No Agenda Show - Episode 845 "Kaine and Unable"

Direct link to mp3 here. Show page here. 

In today's episode John and Adam deconstruct the Republic National Convention, Trump's speech, recent trouble in Munich, the WikiLeaks release of the DNC's emails, and a host of other issues. This episode is a splendid three hours. 

No Agenda Show - Episode 843 "Save the Date"

Show page here. Direct link to mp3 here. 

In this episode John and Adam discuss the failed coup in Turkey, the attacks in Nice, BLM, Ebola, and the recently declassified 28 pages from the 9/11 report among other topics you won't hear reportedly accurately in the mainstream media. 

No Agenda Show - Episode 842 "Cannmed"

Show page here. Mp3 here. 

In this episode, John and Adam discuss Pokemon Go, BLM, the war on guns, medical marijuana, and the 2016 elections. 

No Agenda Show - Episode 841 "Summer of Chaos"

Show page here. Direct link to 841 mp3 here.

In this episode, Adam and John deconstruct the media's coverage of #BLM, the Dallas shootings, Alton Sterling, and Philando Castille among other things you need to know about. 

24

Originally posted by Kevin Minus here.

My co-admin said this:  “In order for libertarians to gain a foothold in congress, we’d have to do two things libertarians generally hate doing. That is learn to play the political game and the art of compromise.”  

I think what he said was right but it needs to be expanded. 

First and foremost, we need to define what we mean by “libertarians”. LP members and ideologically libertarians are not always the same group. In fact, the latter outnumbers the former several times over. 

Let’s assume that we are talking about the LP members for a moment. In order for Libertarians to gain a foothold in congress, Libertarians needs to start with State and Local government positions and build upon those successes. Right now there are currently 143 LP members in office and 39 of those positions are partisan. For some perspective, consider this:  

There are almost 520,000 elected offices in the US. 0.000075% of those positions are claimed by Libertarian Party….. For the LP members, just getting elected to any position would be a victory. Dog catcher, State rep, city council, anything that they can get their hands on. The idea is to get exposure for the party and shift the numbers a big. This will probably take generations of work so I hope they are in it for the long haul…  

So let’s shift for a moment to the “ideological” libertarians. I think sisyphean task is best shown when you had a person like Rand Paul (who wasn’t even libertarian but close) polling at 2-3% throughout his entire time running for POTUS. I said once that Paul wasn’t running for Pastor of the libertarian unification church, I should have been more precise: Paul couldn’t run under the platform of L/libertarian unification even if he wanted to. No one wanted what he was selling.  

This is where my co-admins comments ring true. We do need to play ball with Liberals and Conservatives because they hold almost all of the power. I think our best bet politically is to get elected and start to influence both parties. Outside of the political process, we need more youth outright in order to raise a generation of people who are more likely to vote along *our* ideas (more on this later). If we are trying to win scores of people during POTUS elections, we have already lost. The Party nor the ideologically aligned will never win in this way. The numbers just aren’t on our side.  

The average voter does care about liberty but many do care about safety, who will build the roads, who will feed the poor and who will do xyz. If we approach them with our “The market will provide it” platitude, we will lose many people simply because of entrenchment. Even in places where the “market” is already providing it in some places such as water suppliers (more on this later as well).  

Put a different way, the average voter cares about liberty on their terms, defined by their ideology, their faith their community etc. This is not captured well in Individualism, especially in the Black Community. Liberty is safety and collective safety in the minds of many people. This is not an entirely bad position nor is it something L/libertarians should reject IMO. The critique L/libertarians should have is along the lines of who gets to draw the lines of community. A sort of libertarian communitarianism is what I think, *will* draw many people towards this way of thinking. In other words, we care about you and the people in your community. We want to empower you and your neighbors.  

I think this is the major issue is the LP members and the ideologically aligned libertarians do not want the same thing. I think there are similar goals, and the methods to get towards those goals are similar but there is significant conflict. Assuming he was still running, Rand Paul as a fully actualized libertarian aligned Republicans would be antithetical to the goals of the LP (because the LP and the GOP are competitors). The same goes for any libertarian aligned member of the “Liberty” caucus or any similarly aligned members of the Democratic Party. I think this is important to keep in mind, although not entirely necessary because of the low impact of the LP in politics. Ultimately I believe that the LP should resign attempting to get into federal positions and focus for the next decade on getting elected in State and local positions. I think ideologically aligned libertarians should focus on building coalitions in the existing major parties and inject as much libertarianism as possible into the mix. When those two goals are in conflict, the LP members should defer to the ideologically aligned libertarian in the major party. If there is none, proceed with the campaign process.

Black Conservatives and Black Libertarianism

By Kevin Minus and originally posted here.

First, I think that it is entirely possible to be a Black Conservative without any conflict, if and only if certain precautions are taken and certain mindsets are avoided.  However, there is a certain brand of Black Conservatism that is damaging to the former institution in order to support the latter. Reactionary Black Conservatives (RBC) are people that I dislike the most and people I believe, have the least to offer regarding moving the Black Community forward outside of more outright racist. In my personal experience, anyone who makes an attempt to live the mindset of a Liberal Democrat has the potential of becoming a RBC. I think this happens for several reasons but the main reason is that it takes a level of energy to overcome to Inertia of Liberalism. I think that while intellectualism and its pursuits are a preferred force to overcome inertia, they are far less accessible than what can what powers many over the cliff: hate and anger. While it may be perfectly rational to hate certain things and be angry about other things, left unchecked it can fester then metastasize and become your dominant ideology, without you realizing it. This happened to me in the past when I abandoned the left. I became conservative, latched onto the plentiful hate and eventually became a RBC for a time. It was only after I settled into myself, actually studied a little philosophy and did a self-examination did I realize what had happened and what I needed to change about myself and what I was consuming.

I see RBCs on my Facebook timeline who went down a much darker and deeper path than I, where hate of the left and self-hate commingled in a witches’ brew of ideology, dogma and contrarian fiction.  I see what I was and what I could have become.  I see famous ones, with their gaggles of non-black supporters, who use them as a source of validation, a security blanket and a tool to prevent discussion and analysis.  They are swords and shields. “So and So said this and he is black, therefore” should be prepended to someone of the videos that are shared from certain actors. In future post, I plan this will be elucidated but I think there is an easy test to see what sort of Black Conservative you are dealing with: Look at who makes up their support. The RBCs will almost always be more popular because of the role they play. The more principled Black Conservatives will be called traitors and race baiters and eventually be cast aside as something less Conservative.

One of my goals is to make sure that Black Libertarianism does not have the same relationship to Conservatism has to RBCs. I’ve seen some of the evidence of a similar movement in some of my interactions but I mostly think this is due to the great shadow that Conservatism casts across L/libertarians. It’s important for me personally that Liberty and Libertarianism be something that supports my Blackness and ethnic identity and not something that would cause a false choice.  A multifaceted and modular framework is what I believe the movement must be in order for it to survive in any usable form. I believe that is what Black Libertarians (and all Libertarians) must work towards. That is purpose of this blog. I hope in whatever small way I can, I help make New Liberty.

Thoughts on Jesse Williams

By Kevin Minus and originally posted here.

Maybe this makes me less woke than most but I wasn’t impressed by the Jesse Williams speech. It didn’t move me, I wasn’t inspired and ultimately, I didn’t think too much of it.  

Why? Well that’s twofold:  

0: A speech like that, while provocative, was done in the “safest” possible way possible. It’s the *BET* awards, not the Emmy’s. Racial commentary is almost a requirement whenever we gather for any reason in a post Black Lives Matters world.  

1: The content itself wasn’t fresh to me at all. In fact, I believe I could tag no less than 20 people on my Facebook feed and produce a speech that is similar in message or even more radical. It was measured, it was almost paint by the numbers “woke” commentary.  

The speech wasn’t that interesting but the responses where. White (and black) conservative commentators responded to an apparent attack with vapid retorts. Black commentators responding about how much they love it, while others bringing up colorism and its impact on the situation. This was not just limited to Facebook comments and memes either. It was a real Willie Lynch death spiral, predictable and depressing. Other commentators calling for “unity” and that we should accept “the message” from any source. 
Race is political and skin tone matters in this context.  

What about that message? What *exactly* is the point? Has Black Intelligensia really changed since the 60s or 70s? Where are the market oriented solutions? Even when talking about the market, race lathers, always in the foreground.  

I wish Jesse had said, look, go move your money to this bank or buy X product from this seller because they support the community. That, would have been evolutionary to me, but it also may have pissed off the advertisers.  

Stacey Dash called Jesse Williams a “Hollywood Plantation slave.” She wasn’t entirely wrong in one sense. Of course, since she is a right wing Conservative plantation slave, she has no room to talk. The free are those who absolutely control their own destiny or have relinquished the need to control said destiny. I doubt either of them meet either requirement. 

The next time a famous black person gets a platform and wants to talk about revolution, I want to hear about some stock tips or investment advise at scale. Give me some information to reduce my debt. Tell me how I can be healthier or how I can reduce stress in my life. Tell me how to start a sustainable business or double my income. I need help with my real problems, I don’t need a rallying cry to fight for progressive values. At some point, the (r)evolution must be commodified and turned into a usable product. I look forward to that day.

The No Agenda Show - Episode 839: "Spatchcock"

Adam and John deconstruct the media this time with a focus on the meeting between Bill Clinton and Loretta Lynch, drone strikes, the CIA, and other aspects of Gitmo Nation.

Show page here. Direct link to mp3 here. 

The No Agenda Show - Episode 838: "Hillary and the Vase"

For episode 838 Adam and John discuss the Brexit, Hillary Clinton, and all things "shut up, slave." Don't miss it.