think that is one of the many cam teen is somehow or other we are going to have to figure out a way to address. our democracy was trashed the other day because i have to tell you back in the back in the 19th century, the argument was in britain and in places and united states that people who want more than one resident should have more than one vote. are they argue that people who pay taxes versus those who cannot because they didn't have the wherewithal to do so, they should have the right to vote, not the people who could pay taxes. ..

[applause] >> folks, the you'll give us just a couple of moments, there is a book signing one level up in the bookstore, and we'll meet you up there in a couple minutes. >> booktv is on facebook. like us to interact with booktv guests and viewers, watch videos and get up-to-date information on events. facebook.com/booktv. up next on booktv, "after words," with guest host tim carney of the american enterprise institute. this week, matt kibbe and his latest book, "don't hurt people and don't take their stuff: a libertarian manifesto." in it, the freedomworks president argues that corporate leaders have been steadily eroding constitutional rights

for decades. the tea party proponent presents his plan to represent individual freedoms. this program is about an hour. >> host: so, matt, you call your book a libertarian manifesto. explain how it relates with conservativism. >> guest: yeah. i think there's a lot of misunderstanding about that now, and we debated with the publisher whether or not to put the "l" word on the cover, but so many people are asking the question what is a libertarian, and there's this argument supposedly between libertarians and conservatives and neo-cons and tea partiers and fill in the blank, there's all these silos we're apparently in. and i don't think there is a fundamental difference if you understand conservativism properly defined. there is a fundamental difference between what i would call big government conservativism, the idea that you would take the power of the state and impose a certain set of behaviors on people, you

know, 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 and individual responsibility in communities solving problems, and on the other hand, has this supposedly beneficent state and really smart bureaucrats redesigning things from the top down. >> host: yep. so when you say hayek writing why i'm not a conservative, do you think he had a different definition than ronald reagan's definition? >> guest: oh, very much so. and hayek was talking about the tendency to use government in europe to redesign people's lives. and, of course, in europe even today a liberal is closer to what we would call a conservative. it's more libertarian, it's classical liberal. so one of the things that's happened in the united states is the left steals all of our best

words. they stole liberal, they stole community, and when i mention that i'm a community organizer, i get jeers from the crowd. that's who we are. that's what the boston pea party was. -- tea party was. >> host: you appropriate saul olin sky's rules for radicals, sick rules for libertarians. i wanted to walk through some of them. the first is don't hurt people. that's the title of the book. explain why that is rule number one. >> guest: you know, i wanted to take the fundamental principle of voluntary cooperation is you don't mess with other people, you don't threaten them, and you expect them to treat you the same way. libertarians have this fancy term, the nonaggression principle. and if you're really in the though and you know the secret handshake, you say the nap. because we love to chase people out of the room. but it's just, it's common sense, and you wouldn't have civilized society without that. it's also important to understand that big government, the experiments in big government, they're not

theoretical. this is not stuff off of chalk bodies. we -- chalkboards. we know what happens when you give governments two power, whether it's radical islam, any 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, big government is dangerous. power is dangerous. it needs to be kept in a very locked cage. >> and it's part of the libertarian talk of the nonaggression principle to say that government is force and the threat of force. didn't alan greenspan say something like behind every pile of regulations, there's a cup. in america -- there's a gun. 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 hurting people, or is that just doing things together as barney frank says? >> guest: it is forcing people to do things they wouldn't do otherwise, and not complying is enforced literally at the point of a gun. you don't get to choose about whether or not you pay your taxes even though the irs talks about voluntary compliance. there's nothing voluntary about complying with epa regulations or, frankly, any bureaucratic dictate. now, 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, and go to some place like lithuania or the country of georgia and talk to people there, they remember seeing their family members shot in the street by the government. that's different, and in a sense, americans don't appreciate what big government's all about because the way that it operates in this country is typically more benign.

>> host: well, but and the liberal pushback would be, but aren't their different in kind? -- aren't they different in kind? isn't the communist bloc dictatorship different in kind than the united states? that it's not even a question of degree, it really is different. >> guest: it's a question of size, actually, and it's hard to imagine an omnipotent government that's not hurting people and taking their stuff, and history would back that up. that's why the founders were for limited government. they said we can either limit this power, or we can have unlimited power, and unlimited power always leads to really bad, unintended, 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. this is based on an idea of rot rights. now, isn't -- property rights. now, isn't that ultimately based on government?

you don't have property unless you're standing on the border of your farm with a shot gun or the police are ready to protect your property rights. how does it work with libertarianism to put such an emphasis on property? >> guest: yeah, and this goes back to, certainly, our founding as well. it was life, liberty and property, and those things were not in any way fundamentally distinct from each other. you know, 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 a certain side of the road, there's a reason why you don't take other people's stuff and why you don't hurt them. and 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've gotten

beyond that. but in a lot of ways those rules that government enforces are codified versions of what civil society developed because it worked. >> host: your, you have four more rules. the third rule is take responsibility. say more about that. >> guest: you know, this was -- i hate the president's straw man about community. and in "rolling stone" magazine he takes a shot at ayn rand and basically creates a straw man. either you believe in the individual like iowan rand did, or you believe in robust community. and he says when you grow up, you start to realize it's not all about you. that's such a straw man. i think individual freedom that i get from rand is all about responsibility. it's not a blank check to do whatever you want, it's the respondent you get when you -- the responsibility you get when you look in the mirror trying to figure out did you get it done?

who's going to do it for you? that's the basis of what makes up for community, people solving problems, people coming together. and when you outsource that responsibility to government like barney frank says we should -- >> host: yep. >> guest: -- government's 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 it's an compute not to take responsibility. >> host: so, but if you take the responsibility, say, to care for the poor, to feed the hungry and clothe the naked and house the homeless, if you take that away from the government, does it fall be on to the individual? do you, matt kibbe, have a responsibility to feed a hungry person, to help the poor people? >> guest: i think you do, and i think that our evidence in the united states and our evidence in communities that have been left free shows that that's 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 3,000 miles away or even, you know, six

countries away. it should happen from the bottom up. once you outsource that to a third party even if it's a voluntary o but paragraphly if it's a government -- particularly if it's a government organization, somebody else's agenda comes in, and you don't know who needs help and who's gaming the system. that's why local works so well. >> host: and you suggested in the book and now that, in fact, when the government steps in, it erodes the civil society aspects of community and actually weakens sort of neighborliness and charity. >> guest: yeah. >> host: is that right. >> >> guest: oh, absolutely. and you see it happen every day on the ground. you saw it happen with george w. bush's faith-based initiative which i would call a class you can example of big government -- classic example of big government conservativism. all of these well-meaning people that were trying to solve problems voluntarily at the local level stopped doing what they were doing and started lobbying for an earmark. and this is what happens when

you outsource it. it shifts the incentives, and there's always a middle han that gets the payout, and it's never really been about transferring money from the rich to the poor, it's about transferring money from the politically unconnected to the connected in washington. >> host: and you, your rule number four is work for it. what do you mean by that? >> guest: i quote ashton kutcher when he gave that now-famous speech at the teach choice awards, and hollywood went bananas because he said opportunity looks a lot like hard work, and he said that every job i had was a blessing, and it led to a better job, and i loved the opportunity that i had. and that's how i got to be who i am today. and this should not have been controversial, it should have been boiler points for any speech given to young people today. >> host: yep. >> guest: but it was different. and i think, i think work is another word that we need to rehabilitate, to take it back from the left. they've used it as a pejorative. nancy pelosi now extols the

virtues of not working forced upon young people by obamacare. i think that's really offensive. work is cool. work is the opportunity to do something no one's ever done before. work is the opportunity to define your own future and create something that other people will laugh at you. entrepreneurship is judgment, the ability to sort of look around the future corner of history and do something that everybody tells you you can't do. that's the awesomeness of work with. and if you lose that in this country, i think we lose the very nature of what's made america great. >> host: well, but there's a difference, isn't there, between being a creative entrepreneur and the work that most of us do, that most people do. that, you know, the average guy if his job is going to be at factory or even if his job is going to be a schoolteacher, he has sort of narrow confines in which he's going to do his work. does that have the same sort of

value that you're talking about and ashton kutcher's talking about? >> guest: i think so, and he obviously was talking about probably minimum wage jobs. he's probably washing dishes, he was probably housing yards, that kind of thing -- mowing yards, that kind of thing. i think it's about achievement. it's about taking your responsibility and doing something. but every one of those things that you do, and i've done all those jobs to get to where i am today, view it potentially as a steppingstone to something you don't even know about yet. i loved the open to-endedness of the -- open-endedness of the american system. there is no glass ceiling for anybody. >> host: do you think that's still true? one of the big themes is about inequality and also inability. maybe you and i have gotten to a point where there is this upward ladder, but a guy who graduated high school 20 years a saw a good paying factory job, took it, factory moved to mexico,

but -- >> guest: well, part of it would be the willingness to rethink what your future's all about. check out monster.com, if you don't believe me. i think we live in the most mobile society ever. the you don't like your boss today, you can go online and find opportunities that you and i when we were 21 couldn't have conceived of. i think that's, that empowers the worker at the expense of employers. markets clear better in labor markets today, and that's, to me, that's incredibly liberating for people without job skills yet, people that are trying 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: well, i think there's a lot of confusion. this gets back to the question of big government conservativism. and i talk about, you know, something that's probably the most controversial thing in this book, i talk about my marriage

and my very brief argument with my now-wife over whether or not we should have to get the government's approval -- stamp of approval, yeah. >> guest: -- to get married. and i was a young libertarian, i'd read all the books, and all of a sudden unbenopest to me in order to get -- unbeknownst to me, in order to get the government's approval, i had to get a license. and i thought that cheapened the most important relationship in my life. and i asked in this book why is it that government should get involved in really important social institutions? i think they corrupt everything they touch. there are i think it would make more -- i think it would make more sense to leave that decision to my wife, which i did, and she won that debate. to her grandmother, she won that debate, to her priest, he won that debate. but i didn't really care what the government thought, and i think it's a mistake to let the government insert itself this these things. >> host: was that the extent of

mind your own business? a lot of times people say that not referring to the government, but to your neighbor. my neighbor thinks i shouldn't let my kids run around the backyard in just their diapers, is one of your rules to say, no, don't make carney's kids put on clothes and don't worry about their sunburn? i think, for instance, that the catholic teaching is right that you shouldn't have sex before marriage and i say that in person, am i minding somebody else's business, or are you just talking about goth? >> guest: i'm 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 enough society that allows you to say that without the insanely authoritarian left coming down on you like a ton of bricks and getting you fired from the "washington examiner." but to have government codify be shall be's version of that -- codify somebody's version of

that truth based on long traditions and religions, i think that's where you get into trouble. because i don't think, i don't think you should diminish your values by leaving them to the political process. these are people that can't -- 435 be men and women that can't balance the budget, and you want them to codify a definition of marriage. i think that's insane. >> host: does, would you with apply that rule as ticketly on the local level -- strictly on the local level as on the federal level? >> guest: no, i don't think so. and i don't know how far you'd go with that, because the nice thing about local governments -- and don't get me wrong, county councils and school boards -- >> host: can be tyrants. >> guest: complete tie amounts. the nice thing is you can show up, and you can impact that process in a more, 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 buck keep out of government -- much as we can keep out of government, county council's the better way to go. >> host: the sixth rule is fight the power. i think my parents use today to say that wearing flowers in their hair. how is this a libertarian idea and not a liberal idea? >> guest: we expropose rated the fist, and 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 very clear that you and i had a responsibility to keep government in check. that it was on the shoulders of the american people to protect the sacred fire of liberty. and somewhere along the way particularly conservatives and libertarians, you know, we started reading all the right books, and we had this very naive theory that good ideas would rise to the top in politics just like they do in

markets. well, it's not true. political markets work differently, and if you and i don't step up and fight the power, you lose. somebody shows up. government goes to those who show up, and be by with abandoning the field of play, i think we've let government get out of control. and that's -- >> host: but it feels sort of a liberal, busybody, not minding your own business type thing to go and be lobbying and to be holding these rallies and to be a community organizer. so, i mean, is that not sort of behaving like a liberal, to be -- you often inveigh against washington, but you work here, and this is the heart of a lot of what you do. >> guest: yeah, yeah. it's funny, because if you gone to -- go on to the training manuals for some of the organizations, they don't call it grassroots, they call it direct action, their model for direct action was the boston tea party. and the first time i saw that i smiled, and then i thought, oh, my god, they stole our stuff.

[laughter] and 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. and you wouldn't have the founding without sam adams and the rabble rousing on the streets who literally pressured the new york delegation that was in bed with the british business community and the british government. we wouldn't have an america today without that grassroots activism. so i don't think it's, i don't think it's a leftist thing, i think it's very much in our tradition too to do that. >> host: so if i want to raise my family and run my business and forget about government, you're saying i'm abdicating 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 naive to think that the if you leave them alone, they'll leave you alone. so it's a responsibility that you have if you care about your children's future and their

freedoms. >> host: so the, when you say "fight the power," do you just mean government power? because there's also, there's corporate power, there's, you know, your local school, maybe even it's a private school so it's not even a government school, there are other powers that are worth fighting or that is part of your fighting the power? >> guest: yeah, you know, i think that a lot of corporate power derives from collusion with big government. and you can look at the -- the nice thing about a free market is that bad products fail in the marketplace, and consumers are always right, and businesses that don't meet those demands go out of business. the problem is if you're general electric and you're failing to provide a better product to consumers, you can hop on your g5 and fly to washington and sit down with a committee chairman and get a special deal. that's happening more and more because washington is more and more involved in things. and it's sort of a chicken and an egg thing, but the fact of the matter is corporate power

and government power, it's hard to tell the difference today in some instances because they're so in collusion with each other, and you see 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 and the other stops. >> host: well, and so that traditionally the conservatives when i was a young conservative, you were pro-business, and that was because you were standing up to ralph nader who was trying to, you know, kill capitalism and replace it with socialism. you used pro-business almost as a slur in your book, so is this a new era? why is that? >> guest: part of it's personal experience. i was a young economist at the u.s. chamber of commerce. i actually went there having fled the republican national committee because it would have been my job to defend george h.w. bush's tax increase, and i couldn't figure out how to do that. [laughter] so i went to the chamber, and

being young and naive, it says the spirit of enterprise right on the front of the door. i had to leave ant two years -- about two years later because they had just endorsed hillarycare, and i realized sort of the hard way that all of the talk about balancing the budget and reining in government that ostensibly comes from the business community, it's often hijacked by the big guys that want a seat at the table. they wanted a seat at the table during hillarycare, and they finally got one in obamacare. it took 'em a few years to do that. that was a, that was one of those teachable moments for me, and i realized that big business is very much part of the coalition of insiders that colludes against the american people. >> host: milton friedman once said, what was it, the social responsibility of a corporation is to maximize its profits. doesn't this create a problem for libertarians if the way for general electric to maximize its profits is to lobby for the

lightbulb law which forces people to buy their higher profit margin things? do you think the social responsibility of a corporation is to maximize its profits, or should ge lobby for a policy that doesn't maximize their profits? >> guest: well, i think the responsibilities of customers is to hold ge accountable, and i think shareholder activism is another legitimate form be of fighting the power. you shouldn't just show up at town hall meetings of congressmen 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 this very decentralized world we live in, people have a lot of power the if they're willing to practice it. corporation are hypersensitive -- corporations are hypersensitive to public opinion. send out a tweet sometime trashing a corporation, and all of a sudden you're getting all of these responses back. they pay attention. >> host: so do you think that

corporations can be brought in line with your libertarian manifesto, or are they sort of -- i mean, through the sort of consumer pressure you're talking about? or do you think that they are only occasionally allies? what's your view about where they naturally p will end up? >> guest: i think we should make it toxic. 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 congressmen, has this really powerful idea to limit the amount of deposit insurance that would be available to any single bank. and it's a very free market way of limiting -- >> host: of wreaking up big banks almost. >> guest: yeah, yeah. because big banks are a product of regulatory favoritism. >> host: with but that's not meddling? that's not taking the bank's

stuff? that's perfectly within the rules? >> guest: no, it's not meddling at all. the goal is to move all public policy back towards a simple principle of justice, treat everybody just like everybody 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 had in sparking the tea party fervor? >> guest: i think it was everything, and it was -- i remember that freedomworks and just a handful of organizations in washington were actually opposed at the time. and and i joked at the time that you could have put all of us into a vw bus, and that would have been the entire liberty movement at least in washington d.c. and a lot of conservative,

ostensibly conservative groups and think tanks joined the bandwagon in large part because it was a republican president proposing to defend the free market by abandoning it. but at that moment you had this tsunami of grassroots opposition -- i think in large part driven by facebook and social media and things that were finally available to them -- and they killed that first house bill that was the boehner-pelosi bill or the close city-boehner bill, i don't remember -- pelosi-boehner bill. i don't remember which. that was the beginning of the tea party. had nothing to do with president obama, it had to do with senator obama and senator mccain colluding to pass the $700 billion bailout of wall street for the insiders, for the connected. >> host: and that's one of the themes you have in the book, is the biartisanship of the problem. -- bipartisanship of the problem. 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 come to d.c., and i don't think it's that hard to understand. they're immediately surrounded by all of these interests that aren't even slightly interested in balancing the budget. they're not interested in patient-driven health care. they're interested in getting a better deal for their companies. and it's a particularly big problem for republicans since the takeover in 1994. you remember the k street project -- >> host: yep. >> guest: -- and all of these young staffers became superlobbyists. and so whenever you read in the paper republican centralist next to somebody's -- strategist next to somebody's name, that person works for a big lobbying shop. you could talk about clint gillespie, there's a bunch of these alphabet agencies that 'em low so-called conservative lobbyists, but they're not interested in the republican party, they're not interested in good government. they're defending the interests

of their clients. and typically, their clients are looking for something from government. >> host: so how does that work? do, are the liberal account s that the lobbyists are the way, the tool that businesses use to corrupt government? but some of the way you write here it, again, you say as if there's no telling where government begins and business ends. so you don't think it's quite that neat. >> guest: no. and i think the democrats are equally guilty. the difference being is that they are, in fact, the party of big government. but, you know, their goals are equally corrupted, you know? let's say that the progressive goal of health care reform was single-payer. well, the corporate interests corrupted that, and the health care companies and the hospital lobby withists and the pharmaceutical companies all got in and got their piece, particularly things like the individual mandate that fatten the bottom lines of corporations. so that corruption is

nonpartisan as well. i think the bigger challenge on our side is that we're supposedly for less government, we're supposedly for simplifying the tax code and shifting towards treating everybody just like everybody else. how do you lobby that for that? who's going to high you to lob by for that? it doesn't work. no one comes to washington to be left alone. they, hopefully -- >> host: yep. >> guest: -- they just hope that you do leave them alone. >> host: all right. we're going to take a quick leak break. >> on the go? "after words" is available via podcast through itunes and xml. visit booktv and click podcast on the upper left side of the page. select which podcast you'd like to download, and listen to "after words" as you travel. >> host: matt, you say our values define our tactics.

what do you mean by that? >> guest: well, this is my riff on saul wolin sky and rereading it for maybe the dozenth time i realize just how manipulative the rules for radicals are, and there's no principles in that book. it's all about fooling somebody into doing something they wouldn't do otherwise. and that seems to be consistent with their idea of the rule of man over the rule of law. we're different in the sense that our values -- don't hurt people, don't take their stuff, treat everybody like you would want to be treated -- very much define not only who we are, what we believe, but how we would fight to restore liberty. and i love to quote frederick hayek, you know, hayek famously talked about the spontaneous order and how it was that all of these disparate individuals with their personal knowledge of time and place, of what your family needs, what your aspirations are, what you're trying to accomplish, how they all come

together and create something that's so much bigger than any one of us could have done. well, look at the tea party movement as one small example of that. nobody designed this thing. as much as the left would like to figure out who question designed it, it was free people coming together to do something they hadn't dreamed that they could do alone. to me, that's how we take this country back. this is how we restore liberty x. i think the internet is a fundamental piece of that. and it doesn't need to be deck tated, it's not -- dictated, it's not about big data and manipulating certain people the show up in elections, it's about free people coming together and doing things that they haven't done before. and that's 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 got a personal facebook post from george clooney. >> host: well, so do you think most people are libertarians in

america? >> guest: i do, small l libertarian. i think the you take away the word and the graphs and 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, and i think ultimately a majority. i used to think that the libertarian strategy was very much guerrilla warfare, very much in the sense that sam adams did or even saul wolin sky. i think today because of the ease with which you can connect with other people that think just like you do, i think there's a new majority out there of people that were just not willing to get involved because they found politics and washington offputting and were probably rational to think so. >> host: young people voting overwhelmingly for barack obama both times, and very few people

self-identify as libertarian, and, in fact, democrats often see it as a good way to attack republicans is that all they're trying to do is deregulate and cut taxes for the rich. so there's certainly a lot of evidence, the majority of the country doesn't share the libertarian view, but actually wants a government about the size that we have now. >> guest: well, i think a lot of it is our inability to communicate in english, because, you know, the goal of adult tax reform is not cutting three points off your margin tax rate. the goal of tax reform is fairness, of treating everybody just like everybody else and making sure that those rich enough to hire a lobbyist or a tax lawyer don't get a special break. i think that that value proposition is far her compelling to people than whether or not they save money on their taxes, and i think we've made the mistake in the past of boiling everything down to kind of a transactional thing. that's what the democrats do.

they offer something for nothing even if it's an empty promise. i think our outreach to new voters has to be more values based. >> host: so are you saying if the democrats go out and they are offering to be santa claus, ronald reagan strategy actually was, well, we have to be a second santa claus and offer them tax cuts. but you're saying instead of offering them, you know, other christmas presents, we're going to offer them fairness? you think that's a winning approach p? >> guest: i think offering them opportunity and fairness and not being screwed by insiders that are gaming the system, i think it's both a positive vision that ashton kutcher talked about. opportunity looks a lot like hard work. versus, you know, we're going to give you a family tax credit -- >> host: yeah. >> guest: -- and so that you get a piece of washington too. >> host: because the left can always act santa claus on that.

so speaking of fairness and similar listy, you talk about the -- simplicity, you talk about the complexity industrial complex, as if complexity also benefits special interests. >> guest: yes. and this is as old of a tactic that government has ever used, if you create so many laws and regulations and then create a bureaucracy that can, at their discretion, enforce certain ones and not others, it's basically a way of creating tremendous 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 501c4s, and yet they were able to -- >> host: lois lerner, the top irs official -- >> guest: yes. who infamously targeted mom and pop tea partiers at the expense of other 501c4 applications. >> host: let me ask you about that, because i think the irs and lois lerner show up in about

five different chapters of your book. why is that such a big deal to you? >> guest: because i think we're reaching a point in this country where you have this massive unelected, unaccountable, faceless class of gray-suited bureaucrats that have this infinitely complex set of rules and laws and regulate -- regulations to impose on us. they're never going to do it fairly. they're never going to do it without the biases that a federal bureaucrat would have? and as it turns out, they're just like anybody else. they want job security, they want more power, they want more budgets. and if 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, you know, the authors -- as you've pointed

out, the authors of obamacare who were, under you know, underpaid hill staffers who stayed up all night and made it up as they went along, they're now well-paid lobbyists hired by corporations to turn back around and game the system and carve out a little piece for themselves. that happens, obviously, this the tax code, it happens in health care. i think it happens all across the federal government. so the revolving door is dependent on complexity, it's dependent on more regulations. if you had a tax code that treated everybody just like everybody else, you would destroy an entire industry of insiders. >> host: yep. so the congressional staffers, the congressmen who create this complex law, they end up benefiting when they get hired by the companies. is that why they do it? is that why they make it so complex? is that why they're increasing government, or are they public-spirited public servants who are, you know, trying to give everybody health care? >> guest: i think it's a mixed

stew of all of that. i do think a lot of people come to work on the hill, 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 to trent lott as a u.s. senator, but if i become an expert on homeland security, there's a cash cow after i leave office. >> host: and trent lott, the former majority leader who's now a well-compensated lobbyist in washington, and most people probably don't know that. >> guest: yeah. >> host: their former senator, the word "former congressman" almost means lobbyist today. the other thing you touch on in many chapters is the individual mandate that forces people to buy health insurance. why does that deserve so many mentions? >> guest: you know, i think it's a particularly offensive -- to

me, it's one of the most offensive aspects of obamacare, because it forces young, healthy, less wealthy people to buy something that they don't want and they don't need. they're not offered very low cost catastrophic plans, they're forced to buy something with a lot more bells and whistles, a lot of services they couldn't possibly need as young people. and the reason that 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-run health care has. so it's a reverse robin hood situation where we're taking from the poor and healthy to give to the wealthy and less healthy, and the middleman, the insurance companies, take a fat cut. and if it doesn't work out, there's these things called risk corridors that guarantee that they never lose money. so it, it's a classic example of what i was talking earlier

where, you know, all of this wealth transfer is not from rich to poor. in this case it's the opposite, but the middleman, the insurance companies and the government, they're taking the fat best cut. -- fattest cut. >> host: now, you're saying not just about the individual mandate, but it sucks to be young to do. why is that? >> guest: be the you think about the perfect storm of the obama years, the jobless economy, 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 they don't have that they don't these. it's a continuation of a long-term trend that shifts the

burden of too much government on people who are young or haven't been born yet. it's called generational theft. james buchanan talks about it, and he argues that this is what destroys democracy, a legacy of lord cain's. but in practical terms, a lot of young people are getting screwed. i think there's buyer's remorse on barack obama right now because of a lot of broken promises that they thought they had from this president. and a new reason poll shows that young people are very much up for grabs. there's a potential libertarian generation amongst the young. they're looking for it in the two political parties. they don't see it right now, but that, for me, is an intrep do you recall opportunity for the rand pauls and the mike lees and the justin amashes to step up and fill -- >> host: so you don't think it

can be barack obama's so bad so somebody like john mccain and mitt romney will get the young vote? you think the republican party needs to change drastically to get voters? >> guest: if we run bob dole as republicans -- >> host: and republicans basically run bob dole every four years. >> guest: yeah. there's nothing compelling to young people in a mitt romney or a john mccain. and that should be obvious without having to say it. the good news is i think that we've repopulated the presidential field with some pretty compelling young people that think about the world in a much her dynamic way. >> host: you mentioned rand paul, and in the book you speak of his filibuster talking about barack obama's drone strikes on people including american citizens. >> guest: yes. >> host: this 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. >> guest: yeah.

>> host: is this something that you think is a movement, or is this just partisan opportunism? >> guest: actually, i hi it's a return to what the -- i think it's a return to what the traditional republican position on national defense has been. you go back to reagan, you go back to the way that george w. bush ran for office, he ran against nation bulling. i thought the -- building. i thought the more interesting question about the filibuster was the way that everyone was laughing to arnold paul as he went -- rand paul as he went to the well. and by the time he was done, he had created an international conversation via twitter. everybody had participated and even the crustiest of old guard republicans showed up on the senate floor the join him in that. it shows you that politicians respond to incentives and that ideas can come from the bottom up and that if we are willing to participate -- even if it's driving stand with rand on twitter, that had a real impact. >> host: in the book you emphasize the role that

technology can have in giving the libertarian cause more strength than it had in the past. and you think it particularly helps libertarians as opposed to other -- i mean, liberals can use twitter also or big government conservatives can as well. >> guest: this goes back to the strategic question. progressivism, follow the bells and whistles and talk about bottom-up. it's really a top-down strategy. they dictate. they depend on a leader to tell them what to do. and technology helps that, but what we're talking about, the kind of spontaneous emergence of consensus that came from the rand paul filibuster. you're talking about spontaneous order, i like to call it beautiful chaos. it's the same thing that drives the news today. walter cronkite no longer gets to tell us that's the way it is. you've got all these bloggers and news outlets competing for eyeballs and, frankly, flaming each other if they don't get the story right. i think that produces a better understanding of what's going on

in the world. the same is true with our politics. we can connect with more people and engage them and mobilize them if we just left them free to pursue the values they want to defend. >> host: so even if there's not coons traited benefit to the -- concentratedded benefit toss the libertarian cause, there's not as much effort required. >> guest: yeah. i know moms, tea party moms with facebook pages that are bigger than their county gop's, and that's, obviously, at zero marginal cost to them. the cost of using social media, the cost of hitting that button is much lower than a big tv buy or a mass mailing. so reince rebus doesn't have the same -- >> host: the rnc chairman. >> guest: yeah. >> host: but -- yeah, so that is where i was going to go next. for the leadership of both parties, this is potentially very upsetting. almost anybody who's ooh got

a -- who's got a hierarchical structure whether it's corporate, political or anything has got to be nervous about some of the democratizing effects of technology and social media. >> guest: yeah. i mean, to not put too fine of a point on it, they're freaking out right now. and they're -- everybody's rick the civil war within the gop -- writing about the civil war within the gop be, but it's really a paradigm shift that's taking power away from these entricep. ed structures, and the rnc and dnc are going through the same process. the senate leader's going new the same process, the house speaker. 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 i think those of us that figure out how to work in this new do decentralized world, how to connect with those values and help people do what they're

trying to do, we win the future -- >> host: what victories have already been won by libertarians or tea partiers in the last four years? >> guest: well, i'll talk about political victims first because they're tangible, although i think politics is a lagging indicator. but there would be no rand paul if the rules of the game hadn't changed. >> host: because minority leader mitch mcconnell had chosen as his success is sor, trey grayson, who paul defeated. >> guest: the co-chairman of a democratic superpac, so i think that says something about the old choices of the gop establishment. but, you know, mitch mcconnell cut off his money, and the gop power structure in the state of kentucky said, no, no, we're with trey grayson. he did an end run around that, and he raised money much like his dad did in his presidential bid. but you could tell the same story about mike lee, ted cruz, justin amash. there's a number of young

libertarian-leaning republicans that have beat the system ask been outspent sometimes 5 to 1. and i think that's sort of one indication of this paradigm shift. >> host: those guys are in washington because of this shift, tea party, libertarian, technology, social media. but have they given us anything besides a couple high-profile filibusters? is there a oil win? >> guest: the can conversation fundamentally different here, and steering big government is a little bit like steering the titanic, and we're hoping we can turn it before we hit the iceberg. would we have been talking about the national debt, would we have had a robust argument 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, talking tea party talking points. he's talking about freedom, he's talking about fiscal responsibility.

they weren't doing that before. that's not to say that we're winning because i think we have a ways to go. but i do think the politics is the last thing that's going to change, and the real revolution is happening with people's better understanding of ideas and and ability to connect with over people that share those ideas. >> host: now, the libertarian anger about stuff like the nsa spying on people, is this a trade-off that most americans are willing to make though? if the government's going the listen to phone calls or are the ability to record my phone calls, i'll live with that if they're going to catch terrorists. and so if there's a libertarian line that, no, it's wrong to listen to other people's phone calls. and almost -- even if that allows another terrorist attack to happen, isn't this a case where libertarians are in a different part than most of the country? >> guest: i wonder, i wonder about that because i think there is a natural skepticism amongst the american people of

concentrated power. and to go back to the lois lerner example, if you believe in a big, honest, omnipotent government, you believe bureaucrats with lots of power are going to do the right thing, wouldn't you go after the corruption in the irs with tremendous vigor? because you wanted to give that same power to the nrnght -- nsa. i think that americans are skeptical of power, and they're also skeptical of bureaucracy. i don't think the nsa or the obama administration have made a compelling argument that they're saving lives. they're casting a wide net because they can. and there is examples, maybe trivial examples of nsa employees stalking their boyfriends and girlfriends using this data that they're not allowed to use. well, imagine what happens when it's all gathered in a hub, as obama care does, and you're clerking dod data and irk rs

data and your health information -- irs data and your health information and fill in the blank, whatever else they're going to know about you. if they're listening to all your phone calls, they know everything. why wouldn't they have subjectively used that power? i think we believe in limiting government power, and it's particularly important when it comes to privacy and speech. >> host: at times i sented you were almost disapossibilitied in the left for not -- disappointed in the left for not being with the tea party. is that the way you feel there can be more of a left-libertarian alliance? >> guest: i think there could be, but they would have to be comfortable. as i would argue that a lot of us were when we challenged george w. bush on t.a.r.p., it's easy to be the loyal opposition and criticize a democratic president. they have not generally been willing to challenge obama.

and maybe there's a little bit of saul olin sky in that, you know, that there's good guys and bad guys, and they will destroy the enemy and never criticize their own. our side doesn't do that, and some people worry about that. they think that conservatives and libertarians are too will to question their own. i think that's our strengths. >> host: well, and it wasn't true ten years ago. it was the rare can conservative who was questioning the president. but do you think it's the right that libertarians, conservatives are stronger now because of the internal debate? >> guest: well, i think the devaluization and democratization -- decentralization and democratization imposes responsibility on us too. these national organizations that claim to fight for freedom and fiscal responsibility, you can't get away with doing what old senators used to do, say one thing in washington and do another thing out in the grassroots. when everything was mail and tv,

you could get away with that duplicity. i don't think you do today, so i think one of the hallmark of a legitimate participant in this movement is authenticity. do you actually heene what you say and do your actions reflect that. so do you -- a lot of people say the republican party is hopelessly corrupt. people said tea party should be a separate political party. so saul would say, no, you work within the existing power structures, and you take them over. is that where you are? >> guest: that's pretty much where i am. i wonder what he would say today with the way the internet disintermediates politics. i do think it's still a two-party system and third parties lose which is why i've always worked in the republican party and will continue to do so. i think we'll get to the point

where there will be a new party, but it probably means the republican party dies and something, say the liberty party emerges as that they were. but i don't see any way of getting out of two dominant be parties controlling the process. but that doesn't mean you can't put ideas back into the party. progressives, i think, have done a pretty good job of taking over the democratic party. and what was consider insanely radical during the bill clinton years is now standard democratic policy. and you have nancy pelosi and barack obama who have self-described progressives, they run the agenda. >> host: now, you say the division within the republican party is healthy, but at times it looks like all-out warrer if. the 2014 republican primaries really did feature sort of mitch mcconnell and the republican establishment saying we just have to beat the grassroots up sur gents to death so that they just die and roll oh and give up, and you had people in the

roos roots right saying we are going to drive mitch mcconnell out of office. mitch mcconnell won his primary. he might majority leader in a fw moms. -- in a few months. >> guest: i would agree that lobbying firms across washington have very much embraced a style that's very personal. they're going after guys like matt bevan and now chris mcdaniel on -- >> host: running in mississippi. >> guest: against ted cochran. and i think there's an easy answer for that. they don't want to talk about policy because they'll lose a policy debate, so they're going to go negative, and their going to go personal. they're going to go personal. all that said, i like competition. i like -- i think competition

and consumer choice produces better products. and if a candidate can't win a primary, the it's hard to argue how they win in general. and i think -- and i would argue this going into the presidential. i want a robust debate with lots of talented people vying for the nomination. i don't want the rnc to preordain the next bob dole like we always have in the past. i think out of that competitive process you get a stronger candidate, a tested candidate and, hopefully, a candidate that better reflects the ethos of where the american people, libber tawrns and conservatives, are today. >> host: well, chris christie was considered a republican front rubber until his bridge -- front runner until his bridge scandal, and he attacked libertarians. there's a lot of people, if you talk to former congressmen, senators who are now lobbyists, they will talk about the ideological libertarians being

something of a plague on the party. so do you think that there is a chance of libertarianism really insinuating itself into the gop leadership, or is it going to always be the republican leadership versus the libertarians? >> guest: well, you know, this famous quote attributed to gandhi where he says first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they attack you, and then you win. and as a libertarian, i've been ignored and laughed at. now we're being attacked. i think this is what's known as progress. at some point victory look like everybody pretending to be linertarian, and they stop the attacking that. and, you know, like in the book i quote ronald reagan in 1975. he said, you know, the basis of conservativism really is libertarian. the next year he challenged a sitting republican president, he primaried a sitting republican president, gerald ford. and i would argue contrary to what the go, establishment was

at the time, that's the best thick that ever happened to the republican party because he restored some ideas, he created a path of victimly that really dominated -- victory that really dominated for the next 20 years. gerald ford was not going to do that for the party, so a shake-up would be a healthy thing. >> host: all right, well, thank you for your time and congratulations on the book. >> guest: awesome. ..