Episode 133 — How Government Stripped Us Of Our Humanity w/ Wayne Hoffman

[0:00:00] Thank you. [0:00:30] The End [0:01:00] Thank you. [0:01:30] Thank you. [0:02:00] Thank you. [0:02:30] Welcome to The Backlash. [0:02:57] I'm your host, David J. Reilly. [0:02:58] Thank you so much for joining me today. [0:03:00] We've got a big show, a lot of stuff to cover tonight. [0:03:03] But first, as always, I've got to make sure that you are smashing the like button, [0:03:07] that you are subscribed to the channel, that you are following us on all of our platforms. [0:03:12] X.com slash real backlash. [0:03:15] Of course, our website, the backlash.net. [0:03:18] You can support the show on subscribestar.com slash the backlash. [0:03:23] Patreon.com slash the backlash. [0:03:25] You can always send a super chat at the backlash.net slash super chat. [0:03:30] You can donate to the show. [0:03:32] You can also subscribe on all of our platforms. 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[0:04:29] Use promo code BACKLASH10 over there. [0:04:32] And Idaho Tallow, of course. [0:04:34] Soap and skincare products without endocrine disruptors. [0:04:38] And atlasbullion.com slash Backlash if you are concerned about the fiscal mismanagement in this country, which is really bad. [0:04:47] So anyway, you can always find the links to all of our sponsors in the show notes below. [0:04:52] Thank you again for joining us. So today I wanted to talk a little bit with somebody who would know. [0:05:00] And so that's vague. I get it. I get it. It's very vague. Idaho has been one of the fastest growing [0:05:06] states like three or four years running. We have had a massive amount of demographic change in this [0:05:13] state. A lot of Californians moving here, but also a lot of illegal immigration. Places like Caldwell, [0:05:20] Nampa, Idaho, now 30% Hispanic. [0:05:23] It's happening all across the state. [0:05:25] A lot of illegal labor that's going on. [0:05:27] A lot of human trafficking that's happening. [0:05:31] And amidst this kind of backdrop, there's also a lot of fiscal mismanagement that's going on in the state. [0:05:36] A lot of corruption. [0:05:38] And with these factors, a lot of political division that's happening. [0:05:45] A lot of cancel culture on both sides, on both the left and the right. [0:05:48] A lot of people running around canceling anybody that disagrees with like one percent of what they believe. [0:05:54] And it's kind of led to what I think is a little bit of a toxic environment, frankly, politically speaking. [0:05:59] And of course, this isn't just Idaho. This is everywhere in the country. [0:06:03] And so today I'd like to be talking with somebody who knows a lot about Idaho politics, [0:06:08] somebody who's been involved in Idaho politics for decades. [0:06:12] And very importantly, somebody who changed their mind, which is very rare these days. [0:06:19] I think it's very rare that people are open to ideas that are kind of outside of the norm, outside of what their normal worldview is. [0:06:27] And this person, of course, is none other than Wayne Hoffman. [0:06:31] Oh, I was expecting somebody else the way you said somebody, somebody who would know. [0:06:37] Okay, is somebody else coming in after me? What's going on here? [0:06:41] No, thank you so much for coming in, Wayne. Wayne, of course, is the founder of the Idaho Freedom Foundation. What was that, 15 years ago, 10 years ago? [0:06:48] Oh, my gosh, that would have been 16, I want to say now. [0:06:51] Wow, 16 years ago. And there is very few people, I think, that have had the impact on state politics the way that you have. [0:07:03] Thank you. [0:07:04] And so for those of the people watching, they probably don't know who you are. [0:07:09] They don't know your story. [0:07:10] So I'd like, if possible, I'd love to hear a little bit of your story. [0:07:16] You started out as a libtard journalist. [0:07:18] Is that right? [0:07:22] Yeah, I mean, I don't know if I would have said it quite like that. [0:07:25] You know, actually, I was a self-described objective journalist. [0:07:32] Oh, right. [0:07:32] Starting in the late 80s, there was a radio station on my high school campus, and I went [0:07:39] to public school in Arkansas. [0:07:41] And from there, I got into journalism. [0:07:44] I got my first journalism job in the late 80s, early 90s, while I was in college, and [0:07:50] then moved to Idaho in 1995. [0:07:53] Okay. [0:07:54] And I was working at a TV station in Twin Falls, a newspaper in Burley. [0:07:59] and then I was at a newspaper in Nampa in, I believe this was 1997. [0:08:06] And I'm doing my objective journalism bit, going to city council meetings [0:08:10] and covering the state legislature and doing all those things [0:08:13] and I get this call from a man named Ralph Smead. [0:08:17] And I don't know if you know that name or not, [0:08:19] but Ralph was a businessman in Caldwell, a well-known libertarian. [0:08:25] he had a billboard in Caldwell. [0:08:29] So as you're driving on the freeway, [0:08:30] you would see this billboard with whatever message that he had. [0:08:34] They called it the reader board. [0:08:35] It would usually be something silly, [0:08:37] but something that kind of smacked local politicians upside the head. [0:08:41] And Ralph called me, he says, [0:08:42] This is Wayne Hoffman. [0:08:43] He had this really gravelling voice. [0:08:45] Is this Wayne Hoffman? [0:08:46] I said, Yes, it is. [0:08:47] You say you're an objective journalist, but I don't think you are. [0:08:50] I'm like, Oh, I'll bet you lunch that you're not an objective journalist. [0:08:54] I said, well, sir, I'll be happy to take that bet because I am an objective journalist. [0:08:59] And he sent me some stuff that really got me thinking. [0:09:03] He sent me, I think it was by fax, actually, so you kind of tell the year, a copy of iPencil, [0:09:10] which is the Leonard Reed essay on how markets operate, essentially. [0:09:19] I think he sent me a copy of The Law. [0:09:22] I don't remember what else he did, but he sent me a lot of different things. [0:09:25] And what occurred to me is that it wasn't so much that I was a libtar journalist, although I may or may not have voted for Bill Clinton in a race for governor in 1990. [0:09:38] It was more or less that I gave too much credit to government. [0:09:45] You know, and somebody would call up and they'd say, I've got a problem with the government. [0:09:48] And then you call the government official and that person would say, oh, no, they're wrong. [0:09:53] Here's why we're right. [0:09:55] And then it would discount the thing that the person who's complaining had to say because the government's in charge and they're the experts. [0:10:02] And, of course, they know how things work. [0:10:05] It just made me understand that I didn't, A, give a lot of credence to people who spoke out against the government at that particular time. [0:10:15] B, that I gave too much credence to [0:10:19] and its ability to solve problems. [0:10:25] So yeah, I came a long way. [0:10:26] And of course, then I was a small business owner too. [0:10:28] In the early 2000s, we had a home daycare. [0:10:31] And it was interesting to me how the fire department, [0:10:35] for example, would show up and they'd say, [0:10:37] you need to make your windows bigger. [0:10:40] And I was like, you make your windows bigger. [0:10:41] And then they'd come back and say, [0:10:43] well actually they're not big enough. [0:10:45] Okay, you have to make the windows bigger again. [0:10:47] You need to install the smoke detectors [0:10:50] at this level distance from the ceiling. [0:10:54] And then you do that and they come back, [0:10:56] oh no, we want it to be not so close to the ceiling. [0:11:00] But you told me to put it up there, [0:11:02] now you're telling me to take it down. [0:11:03] I don't know. [0:11:04] And then the big one was when they said, [0:11:06] because we just had at the time in this little home daycare, [0:11:08] this little tiny house, the starter house that we had, [0:11:11] 1,500 square feet. [0:11:14] And they said, we just had [0:11:15] infants. We had babies. [0:11:17] The oldest kid was like [0:11:19] 18 months old. And the fire [0:11:21] department said, you know what you need to do? [0:11:24] You need [0:11:25] to install lighted exit [0:11:27] signs. Why? [0:11:30] Like, what do you expect [0:11:31] to have happen in this little tiny house? [0:11:34] The baby's going to [0:11:35] fire and they're going to like [0:11:37] crawl towards the exit? I mean, [0:11:39] I don't know what you're expecting here. [0:11:41] And I just couldn't take it. [0:11:43] And so it changed my view, like everything about how I was interacting. [0:11:47] Ralph taught me a lot, but then my own interactions with government [0:11:50] and just seeing, oh, and then, of course, [0:11:52] I wrote a lot of stories in the late 90s on affordable housing [0:11:57] and how really it's like government has all these affordable housing programs [0:12:01] and none of them work. [0:12:03] None of them do anything they say they're supposed to do. [0:12:06] And so I start seeing as I cover the state legislature, [0:12:09] and got more involved in public policy from then. [0:12:13] And just how nothing government does really reaches people in the way they say it does, [0:12:20] doesn't solve any problems, and in fact really divides humanity. [0:12:24] They actually take away our humanity. [0:12:27] Now, you were working at the Idaho Statesman at this time? [0:12:31] I was working at the Idaho Press Tribune in Napa, now called the Idaho Press, [0:12:35] and then I moved to the Idaho Statesman. [0:12:37] I was at the Idaho Statesman. [0:12:38] My last journalism job was the Idaho Statesman. [0:12:40] That ended in 2005. [0:12:42] 2005. [0:12:42] And that's when you started the Freedom Foundation. [0:12:45] Oh, no. [0:12:46] There's still more history of me. [0:12:48] I hated the Statesman so much. [0:12:51] It was like the worst job. [0:12:53] I mean, it was such a terrible job. [0:12:57] I could tell you stories about it, but it was just, they weren't really interested in [0:13:00] journalism anymore. [0:13:01] And that was very clear. [0:13:02] And they certainly weren't interested in the state government journalism. [0:13:05] I had an office in the state capitol, and we would do a full page of legislative news every single day. [0:13:13] Every single day. [0:13:15] Whereas now they have a couple stories, maybe here and there every now and then. [0:13:19] We did a full page of state government news every single day, and they just weren't really interested in that anymore. [0:13:25] And so I just had to get out of there. [0:13:26] So what did I do? [0:13:27] I got a job working in state government. [0:13:30] That was the worst job I ever had. [0:13:32] I worked in the State Department of Agriculture. [0:13:34] I was there about a year and a half. [0:13:36] And then I was doing some political consulting at the time, too. [0:13:39] I was helping legislators on their campaigns. [0:13:41] I was working for Tom Luna on his campaign for superintendent of public construction. [0:13:45] Oh, really? [0:13:46] I have committed a lot of sins in my life. [0:13:48] Oh, Tom's a very nice man, but he did disappoint, really, in the way that office was managed. [0:13:55] But that's another story. [0:13:57] And then I worked for Bill Sally in the congressional office in 2007. [0:14:02] Bill Salley lost re-election, and I decided I just couldn't work for another politician again. [0:14:07] I just would not do it. [0:14:10] And Ralph, actually, and his friend, my friend Morris Clements, [0:14:14] who was a former state legislator from Nampa, said, [0:14:17] have you thought about starting a think tank, a state free market think tank? [0:14:22] I said, what's that? [0:14:24] And they described what it was, and I said, that sounds wonderful, [0:14:28] and I proceeded to do that. [0:14:30] I didn't know where the money was going to come from, [0:14:31] didn't know how it was going to be paid for. [0:14:34] And everybody I spoke to said it can't possibly work. [0:14:36] Some people said, [0:14:37] why do you need a state free market think tank in Idaho? [0:14:40] Everyone's so free market-y right now [0:14:42] that what are you going to be fighting for? [0:14:44] Like, right, hold my beer, I'll show you. [0:14:47] And yeah, so we started 2008, [0:14:51] the Idaho Freedom Foundation, [0:14:52] and it was an amazing blessing. [0:14:55] I love the organization. [0:14:56] We did so many wonderful things for the state. [0:14:59] We changed the direction of the conversation in Idaho. [0:15:03] And I'm grateful for the experience. [0:15:06] Yeah. [0:15:06] No, I think it's, you know, the Idaho Freedom Foundation has, you know, at least when I first moved here back in 2020, you guys were fighting COVID. [0:15:13] You were fighting the lockdowns, you know, and really, really knocking it out of the park, frankly. [0:15:19] And so good work. [0:15:21] Good work. [0:15:22] It was a lonely place to be because, you know, when you're working on public policy, generally speaking, tax policy, education, criminal justice, name the thing. [0:15:31] And you usually have allies across the country you can go to locking arms and saying, yes, here's the right tax policy or here's the right approach on this thing. [0:15:40] And you can agree or disagree on what the approach is. [0:15:43] But with COVID, it was very lonely, very lonely. [0:15:47] We had think tanks that were coming up with panels that could determine when it would be safe for the government to reopen the economy. [0:15:57] And my thought was, the hell you are. [0:16:00] Why are you? [0:16:01] You don't have the right to shut down my business. [0:16:04] You don't have the right to tell me to stay home, to tell me, a grown adult, that I had to stay home. [0:16:10] You're non-essential. [0:16:12] Yeah. [0:16:12] And deciding who was going to be essential and non-essential and all those things, it was super lonely. [0:16:17] and I didn't love it. [0:16:19] I would tell you that I learned a lot from the experience [0:16:21] but I didn't love how [0:16:23] fragile, I mean we had made [0:16:25] such inroads in promoting [0:16:27] freedom in the state [0:16:29] and people were changing [0:16:31] the way in which they measured freedom which was [0:16:33] really cool. We became the [0:16:35] measurement because we would say this legislator [0:16:37] voted to grow government and we could [0:16:39] show people that. [0:16:41] But then COVID came and everyone [0:16:43] was like oh Brad Little says [0:16:45] we need to stay home, I guess we'll go do that. And you drive up the freeway to downtown Boise, [0:16:53] and there was no one on the freeway. And I'm like, man, this whole freedom thing is very fragile. [0:16:58] You know, it's not one scary thing. And even the folks that I would consider to be, you know, [0:17:03] close conservative slash libertarian friends would say, yeah, but Wayne, you know, COVID, [0:17:10] People are dying. [0:17:12] And I'd go, okay, well, if that's the case, then show us the data, give us the information, and let us decide. [0:17:21] Let us keep our agency. [0:17:23] And people were like, oh, no, Brad knows. [0:17:26] He's a good guy, and he's going to make sure that people don't die and everything's going to be great. [0:17:31] It was terrible. [0:17:32] So it really made me rethink just how much longer I wanted to do that work. [0:17:39] Right. That makes sense. Now, how would you describe, I guess, your political ideology? Because you've been called everything from a far-right extremist to, you know, Republican, conservative, whatever, you know. How would you self-describe? [0:17:56] You know, the problem is that people try to put everybody in a box. [0:17:59] Right. [0:18:00] You know, if I say I'm a conservative, that means a certain thing. [0:18:02] If I say I'm a libertarian, that means a certain thing. [0:18:06] I have determined that I'm going to refer to myself or do refer to myself as a Taoist. [0:18:12] Okay. [0:18:13] Yeah. [0:18:14] Because if you read the Tao Te Ching, which is 2,500 years old, and I just wrote a book with that in mind, which we can talk about. [0:18:22] But Taoism basically emphasizes doing nothing. [0:18:30] I mean, lack of a better word, but it's effortless action. [0:18:34] So not doing, instead of saying, we've got to do something about this, [0:18:39] let nature take its course. [0:18:42] Let the spontaneous order, let God's creation come into view. [0:18:48] If you do nothing, you're more likely to get the results that you want. [0:18:53] You do a bunch of things, you create a bunch of manifestations, [0:18:56] you create things that weren't meant to be. [0:18:59] And so by just doing nothing, [0:19:03] sometimes you have to do things, obviously, [0:19:06] but if your default disposition is to just let things be, [0:19:12] let the natural order take control, if you will, [0:19:15] let God's creation manifest, [0:19:17] then you don't have near the conflict you don't have near the problems sure and so that's why i [0:19:23] refer to myself as as much more of a taoist than i do any other interesting this is it this is an [0:19:29] interesting development but it makes sense too because it's like when you look at things [0:19:33] certain policies that have been happening in this country and i'm thinking of even like the civil [0:19:38] rights act you know where it's like you're supposed to be fighting some sort of injustice [0:19:42] But then the actions that you wind up taking create more injustice and it just begins to pile up. [0:19:49] Resentment breaks out. Things like the busing stuff that was going on in the 1970s. [0:19:54] The oh, well, there aren't enough black students in this school, so we're going to bust them from one area to another. [0:20:00] And then everybody's mad. The schools are no longer working and everything has fallen apart. [0:20:05] And housing, too. [0:20:07] Housing is another one of these things where the government engages in social engineering, [0:20:12] and then it just leads to a lot of backlash. [0:20:15] Well, and results and consequences have more results and consequences. [0:20:21] So you think you solved the problem, but all you did was push the problem off into something else. [0:20:27] You can see that in immigration policy, health care is a legion for that. [0:20:32] criminal justice, education, name the issue. And there are plenty of examples where the government [0:20:40] made some decision somewhere along the way that led to another decision that led to another [0:20:44] decision that led to another decision. And the problems never go away. Things harden and get [0:20:49] worse. And this has been I mean, I've studied this. I wish I could say it would be easier for [0:20:56] me to come in and say, you know, every time a politician gets together and comes up with a [0:21:01] program, they solve the problem. So you really should just pass whatever bill or law that the [0:21:06] politicians want, because everything's better that way. That would make my life so much easier. [0:21:12] But that's not how that works. I mean, take health care. Health care, I mean, people are, [0:21:17] why is health care so expensive? Well, where to start? Probably in the late 1800s, when [0:21:24] And healthcare became professionalized, and we had to start licensing everybody. [0:21:31] And you've got the American Medical Association that really wanted doctors to make a really, really, really good living. [0:21:41] And so they got rid of things like mutual aid societies having their own doctors or businesses hiring their own doctors. [0:21:48] They did this legislatively. [0:21:50] And that, of course, raised the standard of living for the doctors. [0:21:53] but how does that work? Well, it makes the medical care more expensive. That's an example. [0:21:58] Insurance is another great example. People will say, well, in America, you get your insurance [0:22:04] through your employer. Well, how did that happen? Well, it started with a series of decisions [0:22:09] starting in about the 1940s when the U.S. Supreme Court said insurance is a function of state [0:22:17] regulation, not the federal government. So every state passed a law that said [0:22:22] you can't buy and sell insurance across state lines and we're going to tell you what your [0:22:27] insurance plan should look like and every state did that and so it shrunk the market to where [0:22:32] you were captive you only had a handful of if that of insurance providers that you could work [0:22:38] with in your state you couldn't go and be like well i'm going to go call the guy i know in [0:22:42] nebraska he'll sell me a policy nope can't do that so that became more expensive and on and on [0:22:48] I mean, we can go down the line, but the point is that every single time government interferes, it makes things either more complicated, more contentious, more expensive, not as good a quality. [0:23:02] There's just, of course, health care is a great example of that, but there are so many others. [0:23:07] Oh, sure. [0:23:07] And the bureaucracy in this stuff is just so crazy. [0:23:10] I mean, you know, as someone who's, I guess, kind of a victim of the opioid epidemic, you know, it's like I remember back in 2008, 2009, somebody somewhere decided to give like some sort of like a feedback form for doctors where patients then would like rate their doctor. [0:23:26] And basically, like if you're if you're going in to the hospital to get pain pills and they don't give it to you, you rate the guy zero. [0:23:33] And if he gets five zeros, he's fired. [0:23:36] So now all of a sudden you've changed the incentives and these doctors start handing out drugs like candy. [0:23:41] And, you know, what, hundreds of thousands, millions of kids in my generation died. [0:23:48] Yep. [0:23:48] All because somebody somewhere thought that, you know, this was going to solve some problem. [0:23:54] And in fact, it created a lot more. [0:23:55] And that's exactly right. [0:23:56] And politicians generally don't look back and go, gosh, did we screw this up? [0:24:02] Did we do this? [0:24:03] Are we the ones that are responsible for this mess? [0:24:06] You know, because the people that write the laws or create the programs, they serve an office for a certain amount of time, then they're gone. [0:24:13] And then, you know, the next people come along and they sort of take up that thing and don't look back. [0:24:20] I mean, there's never, I'll give you a great example, Medicaid. [0:24:23] Medicaid, the program for the poor, that's in every state, by the way, and completely optional. [0:24:29] There's not a law that says a state has to run a Medicaid program, but they do. [0:24:32] there's never been a conversation [0:24:35] hey did we make [0:24:37] our communities, our people [0:24:39] less compassionate [0:24:40] because we created this program [0:24:43] you don't have to worry about your neighbor being sick [0:24:45] or needing help of some kind [0:24:47] because we've got this program [0:24:48] there's never that [0:24:50] instead of the conversation is [0:24:51] well last year we spent X number of billion dollars [0:24:54] on the program and this year we need to increase [0:24:56] the spending by 4% [0:24:57] what is that going to look like [0:24:59] and then you might have conversations [0:25:01] well, it's kind of expensive, maybe we should do a managed care program. [0:25:05] But that never gets back to the essential question, [0:25:07] did we do something to fundamentally change [0:25:10] how humanity operates by creating these programs? [0:25:14] And the answer is absolutely. [0:25:16] And this is the thing I'm absolutely obsessed with. [0:25:18] So, again, to the point, do nothing. [0:25:22] Ah, we all need health care. [0:25:24] Okay, well, good luck with that. [0:25:25] That's not what government should be doing. [0:25:27] Right. Maybe maybe, you know, form a co-op with people in your community, maybe get to know your neighbors and see what they need. [0:25:34] Maybe take up a collection, maybe have your church work on that for those people in your community. [0:25:40] I don't know. Right. But we've taken away that element of creativity, our our actual humanity. [0:25:47] Yeah. Well, and, you know, one of the other things I was just going to point out is that, like, the health care system, as we know it, it grew out of not. [0:25:55] come on, this is my show, I'm going to do it. [0:25:58] It grew out of the Catholic Church, right? [0:25:59] Like creating these hospitals, creating orphanages, schools. [0:26:04] That was actually charity. [0:26:06] It was like nuns, monks, brothers, priests [0:26:10] that were like donating their time to make people better. [0:26:14] And we've switched to this for-profit system, [0:26:17] which according to the Idaho Hatesman, your former employer, [0:26:20] St. Luke's Health System is now the second largest employer in the state of Idaho, which is just unbelievable to me. [0:26:31] And of course, where we live here, where I live here in North Idaho, we've got Kootenai Health, which is about to open a brand new campus over on Prairie Avenue. [0:26:39] And it's just they're not making people healthy. [0:26:42] No, they're not. They're not leading to a higher quality of life. [0:26:46] They're drugging people, bringing them in for surgeries, and then siphoning billions of dollars out of these insurance companies. [0:26:54] Right. [0:26:55] So it has nothing to do with, like, charity, loving your neighbor, helping other people. [0:27:00] It's about profit. [0:27:01] That's exactly right. [0:27:02] And that's sustained because those businesses and their adjacent other organizations, Big Pharma, you know, and the American Medical Association, the various doctors groups, they give a lot of money to politicians. [0:27:20] And so no one asks the question, can we be doing something a little bit different? [0:27:26] The whole system is propped up by government. [0:27:30] Right. [0:27:30] And a lot of people are sick as a result of that. [0:27:32] There are millions of people who are on psychotropic drugs in America. [0:27:36] Now, in any ordinarily normal functioning country, [0:27:39] you should have maybe, I don't know, 0.1% of the population that's mentally ill. [0:27:45] But now you've got millions of Americans with a mental health illness [0:27:49] such to the degree that they're taking medications. [0:27:52] Why is that? [0:27:53] Most of that comes through, ready, government medical welfare. [0:27:58] right you know so that's where you get people are like i wouldn't be alive if not for medicaid well [0:28:04] how's that possible well you know i'm very depressed and so i thanks to medicaid i was [0:28:08] able to go to my doctor and they were able to prescribe me xanax great okay well did that [0:28:13] did that make you better or just keep you medicated right so i ask uh my father who's [0:28:20] very socialist actually and he's very very supportive of all these government programs [0:28:25] and I said, let me ask you something. [0:28:27] Would you ever vote for a politician [0:28:30] who put in place a system [0:28:34] that keeps half of Americans so medicated [0:28:38] they couldn't actually feel their feelings? [0:28:40] Oh no, I would never do that. [0:28:43] Well, you have. [0:28:44] Because every time you vote for a politician [0:28:46] that sustains the government welfare system, [0:28:48] you are voting to sustain that system. [0:28:50] And you're voting for the politicians [0:28:52] who keep that in place [0:28:53] and never look back and ask questions. [0:28:55] Are we making people healthier or are we just keeping them hostage to that system to where they're actually afraid? [0:29:03] Oh, you're going to you're going to cut my program. I'm going to die. That's where we are. [0:29:07] Right. Yeah. And it's you know, there was actually an incident two years ago, a year and a half ago. [0:29:13] I can't quite remember, but there was a guy who got all kinds of hopped up on propaganda on Facebook and wherever else, you know, left wing. [0:29:24] Idaho statesman type propaganda. [0:29:27] The Republicans are about to cut your Medicaid. [0:29:29] And he filled up his car with a bunch of gas cans. [0:29:32] And there's like an epidemic of this. [0:29:34] He like went on social media to like tell everybody [0:29:36] that he was about to go commit a terrorist act. [0:29:38] And then he like went to drive his car [0:29:41] into Representative Jordan Redman's pharmacy. [0:29:44] You remember this? [0:29:45] It was just like, whoa, timeout. [0:29:47] Like, what are we doing here? [0:29:49] You know, hopping these people up as if like, you know, [0:29:52] cutting back on Medicaid, like you're going to die. That's not going to happen. That's not true. [0:29:58] People are now being used as pawns in the political system. So the object is to scare people. [0:30:08] They're going to take away your program. They're going to take away your rights. They're going to [0:30:11] bloody blah, blah. And what that is doing is it's all of this, the number of programs, [0:30:18] the number of people that are up in arms against each other [0:30:22] they're literally [0:30:25] taking away our humanity, these politicians, these political systems [0:30:30] and so what you end up with is [0:30:33] endless conflict, endless fighting [0:30:38] over who's going to control what and how [0:30:40] you end up with people that are fearful that something [0:30:46] bad is going to happen. [0:30:48] And so they end up taking [0:30:50] up arms. It's a very, [0:30:52] very tragic thing. It doesn't have to be this [0:30:54] way. And by the way, I think [0:30:56] one of the most dangerous parts [0:30:57] of it is the real lack of compassion. [0:31:01] Who needs [0:31:01] to be compassionate? Who needs to care about your neighbors? [0:31:04] Who needs to care about anybody? [0:31:06] As long as [0:31:08] there's a program there to help you. The only [0:31:09] thing you have to care about is who wins the election. [0:31:12] So they've taken away [0:31:13] our humanity. [0:31:15] They've taken away our ability to be compassionate. [0:31:19] They've taken away our autonomy. [0:31:21] We're basically just the subject of whatever algorithm, [0:31:26] meaning the statutes and regulations that the government comes up with us, [0:31:30] so that we can be most beneficial to the state, [0:31:33] not in tune with our God-given gifts and talents, [0:31:38] but in service of the state. [0:31:41] Now, you know, we're talking about humanity, compassion, love, loving your neighbor. [0:31:47] There's a lot of people that are going to be very, very unhappy with the fact that we're doing a podcast together. [0:31:53] They're going to be upset. [0:31:56] And I think the reason why is, well, first of all, because they tried to cancel me and they were unable to. [0:32:03] But also because I have an issue with what our government is doing overseas. [0:32:09] And I don't know if you want to talk about this or not. [0:32:11] Maybe we'll edit this out. [0:32:13] Probably not. [0:32:14] But two weeks ago, our government bombed a school in Iran and killed 165 little girls. [0:32:22] Yep. [0:32:23] Not a thought. [0:32:24] Not a thought about it. [0:32:25] And not only is there not a thought about it, they are dehumanizing these people in Gaza as well with this conflict that's been unfolding over the past few years. [0:32:35] what are you because by the way uh for those who are unaware you're you're jewish you're you're [0:32:44] apparently i've been i've been told i've been told that i was a nazi so that's very unclear to me [0:32:50] what would i am see and this is just it i'm i'm i'm a nazi you're jewish so we're not supposed [0:32:55] to be talking with one another right we're not supposed to be able to to find any common ground [0:33:00] We're not supposed to be able to move forward. What are your thoughts on what has been going on with this war that's been breaking out? [0:33:09] I've yet to hear your commentary on this. And I think that there's a lot of people in this state. [0:33:14] As soon as you kind of deviate from the party line, they short circuit and freak out. [0:33:22] And it's like we can't have a conversation about this. [0:33:25] Yeah, I've been saying for years, because I remember even there was in the 1970s, I want to say early 80s, I remember there was a segment on 60 Minutes about the conflict in the Middle East and Israel. [0:33:43] And I remember there was a brief bit of film with, I think, a cousin, one of my cousins, you know, protesting at that point in time what was going on over there. [0:33:55] And so I've been very interested in this for years. [0:33:59] And I remember having a conversation with a guy 20 years ago [0:34:03] when I was working for Congressman Sally before he got elected. [0:34:06] We were sitting in the car driving somewhere, [0:34:08] and he asked me if I supported Israel. [0:34:13] And I said, you know, I support peace. [0:34:15] I'm tired of the fighting because I remember as a youngster [0:34:19] watching the fighting then. [0:34:21] And now here we are 20 years later, [0:34:22] or now 40 years from [0:34:25] at that time when I was a kid watching all this [0:34:27] and it's still going on. [0:34:29] And we just accept it as being normal. [0:34:31] Well, because if you don't support [0:34:33] Israel, if you don't support the Jews [0:34:36] then you must be [0:34:38] supportive of Hamas. [0:34:40] Or if you don't [0:34:42] support Israel [0:34:44] you're an anti-Semite. [0:34:46] I'm just wanting it to end. [0:34:48] Look, I don't know [0:34:49] anyone in Iran. [0:34:51] and I sure as hell don't want to be bombing them or their kids into oblivion [0:34:56] because I don't think that's right. I don't think that that's somehow consistent [0:35:00] with God's plan. I think that you need to [0:35:04] lead with peace. Now, I understand and I've read a lot of [0:35:08] philosophy about war and peace and what that looks like. [0:35:12] There are times when one must go to war. But if you [0:35:16] have such a compelling argument for war, because I've been hearing [0:35:20] You don't understand. Trump, he's playing 3D chess, see. [0:35:25] You know, by blowing up boats in the Caribbean and taking out Maduro in Venezuela and blowing up things in Iran. [0:35:33] That's just him playing 3D chess. You don't understand. He's so brilliant. [0:35:38] Okay, tell me. Because what you're doing, and this is something that's very important to me, [0:35:42] because there's a lot of conversation about whether the president has the power, the authorization, [0:35:47] to go and engage in war. [0:35:51] And of course you read the Constitution and you go, [0:35:53] no, he's got to get the permission of Congress, [0:35:55] but now we've got the War Powers Act and all that other stuff. [0:35:58] Here's how I view it. [0:36:01] When you build a bomb, or you make some kind of munitions, [0:36:05] or you pay the salary of a soldier or sailor or airman, [0:36:09] you're doing that using my energy. [0:36:12] so in other words i work my energy is converted to dollars the dollars are then taken from me in [0:36:20] the form of taxes and you take those taxes and make bombs so there's a part of me that's [0:36:26] energetically being dropped on people right and you didn't even bother to ask if that's okay at [0:36:34] least to my representatives you've got a wonderful case for war then bring it but sounds like you have [0:36:38] a very compelling story to tell. Let's hear it in Congress. And that just hasn't happened. [0:36:45] So I'm not convinced at all. And also, with regard to the children, [0:36:50] yeah, there are going to be people who die in war. And sometimes those are going to be innocent [0:36:56] people. But when that happens, there should be some real staring in the mirror going, [0:37:01] what are we doing here? Are we the good guys or the bad guys? Do you think the parents of [0:37:06] those children are going to be more or less likely to be yay America right well and this is this is [0:37:12] something that it's like I feel like it's the most common sense thing in the world but like in Gaza [0:37:17] in Iran you're going to go and you're going to what murder somebody's children and then what [0:37:22] expect him to de-radicalize and say all of a sudden hey you know what this is fine take my [0:37:27] house right it's it's cool no you're you're creating more terrorists and it's it's interesting [0:37:33] You know, I actually I have I have two two friends, one that's from Iran and one that's in Iran now. [0:37:40] Hamed Ghashkabi. He's like one of the youngest people ever to be sanctioned by the United States. [0:37:45] I've known him for about six or seven years now. Good guy. Very spiritual. Doesn't want war. [0:37:51] He's not crazy. He's actually like a producer for TV. [0:37:54] And then the other one is somebody that supported the show. He was born in Iran. [0:37:58] He's Jewish and was actually, he was brought over to the United States by HIAS, the Hebrew [0:38:04] Immigrant Aid Society. And he is, he was like, I think one of the leaders of like the Ron Paul [0:38:10] campaign back in 2008. He is incredibly against the war as, as a Jewish guy, he's totally against [0:38:16] the war. And it's just, it's crazy to me to see people like that, people like you that I think [0:38:24] are pretty reasonable, right? And then you've got on the other side, these Christian Zionists, [0:38:31] who I believe are imbibing propaganda from the military industrial complex [0:38:36] to make them pro-war. And it's like, when you really boil it all down, especially with what [0:38:44] has been going on with Iran, we had this, you know, we overthrew Mosaddegh, we installed the [0:38:49] Shah, and we got sick of the Shah, and we kind of were covertly, we were helping the [0:38:55] Ayatollahs. [0:38:56] Don't minimize what all that was. [0:38:58] We installed a dictator. [0:39:03] Yeah. [0:39:03] You know? [0:39:05] Which we have done. [0:39:06] Using the CIA, I mean, it's no wonder, I mean, if you're Iranian, you might go, yeah, that [0:39:12] doesn't, that kind of sucks. [0:39:13] And this dictator, the Shah, was using government force to injure and kill people. [0:39:22] And that's the person that we had in place from the U.S. government and, of course, the British as well. [0:39:28] But, I mean, wouldn't they have reason to be a little bit skeptical? [0:39:33] And the Ayatollah was in exile and came back. [0:39:40] So he came back as an exalted leader. [0:39:48] We set all the conditions up for that. [0:39:50] And the CIA helped the Ayatollah get back. [0:39:55] And then we have the Iran-Contra scandal where the United States, Israel, and Iran were all working together to traffic arms, to traffic drugs. [0:40:03] This, of course, ties into the Jeffrey Epstein network. [0:40:05] But you have these areas of conflict with what's called strategic tension. [0:40:12] And this was recently exposed as to be happening in Gaza, where Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, was funding Hamas. [0:40:24] I don't know. There are a lot of people out there that might be hearing this for the first time. [0:40:27] I don't have it up. Maybe I'll edit it in. [0:40:29] But there was an article that came out last week about how Netanyahu was siphoning money from Israel to Qatar to be given to Hamas. [0:40:37] Why? Because for Netanyahu, it's important to have an enemy, an armed enemy that is an existential threat to his country, [0:40:46] which then gives him the pretext of building up a military industrial complex. [0:40:51] And on and on it goes. And it's just this spiral that never ends. [0:40:55] Yeah, I think the big thing for me is if you look at American history, and really British history and maybe French history also, there's a lot of things that have happened over the span of the 19th century, 20th century, and now coming to the 21st century that have set the stage for endless war. [0:41:21] not to mention the fact that also we changed the monetary system so that now you have endless money [0:41:28] and so you can have endless money for endless war and that's a problem um but if i if i decide [0:41:37] to look at the the whole thing from the lens of being a father and a grandfather [0:41:44] what kind of world do I want to leave for my kids and for your kids, right? [0:41:50] Not this one. [0:41:52] Not one where we're in a perpetual state of war. [0:41:54] Not one where we're running from conflict to conflict. [0:41:57] I'll tell you, you know, one of the things that Trump had going for him [0:42:01] with a lot of folks that were, like, very skeptical [0:42:03] is that as far as the second term was concerned, [0:42:06] is, well, you know, he didn't start new wars in his first term. [0:42:10] Right. [0:42:10] But now what? [0:42:12] you know so his unique value proposition is completely gone um there was this tweet i'm [0:42:20] seeing if i can bring it up but there was i've played it on the show before um it's not popping [0:42:26] up but it was from the rnc and it came out in 2024 and it said vote vance trump the pro-peace [0:42:32] ticket yeah right and here we are we've like started like how many wars in like the past 18 [0:42:39] months. It's terrible. It's crazy. The amount of people that have died. This is not what I want [0:42:43] my country to stand for. No. At all. And I think at some point we've got to look back at our history [0:42:49] and understand exactly what got us to where we are because it ain't pretty. Not to say that [0:42:57] there are a lot of wonderful things in this country to be proud of and to like and support, [0:43:02] but our foreign policy, especially since the early 20th century, [0:43:12] well, maybe the late 19th century, really, not fantastic. [0:43:17] We've created narratives to invite the country to support war. [0:43:24] We've invited the idea that we've got to be all over the world. [0:43:30] The world's policemen. [0:43:31] The world's policemen. [0:43:32] we've set up a scenario where it's really fascinating to me. [0:43:38] Like if I'm doing this off the cuff, see how good I am. [0:43:42] If somebody were to say tomorrow, hey, Dave, [0:43:47] we're going to set up a country of Catholics right where Qatar is. [0:43:53] We're just going to have a Catholic country. [0:43:56] It's going to be all Catholic. [0:43:58] You'd be like, that's insane. [0:44:00] You wouldn't do that, right? [0:44:03] Right. [0:44:03] But now it's like, hey, we got this. [0:44:05] It's not racist. [0:44:06] It's not, you know, or whatever you would call it, religiousist. [0:44:09] We're going to have a country that's all Jews. [0:44:11] All Jews. [0:44:13] I mean, you'd be like, that's not inclusive, right? [0:44:20] That's not. [0:44:22] What is that? [0:44:23] Why are we okay with that? [0:44:25] Right. [0:44:25] And the other thing, too, is we have to really understand the history here, right? [0:44:30] this was [0:44:32] I mean there's a lot of history with regard to [0:44:34] Jews [0:44:36] and the diaspora from Europe [0:44:38] and the Zionist movement [0:44:40] and all that kind of stuff and I will try to break it all down [0:44:42] here but [0:44:44] you know there was a point when honestly [0:44:46] it was the British were hey [0:44:48] Jewish leaders wouldn't [0:44:50] it be cool if you help us with the Ottomans [0:44:52] wouldn't it be cool if we were going to [0:44:54] give you this land and then at the same time [0:44:56] I was like hey Arabs [0:44:58] the same deal if you help us we're gonna give you this so we created this mess yeah and then [0:45:05] we continued to sustain it instead of saying man we really screwed this up right we've got to figure [0:45:09] out a way to it we we did this we got to figure out a way to fix it right and we just haven't done [0:45:14] that instead of we're just going to bomb the other people into oblivion and call it good now here's [0:45:20] here's i guess where i really see and it you know where does this hit home and it's not just at the [0:45:25] gas pump. It's not just the looming, you know, raw materials crisis because the Straits of [0:45:32] Hormuz being closed. There's a lot of raw material. It's not just petroleum. It's fertilizer. [0:45:35] It's everything. It's everything that goes through that strait. And, you know, we have yet to feel [0:45:40] the effects of this, I think. I think, you know, give it a couple of weeks, maybe a month or two, [0:45:45] and we'll start seeing the effects of it. So obviously there's going to be real effects, [0:45:49] you know, there's about 15 plus American soldiers that are dead. That's a real effect of this too. [0:45:54] But what's really concerning me is what's been going on here at home with the rhetoric, with the inability to have hard conversations, with the inability to to talk to somebody who like, you know, just five years ago, we were shoulder to shoulder at a COVID anti-COVID rally. [0:46:14] you know we're fighting uh against the government and all this together and now all of a sudden uh [0:46:20] because of this uh issue and and these ideologies of christian zionism they will not allow [0:46:26] conversation they will demonize they'll call you a terrorist supporter they'll call you a terrorist [0:46:31] um an anti-semite all of this stuff and it's it's like whoa whoa whoa time out time out uh [0:46:37] How can we, I guess, stop the corrosive nature of this? [0:46:44] Because I feel like the conservative movement here in Idaho, whatever that may be anymore, is kind of hanging on by a thread. [0:46:52] Oh, it's completely falling apart. [0:46:54] I was wondering, was it me? [0:46:56] Did I hold everything together? [0:46:58] Because right after I left, all of a sudden, all the people that were partying together now hate each other. [0:47:04] That is really, really strange. [0:47:06] and the only thing that's really changed is I left. [0:47:09] So maybe it's me. [0:47:11] Well, you know, I think it really comes down to [0:47:13] all this is a symptom of the greater problem. [0:47:15] And this is what I was saying earlier, [0:47:17] and I firmly maintain this. [0:47:18] If you look at the way in which, look, [0:47:21] I spent a lot of time, [0:47:23] I spent a lot of time [0:47:25] believing that I could fix the system. [0:47:28] And the system does not want to be fixed. [0:47:32] The system invites the situation that we have. [0:47:36] And I know you've seen that. We've all seen it. So what do we do? Well, first of all, [0:47:43] should we vote harder? No, no, not at all, really, because I wish that worked. I mean, [0:47:51] the people that I got elected to the legislature, I'm like, my God, what are you doing? [0:47:58] You know, I'm really just shocked by the whole thing. It's like all the bills that are coming. [0:48:03] We still have the big government lefty stuff, [0:48:07] the government welfare programs and all these other things, [0:48:10] but now we have the big government right stuff, [0:48:13] the authoritarian, we're going to tell you how to use the Internet, [0:48:17] and we're going to tell you, I don't know, [0:48:21] what flags to put up, which is another thing, [0:48:25] what books go in the library. [0:48:27] if a woman who had sex surgery or whatever [0:48:34] now looks completely like a man, [0:48:35] that person needs to go to the women's restroom. [0:48:39] I'm like, okay, I'm not really sure, is that working? [0:48:45] So I'm just, look, I look at it this way. [0:48:48] What is the core of the problem? [0:48:50] The core of the problem is the government [0:48:53] and all its minions, meaning politicians, [0:48:56] have taken away our humanity. [0:48:59] They've made people into an algorithm. [0:49:04] Sure. [0:49:04] I think Pope Pius XIII in his encyclical Rerum Novarum [0:49:09] described it as the reduction of human beings [0:49:12] to economic units of input and output. [0:49:15] And it's like, where's the care of the soul? [0:49:18] Because our leaders, our governor, Brad Little, [0:49:21] I'm not expecting any of this from him, [0:49:23] But theoretically, in a Christian country, the leaders would be concerned with the souls of the people entrusted to their leadership. [0:49:33] Not just their economic input and output or GDP or any of that. [0:49:38] It's like, you know, are you leading a good moral life? [0:49:41] Are we doing things and setting you up so that you don't think that you have to, like, go rob a pharmacy to make ends meet or something like this? [0:49:48] Absolutely correct. [0:49:49] And so if you extend this down, you also see, [0:49:53] why should you care about your neighbors? [0:49:54] Because the government's got them, right? [0:49:56] I don't have to worry about whether a person down the road is starving. [0:49:59] I don't have to worry about whether they have housing. [0:50:02] I don't have to worry about if they have clothing [0:50:03] because somebody's taking care of that. [0:50:05] After all, there are, I don't know, 2,900 programs at the federal level alone, [0:50:10] not counting all the stuff at the state and city levels. [0:50:13] There are so many programs. [0:50:14] Surely somebody's taking care of them, right? [0:50:16] All these programs, all these things creates endless vectors for conflict. [0:50:22] It becomes our default position. [0:50:25] We are constantly at odds with each other. [0:50:28] Consider, think about if you and I got together and said, [0:50:31] hey, Wayne, it'd be a shame if your house burned down, [0:50:36] but I can't afford a fire truck. [0:50:39] So maybe we should get together and collect some money, [0:50:41] maybe invite some of the neighbors to form a fire district to buy a fire truck. [0:50:46] That's just one decision that leads to 10 more. [0:50:50] How much is the fire truck going to cost? [0:50:52] Who's going to man it? [0:50:53] Where are you going to store the thing? [0:50:55] What kind of levy are you going to collect? [0:50:56] Are you going to give people benefits for working at the fire department? [0:51:00] You've got a dozen different questions to answer [0:51:03] just from the one decision to create a fire department. [0:51:08] Now look at all these programs. [0:51:09] I said at the federal level, 2,900. [0:51:12] How many decisions go with that? [0:51:14] And there's a vector for conflict with every single decision. [0:51:19] So what I'm saying is, what if we did something different? [0:51:24] What if we start framing things from the context of the things that make us human, [0:51:30] our high moral values, respect, peace, love, understanding? [0:51:35] What if we start there instead of starting with the things that tear down our humanity? [0:51:42] And then from there you actually look and say, okay, how can we value the individual and their God-given gifts and talents and make that the primary thing? [0:51:54] Not as an economic unit, but prize them for who they are. [0:52:00] Somebody special, somebody different, somebody unique, somebody with God-given gifts and talents that need to be able to flourish. [0:52:08] And then what if we also prize, like really, really value and make an emphasis, a prioritization on compassion? [0:52:20] So you start asking questions like, hey, Senator, I see that you want to create this new program, [0:52:26] and that sounds really interesting, but will this get in the way of my ability [0:52:32] and the willingness of my neighbors and their neighbors to have compassion for other people in the community? [0:52:38] community. If you start viewing things from that respect, then it looks very, very different. [0:52:44] And then you can start asking, okay, if we do all these things, are we eliminating vectors for [0:52:51] conflict and creating a mechanism where our God-given talents are able to actually show [0:52:59] themselves? I mean, isn't it interesting how, I mean, think about what a grocery store and a gas [0:53:08] station have in common? Besides taking money and taxing people? Well, the expectation is that [0:53:17] you're going to be able to find food and groceries, gas and groceries not far from where you are. [0:53:24] Okay, well, there's a gas station down the road. You're going to get fuel. You're going to find a [0:53:28] grocery store down the road. You're going to get food. No problem. It's just understood that that's [0:53:32] going to happen. But for some reason or another, on this planet, in this country, which we [0:53:38] understand to be a gift from God, we expect that there's not going to be somebody down the road [0:53:44] who's going to be compassionate about you if you're hungry, or if you can't find clothing, [0:53:51] or deodorant, or toothpaste, or whatever it may be. The expectation is, yes, gas, food, [0:53:56] all these other things, very easy to find. But a compassionate person who might care about you, [0:54:01] oh no, that doesn't exist. [0:54:03] That to me is very fascinating. [0:54:05] We can reverse that. [0:54:06] I don't think you can fix the system, [0:54:08] but you can think about, [0:54:09] you can change how we think about the system. [0:54:12] And that's what's needed right now. [0:54:14] We're stuck in this place where it's like [0:54:16] all arguing over levels of control. [0:54:20] And what I'm saying is [0:54:21] we should be talking about [0:54:22] how we reconnect to one another as human beings. [0:54:26] Sure. [0:54:26] And I think that kind of in line [0:54:29] with what I've been thinking and seeing [0:54:31] over the years, which is that, you know, it's just like drug addiction, right? It's like you [0:54:36] don't have a drug problem. You have a spiritual problem. And the drugs are compensating for that, [0:54:42] right? I mean, I believe original sin, but we have a spiritual problem in this country. [0:54:49] And we're arguing over how to use politics to fix a spiritual problem. And it's just [0:54:56] never going to happen. I think it's going to come down to, you know, one by one, getting your [0:55:02] neighbors converting on board, you know, whether it's converting religion or just, you know, [0:55:07] kind of waking up and thinking about the world that they live in, turning off Fox News, turning [0:55:12] off the algorithm, touching some grass, you know, being in the real world, because that's something [0:55:17] that has just been ripped apart. And it's been ripped apart by the social engineering programs, [0:55:21] the housing programs, all of this type of stuff. But there's no more social cohesion. There's no [0:55:24] more social fabric. You know, in North Idaho, we have things that there aren't anywhere else in the [0:55:33] country, like coffee clubs, things like the Packet Arm Club, right? Where people get together, [0:55:39] they drink coffee with their neighbors, and they talk politics. And like a representative comes in, [0:55:44] you can ask them questions, whatever. But this idea of like real social fabric, where there are [0:55:50] these ways of generating consensus within a community that are divorced from the government, [0:55:58] something that's actually organic. [0:56:00] And that is not happening in the big cities. [0:56:04] We have to do that. [0:56:05] We have to do that. [0:56:06] And frankly, I don't think it's happening in rural communities to the degree that it could. [0:56:14] It's very, very interesting to me. [0:56:16] I mean, I kind of, I remember having a conversation with a guy several years ago where I had this realization that the American experience with civics is designed to have a certain kind of impact. [0:56:35] So in other words, kids in the public schools, they're told, hey, run for public office, run for class president, run for class treasurer, run for, you know, class secretary or whatever it is. [0:56:47] Class clown. [0:56:47] Right. And the idea behind that, I thought, or at least I was told, was that you would understand the importance of voting. [0:56:56] but what happens is kids run for class president they run for for an office in their school [0:57:03] and the first thing that they do is what they promise to give free lunches and candy to whoever [0:57:10] votes for them right we're gonna we're gonna make sure there's vending machines in every [0:57:13] classroom and the vending machines will be full of you know wonderful treats and potato chips [0:57:20] there's actually there's a movie an idaho movie that i'm thinking of that reminds me of this [0:57:24] Napoleon Dynamite. Yeah, yeah, yeah. [0:57:26] Remember, vote for Pedro. Right, [0:57:28] right. But the point is, so [0:57:29] what do they teach us in the public school? [0:57:32] They teach you [0:57:33] that in order to win votes, [0:57:36] you've got to promise something. [0:57:38] And in order to [0:57:39] be a voter and to [0:57:41] give your vote to somebody, you have to demand [0:57:44] something. And I'm waiting for [0:57:46] the politician who says, listen, [0:57:48] if you vote for me, I'm not going to give you anything. [0:57:50] You send me to Congress, [0:57:51] I'm not going to tell you about the grants that I'm [0:57:53] sending back to the state because I'm not going to get any. I'm not going to add any earmarks to [0:57:57] the bills. I'm not going to create some new prayer. I'm not going to vote for some new legislation to [0:58:00] create some new thing for you. I'm just going to go there and make sure that you're able to [0:58:05] enjoy the life that God has given you with your God-given gifts and talents and make sure that [0:58:10] nothing interferes in any of that. That's it. Yeah. That's it. And they should do that at the [0:58:15] legislature. They should do that at the city council. They should do that at the county [0:58:18] commission, but they don't. No, no, they don't. It's very corrupt. And you know, one of these [0:58:23] things that I didn't fully understand. It wasn't until, you know, full disclosure, Wayne hired me [0:58:28] at the IFF a couple of years ago, but it wasn't until like I went down to Boise, I'm in the, [0:58:33] I'm in the Hoffman building, I'm looking around and all of a sudden it starts to dawn on me, [0:58:38] uh, what's actually, what's actually going on. And I think I had it up on the screen. I might've, [0:58:44] yeah, here it is. Uh, there's groups like this, like IACI, right. Uh, this, which is the Idaho [0:58:49] association of commerce and industry this is a lobbying group that was designed for the biggest [0:58:55] wealthiest companies in the state that funnel money into politics they did something a couple [0:59:00] years ago the idaho launch program which is like a socialist program that's basically giving [0:59:04] kickbacks to these big employers uh for participating in it i'm not fully aware of [0:59:10] exactly how the thing works but it's you know with the debt crisis with the you know with with [0:59:17] everything that's been happening in this country. [0:59:19] Like, I don't think that we're too far off from politicians that are going to be running [0:59:24] and saying, not only am I going to do nothing, I'm going to cut Social Security because we [0:59:28] can't pay it. [0:59:30] Well, I mean, I hope so. [0:59:31] I would hope so. [0:59:32] But I mean, you're at a point where I don't know how you pay for this stuff. [0:59:36] Right. [0:59:36] And with the launch, launch irritates me for another reason. [0:59:42] You know, A, it's costly. [0:59:44] B, you've got government now that has assumed the responsibility for training employees [0:59:49] when the company should be training their own employees. [0:59:52] But the other thing that's really bothersome is, let's say that, you know, you have a life plan [0:59:59] and you're like, you know, I really want to become, I don't know, a dentist, [1:00:04] or I want to become an artist, or I want to save up my money and then travel the world for a couple of years [1:00:10] and then come back and find something to do. [1:00:12] And the government comes along and says, hey, guess what, high school graduate? [1:00:18] If you enter this field, we're going to give you $8,000. [1:00:24] Oh, so if I could be a welder or an office manager or whatever it is they consider to be an in-demand career. [1:00:32] And that changes who you're going to be. [1:00:37] well okay $8,000 [1:00:39] I don't really want to be a welder [1:00:41] but I could use the money so I guess I'm going to go do that [1:00:44] and [1:00:45] that's government playing God [1:00:48] that's government [1:00:49] changing and manipulating you [1:00:52] to change who you are [1:00:54] in order to help [1:00:55] IACI's clients [1:00:57] IACI's members [1:00:59] and at the same time that they're doing things [1:01:02] like this [1:01:02] I'm pretty sure Micron is a member [1:01:06] of IACI, but you've got companies like Micron, Chobani, and all of these others that are based [1:01:09] in Idaho that are like notoriously awful with H-1Bs. And so it's like they're literally replacing [1:01:18] American jobs. And COVID was doing this too. I remember hearing from people that worked at [1:01:22] Micron for 25, 30 years and COVID, they get laid off. And then all of a sudden they're getting [1:01:28] replaced by an H-1B visa. And it's like, well, wait, time out. You're not actually helping us. [1:01:34] you're incentivizing [1:01:36] these foreigners [1:01:38] to come over and take all these [1:01:40] jobs, blah, blah, blah. [1:01:41] It would seem to be a conspiracy [1:01:45] if you [1:01:46] didn't look at it too long, right? [1:01:48] None dare call it conspiracy. [1:01:50] Have you read that book? It's very interesting. [1:01:52] I think there's [1:01:54] a line in there that's something to the effect that [1:01:56] you wouldn't expect [1:01:58] all these things to just kind of happen by themselves [1:02:00] but here they have. [1:02:01] So it's like there must be something behind this. [1:02:04] But the notion that you've got an education system that is failing, I mean, like notably failing. [1:02:16] When I ran for school board in Post Falls, the literacy rate was like 58%. [1:02:22] And it's like time out. [1:02:25] Time out. [1:02:25] What? [1:02:26] 50% of kids graduate from high school, can't read, can't write, can't do math. [1:02:30] and we're to this place now where, by the way, [1:02:33] so one of the reasons why I gave up being at the Freedom Foundation, [1:02:38] you know, there are a lot of reasons, [1:02:40] but one of them was, man, it's hard to find good employees. [1:02:44] It used to be in the span of 15 years, [1:02:46] we went from, oh, you've got a college degree? [1:02:49] That's great, to, oh, you've got a college degree? [1:02:52] I'm going to test to make sure you can write [1:02:54] and actually do thinking on your own [1:02:57] because there's a good chance that you can't. [1:02:59] Oh, we ran it. [1:03:00] So my dad, my dad's visiting in town this month. [1:03:03] And we used to own a bunch of radio stations in Pennsylvania. [1:03:07] And we literally got to a point, I think it was like 10, 12 years ago, where if an applicant to the job put down that they had a college degree, we wouldn't hire them. [1:03:20] Yeah. [1:03:21] Just because it's like we cannot trust you to think for yourself. [1:03:25] Yeah. [1:03:25] No problem solving skills. [1:03:27] None. [1:03:27] So the point is, so there's a reason when you kind of look at this and go, that's really weird. [1:03:34] Is this by design to dumb people down and then say, well, we don't have enough people to work these jobs, [1:03:42] so we've got to import them in from other countries? [1:03:44] It just seems really, really strange. [1:03:47] And there's more to it than that as well, which is, you know, with a lot of people, [1:03:51] what we find is that their very first job is right out of college. [1:03:56] And that used to be not a thing. [1:03:58] You'd show up and say, oh, I've got a college degree, but I've had three or four jobs. [1:04:02] Yeah, working as a busboy or a dishwasher or something. [1:04:04] Throwing newspapers on steps. [1:04:07] But see, here's the difference between the United States. [1:04:11] I talk about this all the time. [1:04:12] Here's the difference between the United States and a lot of other countries. [1:04:15] I remember going to Bangkok. [1:04:17] This is a number of years ago. [1:04:19] I went to Bangkok, and I go to the Thailand equivalent to Best Buy, [1:04:23] and there's a 10-year-old behind the counter fixing an iPhone. [1:04:28] Meanwhile, here in the United States, it's like, [1:04:31] oh, no, we can't have you doing that. [1:04:33] You might cut a finger or something. [1:04:35] That would be a youth worker violation. [1:04:39] You can't have a kid working at a restaurant [1:04:42] because they might accidentally fall into a grease machine. [1:04:47] Fry cooker. [1:04:48] It's like, oh, that happens all the time. [1:04:49] And that's a real shame because you would solve a lot of this problem with having to go to other countries to import people into the United States to work if only we let people be who they are, which may be a creative person who wants a job when they're 12. [1:05:08] I don't know. [1:05:09] But we don't let that happen. [1:05:10] Well, and there's also something to be said for the predatory nature of going to third world countries and then taking their best and brightest. [1:05:19] and then bringing them over here and then depriving that country of whatever talent that kid had. [1:05:26] Right. [1:05:26] And so they stay in the permanent underclass. [1:05:29] Then they come up here and then, you know, and of course, with AI coming up, [1:05:35] we haven't really seen much in the way of like, I've really, I'm excited to start seeing maybe [1:05:41] some higher human legislation that starts coming out. [1:05:44] God knows, but there's going to be a massive wave of layoffs in this country. [1:05:51] And the last time this happened, 2008, of course, the opioid crisis, people get depressed. [1:05:56] Nobody cares about me and there's no charity in the society anymore. [1:05:58] And so, you know, I think we're staring down the barrel of another like existential crisis for Americans that nobody seems to be prepared for, addressing, thinking about at all. [1:06:08] You know, it's like if that were the case, you would think that we would be actually cracking down on on immigration or, you know, tightening up on H1Bs or something like that. [1:06:18] But it's the exact opposite that's happening. [1:06:21] It's just unbelievable. [1:06:22] Now, before we go, please tell us a bit about your book. [1:06:26] What is the book about? [1:06:28] Do I hold my book up? [1:06:29] You could hold the book up. [1:06:31] We can do that. [1:06:31] I hold my book up. [1:06:32] There we are. [1:06:33] So, yeah, this this is a has been sort of a passion project of mine. [1:06:38] and it's called The Tao of Liberty. [1:06:41] So basically I fell in love with the Tao Te Ching, [1:06:46] which is 2,500-year-old writings of a philosopher named Laozi. [1:06:54] And the Tao Te Ching, when you see it in the bookstore, [1:06:57] it's usually a collection of 81 chapters, [1:07:02] and most people look at it and go, [1:07:04] oh, this is about being a better parent or a better spouse [1:07:09] or being a better employer or having some mindfulness in your day-to-day life. [1:07:15] And that is an application, yes. [1:07:18] But as you read the 81 chapters, it's really entirely about governing, [1:07:26] how government should interrelate with people, [1:07:30] what politicians should and should not do. [1:07:33] And so I looked around and I thought, well, certainly somebody has written about this. [1:07:37] And not really. [1:07:39] He's mentioned occasionally in recent free market literature, but not a lot. [1:07:47] And there was a book by Alan Watts, probably in the 1970s, where he talked a little bit about this. [1:07:52] But beyond that, not really. [1:07:54] So what I did was I took every single chapter and wrote an essay about every single chapter in the Tao Te Ching [1:08:02] and how it relates to modern governing. [1:08:05] And the idea behind it is if you follow the teachings of Laozi [1:08:10] and the Tao Te Ching, you find that there's less conflict, [1:08:15] more peace, more of human flourishing. [1:08:21] And so what I've done is I've provided kind of a roadmap [1:08:24] for what that might look like through the 81 chapters of the Tao Te Ching. [1:08:29] Interesting. [1:08:29] Is Wu Wei one of those things? [1:08:33] Yeah, we talked about that on the show a couple months ago. [1:08:35] I'd never heard of it before. [1:08:36] Like go with the flow or something like that. [1:08:38] Yeah, effortless action. [1:08:39] So the idea is to allow the spontaneous order to just emerge. [1:08:44] And so you don't row against the river. [1:08:47] You don't try to fight the flow. [1:08:48] You just allow things to occur naturally. [1:08:52] Do by not doing. [1:08:53] And so that's the advice for a lot of politicians is you don't have to do a lot. [1:08:58] and that's boring and everything [1:09:00] because I know you want to go back to your constituents [1:09:01] and tell everybody what you did [1:09:03] but no, you don't have to do that at all [1:09:06] and the beautiful thing about it too [1:09:09] is that what he describes is [1:09:10] the notion that there are thousands of things [1:09:15] that could emerge if naturally left to its own devices [1:09:18] but because, I mean, essentially government [1:09:21] puts restrictions on what that might look like [1:09:24] you end up with a government manifestation of what society is [1:09:27] So all this that you see around you where, you know, houses look a certain way and roads look a certain way and all the kids. [1:09:34] The roundabouts. [1:09:36] It's like every time I go through a roundabout up here in North Idaho, I'm like, thank you, Pete Buttigieg. [1:09:41] It's really just awful. [1:09:42] But, you know, all these things are manifestations. [1:09:46] And so you don't really get to see the divinity, the beauty of this creation, because we've truncated it down into this little bitty set of things, right? [1:09:59] I mean, the best example that it really is the government education system, 90-95% of kids in America are taught in the government school system. [1:10:09] And so they all go to school at a certain age, all learn about the same things. [1:10:14] They're trucked back and forth in buses that look a lot like prison buses. [1:10:18] They're served in a cafeteria that looks a lot like a prison cafeteria [1:10:22] with food that looks a lot like prison food. [1:10:24] They're commanded to sit in a certain place and behave in a certain way. [1:10:28] And so if everyone all has the exact same experience, [1:10:33] roughly the same experience, [1:10:35] wouldn't you expect that that would have some kind of impact [1:10:38] on what society looks like? [1:10:39] so the idea is [1:10:42] by not doing [1:10:44] by allowing for people to discover their own [1:10:46] gifts and become who [1:10:48] they are naturally [1:10:49] as long as it's peaceful [1:10:51] then that should be permitted [1:10:54] that's actually [1:10:55] draws on which I reference [1:10:58] in here as well the teachings [1:11:00] of Leonard Reed in his book Anything That's [1:11:02] Peaceful in 1964 [1:11:03] which he said you know we [1:11:05] assume that we didn't create ourselves [1:11:08] So we came from something, God, source, the universe, the infinite consciousness, whatever that is. [1:11:16] And from there, we have certain gifts and talents that whenever we pursue those gifts and talents, we are actually connecting with God. [1:11:27] And so anything that gets in the way of that is an affront to God. [1:11:31] And so we should be doing and allowing that as long as it's peaceful. [1:11:38] See, one of the other, I guess, interesting aspects of the education system, because I got really into this when I ran for school board in 2021, is the idea that like going to school is going to make you smarter is the same as telling somebody that playing basketball will make them taller. [1:11:59] Right. [1:12:00] Like, it's just not there. [1:12:01] You know, and we, you know, full disclosure, send my kids to private Catholic school with, like, nuns and all that. [1:12:09] But, you know, my thing is that it's like education should be about taking the raw material that's there [1:12:14] and then teaching you the moral way to use your gifts and to direct the gifts that God has given you [1:12:24] towards the true, the good, and the beautiful. [1:12:27] Right. [1:12:28] as opposed to, like, this is how you fill out a form. [1:12:31] This is how you take a standardized test or whatever. [1:12:34] Because it all just kind of becomes a circle jerk at the end of it. [1:12:38] Like all of these SAT scores and this and that, [1:12:41] it's just like you're not actually educating these kids. [1:12:45] You're indoctrinating. [1:12:46] You're indoctrinating, and that's exactly right. [1:12:49] And it runs legion. [1:12:50] I mean, it's baked into everything. [1:12:52] So what we want to do too is taking the Tao Te Ching and the Tao of Liberty is create a new organization. [1:13:03] It's called Level Up Humanity. [1:13:05] And Level Up Humanity is intended to reframe the way we talk about public policy issues. [1:13:14] So the idea is that we all have a birthright to freedom. [1:13:17] and anything that gets in the way of that birthright should be rejected. [1:13:24] And so you've got a website. [1:13:26] It is leveluphumanity.org. [1:13:29] For anybody that wants to follow Wayne, you are on X. [1:13:33] Although you haven't tweeted in like a year. [1:13:35] I have not tweeted. [1:13:36] It's not been a year, but it's been almost. [1:13:37] It's been a while. [1:13:39] You're at Wayne Hoff on Twitter. [1:13:42] You're on Facebook. [1:13:43] What happened? [1:13:44] Where did it go? [1:13:45] There you go. [1:13:45] Wayne Hoffman on Facebook. [1:13:47] Your book, DowofLiberty.com. [1:13:50] It's also available on Amazon. [1:13:53] Wayne, thank you. [1:13:55] Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and all kinds of other places. [1:13:57] That's awesome. [1:13:58] Well, Wayne, thank you. [1:13:58] Thank you for having me. [1:14:00] It's good to catch up with you again. [1:14:01] It's good to talk to you, too. [1:14:02] This is great. [1:14:02] I hope that more people in this state are able to have conversations with people that have different ideas [1:14:11] and, you know, recognize this thing that happens where you're, you know, you're talking with [1:14:17] somebody who sees the world a different way. And instead of getting irrationally angry and [1:14:23] screaming at one another, that you can actually like exchange ideas. That's my, that's like my [1:14:27] hope. I don't know if that's going to happen or not. It kind of seems like this is all spiraling [1:14:32] and devolving. It's a hundred percent mine too. All I think we really want to do is leave our [1:14:38] kids and grandkids something better than what we have right now. This is no bueno. We don't want [1:14:45] to do that. Amen. Well, thank you so much for coming on, Wayne. Thank you. All right. Good to see you. [1:14:52] There we go. Sorry, we're muted. Well, thank you so much again to Wayne Hoffman for joining us here [1:14:55] at The Backlash. It was such a good conversation. We'll have to have him back on again. And, you [1:15:00] know, there's so much craziness that has gone on, you know, in the, what, 24 hours since we had that [1:15:07] conversation. You know, we recorded that on Monday. I'm live here now. It's Wednesday, April 8th, [1:15:13] 4, was it 4.15 p.m. my time. But, you know, we're talking about government and unintended [1:15:21] consequences by, you know, passing legislation that brings about the, like, you know, [1:15:28] unforeseen events. Well, we have something for you. In Boise, Idaho, like last week, [1:15:34] two weeks ago, the legislature finally passed and put teeth into a bill that would make it illegal [1:15:42] for like entities of the state, like the city of Boise from flying the gay pride flag in downtown. [1:15:52] This bill initially got passed a year ago. And here we are now. They finally added a fine to it, [1:16:02] which forced Boise's Jewish gay-ish mayor, Lauren McLean, [1:16:10] she was forced to take down this gay pride flag. [1:16:15] And now the reaction. [1:16:18] Now the reaction. [1:16:19] Oh, you're not going to work for me? [1:16:21] Hold on a second. [1:16:22] Let me get my browser going. [1:16:25] Jeepers creepers. [1:16:27] There we are. [1:16:28] they have taken to striping the flagpoles with like the gay pride trans thing this is like [1:16:37] toddlers lashing out because they're not getting their way they were told you're not allowed to [1:16:44] fly the gay flag and so now they've gone throughout all of boise on every building [1:16:49] they're putting these stickers absolutely everywhere let's see if there's some more [1:16:54] more content. Dave Pettinger would have it, but I can never pull him up. [1:17:04] Oh, it's lame. Anyway, it's just unbelievable what has been going on in Boise. And so yesterday, [1:17:10] you know, we did have like a brief moment where I said, you know, now that the stuff on Iran [1:17:16] is on ice for the time being, we can focus on the real issues, like how Boise, Idaho is run by [1:17:23] Jewish Sodomite. Of course, here's Mayor McLean at the Pride Parade in Boise. [1:17:29] And here she is with Chabad Lubavitch, Rabbi Lifshitz, for the menorah lighting ceremony. [1:17:36] But anyway, you know, getting your hopes up about the Iran stuff, you know, here we are. [1:17:43] It's been like less than 12 hours since I think I put that tweet up. And we've gone from having [1:17:47] a ceasefire to like total annihilation. Iraq is getting involved now. I don't know. Have you guys [1:17:53] seen this. There's new tweets out now about how the Iraqis, are we going to, you're not going to [1:18:01] cooperate with me? Well, that's fine. That's totally fine. But anyway, the Iraqi resistance [1:18:05] is getting called up. They're talking about entering the war now that Israel is bombing [1:18:10] Lebanon, which was a part of this ceasefire thing that Iran put up. The whole thing is just such a [1:18:17] mess. And now there's this new report that has come out. This comes from Sean Ryan. The Pentagon [1:18:24] summoned the Pope's ambassador and told him that the United States has the military power to do [1:18:29] whatever it wants and warned that the church better take its side, invoking the Avignon [1:18:36] papacy, a dark chapter in the Catholic Church's history when a government used military force to [1:18:42] bend the church to its will. So where exactly does this end? You know, if the Pope refuses to fall [1:18:48] in line, are they going to bomb the Vatican? I mean, hey, that seems kind of like what's going [1:18:55] to happen here. It's just, it's crazy, man. Everybody's losing their minds, and then they [1:19:00] want to, like, shut you down from being able to have conversations about this stuff. Like, [1:19:04] this is some video that has come out over the last couple of hours. This is what has been going [1:19:12] on in Lebanon since the ceasefire agreement or whatever that's being touted by Trump was agreed [1:19:20] to or whatever. Check this out. This is insane. Look at these buildings are blowing up. Hundreds [1:19:25] of people injured, killed, apartment buildings, civilian infrastructure in Lebanon, not Iran, [1:19:34] not not Israel Lebanon a Christian country the Lebanon's leader is is Christian by the way like [1:19:43] there's a lot of Christians and Catholics and Coptics and Orthodox over there and they're [1:19:50] getting the shit bombed out of them over 1,120 people injured just in the last 24 hours [1:19:57] but you know if you if you talk about it you're gonna get shut down you're you're an anti-Semite [1:20:03] You know, that's not, oh my gosh, it's just so infuriating. [1:20:08] And it's all designed to make you angry and to get you to hate one another. [1:20:14] And it's just so counterproductive, you know. [1:20:17] Another thing that I wanted to bring up before, and we do have some commercials, some sponsors to thank. [1:20:24] But another little piece of news update here, we covered this story when it happened live. [1:20:30] You remember Irina Zarutskia, the Ukrainian woman who fled a war-torn country, came to America in hopes of a better life, young white lady, who was viciously and brutally stabbed to death by a black guy on a bus. [1:20:46] Well, now we're hearing that a judge has determined that Irina Zarutska's murderer, DeCarlos Brown Jr., he's been ruled mentally incompetent to stand trial. [1:21:03] So there it is. [1:21:05] You can just murder people in the United States and get away with it because you're like, what? [1:21:12] Mentally incompetent? [1:21:13] This is just, we don't have a real country anymore. [1:21:17] We don't have a real country anymore. [1:21:19] It's just absolutely unbelievable. [1:21:23] But anyway, thank you to everybody who joined us. [1:21:25] I'm seeing Audrey over on YouTube. [1:21:31] Enjoyer762. [1:21:32] Winged Hussar in the chat. [1:21:33] Very nice. [1:21:35] Well, it's good to see all of you guys. [1:21:36] And thanks again for joining us today. [1:21:38] Of course, this program would not have been possible [1:21:40] without our amazing sponsors [1:21:42] like ODGG Supply, whether you're going a blankie mode or tactical mode, whether you need night [1:21:50] vision goggles or a sleeping bag, ODGG Supply has got you covered with military surplus equipment [1:21:57] that has been tried and tested in the field by Alex, the owner of ODGG Supply. They've got clothing, [1:22:06] they've got tents they've got all kinds of stuff you know it's just incredible um so be prepared [1:22:16] be prepared because we don't have a country anymore we don't have a real country you could [1:22:20] get stabbed to death on a bus and no one would ever go to jail for it so you've got to be able [1:22:27] to take your own side you've got to be prepared wherever you are use promo code backlash 14 and [1:22:32] you'll get 14% off select items at odggsupply.com. Of course, Above Time Coffee, it's what got me [1:22:42] out of bed this morning, I got to tell you. Their medium roast coffee is so delicious. You don't [1:22:48] need any sugar. You don't need any sweetener, no milk. It is just the most delicious hand-roasted [1:22:56] coffee I have ever tasted in my life. You can go to abovetimecoffee.com and use promo code [1:23:02] Backlash10. You'll get 10% off your order. And they've got all kinds, you know, everything that [1:23:07] you need to make a nice cup of coffee. They've even got these refillable K-cup pods. So if you [1:23:13] want to use their coffee, good coffee, coffee that isn't molded because it's been sitting on some [1:23:19] shelf in a warehouse for six months, you know, this stuff is all roasted basically on demand [1:23:24] in small batches by hand. [1:23:27] So definitely check them out [1:23:30] at abovetimecoffee.com. [1:23:32] Also, Antelope Hill Publishing, [1:23:35] they're fighting to keep history alive [1:23:36] amidst a regime of anti-white censorship. [1:23:39] They are trying to help people fight back [1:23:42] against this brutal regime that we are living under, [1:23:46] a regime that's murdering people [1:23:48] and schoolgirls in Iran. [1:23:50] anyway antelope hill has a varied catalog that includes newly updated and expanded third edition [1:23:58] of dr kevin mcdonald's culture of critique the essential modern text on jewish identity [1:24:03] dr ricardo duchane's magnum opus greatness and ruin the definitive scholarly examination of [1:24:09] european exceptionalism as well as works by carrie bolton paul kersey and friend of the show josh [1:24:15] Neil. Antelope Hill recently brought David Irving's iconic Nuremberg The Last Battle back into print, [1:24:20] and they've got numerous translations of historical works from eras such as Fascist Italy, [1:24:25] National Socialist Germany, and Civil War Spain, all previously unavailable in English. [1:24:31] There are also plenty of books on contemporary issues such as transgenderism and the opioid [1:24:35] crisis, Christian nationalism, as well as history books, novels, and children's books. So whatever [1:24:41] your interest is, you're bound to find books that you like at Antelope Hill, all professionally [1:24:45] published, with sleek modern cover art. Help us and help our people by checking out companies [1:24:50] that share our values and fight for our cause. Visit antelopehill.com. Yeah, and by the way, [1:24:56] their Spanish Civil War books are really good. They've got one on José Antonio Primero de Rivera, [1:25:01] an anthology of his speeches. They also have Spain, 1923 to 1948, Civil War and World War. [1:25:09] very good books. It's very much worth looking into and getting some historical perspective [1:25:15] on this stuff because a lot of the stuff that we're dealing with in Idaho, especially in places [1:25:19] like Boise, it's like it's neo-Bolshevism with this transgender crap that they're doing [1:25:25] and the programs and the subsidies and all of this stuff. So you got to get right up on history or [1:25:32] else you're going to be doomed to repeat it. Visit Antelope Hill Publishing and use promo code [1:25:36] Backlash 10, you'll get 10% off your order, and you'll learn a thing or two about history that [1:25:42] maybe you didn't get taught in your government education, government schools. Also, big shout [1:25:48] out to IdahoTallow.com. They've got soap and skincare products that has everything that your [1:25:55] skin craves. No harsh chemicals, grass-fed tallow, nutrients and minerals that your skin actually [1:26:04] needs. And it all looks great. It smells great. And hey, you know, if you're into eating soap, [1:26:10] it even tastes great too. Don't eat the soap, okay? Don't eat the soap. But it's very good. [1:26:16] Please visit IdahoTallow.com. Maybe get signed up for their Soap of the Month Club. You'll never [1:26:21] have to think about buying soap again. It'll get sent to you automatically. You get a little [1:26:24] discount on it too. And a portion of this goes to help support this program and something else too, [1:26:33] actually, which I just noticed. Give me one second. I will be right back. [1:26:45] Yeah. See, I was meaning to do this, and I should have thought of this before I went live, but [1:26:49] there's actually a very nice newspaper here in North Idaho called The People's Pen. A new [1:26:56] edition just came out. If you haven't, if you haven't, well, I guess if you live in the area [1:27:03] in North Idaho, definitely go get a copy of this. You can get it at like all your local gun stores, [1:27:07] a couple of different grocery stores carry this thing. But you know, in the back, there is a [1:27:13] little advertisement right there. Just saying, you know, when you go for these people at like, [1:27:22] you know, Antelope Hill or Above Time Coffee or Idaho Tallow, they support other things as well. [1:27:30] I know that Antelope Hill and Above Time Coffee are intimately involved in supporting the work of the White Civil Advocacy Project. [1:27:38] Idaho Tallow Company helping to support independent journalism here in North Idaho, like the People's Pen. [1:27:43] And I'm going to have to make a little video going over this because there's a lot of really important information here, [1:27:50] especially when it comes to all the people running for office. [1:27:55] I do have recommendations on how you should be voting. [1:27:59] Don't vote for Jim Risch. Vote for Denny LeVay. [1:28:02] OK, but we'll go over that. [1:28:04] Make sure you're subscribed on Twitter or whatever, and we'll put out a couple of tweets. [1:28:08] But yeah, if you're in if you're in the area, if you're in North Idaho, go pick up a copy of the People's Pen. [1:28:13] This is probably one of the best issues that I've seen in a long time. [1:28:17] And we're going to probably do a whole episode on this in the coming weeks. [1:28:22] So anyway, they're not a sponsor. They're not paying any money, but I like what they do. [1:28:28] Where were we at? North Idaho Talo Company. Get yours at IdahoTalo.com. [1:28:32] And of course, you know, with federal mismanagement, budgets, overspending and everything, [1:28:40] you got to be a little bit concerned about where our country is going economically. [1:28:44] And if you are, if you're like me, you might want to consider going to AtlasBullion.com [1:28:49] slash Backlash, where you can sign up to stack precious metals the easy way. [1:28:55] They have gold and silver subscriptions starting as low as $55 a month. [1:29:00] You can sign up and automatically stack precious metals that will, you know, hopefully go up in value as the dollar is inflated, right? [1:29:10] I mean, we've got a new budget proposal, $1.5 trillion proposal for the military in this country while we're $39 trillion in debt. [1:29:23] So that'll push us over the $40 trillion mark. [1:29:26] And of course, there's all of these other programs, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. [1:29:31] It's not good. [1:29:32] They're going to have to print a lot of money. [1:29:34] The big print is on. [1:29:36] Maybe I'll try to get Larry Lepard on the show to explain this. [1:29:39] He wrote a whole book about the big print that's coming. [1:29:42] And anyway, one way to hedge yourself against government debasement of money is with precious metals. [1:29:52] So visit atlasbullion.com slash backlash. [1:29:56] You will be able to stack metal and help subsidize shows like this, content that you like. [1:30:05] Anyway, find all the notes or all the links in the show notes below. [1:30:11] Wow, gold is at $4,700 an ounce today. [1:30:14] Silver at $7,378. [1:30:16] I hope you have not been trading oil with leverage, by the way. [1:30:19] A buddy of mine called me yesterday and was like, Dave, what do you think I should do? [1:30:23] I just took out a levered long on oil. [1:30:27] And I'm like, bro, don't ask me. [1:30:32] You're going to get wrecked. [1:30:33] I mean, look at what's going on. [1:30:35] They come out and say, we got a ceasefire. [1:30:37] The next day, no ceasefire. [1:30:38] The price of oil is just whiplashing back and forth. [1:30:42] You know, don't touch leverage, man. [1:30:45] Put your money where your mouth is and visit Atlas Bullion. [1:30:51] What else we got? [1:30:53] Let's check the chat real quick. [1:30:54] Winged Hussar says, I love Idaho Talo. [1:30:58] Corrin? [1:30:59] Cronin. [1:31:00] Cronin? [1:31:01] Is that your name? [1:31:02] Nice. [1:31:03] Very based. [1:31:04] Good to see you guys. [1:31:06] Well, thank you all for joining us today. [1:31:07] We've got a lot of really, really interesting interviews lined up for you next week, actually. [1:31:12] On Monday next week, we will be joined by the one and only Justin Stamm. [1:31:18] Justin is a Hollywood screenplay writer. [1:31:20] He wrote a lot about COINTELPRO, the mafia. [1:31:24] He's got a book out now called The Paola Chronicles. [1:31:28] We talked about that a little bit. [1:31:31] So that interview will be coming out on Monday, talking about the mafia, [1:31:36] going all the way back to the 13th century [1:31:38] and what lessons we can learn for politics today. [1:31:43] The four laws of mafia power and all of this stuff. [1:31:46] It was a very good conversation. [1:31:47] I think you'll enjoy it a lot. [1:31:48] That'll be coming out on Monday [1:31:49] and then on Wednesday next week. [1:31:52] We've got a rival podcaster coming on the show. [1:31:55] I think it's going to be a lot of fun. [1:31:57] I'm going to keep his name secret for now, [1:32:00] but he runs a podcast up here in North Idaho, [1:32:03] and I think it's the kind of show that you guys would enjoy, [1:32:07] especially if you live in the area [1:32:09] and you're interested in local politics [1:32:10] and finding out about some of the ins and outs [1:32:14] of what's been going on up here because it's crazy. [1:32:17] I mean, we're really on the bleeding edge of the culture war, [1:32:20] the GOP civil war. [1:32:22] All of this is like happening in our backyard. [1:32:25] It happens here and then two years later, [1:32:27] it sweeps across the country. [1:32:29] So if you're into that, join us on Wednesday. [1:32:32] same time, same place, 3 p.m. here at The Backlash. Make sure that you're subscribed to all of our [1:32:38] channels. Please, if you enjoyed this video, make sure you give it a like. Share it with your family [1:32:43] and friends. You know, I think it's good to be able to reach across the aisle and to talk with [1:32:49] other people. You know, Wayne's a very libertarian, Taoist type of guy, Jewish. And I think it's good [1:32:55] to be able to reach out and talk with other people and get a little bit bigger of a perspective [1:33:00] on the world that we live in and the world that we're leaving to our kids. [1:33:04] So anyway, with that, I'm going to be signing off this evening. [1:33:08] Thank you again for joining us. [1:33:10] God bless you. [1:33:12] Have a good one. Have a good weekend. Bye-bye. [1:33:30] Thank you. [1:34:00] Thank you. [1:34:30] Thank you. [1:35:00] Thank you. [1:35:30] you