Kibbe On Liberty

At the New Hampshire Liberty Forum, Matt Kibbe sits down with Maine state Senator Eric Brakey, who talks about his legislative accomplishments and his transition into the role of executive director of the Free State Project. Brakey explains that state governments are in the best position to be leaders on building mainstream support for new and seemingly radical ideas. Just as Democrat-led states have shifted the Overton window on certain progressive policies, states like New Hampshire and Maine are positioned to demonstrate that liberty-oriented laws can not only pass but can work to improve the lives of American citizens.

At this year’s New Hampshire Liberty Forum, Matt Kibbe sat down with Derek Proulx, the New Hampshire state chair of Bring Our Troops Home, to talk about his involvement in the Defend the Guard movement. Defend the Guard is an initiative to prevent the federal government from misusing the National Guard for military adventurism abroad without a proper declaration of war by Congress, as the Constitution requires. As a former member of the National Guard, Proulx and his fellow veterans have a unique and valuable perspective on military involvement, which could teach a lot to war-hungry politicians who have lived lives sheltered from military conflict.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson’s job is in trouble, as many Republicans in Congress are dissatisfied with his lack of leadership and willingness to cozy up to the Democratic opposition. Matt Kibbe is joined by Rep. Thomas Massie, who explains why he’s calling for the speaker to be replaced and outlines what he calls “the three betrayals of Mike Johnson.” First, Johnson abandoned the regular order budgeting process in favor of a massive omnibus bill. Second, he reauthorized warrantless surveillance of Americans by the FISA courts, and third, he is ushering through a military spending package that would send American taxpayer dollars to fund the wars in Ukraine, Israel, and Palestine. To top it all off, Democratic leaders in the House are openly admitting that they want to keep Johnson in power, which speaks volumes about how firm his conservative bona fides really are.

Sprouting from a graduate student’s thought experiment in 2001, over the last 20 years, the Free State Project has made a significant impact on the state of New Hampshire by gathering like-minded, liberty-loving folk who share a passion for freedom and independence. At this year’s New Hampshire Liberty Forum, Matt Kibbe sits down with Carla Gericke, president emeritus of the Free State Project, to discuss the history of the project, where it is today, and where it’s going in the future. In addition to making substantial legislative changes in the state, the Free Staters are also attracting the attention of major figures like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard, indicating that the real gains for liberty are yet to come.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, a whole host of European countries were faced with a unique opportunity: the chance to free their economy and clean up a corrupt legal system. Of all the ex-Soviet states, few have been as successful as Estonia. Matt Kibbe speaks to Matthew Mitchell, senior fellow at the Fraser Institute, about the peaceful and musical revolution that helped lift Estonia out of poverty and oppression as the country’s people embraced the concepts of free markets and personal liberty. Today, this tiny Baltic nation serves as a model for how to get things right, both in terms of casting off the chains of the past and create a free society that empowers citizens to thrive.

The question of whether transgender athletes should be allowed to compete in women’s sports has sparked controversy as elite female athletes have seen their accomplishment erased by bigger, stronger, and faster trans women who went through male puberty. Matt Kibbe talks with Jennifer Sey, a champion gymnast and the founder and CEO of XX-XY Athletics, about the abuse she has received for having the courage to speak obvious truths about human anatomy out loud and her launch of a new line of athletic wear designed to explicitly support female athletes in the midst of a culture that seeks to silence them.

In the information age, it’s ironic that the government is becoming more secretive than ever, with an increase in classified documents and a growing reluctance to engage in any sort of transparency. Today's guest is James Bovard, author of "Last Rights: The Death of American Liberty," which is about the massive amount of illegal activity the government routinely engages in and the ways in which whistleblowers like Julian Assange and Edward Snowden are punished for attempting to reveal the truth. In this atmosphere of lies and deception, is there any hope for the preservation of American liberty? All I know is, my gut says “maybe.”

At New Hampshire’s Liberty Forum, Matt Kibbe talks to Glenn Jacobs, Mayor of Knox County, Tennessee, about a wide variety of liberty issues, from the dishonesty of lockdowns and the unsustainability of the national debt, to the way in which the invocation of ‘democracy’ has become a code word for the raw accumulation of political power. Jacobs explains what it’s like to try to govern from a principled position, and how his efforts to do so got him demonized as a ‘grandma killer’.

As Hollywood continues to prioritize ideology over quality entertainment, filmmakers who just want to tell compelling stories are finding alternative avenues for production and distribution. Angel Studios is one such alternative, breaking out in a big way with the film “Sound of Freedom.” Matt Kibbe talks to Angel Studios co-founder and president Jordan Harmon about the company’s latest release, “Cabrini,” which is proving to be both a critical and financial success. Part of the reason for that is Angel Studios’ passion for the art, which is about amplifying light in the world rather than simply making a quick buck or pushing a particular narrative onto the public. Visit https://angel.com/kibbe to find showtimes in your area and purchase tickets.

After the Twitter Files revealed that government agencies pressured social media companies into suppressing dissident speech during lockdowns, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya was one of several plaintiffs who challenged this clear violation of the First Amendment in court. Now, the Supreme Court is hearing arguments about whether the Constitution still gives us the right to critique and dispute the official narrative, or whether we can be silenced in the name of public health unanimity. Matt Kibbe checks in with Dr. Bhattacharya on the status of the case and the prospects for the future of free speech in America.

This week, the US House of Representatives passed a bill that would ban TikTok if it is not sold by the Chinese-based ByteDance company. In this Episode, former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard sat down with Matt Kibbe to discuss the further implications of the bill, and how it is a form of government overreach that will be used to spy on the American people, similar to the Patriot Act. 

When actor Clifton Duncan dared to go against his industry’s orthodoxy on COVID-19, he found out the hard way that the expectations for conformity can be unforgiving. Hounded out of his profession, he took comfort in discovering the work of another celebrated nonconformist, economist Thomas Sowell. While Sowell’s peers were arguing for socialist economic policies to address the alleged injustice of institutional racism, Sowell boldly stood up for free markets and personal responsibility. Like Duncan, he refused to use his identity as a black man as a crutch or an excuse to act like a victim. Now experiencing a career renaissance, Duncan talks to Matt Kibbe about his planned one-man show based on the life of Thomas Sowell and how being “canceled” has actually created new fans and new opportunities for him.

The country of Georgia is a beautiful place of rich traditions and a unique wine-making culture, but like so many countries, its individual character and history were nearly wiped out by the enforced homogeneity of the Soviet Union. Matt Kibbe talks to Gia Jandieri, founder of the New Economic School, about what it was like for him to spend half his life under an oppressive communist regime. When everything was made illegal, Georgians had to resort to the black market to do everything from operating their businesses to educating their children, with death being the penalty for being caught.

Won’t someone please think of the children? There’s a long history of politicians weaponizing supposed concern over protecting children to impose repressive legislation on the people. The latest example is the Kids Online Safety Act, a transparent attempt to smuggle widespread censorship past the people under the guise of keeping children safe. Matt Kibbe talks to Yaël Ossowski, deputy director at the Consumer Choice Center, about the importance of free speech and privacy online and the dangers bills such as this one create to a free and open internet.

Libertarians have always struggled to communicate their ideas in a way that is appealing to the average person, mainly because they won’t stop quoting dead economists, to the point where it becomes a drinking game. Spike Cohen, former Libertarian Party candidate for vice president and founder of You Are the Power, wants to change that. In this conversation with Matt Kibbe, he explains that the basic principles of libertarianism can be boiled down to respect for one’s fellow human beings and that this is an idea that just about everyone can understand and appreciate. Instead of referencing obscure economic concepts and spreadsheets full of data, we can tell a story about values that will connect with audiences, not just on an intellectual level but an emotional one as well.

When the socialist policies of Nicolas Maduro and Hugo Chavez transformed Venezuela from a prosperous country into a humanitarian disaster, it was big news all over the world. The New York Times ran stories about residents of the impoverished nation having to eat their own pets in order to survive and any number of similarly horrific narratives. But at some point, discussion of Venezuela’s downfall simply stopped, as readers got bored and preferred to focus on issues closer to home, like the American economy or the pandemic. But just because we stop talking about something doesn’t mean it ceases to exist. In Venezuela, things have only gotten worse. Matt Kibbe talks to Jorge Jraissati, a Venezuelan activist and the director of Alumni for Liberty, about Maduro’s continued efforts to control the population by outlawing cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and the desperate attempts of the Venezuelan people to survive the actions of their own government. As Americans, it’s important that we not forget about the plight

It’s easy to take a revisionist view of our initial attitudes toward the COVID-19 lockdowns now that several years have passed and the initial fog of confusion has been replaced by a series of increasingly inconvenient facts for the COVID-authoritarians. But Matt Kibbe’s guest this week has had the courage not only to revisit his former views but even to publish them! Tom Woods is the host of “The Tom Woods Show” and author of “Diary of a Psychosis: How Public Health Disgraced Itself During COVID Mania.” Woods catalogues how, as the pandemic progressed, the folly and foolishness of lockdowns became ever more clear as public health officials backtracked, contradicted themselves, and made a series of entirely arbitrary recommendations with no basis in science or sound policy.

Political polarization in the United States has never been worse. At least, that’s what we’ve been told by a media culture that feeds on sensationalism and fearmongering. But it turns out the truth is somewhat more complicated. In their new film, “Undivide Us,” Kristina Kendall and Benjamin Klutsey bring Americans together to have the kinds of difficult conversations that we’re told we can’t have any more. What they find is that, far from being too tribally entrenched to hear one another, most people are actually eager to hear other points of view and to humanize viewpoints besides their own. In this conversation, Matt Kibbe and his guests explore the idea that we can disagree without being disagreeable and that we can use our differences to make social progress rather than to simply attack one another.

All over the country people are relocating in search of better living conditions, greater economic opportunity, and more freedom. But where to go? Conventional wisdom would probably suggest states like Texas or Florida, but two economists from the American Institute for Economic Research say that conventional wisdom is for suckers! In a new study entitled "Freedom in the Fifty States", Will Ruger and Jason Sorens use science to discover which state really is the freest of them all. In this conversation, Matt Kibbe digs into the data while trying to defend his decision to remain in the festering swamp that is Washington, DC in spite of all the available evidence.

Concluding a series focusing on different points of view on the Israel-Palestine conflict, Matt Kibbe is joined by three members of the Israeli liberty movement for firsthand accounts of what it’s really like to live in the midst of war. Moshe Gorin and Lior Abutbul of the Kohelet Policy Forum, along with Boaz Arad of the Ayn Rand Center Israel, share their experiences surrounding October 7, Israel’s response to the attacks, and whether the policies of the local government contributed to a lack of preparedness.