Kibbe on Liberty

The Deep State, that collection of unelected bureaucracies that run the government and maintain the status quo in spite of what the American people vote for, has been identified as one of the biggest threats to liberty and democracy faced by our country. Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy wants to dismantle it. But can it be done? At this year’s annual Porcupine Freedom Festival in New Hampshire, Matt Kibbe caught up with the presidential hopeful, as well as former FBI agent Kyle Seraphin, to find out what the chief executive can actually do to rein in D.C.’s alphabet soup agencies and restore accountability to the American government.

Everyone would like to have access to better, healthier food, but government regulations favor huge factory farms while making it difficult for the thousands of independent farmers across America to reach consumers. Joel Salatin, owner of Polyface Farm, recently testified at a congressional hearing about letting local producers sell beef and pork products directly to consumers. Government regulators are terrified that loosening regulations on small farmers will result in unsafe food, but there’s every reason to believe that local food is safer and more accountable to the consumers than these large, anonymous producers.

Won’t someone please think of the children? From time immemorial, this has been the battle cry of the moral guardians who want to control what you’re allowed to see, hear, or think. Matt Kibbe talks to Shoshana Weissmann, digital director at the R Street Institute, about the ways in which Congress is attempting to regulate speech online. Under the guise of protecting children, there are plans to build permanent databases of users’ private information, strip the anonymity protections from the internet, and centrally control what kinds of content users are allowed to experience. This is nothing more than an emotional manipulation tactic to claim that anyone who still defends freedom of speech must be against children’s safety, which is obviously not the case.

As progressive politics infect more and more sources of popular entertainment, it's becoming increasingly rare to find themes of independence, freedom, and self-determination in movies and television. Matt Kibbe is joined by Reason Magazine's Eric Boehm, who points out that "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" is an exception to this rule, containing many of the same elements that define the heroes and heroines in the novels of Ayn Rand. The story about a woman pursuing her dreams to become a stand-up comedian celebrates artistic integrity, personal ambition, and not allowing the petty envy or pessimism of others to stand in the way of a life worth living. At a time when the politicians in Congress are arguing about how many trillions of your dollars they are going to spend next, it's all the more important that we take inspiration from those who, fictional or otherwise, are willing to stand on principle and do the right thing, even in difficult circumstances. 

In today’s hypersensitive environment of political correctness, it seems like nobody can even take a joke. We’re told that speech is violence and that certain subjects are off limits for humor. But comedian Lou Perez believes that, now more than ever, we have a responsibility to hold a mirror up to society using the oldest and best form of social criticism: jokes. Perez and Matt Kibbe discuss their new comedy series, “Comedy Is Murder,” produced by Free the People. They take a look at the first two episodes, which tackle the absurdity of gender politics among homicide detectives and question whether gun owners are willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to defend their families.Comedy Is Murder: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL36_JCmmBwZo1VpgR9vhdI33iCyOxOIuV

With the recent rash of beer commercials insulting the companies’ own customers in order to score cheap political points, it’s reasonable to ask what’s going on. Traditional economics holds that companies are profit-maximizing entities, so why are Bud Light and Miller Lite still willing to virtue-signal when it comes at the cost of boycotts and plummeting stock prices? Matt Kibbe and Jennifer Sey, former brand president for Levi’s, discuss how the impact of ESG scores has altered the behavior of corporations that now believe that being “on the right side of history” is more important than making good products and serving customers.

The Republican-controlled House of Representatives just passed a bill reportedly designed to secure the border, but what they're not telling you is that it also contains a national identification program called E-Verify that employers will be required to use before hiring anyone, even American citizens. Matt Kibbe and Thomas Massie talk about the dark implications of such a program, comparing it to China's social credit system and vaccine passport program that was conceived during the COVID-19 lockdowns. Not only will E-Verify create the infrastructure needed for the government to keep constant tabs on its citizens, but we already know from existing programs how susceptible these systems are to mistakes, meaning that thousands of innocent, law-abiding Americans will be denied employment through clerical errors alone.

America prides itself on being a classless society. We abolished the peer system of England and replaced it with the concept of social mobility and the belief that all men are created equal. But in March 2020, the country was suddenly and forcibly divided into essential and non-essential workers. One class was expected fix pipes and remove garbage while the other watched Netflix and waited around for their groceries to be delivered by virus-ridden serfs. Matt Kibbe talks with Jeffrey Tucker, founder and president of the Brownstone Institute, about the surprising ways in which public health policy transformed the most egalitarian and meritocratic society on the planet into one in which your social status is not determined by your effort, intelligence, or ingenuity, but by the dictates of some cloistered bureaucrat.

In a New York Times interview, Dr. Anthony Fauci claimed that he sleeps just fine, but if he’s at all concerned about the devastating consequences of his actions, he should have a lot of sleepless nights. Matt Kibbe and Sen. Rand Paul discuss the series of terrible decisions Fauci made during his handling of the pandemic and his continued equivocation and evasion under questioning. As ranking Republican on the Homeland Security Committee, Sen. Paul is demanding answers: Where did the novel coronavirus actually come from? Who funded it? Is gain-of-function research still going on, and could it lead to more man-made viruses being released in the future?

For decades, we’ve been told that only top-down mandates from the government can organize people to protect the environment, but in many cases, the federal government actually does more harm than good. Matt Kibbe talks with Chris Barnard of the American Conservation Coalition about the ways in which free-market innovation is a superior form of environmental protection. Not only do innovators and entrepreneurs — despite being held back by bureaucratic red tape and anti-nuclear bias — have the tools to produce better and cleaner technology, but free markets also create the conditions in which ordinary people can afford to care about the environment in the first place. It’s hard to get people to care about a potential environmental catastrophe in the future if they are struggling to put food on the table today. Building a strong economy and achieving energy independence are two of the best ways to practice responsible ecology.