Kibbe On Liberty

From Eadweard Muybridge’s experiments with sequential photography to the earliest motion pictures, the power of sequential images to tell stories and communicate ideas has long been recognized. The medium of comics, once thought to be fit only for children, has emerged as a rich and vibrant source of creativity and passion among artists and writers. Matt Kibbe is joined by Matt Battaglia, executive producer at Free the People and author of the new book "House on Fire," to talk about art, creativity, and the ways in which comics can both predict the future and respond to the various challenges faced by 21st-century American society. House on Fire: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1736860569/

Cryptocurrency has the potential to liberate millions of people from the government’s money system, but there are some who want to use that very tool for evil instead of good. Matt Kibbe talks to Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) about the possibility of the Federal Reserve creating its own digital currency that would be controlled by the federal government. In addition to being prone to massive inflation, a central bank digital currency would be used to track your every purchase and could be denied to people who behave in ways that the state deems undesirable. In Canada, truckers were locked out of their bank accounts for protesting COVID policy. Imagine if Justin Trudeau had the ability to deactivate the very dollars in their pockets as well.

Election integrity, fairness, and representation are increasingly important issues in the minds of American voters, with several recent presidential election results mired in controversy and an unwillingness to accept the results. One point of contention with many is that the candidate who receives the most votes nationally does not always end up becoming president. Saul Anuzis, senior adviser for National Popular Vote, believes that changing this would result in a system that better represents the desires and interests of the American people. He and Matt Kibbe discuss whether a national popular vote would help to enfranchise more people and reduce pandering to swing states, or whether the current Electoral College system is necessary to protect the interests of rural voters.

The gender ideology movement has become extremely influential (and extremely radical!), but how much do the activists we see on college campuses and teaching elementary schools actually represent transgender people? Matt Kibbe is joined by Sara Higdon, a trans woman and the host of “TRANSform to Freedom,” who explains why she does not believe that gender is fluid, that women can become men, or that biological men should compete in women’s sports. Trans adults should be treated with respect and compassion, but that does not mean that men calling themselves women should automatically and unquestioningly gain access to all female spaces, or that drugs and surgery should be forced on young children. According to Higdon, this extreme ideology is actually a setback for people like her, who just want to live and let live.

As inflation rages on, many people regard cryptocurrency as a silver bullet to escape the tyranny of fiat currency. But what happens when government tries to take over that tool for its own purposes? Matt Kibbe is joined by Paul Atkins, CEO and founder of Potomac Global Partners, to discuss the prospects for cryptocurrency in the near future, the FTX scandal, and the consequences of government attempts to control and regulate this exciting new market of competing currencies.

Midjourney and other artificially intelligent image generators are sending shock waves through the art industry as creators wonder whether they will soon be replaced by machines and whether human creativity and purpose are themselves endangered by technology. Matt Kibbe and the Free the People team are joined by artists Sean Robinson and Carson Grubaugh, who recently published the AI generated comic “The Abolition of Man,” to discuss and debate whether we should be optimistic or pessimistic about artificial intelligence’s role in the creative sphere going forward. Just how concerned should we be? Watch Part 2 on LivingtheLine: https://youtu.be/5oKmEj5_IyI

We are told that the world is full of dangers that only the U.S. military can neutralize — that our very freedoms depend on sending young men and women overseas to fight and die. But what if we have been actively seeking out, or even creating, these dangers in order to perpetuate the power of the military-industrial complex? Matt Kibbe talks to Chris Coyne, author of “In Search of Monsters to Destroy,” about the sometimes-hidden incentives that drive the political machine toward war at any cost. Cronyism, corporatism, and the need to distract from problems at home makes foreign enemies, real or imaginary, an attractive prospect for people with an interest in winning elections and wielding power over the American people. In Search of Monsters to Destroy: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1598133470/

When people talk about the need for government-sponsored medicine, they’ll often use words like “compassionate” and “humane,” but neither of those terms describe what’s been happening at the National Institutes of Health. Matt Kibbe and Justin Goodman, senior vice president of the White Coat Waste Project, talk about some of the horrific cases of animal cruelty and abuse that the government has been financing for years. We’re not just talking about fruit flies and nematode worms here. Dogs and cats are being tortured and killed, often with little to no scientific justification. And your tax dollars are paying for it. The mission of the White Coat Waste Project is to shine a light on these disgusting practices and hopefully put a stop to them once and for all.

Why are we taught that communism and fascism are opposites when both have led to the deaths of millions? Are conservatives for free markets or for corporatism? Is the Left anti-war or pro-war? Matt Kibbe is joined by Verlan and Hyrum Lewis, authors of “The Myth of Left and Right: How the Political Spectrum Misleads and Harms America,” to explain how the entire concept of the Left-Right political spectrum is a fantasy. Political tribes are not about ideas or philosophy. They are about supporting your team while demonizing the other — independent of any issue or political position. The delusion of the political spectrum is not only wrong but dangerous, preventing people from compromising, working across the aisle, or even recognizing the basic humanity of their political opponents. The Myth of Left and Right: https://a.co/d/4nYQlgy

Matt Kibbe talks to Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) about the recent fight over the Speaker of the House election. One of the concessions Kevin McCarthy offered in order to secure the position was the formation of the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, which is being likened to the Frank Church Committee, designed to investigate the CIA in the 1970s. This new committee will be focused on identifying ways in which the federal government is violating the civil liberties of American citizens, and putting a stop to it.

Matt Kibbe is joined by Justin Hart, author of “Gone Viral: How COVID Drove the World Insane,” to talk about the wide range of irrational behavior we saw during the pandemic, from shutting down the economy and quarantining the healthy rather than the sick to blindly trusting models that turned out to be grossly wrong and demonizing anyone who didn’t agree with the official narrative. The last three years have not only been a blow to our freedoms, but to our mental and physical health, and yet these problems continue to be ignored by the very people who were supposed to be looking out for us. The question of how so many smart people got this issue so wrong is one we have to keep asking if we want to prevent it from happening again in the future. Gone Viral: How COVID Drove the World Insane: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B2SB1WZ8/

Matt Kibbe gives his analysis of the current election for Speaker of the House taking place in the U.S. Capitol, then is joined by Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) for an inside look at the proceedings. For the first time in a hundred years, Congress has been unable to decide on a Speaker after multiple ballots. While insiders assumed that Rep. Kevin McCarthy would be the obvious choice for Speaker, he is having trouble securing the votes for the job, with members of the House Freedom Caucus demanding concessions in exchange for their support. There’s a lot at stake here, including how Congress goes about budgeting and spending taxpayer funding, transparency, and the ability of all Members to make their voices heard.

Matt Kibbe is joined by Sienna Mae Heath, host of “Leaving the Left for Liberty,” to talk about their different strategies for communicating ideas of liberty to the public and whether we should focus on a fact-based analysis or a more emotional approach that appeals to people’s intuitions about how the world works. On a practical level, both communication styles are necessary — both separately and together — with the heart and mind united in a single, perfect sphere. As a woman of Iranian descent, Sienna also reflects on the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement currently threatening to topple Iran’s authoritarian theocratic regime. Leaving the Left for Liberty: https://anchor.fm/leaving-left-for-liberty

Matt Kibbe is joined by Hannah Frankman, founder of Rebel Educator, to discuss the country's growing move toward education alternatives. Following massive school closures during the pandemic, many parents have discovered the failures of the government school system. Zoom classes exposed both what children were learning and how they were learning it, and neither turned out to very sensible in a world of increasing access to education resources. Frankman talks about her experience as a lifelong homeschooler and an education entrepreneur working with families seeking a new way to think about schooling. She argues that as bad as the COVID lockdowns were, they accelerated the move away from government schools by more than a decade, as many of the fears and misconceptions surrounding child-led education begin to fall away.

Matt Kibbe talks to Jennifer Sey, former brand president of Levi’s, about how she was pushed out of the company over her views on COVID lockdowns. In this off-the-cuff conversation, Sey is bursting at the seams to explain how she legged it from the jeans giant rather than button her lip, as it became increasingly clear that some political leaders were in the pocket of Big Pharma, telling pants-on-fire lies to the public, and implementing policies that were apparently made up on the fly. Not wanting to feel hemmed in, she buckled down and wrote a book, “Levi’s Unbuttoned,” about her experiences, in which she stitches up those who wanted to silence her and others like her.

Matt Kibbe is joined by the R Street Institute’s Adam Thierer and Wayne Brough to discuss the state of free speech on the internet. With Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter, we are in the middle of a national debate about the tension between censorship and free expression online. On the Right, many people are calling for government to rein in what they perceive as the excesses of Big Tech companies, while the Left wants the government to crack down on speech they deem dangerous. Both approaches make the same mistake of giving politicians authority over what we are allowed to say and hear. And with recent revelations about government agents leaning on social media companies to censor speech, it’s clear that when it comes to the online conversation, there’s no such thing as a purely private company.

Matt Kibbe is joined by Jack Hunter, co-founder of Based Politics, to discuss the results of the midterm elections, what we can learn from a lukewarm performance from Republicans, and the state of conservatism in the United States. One clear takeaway is that those Republicans who took a clear stand on liberty issues did better than their less principled counterparts. Thomas Massie, Rand Paul, Mike Lee, and Ron DeSantis won their races because voters recognized leaders who are willing to stand up against the tide of authoritarianism coming from Washington. In other cases, generic Republican candidates simply failed to capitalize on Americans’ widespread feelings of dissatisfaction, with a lack of inspiring candidates or a convincing case for how they would govern more responsibly.

Matt Kibbe is joined by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) to discuss the results of the recent midterm election. Many people were expecting Democrats to take a beating after COVID lockdowns, a weak economy, and record inflation, but for the most part, this didn’t happen. There are several explanations for this, including a number of lackluster Republican candidates and failure to sufficiently convince voters that Republicans would govern more responsibly. After all, many of the problems Americans now face started under a Republican president. If Republicans want to win in the future, they need to stand for something tangible. This is why Ron DeSantis had a good night, while moderate Republicans like Dr. Oz and Herschel Walker struggled. There’s also a conversation to be had about the role of Donald Trump in the GOP’s future, after many of his endorsements appeared to do more harm than good.

Matt Kibbe talks with economist Per Bylund about his new book, “How to Think About the Economy: A Primer.” Bylund explains what the economy actually is and how it works in terms that are easy for anyone to understand. Economics is not, as many believe, the study of money or finance, but a way of understanding human decision-making given the constraints of scarce resources. Per also explains the basics of the Austrian School of Economics, which differs in several important ways from the Chicago School and the Keynesian School, which are generally more popular with politicians and policymakers. How to Think About the Economy: A Primer: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1610167554/

Matt Kibbe sits down with Will Ruger, president of the American Institute for Economic Research, to discuss the theory of foreign policy realism and how we can apply it to international conflicts like the war in Ukraine. Contrary to what critics claim, realists are not isolationists. They recognize a role for the American military on the world stage. But at the same time, they think that involvement should be restrained and always focused on America’s clear national security interests. By contrast, the neoconservative approach imagines that the United States has a duty to order the world as the U.S. government sees fit, engaging in nation-building and taking sides in every conflict around the globe.