Kibbe on Liberty

As political corruption runs rampant in plain sight, it’s becoming more and more clear that the American legal and economic system is rigged against average citizens. Well-connected insiders get away with murder, while a minor infraction can completely ruin the life of an ordinary person. Big bankers benefit from bailouts and expansions in the money supply, while the rest of us get soaked with the costs of inflation and higher taxes. Lars Mapstead, Libertarian candidate for president, talks to Matt Kibbe about his plans to unrig the system and create a level playing field for all Americans.

The World Economic Forum’s infamous prediction that “you will own nothing and be happy” appears to be part of a playbook for elites to replace market economies around the world with something that looks a lot like communism. Matt Kibbe is joined by Carol Roth, author of “You Will Own Nothing: Your War with a New Financial World Order and How to Fight Back,” to talk about Klaus Schwab’s plans for lowly citizens who are better off surrendering their autonomy and property rights in order to eat bugs. Roth’s book exposes what the WEF is actually up to and what the average person can do to fight back against its agenda.

After years of post-pandemic doldrums, people are finally going back to the movies with one of cinema’s biggest opening weekends since 2020. Big-budget movies like “Mission Impossible,” “Barbie,” and “Oppenheimer” are drawing people in, although some, like the new “Indiana Jones” movie, are struggling to make back their budgets. To the surprise of industry insiders, however, “Sound of Freedom,” a film that exposes the global problem of child trafficking, is shattering expectations and filling theaters across the country. And with a budget of just $14.5 million, it’s set to be a huge financial success. Matt Kibbe is joined by Jeffrey Harmon—co-founder of Angel Studios, which is distributing “Sound of Freedom”—to talk about the film’s success and the mystifying attacks from left-wing critics, most of whom haven’t even seen the movie they are decrying.

Joe Biden believes that white supremacy is the greatest threat to America today, and anyone who didn’t vote for him “ain’t black”. But Adam Coleman, founder of Wrong Speak Publishing and author of the book Black Victim to Black Victor, sees it differently. Speaking with Matt Kibbe at FreedomFest in Memphis, Tennessee, he argues that it’s not racism that is holding back the black community, but a lack of strong families. We do a disservice to people when we tell them that they are victims and not in control of their own destinies, creating a defeatist attitude that perpetuates the cycle of poverty and dependence.

The phrase “going medieval” is used to refer to an extreme and brutal reaction to a problem, a colorful figure of speech that can have some sinister implications. With respect to the COVID-19 pandemic, public health authorities explicitly stated their intentions to go medieval on the virus, something that should have alarmed anyone who knows anything about the state of medicine in the Middle Ages. Matt Kibbe catches up with Jeffrey Tucker, founder and president of the Brownstone Institute, at the 2023 Porcupine Freedom Festival in New Hampshire to talk about the strategic barbarism of the COVID response, a series of plans that have been in the works far longer than most people realize.

Culture is upstream of politics, and while libertarians are great at compiling spreadsheets and writing white papers, they’re a little bit behind when it comes to making compelling art that communicates the benefits of a free society. Pho Chan, who records as the Pholosopher, and producer Jack Lloyd are trying to change that. At the 2023 Porcupine Freedom Festival in New Hampshire, they spoke with Matt Kibbe about how they are using rap music, memes, skits, comics, and other forms of multimedia entertainment to spread their ideas of voluntary cooperation, ethical behavior, and consent culture.

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.

The world of the arts is one in which creativity and original thinking should be valued above all else. But in fact, it's one of the industries that most enforces conformity and obedience. Matt Kibbe is joined by Clifton Duncan, a classically trained theater and television actor who found this out to his cost. When he refused to get the COVID-19 vaccine, he found his thriving career suddenly grinding to a halt, as managers, agents, and casting directors shunned him for failing to toe the party line. Duncan talks about the culture of the New York theater scene, the inability of free thinkers to speak out, and his new documentary, "Follow the Science," which exposes the muddled thinking, or lack thereof, behind the uniformity of opinion surrounding COVID lockdown policies.

In the midst of yet another American banking crisis, the so-called experts are at a loss to explain how these crises keep happening. But there is an answer, and it’s one that Austrian economists have known for more than a century. Matt Kibbe talks to Peter St. Onge, research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, who explains how our system of fractional reserve banking is a house of cards that is founded on the lie that the same dollar can be in two places at once. Simply put, the banks are so fragile because they are already insolvent—even when things seem to be going well. This issue can be solved, but it requires rethinking the way we bank and getting the government out of the money business.

The war against Big Tech is in full swing. Republicans in Congress are attempting to pass the Restrict Act, a dangerous piece of legislation that would not only allow them to ban TikTok, the China-controlled social media app, but would also give them broad powers to regulate Americans’ speech online and silence dissenting voices. Matt Kibbe is joined by Robby Soave, senior editor at Reason Magazine, to talk about why this is a really, really bad idea. The beauty of the internet is that it has given us access to a multitude of voices and a diversity of opinion absent from the old network news channels. But there are those who want to take all that away in order to enforce a single narrative, whether it be about the policies surrounding COVID-19 or the war in Ukraine. Tech companies restricting speech is certainly a concern, but as we’ve learned from the “Twitter Files,” almost all of the worst examples of online censorship were performed at the urging of the FBI and other government agencies. The last thing defenders of free speech should do is give them even more power.

The housing crash of 2008, leading into the Great Recession, was one of the worst economic crises in the last hundred years. As governments around the world locked down their economies during the COVID-19 pandemic, the stage was set for a similar collapse in the real estate market, yet for the most part, it didn’t happen. Mark Calabria, author of “Shelter from the Storm,” talks with Matt Kibbe about the ways in which some policymakers were able to avoid making the mistakes of their predecessors, and avoid making a bad situation even worse. This points to the importance of having libertarians and those skeptical of big government in positions of authority within the very bureaucracies they would like to eliminate altogether. Shelter from the Storm: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1952223563/

From Eadweard Muybridge’s experiments with sequential photography to the earliest motion pictures, the power of sequential images to tell stories and communicate ideas has long been recognized. The medium of comics, once thought to be fit only for children, has emerged as a rich and vibrant source of creativity and passion among artists and writers. Matt Kibbe is joined by Matt Battaglia, executive producer at Free the People and author of the new book "House on Fire," to talk about art, creativity, and the ways in which comics can both predict the future and respond to the various challenges faced by 21st-century American society. House on Fire: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1736860569/

Cryptocurrency has the potential to liberate millions of people from the government’s money system, but there are some who want to use that very tool for evil instead of good. Matt Kibbe talks to Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) about the possibility of the Federal Reserve creating its own digital currency that would be controlled by the federal government. In addition to being prone to massive inflation, a central bank digital currency would be used to track your every purchase and could be denied to people who behave in ways that the state deems undesirable. In Canada, truckers were locked out of their bank accounts for protesting COVID policy. Imagine if Justin Trudeau had the ability to deactivate the very dollars in their pockets as well.

Election integrity, fairness, and representation are increasingly important issues in the minds of American voters, with several recent presidential election results mired in controversy and an unwillingness to accept the results. One point of contention with many is that the candidate who receives the most votes nationally does not always end up becoming president. Saul Anuzis, senior adviser for National Popular Vote, believes that changing this would result in a system that better represents the desires and interests of the American people. He and Matt Kibbe discuss whether a national popular vote would help to enfranchise more people and reduce pandering to swing states, or whether the current Electoral College system is necessary to protect the interests of rural voters.

The gender ideology movement has become extremely influential (and extremely radical!), but how much do the activists we see on college campuses and teaching elementary schools actually represent transgender people? Matt Kibbe is joined by Sara Higdon, a trans woman and the host of “TRANSform to Freedom,” who explains why she does not believe that gender is fluid, that women can become men, or that biological men should compete in women’s sports. Trans adults should be treated with respect and compassion, but that does not mean that men calling themselves women should automatically and unquestioningly gain access to all female spaces, or that drugs and surgery should be forced on young children. According to Higdon, this extreme ideology is actually a setback for people like her, who just want to live and let live.

As inflation rages on, many people regard cryptocurrency as a silver bullet to escape the tyranny of fiat currency. But what happens when government tries to take over that tool for its own purposes? Matt Kibbe is joined by Paul Atkins, CEO and founder of Potomac Global Partners, to discuss the prospects for cryptocurrency in the near future, the FTX scandal, and the consequences of government attempts to control and regulate this exciting new market of competing currencies.

Midjourney and other artificially intelligent image generators are sending shock waves through the art industry as creators wonder whether they will soon be replaced by machines and whether human creativity and purpose are themselves endangered by technology. Matt Kibbe and the Free the People team are joined by artists Sean Robinson and Carson Grubaugh, who recently published the AI generated comic “The Abolition of Man,” to discuss and debate whether we should be optimistic or pessimistic about artificial intelligence’s role in the creative sphere going forward. Just how concerned should we be? Watch Part 2 on LivingtheLine: https://youtu.be/5oKmEj5_IyI

We are told that the world is full of dangers that only the U.S. military can neutralize — that our very freedoms depend on sending young men and women overseas to fight and die. But what if we have been actively seeking out, or even creating, these dangers in order to perpetuate the power of the military-industrial complex? Matt Kibbe talks to Chris Coyne, author of “In Search of Monsters to Destroy,” about the sometimes-hidden incentives that drive the political machine toward war at any cost. Cronyism, corporatism, and the need to distract from problems at home makes foreign enemies, real or imaginary, an attractive prospect for people with an interest in winning elections and wielding power over the American people. In Search of Monsters to Destroy: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1598133470/

When people talk about the need for government-sponsored medicine, they’ll often use words like “compassionate” and “humane,” but neither of those terms describe what’s been happening at the National Institutes of Health. Matt Kibbe and Justin Goodman, senior vice president of the White Coat Waste Project, talk about some of the horrific cases of animal cruelty and abuse that the government has been financing for years. We’re not just talking about fruit flies and nematode worms here. Dogs and cats are being tortured and killed, often with little to no scientific justification. And your tax dollars are paying for it. The mission of the White Coat Waste Project is to shine a light on these disgusting practices and hopefully put a stop to them once and for all.

Why are we taught that communism and fascism are opposites when both have led to the deaths of millions? Are conservatives for free markets or for corporatism? Is the Left anti-war or pro-war? Matt Kibbe is joined by Verlan and Hyrum Lewis, authors of “The Myth of Left and Right: How the Political Spectrum Misleads and Harms America,” to explain how the entire concept of the Left-Right political spectrum is a fantasy. Political tribes are not about ideas or philosophy. They are about supporting your team while demonizing the other — independent of any issue or political position. The delusion of the political spectrum is not only wrong but dangerous, preventing people from compromising, working across the aisle, or even recognizing the basic humanity of their political opponents. The Myth of Left and Right: https://a.co/d/4nYQlgy

Matt Kibbe talks to Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) about the recent fight over the Speaker of the House election. One of the concessions Kevin McCarthy offered in order to secure the position was the formation of the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, which is being likened to the Frank Church Committee, designed to investigate the CIA in the 1970s. This new committee will be focused on identifying ways in which the federal government is violating the civil liberties of American citizens, and putting a stop to it.

Matt Kibbe is joined by Justin Hart, author of “Gone Viral: How COVID Drove the World Insane,” to talk about the wide range of irrational behavior we saw during the pandemic, from shutting down the economy and quarantining the healthy rather than the sick to blindly trusting models that turned out to be grossly wrong and demonizing anyone who didn’t agree with the official narrative. The last three years have not only been a blow to our freedoms, but to our mental and physical health, and yet these problems continue to be ignored by the very people who were supposed to be looking out for us. The question of how so many smart people got this issue so wrong is one we have to keep asking if we want to prevent it from happening again in the future. Gone Viral: How COVID Drove the World Insane: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B2SB1WZ8/

Matt Kibbe gives his analysis of the current election for Speaker of the House taking place in the U.S. Capitol, then is joined by Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) for an inside look at the proceedings. For the first time in a hundred years, Congress has been unable to decide on a Speaker after multiple ballots. While insiders assumed that Rep. Kevin McCarthy would be the obvious choice for Speaker, he is having trouble securing the votes for the job, with members of the House Freedom Caucus demanding concessions in exchange for their support. There’s a lot at stake here, including how Congress goes about budgeting and spending taxpayer funding, transparency, and the ability of all Members to make their voices heard.

Matt Kibbe is joined by Sienna Mae Heath, host of “Leaving the Left for Liberty,” to talk about their different strategies for communicating ideas of liberty to the public and whether we should focus on a fact-based analysis or a more emotional approach that appeals to people’s intuitions about how the world works. On a practical level, both communication styles are necessary — both separately and together — with the heart and mind united in a single, perfect sphere. As a woman of Iranian descent, Sienna also reflects on the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement currently threatening to topple Iran’s authoritarian theocratic regime. Leaving the Left for Liberty: https://anchor.fm/leaving-left-for-liberty

Matt Kibbe is joined by Hannah Frankman, founder of Rebel Educator, to discuss the country's growing move toward education alternatives. Following massive school closures during the pandemic, many parents have discovered the failures of the government school system. Zoom classes exposed both what children were learning and how they were learning it, and neither turned out to very sensible in a world of increasing access to education resources. Frankman talks about her experience as a lifelong homeschooler and an education entrepreneur working with families seeking a new way to think about schooling. She argues that as bad as the COVID lockdowns were, they accelerated the move away from government schools by more than a decade, as many of the fears and misconceptions surrounding child-led education begin to fall away.

Matt Kibbe talks to Jennifer Sey, former brand president of Levi’s, about how she was pushed out of the company over her views on COVID lockdowns. In this off-the-cuff conversation, Sey is bursting at the seams to explain how she legged it from the jeans giant rather than button her lip, as it became increasingly clear that some political leaders were in the pocket of Big Pharma, telling pants-on-fire lies to the public, and implementing policies that were apparently made up on the fly. Not wanting to feel hemmed in, she buckled down and wrote a book, “Levi’s Unbuttoned,” about her experiences, in which she stitches up those who wanted to silence her and others like her.

Matt Kibbe is joined by the R Street Institute’s Adam Thierer and Wayne Brough to discuss the state of free speech on the internet. With Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter, we are in the middle of a national debate about the tension between censorship and free expression online. On the Right, many people are calling for government to rein in what they perceive as the excesses of Big Tech companies, while the Left wants the government to crack down on speech they deem dangerous. Both approaches make the same mistake of giving politicians authority over what we are allowed to say and hear. And with recent revelations about government agents leaning on social media companies to censor speech, it’s clear that when it comes to the online conversation, there’s no such thing as a purely private company.

Matt Kibbe is joined by Jack Hunter, co-founder of Based Politics, to discuss the results of the midterm elections, what we can learn from a lukewarm performance from Republicans, and the state of conservatism in the United States. One clear takeaway is that those Republicans who took a clear stand on liberty issues did better than their less principled counterparts. Thomas Massie, Rand Paul, Mike Lee, and Ron DeSantis won their races because voters recognized leaders who are willing to stand up against the tide of authoritarianism coming from Washington. In other cases, generic Republican candidates simply failed to capitalize on Americans’ widespread feelings of dissatisfaction, with a lack of inspiring candidates or a convincing case for how they would govern more responsibly.

Matt Kibbe is joined by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) to discuss the results of the recent midterm election. Many people were expecting Democrats to take a beating after COVID lockdowns, a weak economy, and record inflation, but for the most part, this didn’t happen. There are several explanations for this, including a number of lackluster Republican candidates and failure to sufficiently convince voters that Republicans would govern more responsibly. After all, many of the problems Americans now face started under a Republican president. If Republicans want to win in the future, they need to stand for something tangible. This is why Ron DeSantis had a good night, while moderate Republicans like Dr. Oz and Herschel Walker struggled. There’s also a conversation to be had about the role of Donald Trump in the GOP’s future, after many of his endorsements appeared to do more harm than good.

Matt Kibbe talks with economist Per Bylund about his new book, “How to Think About the Economy: A Primer.” Bylund explains what the economy actually is and how it works in terms that are easy for anyone to understand. Economics is not, as many believe, the study of money or finance, but a way of understanding human decision-making given the constraints of scarce resources. Per also explains the basics of the Austrian School of Economics, which differs in several important ways from the Chicago School and the Keynesian School, which are generally more popular with politicians and policymakers. How to Think About the Economy: A Primer: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1610167554/

Matt Kibbe sits down with Will Ruger, president of the American Institute for Economic Research, to discuss the theory of foreign policy realism and how we can apply it to international conflicts like the war in Ukraine. Contrary to what critics claim, realists are not isolationists. They recognize a role for the American military on the world stage. But at the same time, they think that involvement should be restrained and always focused on America’s clear national security interests. By contrast, the neoconservative approach imagines that the United States has a duty to order the world as the U.S. government sees fit, engaging in nation-building and taking sides in every conflict around the globe.

Matt Kibbe is joined by comedic magician Doc Dixon to talk about what it was like being an entertainer during the years when live performances were mostly prohibited. As a libertarian, Dixon saw the dangers of lockdowns earlier than most — dangers not only to his ability to earn a living but to the mental health of a nation deprived of human interaction. From there, the discussion swings through a variety of topics, including the business of magic, the healing power of comedy, drug legalization, and the Ron Paul revolution.

Matt Kibbe is joined by Marian Tupy, senior fellow at the Cato Institute and author of “Superabundance,” to talk about the ways in which the standard of living has dramatically increased over the years. It has become fashionable to assert that things are getting worse, wages have stagnated, and prosperity is a thing of the past, but in reality the opposite is true. If you look at the numbers, as Tupy does in his book, it’s indisputable that we’ve made amazing progress as a species, and yet many refuse to recognize it. The reason is that utopian thinking leads to comparing the present not to the past, but to an unrealizable ideal that exists only in the imagination. When you make this comparison, you are bound to be disappointed. A more realistic approach shows that this resentment is misplaced and that in fact we should be grateful for all the wealth and prosperity we now enjoy.

Matt Kibbe is joined by Robert Alt, CEO of the Buckeye Institute, and Eric Flannery, owner of the Big Board, to celebrate the filing of their constitutional challenge against the District of Columbia. After Eric announced that his restaurant would not discriminate against the unvaccinated, the city pulled his liquor license and ultimately shut him down completely. Nine months later, after Eric was forced to burn through his life savings, the Big Board is open and the outstanding fines have been dismissed. But Eric and Robert are fighting on in defense of the fundamentally American principles at stake. Their new legal challenge argues that the D.C. government did not have the authority to issue a string of emergency orders that resulted in the Big Board’s shutdown and that these actions, by seeking to evade congressional review and judicial scrutiny, violated the U.S. Constitution and the Home Rule Act of 1973. Watch Free the People's documentary coverage of this story: Shut Down Indefinitely | Part 1: https://youtu.be/hA-iPTXJfQE Shut Down Indefinitely | Part 2: https://youtu.be/OWAa7P8DmBI

Matt Kibbe sits down with Corey DeAngelis, senior fellow at the American Federation for Children, to discuss the bottom-up revolution sweeping the States, driven by fed-up parents demanding better choices and accountability from failing government schools. While Arizona’s reforms are the new gold standard, and West Virginia is making progress in offering school choice to more students, parents should demand more, especially from Republicans. With students still recovering from COVID lockdowns and long-term school closures, the last thing children need is politics getting in the way of parental rights and much needed reforms.

Matt Kibbe sits down with Carol Roth, author of “The War on Small Business,” to discuss the many ways in which government policy favors huge corporations and makes life hard for the independent business owner. For all the talk about small business being the backbone of the American economy, it would be hard to design a set of policies more hostile to small businesses. Considering everything from COVID lockdowns, to Wall Street bailouts, to Obamacare, to the monetary policy of the Federal Reserve, it’s clear that the rich and powerful have a seat at the table that is denied to the rest of us, and that translates into a playing field that is anything but level. The War on Small Business: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0063081415

Matt Kibbe is joined by Stanford University epidemiologists Jay Bhattacharya and John Ioannidis to discuss the interaction between science and health policy. The COVID-19 response was one-sided and dictated from the top down, which not only led to many disastrous policies, but also undermined the public trust in science and medicine as institutions. In the future, what is needed is a more humble approach to policymaking that admits its own ignorance and allows the public more opportunities to participate in the decision-making process.

Matt Kibbe talks with Gene Epstein, director of the Soho Forum, about the economy, inflation, and whether or not the United States is set to experience a severe recession. Kibbe argues that between lockdowns, rampant spending, and an unwillingness of the Biden administration to take its foot off the gas, we could be in the midst of a perfect storm for economic downturn. Epstein, on the other hand, thinks that the economy is more resilient than that — based on the rapid recovery we saw after lockdowns were lifted. While we can certainly expect some degree of economic hardship in the near future, how severe it will be is still very much an open question.

Matt Kibbe sits down with Jenin Younes, litigation counsel for the New Civil Liberties Alliance, to discuss the lawsuit filed by two attorneys general against the federal government over online censorship. There is a mounting body of evidence that the Biden administration pressured social media companies into removing certain content, and the suit alleges that this is a clear violation of the First Amendment. If major platforms like Twitter and Facebook are acting as an arm of the federal government under threat of punishment if they disobey, the basic principle of freedom of speech and of the press is severely compromised, replaced by a regime of aggressive censorship and propaganda.

Matt Kibbe is joined by Lou Perez, comedian and author of “That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore,” to talk about the future of comedy in a world where taking offense has risen to the level of a competitive sport. As comedians abandon college campuses and risk having their social media presence destroyed by saying something controversial, comedy has become the vanguard for free expression and the war against censorship. Without jesters to poke fun at the powerful and cloak important truths in humor, society becomes a stagnant, humorless morass that tends ever closer towards authoritarianism. That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1637582455

Matt Kibbe sits down with Heather Wilson and Jacob Wells, co-founders of GiveSendGo, a crowdfunding website that doesn’t discriminate based on differences in ideology. After several high-profile cases where crowdfunders have blocked campaigns for the Canadian truckers or businesses refusing to comply with vaccine mandates, people are looking for an alternative solution to support companies that are willing to stand up for their values. As cancel culture and deplatforming are interfering even with people’s ability to make charitable contributions to support freedom, competition and entrepreneurship are more important than ever in providing an escape from the woke mob.