#464 – Dave Smith: Israel, Ukraine, Epstein, Mossad, Conspiracies & Antisemitism
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The following is a conversation with Dave Smith, an outspoken and at times controversial antiwar libertarian, comedian, and podcast host. And now a quick few second mention of his sponsor. Check them out in the description. It's the best way to support this podcast. We got Call of Duty for video game fun, Tax Network USA for, figuring out your tax problems, Notion for collaborating with your mates and integrating AI in the whole process, Shopify for selling stuff online, and BetterHelp for figuring out the problems of your mind. Choose wisely, my friends. If you're watching or listening to thi
Yeah. So there's almost like anything, like, with left wing schools of thought or right wing schools of thought, there's many different camps and different thinkers. And so within the kind of broader theme of libertarianism, there was a lot of influence from, people like Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman, Thomas Sowell. Those were, I think, some of the more mainstream figures. And then there's kind of like the Ron Paul brand of libertarianism, which is kind of distinct from that other camp where there's much more of an emphasis on foreign policy. All of them kind of fall into the, radical monarchist p
a big fan of Ron Paul. Can you explain what you admire about him?
A big fan is an understatement. I think Ron Paul is like the greatest living American hero. I I I revere him on the level of of the founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson or George Washington. Number one, I mean, all of the major issues that he he was correct in his understanding of them, his diagnosis of what caused these problems, and his solutions. And in hindsight, there's just like a million different examples of where almost everybody today would agree, even though his ideas were very controversial at the time, be like, oh my god. If we had just listened to Ron Paul about that, we'd be so mu
Yeah. As you said, there's integrity there. Can you speak to the ideas that Ron Paul represents? Like, he says some of the things he's been right about. Maybe can you speak about the economics, the Fed, and maybe war and being anti military intervention?
Well, I think it comes it all came from kind of the same central thesis, which is that the highest political value ought to be liberty, And and that, you know, the government by its very nature is an instrument of force and tyranny, and that therefore, the more government you have, the less liberty you have. I think he also was he was way ahead of his time in in, like, really calling out the corruption in DC. And I think that's one of the things that's kind of that's that it's a common through line between the Federal Reserve and, government spending and, of course, this crazy war industry tha
Yeah. We should also say that there's some degree of truth that the battle is not just militaristic. It's also cultural. And then many of those parts of the world don't want other people's values forced onto them. Right.
But the way that George w Bush and Dick Cheney and every right wing host in America and Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly and, like, everybody, what they were saying is that they hate that we're free. Mhmm. Whereas it was much closer to saying, like, they don't like us imposing on them. Even, like, all the hardcore neocons, Brett Stevens, the New York Times, he wrote this piece on the twentieth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, so, 02/2023 to cheerlead the war in Iraq. And he goes through the whole piece, and there's not one mention of the million people who died in the war. You know, he he li
Yeah. We'll have to remember the thing that's difficult to me
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