leading the charge.

[B]

Seven up fan. Is seven up still the UnCola?

[C]

Yeah, that's. I stole it from them.

[A]

Yes. Give me. Give me John Gans at seven. I'll give you the man. Different seven UP and Nick Gillespie. What John is to on. He is to reason. He is the host of the Reason Interview podcast and the editor at large of Reason magazine. Thank you so much again, Nick.

[B]

Thank you.

[A]

And until next time, we're not saying we're right. We're not saying you're right. But we are saying we're not even mad. And that's it for today's show. Cory War produces the gist. Kathleen Sykes runs the gist list. Ben Astaire is our booking producer, and Jeff Craig runs our socials. Michelle Pesca oversees it all. Benevolently improve and thanks for listening.