>> host: so matt, you call your book a libertarian manifesto. explain what libertarianism is, specifically how relates to conservatism. >> guest: i think there's a lot of misunderstanding about that now and we have debated with a publisher whether or not to put the al word on the cover but so many people are asking the question now what is a libertarian and there's this argument supposedly between libertarians and conservatives and neocons and tea partiers and fill in the blank. i don't think there is a fundamental difference if you understand conservatism properly defined. there is a fundamental difference between what i call big government conservatism, the idea that you take power of the state and impose a certain of behaviors on people either subsidize them or punish them. that sounds a lot like progressivism to me and i think the real political spectrum on one side has liberty, individual

responsibility and committed to solving the problems in and on the other hand has the supposedly magnificent state and smart bureaucrats redesigning it from the top down. >> host: when you say high-en high-end -- y. am not the kinds -- hayek do you think had a different definition of conservatism than ronald reagan's definition? >> guest: very much on hayek was talking about the tendency in europe to use government to really control and dictate and redesign people's lives and of course in europe even today a liberal is closer to what we would call a conservative. it's classical liberal so one of the things that is happening in the united states is how the left steals our best works. they still deliver when they stole community and i mention i'm a community organizer i get jeers from the crowd but that's

who we are. that is what the boston tea party was. >> host: you appropriate saul walinski's rule for solidarity. i wanted to walk through some of them. the first one is don't hurt people the title of the book. explain that. >> guest: i wanted to take the fundamental principle of voluntary cooperation, and you don't mess with other people and he don't threaten them and you don't hurt them and you expect them to treat you the same way. the libertarians have this fancy term nonaggressive principle and if you are in the know and you know the secret handshake, we love to chase people out of her room. it's common sense and you wouldn't have civilized society without that. it's also important to understand that the government, the experiments of the government are not theoretical. this is not stuff off the chalkboards. we know what happens when you give government government power brothers fascism or communism or

any sort of-ism, radical islam in a third world dictator that uses religion or some rationale to control people it leads to a lot of people dying at the hands of the state. i think we need to appreciate like the founders did the government is dangerous. power is dangerous and it needs to be kept in a very locked cage. >> host: is part of a libertarian talk of the nonaggressive principle to say that government is the force of and the threat of force and alan greenspan saying ultimately there is a gun and you can point to mao or pol pot died in america today you really feel like if the government is saying you know what you have to buy more efficient lightbulbs or your tax rate is going to be 15% on your marginal dollar is that really violence in hurting people or isn't that just doing things together as barney frank says? >> guest: it is forcing people to do things they wouldn't do otherwise is not complying is

enforced literally at the point of the country you don't get to choose whether or not you pay her taxes even though the irs talks about voluntary compliance. there's nothing voluntary about it. there's nothing voluntary about complying with epa regulations or any bureaucratic dictate. it is different in the united states because being forced to use a lousy lightbulb is hardly a fundamental act of oppression but if you go to europe particularly eastern europe in someplace like lithuania or the country of georgia and talk to to people dare they remember seeing a family member shot in the street by the government. that's different and in a sense americans don't appreciate what the government is all about because the way that it operates in this country is typically more benign. >> host: and a liberal pushback, aren't they different in kind? isn't the impressive communist

bloc dictatorship or any dictatorship different in kind than the united states that it's not a question of degree. it really is different. >> guest: is a question of size really and it's hard to imagine a government that's not hurting people and taking their stuff and history would back that up. that's what the founders were for limited government. they warned for good government or bad government. they said we can either limit this power or we can have unlimited power. unlimited power leads to unintentional consequences. maybe the rationale for big government is a good thing. maybe it's wrapped in the language of compassion but in practice it doesn't work out that way. >> host: the other half of the title don't take their stuff is based on idea of property rights. isn't that also based on government? you based on government? united states property unless you are standing on the border of your farm with a shotgun or the police are there to protect your property rights. are we stepping away from anarchism or how does it work

with libertarians to put such an emphasis on property? >> guest: this goes back to certainly our founding as well. it was like liberty and property and those things were not in any way fundamentally distinct from each other. frederick hayek would argue that the evolution of common law comes out of people doing things together that work and it happens over time. there's a reason why you drive on the certain side of the road and there's a reason why you don't take other people's stuff in why you don't hurt them. those are what a lot of conservatives and libertarians would call natural laws. i'm not sure hayek would say it quite that way. conservatives and libertarians believe that a limited government, the proper role of government should be in defense of life, liberty and property but nothing else and obviously we have gotten beyond that but in a lot of ways those rules that the government enforces are codified versions of what civil

society developed because it works. >> host: you have four more rules. the third rule is take responsibility. say more about that. >> guest: i hate the president strongman about community and in "rolling stone" magazine he takes a shot at on grand and basically creates a straw man peter -- either you believe an individual like on grand or you believe in robust community and you can't have both. he says when you grow up you start to realize it's not that you can do whatever you want. that's such a straw man. i think individual freedom the idea of ein rant is about responsibility. it's the responsibility you get when you look in the mirror trying to figure out did you take responsibility? if you don't who's going to do it for you? that's the basis of what makes up for community, people solving problems and coming together.

when you outsource that responsibility to government like barney frank says we should government is what we do together is what he says. i think that unwinds community. i think it unravels the fabric that holds us all together because an excuse not to take responsibility. >> host: but if you take the responsibility state to care for the poor, the hungry and clothe the and house the homeless if you take that away from the government doesn't fall on you and you to have a responsibility to feed a hungry person help poor people? >> guest: i think you do and our evidence in the united states and our evidence in community sentiment left free shows that exactly what happens when free people are left to solve problems. you care a lot about your community. it's harder to care about something that's 3000 miles away or six countries away. it should happen from the bottom up. once you outsource that to a third-party even if it's

voluntary organization but particularly a government organization someone else's agenda comes and then you don't know who needs help and who's getting -- gaming the system. that is why local work so well. wesley you suggest in the book as you're suggesting now in fact when the government steps in any roads the civil society aspects of community and actually weakens neighborliness and charity. >> guest: oh absolutely and you see it happen everyday. you saw happen with george w. bush's faith-based initiative which i would call a classic example of big government conservatism. all of these well-meaning people who are trying to solve problems voluntarily at the local level stop doing what they were doing and start lobbing for an lobbing for near markham is what happens when you outsource. it shifts the incentives and there's always a middleman that gets the payout. i would argue it's never really been about transferring money from the richer the poor.

it's about transferring money from the politically unconnected to the connected in washington. >> host: your rule number for his work for it. >> guest: i quote ashton cloture when he gave that now famous speech and hollywood went bananas because he said opportunity looks a lot like hard work and he said every job i had was a blessing and it went to a better job and i love the opportunity that i had. that's how i got to be who i am today. this should not have been controversial. it should have been boilerplate given to young people today but it was different and i think work is another word that we need to rehabilitate to take it back from the left. they have used it as a pejorative. nancy pelosi extols the virtues of not working force upon young people by obamacare. i think that's really offensive. work gives you the opportunity

to do something that no one has done before. workers the opportunity to define your own future and create something that other people will laugh at you for. the ability to look around the future corner of history and do something that everybody tells you you can't do. that's the awesomeness of work and if we lose that in this country i think we lose the nature of what has made america great. >> host: there's a difference is in there between being a creative entrepreneur and the work that most of us do, that most people do. the average guy whose job is going to be at a factory or being a schoolteacher bear these narrow confines of which he will do his work. is that half the same sort of value that you are talking about and ashton kuchar is talking about? >> guest: i think so and he

was talking about probably minimum-wage jobs. he was probably washing dishes. he was probably mowing yards in that kind of thing. i think it's about achievement and taking responsibility and doing something that everyone of those things that you do and i have done all those jobs to get where i am today. you would potentially as a stepping stone something you don't even know about yet. i love the openness of the system. there is no glass ceiling for anybody. >> host: one of the big themes in political debate is about inequality but also in mobility. maybe you and i have gone to a point in her career where is the supper latter but a guy who graduated high school 20 years ago saw good paying factory jobs and the factory move to mexico he does have a glassine -- ceiling. post- >> guest: part of the mobility -- check out

monster.com. if you don't like your boss today you can go on line and find opportunities that you and i when we were 21 couldn't have conceived of. i think that empowers the worker at the expense of employers. to me that's incredibly liberating or people without job skills get people that are chimed to develop a better product to sell to a better employer. >> host: your fifth rule is mind your own business. how do you mean that? >> guest: i think there's a lot of confusion. this gets back to the question of big government conservatism. i talk about something that is the most controversial thing, i talk about my marriage and my very brief argument with my now wife over whether or not we should have to get government approval.

i was a young libertarian and i had read all the books and i really believed believed this stuff and announced to me in order to get buried what i wanted to do i have to give the government approval. i had to get a license that i think that cheapens the most important relationship in my life and i asked the question this book why is it that government should get involved in really important social institutions? i think they corrupt everything they touch. i think it would make more sense to leave that decision to my wife, which i did and she went to her grandmother, and went to her priest. i didn't care what the government thought and i think it's a mistake to let the government insert itself in these things. >> host: is that in a sense mind your own business because a lot of people say that as a neighbor. if my neighbor thinks i should let my kid run around in their

yard in their diapers is the one of your rules to say no, don't make kids put on clothing and don't worry about their sunburn or if i think for instance of catholic teaching is right that you shouldn't have sex before marriage and i say that in public and my minding someone else's business? >> guest: on talking about government. i think peer pressure and values and being willing to stand up for what's right is a very good thing and i think we should have an open of society that allows you to say that without the insanely authoritarian left coming down on me like a ton of bricks and getting you fired from the "washington examiner." but to have government modify someone's version of that truth at the expense by the way of other deeply held values based on long traditions and religio religions, i think that's where you get into trouble. i don't think you should diminish your values by leaving

them to a political process. these are people, 435 million men and women who can't balance the budget and you want them to codify a definition of marriage. i think that's insane. >> host: which you applied that rule strictly on the lobe -- federal level as well as the local level? >> guest: now, i don't think so and i don't know how far you go with that because the nice thing about local governments and don't get me wrong, county councils and school boards can be tyrants, complete tyrants. the nice thing is that you can show up and you can impact that process in a more cost-effective way. once you get to washington d.c. it gets harder and harder to have a voice in the system but i still think as much as we can keep out of government is a better way to go.

>> host: your sixth ruiz fight the power which sounds a lot like a 1960s liberal. i think my parents used to say that with flowers in their hair so how is that a libertarian idea not a liberal idea? >> guest: when we organized a march on washington in 2009 week expropriated the system some people were upset by that but i think going back to america's founding it was very clear, you read george washington's farewell address, he made it clear that you and i have a responsibility to keep government in check that it was on the shoulders of the american people to protect liberty and somewhere along the way particularly conservatives and libertarians started reading all the right books and we have this very naïve theory that good ideas would write to -- rise to the top in politics just like markets. it's not true and if you and i don't take that responsibility if we don't step up and fight the power you lose.

government goes to those who show up by abandoning the field of play i think we have a government get out of control. >> host: it feels sort of liberal busybody not minding your own business type thing to go and be lobbing washington holding these rallies and to be a community organizer. so is that not behaving like a liberal? you often convey against washington but but you work here and it's at the heart of a lot of what you do. >> guest: it's funny because if you go on to the training manuals for some of the most radical leftist organizations, they don't call a grassroots. they call it direct action. their model for direct action was the boston tea party. the first time i saw that i smiled and i said oh my god they stole my stuff. this was long before there was an actual tea party. i think the very nature of the american experiment had everything to do with populism

and grassroots and people on the streets of boston harbor. he wouldn't have the founding without sam adams and the rabble rousing on the street who literally pressured the delegation who was in bed with the british business community and business government, we wouldn't have in america today without that grassroots activism. i don't think it's a leftist thing. i think it's very much in our tradition to do that. >> host: so if i want to raise my family and broaden my business and forget about government you are saying i am advocating responsibility because i'm not fighting the power? >> guest: well you might benefit in the short-run by not having to worry about government but i think it's naïve to think that if you leave them alone they will leave you alone. it's a responsibility that you have if you care about your children's future and their freedoms. >> host: when you say fight the power you just mean government power because there is corporate power.

there is your local school and maybe even a private school. are there other powers that are worth fighting or part of fighting the power? >> guest: no, i think a lot of corporate power derives from collusion with the government and you can look at -- the nice thing about a free market is that products fail in the marketplace and consumers are always right in businesses that don't make those demands go out of business. the problem is if you are general electric and you are failing to provide a good product to consumers you can hop on your g5 and fly to washington and sit down at the committee chairman and get a special deal. that's happening more and more because washington is more and more involved in things of that sort of a chicken and egg thing. the fact of the matter is corporate power and government power, it's hard to tell the difference and in some instances because they are so in collusion

with each other and in tc this problem right now with the nsa and a lot of phone and data companies and technology companies. it's hard to tell where one starts in the other stops. >> host: so traditionally the conservatives, when i was the unconservative you are pro-business and that is because you were standing up to ralph nader and kill capitalism and replace it with socialism. you use pro-business almost as a slur in your book so is this a new era and why is that? >> guest: part of his personal experience. i was a young economist at the u.s. chamber of commerce. i actually went there having fled there were both at the national committee because it would have been my job to defend george h.w. bush's tax increase and i had to figure out how to do that so i went to the chamber and being nice i looked at the chamber's logo that sped -- said spirit of enterprise when the door. i believe two years later

because they had just endorsed hillarycare and i realized the hard way and all the talk about balancing the budget and reining in government that ostensibly comes from the business community is often hijacked by the big guys that want a seat at the table. they want a seat at the table during hillarycare and they finally got one with obamacare. it took them a few years to do that but that was one of those teachable moments for me. i realized big business is very much part of the coalition of insiders that colludes against the american people. >> host: milton friedman once said the social responsibility of the corporations to maximize its profits. doesn't this create a problem for libertarians in the way for general electric to maximize its profit is to lobby for the lightbulb law which forces people to buy their higher profit margin things? do you think the social responsibility for corporations

to maximize its profits or do you lobby for a product that doesn't maximize profits? >> guest: i think shareholder activism is a legitimate form of fighting the power. you shouldn't show up to town hall meetings with the congressman if a company is using their cozy relationship with government typically frankly to screw consumers. you should show up and i do think that in westbury decentralized world we live in people have a lot of power if they are willing to practice it. corporations are hypersensitive to public opinions. send out a two week some time tracing the corporation all of a sudden you're getting all these responses back. they pay attention. >> host: do you think that corporations can be brought into line with your libertarian manifesto or through this consumer pressure you are talking about or do you think that they are only occasional

allies in what is your view? >> guest: i think we should meet the politically toxic to provide these benefits to corporations. you are both pushing and pulling. i think we should hold corporations accountable for their behavior but we should also take certain policies off the table and that can be done through the political process as well. justin amash one of my favorite congressman has this powerful idea to limit the amount of deposit insurance that would be available to any single bank and at the very free market way of limiting. >> host: of breaking it up. >> guest: big banks are product of regulatory favoritism. >> host: but that is not medaling? it's not taking a man's stuff and that fits perfectly when the rules? >> guest: let's not medaling at all. the goal is to move public policy back towards the central

principle of treating everybody just like everyone else. there should be no favoritism and there shouldn't be an advantage to being well-heeled. there shouldn't be an advantage to being a particular type of industry that is deemed by somebody to be of national importance. everyone should be treated the same. >> host: how much of a role do you think the bailouts have been sparking the tea party fervor? >> guest: i remember freedom works and just a handful of organizations in washington were actually opposed at the time and i joked at the time that you could have put all this into a vw bus and that would have been the entire liberty movement, at least in washington d.c.. ostensibly conservative groups and think tanks joined the bandwagon in large part because there was a republican president

in washington to defend the free market by abandoning it. but at that moment you have this tsunami of grassroots opposition in large part driven by facebook and social media and things were finally available to them and they killed that first house bill that was the boehner pelosi bill. or the pelosi boehner bill. i don't remember which but it had nothing to do with president obama. it had something to do with senator obama and senator mccain colluding to pass it. >> host: that is one of the things you have in the book, the bipartisanship. you don't think the republicans are the answer here or certainly that the democrats are the answer? >> guest: i call it bipartisan collusion. it's a duopoly of sorts. something happens when politicians -- they are immediately surrounded by all of these interests that aren't even

slightly interested in balloti balloting -- balancing the budget. they are just sitting getting a better deal for the company's and it's a particularly big problem for republicans since the takeover in 1994. you remember the k street project and all of these young staffers became superlobbyist. whenever you read in the paper republican strategist next to somebody's name that person works for a big lobbying shop and you can talk about barbour griffith or clinton co-lessee. there's a bunch of these alphabet agencies that employ so-called conservative lobbyis lobbyists. but they are not interested in the republican party. they are not interested in good government. they are defending the interests of their clients and typically their clients are looking for something from government.

>> host: so how does that work? the lobbyists are the tool that businesses use to corrupt government but the way you write here as you say there's no telling where government can be. you don't think it's quite bad and he? >> guest: i think the democrats are equally guilty. the difference being that they are in fact the party of big government but you know their goals are equally corrupted. let's say the progressive goal of health care reform a single-payer while the corporate interests corrected that and the health care companies in the hospital lobbyists and the pharmaceutical companies all god and and got their piece particularly things like the individual mandate affect in the bottom line to corporations. that corruption is nonpartisan as well. i think the bigger challenge on our side is that we are supposedly for less government.

we are supposedly for simplifying the tax code and shifting towards treating everybody just like everybody else. how do you lobby for that? it doesn't work. it only comes to washington to be left alone. they hope that you do. >> host: all right, we are going to take a quick break. posed him that you say our values define their tactics. what do you mean by that? >> guest: this is saul walinski and rereading it for a dozen times i realized how manipulative the rules for

radicals are and there are no principles and output. it's all about fooling somebody to do something they wouldn't do otherwise and that seems to be consistent with their idea of the rule of man, the rule of law. we are different in the sense that our values or people don't take their stuff, treat everybody like you would want to be treated very much defined not only who we are and what we believe but how we fight to restore liberty. i love to quote frederick hayek. hayek famously talked about spontaneous order and how it was that all of these disparate individuals with their personal knowledge of time and place and what your aspirations are and what you are trying to a compressco they all come together and create something that is so much bigger than any one of us could have done. look at the tea party movement is one small example of that. nobody designed this thing.

as much as the left would like to figure out who designed it was free people coming together to do something they hadn't dreamed they could do alone. to me, that's how we take this country back. this is how we restore liberty and i think the internet is a fundamental piece of that. it doesn't need to be dictated, it's not about big day then manipulating certain people show up in elections. it's about free people coming together and doing things they haven't done before. that is why the rules for liberty are so clear and could equally define our political strategy in a way that is more compelling than being manipulated into doing something just because you have a personal facebook posts. >> host: do you think most people are libertarians in america? >> guest: i do. if you take away the word and take away the graphs on the charts and the acronyms and you talk about the basic values that

i try to talk about in this book i think there is a growing plurality of active americans ultimately has the majority. i used to think the libertarian strategy was much -- bremer's guerrilla warfare in the sense of sam adams did reagan saul walinski. today because of the internet and lower cost of finding out what's going on which you can connect with other people that think like you do i think there's a new majority out there of people that were just not willing to get involved because they thought politics in washington were offputting and were rational to think so. >> host: young people voted overwhelmingly for barack obama both times and very few people self-identify as libertarian. in fact democrats often see a good way to attack republicans is all they are trying to do is deregulate and cut taxes for the

rich. they are certainly a lot of evidence that the majority of the country doesn't share the libertarian view that actually wants a government about the size we have now. >> guest: i think a lot of it is our ability to communicate in english because the goal, fundamental tax reform is not cutting three points off the marginal tax rate. the goal of tax reform is fairness, treating everybody like everybody else and making sure those rich enough to hire a lobbyist or a tax lawyer don't get a special break. i think that value proposition is far more compelling to people than whether or not they save money on their taxes. i think we have made the mistake in the past of boiling everything down to kind of a transactional thing. that is what the democrats do. they offer something for nothing even if it's an empty promise. i think our outreach to the

voters has to be more value space. >> host: so you were saying if the democrats go out and they are offering to be santa claus, the ronald reagan strategy actually was we have to be a second santa claus and after -- offer them tax cuts and you were saying we need to offer them fairness? >> guest: i think offering them opportunity and fairness and not being screwed by insiders that are gaming the system i think is a positive vision by the that ashton kuchter talked about. opportunity looks a lot like hard work versus we are going to give you a family tax credit so that you get a piece of washington too. >> host: because the left denies out santa claus the right amount. speaking of fairness and simplicity you talk about the complexity industrial complex as

if complexity benefits special interests. >> guest: this is an old tactic of government ever use. if you create some money -- and create a bureaucracy that can enforce certain ones on others it's basically a way of creating german this power at the hands of unelected bureaucrats and of course lois lerner would be a classic example of that. nobody can figure out exactly what the rules are for 501(c)(4)'s and yet they were able -- cisco lois lerner at the top irs official. >> guest: yes, who infamously targeted mom and top -- mom-and-pop tea partiers at the expense of other 501(c)(4) applicants. >> host: i think the irs and lois lerner show up in about five different parts of your book so why is that such an issue for you? >> guest: because i think we are reaching a a point in this

country where we have this massive unelected, unaccountable, faceless class of basically bureaucrats that have this infinitely complex set of rules and laws and regulations to impose on us. they are never going to do it fairly. they are never going to do it without the biases that the federal bureaucrat what happened as it turns out they are just like anybody else. they want job security. they want more power. they want more budgets and that they can use that power to punish people that might take it away from them and reward people that would help them get more of it why wouldn't they do that? that's human nature. that's why we never wanted that sort of complexity. and by the way as you pointed out the authors of obamacare of obamacare were underpaid hill staffers have stayed up all night and made it up as they went along they are now very

well-paid consultants and lobbyists hired by corporations to turn back around and gamed the system and carve out a little piece for themselves. that happens obviously in the tax code and it happens in health care. i think it happens across the federal government so the revolving door is dependent on complexity. it's dependent on more regulations. if you have a tax bill that treated everybody just like everybody else he would destroy an entire industry. >> host: the taxpayers in the benefiting when they are hired by the companies. is that why they make it so complex? is that why they are increasing government or are they interested in public servants who are trying to give everybody else where? >> guest: i thinks it's a mixed stew of all of that. i think a lot of people come to work on the hill and they come to elected office wanting to do the right thing. i think the system itself forces

them to conform into that and once they get here they realize that hey i could become trent lott someday and i'm not making that much relative outlawed as a u.s. senator but if i become an expert on homeland security this cash cow. >> host: travelodge the former majority leader and most people probably don't know that. their former senator, the words former congressman almost means lobbyists. get the thing you touch on is the aspect of the health care law that forces people to buy health care insurance health care insurance. why does that deserve so many mentions? >> guest: to me as one of the most offensive aspects of obamacare because it forces young healthy less wealthy

people to buy something they don't want and they don't need. they are not offering very low cost catastrophic ones. they are forced to buy servers as they possibly need. the reason it works that way is because that's the only way that the health insurance industry is able to take on all of these other demands that government health care has so it's a reverse robin hood situation where we are taking from the poor and healthy to get to the wealthy and less healthy and the insurance companies take a fat cut. if it doesn't work out there at these things called a risc core doors they guarantee they never lose money. so it's a classic a sample of what i was talking about earlier where all of this wealth transfer is not from the rich to the poor. in this case it's the opposite

and the middleman the insurance companies and government are taking a cut. >> host: now you say not just about the individual mandate that you said it to be young today. why is that? >> guest: if you think about the perfect storm of the a balmy years there's a jobless economy and youth unemployment is historically high right now. it's hard to find a job. you have the student loan crisis where a lot of young people literally have more in college debt than they can reasonably expect to earn over a lifetime so it's a bad payoff and on top of that you have the individual mandate that forces them to buy something with discretionary income that they don't have that they don't need. it's a continuation of the long-term trend that shifts the burden of too much government onto people that are young or haven't been born yet.

it's called generational theft. james began to talk about it and he argues this is what destroys democracy, a legacy of lloyd keynes but in practical terms it's young people getting screwed. i think there's a lot of buyers remorse not just because of this but because of the nsa and because of a lot of broke and promises that they thought they had from this president. and new recent poll shows young people are very much up for grabs. there's a potential libertarian generation of monks the young that are looking for the two political parties and they don't say right now but that's not the real opportunity for the rand paul and justin amash's to fill a bad architecture. >> host: you think somebody like john mccain and mitt romney would get the young vote any think the republican party needs to change drastically to

get young voters? >> guest: if we get bob dole again. the next guy guy in mind is judicial and gotten the end there's nothing compelling to young people in a mitt romney or john mccain. that should be obvious without having to say it. the good news is i think we have repopulated the presidential field with some pretty compelling young people to think about the world and a much more dynamic way. >> host: you mentioned rand paul and the book you speak of this filibuster talking about barack obama including american citizens. it was an interesting moment for me. i was in the house chamber watching it and to watch the republican party become almost the party of peace. is this something you think is a movement or is it partisan opportunism? >> guest: actually i think it's a return to what the traditional republican position

on national defense has been. if you go back to reagan and the way that george w. bush ran for office, he ran against nation-building. i thought the more interesting question about the filibuster was the way that everyone was laughing to rand paul as he went to the well and by the time he was done he created an international conversation via twitter. everybody participated and even the crusty asked old guard republicans showed up on the senate floor to join them. it shows you that worse politicians respond to incentives and that ideas can come from the bottom-up and if we are willing to participate even if it's driving a rant on twitter that had a real impact. >> host: in the book you emphasize the role technology can have been giving the libertarian cause more strength than it had in the past. do you think it particularly helps libertarians as opposed to

others like liberals are big government conservatives can as well? >> guest: that goes back to the strategic question of progressivism and when it comes to political strategy the bells and whistles to talk about bottom up. they depend on the leader to tell them what to do and technology helps that but what we are talking about kind of spontaneous emergence of consensus that came from the rand paul filibuster, you are talking about spontaneous order. i like to call it beautiful chaos. it's the same thing that drives the news today. was her crime guy no longer gets to tell us that's what it is. we have all these bloggers and news outlets competing for eyeballs and frankly flaming each other they don't get the story right. i think that chaos produces a better understanding of what's going on the world. the same is true with our politics. we can connect with more people and engage them and mobilize them if we just let them be free to pursue the values that they

want. >> host: even if there is not a concentrating benefit to the libertarian cause they can at least, there's not so much effort required to push their cause soda makes it easier. >> guest: tea party moms with facebook pages are bigger than their county gop and that's obviously a zero marginal cost of them. the cost of social media and the cost of hitting that button is much lower than the big tv by oren mass mailing so reince priebus -- pasco reince priebus the rnc chairman. for the leadership of both parties this is potentially very upsetting and almost anybody who has got a hierarchical structure whether it's corporate, political or anything has got me very nervous about some of the

democratizing effects of technology and social media? >> guest: yeah they are freaking out right now. everybody's writing about the civil war within the gop but it's really a paradigm shift that is taking power away from these old entranced and gestational structures and the rnc and dnc the dnc are going to the same process. the senate leader is going to the same process and the house leaders going to the same process. he doesn't have the same control that he used to but that's not a tea party thing. there's something bigger going on here and those of us that figure out how to work in this media centralized world, ought to connect with those values and help people do it they are trying to do. >> host: what victories have argued and won by libertarians or tea partiers in the last 40 years? >> guest: level talk about

political first because they are tangible. there would be no rand paul if the rules of the game had changed. >> guest: minority leader mitch mcconnell chose his successor trey grayson which rand paul would not have been able to beat him in the past. >> host: trey grayson is the chairman democratic of the super pacs i think that says something about the choices of the gop establishment that mitch mcconnell cut off this money and the power structure in the state of the company said no and trey grayson did an end run around and embrace money like his dad did in his presidential bid. he could tell the same story about mike lee and the same story about ted cruz justin amash. there's a number of young libertarian were leaning republicans that beat the system and get outspent sometimes five to one.

i think that's one indication of this paradox it. >> host: those guys are in washington because of this shi shift, tea party libertarian technology, social media. have they given us anything besides high-profile filibuster's? is there a legislative and a policy when? >> guest: the conversation is fundamentally different today and steering the government is like steering the titanic and we are hoping it we can turn at the port hits the iceberg. would we have had a robust talk about obamacare? would we be trying to do any of these things without this? today you look at any republican running for office including mitch mcconnell. he's talking tea party talking points. he is talking about freedom and fiscal responsibility. they were doing that before. that's not to say that we are winning because i think we have a ways to go but i do think politics is the last thing

that's going to change into real revolution is happening with people's better understanding of ideas and ability to connect with other people and share those ideas. >> host: the libertarian anger about stuff like the nsa spying on people. is this a trade-off that most americans are willing to make though? it they say the government is going to listen to phonecalls or have the ability to record my phonecalls i will live with that if they are going to catch terrorists. there's a libertarian line that even if that allows it to happen in this case were libertarians are different parts part than most of the country. >> guest: i wonder about that because i think there's a natural skepticism amongst american people of concentrated power and to go back to the lowest learner example if you believe in a big honest

omnipotent government you believe in bureaucrats with lots of power that will do the right thing wouldn't you go after the corruption and the irs with tremendous bigger because you want to give that same power to the nsa. i think americans are skeptical of power and they are also skeptical of bureaucracy. i don't think the nsa or the obama administration would have made a compelling argument that they are saving lives. they are casting a wide net because they can and there are examples, maybe trivial examples of nsa employees stocking their boyfriends and girlfriends and using this data that they are not allowed to use. imagine what happens when it's all gathered in a hope as obamacare does and you are collecting dod data and irs data and your health information and your political, still in the blank. they are listening to all your

phonecalls and they know everything. why wouldn't they selectively abuse that power? i think we believed in limited government power and i think it's particularly important when it comes to speech. >> host: at times in the book i sense you are almost disappointed were not being with the libertarians libertarians on somebody's issues including you mentioned individual mandate or some parts by the left on national security. it can be a left libertarian alliance? >> guest: i think they could be that they would have to be comfortable. as i would argue a lot of us a lot of us who may challenge george w. bush on tarp it's easy to be there were a lot position and criticizes democratic president. they have not generally been willing to challenge obama and maybe there's a little bit of saul walinski and math. there's an apparatchik that there's good guys and bad guys and they will destroy the enemy

and never criticize their own. our site doesn't do that. some people worry about that. they think conservatives and libertarians are too willing to question their own. i think that's their strength. >> host: it was the rare conservative who was questioning it but you think the libertarians and conservatives are stronger because of the internal debate? >> guest: i think the modernization of information imposes accountability en masse to math. these national organizations that claim to fight for freedom and fiscal responsibility, you can't get away with doing what senators use today to do say one thing in washington and done that thing in the grassroots. you could get away with that duplicity. i don't think you do today so i think one of the hallmarks of a

legitimate participant in this movement is authenticity. do you actually mean what you say and do your actions reflect that? >> guest: a lot of people say the republican party is hopelessly corrupt and we need a third party. the beginning of the tea party movement do as they separate political party. saul walinski would say you work within the -- is that where you are? >> guest: i wonder what walinsky would say today with the way the internet to center mediates politics i think it's still a two-party system in the third parties lose which is why a fork in the republican party and will continue to do so. i think we get to the point where they do nominate another bob dole there will be a party but it probably means the republican party guys and something like the liberty party emerges as that alternative. i don't see any way of getting

out of two-dollar parties controlling the process. that doesn't mean that you can put ideas back and at the party. progressives i think it done a pretty good job of taking over the democratic party and considered insanely radical during the clinton years is standard democratic policy. nancy pelosi and barack obama who are self-described progressives run the agenda. >> host: you say the division within the republican party is healthy but at times it looks like all-out warfare. the 2014 republican primaries really did feature mitch mcconnell and the republicans saying you have to beat the grassroots insertions to death so that they died in rollover and give up and you had people in the grassroots on the right saying we are going to drive mitch mcconnell out of office. mitch mcconnell wants a primary and he might be the

majority leader in a few months so is this a productive debate versus actually a civil war with lots of bloodshed? >> guest: i would observe with the gop establishment candidates and their apparatchiks and their lobbying firms across washington have very much raised the wilensky style. it's very personal. they're going after guys like matt bevan and now chris mcdaniel on a very personal basis. >> host: mitch mcdaniel running in mississippi. >> guest: i think there's an easy furniture that. they want to talk about policy because they will lose policy debates but if they are negative and personal. all that said, i think competition and consumer choice produces better products and the candidate can't can't win a primary it's hard to wonder how

they win the general and i want a robust debate with lots of talented people vying for the nomination. i don't want the rnc to preordained the next bob dole what we have in the past. i think out of that competitive process to get a stronger tested candidate and hopefully a candidate that better reflects the those of where the american people libertarians and conservatives are today. >> host: chris christie was considered a republican front-runner until his bridge scandal and he our right cell no problem with attacking libertarians. there are a lot of people if you talk to the former congressman and senators who are lobbying and talking about the ideological libertarians being a plague on the party so do you think there is a chance of libertarianism really insinuating itself into the gop

leadership or so going to always be the republican leadership? >> guest: theirs does famous quote which riveted to gandhi for he says first they ignore you and then they laugh at you and then they attack you and then you win. as a libertarian i have been ignored and laughed at and now we are being attacked. this is what is known as progress. at some point victory looks like everybody pretending to be a libertarian and they stop attacking that. and the book i quote ronald reagan in 1975. he said set on the basis of conservatism it really is libertarian. the next year he challenged a sitting republican president. i would argue contrary to what the gop establishment was lurking at the time that the best thing that ever happened to the republican party because he were stored some ideas. he created a path of victory

that really dominated for the next 20 years. gerald ford was not going to do that for the party so a shake up with a healthy thing. let's go all right, thank you for your time. congratulations on the book. >> guest: thanks, awesome. >> that was "after words" booktv signature program in which authors of the latest nonfiction books are interview by journalist public policymakers legislators and others familiar with their material. "after words" airs every weekend on booktv at 10:00 p.m. on saturday, 12 and 9:00 p.m. on sunday and 12:00 a.m. on monday. you can also watch "after words" on line. go to booktv.org and click on "after words" in the booktv series in the topics list on the upper right side of the page.

>> i'm reading david bought dodgy prospect that target the recent and his series series and it just gives me an escape from the world world here on capitol hill to read about the fantasies of world problems. it's enjoyable reading and it's fast reading and something that i get a good deal of pleasure out of. ..

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