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Are You Really Wasting Your Vote? · Conversations With the Hoff

1:15
SPEAKER_02: It's a beautiful day on the South Strand.
1:18
SPEAKER_02: Welcome to Conversations with the Hoff.
1:21
SPEAKER_02: I'm Steve Hoffman, your host, and with me today in the studio are my libertarian friends Randy Oporowski and Tripp Detmering.
1:31
SPEAKER_02: Yay! We also have a special call-in guest with us today, who is seeking the nomination of the South Carolina Libertarian Party to serve our state in the U.S.
1:44
SPEAKER_02: Senate.
1:45
SPEAKER_02: Our guest is Dr.
1:46
SPEAKER_02: Casey Whitener.
1:48
SPEAKER_02: She's a writer, business owner, radio host, and educator at the University of South Carolina.
1:56
SPEAKER_02: After moving to Blythesville in South Carolina, she started her own business, Clemson Road Creative, which is a consulting company.
2:07
SPEAKER_02: And she's earned her PhD in organization and management in 2014 and joined the Darla Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina in 2017.
2:21
SPEAKER_02: She's the co-host of Mornings with Casey and Kev on 100.7 the point.
2:29
SPEAKER_02: She's a community leader.
2:31
SPEAKER_02: She was a two-term president of the South Carolina Writers Association and still serves on that board.
2:39
SPEAKER_02: She was a Richmond County chairperson for the South Carolina Libertarian Party and is the current past chair of the South Carolina Libertarian Party.
2:51
SPEAKER_02: She's co-founder of the Women's Business Center at Columbia College.
2:57
SPEAKER_02: She's also an active reviewer for the South Carolina Arts Commission Artist Venture Grant.
3:04
SPEAKER_02: Dr.
3:05
SPEAKER_02: Whitener is a Florence native who grew up in Herndon, Virginia, but returned to South Carolina when she enrolled in Clemson University back in 1995.
3:15
SPEAKER_02: She resides in Blytheville, South Carolina with her husband Charlie and their 16-year-old daughter.
3:22
SPEAKER_02: Welcome to the show, Dr.
3:23
SPEAKER_02: Whitener.
3:24
SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
3:25
SPEAKER_00: It's great to hear from you guys, and I'm so honored to be here.
3:28
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for inviting me to be part of your show.
3:31
SPEAKER_02: To begin with, tell us a little bit about yourself and why you want to run for the U.S.
3:36
SPEAKER_02: Senate.
3:38
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
3:38
SPEAKER_00: So about six years ago, one of our South Carolina Libertarian Party senior members, a guy that's been around uh longer than I have.
3:46
SPEAKER_00: As a matter of fact, I met him when I joined the party back in 2012.
3:50
SPEAKER_00: He asked me if I'd be willing to run in 2026 against Senator Graham.
3:55
SPEAKER_00: And so since about 2020, I've been getting my family ready and getting myself ready to take on the responsibility of being a statewide candidate for a federal office.
4:05
SPEAKER_00: My primary issue is the national debt.
4:07
SPEAKER_00: I think it's an existential threat, and I think that nobody's doing anything about it.
4:11
SPEAKER_00: And I want to work really hard for South Carolinians and for our country to solve this problem, which is the national debt.
4:18
SPEAKER_00: And the place to do that is in Congress.
4:20
SPEAKER_00: And so the Senate seemed like the right fit.
4:23
SPEAKER_00: It would give me a six-year term, would give me six years to build some coalitions, to get some traction, to really make an effort toward what I'm trying to do, which is to address the national debt.
4:34
SPEAKER_00: So that's really the only thing.
4:35
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I want to go there.
4:37
SPEAKER_00: Obviously, I would represent South Carolina.
4:38
SPEAKER_00: We would work on a ton of different issues besides the debt.
4:41
SPEAKER_00: But for me, it's go there, fix that, and come back home.
4:44
SPEAKER_00: Uh I don't expect to be there longer than a couple of terms.
4:48
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to be a politician and not trying to get elected to get famous or to make money.
4:52
SPEAKER_00: I just want to go and fix this one thing that I think other folks are not paying attention to.
4:57
SPEAKER_02: Okay, very good.
4:58
SPEAKER_02: Uh tackling the national debt sounds like a very good start.
5:03
SPEAKER_02: Now you are obviously a gifted writer.
5:06
SPEAKER_02: And I I really like the way that you communicate your positions on your uh webpage, which is kcsouthcarolina.com.
5:16
SPEAKER_02: You communicate your political positions via your daily blogs.
5:22
SPEAKER_02: So let's let's talk a little bit about them.
5:25
SPEAKER_02: The first blog that I looked at was called Do the Ends Justify the Means?
5:31
SPEAKER_02: Uh basically it's about the military interventionism and the endless wars.
5:36
SPEAKER_02: Could you uh comment on that a little bit more?
5:40
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so it you know, part of the reason I'm using the blogs to tell people where I stand on things is that I don't believe in the short soundbite culture that we have, which is your platform, which is bullet point one sentence on all these things.
5:55
SPEAKER_00: I don't think it gives uh validity to the nuance that a lot of these issues that senators deal with, that politicians deal with, have a lot of different layers to them.
6:05
SPEAKER_00: So I wanted to use the blogs to help sort of draw for folks a vision of what my position is with all the different considerations I bring into play.
6:15
SPEAKER_00: And the other piece of that is when something like the bombing of Iran happens, everybody runs to the microphone and runs to Twitter and runs to Instagram to start throwing out their opinions on this and that and where do we stand and blah, blah, blah.
6:30
SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, oh, you have to issue a statement on this, oh, you have to put out a press release on that.
6:34
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and a lot of that is just more noise contributing to the ecosphere.
6:39
SPEAKER_00: It's not not necessarily helpful.
6:41
SPEAKER_00: So I wrote the blog about Iran, wanting to bring it back to our libertarian principles of being anti-war.
6:47
SPEAKER_00: I'm opposed to any war, anytime, anywhere.
6:50
SPEAKER_00: I do not believe in military interventions, I do not believe in preemptive bombing of other countries, I don't believe in rushing into somebody's presidential palace and kidnapping their president, like all these things that our country uh is doing, and specifically these last two, Venezuela and Iran, to me are aggression that is violates our non-aggression principle in the Libertarian Party, but also just makes things harder for our nation to succeed in a worldwide, globally connected economy.
7:21
SPEAKER_00: So I wanted to write a little bit about that.
7:23
SPEAKER_00: And you know, the thing is it's done now, and there's nothing we can, you know, we can't go back and do it differently.
7:29
SPEAKER_00: So, how do we extricate ourselves and how do we prevent it from happening again?
7:33
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's the big question for all of us moving forward is how do we prevent this from happening again?
7:38
SPEAKER_00: Because it's been happening again and again and again in our lives.
7:41
SPEAKER_00: I know you guys have seen it.
7:42
SPEAKER_02: You're right about the endless uh the sound bites.
7:45
SPEAKER_02: Uh short-term pain, long-term gain.
7:48
SPEAKER_02: That seems to be the current soundbite.
7:51
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
7:51
SPEAKER_02: But here we have a president now that wants to be wants to get the Nobel Peace Prize, and he's now reverting the endless wars.
8:00
SPEAKER_00: Well, he established the Board of Peace.
8:03
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I watched their ceremony where they had all these people get together to christen the opening, you know, the very first meeting ever of the Global Board for Peace.
8:14
SPEAKER_00: And all these company countries came forward and they all expressed such gratitude for his vision for establishing world peace.
8:20
SPEAKER_00: And then two weeks later, he bombed Iran.
8:23
SPEAKER_06: Well, the the P the I think the misunderstanding the misunderstanding is how they spelled peace.
8:28
SPEAKER_06: It's P-I-E-C E.
8:31
SPEAKER_06: Um, it's it's what piece of the world they're gonna have.
8:34
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
8:35
SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
8:36
SPEAKER_05: Well, what would your response be to uh you would be running against Lindsey Graham?
8:40
SPEAKER_05: I think his soundbite was we should send South Carolinian uh sons and daughters to the Mideast.
8:48
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean it's I've been trying to avoid direct attacks on Senator Graham uh because I think that his primary opponents and the Democrats, they're going to that that's going to be their strategy.
9:01
SPEAKER_00: So I don't necessarily want to unpack his perspective or his position.
9:05
SPEAKER_00: As much as I would say if we were standing across from each other on a debate stage, we could not be more diametrically opposed.
9:12
SPEAKER_00: I do not believe that preemptive war keeps us safe.
9:15
SPEAKER_00: I do not think it's a good idea to go in and prevent something that hasn't actually happened yet.
9:20
SPEAKER_00: Uh the predictions of how dangerous Iran is, the way they position Iran as a villain on the world stage, it doesn't take into account all the thousands, millions of Iranians who are trying to live a peaceful, quiet life and are now being victimized by our acts of aggression.
9:40
SPEAKER_00: So But they had weapons of mass destruction.
9:43
SPEAKER_02: So you know, where have we heard that before?
9:46
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
9:47
SPEAKER_00: There's all the justifications for war.
9:49
SPEAKER_00: Look here, at the end of the day, somebody's making money.
9:52
SPEAKER_00: That's what this is about.
9:53
SPEAKER_00: It's about businesses that are going to make money off of this.
9:56
SPEAKER_00: In fact, the stock market fell 700 points yesterday.
9:59
SPEAKER_00: Magically, Lockheed Martin didn't fall.
10:01
SPEAKER_00: Their price went up.
10:03
SPEAKER_00: Um, some of our other, you know, big McDonnell Douglas, uh, these kinds of uh companies that that benefit from war, they're in the business of war, they're they're making money.
10:13
SPEAKER_00: So you know that that I think when you follow the money, you know that this is not about freedom, it's not about security, it's a hundred percent about money.
10:21
SPEAKER_06: Gee, I wonder where Boeing is right now.
10:24
SPEAKER_06: Hmm.
10:25
SPEAKER_00: They actually did not get the benefit that all the other companies did, but they didn't fall as far yesterday as they had been.
10:31
SPEAKER_05: Who gets the benefit of the three dollars and forty cent uh gallon gas?
10:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
10:37
SPEAKER_00: Well it's we all end up paying for it, we know that.
10:40
SPEAKER_06: But yeah, you know, what he's going to do is uh release uh 20 percent of our reserves, oil reserves, and it will it will work.
10:48
SPEAKER_06: It'll depress the the price from spiking.
10:52
SPEAKER_06: Um, so we this is another trick that uh every president's used.
10:57
SPEAKER_05: Well, at least he replaced the Ayatollah committee with the Ayatollah community as number two.
11:03
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
11:03
SPEAKER_01: Right.
11:04
SPEAKER_02: So I think the main message here is that military interventionism should not be an instrument of national policy.
11:11
SPEAKER_02: Let's move on to your your second blog.
11:14
SPEAKER_02: Uh as libertarians, we uh we believe in less government, and that kind of hits it right on the nail when you have bad laws make for bad enforcement.
11:22
SPEAKER_02: Could you comment on that?
11:25
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, this is another question.
11:26
SPEAKER_00: This one actually came up when I was hanging out with you guys out in Ory County at the gun show and uh had some conversation with some folks there, and the immigration conversation came up.
11:35
SPEAKER_00: I wanted to be really honest in that blog about sort of being stumped by one of the guys that asked me about do you think that people should interfere with law enforcement?
11:44
SPEAKER_00: And I didn't have a great response because I thought, you know, my response was, are they law enforcement?
11:49
SPEAKER_00: Uh we're seeing ICE agents behaving outside of the normal behavior for our law enforcement officials and what we expect from law enforcement.
11:58
SPEAKER_00: So I think uh, and we've seen since then, right, uh Christy Gnome uh having to step down or being fired, right, from Homeland Security.
12:06
SPEAKER_00: Um, they're still not funded.
12:09
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of uh sort of arguing and bickering around what DHS should be allowed to do and not allowed to do here in Colombia.
12:17
SPEAKER_00: Everybody's outraged that uh immigration ICE that ICE wants to put an office here in Colombia that's gonna have attorneys in it.
12:24
SPEAKER_00: Um so there's just a lot of sort of misinformation flooding around.
12:28
SPEAKER_00: But I wanted to get sort of to the first principles of it, which is I think that we should embrace immigrants.
12:34
SPEAKER_00: I think they should come legally, I think we should know who they are, I think we should have a better infrastructure that handles the influx of immigrants that come our way.
12:43
SPEAKER_00: When we think about people who came illegally, should they be deported?
12:48
SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, back to my number one concern, which is how much does this all cost?
12:53
SPEAKER_00: It's expensive to put people on airplanes and send them away.
12:57
SPEAKER_00: We also don't have a great reliable method of knowing who they are, where they're from, and where they should go.
13:03
SPEAKER_00: We've been sending people back to countries they've never even been to before.
13:06
SPEAKER_00: They're also rounding up American citizens and holding them without proper cause.
13:11
SPEAKER_00: So it's just really messy.
13:13
SPEAKER_00: Um, and a lot of that is because we haven't done a great job of defining immigration law and immigration procedures.
13:19
SPEAKER_00: And they've not modernized that immigration system to use software uh effectively to use a decentralized approach, you know, where if you could walk into any bank in the state and get yourself a bank account and say, okay, I we're gonna run a background check on you, we're gonna find out who you are.
13:38
SPEAKER_00: Like people have access to information networks.
13:40
SPEAKER_00: Why aren't we utilizing those organizations to help us process residents who want to work here in the United States?
13:49
SPEAKER_00: So we needed to do a better job with it.
13:51
SPEAKER_06: I yeah, but I I gotta say the real ass and elephant in the room is the core the core cause of all these problems that we have are not those people coming in.
14:02
SPEAKER_06: It's why they're coming in, and it's this frickin' welfare state.
14:07
SPEAKER_06: We have got to if we start addressing that first and foremost, and not not all this other fluff that goes around it, I think that is where we can really nip the problem in the bud.
14:23
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, allow the immigrants in who have a skill, who want to work, who want to care for their family, and they can contribute to the American economy.
14:31
SPEAKER_06: And unfortunately, we've got a lot of people that are being brought in for nefarious reasons and for parasitic reasons.
14:37
SPEAKER_02: Parasitic is the key word there.
14:40
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'll agree with that, Trip.
14:41
SPEAKER_00: And I also think I would I would add to that that a lot of that is grift.
14:45
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
14:46
SPEAKER_00: Right?
14:46
SPEAKER_00: Like it's these government um programs.
14:49
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
14:50
SPEAKER_00: We think about what's going on in Minnesota, how much, you know, how many how many government programs are being supposedly fulfilled by these immigrant-owned businesses that are not actually doing the work.
15:01
SPEAKER_00: And it's just because government is so big, it's unmanageable.
15:05
SPEAKER_00: And the federal government is spending so much money that they can't even, they can't manage their books.
15:11
SPEAKER_00: They don't know who's getting what.
15:13
SPEAKER_00: And yeah, you mentioned the NGOs, like there's just a lot of shell companies that are set up, and it's all uh the and that the states are meant to be keeping track of the stuff, but the states are underfunded, they're understaffed as well.
15:25
SPEAKER_00: Don't grow that to try to keep track of it, just stop giving it away and that goes paying for all these things.
15:31
SPEAKER_06: Right down to your core uh your core of bringing down our debt.
15:37
SPEAKER_00: It does, yeah.
15:39
SPEAKER_02: Conversations with the Hof did an entire episode on health care, Obamacare.
15:44
SPEAKER_02: And you mentioned healthcare in this particular blog.
15:47
SPEAKER_02: What's your position on health care?
15:50
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that blog.
15:51
SPEAKER_00: I'm actually uh I keep waiting for that blog to kind of blow up because um it links back to something I wrote years ago when I went to a town hall with Senator Graham.
16:00
SPEAKER_00: And um it the title of that blog on my personal blog was uh Healthcare is a Right and Other Stupid Shit People Say at Town Hall Meetings.
16:10
SPEAKER_02: That's pretty good.
16:12
SPEAKER_00: Um and and I and in that blog, even from you know, whatever that was, 10 years ago, I was saying, look, healthcare is provided by professionals who have gone to school, and my husband's one of them.
16:22
SPEAKER_00: He's a nurse, right?
16:24
SPEAKER_00: Uh we have individuals who they they need to get paid.
16:27
SPEAKER_00: And we all know that when you governtize professional work, the people don't get paid.
16:33
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's why we have an education crisis, is because educators aren't getting paid, right?
16:37
SPEAKER_00: Uh the way that they should be.
16:39
SPEAKER_00: So when we think about health care, there's a lot of opportunities here for solutions, but none of those solutions are more government intervention.
16:46
SPEAKER_00: Government distorts markets, and that's what it's done through Medicare is it has completely distorted the marketplace for health insurance, and then has created this terrible experience where payers are determining the level of care that patients receive, and that's not how it should be.
17:02
SPEAKER_00: Doctors should be determining the level of care.
17:05
SPEAKER_00: And uh, so we need to decouple those things.
17:07
SPEAKER_00: So that's what the whole blog is about is how do you decouple health insurance from health care to make sure that people can still receive quality health care even if they don't have health insurance?
17:17
SPEAKER_00: And then how do you decouple health insurance from employment so that people who don't work, who are retired or who are on um, you know, are are stay-at-home moms, things like that, how they can still access health insurance even though they don't have an employer to pay part of their health insurance.
17:33
SPEAKER_00: So we just need to bring that back to the free markets, which means undoing a lot of these regulations that were put in place by health insurance companies to protect their own market position.
17:42
SPEAKER_00: So we just got to get back to where the free markets can control those things.
17:46
SPEAKER_02: And it would be nice if we could make the general public understand that whenever the government interferes with the free market, bad things happen.
17:56
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
17:57
SPEAKER_00: So the distortion is real.
17:59
SPEAKER_00: And the healthcare piece, I think people don't recognize how much of a distortion Medicare is, but they set pricing for everything.
18:05
SPEAKER_00: I mean, they determine the pricing for absolutely everything.
18:08
SPEAKER_00: Even, you know, pediatricians are taking cues from the healthcare pricing that comes out of Medicare, even though Medicare isn't for little kids.
18:15
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
18:15
SPEAKER_01: Right.
18:16
SPEAKER_00: Um, and then if you give them the example of education and how when the federal government opened up the floodgates for loans, student loans, all the universities raised their prices because the money was available, and all these people ended up with these massive student loan debt.
18:34
SPEAKER_00: That is market distortion caused by the federal government making those loans available to people.
18:40
SPEAKER_00: And when people see that, they go, Oh, I get it.
18:42
SPEAKER_00: Like I recognize that's a crisis.
18:44
SPEAKER_00: We're like, we're in the health, healthcare is the exact same thing.
18:47
SPEAKER_00: It's government making money available and then providers raising their prices because that money is available and the market gets distorted.
18:55
SPEAKER_02: I uh particularly like your uh take on economics and your blog that says uh uncertainty is the enemy of prosperity.
19:04
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
19:05
SPEAKER_02: Let's talk about the economics.
19:08
SPEAKER_00: We're in a um an experience right now that's not unlike the last Trump administration, uh, where they they thrive on what they call the flood the zone strategy, right?
19:19
SPEAKER_00: Where there's always something in the news cycle.
19:22
SPEAKER_00: Some days there's three, four, five things in the news cycle, so you just can't really keep up with it.
19:41
SPEAKER_00: And the chaos is intentional.
19:44
SPEAKER_00: They're not doing this on accident, they're doing it on purpose.
19:47
SPEAKER_00: And it's to try to misdirect or redirect people's attention so that we don't know what to pay attention to, or we get exhausted by what's happening.
19:55
SPEAKER_00: And so we just leave them alone or we give up, right?
19:59
SPEAKER_00: Um, and and that chaos back in December, I went to this uh economic summit at the university uh that I got a chance to go to, and they talked about the instability that that kind of chaos causes in all markets.
20:13
SPEAKER_00: And because of that instability, I mean, right now we're seeing it where people aren't being hired, companies are not hiring anybody because they're worried about whether or not they're gonna have to fire them in two months when the when the market changes, right?
20:25
SPEAKER_00: Um it's it the instability is not good.
20:28
SPEAKER_00: It's not good.
20:29
SPEAKER_00: It's just poor leadership.
20:30
SPEAKER_00: Um, but it's intentional, and I think people need to understand that.
20:33
SPEAKER_00: This isn't that we have a president who doesn't know what he's doing.
20:37
SPEAKER_00: It's we have an entire administration that knows exactly what they're doing.
20:40
SPEAKER_00: And again, somebody is getting rich.
20:43
SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah.
20:45
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's very hard for an investor like myself.
20:48
SPEAKER_02: I don't know where to invest because think the scenario changes every day.
20:53
SPEAKER_02: You know, one day it's the defense stocks, next day it's health care.
20:56
SPEAKER_00: But uh Bitcoin, yeah.
20:59
SPEAKER_06: Actually, actually, today uh when everything went down, all the crypto went up.
21:03
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
21:03
SPEAKER_06: Even Dogecoin uh rocketed up.
21:08
SPEAKER_02: I was always told that buying equities is better than buying bonds.
21:12
SPEAKER_02: Well, I've lost my shirt lately with equities.
21:15
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, yeah.
21:17
SPEAKER_02: So I like also the fact that you get out there on the street, you actually talk to people, you know, about what what's their concern.
21:25
SPEAKER_02: Uh you've got a blog, uh, what me and shop owners know in in Conway, South Carolina.
21:31
SPEAKER_02: Are you saying she's a street walker?
21:33
SPEAKER_02: No, I'm saying it's good to get out there.
21:35
SPEAKER_02: Oh, haw off.
21:37
SPEAKER_02: And actually um uh talk to the Hoy Ho Hoy Poloy, right?
21:45
SPEAKER_00: It's interesting.
21:46
SPEAKER_00: We went to the uh St.
21:47
SPEAKER_00: Patrick's Day Parade in Lexington on Sunday, and before the parade kicked off, uh we walked the length of the parade route, handing out flyers and talking to folks uh and bubbles.
21:59
SPEAKER_00: I was giving them bubbles too.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna do the same thing tomorrow here in Richland County uh before the five points parade.
22:05
SPEAKER_00: Just walking around talking to people, uh giving them flyers.
22:08
SPEAKER_00: And a lot of folks are very receptive.
22:10
SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, I'm Casey Whitner, I'm running for Senate.
22:12
SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh, that's great.
22:13
SPEAKER_00: You have my vote.
22:14
SPEAKER_00: I'm so sick of the duopoly.
22:16
SPEAKER_00: Like, there's a lot of really, really good receptive folks.
22:19
SPEAKER_00: There's some others that are like, tell me what you think about this, tell me what you think about that, so I can give some quick little hits.
22:24
SPEAKER_00: Um, but then I direct them all to the website to take a look at the blogs and to kind of understand what my thought process is on these things.
22:30
SPEAKER_00: Um, but it is uh I enjoy meeting people.
22:33
SPEAKER_00: I've been uh networking since we moved here in 2012 and I was building my business.
22:38
SPEAKER_00: I frequently go into rooms where I don't know a single person in the room and then have to introduce myself and make friends and and uh talk to them and learn more about them.
22:47
SPEAKER_00: So my favorite part of street walking, if you will, is asking them about their business.
22:54
SPEAKER_00: You know, what matters to you and and why did you decide to start your own business?
22:58
SPEAKER_00: And a lot of them are talking about the freedom that they have, the financial security that building their own business gives them.
23:04
SPEAKER_00: Um the there's just a lot of benefits to being an entrepreneur, and I really enjoy those conversations.
23:10
SPEAKER_00: So I do a lot more asking than talking when I'm older.
23:13
SPEAKER_02: What have you found out are some of the major concerns of uh the average Joe on the street?
23:19
SPEAKER_00: National debt.
23:20
SPEAKER_02: National debt.
23:21
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
23:21
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean 201.
23:23
SPEAKER_00: Everybody feels it.
23:24
SPEAKER_00: Everybody feels the pressure of owing money.
23:27
SPEAKER_00: And when we think about it as a national security threat, everybody feels we don't know what's going to happen.
23:32
SPEAKER_00: We've seen other countries that get into really bad debt scenarios where their inflation runs rampant, right?
23:38
SPEAKER_00: If you think of Argentina or where they require, you know, massive bailouts like Greece, you know, where their infrastructure collapses under the weight of its own cost.
23:49
SPEAKER_00: Um, so people are worried about it.
23:52
SPEAKER_00: They don't think that fiscal responsibility, especially the business owners, because they know better, right?
23:56
SPEAKER_00: Like they know you can't run a business if you're constantly in the red.
24:00
SPEAKER_00: And um, and so I think that that's a it weighs on people.
24:03
SPEAKER_00: It weighs on them.
24:04
SPEAKER_02: You'll also have a blog.
24:06
SPEAKER_02: Uh, don't just get back in line.
24:09
SPEAKER_02: We outnumber the oppressors.
24:10
SPEAKER_02: Now, this definitely is a key topic for us libertarians in the Libertarian Party.
24:16
SPEAKER_02: Basically, you're commenting on the two-party system.
24:20
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
24:21
SPEAKER_00: Go ahead and I mean, everything really important I learned, I've learned from Pixar.
24:26
SPEAKER_00: So uh the ants.
24:31
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
24:32
SPEAKER_00: So I use the uh the example of a bug's life.
24:35
SPEAKER_00: Um, but before we get to that, as a matter of fact, I mentioned it last night.
24:38
SPEAKER_00: I was on the Black Powder podcast last night, and we were talking about WALL-E.
24:42
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I don't know if you guys have seen WALLE, but we were talking about the consolidation of major corporations and how eventually there's only going to be like three companies left.
24:50
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, oh, so you guys have seen WALL E, right?
24:52
SPEAKER_00: Where like by and large owns everything and they ruined the world.
24:56
SPEAKER_00: Um, so so yeah, so this is you get that one on Pixar, and then you get the Bug's Life one.
25:01
SPEAKER_00: What's powerful to me about the story in a Bug's Life is that the ants outnumber the grasshoppers 100 to one.
25:08
SPEAKER_00: And the grasshoppers know that.
25:10
SPEAKER_00: And so they do everything they can to intimidate the ants and bully the ants into submission until finally you get this hero that says, look, we don't have to submit to these guys.
25:20
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't even make any sense why we're submitting.
25:23
SPEAKER_00: Don't just get back in line.
25:24
SPEAKER_00: Don't, you know, we don't, we don't need to follow the just because we've always done it that way, doesn't mean we need to continue to do it that way.
25:30
SPEAKER_00: In fact, we'll have a much better life on the other side if we decide to off our oppressors.
25:36
SPEAKER_00: And so that's what I'm trying to encourage people to do.
25:38
SPEAKER_00: You know, not everybody has to be libertarian.
25:41
SPEAKER_00: That's not, I'm not asking you to convert all of your deepest beliefs into our libertarian principles.
25:47
SPEAKER_00: I'm asking you to consider that what we've been doing doesn't work.
25:51
SPEAKER_00: And if you keep doing it the way you've been doing it, you're gonna keep getting what you always got.
25:55
SPEAKER_00: So this year in 2026, in a midterm election, take a chance and decide, you know what, this time I'm gonna do it differently.
26:02
SPEAKER_00: And if you send me to Washington and after, you know, five years, you're so fed up with me just mucking it all up, then vote me out in six years.
26:12
SPEAKER_01: Right.
26:12
SPEAKER_00: Right?
26:13
SPEAKER_00: Um, but you just don't know unless you try.
26:16
SPEAKER_00: And we know what we've been getting, and we know it's not good.
26:19
SPEAKER_02: So it's interesting that we, the average taxpayer, actually way outnumber the ruling elite.
26:26
SPEAKER_02: And yet who does the ruling elite represent in government?
26:30
SPEAKER_02: Not us.
26:31
SPEAKER_02: So they're representing somebody, but definitely not me.
26:34
SPEAKER_02: Special interests with lots of cash.
26:37
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's lots of self-dealing in government where they're they're doing what they need to do to keep their campaigns funded, they're doing what they need to do to keep getting re-elected because they get the money, then they get the support from the party, then they get re-elected, right?
26:51
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
26:51
SPEAKER_00: And that's as citizens, you know, we're sort of left with whatever the parties give us, unless we decide we're gonna vote against the parties.
27:00
SPEAKER_02: And then moving on, uh, you have another blog that's very interesting, uh, No King's Face Plant.
27:06
SPEAKER_02: And as it's uh that's the level of discussion in American politics today.
27:10
SPEAKER_02: If you talk to the somebody who's in college or a recent college grass uh graduate, they're gonna say, socialism is wonderful.
27:18
SPEAKER_02: We need to have more socialism down on capitalism.
27:21
SPEAKER_02: What's going on there?
27:23
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
27:24
SPEAKER_00: I got a chance to speak at the No Kings rally last summer.
27:27
SPEAKER_00: And um, you know, theoretically, I agree with the organizers as far as the folks that are saying, look, our executive branch is um taking more power than they're supposed to have.
27:40
SPEAKER_00: They're doing, they're they're running amok, if you will.
27:44
SPEAKER_00: There's some unchecked authoritarianism happening, and we need to hold Congress responsible for standing up to the executive branch.
27:52
SPEAKER_00: I like that we've seen the judiciary stand up to the executive branch.
27:57
SPEAKER_00: We saw that recently in the Supreme Court rulings related to the tariffs.
28:00
SPEAKER_00: We need that balance between the three.
28:03
SPEAKER_00: And so theoretically, this idea of the No Kings uh I was very attracted to that idea.
28:08
SPEAKER_00: And I spent some time at a couple of different rallies with them last year.
28:11
SPEAKER_00: And again, this is in the customer discovery phase of our campaign, right?
28:15
SPEAKER_00: We started in March of 2025, and I was just going around listening to people and talking to people and understanding where they're coming from.
28:22
SPEAKER_00: And there were a number of things I did not like about how that rally unfolded as far as the messaging being against specifically President Trump.
28:32
SPEAKER_00: I don't think that for me, the the theory of this is more compelling.
28:36
SPEAKER_00: If you go back to it being the 250th anniversary of the revolution, if you think about our original forefathers having the bravery and the courage to throw off their uh monarchy, right?
28:50
SPEAKER_00: Like all of that to me is really valuable.
28:52
SPEAKER_00: But to target an individual, specifically President Trump, to me was just petty and childish.
28:57
SPEAKER_00: So there were some things about it I wasn't pleased with.
29:00
SPEAKER_00: Um, but specifically, I wasn't prepared to get up there and give a speech.
29:05
SPEAKER_00: And so when I did get up to speak, I was like, okay.
29:08
SPEAKER_00: And I think this says is in the blog, I was talking and I said, you know what the real problem in this country is?
29:13
SPEAKER_00: And some dude shouted, capitalism.
29:17
SPEAKER_00: And I just started laughing.
29:19
SPEAKER_00: I go, I teach at the business school.
29:21
SPEAKER_00: I'm definitely not gonna talk against capitalism.
29:25
SPEAKER_00: Like you have got the wrong cat here.
29:28
SPEAKER_00: Um well I and I and I struggled to recover after that.
29:31
SPEAKER_00: And so that's really what the blog is about is me being unprepared and and not really sure how to address some of the um the objections that those folks had.
29:38
SPEAKER_06: Well, I'm I'm glad I went to the No Kings rallies that were here in Myrtle Beach, and I had a different experience because we didn't have young people.
29:46
SPEAKER_06: It was a dinosaur convention.
29:48
SPEAKER_06: And um I tried to ask questions because I had my recording equipment and everything else.
29:55
SPEAKER_06: And when they found out that I wasn't cheerleading, I was just asking questions.
29:58
SPEAKER_06: I wasn't taking sides.
30:00
SPEAKER_06: I just said, okay, for a moment, because everything there was you know, Trump and effigy and all this other stuff.
30:07
SPEAKER_06: I said, for a moment, let's take Trump out of the picture.
30:10
SPEAKER_06: What do you think?
30:11
SPEAKER_06: And I couldn't even get the question out, and I started getting shouted down.
30:15
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
30:15
SPEAKER_06: And it was just like, okay, this is not a no king's rally, this is my king's rally.
30:22
SPEAKER_06: Um and I was just like, okay, you know, I'm just gonna back away because there was nothing productive I could get out of that.
30:30
SPEAKER_06: I did get an interview with one couple, and it's because I knew them from the church.
30:36
SPEAKER_06: And um, and you know, they're diehard you know, Democrats and everything else, and and uh and we had a very good conversation, but it was nothing I could use on air because again, it didn't represent uh really what I experienced there.
30:53
SPEAKER_06: But I think too, I think all these rallies were uh kind of disjointed.
30:59
SPEAKER_06: And so um they they only had the one theme that the the you know no Trump is is really what the the rally was the only rules theme that I saw going on was authoritarianism is what I thought that they were gonna be addressing, and they didn't.
31:16
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
31:17
SPEAKER_00: I think and and the first one I went to, the organizers for that one, the um the guy that organized the one here in Columbia, Sam, is actually a member of the reform party.
31:26
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
31:26
SPEAKER_00: And and he really was about this idea of overreach and authoritarianism.
31:31
SPEAKER_00: I think it just attracted a lot of like Trump derangement syndrome.
31:36
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
31:36
SPEAKER_00: And then I had this conversation with the woman at the second one that I attended, where I mentioned that my father is a my dad's a big Trump supporter and always has been.
31:45
SPEAKER_00: And she said, How do you even talk to him?
31:47
SPEAKER_00: I go, he's my dad.
31:48
SPEAKER_01: Why can I not talk to him?
31:50
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
31:51
SPEAKER_00: Like I'm not cutting people out of my life because of who they vote for.
31:56
SPEAKER_00: That's cuckoo pants.
31:57
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
31:57
SPEAKER_00: That's insane.
31:59
SPEAKER_00: Right.
32:00
SPEAKER_06: It's like poor Catherine Heigel getting attacked because she attended a uh a dog rescue charity, um, but it was at Marilago.
32:09
SPEAKER_06: I mean, like, who cares?
32:11
SPEAKER_06: It was a dog rescue.
32:13
SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
32:14
SPEAKER_00: Like that.
32:15
SPEAKER_00: I mean, the idea that we're supposed to uh hate members of our own family because of their political views to me is just you're saying it's too far.
32:24
SPEAKER_00: It's too far.
32:25
SPEAKER_00: Like that, that's crazy pants.
32:27
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
32:27
SPEAKER_00: So yeah, uh, there was definitely a lot of crazy pants.
32:30
SPEAKER_00: I did see some really funny t-shirts though, too.
32:33
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, I did too.
32:34
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
32:35
SPEAKER_02: So my my takeaway from that particular blog is that uh capitalism has raised more people out of poverty than any other economic system.
32:45
SPEAKER_02: But we libertarians also know that there's a big difference between capitalism and corporatism.
32:53
SPEAKER_06: Of course, Steve's the only person who's lived under feudalism in the group.
32:56
SPEAKER_02: So another blog uh you have uh you mentioned about disruptive technologies.
33:07
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
33:08
SPEAKER_02: How should we handle AI?
33:10
SPEAKER_02: Uh we'll we'll talk about that and then one more topic before we close.
33:15
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, the AI question came up in a very small group gathering that I had.
33:19
SPEAKER_00: There are all boomers, uh, retired folks that wanted to understand, they don't necessarily didn't really know how AI works.
33:27
SPEAKER_00: I didn't really know a whole lot about it either.
33:28
SPEAKER_00: So this is way back in the, I think of like May of last year.
33:32
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, the only sort of parallel I can draw is back in the 90s uh when the dot-com boom was going off and how we flooded the market with a lot of dot-coms that were not really making any money.
33:50
SPEAKER_00: They weren't real legitimate businesses, they weren't really creating value.
33:54
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and yet there were a lot of investors who were getting behind them, and then we had that bust where people realize like this is not the way the internet's gonna be used.
34:03
SPEAKER_00: And I think AI is the same.
34:04
SPEAKER_00: People are trying to predict how AI is gonna be used, but I think we still don't really know.
34:10
SPEAKER_00: And uh I'm encouraged actually by this administration's approach, which is to bring in the tech experts to help to craft some kind of approach here.
34:23
SPEAKER_00: But you know, of course, as a libertarian, I'm like, let's be careful with legislation that quickly gets outdated and also protects industries and that sort of thing.
34:31
SPEAKER_00: Like I'm not I'm not on the legislative side here.
34:33
SPEAKER_00: I just want to have we need to understand what's happening and how it's being used and whether or not it's being used for nefarious purposes.
34:41
SPEAKER_00: Um, that's a big deal.
34:42
SPEAKER_00: And we just saw recently where one of the big AI companies got fired from the military contract because they refused to allow their product.
34:51
SPEAKER_00: They had said in the contract that they didn't want their product to be used in war-making efforts.
34:56
SPEAKER_00: Okay, well, you shouldn't have signed a deal with the Pentagon, like duh, right?
35:02
SPEAKER_00: Surprise, surprise, surprise.
35:04
SPEAKER_00: Like, oh my gosh, I can't believe it that the Pentagon is using us for war.
35:09
SPEAKER_00: Like, really.
35:10
SPEAKER_00: Um, but in any case, I you know, it when we see companies stand up to what they're seeing in the government as being misuse of their product, that we should be encouraged by that.
35:20
SPEAKER_00: Like, I think we should be glad to see that and we should support those companies that are doing it.
35:25
SPEAKER_00: Um, but we also know that other companies will sell out, you know, they'll do whatever they have to do to get those government contracts.
35:30
SPEAKER_00: And I was talking about that last night, as a matter of fact.
35:32
SPEAKER_00: One of the biggest challenges in this state is we have a lot of companies that are government contracting companies.
35:37
SPEAKER_00: And I, of course, I believe that the procurement process for the federal government is the most corrupt grift in the history of mankind.
35:47
SPEAKER_00: Like the way that people sell to the government and grift our federal government is it's embarrassing, and people should be horrified by it.
35:56
SPEAKER_00: Um, and so I that's gonna be a struggle here on the campaign trails.
36:00
SPEAKER_00: I know we have a lot of government contractors in our state.
36:03
SPEAKER_00: Um, and and you know, just not to get too tangent tangente about it, um, but AI is the latest, but there's a long history of companies just selling to the government things that the government doesn't really need or or or shouldn't be paying for.
36:19
SPEAKER_02: Bravo.
36:20
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
36:21
SPEAKER_02: To get back on your your comment about South Carolina, government is either the number one or the number two industry in South Carolina.
36:29
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
36:30
SPEAKER_02: I don't know if you know.
36:31
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
36:31
SPEAKER_02: Okay, the last topic is something that us libertarians really care about and take offense to.
36:38
SPEAKER_02: And that's if you talk to a Republican or a Democrat about voting, and they they'll say to you, Well, you're a libertarian.
36:46
SPEAKER_02: Aren't you wasting your vote?
36:49
SPEAKER_02: What do you say about that?
36:51
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think every time I cast the ballot.
36:55
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
36:55
SPEAKER_00: That that that's the big hurdle is to help people understand that you know, as a voter, you have the easiest participation is your vote, right?
37:07
SPEAKER_00: Um, the next is to get involved in somebody else's campaign and help to promote them as a candidate.
37:13
SPEAKER_00: And the third is to be a candidate yourself and to get in the game, right?
37:18
SPEAKER_00: But at the end of the day, democracy requires participation.
37:21
SPEAKER_00: It requires it.
37:22
SPEAKER_00: We have got to get engaged.
37:24
SPEAKER_00: And if you're not gonna be an activist, if you're not gonna be out there, you know, doing all the legwork, walking the streets, if you will, uh, then you've got to take your vote seriously.
37:35
SPEAKER_00: And from my perspective, you're never wasting your vote if you're supporting a candidate that you believe is the right candidate.
37:42
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, period.
37:43
SPEAKER_00: That doesn't mean that the candidate's gonna win.
37:45
SPEAKER_00: Um, but if you're putting your vote in the pocket of somebody who takes it for granted, and we have a lot of that in this state, specifically from the Republican Party, where they just take your vote for granted, they just believe we're a red state and it's a foregone conclusion, that feels awful that people are taking your vote for granted.
38:02
SPEAKER_00: Why would you want to do that?
38:03
SPEAKER_00: Why would you want to support a candidate that doesn't recognize how valuable your vote actually is?
38:08
SPEAKER_00: It's not actually working for it.
38:09
SPEAKER_00: So I would say that I I think folks who feel like you're wasting your vote when you vote for a libertarian, I've been voting libertarian for 26 years and I've never felt like I wasted my vote.
38:17
SPEAKER_02: Same here.
38:18
SPEAKER_02: Amen.
38:19
SPEAKER_02: Very good answer.
38:20
SPEAKER_02: Dr.
38:21
SPEAKER_02: Wedner, thanks for being on our program today.
38:24
SPEAKER_00: Hi, thanks, guys, so much for having me.
38:26
SPEAKER_02: Oh, you bet.
38:27
SPEAKER_02: It was a pleasure having you.
38:28
SPEAKER_02: I hope our listening audience can appreciate that the current duopoly and control of our federal government has not been in the best interest of the public.
38:41
SPEAKER_02: And let me comment on a meme I just posted on Facebook.
38:45
SPEAKER_02: The meme says the good news is the Republican Party is going to take a beating in the midterm elections.
38:54
SPEAKER_02: The bad news is the Democrats are going to win.
38:59
SPEAKER_02: Well, the reality is the reality is if the neocons policy and the progressive policy of the two parties, if they implement those, we the voters are gonna lose.
39:15
SPEAKER_02: So we're gonna have endless wars and our future well-being well-being is gonna be jeopardized.
39:22
SPEAKER_02: So the real losers in this upcoming midterm election are you, the American public.
39:30
SPEAKER_02: So again, thanks for listening.
39:33
SPEAKER_02: And on future episodes of Conversation with the Hoff, we're gonna talk about the efforts to pass medical marijuana in South Carolina.
39:42
SPEAKER_02: We're also gonna look at the works of the Palmetto State Watch and have a discussion on this is this is what I like tribalism within the Libertarian Party.
39:55
SPEAKER_02: Never a dull moment on conversations with the Hoff.
39:59
SPEAKER_02: And now a word from our glorious leader and executive producer of Liberty Crack Media, Tripp Detmering.
40:06
SPEAKER_06: And uh thank you, uh Stephen.
40:08
SPEAKER_06: This has been another exciting episode of Conversations with the Hoff.
40:12
SPEAKER_06: Uh, please, if you are a listener, tune in to some of our other podcasts.
40:17
SPEAKER_06: If you're interested in books, we have the bookworm mom uh comes out every uh Friday with a new episode.
40:24
SPEAKER_06: And also on Thursdays, dropping with the Hoff will be microphone monkeys.
40:28
SPEAKER_06: If you want to have a laugh, especially uh one laughing at other people who are a bunch of idiots, we are absolutely the show you want to listen to.
40:36
SPEAKER_06: And I want to thank uh Casey.
40:38
SPEAKER_06: And if you want to learn more about Casey Whitner and Dr.
40:41
SPEAKER_06: Casey Whitner's uh campaign, go to Casey, South Carolina, and that's Casey with a K.
40:46
SPEAKER_06: Uh Casey SouthCarolina.com.
40:49
SPEAKER_06: And um, if you need a message from God that you need to cast your vote for her in the general election, if you wake up on the 18th of this month and your pea is green, it's an indication that you should cast your vote for Casey Whitener.
41:06
SPEAKER_06: All right, everybody.
41:07
SPEAKER_06: That's been that's been the uh the the the street walker and all the Johns are saying have a great day, have a great day.
41:16
SPEAKER_06: This has been Conversations with the Hawk.
41:18
SPEAKER_04: Take care, everybody got a question back of the glow from campus call to the campus talking to the evil number.
42:57
SPEAKER_04: Old school and a freedom for you questions, conversation with the biggest shoes, liberty conversation with the biggest.