All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show.
I am the Director of the Libertarian Institute, Editorial Director of Antiwar.com, author of the book Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and I've recorded more than 5,000 interviews going back to 2003, all of which are available at scotthorton.org.
You can also sign up for the podcast feed.
The full archive is also available at youtube.com slash scotthorton show.
All right, you guys, check it out.
On the line, I've got Jacob Hornberger.
He's a libertarian and he's running for president.
Hey, welcome to the show.
How are you doing?
It's always an honor, Scott, to be here on your show, and I'm doing great.
Thank you very much.
All right.
Good deal.
Happy to have you here.
So how come you're running for president?
Well, the simple answer is I want to live in a free society, and as you know, I've been battling for a free society for some 30 years in the educational arena with the Future of Freedom Foundation, which I founded in 1989, and which I should emphasize is not endorsing my candidacy because they can't do that.
But I finally decided that at this point in my life, I've gotten to a point where I just want to throw myself directly in the battle for a free society by taking these people on who have destroyed our freedom in the political arena.
And so I've decided the best way to do that is to seek the Libertarian Party presidential nomination in the hopes that if I were accorded that honor, it would be a pleasure to go against Donald Trump and anybody the Democrats put up and take them to account for what they've done to the freedom of the American people.
All right, now, so all the candidates running for the Libertarian Party nomination right now are all a bunch of really great, really principled Libertarians because so far, Amash hasn't entered.
So what advantage do you bring to the race?
Well, I think you make a good point.
I mean, I know most of these candidates, I've been going to different Libertarian Party conventions from the spring and summer, and all I've been doing is just giving a speech called adhering to principle is everything.
And so I've gotten to know a lot of these guys and and we're we're friends.
I mean, we all I know most of them.
I don't know all of them.
And we're all on the same page.
I mean, we're Libertarians.
We want to we want to achieve a free society.
And so it's an honor to be in the same race as these guys, especially ones that I know and that are friends of mine.
But by the same token, there's there's differences.
I mean, we know that there's always differences in the Libertarian movement, the Libertarian Party.
But what makes our movement philosophically an exciting, dynamic movement, that there are differences, things like, you know, should there be intellectual property rights or limited government versus no government, so forth?
It's a it's a powerful intellectual environment in which we find ourselves.
And so what I'm bringing to the party is to say, look, for 30 years, I've advanced the principled uncompromising case for for liberty.
And that means the dismantling of infringements on liberty.
No reforms, no vouchers, no gradual gradualism, reducing welfare, warfare, state programs.
Bring all the troops home from everywhere, discharging, do it immediately, dismantle welfare state programs, dismantle the drug war.
So what I'm going to be talking about is liberty.
That's the centerpiece of my campaign and what we need to do to achieve a free society, which necessarily entails presenting this principled case for liberty.
Not only because it's right, Scott, but because I'm convinced that I've been convinced for decades that it's really the only practical solution, that libertarianism really does work.
It is the it is the solution to the many woes that besiege our society.
All right.
So let's talk about that, because you know what?
That's also what I think, too.
Otherwise, I guess I wouldn't be a libertarian.
And I also, you know, maybe I'm a little more alarmist than most, but I think America's in real trouble in a lot of ways.
And so I wonder, what are your priorities and what's your pitch to the average American, not libertarians listening, but to any American who might hear this?
What is it that you think they care most about and what is it you're going to do about it?
Well, we've got to talk in terms of both moral principles and practical applications, because, you know, people are interested in, I think, what is the moral case for liberty?
What do we have to do morally to get this country back on the right track?
Other people say, you know, what's the practical solution to all these problems that America has?
I mean, everywhere you look, there's a crisis.
And unfortunately, libertarianism answers both of those those questions and those issues.
For example, one of my top priorities is foreign policy and foreign interventionism.
My position is bring all the troops home immediately from everywhere, North Korea, Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Africa, Latin America, Europe.
Just bring them all home and do more than that.
Just discharge them.
They're not necessary.
That, in other words, restore America's founding principle of non-interventionism, while at the same time doing everything you can to restore a limited government republic instead of a national security state, which is what we've had since World War II.
That's a necessary prerequisite for a free society.
Number two, end this drug war, which is nothing more than Jim Crow mass incarceration.
It's the most bigoted, racially bigoted government program since segregation.
It takes away the right to vote of countless African-Americans.
And so I would say, don't just settle for legalizing marijuana.
Legalize the whole thing, meth, heroin, cocaine, you know, as harmful, as destructive as these substances might be.
That's no business of the criminal justice administration.
This is this is a case for private rehab programs like Alcoholics Anonymous or some narcotics rehab group or counseling groups or something.
But that's the only practical solution also.
I mean, for one thing, morally, people have a right to ingest whatever they want to ingest.
It's none of the government's business.
But secondly, it's the only way to get rid of the drug cartels and drug gangs and drug lords and all this violence in Mexico.
And there's no other solution to the drug war crisis than to just legalize drugs.
And that would immediately end the crisis.
It would put all the drug cartels out of business overnight.
There's also the health care that I'd be concentrating on that, you know, the battle between the two parties is, you know, well, we're Medicare for some or Medicare for all.
They're not recognizing that would destroy what was the finest health care system in history was Medicare and to a certain extent, Medicaid.
We had the best system in the world.
Prices were low and stable.
Nobody had major medical insurance.
And it just it was like going to the doctors was like going to the grocery store.
You know, nobody has grocery store insurance to protect against soaring prices of groceries.
That's the way it was.
Medicare comes into existence.
That's when the whole thing just got destroyed.
So the only practical solution and I underline and underscore and circle the word only, the only solution is to get rid of Medicare and Medicaid.
There is no other solution to the health care crisis.
And once you do that, you get rid of this cancer on the body politic, then you start getting a healthy health care system again and you're back on the road to the finest health care system in the world.
OK, so from those three issues, a lot of things flow.
You know, the out of control federal spending and debt now exceeding twenty two trillion dollars with big spender Trump at another trillion dollars this year.
The Federal Reserve, which is, of course, designed to accommodate the debt and fund this out of control welfare warfare state spending.
So you got all that.
Then you've got, you know, fourth issue is the war on immigrants, which will be a leading position of mine.
There is no other solution to the immigration crisis, which was going on, has been going on for decades than open borders.
That is the only solution.
There is no other solution.
And it's also the moral solution because it encompasses the right of people to peacefully pursue happiness in their own way.
And it gets rid of all the death and the suffering that a system of immigration controls has foisted on the American people and foreign people.
So those are my principal issues.
But they all revolve around the concept of human liberty, which is going to be the core feature of my campaign.
All right, well, let me follow up on one there on immigration, because it sounds like what you say might appeal to people who lean left, but to people who lean right to them, the crisis, of course, is just too much immigration.
So to open the border to them sounds like you want to call total surrender, hand our country over to somebody else.
So what do you say to them?
I'd say that that in endorsing a system of immigration controls, they're endorsing socialism, which they profess to be against.
I mean, they're attacking Sanders for being a socialist, for Warren to be a socialist.
Well, and this system of immigration controls we have is a socialist system.
It's based on the socialist principle of central planning, that the government plans in a central manner, how many immigrants are going to be permitted to come in, from what countries, what the quotas are going to be, what the qualifications are.
I mean, this is classic socialist central planning.
And as Ludwig von Mises said, and as people in Venezuela and Cuba and North Korea could verify, this always produces planned chaos.
Well, what better term to describe what's happening on the border?
It's just planned chaos.
You have these multitudes of people trying to get in to get jobs, and you got farmers and other industries, like the crabbing industry in the Northeast, the crops are rotting in the fields, other businesses are going bankrupt because they don't have enough workers.
Well, this is planned chaos.
So you've got right-wingers supporting planned chaos and socialism instead of the free market, which is really what open borders are.
It's just the free market.
We have an open borders policy here in the United States.
People are free to cross state borders, county borders, city borders.
There's no guards there or anything.
Nobody keeps track of who's crossing the border.
And so there's this harmony of people.
And nobody cares, are you from California, are you from Montana?
That's like an item of curiosity, but it's not something important.
Well, the minute you open the borders, people would be free to come into the United States.
They don't have to become American citizens.
Citizenship is a totally different concept.
They retain their citizenship, and they get jobs, they buy things, and nobody would even know who's a citizen and who isn't.
Nobody would care.
The crisis would be over.
I mean, like when you go to Las Vegas, as an example, you have thousands of people walking down the streets.
Lots of them are speaking foreign languages.
Does anybody care?
I mean, does anybody go up to them and say, I want to make sure you're a citizen?
Or when you go into McDonald's and you hear people in the back speaking Spanish, do you care?
I mean, do you go and say, man, I better go check and see what their citizenship is?
Nobody cares what the citizenship is.
You're dealing with just regular human beings, except on election day.
Election officials would go and ask people for their citizenship cards or whatever, voter registration.
But other than that, it's just people.
And that's why this is the only practical solution.
It gets rid of the planned chaos.
It deals with peaceful, harmonious interaction between human beings.
And it's consistent with moral and religious principles, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, where it's treating people according with a golden rule.
That's what life and liberty and harmony are all about, and peace are all about, instead of people drowning with their children in the Rio Grande, dying of thirst on some desert in the back of some 18-wheeler of dehydration.
That's not a great nation.
That's not a free nation.
All right.
Well, so you got my vote, Mr. President.
And I'll tell you, as people know, I think already many people do know, I'm joining the Libertarian Party over this, and I'm planning to do everything I can to support you.
And that includes things like me beseeching my audience, each and every member, well, especially the Libertarians, but hell, everybody else, to join the party with me and to work together to really promote this, to work hard to make sure that we get the seats as delegates in our different states, and that we show up and make sure you get this nomination.
Because I foresee a real ruckus beginning after the National Convention, with the beginning of your national campaign for the general election for the presidency against Trump and Hillary or Warren or whichever one they run.
God, I hope it's Hillary.
But anyway, this is going to be so much fun.
And stage one is making sure we get you that nomination, and as I only found out over the weekend here, there are only 13,000 members of the Libertarian Party right now.
And my audience isn't that big, but it's dedicated.
And I think with a little bit of help from our friends, I think that we can make sure to do a great job here, run a great campaign for the presidency here.
And there's not a magical political solution to America's problems, and I think everybody knows that.
As Ron Paul always says, education is at the heart of what we're doing, to win the people over, to get them, not to somehow fool them into voting for a guy because he sounds kind of like a Republican or something, but to lead them, to get them to understand that freedom is, as you say, one, a matter of principle, and two, it works.
This is the solution.
The market will take care of it, for real.
And to get that across to the American people, after all, this is what we're all about in the first place anyway.
That's what the Declaration of Independence says in the first place anyway.
And that should be the consensus of all Americans, as Dr. Paul used to say.
Freedom brings us together, and especially with who you're up against this year in the general.
I don't mean the other Libertarian candidates, but in the general election, what a great fight to be in the middle of.
And I think you are going to have the time of your life, and I think we are all going to love watching it like the Ron Paul revolutions of 8 and 12.
And I think this is just going to be great.
So sorry for all the hyperbole, but I believe every word of it, obviously, and I really mean it.
And I really mean for any of you in the audience who could possibly stomach joining a party and doing some work and bringing your friends with you and making sure you get elected a delegate seat and these kinds of things, to please do it.
I think this is going to really be great.
And if it helps, I'm going to be the devil on this guy's shoulder for the next year too.
And so we're going to have a hell of a lot of fun.
I know it.
Well, Scott, I got to tell you, I mean, and this goes without saying, but I have held you in the highest esteem for a long, long time with all the great work you've done at antiwar.com and then at the Libertarian Institute and this great book you've written and you're just your overall principled approach and to have your endorsement is just a big honor for me.
And I want to tell you how grateful I am, but let's not get too far ahead of us here.
I'm starting at the bottom of this totem pole.
These guys I'm running against, I, like I say, I know many of them.
I don't know all of them, but the ones I know I deeply admire, I respect, and I got no doubts that they are far ahead of me here.
They've been in this race for a year, two years, and I got some climbing to do here, but I want to be the nominee of this party.
I want to be able to tell people what we're fighting for, why we're fighting.
All these LP members that go to these meetings and they do the Roberts Rules of Orders and they're building up the party structure, well, let's face it.
The presidential race is the standard bearer.
That's what gives people the understanding of why everybody's working at the state level and at the local level.
I want to be that standard bearer, and if people were to accord me the honor of this nomination, they could go to sleep well at night knowing that their presidential spokesman was expressing their beliefs and their philosophy in a very clear, succinct, and uncompromising way.
Now, so I got to win this nomination first, and what I'm doing, if you'll permit me a I'm going into North Carolina.
We're in the party primaries, the Libertarian Party in North Carolina, along with six or seven other states.
Well, I'm devoting my efforts to North Carolina.
I'm going outside the Libertarian Party in a way here by going to running a guerrilla campaign in North Carolina, by trying to get independent voters to come and vote for me in my primary.
I mean, there's one thing the Democrats and Republicans understand, and that's a message that's delivered through adverse votes.
And I figure if I can get a lot of people to come and vote for me in our primary on Super Tuesday, March 3rd, we can send a powerful message to both Democrats and Republicans.
Well, I need help with this guerrilla campaign.
Right now, I'm ordering 10,000 brochures to personally hand out to people in Raleigh, Raleigh, North Carolina, and those brochures are now being printed up.
Well, I need help with printing expenses, so I'd invite everybody to go to JacobForLiberty.com and please make a donation, $25, $50, $100 to play for these brochures, because that's, I think, where we can really make an inroad against these two major parties, send them a powerful message through the ballot box.
Yeah.
And hey, listen, this call goes out, too, to all the Libertarian media out there.
As Bumper said here, well, Jacob, Bumper's his nickname, some people know that.
As Jacob said, he's new in the race and these other guys have been working for a long time.
So for all you other Libertarian radio hosts and podcasters out there, you know, get in touch with Jacob.
And what's your contact info?
They want to go to JacobForLiberty.com for that?
Yeah, just go to JacobForLiberty.com and all the contact information is there.
They can make a donation online or they can mail me a check.
All the information is there.
Yeah.
And for interview requests, too, and to help get the word out.
And you know what?
I really think that we got a guy who's essentially Ron Paul level good on everything that we can feel confident about, you know, building a Ron Paul type revolution around.
And it's not for the major party candidacy.
So it is a bit different, but I don't think that means it has to be any less so.
And you know, when you were talking about, you know, you can rest well knowing that I'll represent you well and that kind of thing.
That was really the deal with Ron at some point.
I would not bother unmuting the TV when he was on because I just knew what he was going to say.
And I already knew it was so good that I didn't need to turn the volume up because it was just like, oh, hell yeah, they got him on again.
That's I know that whatever they're asking him about, he's saying, well, that's why we have to bring the troops home, man, because that's his answer for everything and et cetera like that.
And you are that kind of character.
You know, to me, you absolutely inspire that kind of confidence.
And I think, you know, other people know that, too.
And so it's it absolutely is worth chipping in on.
And I am.
I actually haven't gotten around to it yet.
But any minute here now, I am joining the Libertarian Party for this purpose.
And I'm bringing as many people with me as I can.
And so all you people listening out there walking around or whatever it is you're doing with your earbuds in, I'm talking to you, too.
This is something that we can do.
And what if, you know, in history, the year 2020 was the year that the libertarian movement joined the Libertarian Party and then had, you know, this real effect and put a real purist up there to kick everybody's ass in that.
And again, I'm referring to the general.
I mean, bring chaos to the general election, to the mainstream media, to the common narratives about all of our worst issues.
And, you know, again, my full respect to the rest of candidates in the Libertarian Party nomination process, too.
I think they're all great.
But I'm just our target is the real bad guys in the general.
And I think there's just so much potential there to to make great hay.
So come on, everybody.
Let's do it.
Jacob for Liberty dot com.
And as he said, he's raising money for this North Carolina effort.
That also means North Carolina people in the audience.
Jacob for Liberty dot com for contact information there.
If you want to join up with the campaign, volunteer your services, whatever you got.
Let's do it.
And that's cool.
Everybody, a project that we can work on.
That's one of those things.
Yeah.
What can we do?
This is something we can do.
You know, other than just complaining on Facebook or something, we could go outside and make a difference for real.
Right.
Jacob for Liberty dot com.
Thank you.
Bumper.
Yeah.
Just one thing.
I totally agree with you about Ron Paul.
He's one of my real life heroes.
And I actually campaigned for him.
I went up to New Hampshire in the 2008 race and went door to door for him before the primary.
And and he's written the introduction to my new book.
I wanted to have a campaign book when I when I launched my campaign at the South Carolina Libertarian Party Convention.
So I've written a book called My Passion for Liberty, which gives my background, my philosophical beliefs, and it explains to the American people why libertarianism is the real only practical solution.
And I'm honored to say that Ron Paul has written a very nice introduction to the book.
So I'd invite people to go buy it.
It's two ninety nine at Amazon.
My Passion for Liberty.
And I agree with you.
I mean, the more if we can bring more people into the party and and especially people that they would like my campaign motto is a campaign of principle for the party of principle.
If that appeals to you, come on in the party and help me win the nomination, because that's what I'm going to give you.
I'm going to give you a campaign of principle for the party of principle.
If I'm accorded this honor of receiving the presidential nomination in May of 2020.
Great.
And by the way, and this is totally separate and distinct from any political politicking, but if you want to know what Jacob Hornberger thinks about things he writes every day at the Future Freedom Foundation, FFF.org slash blog.
And he's got an opinion on everything.
He's a libertarian generalist and up to date on every bit of what's important in current events and history and everything, too.
Remember that time I interviewed him all about Operation Keelhaul when Harry Truman betrayed all those Soviet POWs and gave them back to Stalin to murder?
Oh, my God, this guy's good.
He's got 30 years worth of him.
As long as I'm at it, James Bovard and all of the greats there at FFF.org.
So thank you very much again, Bumper.
That's jacobforliberty.com, everybody.
Thanks.
Thank you, Scott.
All right, y'all, thanks.
Find me at libertarianinstitute.org, at scotthorton.org, antiwar.com and reddit.com slash scotthortonshow.
Oh, yeah, and read my book, Fool's Errand, Timed and the War in Afghanistan, at foolserrand.us.
