Penn Jillette: Let me lay on you what Libertarianism is to me. Once again I’m speaking for myself
which is about as Libertarian as you can get. I do not believe I know what’s best for
other people. I also don’t believe that other people know what’s best for other
people. I can barely make decisions for myself. I do my best to make decisions for my family.
Should my ten-year-old son take music lessons? That’s a hard question for our family. Do
you want to push him into it or wait until he really wants it? Those are hard decisions.
I have trouble making those for my family so making the decision of what someone else’s
job in healthcare should be like who is in another part of the country who I’ve never
met is not something I’m qualified or desirous to do. That’s Libertarianism. Libertarianism
is taking a right on money and your first left on sex and looking for utopia straight
ahead. To me the way I was brought up in western Massachusetts, kind of a New England philosophy.
We believed in responsibility and keeping your nose out of other people’s business.
We believed in live and let live I think to a fault. My mom and dad were older parents
too. My mom was 45 when I was born so I was raised by another generation. You see my mom
would be whatever – 120 now or 115 now. A whole other generation.
My mom was born – now you’re going to see that my math is wrong. My mom was born
in 1909. She’s dead now. So it’s a whole different generation. And my mom’s feeling
about absolutely everything was who cares. Her whole feeling on the gay rights movement
was who cares who they want to get together with. It doesn’t matter to me. Her whole
feeling on drugs. I have never had a sip of alcohol or any recreational drug in my life.
That was true for my mother, true for my father, true for my sister. I don’t know how many
generations it goes back but never. And yet my mom always thought that sure, any drug
should be legal. If you’re living in a free country do whatever you want. Take responsibility
for it. When you tell people about Libertarianism you just tell them we think you should take
as little from other people by force as possible. And you should be able to do whatever you
think is right. Now that’s a pretty heavy thing I’m saying. Because I’m saying that
if there’s an 18-year-old girl who is the greatest math whiz that we have in this country,
let’s say she’s the smartest person in math we have anywhere. And let’s say we
give her a full scholarship to go to whatever school she wants to go to – Stanford, MIT,
wherever she wants to go. And she decides she wants to work at McDonald’s and get
pregnant at the age of 19. That’s her decision.
Jim Morrison – did he have a worse life because he did an awful lot of drugs and died
at 28? I don’t know. I’ve already lived a lot longer than Jim Morrison but were his
choices worse than mine? I don’t know. I know I would not have liked to have lived
like Jim Morrison although I’d like to look that good in leather pants. But Kurt Cobain.
Did I want to live like that? No, not even slightly. Prince? I don’t want to live like
that. But they probably don’t want to live like me either. Libertarianism is the strongest
sense of please do what you want, try not to hurt me.
Our government has a monopoly on force, they have a monopoly on force. The government is
the only organization that is supposed to be able to use force. The government is supposed
to be a government of us which means in my thinking, my morality, the government should
only use force for things I’m willing to use force for. The government are the only
ones that are allowed to use guns to hurt another person or threaten another person
legally. So the question becomes what would I use a gun to do? Now I’m a coward and
I have no skills with guns or with violence. I’ve never hit a person in anger in my life.
I’ve been hit. I never hit back. So this is hypothetical. But if I were not a coward
would I use a gun to stop someone from being killed? Yes. Would I use a gun to stop someone
from being raped? Yes. Would I use a gun to build a library? Would I take money from someone
to build a library? Well I’d certainly give my money. I’d certainly work. I’d certainly
beg you for money to build a library. Libraries really matter to me. I was born in 55. I’m
from a small town. Without a library I would have known nothing. I had to drive to – I
had to ride my bike to the library to learn about Lenny Bruce, Franz Kafka.
I got Stravinsky records from the library. It meant everything to me. Libraries matter.
But that’s the Libertarian question. Now taking care of people. Would you use a gun
to take care of others? That’s a hard one. Because taxation is using violence. Now people
try to say taxation is voluntary. It’s not. If you don’t pay your taxes eventually somewhere
down the line someone with a gun will show up. They just will. At some point if you don’t
do that. What do we do with our taxes? Would we use a gun to defend our country? Yeah I
guess we’ve got to, right. Would we use a gun for everything we use for taxes? So
when I see the government doing something I ask myself would I use a gun to do that.
Now all of that being said that is the high level, the theoretical part of Libertarianism
to me. In a nuts and bolts level it becomes much, much simpler. It is one of the cases
where the reality is simpler than the theory. When someone is worried about Libertarianism
they worry about what happens to public schools, what happens to welfare, what happens to roads.
Those are the first three questions they ask. And those are the hardest questions. I will
give you public schools. I will give you welfare. I will give you infrastructure. I will not
give you the government using a gun to take money from poor people and giving it to rich
people.
The biggest issue in Libertarianism is stopping corporate welfare. What we give in welfare
to the poor, we give in government money to the roads. We give government money to the
schools is nothing compared to the money we give to rich people. The best way to stop
crony capitalism, the best way to stop graft, the best way to stop all sorts of bad stuff
in government is to make government small enough. The way you stop corruption is make
it small enough that corruption doesn’t pay. Give the government little enough and
there’s not a lot to steal from them. But government is buoying up the rich corporations.
The rich corporations love the government. They’ve gained the system in a way an individual
never can. Any big corporation has a team of the best lawyers to figure out how they
cannot pay taxes. No middle class person has that. They have regulations set to keep other
people out of the business, right. Even the manicure shops, you know. They want to license,
register everything so that other people can’t get in. It’s limiting. If you had a true
free market you would not have the big mega corporations.
Libertarianism is not about rich white people getting a lot of money from corporations and
leaving everybody else to whistle. Libertarianism is let’s not use the government to take
money from poor people and middle class people and give it to rich people. Because really
that’s all that’s ever happened. That’s all that’s ever happened. In our present
climate we have somebody running for president who we know for a fact lied. Lied a lot less
than other people. We know for a fact she lied. And we know for a fact that she is an
insider and that knows the way to play all the games. We also know that she knows what’s
better for other people. And we know that she says and claims and brags that she will
do a lot of killing of people overseas. We also know that she is essentially – even
after I’ve called her a liar, she’s essentially a good, honest person. She essentially has
a good heart. She also has a 65 percent disapproval rating or higher. That’s Hillary Clinton.
There are two things that I always believed about modern politics. One was that everyone
who had ever run for a major office was smarter than me. And the second thing was there was
no one worse than Hillary Clinton.
Both of those things have been disproven by Donald Trump. Donald Trump, all the good qualities
I mentioned about Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump does not share. He’s not skilled.
He does not have as far as I can tell any compassion. And he does not have very much
knowledge. He does have a weird kind of charisma that I cannot understand myself. It doesn’t
seem to work on me. But certainly demonstrative that he has charisma that works for some people.
And he’s willing to give easy answers. And being willing to give easy answers which in
his case aren’t answers, they’re just I will fix it. We’ve got this problem, I’ll
fix it. Well no, you don’t get to say that. You have to demonstrate how you’re doing
it. But both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are very interested in getting a lot of power
for themselves. I believe Hillary Clinton wants that power because she thinks she knows
what’s best for other people. Let’s refer back to me saying I don’t know what’s
best for other people. I also don’t think she does either but she believes that. And
I believe her heart’s in the right place. I don’t think Donald Trump knows there are
other people to be concerned about.
I don’t think he even knows that. You’ve got those two. And neither one of them – this
is not fair to Hillary Clinton. Donald Trump is giving no theoretical policy ideas for
how government should run. Hillary Clinton is not giving enough for my taste. Here’s
the debate I want to see. Now I know that my buddy Gary, Gary Johnson, I know we were
trying to get him to do the debates that if he gets 15 percent he’ll be in the debates
and that’s wonderful. We should all work for that. Even people who don’t like Gary
want to see someone else on stage talking. I don’t see why you wouldn’t want him
involved in the conversation. If Hillary Clinton really is great, let her talk to Gary in public.
Well there’s nobody that entertains that Donald Trump really is great. If you thought
that for a moment, why not have Gary Johnson talk. Here’s the conversation I want to
have. I want to have this debate. I don’t even want to call it a debate. I want it to
be a simple conversation. Bernie Sanders, Gary Johnson. Put them side by side. Two good
people. Two paragons, you know.
Here’s the debate I want to see. It’s not even a debate, a conversation, a public
conversation in front of as much of America as wants to watch it. Bernie Sanders, Gary
Johnson. Both paragons, both virtuous, both honest, both smart, both concerned about other
people, both with experience in government. And I want to hear Bernie Sanders say, you
know, a lot of people in this country have trouble taking care of themselves. We need
a strong infrastructure for business to thrive. We need to protect our country, to protect
the people around us. We need a big strong government with a good solid safety net that
can take care of people and treat them with compassion and make better choices than some
individuals will make. We need a government where more qualified people can take care
of those that aren’t and where we can keep corporations at bay and where we can keep
some money out of politics. That’s what we need. And here’s some examples of how
we can get there from where we are. Here are the checks and balances we want to put in
place on corporations. Here’s what we want to do with campaign finance. Here’s what
we want to do with schools. Here’s some of my ideas. But I want Gary Johnson to say,
you know, all those things are problems. But I think that maybe a little more freedom as
opposed to a little more control from the government might give us a lot of that.
I want individuals to have a little more money in their pockets and use that for charity
and use that for building. And I think instead of putting up tariffs to keep foreign businesses
out we can actually make America more competitive, less taxes and let them have more power that
way and be more successful. There would be more money all over the place. We can take
care of people. I think that’ll work pretty well and while we’re at it we’ll stop
the corporations by not having a big government that flows money to them. And then Bernie
Sanders says back, you know, that sounds really good Gary. It really does. But there are some
people who just plain are going to be left out. They’re not going to make it. They’re
just not going to make it in your dog each dog free market economy. You’re just willing
to throw them away? And then Gary says, you know, maybe a subsistence amount of money
for everybody. Maybe just get paid. Just give them that money. Because you know compared
to what we’re paying for food stamps and all of that stuff just writing them a check
is much easier. So maybe we can do that. And Bernie says, you know what you’re saying
about keeping businesses over here kind of makes sense Gary. Maybe we can do a few less
tariffs and a little lower taxes to help our corporations and maybe that’ll help a little
bit. And they go back and forth and they come up with an impasse where they don’t agree.
And then the American people say, you know, let’s try it Bernie’s way for a while.
Let’s give it four years of Bernie because it seems like he’s got some ideas. Let’s
go four years with Bernie. You know Gary you’re a good guy. You’ve thought about this really
hard and you made a really good case and we know you’re a good guy. We like you. We
trust you. But we’re going with Bernie now. And we try that for a while. And as Bernie’s
doing this there’s other people in the government that go what about this and he pulls back
on this and he adjusts and he does that. And then he comes, you know, four years go by
and the country goes let’s hear that debate again. Maybe it’s someone else in place
but whatever. They do the debate again and they go, you know, we tried. We don’t really
feel your burn. Now feel my Johnson. We’ll have Gary Johnson take over for four years
and see how that goes. And you go back and forth and you have a discussion of what we
want to do as a country between two good, honest, hard thinking human beings. And please
let’s get one of them to be a woman by the next time we do this. Please. And let’s
get someone to be of color please. Let’s just do that.
We’ve got plenty of people on both sides that aren’t just white guys. But for right
now my example of Bernie and Gary and we go back and forth like that. Why aren’t we
doing that? Why do we have two people that all they agree on is that they should have
power. Two psychotic, power hungry, hated, unpleasant people clawing and scratching to
take power over other people’s lives. Why not two people who are actually having a discussion
about what direction our country should go in. And by the way we’re never going to
go all the way Bernie. We’re never going to go all the way Gary. But that’s the discussion
we have and let that go. So that is what I think about modern politics and that’s what
I think about Libertarianism. Yeah, maybe someday in the future we should go to anarcho-capitalism.
Maybe someday in the future we should go to full out socialism. But for right now can
we just do what every mother fucking American believes which is stop giving so much money
to the corporations, let the people have more control, let them smoke dope, let them put
what they want into their bodies, let them have sex with whoever they want as long as
there’s consent. And let them do that in every state. Let them love who they want and
enjoy life the way they want. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Is that a nut