Sam Harris

All the people who sold the war in Iraq, they lied us into war after a war. They've bankrupted the country, damn near destroyed the dollar and no one loses their job. No one even gets in trouble over any of this. If you make everybody monsters and they're not human beings, well, you can't do diplomacy with monsters, you can't negotiate with monsters, but you can with humans. Maybe there are times where you shouldn't negotiate or you can't negotiate with humans, but it's better if you can. And we could use a lot more of that thinking. Donald Trump has put a lot of political capital chips into the middle of the table that, "I can end this war." And he's going to look very, very bad if he can't. So he's very highly incentivized to get this thing done as quick as possible. You are fighting in a way that produces more of the thing that you're fighting, and so the first step is to stop doing that. Your cure is making the patient more sick. So stop doing that. And then let's see if maybe we could heal. Where are the tapes? Why is everyone talking about the flight logs and the files? Where are the tapes? This guy was clearly taping people to blackmail them. Why does anything need to be redacted for national security? I'm sorry. You're telling me there's a pedophile ring and we can't tell you everything about it for national security? Why would that be related to national security?

The following is a conversation with Dave Smith, an outspoken and at times controversial anti-war libertarian comedian and podcast host. This is the Lex Fridman podcast to support it. Please check on our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Dave Smith.

You are a longtime libertarian, perhaps an anarcho-capitalist. We can talk about that. Can you explain the different variants, flavors of libertarianism and where you stand among those variants? Yeah, so there's almost like with left-wing schools of thought or right-wing schools of thought, there's many different camps and different thinkers. And so within the kind of broader theme of libertarianism, there was a lot of influence from people like Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman, Thomas Sowell. Those were I think some of the more mainstream figures. And then there's the Ron Paul round of Libertarianism, which is kind of distinct from that other camp where they're much more of an emphasis on foreign policy. All of them kind of fall into the radical minarchist points of view. And then there's Rothbard, anarcho-capitalist. And there's also David Friedman who's an anarcho-capitalist, but from a completely different perspective than Murray Rothbard. I would probably be most closely with the Rothbard School, which is very similar to Ron Paul. But even maybe a little bit further in that, the very little bit of government that Ron Paul might support.

You've been a big fan of Ron Paul. Can you explain what you admire about him? A big fan is an understatement. I think Ron Paul is the greatest living American hero. I revere him on the level of the founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson or George Washington, number one. I mean all of the major issues that he was correct in his understanding of them, his diagnosis of what caused these problems and his solutions. And in hindsight, there's just a million different examples of where almost everybody today would agree, even though his ideas were very controversial at the time, it'd be like, "Oh my God, if we had just listened to Ron Paul about that, we'd be so much better off." But I think there's something almost deeper than that about why Ron Paul inspires so much love from so many people is okay, so number one, the guy, he was a champion of these views for decades when there was no payoff for it at all. Where he was just kind of alone in the woods, they used to call him Dr No because he was a medical doctor.

Yeah, as you said, there's integrity there. Can you speak to the ideas that Ron Paul represents? He says some of the things he's been right about. Maybe can you speak about the economics, the Fed, and maybe war and being anti-military intervention? Well, I think it all came from the same central thesis, which is that the highest political value ought to be liberty. And that the government, by its very nature, is an instrument of force and tyranny. And therefore, the more government you have, the less liberty you have. I think he was way ahead of his time in really calling out the corruption in DC and I think that's one of the things, it's a common through line between the Federal Reserve and government spending, and of course this crazy war industry that our country has. So there's a lot of components to that. But essentially Ron Paul was talking about draining the swamp way before it was this dominate mass message. And I think Ron Paul in many ways he laid the groundwork in his 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns. Not saying that he leads to Donald Trump, but he laid the groundwork for Donald Trump to be able to get up at the South Carolina Republican primary debate and look at Jeb Bush and say, "Your brother lied us into war."

Yeah, we should also say that there's some degree of truth that the battle is not just militaristic, it's also cultural. And then many of those parts of the world don't want other people's values forced onto them. Right. But the way that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and every right wing host in America, and Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly and everybody, what they were saying is that they hate that we are free, whereas it was much closer to saying they don't like us imposing on them. Even like all the hardcore neocons, Brett Stevens, The New York Times, he wrote this piece on the 20th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, so 2023 to cheer lead the war in Iraq. And he goes through the whole piece, and there's not one mention of the million people who died in the war. He literally just goes, the piece is just, measure life under Saddam Hussein verse life, were under the Shiite parliamentary system that they have now. Which one's better? And he's arguing this one's better, therefore it was worth it. But there's no mention.

I'm sure there's people that agree with that. I happen to disagree with that. But the drums of war are beating a little bit over Taiwan and China. More than a little bit.

I think we got to this discussion from the military industrial complex and military intervention, and Ron Paul, before that, if you could rewind a little bit. According to you, and according to various flavors of libertarianism, is there any amount of military intervention that's justified? That's okay? Well, I would say, at least to me, in terms of pure libertarian theory or just in terms of what I think is right or wrong, there is such thing as a just war. The most obvious example of that would be you're invaded by a military and fighting them off. So in that sense, also, even if you want to isolate from everything else-

Let's talk about it, since you brought it up. October 7th. So what exactly do you think about the October 7th attack by Hamas on Israel. Well, I mean, what I just said that it was horrible, and by the same logic that I'm giving you now, it's always evil to target innocent civilians. I don't believe civilians can be held responsible for the crimes of their government. This was, by the way, the Osama bin Laden logic, which I think would also be the logic of Bill Clinton or George W. Bush or Barack Obama. But Osama bin Laden very explicitly said when he was asked, "Well, are you just going to target U.S. military sites or are you targeting U.S. civilians?" It was an interview in the '90s before 9/11, and he goes, "No, civilians are fair game too because you guys have regular elections, and you guys vote for your government, and therefore you're responsible for the crimes that they commit." Now, I think that's the logic of a fanatic like Osama bin Laden, and that's not the logic that any of us should follow.

I interviewed Douglas Murray recently. He just wrote a book on Israel and Hamas called On Democracies and Death Cults. He makes, what I think is a strong pro-Israel case, focusing on Hamas as an evil organization, evil for its corrupt leadership who's essentially stealing money from the Palestinian people and allocating the money that is there towards terrorists, militaristic operations versus building up Gaza. Can you steel man the case for, and then against this perspective, centering... We've been talking about the people, about centering around Hamas, which is like this extremist religious organization. The perspective being like they need to be, as you mentioned before, eliminated before any progress can be made. Okay, so if I were... So steelman Douglas Murray's case, I would say, "Well, I guess the case is right." Look, Hamas is a fanatical death cult, essentially, which I do think is a fair description of them. There is no question that they have pursued... They have pursued a path that was just devastating to their own people. And there's no question, they have not spent the resources they have, their priority has not been uplifting their own people. Their priority has been, I think, essentially antagonizing Israel into this overreaction so that they can turn world opinion against Israel. I think they've been very effective at doing that. And again, I think the argument would come back to something like, "And the people voted for this in 2005, and the people sure do... We sure do see a lot of people cheering when Hamas is doing some pretty horrific stuff." And so, hey, you got that on one side, and you have a country that's much more similar to Western societies on the other side.

What about the case against... The Douglas Murray case of the death cults and that a fundamental part of this process, Hamas needs to be eliminated? Well, I mean, first of all, I would just say that, and I'm not saying this as a fan of democracy. I'm not a big believer in democracy. I believe in liberty, and I think democracy is often not in line with liberty.

It's difficult to have a discussion about ethics when you're talking about war because really at the core of it all war is immoral. Yeah. I mean, by its very definition, it's innocent people dying almost always, right?

Since you mentioned Daryl Cooper, you're friends with him, can you tell me about him? And tell me about the whole saga about where he got attacked after the talker interview? Yeah, yeah. So I was just a big fan, and still I'm really just a big fan of him. We chatted a few times and I interviewed him on my podcast, and I consider us friends. Martyr Made Podcast is his show and it's just phenomenal.

So all that said, there does seem to be a lot of hatred of Jews on the X. How much of it do you think is actual hate of Jews? And how much of it's just trolls and grifters and conspiracy nerds just cosplaying as Nazis? It's really hard to tell. I mean, I don't know. I don't know how you even figure it out. And I think this is one of the problems with outrage culture. It's kind of one of the unintended consequences of it, is that now you just have no way of knowing who's saying this just to get a rise out of you, or who really sincerely means it, or who's some version of both. You see, there's so many weird dynamics because there's no question, I see it all the time. I mean, I see a level of Jew hatred on Twitter that I've never seen before in my own replies and other people's things. And that's interesting. First off, you're like, "Okay, what's going on here?"

So maybe this is a good time to ask for your advice because these folks are the reason why I'm hesitant. So I've interviewed several world leaders recently, it is looking likely that I'll interview Vladimir Putin and several other similar level major world leaders. I've previously interviewed Benjamin Netanyahu for an hour. One of the biggest regrets I have about that interview is it was only an hour. I mean, I learned a lot, but I think he's a really important historical figure and I think it's impossible to have an effective conversation with him that's shorter than three hours. So it looks like he's interested now to do round two with me for three or more hours. And I've personally, so this is a bit of a therapy session, but I've personally been leaning against doing it and I hate that I'm leaning against doing it because the reason I'm leaning against doing it is because the very people you're talking about, because I just don't want them on either side, pro Israel, it doesn't really matter, but the chanting sheep of animal farm, Jew hating or otherwise, they follow you around everywhere online and make it difficult to think. I think whenever I come across these crowds, the woke left or the whatever you call the Jew haters, the woke right, let's call them, they just decrease the quality of my thoughts for the rest of the day.

You have to keep turning. All right, speaking of the trolls and Israel, I got to ask you about this. Let's talk about Jeffrey Epstein. I recently got attacked because a couple of conversations I had with Tim Dillon three and four years ago. I love Tim Dillon, he's hilarious. I love Tim too. I've known Tim for many years, love that guy.

To our earlier discussion, maybe there are times where you shouldn't negotiate or you can't negotiate with humans, but it's better if you can. We could use a lot more of that thinking. Can we take that idea and move to the war in Ukraine?

You host a podcast called Part of the Problem. Yes.

I think also there are shows, there are people, that just are constantly conspiracy theorists, which is fine also, but I sometimes feel that those lack genuineness, because they put themselves in a bin. Or everything, you question everything to a point where, I don't know, I feel like you're not getting closer to the truth when you question everything. There is something that some people in the conspiracy world do, which is they speak about something with certainty when they're really not certain about I., and it's fine to ask questions and it's fine to speculate about things, but you also have to ... It is true in general in life, you got to be really careful about presuming your conclusion and then working backward from there. And then sometimes when you have one ... It's a matter of being sloppy verse not being sloppy.

Yeah. All right. What gives you hope about this whole thing we got going on, America and human civilization? Okay. This is not mine, but this is Gene Epstein, who's a ... is a really brilliant economist and a great guy. And he told me this once and I just always loved it, and so I call it Epstein's case, not that ... Different Epstein, Gene Epstein. No relation. I want to be clear on that. Okay. Let's call it Gene's case for radical optimism, and the way he put it was he goes, "So imagine you were sitting around in 1845 and you're at the height of the slavery and you were like, 'Hey, in 20 years slavery is going to be abolished across the West.'" And if you told that to someone, they'd be like, "Dude, slavery has existed for all of human history. Look around. It's not going anywhere. You'd have to be out of your mind to think we're 20 years away from abolishing slavery."