Latest / The Junto Podcast / E36: Punk, Politics, and the Ethos of Nonconformity

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E36: Punk, Politics, and the Ethos of Nonconformity · The Junto Podcast

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Hello, America. Welcome to the Junto Podcast, where we promote the practical
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applications of critical thinking and bold creativity.
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I am your host, Edgar Mills. Thanks for joining.
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Welcome to episode 36, Good People, and thank you for sticking with me. I appreciate you.
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So what's the topic of the day? Can you be punk rock and be conservative in your politics?
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When you were young and wild and crazy, and you were a punk and you call yourself
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punk, Is that the domain of the left only In political terms?
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I don't think so I think one of the most punk rock things you can do these days
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Is to stand up and speak loudly on your conservative beliefs,
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That's how you get ostracized and criticized And isolated and canceled these
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days Is to be conservative proudly Hopefully.
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So, well, first of all, what does it mean to be conservative?
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People apply various definitions that are convenient to them.
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So I'm going to try to apply some definition to what I think.
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If we get rid of all the jargon, right, all the political jargon,
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and if we disregard all these think tank definitions and whatnot and speak plainly,
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I really do believe that conservatism is just common sense living is what I believe.
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And some of the things that, well, you might believe in God or at least have
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a respect for general sort of Judeo-Christian values that the West has.
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As a conservative, you might love your country, even with all its flaws,
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and recognize that Western civilization has, in fact, pulled hundreds of millions
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of people out of poverty.
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And you might have an appreciation for that. You might believe in free markets
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and voluntary exchange.
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You might believe that people should have sort of a hard work ethic.
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You might believe that you should pay your debts, whatever those debts are.
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Now, we can talk about debt slavery on another podcast, but you might have a
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strong value for family. Yeah.
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You might believe that you can still make a deal on a handshake.
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You might believe that giving a handshake is as good as giving your word is
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as good as signing a contract.
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Those are some things that I think are conservative sort of ideals.
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As a conservative these days, you might be, I don't know, skeptical of big government issues.
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You might be skeptical of whatever the latest social engineering fad is.
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You might be skeptical of the, I don't know, the intellectual,
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the credentialed class who lecture us all from their position of superiority.
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Yeah, who never actually get their hands dirty and the goings-ons of everyday life.
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And as a conservative these days you might
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believe in individual freedom you might
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believe that individual freedom and personal responsibility are inextricably
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connected yeah you might believe those things because without freedom responsibility
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well freedom without responsibility can turn into like some kind of lawless chaos, right?
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Some hedonistic lawless society, but given human nature, somebody is going to violate.
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And then we got some chaos, some madness. Now I know the word anarchy is closely
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associated with, with being punk, being punk rock, but we'll get into that in a little bit.
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So those are all the things, right? That I attached to conservatism,
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not MAGA, not Donald Trump is the savior, not cronyism, not even consumerism.
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Free markets, yes.
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Rampant consumerism, no.
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So I'm applying my definitions as well. I think they're widely accepted, but.
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So, from what I believe to be punk rock, right, the tenets, early in the punk
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rock days, right, what did punk rock, what did punk celebrate?
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We can call it radical individualism if you want.
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They celebrated absolute contempt for conformity.
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And they celebrated and they made a deliberate effort to be offensive,
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to offend the groupthink, the herd,
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to offend what was pushed upon us as the way you should be.
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Non-conformists, right? Non-conformists, sometimes just contrarian,
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just for the sake of being contrarian.
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But these days, in the modern day, the loudest, most conformist herd out there
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is the woke left, the progressives.
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And they control every major institution, folks.
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The left controls every major institution. Big tech, academia, news media, politics.
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Yeah, Donald Trump's in office. And yeah, even Republicans have majorities.
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But they're not conservatives.
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So to me...
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A genuinely punk rock position
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today is to be kind of a right-leaning sort of conservative libertarian because
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that's what gets you demonetized and deplatformed and isolated and sometimes
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physically attacked by the mob,
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by the frigging herd mentality.
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Whether they're paid agitators or genuine zealots, whatever,
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you go out as a conservative in a major city street and see what happens.
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So if you're a lefty and you're out at an entertainment venue,
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right, you're out with some live music or just something, you know,
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like Piedmont Park, for instance, and there's some kind of little festival going on.
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And you look all punk rock, you're wearing the uniform, right?
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You're all you're all edgy you got fucking whatever
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color hair and you're saying
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the progressives the the progressive party lines
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and everybody's nodding along with you and everybody loves you you're an ally
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you're an ally okay you dress the same way you look the same you look the part
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right you have your boots and and spikes and chains and everything that you
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have and you And in the same exact environment,
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then you say something remotely conservative and watch the crowd turn on you. Watch them turn on you.
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That's punk rock, isn't it?
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Nonconformity. So back in the day, punks, sort of socially speaking,
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I mean, they rejected and they spit in the face of like...
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Corporatism and consumerism and these white-collar career dudes.
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And they rejected the rules of your standard, you know, polite society.
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They didn't want to look like everyone else.
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And largely, I mean, you can argue that largely it was a fashion.
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It started out sort of superficial, I think.
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Think we can agree that punk rock started out superficial and
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and not just a rejection of of whatever the
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current end fad was a lot of
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punk rock that i knew when i was young it was
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just out of sort of socioeconomic i couldn't afford nice hip fashionable clothes
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anyway so yeah you just cut the sleeves off and wear your dad's work boots and
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boom you're a punk you're a punk rocker but yeah then the music you know what
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i mean an appreciation for the really really just,
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bare bones hard music and
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and and it was voluntary chaos yeah
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it was voluntary chaos they wanted to create chaos just to make other people
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uncomfortable and it was and it was hardcore individualism and somewhat self-reliance
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it's our even the punk sort of formed little little groups there. That's nature.
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You gravitate toward people similar to you.
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But they took full advantage of their God-given right to offend any and everyone
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because free speech existed.
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Yeah, free speech existed. It still sort of exists, I guess, right? It does.
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Whether you can do it on any given platform or not, it's a whole other thing.
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I can still say what I want to say.
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In America, definitely not the UK, where arguably punk was born,
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but some people will say the U.S..
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Politically, punks absolutely, categorically, in every form, rejected authority,
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whether it was state authority, whether it was these big mega corporation,
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monopolistic corporations,
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or frigging Ivy League universities, or legacy media, or big corporate record labels.
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And and also and and this is
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very important here is the they also rejected these
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self-appointed sort of gatekeepers that were within the the punk rock scene
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itself you've got these self-appointed types who believe that they're somehow
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the the the trendsetters or the or the rule makers within the the sub-genre there,
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so what's cool well your your mohawk isn't as cool anymore so you got to change
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or you know whatever you guys remember all the laces right the different color laces with the boots,
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i mean who who's who does that stuff who sets that up it sees these gatekeepers
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and i'm going to say it and i'm going to make a reference to every even the
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punk scene even the punk scene has its own version of Ellsworth M. Toohey.
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Every industry, everything has that.
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They have that guy who believes he is the one who sets the pace for what everyone
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else should or shouldn't do or thinks cool or acceptable.
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And the general rule of punk rock, I'd rather be a hated misfit than a loved conformist. podcast.
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Conformity was the worst. That was the worst sin amongst the punks.
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And I latched onto that, folks. I latched onto that and, yeah, took it fairly to heart.
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In today's society, folks, the ultimate conformity is the performative,
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woke, leftist progressivism.
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That shit is the new friggin' corporate standard.
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You get in line or you get dismissed.
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And if you're a real punk, if you call yourself a punk, if you were a punk,
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then you reject that conformity.
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I saw, so I'm on Facebook with this one page. I want to say it's called Punk Rock Conservatives.
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And I haven't been active on it as far. I've been just, you know,
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I'm just lurking in the background.
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There's always somebody going
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back and forth. I believe there's a lot of trolls on that page probably.
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And some people say some semi-thoughtful things on there and,
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but somebody posted a photo and I don't know if it was a troll posting a photo
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of this guy, but it was this, this guy,
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you know, he was wearing some, whatever outfit,
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you know, he looked some version of a punk rock outfit and he was wearing a
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mask and it was, you know, like a COVID type mask.
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And he was throwing up like a peace sign or something and it says it's punk to mask up.
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I can't think of anything less punk rock.
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I can't think of anything more conformist than to fall in line with what was
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going on during that COVID madness.
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What are your thoughts on that? Was it very punk rock to mask up?
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Or was it just responsible? Was that just a responsible thing to do?
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You let me know. You reach out and let me know.
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So some of the very early bands, right? And when did punk come along?
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You know, early, mid-70s, early 70s.
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Now, I know, generally speaking, folks, the Kinks aren't considered punk.
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They're not punk. They're just some British rock, whatever.
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But they had, to me, a very early sound that led into some pretty, yeah, I like the Kinks.
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Anyway, but yeah, later on, you know, 75, 76, something. I was young. I was a wee lad.
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The Ramones, obviously, right?
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And most of you know, probably that Johnny Ramone was a Republican.
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Yeah, he was, he never, never denied that.
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I think he might even said that liberalism is a mental disorder.
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But yeah, they were very punk rock. You know, New York, Queens, I think.
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And then the Sex Pistols was one of the early British. What do you think they
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were manufactured or not? Whatever.
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But the Sex Pistols were very, very influential in the punk scene.
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And then one of my favorites in yours, Fear. Yeah, they were awesome.
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One of the most punk rock things ever was in 1981, I don't know.
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1981, Fear was the musical guest on Saturday Night Live.
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Now, they were given, you know, just like all things on Saturday Night Live,
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very like scripted and very whatever.
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Well, Lee Ving on the trip. Now, this is the way I read it, right?
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As they were cruising to the venue, the Saturday Night Live studios,
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you know, this dude was collecting up punks off the street. We're like, hey, let's go do this.
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And they did, I love living in the city, I think on live television, on network television.
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And then it just got, it went out of control, man.
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The punks were up just smashing shit. That was one of the most punk rock things
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you'll ever see on network television.
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And that, yeah, that, and that happened. Yep. Yep.
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Who else? Let's see. The Damned. Yeah, they're pretty serious.
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Early Black Flag, folks. Say whatever you want.
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Like all these things I'm naming off now, now everybody considers just classic rock.
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But yeah, Black Flag. Yeah, Henry Rollins went left.
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Pretty left later on. He's very much a bootlicker now.
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And it was kind of funny because he hated cops a lot, Henry Rollins.
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But now he's a lefty. It's very weird. It's weird how lefties hate cops but
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love big government. I don't understand that. But anyway.
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Yeah, Black Flag was good, though. They were awesome. Who else?
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Later on, you know, in the later 80s, I think, minor threat. Yeah.
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So they were, I think they were kind of straight edge there a little bit.
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But they were still very much anti-corporation, anti-state. You know what I mean?
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And then who's some now i don't know you know a lot of a lot of punk rockers
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from the 70s and 80s sort of age out right you think that and that's what we're
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talking about now one of the questions that prompted this podcast was someone
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posed the question is why are so many old punks,
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now just conservatives and we'll get to that but some of the guys age out of
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the edgy music You find your happy space, your zone there, and you don't go beyond that.
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I like exploring new music.
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Exploring new music. So some of the bands out there today, and I mean,
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you know, since 2020, I mean, new ish, but who are, are still like pretty,
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truly punk rock as far as independent and, and, and just edgy.
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And, and I recommend, I recommend, God damn it.
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Standby. little interruption all right
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anyway here we go where did i pick off sorry about
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that interruption folks all right current rock bands punk rock bands that's
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where we're at current punk rock bands who's out there today that is edgy that
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is hard there's there's a band called smirk yeah pretty serious business there's
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a there's one called billiam and i think they're australian,
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billiam like william except with a b there's a philly band called extradition.
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That is pretty damn good let's see
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who else who's who else gel is good
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i want to say they're out of new jersey somewhere up
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there new york or new jersey scowl is
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very they're so yeah i think
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they got a female front
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and it's pretty it's pretty
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hardcore let me look them
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up real quick scowl all of
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these bands i'm talking about if you listen to it man they're hard
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they're very hard out of
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california yeah yeah this so the the lead singer is cat moss and they they've
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like they're so hard like they've been kicked out of venues for being too rowdy yeah.
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Scowl yeah they're give them a listen for sure then
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there's a band i'm still on the fence with this band it's
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called spy but their use of
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they got a lot of like feedback and and stuff
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going i don't know i'm still i'm still undecided about them uh but they're pretty
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good but all of these are like and when i say proper punk folks i'm talking
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about like small unknown record labels are just putting shit out in like on
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YouTube, you know what I mean?
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Like, and they're all very, very raw in the punk rock sense,
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you know, and, and they all very much are, well, they're not corporatized.
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They're not, they're not packaged and marketed and corporatized or,
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and what's more and more important to
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me today as it was in the
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80s is they're not really ideological
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purists in the sense that you got to be a lefty or
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a righty or whatever you know what I'm saying not gatekeeping as far as that
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goes I mean they play you know friggin small venues house shows you know what
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I'm saying playing in people's basements or some warehouse they're not they're not at all these.
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These corporate-y festivals sponsored by Target. You know what I'm saying?
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So that right there is what I consider to be pretty punk rock,
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never mind the music itself.
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Now, some of that music snobs out there, and I got a buddy who's a music snob
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who might tell you that some of these bands aren't necessarily punk.
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It's some other niche genre, but to me, they all sound pretty punk rock.
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So yeah there's some good bands out there we some of the older bands that we
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all know and loved or or love at some point loved at some point and then some
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of these new bands that i encourage you to check out,
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if you like hard music and you're a hard person, now, again,
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some of us age out of that stuff.
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And to me, music sets a mood and it depends on what I'm, what I'm doing as to
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what type of music I want to be listening to, because I could just as easily be listening to,
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you know, Ralph Stanley do some bluegrass or John Coltrane do some jazz.
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Anyway, yeah, new bands that are proper punk rock bands.
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So who are some of the old school punk heroes that we love their music, you know what I mean?
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But now they've some, or they were always, or they've come out as outspoken lefties.
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Notably, I'm going to talk, well, I never considered Green Day very punk rock at all.
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But Billy Joe Armstrong's a little douchebag. But have you guys seen,
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there's a YouTube channel called, I want to say Punk Rock MBA.
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And so you guys remember NoFX? Yeah.
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So Fat Mike from NoFX has been on that.
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And that is a very much what I would consider anti-punk.
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The whole premise of the channel is that you could learn how to,
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even if you're a band, right,
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that you can go in there and learn how to package and market your band for commercial success. Yeah.
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And I guess, you know, even the most punk rock of the most punk rock,
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yeah, you want to get successful, I suppose.
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But the most punk rock of the most punk rock don't
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consider commercial financial success
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the end-all be-all and that channel very
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much is all about setting up that commercial financial
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success yeah so i
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don't know i don't i don't think it's uh and then
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jello biafra from the dead Kennedys is
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I think that dude ran for
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like mayor of like San Francisco I think or something like that like how how
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how much more left wing does it get than San Francisco and then you want to
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be the head you want to be the head the lefty oh man it's crazy.
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Mind billy joe armstrong that douche a
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couple of these former punk rockers from some of these
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british bands man like you know ran for like parliament and stuff like that
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back in all the and all these dudes though there's some commonalities here they're
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all rich they all have money and again folks i'm not allergic to money and i'm
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not poo-pooing money i'm just telling you,
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And they've all had various accolades and whatnot from the music industry.
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And they all preach the same leftist, which is also elitist, nonsense.
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And they're in line with the people who are running the show right now.
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They fall in line with that.
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How punk rock is that? I don't know. So their packaged and marketed rebellion
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is government-approved, corporate-sponsored,
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agreeing and if you're agreeing with everything that the mainstream media puts
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out and every edict that the, the, the government puts, puts,
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lays down, I mean, that's, that's just not rebellion. It's just not rebellion.
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And I saw a funny quote that said, that's, that's just like being the house band on the Titanic.
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You're still going, you're still going down with the ship, which
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was planned by the way all right
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in contrast who are some of the former or
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current punk rock dudes who are
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out there who are conservative or
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libertarian even well we already
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johnny ramon we talked about was john
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lyden is michael graves
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michael graves whatever you want of calling from the
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misfits now he back in
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early 2000s they started a
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website called conservative punk.com and
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that was in direct contrast to some
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lefty started what was a punk the vote or something
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like that in the in the early 2000s and
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they did that as a direct contrast but i
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want to say well let's talk about leaving
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let's talk about fear right leaving he's i
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mean he's done guest spots on fox news and he openly mocks like politically
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correctness and stuff like that which all punk rockers should openly mock pc
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culture at any rate i don't know back in back Back in the 90s,
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80s and 90s, agnostic front was very controversial.
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Not for being offensive, well, but for being offensive to the left,
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for being too pro-working class and anti-welfare state.
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Yeah. Who else?
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Joe Escalante from the Vandals has his own record label.
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And let's talk about that. Like when you do your own thing, right?
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If you reject the system, you remove yourself from the system and you do alternative parallel.
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And so as opposed to these big record labels in this night, he just started
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his own fucking record label. And it's called Kung Fu Records, by the way.
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And that's, well, that's capitalism in action. That's small scale.
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You know, do it yourself.
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Capitalism in action. And there's nothing wrong with it. It's good.
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Now, let me tell you a thing about these old punk rock guys.
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Let's just use Johnny Rotten, for example.
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That guy, he's been on the planet for a little bit. You know what I mean? He's been around.
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And when you're young and you're screaming about the system and this and that
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and the other and anarchy, and then you've lived decades and decades and decades,
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and you've seen all the things in action.
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You've seen the logical outcomes of the systems that you're railing against.
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And you've lived long enough to see the burn it down crowd turn into the comply crowd.
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Yeah, man. Don't be in the comply crowd. Be a nonconformist.
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And I can't remember...
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When I say he, John Lydon had a quote, and I can't remember it.
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I'm going to paraphrase it here, but something like, who knew that the conservatives
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would be the rational, you know,
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sort of nonconformist today versus the left who originally, you know,
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were about all this individualism and freedom. them.
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And now they're the cunts who are trying to make everyone comply. I'll paraphrase.
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So I want to add sort of a little disclaimer and a caveat into all this.
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And I'm going to start with a little story. I used to be a bouncer at the Masquerade
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when it was on North Avenue back in the day.
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And when I say back in the day, for me, that means the early 90s in the midnight
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i went back in the army in 19 and 96 i went in the army in 90 well late 90 into 91,
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i did two years i came home and from 93 to 96 ish yeah i was a bouncer at the masquerade and the.
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A bike messenger during the day. Yeah, that was my life. Anyway,
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if you were a skinhead in that timeframe and came to some sky shows or,
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or whatever, whatever other punk bands play,
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the masquerade had a just awesome.
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So many bands came through there big and small.
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You know what I mean? Like I played a Reverend Horton or I played,
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I worked a Reverend Horton heat show there, which was Reverend Horton Heat Live.
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Oh man, it's a sight to behold.
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Anyway, if you were a skinhead during that time, you caught an ass whooping from me at some point.
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Yeah. What I'm doing here is doing a little disclaimer.
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And there's this, you know, there's a segment of these 80s sort of white power
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sort of skinhead bands that were full, you know, full-blown neo-Nazi.
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And yeah, racist, frigging nationalist.
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And when I say nationalist, not American nationalist, you know what I mean?
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Like Nazi, like German-esque.
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And real punks did and do reject that completely.
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Because it's still a form of collectivism. It's still, it's an extreme form
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of authoritarianism. authoritarianism, and then it's just racist anyway,
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you know, nevermind the racism, right?
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And it has zero to do with conservatism, and it has zero to do with being a proper punk.
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That's my disclaimer. And if you are a lefty or even a moderate politically, and you immediately,
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when somebody says punk rock conservative, and you immediately think Nazi,
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then you're not a critical thinker.
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All right. You're just a, what they call an NPC who's just thinking and regurgitating
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what your echo chamber wants you to. You're not a critical thinker at all.
32:13
So chew on that for a little bit.
32:17
And as I defined earlier, I think true conservatism, one, is about individual
32:23
liberty, free speech, and yeah, even, dare I say, secure borders and personal
32:29
responsibility, but not racial hatred.
32:32
Secure borders doesn't equal racial hatred either. And it doesn't mean extreme nationalism.
32:38
Name me another country on this planet that doesn't have secure borders.
32:42
All right, we're done with that.
32:44
But the left, who consider themselves to be punk rockers, you know,
32:51
they claim to hate the system, right?
32:53
And they will say that, you know, Donald Trump is the system or Republican is
32:58
the system. Well, I got news for you.
33:00
The Constitution does expressly state that we are a Republican constitutional republic, right?
33:08
A Republican form of government is guaranteed under the Constitution.
33:13
But I mean the Republican Party, right? You conflate the two.
33:18
And then you claim to hate the system while stroking the cock of the system.
33:24
Who do you think? What do you think government program?
33:30
There's some catchphrase floating around there right now. If you give somebody
33:33
the power to feed you, you're also giving them the power to starve you.
33:38
Right? The government is not benevolent. it's going to do what's in its interest.
33:44
If it's in its interest to give you free food stamps for votes.
33:51
If the welfare class voted Republican, guess what?
33:59
The Democrats would be on the other side of that aisle. We can just look back
34:03
in history, and I mean maybe back into the even 70s, and see that to be true.
34:09
Definitely the 60s and beyond.
34:12
So if you're a lefty punk rocker and you claim to hate the system,
34:18
you're doing something you're not.
34:21
There's a contradiction there. All right.
34:24
What's one of the number one guidelines? Right. Punk rock. Right.
34:28
I'm not going to say rules because that in itself is contradictory.
34:31
Reject conformity. That's that's a part of the ethos of punk rock. Right.
34:38
Authority. That's a part of the ethos of punk rock.
34:43
And then lesser is basically a do-it-yourself self-reliance.
34:49
Start your own label, right? Do your own thing. Sing the way you want to sing.
34:54
Play what you want to play.
34:56
And then another lesser, but even equally, is the freedom to offend the easily offended.
35:06
That's the First Amendment all day, every day, good people.
35:10
Modern leftism violates every single one of those tenets of ethos because they
35:19
want to impose hate speech codes and whatnot.
35:25
They want to pressure and get corporate sponsorship for their agenda.
35:34
Fuck. Green Day was on Broadway, did a musical on Broadway.
35:39
From the entertainment perspective, that's the middle of corporate sponsorship
35:49
and capitalism and commercialism.
35:54
That's the middle.
35:56
That's the nexus.
35:59
Well, on the East Coast, my bad. Hollywood is for West Coast.
36:05
Yeah, fucking Broadway musicals, man. God dang.
36:09
And then I mentioned earlier the Punk Rock NBA YouTube channel.
36:14
How to market and package and commercialize your punk rock. Yeah.
36:22
That's lefty stuff, man. That's lefty stuff.
36:26
Or their absolute obedience to academia, to Ivy League friggin' elitism.
36:35
That ain't very punk rock, I can tell you that.
36:39
You can't claim to be anti-system and then beg for government solutions and
36:47
government subsidy and corporate approval. it doesn't get any more conformist than that.
36:55
Speaking, logically speaking, if you stand for small government,
37:01
individual rights, to include gun rights, right?
37:05
Free speech, individual responsibility, that right there is genuinely anti-system,
37:11
folks, because the system's trying to crush all of those things.
37:15
The system, as it is, even the Republicans, they hate you for those things,
37:20
because those things deny them maximum control over you.
37:25
So I asked the question earlier, I said it, you know, a lot of somebody,
37:29
well, someone else asked the question, I'm just repeating it.
37:32
Why are there so many older, you know, middle-aged, when you were punk rock
37:36
and then you, you turn into a middle-aged conservative?
37:41
Well we all take that journey you know from teenhood to adult you know reality
37:47
right reality does does set in to us a little bit i'm not gonna i'm not gonna
37:54
minimize the reality of teen angst but you're looking at the world through a
37:58
limited perspective and the older you get,
38:01
hopefully the the broader your your aperture gets the wider it gets but i'm
38:07
reminded of a quote and And this quote's been around for a few centuries,
38:10
and I tried to find the source of this quote, and I cannot.
38:16
So it's an unattributed quote, but it goes like this.
38:19
If you're not a liberal at the age of 20, you have no heart.
38:23
If you're not a conservative at the age of 40, you have no brain. Ha!
38:31
That's reality setting in, folks. That's reality setting in.
38:36
And that quote's about, you know, been around for about 300 years at least.
38:42
We start out, you know, young, full of vigor and idealism of whatever flavor.
38:49
But we pretty early, I, especially me, I can say that I had a pretty early anger
38:58
and distrust of authority.
39:00
And that's to include my parents, teachers, even, especially cops.
39:08
Religious institution.
39:10
And to some degree, even when I was young, maybe, I don't want to say capitalism.
39:15
I wasn't too up on politics as it was, but especially as it pertains to economics.
39:25
So, and a lot of people start out like that. You start out idealistic and ready
39:30
to fight for your whatever you think your cause is. And then we start to grow up, though.
39:36
We start to age and we start to see the realities of the world.
39:41
And now we pay taxes, folks. And that's enough. If that's not enough,
39:45
holy shit, it ought to be.
39:48
Then we have kids and we see how the society, the external influences that the
39:55
society poses on our kids.
39:57
And some of us start businesses and we're like oh and we see the struggles of like,
40:03
the roadblocks yeah we realize as especially when you start a small business
40:10
that the government is the biggest thief of your effort and your time and your
40:17
money and the government,
40:20
presents the biggest obstacle to your freedom of movement as a businessman,
40:26
So that starts to shape the way you think.
40:31
Example john johnny ramon and and johnny rotten they never changed their their core belief system,
40:38
i said it a minute ago they they just lived
40:40
long enough to watch the the burn it all down crowd become the establishment
40:45
yeah they just lived long enough to watch watch all those posers and those fashion
40:52
the fad chasers they became the establishment and then you realize it like,
40:59
And maturity will lead you to the realization that, now this is two very profound
41:06
things I'm about to say here.
41:09
One, that anarchy doesn't scale, folks.
41:13
Anarchy, it's okay in its isolated forms.
41:21
And neither does socialism. And socialism just flat out doesn't work.
41:27
It works on small scale, folks. And I've said this before.
41:31
Communism will work in a community of 100 people. Maybe.
41:36
Let's say it'll work in a community of 20 people who all have the same ideology.
41:42
But even if it was 100 people, somebody in that group is going to start to reject something.
41:50
And then that's it. It doesn't scale, folks.
41:53
It doesn't scale. And it takes maturity to make you understand that.
41:59
Age, life.
42:04
The only truly punk
42:06
rock political position is one maximum
42:11
individual liberty paired with personal responsibility and that's exactly what
42:17
libertarianism is and honest conservatism libertarian is the most punk rock
42:24
political platform out there folks that the menu is very small, right?
42:30
We've got Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, and then some rando,
42:35
you know, and then a bunch of randos. Very niche.
42:40
Libertarianism is the most punk rock as far as ideology goes.
42:44
And that's what's on the menu right there.
42:46
Well, what makes you say that, Edgar? Why? What makes Libertarianism punk rock?
42:53
Well, the Libertarian platform, generally speaking, believes that we should
42:58
eliminate Victimless crimes.
43:00
If there is no victim, there is no crime. It's just a contract dispute at some
43:05
point. Well, even with contract dispute, there's a victim.
43:09
Yeah. What would that do for the criminal justice reform?
43:14
Libertarian Platform believes that taxation, all taxation, is theft.
43:17
However, taxation should be voluntary.
43:21
We'll see how many Democrats voluntarily pay taxes if there were no tax.
43:29
Libertarianism believes in the absolute right to self-defense.
43:35
Believes in the property rights. If you work for a thing and you own that thing, that's your thing.
43:42
Anybody else doesn't have a right to that thing unless you voluntarily share that thing.
43:47
All things are not communal.
43:50
Libertarianism absolutely rejects corporate bailouts, government to corporate bailouts.
43:58
If you want to rage against the system, rage against it.
44:02
That's it right there. No corporate bailouts. If your gigantic,
44:06
behemoth, monopolistic corporation fails, well, so be it.
44:13
Libertarianism does not believe in speech law.
44:19
Hate speech, a savage hypocrisy. Yeah, that was from South Park.
44:25
Hate speech is a savage hypocrisy. Just like hate crime is a savage hypocrisy.
44:32
And some people, and I'm not an absolutist, folks, but some people strongly
44:36
believe that any free...
44:41
Free speech without all free speech. You should be able to state a position
44:46
without being canceled or certainly litigation against you.
44:53
Punk rock embodied these things early.
44:57
Yeah, I mean, think back when you were a punk rocker in the 80s, right?
45:03
You and a couple of homies rented a frigging like a storage unit or something and lived in it.
45:08
You printed your own t-shirts and your own zines made
45:13
your own tapes and eventually your own cds sold
45:17
your own merch at your own show and if you didn't have a table full of merch
45:21
if you didn't have somebody's girlfriend sitting at the table during your show
45:25
before and after your show you were out there selling your own shit you might
45:31
have carried a blade or me i carried brass knuckles yeah when I was a bouncer.
45:36
I mean, I just carried them everywhere, but I used them a few times as a bouncer.
45:43
And your whole attitude was, everybody else can fuck off. I'm doing what I do.
45:47
It doesn't get any more libertarian than that.
45:52
Libertarian in that. So in one of my episodes, I want to say maybe episode 31-ish,
45:58
we talked about can you separate the art from the artist?
46:02
When you know all your favorite musician, when he's out there spouting off his
46:06
political views and you disagree with those political views,
46:09
can you still like the music and just disregard the dude?
46:14
Yeah, you can. I think we came to a conclusion
46:17
sort of that you can do that there's probably a line somewhere that that you
46:21
have yours right but I got news for you I thought the dead Kennedys were I love
46:27
the dead Kennedys right but they're they're big libs yeah I don't I don't like liberal perspectives,
46:35
but I like the dead Kennedys what about the sex pistols yeah can you wear a
46:42
sex pistol shirt to your local BLM rally?
46:47
Or is somebody going to, are they going to pile on you because John Lydon came
46:53
out three decades later and said, I vote for Trump.
46:57
The power of punk rock music was in the rebellion for rebellion's sake. It was hard music.
47:07
It wasn't inherently political. Like I said, I think, you know,
47:11
I had this conversation when one of my sons was punk rock kind of started out.
47:15
It was a little superficial.
47:16
I mean, you can look at some, there were some social commentaries there,
47:24
but it was in the hardness and the rejection of whatever the top 40 music was.
47:31
It wasn't in whatever pre-approved political cause that the lead singer was
47:39
shilling for. know what I'm saying?
47:43
It was in the physicality. Yeah. To be punk rock was to be very physical.
47:52
Some shows where you would get the shit beat out of
47:54
you yeah it was rough and it
47:58
was a release it was an individual release
48:01
amongst people who also felt the
48:04
need for a release yeah it
48:08
was so you can separate whatever the
48:12
the singer's politics are from the
48:15
quality when i say quality i don't even necessarily mean
48:18
technical artistic quality i mean just the
48:21
feeling whatever feeling you get from it
48:24
the rage or the or the the freedom or whatever you you get from that you can
48:30
you can separate that you can do it so i'm going to leave you with this if if
48:35
your version of being a punk and i say that with finger quotes requires some
48:41
kind of ideological conformity,
48:44
or some kind of censorship or oppression of wrong think somebody who's not on
48:50
the same ideological wave, then you're not punk at all, and you never were, and I'll stand on it.
48:58
You're just another conformist douchebag dancing along with your party-approved
49:04
punk uniform. That's my thoughts.
49:08
All right, good people. Thanks for listening to yet another rant.
49:12
But please, I got one more seat available for the land navigation course,
49:18
which starts this Friday.
49:21
So we are about five, four days out from the three-day land navigation course.
49:27
And you can find it on twoteanguys.com.
49:30
Please sign up.
49:32
Baby, it's cold outside. It's coming up on 20 December. And that's a, I think, pistol match.
49:38
And you can find that on ospreyshootingsolutions.com.
49:44
Listening to the Junto podcast and go back and catch episodes that maybe you
49:49
haven't heard yet and tell me, share your opinions on the things I'm sharing.
49:54
I'm not posing these things to tell you I'm right, wrong, or otherwise.
49:58
I'm just giving you an opinion on a topic. Some of them I hold very dearly.
50:03
Some of them I'm just posing questions to be pondered. At any rate, give them a listen.
50:10
TheJuntoPodcast.com. You can find the last three episodes for sure.
50:16
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50:26
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50:28
Please help us help other people by donating to the Help a Homie Fund.
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50:49
help i mean like something as as simple as me going and buying a to-go meal
50:55
to give to a guy on the street or possibly maybe buying a jacket as the weather's
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getting colder or a blanket for some dude out on the street who needs it.
51:09
Things like that. So consider that, if you will. And other than that,
51:13
folks, please reach out to me.
51:16
Appreciate the feedback. I encourage the feedback. And I like hearing from people out in the wild.
51:24
So please do. Okay, folks.
51:27
Thanks very much for listening. I appreciate you. Take care Have good manners
51:32
with people Treat everybody with some Some basic mutual respect Okay I love you guys.