Chase Oliver: For the Love of Liberty

On Saturday, 13 July 2024, Chase Oliver and Mike ter Maat (POTUS and VPOTUS nominees of the Libertarian Party) hosted an hour-long session during FreedomFest in Las Vegas, NV titled: “For the Love of Liberty: A Fireside Chat”. A partial transcript follows:

(NOTE: The following transcript has been modified as follows: Punctuation has been added, most contractions have been expanded, hyperlinks have been added where appropriate, italics font has been used to match empathic tone where present in the original audio; most fill-words, repeated phrases, and unintelligible portions have been deleted. Off-mic or otherwise unintelligible questions by attendees have been partially to fully inferred from the answers and written notes made by your reporter at the time.)

TER MAAT: I have the honor, pleasure, obligation, chore, and the honor, again, of serving as the Libertarian Party’s vice-presidential nominee. If anyone has run for vice president before, you know that the most important task is to make sure the presidential candidate gets to where he needs to be on time, and to introduce him.

Chase and I competed against each other for over a year. So I’m here to tell you that however good-looking and charming you may think I am; he is even better.

I am really pleased to introduce him, because he is the right guy for our particular situation. If you are waiting for a Republican to lead the charge back toward a Constitution of delimited powers, you are waiting for something that is not going to happen. If you are waiting for a Democrat to stand up for your civil liberties, I am sorry. That ship has sailed.

This is, in some sense, what we used to call a passion project. You are not getting paid. That is not what this is about.

The United States federal government is going to face a financial collapse before the middle of this century. We can either do something about it, or not. The people who have an ability to do something about it are in this room, in this conference, and in similar conferences around the United States.  That is not a large number of people.  Do not wait for someone to pick up this shovel. This is ours. This is ours, this is the ticket, this is the time, and I don’t know how many opportunities we will have after this year.

If the federal government of the United States goes down the tubes and faces financial collapse, it is not like you will miss it. This is not an organization that is adding value to your lives. But controlling the world’s only reserve currency, representing twenty-five percent of the world’s GDP, with a government that controls one-third of that – that is a worldwide depression out of which it is difficult to climb. That affects millions and billions of people around the world who deserve better.

We are here to represent their interests because a disorderly collapse of the federal government is disaster. But an orderly takedown is what we are all about. Chase Oliver has been a peace activist for a long time.  For anyone who is not aware, let me proudly say he is the guy that caused the Senate runoff in Georgia between Herschel Walker and Raphael Warner.

(APPLAUSE)

TER MAAT: Thank you. Let’s hear it for driving Democrats and Republicans crazy in the state of Georgia.

(CHEERS)

TER MAAT: Each one of those guys got less than fifty-percent because of Chase.  His message resonates because what we are talking about matters. You know it; and I know it; and the people who are watching us know it as well. We need to give them the guts and the methods by which to get on board the train, and that train, mark my words, is Libertarianism. We represent the Libertarian Party ticket and this is Chase Oliver, our presidential nominee!

OLIVER: Thanks for being with us. First and foremost, I want to say thank you, Mike ter Maat for being a wonderful running mate. Mike and I complement each other very well. If you haven’t noticed, I am under the age of 40, and Mike isn’t. Mike has real practical experience working as a professor of economics. He worked in the Bush 41 White House. He is somebody who has that real-world experience that gets you respect in certain rooms.

I am the other man, an activist. I have my political education in the street, with my feet under me, a bullhorn in my hand, and fighting for truth against power as activists organized at the community level. But what is awesome about me and Mike is how we take our message to all these different audiences.

If I wanted to walk in front of, for example, a police foundation, they might look at me and go, “Who is this guy that had a bullhorn in his hand, and he has been protesting against us?  We’re not going to give him the time of day.”

But with the exact same policy prescription, with the exact same platform, Mike can walk into that room and say, “You’re not going to ignore me because I spent 10 years doing this job. I have been one of you, and I recognize that these solutions for criminal justice reform not only improve our relationship with the community, but actually make your job as a police officer safer.” He can do that.

Conversely, if Mike tried to walk in a room full of young activists, they might say, “Who is this ex-cop trying to tell us that we are going to do this, that, and the other?” But when they see me, they say, “I know Chase, he has been in the room, he was out in the streets, he knows how to speak this message passionately.”

So we work together to complement one another, to put the Libertarian message in as many places as possible. I am very thankful that I have a friend of mine like Mike.

My name is Chase Offer. I am the Libertarian candidate for President of the United States. The question most often asked is, “Someone else is going to win, so why are you running?”  

First off, I believe it is immoral that voters only have two choices on their ballot. That further separates us, creates more hyper-partisanship, more polarization, more hatred for our neighbor and for our communities. That is wrong.  We need to have more choices on the ballot to more broadly represent the American voting public. But beyond that, it is because I want to help put the message of liberty into the air. Let me tell you right now, the message of liberty is a powerful message. I knew it from the first time I heard from a Libertarian.

I was an antiwar Democrat. That is where I got my start, because I opposed the Bush wars. Deep down I knew that the way we were engaging the war on terror, was wrong. It was creating more violence around the world; it was destabilizing governments; it was creating further tensions against the United States. So I got on the streets as an activist, and worked hard to oppose that war-criminal George Bush.

In 2008, we had to pick, as Democrats, between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in the primary. Well, all of us in the antiwar movement knew Hillary Clinton was, “Dick Cheney in a dress”. But Barack Obama was saying things like, “We’re going to stop the wars; we’re going to close GTMO (Naval Station Guantanamo Bay); and we’re going to talk to our enemies without preconditions.”  He attracted the antiwar movement. So we put our energy behind it. I think the antiwar movement is what allowed Barack Obama to beat Hillary Clinton for the nomination in 2008.

Then he failed every one of those promises that he had made to the antiwar movement. He failed us. He did not close GTMO, he didn’t end the wars, he didn’t create diplomacy based on exchanging ideas with people instead of shooting them. But he did win the Nobel Peace Prize. When that happened, when he got the Nobel Peace Prize, I Peaced-Out of the Democratic Party. I was done with them.

It was lucky for me that the Libertarian Party of Georgia was at the Atlanta Pride Festival in 2010, because there I was, Daiquiri in hand, hanging out, having a good time. I see this booth, Librarian Party. What is that? There was somebody outside the tent who caught my eye. He saw me. He said, “Get over here!” I said, “Look at me!?!” He said, “Get over here!!” That was a guy named John Monds. He’s the first Libertarian to ever earn a million votes. He did it in just the state of Georgia. So he is my political mentor; he is the guy who brought me into the movement. He did so with a welcoming, opening nature.

He asked me, “What is the most important thing to you?” I said, “I oppose the war on Iraq with every fiber of my being.” The next words out of his mouth were, “Welcome home. Welcome home!!” He didn’t question me as to what my politics were. He didn’t ask me if I read this economist or that economist. He didn’t gate-keep me. He welcomed me into the tent. He said, “Let’s connect your antiwar views with the greater view of non-aggression.”

I am so thankful that he did that. The lights started firing in all cylinders in my brain. John Monds was the first Libertarian I ever voted for. He certainly wasn’t the last.  All because of his welcoming nature. That is what I want to do as our presidential candidate.

I need voters who are so sick and tired of getting sick and tired of the two-party system that feel let down by Democrats and Republicans giving false promises. They feel abandoned by political elites who care more about their donors than they do about their constituents. We feel this feeling all over the country when we talk to voters. They desperately want something to vote for. They desperately want someone to vote for. And let’s give them that. Let’s give them that message that says, they control their lives. That if you aren’t hurting anybody, if you’re not committing force, fraud, coercion, theft, or violence, then your life is your life. Your body is your body. Your business is your business. And your property is your property. It’s not mine. It is certainly not the federal government’s.

That is the powerful message of liberty.  I want to tell this to the millions of Americans who feel sick and tired of the political system that exists – “Welcome home to liberty! This is where you belong!”

Because the principles and the concepts upon which our nation is founded, however much you have to work towards achieving the perfection that the founders had in mind when they spoke of liberty and freedom – is something we can all work towards together.

It is an empathic message.

There’s one thing that we don’t get across to liberty lovers – and I do not want to provoke the Libertarians here – but aren’t we tired of being told that we are selfish? That because we want our own individual liberty, we somehow don’t care about others?  That we only care about ourselves? That is not the truth.

The truth is that the message of Liberty is one of empathy. One of respect. One of the common grace that we have for one another that says you can live your life the way you see fit, even if it is different than the way I live my life. Because that creates the powerful diversity of innovation, and free markets, and free minds that makes us the most powerful and prosperous nation in the world.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is what really makes America great. Not a politician. Not a false promise. Not a Congress. Certainly not our federal government. What makes America great – is the power that each individual has to make positive change in their lives, and the lives of their community. That is only achieved with the powerful message of liberty. I want to help spread that message all up and down the ballot, across this nation, as the Libertarian candidate for president, and I encourage you to join us in this fight.

Mike and I are going to be traveling across the country and speaking this powerful message to as many people as possible. But we are just two folks. We need your help to do it too. I urge you to go to our website, www.votechaseoliver.com.  Join the campaign. Tell all your friends and neighbors.

One of the reasons we are gathered here today is to talk about how we are going to spread the message of liberty across the country, and up and down the ballot.

This is my third year in a row running for office. I did about a year-and-a-half running for President, and about a year-and-a half running for the US Senate. Mike was running for president in Reno in 2022, so he has been running for over two years. I am hoping that your questions in this conversation facilitate ways that we can help our down-ballot candidates, and serve to support them. When you ask a question, if you know a local candidate in your area that needs to be highlighted, please let me know who they are. I can’t wait to hear their story; hear about their race.

Candidates are running locally all across the country, so as we travel from state to state, we are going to do what we can to shine a light on those amazing candidates that are running down-ballot locally for school boards, or for city councils, or for state legislatures, or Congress, like I ran before in the past. We want to help those candidates. The best way to help this campaign is to make sure you are highlighting who your candidates are in your neighborhood.

I want to start by shouting out a really good candidate, Michael White. He is running for state legislature in Arkansas. Why is his race important? First off, it is a competitive district. It is not solidly red; it is not solidly blue; it is actually quite purple. What is great about this race is it is just him and the Democrat. There is no Republican. So he gets to be the alternative voice in that race. He gets to be in a one-on-one race. He has a real chance to win it because he is far more articulate than I am. A lot of people praise my 2022 Senate race, but go watch Michael White. That will inspire you.

In conclusion, I wish the same thing for each and every one of you – for each and every peaceful person in the world – a life of peace, love, and liberty.

(APPLAUSE)

OLIVER: Thank you very much. Thank you. We would love to take questions and hear your opinions.

ATTENDEE: What are your realistic expectations for media coverage?  How do you avoid distortions?

OLIVER: We have to be very disciplined running for President. Gary Johnson had his Aleppo moment, the media glommed onto it and never let him forget about it. How many mistakes and gaffs did Donald Trump make in the same 2016 election cycle? How many times did Hillary Clinton blow a word, or screw something up? That was not made into the headline every time that person appeared on a talk show. That’s because the media, frankly, is in the pocket of the two-party system. They want to perpetuate the cycle because it creates division, it creates hyper-partisanship. What comes from conflict? Ratings. Nobody likes to see government smoothly functioning and getting along with each other. No, the media thrives on hatred and sowing discord. So they are going to keep doing that.  We need to recognize that.

One of the things that keeps us in a great situation is our amazing media team. I have a fantastic group of people that have been keeping connections ever since I ran for the US House, making sure that we are having great relationships with them, letting them know where we are going, what we are doing, and really highlighting that we need that Libertarian voice so put that Libertarian on the stage.

We have gotten lots of great media in this campaign. Forbes magazine has been very excellent listening to me and Mike. They have had something three or four times now and they are fantastic.

(NOTE: See, for example, https://www.forbes.com/sites/caileygleeson/2024/05/27/who-is-chase-oliver-libertarian-party-picks-2024-candidate-rejecting-trump-and-rfk-jr)

That is possible only because our media team constantly is having that relationship back and forth, and making sure we are making those connections. So recognizing that we are going to be outgunned, we are going to have maybe for every one time I am mentioned in the media, Trump or Biden is going to be mentioned a hundred times, or a thousand times.

The best way to harness that is to be as bold and principled as we can in our message to try to break through, and again, being positive, trying to give people something to vote for. Merely voting against somebody does not inspire people to step outside of the two-party system; giving them something to vote for does. So when I am in the media, I am always trying to think, “How can I positively spread the message of liberty?” and not just attack Joe Biden or Donald Trump. Frankly, that is easy, because they do it to each other each and every day . . . with varying levels of cognitive ability . . .

(LAUGHTER)

. . . but they do it.

I think we can do better as a party by promoting our message positively.

ATTEEDEE: What about RFK?

OLIVER: I do not happen to think RFK is Libertarian; I do not think he is for small government at all. I welcome him to challenge that perspective, especially with me on the debate stage – anytime he wants; anywhere, I am happy to debate him.

What we see in the LP this year is similar to the year 2000, when we had an amazing Libertarian candidate for president, Harry Brown.  He doubled our party’s membership, but he was not the third-highest vote-getter in that election. He was not the fourth-highest vote-getter in that election. He was the fifth-highest vote-getter.  He had fewer votes than Patrick Buchanan (Reform Party) and Ralph Nader (Green Party). But he doubled the membership, he created a really good structure for us to grow from. He organized the party, and that is what I want to do in this campaign.

Obviously, I would love to take office in January 2025 and blow people’s minds by immediately pardoning Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, Ross Ulbricht, Leonard Peltier, and others. I would love to order the military-industrial-complex to stand down.  Absent getting in the White House, there are still lots of potential victories – supporting the Libertarian Party nationally, supporting our state parties, expanding ballot access, and earning major-party status.

These are the kinds of things that will grow our membership, grow the number of people who are looking at Libertarian Parties as a serious alternative, especially by earning major-party status. That is what got me on stage at the Iowa Soapbox. If you’re not familiar with the Iowa State Fair, they have the Des Moines Register Soapbox, a huge event.  Traditionally only Democrats and Republicans ever get on that stage. But because the Libertarian Party in Iowa earned major-party status, they said, “Hey, campaign in Iowa, if you get enough media, we’ll bring you on stage.”

I took that as a challenge. I did a county fair tour. I called out bingo numbers to raise money for youth softball. I talked to farmers about pigs; I knew nothing about pigs, but now I know a lot more about pigs than I did a year ago. Doing that got me noticed, and that got me on that stage. I am the first candidate for President ever who was not a Republican, not a Democrat to speak on that stage.  There are hundreds of thousands of people who go to that fair.

That is what we do; we spread our message.

ATTENDEE: To piggyback on that question a bit – I have been writing about the Libertarian Party for a couple years, but it is hard to get anything published. What about podcasts and other alternative media?

OLIVER: Yes! I would like to do more podcasts. By the way, if you host a podcast put me on. I want to do as much media as possible, whether that is mainstream media, new media, whatever it is. I think as mainstream media becomes more and more assertive about what cannot be said and what cannot be published, that more and more people will separate themselves from the media-industrial-complex. They are starting to read Substacks, they are starting to find Blogs, they are starting to find podcasts. That is a good thing, that decentralizing of the way we receive information. It is one of the most powerful things that the Internet has provided for us, that we are not just stuck with three channels on TV, a few random newspapers, and only whatever they want to tell us.

ATTENDEE: I was wondering if you could clarify your border position?

OLIVER: The first thing that we have to get around is the use of the term “open borders” because it means a different thing for different people. You say, “I don’t support open borders”, and for some people that means you support easy immigration, for other people that means there is literally no border at all. One of my competitors for the Libertarian nomination said that any kind of voucher, any kind of checkpoint, is socialism. That is the true, fully open-border position. My position is a little different. I support a 21^st-Century Ellis Island, recognizing that immigration is good for this country, recognizing immigrants help build up this country, help businesses create prosperity, to bring people here to work.  Having people come through a port-of-entry, be vetted for who they are, do a basic background check, and if they are here to peacefully work, then they should have some sort of legal status to be able to work. You are no longer going to be undercutting the wages of American workers. You are no longer having to fear talking with the police when you see a crime in your neighborhood because you don’t want to put your name down on paper for fear of someone tracking that back to you. It brings people out of the darkness and into the light.

What happens when we create that border-leaning process for those folks is we can now laser-focus ourselves our law enforcement and others to prevent crimes like human trafficking for the purposes of labor or sexual exploitation.  I’m obviously a Libertarian, but I do believe that if you are crossing the border with fentanyl that’s been pressed, that is fraud, that’s violence, and that’s wrong to do. We should be punishing those people but we never get to focus on them. We are not separating out those peaceful people to be able to orderly come here. So I want to see a 21^st Century Ellis Island. It is not government determining who can come here and who cannot. The market determines that by who needs labor and who can get hired here.

I am from the state of Florida. Agriculture is a big industry in my state. You talk to deep-bred farmers who are like, I love Donald Trump, but they’re also like, We need everyone for labor. Those two things are in conflict on the one hand, but what I argue is that you can come in and do the work and then when planting and harvesting season is over, you can take that money, go home to your family, and live where that money is going to go much further instead of remaining stuck here.

What happens to so many agricultural workers is that they send their money back home to their family, but they remain stuck here.  That creates human misery. A 21^st Century Ellis Island is good for immigrants. It is good for our communities. It is good for labor. It is good all around. The people it is not good for are those in the prison-industrial complex that also lock up immigrants. It is not good for unions who try to keep immigrants out because they say that they took our jobs. Immigrants are good for this country.

ATTENDEE: What are your top priorities, both domestic and international?

OLIVER: We can reduce the bureaucracy that is involved in immigration and actually still be able to process people forward more quickly. I don’t think you should have to wait three-and-a-half years for a green card. I think probably if you are peaceful and you are saying, “I want you to come here for the purposes of working”, you should get a green card quickly. The asylum process is broken because people think if they could just come here peacefully and work, they would. Right now, they are coming here and they are claiming asylum, which is gumming up the entire asylum process.

The biggest issue with regards to foreign policy is removing the US military footprint from around the world. The second thing we can do is tear down trade barriers and limitations. No more economic protections. No more tariffs. We are actually going to compete in a free market. And three, we need to encourage voluntary exchange with our neighbors through non-governmental organizations alike. Things like micro-lending and direct investment in the developing world. We can convert capital to the developing world in a way that is better allocated and saves the broken process of foreign aid, which we must remove altogether. So remove foreign aid, get our military footprint out from every continent that isn’t North America, and facilitate free trade.

ATTENDEE: So as I am sure you are aware, the folks in the Mises Caucus hate you with a passion that is shocking to me. There are a lot of them in New Hampshire, as I’m sure you’re aware. When I ask them why, they say two things:. One, a tweet you did back in November of 2020 about masking, and the other is your position on Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT).

So my question is: Are these people just beyond hope, or can you recommend some way to try to win them over?  

OLIVER: I am hoping that explaining my positions can help turn people around. I do not believe that anyone is fully completely impossible to change their mind.

The tweet from November of 2020 is talking about masking and Thanksgiving. I want people to know it that is a response to a tweet from Lori Lightfoot, who was the mayor of Chicago, who said that small gatherings are actually more dangerous because people are less likely to be responsible. I mean, one person said, you cannot have Thanksgiving. You must not have Thanksgiving. I said, excuse me, I am going to have Thanksgiving. I am going to do what I think I need to do to mitigate risk, but I am going to have Thanksgiving with my family. You as the government are not going to tell me that I am not going to.

But what is being shared is only the screenshot of my response. 

(NOTE: IPR captured the following screenshot of both a similar original tweet, and Chase’s response at the time.)

Even if you disagree with that tweet from me, it is certainly better than any tweet you would have gotten from Joe Biden. In November of 2020, you would have had Donald Trump saying, “We need to listen to what Anthony Fauci says because he is smart and he is right.”  So I would hope that libertarians can have a sense of forgiveness and recognize that even if I am not their perfect choice, I am the Libertarian choice.

With regards to HRT, I believe in the Health Freedom Policy that is in the LP Platform, that individuals can make their own health care determinations, and in the parental rights part of our platform says that parents are the sole determiners of decisions about their children. I believe that my position falls squarely within (the platform). I don’t want the government deciding for or against anything. I want families to decide for themselves on a case-by-case basis.  Why? Because each and every child is a little bit different. I have seven nephews and nieces. None of them are like each other. They are all very different. So recognizing that that needs to be done on a case-by-case basis, we need to return that decision-making to self-governance, and in the case of a child, that of their parents to be a determining factor.

ATTENDEE: I need to jump in here just for a moment because I think it’s important for us not to make the mistake of thinking that certain people in our party represent a significant proportion of the party, because they don’t. As someone who is in the Mises Caucus, who is actually recently back from meeting with the leadership of the New Hampshire party of which you speak, in particular having met with individuals who raise this particular issue – they are completely out of step with each one of those layers. They are out of step with their own state party. They are out of step with the Mises Caucus. They are out of step with the Libertarian Party nationally. And to be honest, they’re out of step with libertarianism itself. Chase’s position is perfectly aligned with classical liberalism. He is the one that represents our philosophy and our party.

ATTENDEE: Where are you going to concentrate your efforts geographically?  How are you going to portion your energy for these next four months?

OLIVER: I’m going to try to visit as many places as possible. I don’t know if it’s possible to get us to all 50 states effectively in the four months we have left. But one of the things I look for is, does the state need us for ballot access? So my home state of Georgia needs a presidential candidate to get a certain threshold, or we lose the statewide ballot access we’ve had for many years, and it would cost us a ton of money. So, of course, we are going to stress Georgia. Another area is, do we have the potential to earn major-party status? That is another area we’re going to stress. If we can earn major-party status, get access to the primary ballot, increase media attention, we’re of course going to focus there. It’s also our populations that we’re going to focus on, not necessarily regions.

We did a poll on our social media platforms. We had over 2,000 responses asking people, at what age did you first start identifying yourself as a Libertarian? It doesn’t matter whether they were 20 or 70, the most common response was between the ages of 18 and 30.  The second highest response was under the age of 18. So it is young people that are ready to hear our message. So we are going to reach out to as many young voices as possible because Gen-Z and millennials are some of the proudest of us.

In ten years, Gen Z and millennials will be the vast majority of voters. So if we are not reaching out to them now, it’s going to be really hard to bring them to the process twenty years from now. So I want to reach out to these young people, be it our foreign policy message of anti-interventionism, being antiwar, etc. In college campuses all over the country, until school let out for the summer, we saw protests begging for a peace candidate, somebody who is going to challenge the war in Gaza. We can reach out to those young people very easily, trust me, by the end of this fall.

ATTENDEE: So how in particular are you going to reach out?

OLIVER: We ae going to be doing a college tour across the country to speak to as many students as we can, but also recognizing that not all young people are students. A lot of young people want to get into the workforce. I want to do a Twitch channel. I want to be able to speak to gamers. Because a lot of my friends who are younger who got involved in the workforce, they get off work, they kick off the work boots, they play games for two or three hours, they have a community there.  I want to reach out to young people, not just on campuses, but wherever they congregate and a lot of times that’s online.

ATTENDEE: You’ve got four months left. How can the Libertarian be catchy for the TikTok generation?  A slogan? A meeting with hedgehogs? What will get people to pay attention to us in that virtual world?

OLIVER: Speaking of going viral on TikTok, I think you gave me a very good segue. At the Libertarian National Convention, they had this group called The Good Liars. It is actually very funny. If you have a sense of humor about yourself, I recommend you watch the Good Liars at the Libertarian National Convention. They mentioned how many people had beers and how everybody is day drinking on the floor. The second he asked me, “Gun to your head, pick a choice, Donald Trump or Joe Biden, who do you pick?” I say, “The gun would go off!” That clip, that 10-second clip, was made into a TikTok.

It has now been viewed 26 or 27 million times. It’s been liked over 5 million times. It’s been shared over 250,000 times. It’s now a viral sound. I knew I had gone viral because my brother’s, ex-girlfriend’s, daughter, texted him “Oh my God, Uncle Jake’s on TikTok!! He’s running for president!!”  We are bold.  We take advantage of the media opportunities.  We are unapologetic. When they ask us to equivocate, you see, we are not equivocating. We are not picking one or the other. We are something completely different. The gun would go off. It is powerful because you know what happened in those comment sections? “That’s exactly how I feel.” “We are all screwed in this election!” and “You can vote for the guy who said that! He’s running for president. The gun doesn’t have to go off. You can vote for Chase.”

We did a TikTok Time All recently. We had over 60,000 young people watching. We are going to grow that organically throughout the rest of the process. We are going to bring a lot of young people in.

ATTENDEE: Is there a movement to move the convention to an earlier date?

OLIVER: It is a double-edged blade, right? Because we can say, well, technically, neither Trump nor Biden is the nominee yet. They haven’t had their conventions. The LP has the earliest convention. But the truth is we knew it was going to be Trump versus Biden well ahead of time. We don’t have to wait for the convention to know this. I would argue that it is a better idea to have earlier conventions now. Some state election laws might prevent how early. Back in the day, we had it in the fall of the previous year. So I don’t think that’s impossible. In fact, I think it would be good for us to be able to build ourselves up more organically post-convention and have more time to remain out there. I would support that.

The mechanism for getting that done, though, involves the bureaucracy of the Libertarian National Party, which is going to take a lot of work. As a candidate for president, would I have liked to have had the nomination three or four months earlier?  Absolutely.

ATTENDEE: In the Free and Equal Debate last night, you were asked about the role of government. What does the Libertarian Party have as a method for enabling people to work together?  Is there a role for government? Or is the LP simply about individuals and single-issue charities?

OLIVER: The best way to organize those structures is outside of government. We have corporations that do lots of very big things outside of the government structure. They organize themselves. They allocate resources. They participate in commerce. We can have rather large organizations. We don’t need a federal government to have an American Red Cross. They do lots of great work around the country in helping to prevent disasters. They don’t need the federal government to make that happen. The best way to actually help is to get the government out of the way, get the red tape out of the way.

I want to talk about these smaller community-led efforts. One of the things I always shout out, mostly because they do amazing work, is a group called Shred the Stigma of Oklahoma.

They service the Oklahoma City area by providing direct aid to addicts. They give them clean needles. They give them Narcan.  They give them testing strips so they know if they’re being spiked with a bad batch. They recognize that they can allow people to use safely. They create a bond of trust with that person. And when that person wants to get clean and healthy, they say, hey, that guy that’s been providing me with harm reduction stuff, he is an ex-addict, I should talk to him. I trust him.

That’s the kind of power that individual organizations have. It’s on a real human level, and it really changes lives. This organization has saved over one thousand lives from overdose. One thousand lives.

Broadly speaking, we can make real powerful change in organizing outside of government structure. We have something that government bureaucrats just don’t have. They don’t know what’s going on in their community. This is why it is better to organize in the field, because you know your neighbors. You know the struggles they are going through. I know people who work in these organizations and the biggest headache they have comes from the government, not the people who they are trying to help.

ATTENDEE: I understand the positive response here among libertarians, but how do you reach non-libertarians?

OLIVER: One of the things I do when I am talking to non-libertarians, and I did this at the Iowa State Fair or . . . I’ll do it right here: Raise your hand if you have children. Keep your hand up if you have unconditional love for your children. If you would do anything for your children. Keep your hand up if you would fight and die for your children?

Now, those of you who have your hand raised, aren’t you going to be the best advocate for your child? You know them, you know what they are going through, you know the challenges they’ve had to overcome, you know the triumphs they need to celebrate.  So why on earth would we take the agency to raise that child out of your hands and put it in the hands of a bureaucrat in Washington, D.C. or your statehouse who doesn’t know your child? They don’t know what they’re going through. They don’t know the challenges they’ve had. They don’t know the triumphs they’ve celebrated. But you do.

That is why you as a parent should really be in charge of your child’s educational decisions, their health care decisions, and really any other decisions in their life up until they’re able to make these decisions for themselves. Not the bureaucracy and not the government.

Does that sound logical to you? Nearly every person I meet says, you’re right, that does sound logical. That does make sense. That starts the conversation on education freedom, health care freedom, freedom of the state of New York, raising our kids, and it really works. These are people who are Democrats, Republicans, Independents, and when you find that thing in place that’s universal, it works. What is universal amongst parents? Unconditional love. Unconditional love means that you should be the ones who are helping make that decision because you’re going to be the best at it. So utilizing tools like that and creating engagement with the audience and ask them questions themselves is a great way to do that and bring the ideas of liberty in a way that’s organic in a way they feel like, oh, that makes sense. Lightbulb goes off. That’s exactly the way to do it. You can do that in races all over the country. I encourage you, if you are a candidate, to do exactly that. To find some sort of thing that allows the voters to respond to you and then they go, oh wait, that totally makes sense.

ATTENDEE: I do have a question about that with children because that is one of my sticking points if I may. When we have a psychopathic parent there is a concern. I don’t know the answer because I don’t want the government involved. But I think community has to be involved to protect those children. How would you address that?

OLIVER: When it comes to the decisions being made when we see abuse or neglect regardless of what it is, there is actually a role in my mind for government. I believe the only role for government is to protect civil liberties.  There is a reason to have adjudication in court. There is a reason to punish abusive parents. Whether they are physically abusive, manipulating kids, Munchausen’s-by-proxy, whatever it is, that is abuse and neglect.

I have met many parents of trans and non-binary young people. Almost every one of them say, “This is happening and we are just trying to figure it out. We’re just trying to figure out what we’re doing. God knows I wasn’t expecting this.” I feel that. I want them to be able to make those decisions, not the government. But if there is abuse, clearly that is when you step in. Clearly you step in. Abuse is going to exist. We have to recognize. But, absent abuse, we need to let the parents make those decisions.

Thank you for taking the time to listen to us.

Please, when you get back to your states, look up your Libertarian Party affiliate and ask them who is running.  If you can help, please do. Knock on doors. Pass out literature. Tell your friends and family about these candidates. If you are in a position to open your home to these candidates, invite your friends and neighbors over to meet them. Meet them one-on-one.  When you do that, you are going to convert voters because your neighbors trust you.

In closing, thank you so much for coming out here and having me yak on for a while. Thank you for being here. I am going to say the same thing to you every time: I wish each and every one of you in this room and each and every one of you that you know a life of peace, love, and liberty.