HS 286 - The Dissolution of the Federal Government on the Ballot in 2020 with Adam Kokesh

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Welcome to the Holistic Survival show with Jason Hartman. The economic storm brewing around the world is set to spill into all aspects of our lives. Are you prepared? Where are you going to turn for the critical life skills necessary to survive and prosper? The Holistic Survival show is your family's insurance for a better life. Jason will teach you to think independently, to understand threats and how to create the ultimate action plan. Sudden change or worst case scenario, you'll be ready. Welcome to Holistic Survival, your key resource for protecting the people, places and profits you care about in uncertain times. Ladies and gentlemen, your host, Jason Hartman.

It's my pleasure to welcome Adam Kokesh to the show. He is the 2,022. 2020. Yes, you heard me right, 2020 Libertarian Party candidate for President of the United States. He's an activist, a radio host, and the best selling author of the book Freedom. Adam, welcome. How are you?

Hey, my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

It's good to have you on the show. So do we really need government for anything at all?

Well, it depends on how you define we and need. If you are the elites, the super class, the extremely rich in society, well then you certainly need government to keep the plebes in line, to keep the common folk exploited and oppressed and fighting amongst each other. You need government to make war so you can kill lots of people and make lots of money. You need government so that you can have a police state to keep people obedient. And you need a government so that you can steal from people in the name of taxation. So in that sense, absolutely, government is necessary if you want to run a violent racket, which is pretty much the definition of government. But when you talk about we, humanity, we the peace loving people of the world, we who just want to make the world a better place and help our fellow human beings, of course not. We do not need violence. And government is coercion and violence. Everything it does is either by force or backed up by the threat of force by coercion. And it's almost like a law of physics or any other scientific law. It's in human relations, those that are free of violence and coercion are always more conducive to human happiness than relationships where there is violence or the threat of violence present.

Okay, so I agree with you and I love the. I sense a bit of sarcasm in there too, and I love that. But you know, wouldn't we just decay into this state of lawlessness and anarchy. I mean, look at Somalia. They basically have no government and it's a disaster. I don't want to live there. What do you say to that?

Well, actually, part of the problem in Somalia is they have very many competing governments, little tribal warlords and religious courts that are competing and use the word anarchy. Wouldn't it be anarchy without government? Well, it depends on how you define the word, because there are two definitions and they're kind of opposite each other, which is really somewhat deliberate by those who have slandered or distorted the word to serve their purposes. Because by itself, true meaning anarchy means no rulers. That means no one ruling or owning or trying to control other human beings with violence. And if you mean the other definition, anarchy as in chaos and disorder and disharmony, well, then that's what government is. Government is anarchy. Government is chaos and disorder and violence. And that's what you get instead when you interrupt the natural spontaneous order of human beings who are capable of interacting peacefully in their best interest and supplant that with a violent, central coercive monopoly. So if you say we, you know, without government, well, you're saying without violence. So by definition things will be more peaceful.

In Somalia, where you say, and you rightly say, that there are lots of competing governments, wouldn't that just naturally spring up? Because there will always be people who are power hungry who try to gain an advantage over another. Isn't that what a court system and a police force is for? Well, supposed to be for. I'll put it that way.

Right.

You know, to keep the playing field level so everybody has an equal opportunity and an equal chance to thrive and no one can step on another.

Well, that's the great lie behind government, when the reality is that it exists to serve its sponsors. And you might make the case that, you know, having one slave owner instead of multiple slave owners fighting over you would make for more peace. Or you could be a well kept slave in that situation. Sure. But what we have in government is a centrally controlled monopoly on violence. And when you say, well, if we get rid of that, we might get more government, it might come back, there will always be people. That's certainly a potential that needs to be examined. But that's kind of like telling your doctor when he says, okay, look, you've got cancer, we're going to cut it out with a very easy procedure. It's a very easy cancer. We're going to cut it out and you're going to be fine. No More cancer? You wouldn't tell the doctor? Well, hold on a second. I don't really want you to take my cancer out because you know it might come back like. No, you get rid of the cancer undoubtedly as soon as you possibly can. It is a threat to your health. It is a threat to your life. Eliminate it. But on the possibility that we eliminate government, and it would have to come about with a change in paradigm, people embracing universal nonviolence would be required to have a fully stateless society. But when, when we get to that point, in order for someone to form a new government or to try to control and exploit other people's violence, they generally need cooperation. They need other people to buy into this. One psychopath on his own, threatening you with a gun, trying to take your wallet or half your income every day is soon going to be killed and isolated and put out of society. But if he has Congress and an IRS and laws backing him up, well, then now he's going to get rewarded handsomely for his psychopathic behavior. But in order for a stateless society to produce a new state, that is for a new violent monopoly to come up after government has been eliminated, there would have to be someone convincing lots of people around them to get a new government. And you can imagine, we eliminate government, we eliminate war, we eliminate the police state, and we have all these new, peaceful, harmonious ways of interacting and achieving the legitimate functions once used as an excuse for all of its illegitimate functions. Then this person would have to get up and say, hey, everybody, Remember when we had wars? Remember when we killed people at random? Remember when we had the police state? Remember when you guys had to pay those protection racket people, the Mafioso calling themselves government? Wasn't that wonderful? Let's do that again. And I imagine in that scenario that person is going to get shouted down pretty darn fast. And I'm really not too concerned about it if we do this properly. And by that I mean localization, decentralization of power, taking governments apart from the top down and ensuring that there is a peaceful transition that shows people the more local power is. And of course, the ultimate destination of this process would be to take it down to the divine individual with no state whatsoever. The better and happier we all will be. And that's something that is very easy to demonstrate even using current examples. But if we can do this where there is a critical mass of the population who understands why they're happier and why everyone is better off, then I don't think we'll have any problem moving Forward from there without any major steps backwards.

So if you ran the country, then how would you do this? You know, I've often said if I were president, I would just somehow try to cut the size of government by about 10% per year for seven years and things would just get a lot better. Well, because I wouldn't be president for 10 years. I'd only be president for eight.

Well, then at least you'd get eight. Well, if you only get to be president for eight, you better do 12 and a half percent.

No, but I think, I don't think, you know, look it, you know, I don't go that far in terms of being a libertarian. I believe that my friend Dan Sullivan, who's been on the show a few times, he's a business coach and business speaker and consultant and he has. In any 10 story government building, if you just eliminate everybody above the fourth floor. Most of us like the government. We can see. We like having the police, we like having the fire department, we like having some basic services. Those aren't real problematic. The problem comes here.

What do you like about. Sorry, I just gotta ask. What do you like about the police? Is it how they enforce victimless crime laws? How they help the state enforce taxation rules? How they do the will of politicians instead of serving the people?

Well, you know, you can, you can say all that. No, I don't like, like any of those things, but I like the fact that the police protect me and they protect my home and my property. They do.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Where do you, where do you live? Because everywhere that I live, where they have police, they just show up afterwards and write reports.

Stop any crimes or prevent, you know, they don't provide any like actual protection services. You know, when they're patrolling out on the street, they're enforcing traffic laws, which are just an excuse to steal more money for politicians and hunting down people who are committing victimless crimes, which is criminal. I mean, the police are criminal when they're doing that.

I don't completely agree with you there. Because sometimes when police patrol, they prevent crimes by their presence. Okay. And also they prevent crime. Hold on.

No, no, no, hold on.

Let me just finish, Let me just finish my thought for a second. Okay, you can answer. I'll give you time. Okay? Don't worry. And they also prevent crime because people are in fear of police. I believe that if we didn't have police and we didn't have courts that people would rape and pillage. Okay? And those aren't victimless crimes. They don't do that, well, at least most people don't do that because they are in fear of the repercussions. Is that not a fair statement?

Are you saying that if it wasn't for police that you would go out raping and pillaging or you know, someone who would do this?

I don't know who I know that might do it. I don't think I would do it. But human history has definitely proven that people have trouble living peaceably together.

Right? Usually those people are called soldiers and cops who use violence against innocent people. So it always. What you're talking about is primarily government here.

Listen, you're not gonna get any disagreement with me that government is the problem a lot of times. And the police can be very brutal. There's no question about that. But they also do protect.

You're right that we need public safety services and we want dispute resolution services and justice services.

So how do we do that?

Well, peacefully, of course, with cooperation, not with violence. I mean, let me ask you a more fundamental question. When is it okay to use violence against someone who's acting peacefully and simply exercising their rights on their property, as.

Long as they're not interfering with anybody else? Nobody? Never. Of course not.

Then government can't exist because government is based on taxation and taxation is theft. That's, you know, using force against someone who's, who's acting peacefully.

Hey, I agree.

Most people say that they don't understand that, that if you don't your taxes, you will be looking down the barrel of a gun. Okay, I totally get it. Listen, I'm a huge Ayn Rand reader. I have followed her stuff for many, many years, and I completely understand and agree with that. I'm just saying, I'm talking about the mechanics of how you really do this. I've interviewed a lot of libertarians on my shows over the years, and I just want to get down to the brass tack mechanics because everybody, including myself, always has like their three things that they, they don't want to give up and they want government to provide. So how would you provide? Say like you say, the public safety services. Right. The substitute for the police. How would you do that?

First of all, what we're talking about is preventing violence, right? We're talking about, we want to minimize the violence.

And theft. Okay?

Yes, and theft. Okay. Well, that being said, if you talk about theft, I mean, if you look at the amount of theft that happens in the world today, 99.99% of it is done by government in the form of taxation. So you want to eliminate Theft, bam. You get rid of government, you've gotten rid of at least 99% of the theft in the world. If you want to talk about violence, about 90% of the violence in the world, you look at the wars and the police state and all the enforcement of government. About 90% of the violence of the world is done in the name of government. And of the remaining 10%, about 90% of that is caused by government indirectly, through the war on poverty and the war on drugs and the restrictions on economic freedom that drive people to desperation. Get rid of government right away. Bam. You got rid of about 99% of the crime. Now, of the remaining crimes in the world, you've got crimes or violence at least you've got crimes of passion and crimes of motive, right? Crimes of passion no institution is going to do anything about if someone just loses their cool and decides to be violent against someone. Unless you have an immediate security presence right there, no institutional framework is going to limit that, except in a sense with crimes of incentive where you can so disincentivize crimes that even crimes of passion are disincentivized by appropriate justice. Remember, punishment is hurting someone for doing something that you didn't like, whereas justice is making the victims whole and protecting your community. So for crimes of incentive, this is where private protection services would clearly do a far, far better job than government. And today, with a government system, with a monopoly on justice services, dispute resolution services, what you end up with is the same problems with any monopoly services which are inadequate, inaccessible, misdirected, and not accountable to the people they're supp serving. So it actually encourages petty crimes among poor people to have a justice system that makes it inaccessible to poor people. If you have something stolen from you, a bike, your house is burglar, you know, like you don't have any legitimate recourse in the current justice system, you can call the police and they'll write a report, but even if they catch the guy, and in my case, I had a motorcycle stolen that I bought when I got back from my deployment from Fallujah in 2004. And I got the guy who stole it, got caught by the police, was held accountable in the courts for the $6,000 restitution damage claim that I got against him. But what did I get? Nothing. Because the government spent tens of thousands of dollars dealing with this guy, incarcerating him, trying him, moving him around. And as a result, I was punished twice as a taxpayer and as a victim of this individual theft, theft on top of the government theft so what we have is a system here that is really failing us. What we should have is a system that is more accessible, more equitable, and better able to deal with all of the petty crimes of incentive in a way that holds people accountable. Obviously, under today's government system, we have a terrible lack of accountability and people are allowed to get away with all kinds of crimes as long as they can hire lawyers, as long as they can buy off the politicians and get their laws passed in their favor. I mean, it is a disaster. And the reason is you have a monopoly. I want competition. And the way that we achieve this is a lot easier than you might think. I don't want a revolution, I want an evolution. What we can do is take government apart from the top down, decentralized power back to our communities. And when it gets down to the community level, that's where you can build up the free market, non violent, non coercive systems that actually will displace government and render it fully obsolete.

Okay, so you've probably heard the saying that you can't hear the dogs that don't bark, right? Have you heard that? Are you familiar with that idea? Yeah. So I agree with you that government does commit most of the violence in the world, you know, with their war machine and so forth. I couldn't agree more. I totally agree with you. I just want you to understand that. But what happens is that when you create this vacuum, if government were to disappear, yes, the wars would diminish dramatically.

That's why I'm not advocating for an immediate disillusion of everything. I want government to be localized and to have a gradual transition where it's displaced slowly as we come up with the peaceful solutions that render it obsolete. No, and you're right, there is the potential of a power vacuum if you don't have the paradigm shift first. If not enough people understand that we need to give up our attachments to violence, we need to give up. Well, violence gets me welfare. Well, violence gets me roads. Well, violence gets me protection. Well, violence gets me pretty politicians on television. No, if it's done by violence, it's bad for humanity. And we all have to understand that we need to give up our attachments to that violence.

Okay, What? Haven't I asked you that? Maybe you just want to share with the audience.

I'm preparing to run for President in 2020 on the platform of the immediate dissolution of the entire United States federal government. Right now we are in illinois on a 60 stop in two month exploratory tour, going all over the country. And so far, the response and enthusiasm has been incredible. We've been getting averaging over 15 sign ups at every location of people who want to be volunte the campaign, who want to be delegates for us in the libertarian nominating process. And the platform here is extremely simple. We're going to have one executive order that is written out in advance that details, to the greatest extent possible, what we can do in advance. At least the process of dissolving the federal government in a peaceful, orderly manner and making the 50 states the highest government authorities in the land. So we would have department heads appointed as custodians. You wouldn't have a secretary of defense. You would have a custodian of the Department of Defense whose job would be to deal with those resources in an orderly way, sell what we can, and return to the states what would be appropriate. And I would no longer be president. After signing this one executive order, I tell people I'm running for not President of the United States, because I would, upon signing this order, become custodian of the government of the United States of America. And the only power that I would retain would be the ability to appoint or replace department heads as necessary for carrying out a preordained process.

But there still would be a federal government and a, quote, United States. Right. It would not make the states individual. Well, then the United States would basically disappear and there'd be 50 countries essentially.

Right, right. And we could go back to just being America and back on our way to being the land of the free, the home of the brave, and a beacon to the world leading the way forward for humanity.

So it would be 50 separate states, 50 separate countries, basically. Right.

50 separate governments. Yes.

Yes. Okay. And no federal government whatsoever. Wow, that is a radical idea.

I mean, would you say that the founders were wrong in saying.

No, I don't think they were wrong. The founders, their original intent was that the government would do very limited things. You know, secure the blessings of liberty, you know, blah, blah, blah, promote the general welfare. That's been blown way out of proportion.

I mean, it's the idea that provide the national defense. They have the idea of a national country. Okay. It wasn't a bunch of separate states in their eyes. So you're not in line with the original intent though.

I mean, are you saying that they were wrong about the system being appropriate for the population it was written for? Because if that's the case, if the founders were right about that, as big as the country is, we should definitely have split up a long time ago. So that single government was overseeing too many people. But I think the most important thing that the founders were right about, that they were against a standing army. And really this is the only significant objection we've had to this platform is don't we need a military to keep us safe? But there's a reason the founders were against a standing army. They knew that a military was the monopoly government version of the free market answer to defense, which was the militia. And the fact is that having a military makes us less safe. You have to understand, wars are not fought between countries. They're fought by governments using violence to expand their protection rackets. And when you tell your government, please tax me, please rule me, please subject me to your monopoly protection services, that makes you a really juicy target for another government that would come in and govern you. And if someone had to start from scratch at this point, it would probably take them a couple hundred years before they could get to the point of screwing over the American people as thoroughly as we are being screwed today, where the average American works for government half the year. So the greatest defense for a country is.

That would be beautiful. The original intent of the founding fathers was never to have full time politicians. My God, that is the biggest disaster ever, right?

Yeah. And the greatest defense for any country or any area is a population that refuses to be governed by anyone. You give up liberty for security, you get neither. And if you want to do one thing to make this country safer, and I can tell you this from my experience, because just like with any monopoly, you have the same problems with the military monopoly and the adventurism that I was a part of in Fallujah. I saw we were making enemies faster than we could kill them. And if you want to do one thing to make America safer, the single most important thing is to eliminate the United States military.

Well, okay, so wouldn't Putin come in and take Texas's oil then? Or whatever state had, you know, a bunch of resources that someone else wanted, whether it be North Korea or Russia or whomever, wouldn't they just come in and take it? Because, you know, I mean, we are our militia with a few AK47s and the AR15. AR15, you know.

They wouldn't be able to fight off another government. I mean, the other governments aren't going to go away with their huge weapons systems. You know, you're not going to have militia of a bunch of guys in Texas being able to fight them off.

You know what Admiral Yamamoto said about not wanting to invade?

I know 300 a gun behind every Blade of grass. Yeah, I love that.

A rifle behind every blade of grass. And if you care.

But that was then, this is now. It's different.

No, no, it's different. Different weapons in order to preserve human life. Then what you want is the far more efficient, effective, free market answer of the guerrilla militia defense. Less of our people will die compared to theirs if we do not line up our men in silly costumes and make it really easy to kill them. The guerrilla militia defense is far more effective and it's a more effective deterrent. And unless you're an empire, it is.

May I just interrupt you for a moment? You are absolutely right when you're dealing with other guerrilla militias or other armies with infantry, but you're wrong when it comes to someone dropping a neutron bomb. Japan didn't know that existed yet in World War II. Okay, I agree with you, but it just, it's a different world. I mean, isn't that a fair statement?

Right? No. And actually that makes things better for us, the fact that it's a different world and more high tech and more connected because the people of Russia aren't going to support an aggressive action against a peaceful people. They only do that when you give them a government to be violent and give them an excuse to go after someone else. So one of the benefits of eliminating the government is that we immediately become twice as rich. I mean, almost literally every American is making twice as much money. And that's nothing to say for all of the kind of economic opportunities, you know, the dogs that don't bark that have been squandered and squashed by government regulation, businesses that don't exist, jobs that don't exist, opportunities that don't exist because of government taxes and regulation. So if we make this stand, or I should say, when America decides to lead the world forward in freedom once again, we are immediately going to be so much more prosperous that the people of Russia are going to go, hey, what's going on over there? Oh, they got rid of their government. Gee, that's going really well for them. We should do the same thing too.

Hopefully that trend would catch on.

Yes, they're not going to be so angry at the American people that they're going to go, hey, Russian government, you're holding us back. You should go and hold back the American people too. No, they're going to be angry with their government and they are going to stop doing the government thing themselves and they're going to join us in freedom, just as the rest of the world has generally followed the trends of The American Revolution, right?

Yeah. Very interesting, very interesting thoughts and discussion, Adam. Give out your website and tell people where they can follow you and learn more and potentially support your campaign if they, they're interested.

I appreciate that. And I wrote a book when I was in jail which is ironically now banned in US jails and prisons called Freedom and it's a hundred pages. It's a free three hour audiobook. It's free in every digital format possible, including the audiobook on my website, the freedom line.com or the freedom Line Calm. And you can find my YouTube channel there where we just hit 200,000 subscribers and 50 million views. You can find me on social media, sign up for my email list and if you join the forums there, you can sign up to represent your county, if your county hasn't already been claimed by someone else or if you want to get involved with the campaign at the central national level with everything that we're doing right now to organize volunteers, to organize delegates for 2018 and 2020. And really, you know, Jason, I think, I think what's really beautiful about this platform is how it has the potential to bring people together without even making them give up their attachment to violence. If you're a liberal, you live in a liberal state. You're a conservative, you live in a conservative state.

Well, would you rather be governed locally where you have a chance of your voice and your vote counting or by someone in some far off capital? And I think the answer there is pretty obvious to most Americans. So localization, decentralized in power, bringing it back to the communities and eventually down to the individual. That's what's going to bring people together. Because every human being is a libertarian. They might not have all figured it out yet, but they're all libertarian because they all are independent consciousnesses that have desires and a will and that will wants to be respected. Every human being at some level wants to be free, wants to live in peace and harmony with their fellow human beings. And it is only the fear of government that leads us to fall for its protection racket. So anyway, all of that. Thefreedomline.com thefreedomline.com Excellent stuff.

Excellent stuff. Adam, thank you so much for joining us and telling us about your very interesting ideas. Good luck to you.

My pleasure. Thank you, sir.

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