Is Kyle a Libertarian? Ft. Hannah Henriksen

This week Kyle sits down with Hannah Henriksen of The Advocates Organization, a libertarian education non-profit foundation. Listen to hear Kyle's views on mandatory military drafts, sex between consenting adults, laws prohibiting the use of drugs, America without borders, and more!

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Produced & Edited By: Drew Tattam

Transcript

Hey, y'all this is the immigration guy with Kyle Farmer.

Today we're sitting down with Hannah Hendrickson, who works for the Advocates for Self-Government in the marketing operations and fundraising departments. During her time with advocates, she's aided and amassing a hundred thousand followers on Facebook and developed a cu. to educate high schoolers across the country on their political views.

Welcome Hannah and thank you for making time to join our show. Is there anything that I missed that you'd wanna share with everyone? Thanks so much for being here. Um, yeah, I mean, that's a pretty good explanation of who I am. The cool thing about our organization is that we are a 501c3 nonprofit. Nice.

And we have a very small team, so you heard a lot of things that I do there because I do a lot of things. 

That's cool. Oh, and then I guess just as a disclosure for people, we're not talking about immigration today, I don't think. That's probably not gonna come up on the. But this is gonna be way more fun for me anyways, so, yeah.

So, this, this should be good. We actually, 

we have, uh, world tomorrow's political quiz, which we're gonna go through later. And one of the questions does ask about immigration, so we'll kind of sneak it in there a little bit. All right, we'll, we'll sneak it in there. Uh, tell us about the advocates. 

So, the advocates, like I said, is a 501c3 nonprofit organization.

We work for um, educating people about the different political types. We focus on libertarian political types. Um, but we were founded in 1985 by David Nolan and Marshall Fritz. David Nolan created the Nolan Chart, which is the chart that plots what your political type is that we have. After you take the World's Moss political quiz, which was developed in 1987 by an IBM salesman named Marshall Fritz.

Um, he was also. Big and starting the libertarian party back in the seventies too. Tell people what a libertarian is because I don't know if anyone knows what a libertarian actually is. 

So, it's funny, I didn't actually know until I was interviewing for my job here. Um, but a libertarian is someone. It worked out well,

Um, but a libertarian is. Someone that doesn't agree with government force. So, they think, uh, there's many different flavors I guess you could call of libertarianism, where some people are absolute anarchists, and some people think it's the least amount of government as possible. So, they're big on both economic and personal freedoms, which, um, like progressives are more on personal freedoms and conservatives are more about economic freedoms.

It's kind of a happy medium in the middle that just wants a whole bunch of. Yeah. So, if, if you could think of, uh, can you think of a, oh, sorry. I'll let you get back to the, the advocates thing. Actually no, get back to the advocates thing, then I'll ask the other question. 

So, over the last 35 years of us being around, our quiz has been taken over 26 million times all around the country.

Um, and our quiz was actually the first political quiz to be online, which is pretty cool. And like I said, we have a quick quiz called the World Smalls Political Quiz. Um, and it's 10 questions to accurately show you what your political philosophy is. So, we don't work politics, policy, anything like that.

We work with political philosophy and educating about those philosophies. So, we have a bunch of different quizzes, like I said, the world's smallest political quiz. We have a human respect test that shows how coercive or respectful you are, which really interesting. Um, over 80% of the people that take that quiz actually come out as respectful.

So that's pretty exciting for our, for our future and people. And then our other main thing that we have is a single-issue survey that shows what your political type is based off of specific hot topic issues that are happening in the news right now. Awesome. 

That's what we do. Very cool. So, I, is there a specific politician that you can think of that most aligns with Libertarian?

if you've heard of the Ron Paul revolution, then that's, uh, he's a really big, um, person in our movement. Ron Paul's definitely a big one. Um, Justin Amma was actually a congressman in, um, Michigan. and he originally ran as Republican, was in office as a Republican, realized he was libertarian during his first term, and whenever he ran again, he ran as libertarian.

So, he just timed out of his office not too long ago. Cool. 

Yeah. So, for those not aware of who Ron Paul is, he's uh, I think he's, he was outta Houston, right? He is one of the. I, I, he was one of those politicians. I was like, dude, this guy is so old. Like, every time he would talk, I was like, oh my God, look how old this guy is.

This is amazing. But and he is the, I think he's Rand Paul's dad, right? Yeah. Yeah, so, so Rand Paul, the senator from Kentucky. It's, it's his, it's his dad. And I think that Rand Paul actually has a lot of libertarian views on stuff. I think he's more conservative on social issues than his dad was, but, uh, or his dad is Ron. Ron. Paul's still alive 87 years. Strong. 

I actually just saw him this summer at an event and he's still sharp as a t and loves the, loves it so y yeah, they're, they're, they're smart people. I think was Ron and Rand Paul were both physicians. I think before that they were politicians, which isn't normally.

The pathway, its usually slimy lawyer, politician, not surgeon, politician. 

Yeah. Uh, Ron Paul was an OBGYN, and rumor has it, he apparently delivered Selena. I don't know how true that is, but that's what, uh, the internet says, and we all know the internet's always right. Right. 

that that's right. And that is, you know, even if what you're spreading right now is just complete and utter misinformation, I'm fully supportive of it.

I think that that is so smart. I love it. He, yes, he, he, he delivered Selena. I love it. Wow. And, and George Washington based off of his age. So, uh, what are some steps that y'all are taking to. People on political views in schools. So 

the Year World Smalls political quiz used to be in textbooks, like they would be taught as a part of typical curriculum in schools.

Whenever we had. Switched locations and kind of got rid of most of the people that were on the team. And they just left for whatever reason. And then we basically hired an all-new team. We lost that relationship with the textbook publishers. So, our quiz is no longer in textbooks, unfortunately. Um, but last year I had a team that I created of two volunteers and I that um, created a classroom curriculum to actually give to high school teachers so that they can teach about these different political types, the five different political types that we have found to be the most popular, and take those political types, teach about each one in a non-biased way, and the different issues that we have on the political quiz.

So, it's about a weeklong curriculum and we have it sitting in our back end, ready to do something. 

That's, that's cool. That's cool. How were the questions for the political quiz created in the first place and, and how do you know that they're unbiased? 

We had a statistician and two of my colleagues go through the quiz in 2020.

So, like I said, the questions came out in 1987. Not exactly sure how that one was created and wasn't around for that one. Um, but in 2022 of my colleagues and. Statistician Data Science Econometrician analyzed and evaluated the responses that we had for the previous quizzes for each question and saw which degree they data correlated with the survey taker's own political self-identification.

So, at the end of the quiz, there's an optional final question to., what do you think you are? Or like, what have you been told you are, and you can guess, and then it like shows you, oh, you're correct or you're incorrect. It's pretty interesting actually. But because of that, we realized that there are some questions that needed to be revised based off of user feedback and the different results and things that happened.

So, that's how we just keep doing that every couple year. We are actually gonna be doing that in a couple months and having, uh, new questions and things to kind of evolve with the times and the different biases that people have and how different issues kind of evolve. Um, so yeah, we'll update that in 2023.

So, I, what have y'all, I guess y'all's goal is to get to educate people, I guess, on is it to educate 'em on their own political identity without any kind of persuasion one way or another? Yes, we do. or are, are y'all actually trying to persuade people to be libertarians? Which is totally fine. I mean, I don't, I don't know that many crazy libertarians.

You haven't been around the libertarians enough. I, I said that many, that most of 'em are reasonable people. The other half okay, are off the deep end. 

Like I said, there's many different flavors of libertarianism, so we do educate more on libertarian. We do want people to be libertarian, but mostly we want people to understand that they are more libertarian than they originally realized.

They. Is that something that y'all are doing in schools? Is it like, are there a specific age demographic that y'all are going to, or is it kind of just for everyone? 

Um, we do want young people to take the quiz so they can understand more earlier and have informed decisions about what to do in their adult life.

We do have the human respect task, like I said. helps people realize they are more respectful than they are. We do. We would love people to be libertarian, but you know, we don't expect everyone to be, and actually a third of our results come out as libertarian, which is not even the biggest section that we get on the quiz.

Quiz. We actually get most people to be moderate and then libertarian a second. We do educate people where they're at. We wanna meet them where they are and help them just be the best person, the most respectful that they could be. Oh, cool. Cool. Yeah, I, I know that I took it, I can't remember what mine was.

I, I think it may have said that I was moderate, but lean conservative or something like that. I don't know. Uh, but cool. So, what would you, what are y'all shooting for whenever you, cause now in all reality, Libertarians, I, I don't think are gonna be a predominant political party anytime soon. So, what do y'all hope for, for future political parties?

We're not party oriented. We don't really have the party situation going on. We just genuinely want people to treat other people better with more respect and kinder and, you know, a bit more grace and stuff. So, we’re not focused on the politics part. Um, whatever people get from the quiz, they get, you know, they might learn more about their political type and then go and figure out who they should vote for from that.

Um, but we don't push any of that. 

Y'all are not advocates of Twitter then, because Twitter is just a forum to trash each other, and it is hilarious. 

Oh man, it's, there's a lot of entertainment there.

Uh, it's so funny. It's so funny. It's so funny how people just take their shots. Oh, man. Uh, that's, that's cool. Yeah, no, that I, I, I remember taking the quiz and I thought that some of the questions were, were pretty interesting. I, I think I should probably pull them back up. I think we should just go through the questions on the quiz.

We can do that. Yeah, I've taken it a million times. Cool. Let's do it. Alright, so question one and I guess we, yeah, we, we can just go through 'em here and, uh, government should not uh, censor speech, press media or internet I, your position on that is obviously agree. My position on that is also obviously, uh, I, I, yeah, no, I, I really don't understand the notion of centering speech.

I think that anyone with two brain cells to rub together understands that the way that you get rid of bad speech is with good speech. It's, you have the internet. Yeah, fact check things, people, you don't need the government to say what's true and not my God. Yeah. 

That actually sounds pretty scary. 

Yeah, no, I know.

Every time I see what, like the, the stuff that the tech companies have been doing is, it is, it is absolutely terrifying. The, you know that, but I don't think that A lot of people just don't care about it, but they, the, a lot of the censoring and the misdirection on basically purely politically driven is just wild to me.

Uh, so, kind of, kind of interesting. What about this one? Military service should be voluntary. There should be no draft. You agree with this one? Yeah, I disagree with this one. I think there definitely should be a draft. I now, I don't think that the draft's very useful at this point. But I think in principle, let, let's say hypothetically, okay, we need to go to war to defend the country, and we have a bunch of children that were raised up being soft and they don't want to go and defend the country.

Do your, your position is, they should not be compelled to do so. 

Well, our position wouldn't be to go to war and begin with. Um, but yeah, but that's, that's not always optional though., like if, yeah, if Pearl Har, Pearl Harbor's. We're gonna go kick some ass., it's gonna happen. And 

I personally agree with that.

I'm definitely more conservative than Libertarian. Um, but the libertarian position is like, war shouldn't happen. You shouldn't be forced to do something you don't wanna do, which is a big part of like the libertarian ideology is, you know, government equals force for the most part. You know, you're forced to do things.

You wouldn't typically wanna do, and now I'm sounding like the crazy tin foil hat person, but, um, no, no. I, I, I think that it's a, it like, so okay, if you, if you take it out of reality and you put it. Into hypothetical utopian land. I think that that sounds good and great, but I think that the reality is, is that not everyone has our ideals.

Not everyone has the, the same incentives that we do and that o sometimes war is not something that we would voluntarily go into but be compelled to go into due to other people. And so, I'm just saying Pearl Harbor gets bomb. The libertarian views. I don't even think the actual libertarian view would be, we shouldn't do anything about it.

I don't think that that makes any sense. I think you can't take that position logically now. But on the other end of the thing, at the other, uh, end of the spectrum, the libertarian view is certainly and has always been, we don't need to go to Iraq, we don't need to go to Afghanistan. Like that is, which I actually totally agree with that too.

So, it's just, yeah. So, but., there should be no draft. It's such a definitive statement. It's like that neglects all of the potential circumstances that would actually compel a draft. Now, I don't think a draft should be necessary for something like Vietnam., but I do think a draft should be necessary for something like World War II if you had to do it.

Yeah. So more, uh, defensively rather than offensively. Oh, 

definitely, certainly. Yeah. No, I don't, I don't see any reason why we need to be engaged in a, in a lot of these conflicts., uh, through our own aggression. I, I completely agree with that position. U un unless there is some larger foreign policy rationale for it, which sometimes there is, but oftentimes there's not.

And it's just stupid and shortsighted. And I, you know, to, to libertarians’ credit, I do remember, uh, during the Bush administration, whenever they first went to Iraq, all the libertarians were throwing a. They were a li like from the very beginning, and it wasn't, it wasn't cool to throw a fit about it back then.

Like that was when Republicans and Democrats alike were like, yeah, we support Iraq War. And the Libertarians like, what the hell are you guys talking about? They were the ones with the, with the insight there. Yeah. My personal favorite question on this quiz, there should be no laws regarding sex between consenting my position. So, a keyword here is consenting adults. Yep. And my position on this is I adamantly disagree with this position because I think it should be completely illegal for a father to have sex with his adult child, daughter, because I do think that we are a. Of morals and virtue, and that's worth protecting even with laws, especially in a situation like that.

How would, how would the Libertarians respond to that? 

Well, you know, going back to the whole Libertarians, don't really agree with most laws. Regardless. That idea of a father and adult daughter, that's honestly just disgusting. But you know, it's, if they're consenting. So, a libertarian would, um, agree that there should not be any laws regarding any kind of sex between any kind of adult, uh, consenting adults, but they just mostly agree that there shouldn't be any laws regardless.

But, um, you know, I, I honestly did not even think about, you know, like father-daughter, adult situation mostly of just like, you know, same sex people wanting to have intercourse. I think that that's exactly how everyone thinks of it. E, exactly how you thought of it is how most people think of it. And then I read that, and I was like, most people are not thinking through this question.

And that was my initial response to it. But it was, so this is why you have laws, because let's say you have a deranged father and a deranged daughter, and they want to have a related., an in deranged daughter has a child with her father. This has consequences beyond that of the initial re of the relationship.

That's why you actually have. Laws that, that justify that. But I, I do agree with you. I think that this, this was originally drafted through the lens of same sex relationships, but there are consequences beyond that. So, I, that's why I disagreed with that whenever I went through it, cuz I don't think people should be sleeping with their kids pretty.

Reasonable position. 

I, I also agree with that, but I personally, I don't know if the law should be involved with that. I think that's a, it's more of a moral thing, you know, uh, which is pretty big on the respecting others, like being morally responsible type thing. But no, I have a really great. Feeling in my head for the rest of the day.

You're welcome. Uh, repealed laws prohibiting adult possession and use of drugs. Uh, for, so for this one, I disagree with the repealing of those laws, but I do think that they could use some refinement. Like I, I don't really see. The reason to be arresting people for possession and use of weed. I do see the rationale for keeping people from using heroin and substances like that.

Now, I, I think that the libertarian view on this is a utopian view, which I would assume would be if you didn't have laws on. They would be doing it in a much more medically safe way. They would be using heroin because heroin actually is legal in some countries. Uh, it, it is, uh, it's a drug that has, is used to treat pain.

And I think that the libertarian view is, yeah, they would do it in a safer way. I think that's crowded. I, I think that that's not true at all. And so that's why I still think that there are reasons to have those laws in place., am I right on the libertarian view? 

Uh, well the libertarian view is that, you know, going back to what I said previously, there wouldn't really be any laws.

Obviously, there would be moral codes of contact, um, and things like that. But kind of also thinking about the previous question and any other law that gets broken. You know, basically most people I know break the lawn. Speeding people. It's illegal to kill people, but people still do it. You know, for the people that are gonna be doing these terrible things anyways, is a law really gonna stop them or hinder them as much?

It will some. So that's kind of where that one goes. It will some. So, the. You're, you're right that people do break the law. Uh, they do bad things, but there's no way to know how many people are deterred from doing those bad things because of the law. And I think that you can kind of see the evidence of what happens whenever you abandon criminalization of possession and use of drugs.

Is, it's a, it actually harms people the most, that need the most help because they're the ones that are most inclined to use it. You live in California, I, I, I would welcome you to walk down the streets of LA or go to Portland and see what happens whenever people are, or San Francisco, when people are very loose on drug laws and the enforcement of those drug laws.

That the reality is, is that you're not helping those people. You're hurting them. You, the, they, they need. and you help them by enforcing the law. The law is not necessarily there strictly as a deterrent. It's used for many things. The reason that you have laws is, uh, a deterrent for one. Uh, retribution is another one, and, and redemption is the other one.

And so, you're the idea behind a law. So, for example, with, with. It, it, of course it's against the law. You want it to deter people, but there's another aspect of it is you want justice for that person, for the person that was murdered. You want retribution for their family, and so you send that person to jail.

But there is also a reason why you have limits on the amount of time people spend in jail and, and that's rehabilitation because you do want people to come out on the other. better than they went in, which is why I think that drug laws are actually good, is because it may not fall into the uh, retribution category.

I don't think anyone's like getting retribution from someone going to jail, but I do think it falls in the rehabilitation category where you're ideally putting people in to jail for these criminal offenses, hoping that they come out on the other. better than they went in. But what are the rates of people actually coming out better?

Because as far as I've seen, it's basically people come out and the next day they're back in or very quickly they, it just doesn't seem like the prison system, how it is, is helpful. So, I think there are better ways other than laws in the prison system to help these people that need help. And I, I fully agree with helping people.

You know, I, you know, I live in Sacramento. It's one of the highest populations of homeless people in the country. I. Literally walk outside my front door of my office and I can see at least three homeless people, you know, so, and like I'm in the cleaning part of town, so I totally get that. But I think there's like, A lot better ways to help people than the law.

So how would you do it? Um, you know, gather people that I, that care about issues? Um, this is actually a question. The organization I work for goes through, um, insight interviews, a different organization I work for, goes through insight interviews with people where we bring people in off the street. We have conversations with them, and you know, one of the last few questions that we go through is Socratic dialogue.

So, by the end of it, they're like, oh yeah, like government is forced, you know? Um, and like, you don't have to keep this in the podcast. I'm kind of going deep end. Um, but so part of the part of the interview, like towards the end of it, it's um, how would you help people without force? Like if there was an issue on the street of homeless people, how would you help them without using.

Force and basically every person that walks through it is like, oh, well I care enough. I'm gonna, you know, band together with some people that also care about this and we're gonna donate money and we're gonna help them find a house or figure out what their problem is and then help them find resources.

So, there are resources, there are homeless shelters, there are drug rehabilitation centers. There's a lot of different options that are better. Jail. Yeah. And I actually, because I really just don't see that being a positive thing. 

Well, I, I, so, I completely agree with basically everything you just said. I, I think that it's great.

Um, I, and I think that people that participate in and helping the homeless and they really make that a life's mission. Absolutely love that. But there's also a component to helping someone where sometimes the person that needs help doesn't want your help. And that is where the law does come into effect.

Cuz it's like, fine, you don't want my help. My help will be compelled upon you because it is for your benefit. And I think that there's circumstances where you can see that. And, and a lot of times they don't know that that's what drugs do. There are drugs that change your brain into where you're like, I don't care about your help.

I care about the drugs. And so that's, that's why you have drug laws. But I, I get your perspective. I mean, I get it and I get that you would want that prison to work better for people, but I, I do think it serves a function. What about this one? Government should not target detain and deport undocumented workers.

There's our immigration question. Told you it was there. um, I don't actually know the libertarian view on this. 

Oh. So, I'll make it pretty easy for you. The libertarian view is agreed on all of them. If you're looking at our chart on our website, you'd be the top up here, 100, 100, which means you got a 20 on every question.

But there are a lot of libertarians that don't. Borders should be closed. They think they should be open, and everyone should just be able to freely move wherever they want. And that's the general libertarian view on it. Um, I personally think that if someone is bringing value, I don't think they should be kicked out, but that's my personal view.

That's not the liber. I'm not encompassing of the libertarian views. Uh, this is my personal view. Yeah. Um, but Libertarians, a lot of them agree that borders should be open, and you should just be able to go. Wherever you want at any time without visas or passports or anything like that. 

Yeah. Interesting.

As you might imagine, I completely disagree with that proposition. And, and I mean, I, I, yeah, no, I, I think there's, there's a lot of harm that comes to it. Uh, so. and that's always kind of the perspective I look at is like, what's the harm that comes from, from this? So, from this government should not target detain and deport undocumented workers.

And I, I actually like the way that, that you approached it cuz that was actually what I was gonna ask was about the border itself. Uh, because I didn't know if the libertarian perspective was, it's okay to have a border. and it's okay to defend your border so long as once the person gets in, you don't target that person.

Uh, which I think is one separate position and, and it maybe sounds like maybe some libertarians hold that view. And then the other one is just no border. Now, I, I do think that there is a serious national security interest risk in maintaining a strong border and that. There are enemies of the United States.

I don't think Libertarians would disagree with that. Nope. It, it's in the United States best national security interest to keep those people out of the United States to prevent harm here. Yeah, I agree. And so, the way you do that, Is with a border. If you have a completely open border, how do you know who's coming in and leaving?

There's, I, I don't, I don't see how that's rationally possible. And, but there's also, so that's just a national security issue. There's also issues that it relates to. The domestic workforce. Uh, I, I think that everyone agrees that we want good high paying jobs for Americans. We want people to be able to, to work here, provide for their families.

I think everyone agrees with that. I don't, I don't know a single person that doesn't agree with that, but if you have just a completely wide-open border during times, like right. Where the unemployment rate is extremely low. Let's say that anyone that from Honduras wanted to come here because even our worst paying job is better than what they would have back home that would naturally depress the wages of the US workers if they were able just to come in unchecked and permanently. Uh, now there's a, there's, there's values in certain immigration processes where you have to test the domestic labor market prior to bringing people in anytime. But you do have to test it for a reason that, so you don't hurt the US worker.

And so, I think that not having a border is a terrible idea just because you would have serious national security issues and, and employment issues. I think you would basically bring down the United States to other countries level as opposed to elevating the people that are coming here for refuge. 

And that's why you're an expert on immigration.

And I'm not. 

Well, thanks for, uh, spending time with us. We really appreciate it. 

Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. It's been great chatting with you. Thank 

y'all for listening to the Immigration Guy Podcast. We really appreciate it. You can find us on our website, go to www.farmerlawpc.com. You can find me on LinkedIn and Twitter.

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