Subject: Anarcho-Capitalist NEWS: Libertarian Adam Kokesh Doesn’t Want To Be Your President Sat Feb 03, 2018 2:44 am
The Libertarian Party’s Most Radical Candidate Speaks With 71 Republic
Adam Kokesh is an activist, veteran, and is currently running to be the Presidential Candidate of the Libertarian Party in 2020. His principled activism, popular show Adam Vs. The Man and his book FREEDOM! have established Mr. Kokesh as one of the major voices in the modern libertarian movement. His platform for Not-President can be read in full at his website. 71 Republic’s Spencer Kellogg spoke with Mr. Kokesh about his current campaign for Not-President of the United States of America.
I am going to be president only long enough to sign one executive order in which I resign to become custodian of the federal government. I think that holding a government job is contradictory to libertarian principles unless you have the approach of being a bankrupt agent. I’m running on a platform that this institution is bankrupt and should be dissolved. It needs to be liquidated so that we can pay back our creditors and I don’t mean the foreign banks and corporations that hold the american government debt. With this executive order, the federal government will be declared a null authority and merely a custodial institution. The only power I’d have is to oversee the process of dismantling the institution.
We are invoking the higher authority that is The Declaration of Independence which says that people have a right to abolish systems of government that no longer serve them. This comes from the consent of the American people. When it is clearly asserted by the American people in this referendum, nobody will stop us. If I go into the oval office on the first day after swearing in and they bring me the executive order to dissolve the federal government and I say “never mind, bring me the emperor executive order…” you can shoot me. Shoot me right in the face.
On His Arrest At The Jefferson Memorial:
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The original idea came from a silent flash mob to celebrate Thomas Jefferson’s birthday. Three years prior, a group of 18 libertarians went out to the memorial at midnight on his birthday when there is nobody out there but security. They were asked to leave and as they were leaving a woman was dancing out of the monument and a guard grabbed and arrested her for that. After three years of legal challenges, a judge upheld the arrest and said that dancing at the Jefferson memorial was ‘not appropriately reverent’ – basically suggesting you must bow down to the gods of government. And I only found out after this happened how ironic all of this was. Not only was Jefferson this great champion of free speech but he was also known as the ‘dancing president’. There are all these great Jefferson quotes about dancing being good for the youth, health and vigor of the soul. He would play his fiddle at the white house to get people to dance so there was an extra bit of irony. So we danced, we got arrested, we went to court and we beat it. This is clearly my most successful act of civil disobedience because today, if you go to the Jefferson Memorial, you can dance without getting arrested.
On Ron Paul:
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He got people to read Rothbard. Ten’s if not hundred’s of thousands of people now have read Rothbard because of Ron Paul. Or they’ve read Konkin and about the principles of voluntarism. I haven’t woken up a tiny portion of the people that Mr. Paul has.
On Libertarianism:
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A Libertarian is someone who believes in freedom.
On Running For Not-President:
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This is not an educational campaign. We are building a consensus among the American people. We like to say that I’m running for “Not President”. It’s accurate to say that I’m running against the presidency. The very first thing that I’m going to do is resign with an executive order that initiates the administrative process of dissolving the entire federal government. I want to turn the American presidential election into a referendum on whether or not the federal government should be allowed to exist at all. If you look at the way Americans vote right now, the macro demographics, 60% of American (roughly) vote in presidential elections. Most of these people vote reluctantly. You can see that because in midterm elections the numbers are even smaller, a lot of them are under 20%. The American people will see this campaign as a credible option and they will vote ‘nobody for president’. I think that anybody who is on that other line in the sand is going to have a difficult time arguing “NO! The federal government of the United States is a righteous institution that needs to continue until the end of time!” It sounds ridiculous when you put it against the possibility of a peaceful, orderly, responsible disillusion of the United States government where everyone can get what they want at the state and local level without the federal government getting in the way. This is a message that unites right, left and center against the common enemy of big, centralized government. Localization of government is something that transcends political ideology. The only people that will oppose this are globalists who want to have greater concentration of power. We want to abolish the constitution.
On The Washington DC Monuments:
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Every government building is propaganda, there is a face to it, there’s a part of it that the public is intended to see. The impression that you get when you go to Washington DC is deliberate. When you look at capitol cities throughout history, Rome being the archetypal example, they are set up to create this impression of intimidation. It’s peacocking of them to build a giant phallic symbol in the middle of a city on the National mall. It’s a phallic symbol. Even if there is no biology or sexual reference, it’s a stone tree. So we put up a giant stone stick sticking up in the air, hundreds of feet, to honor a dead man or to make him feel better about himself? The purpose is to have an impact on the living and to keep them intimidated. When you look at castles in medieval times it was more obvious because a king would get a bunch of knights together and point swords at people and say “start collecting rocks to build my castle.” It’s the same thing when they print money out of thin air and use it to distort the economy and create all these utterly non-functioning buildings like the Jefferson Monument. What you are being presented with is a glorified, propagandized, whitewashed version of our history written by government. Where is the monument to Patrick Henry? What about Thomas Paine? There is nothing in DC to memorialize or commemorate the first 12 Presidents of the United States. We are led to glorify George Washington because he was the first constitutional president but not the ones that had a greater impact, not the ones that actually fought for independence and freedom. I don’t care if George Washington has a monument as long as it’s funded voluntarily. But when you steal from people at gunpoint in order to build a monument then I don’t believe that monument should exist. Theft is always inappropriate. I don’t think that these monuments shouldn’t be respected as massive feats of engineering and architecture but it’s important to remember what they are. There is a very important distinction between respect and adoration.
On George W. Bush:
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George W. Bush lied this country into war. As a result, people died. As a result, I had to witness some of that death. I had to experience the threat of mortars and rockets and gunfire and depleted uranium poisoning and PTSD. I can’t imagine much more evil that could’ve been brought on the world than what was unleashed in the Bush administration. That is something I have deep, personal, emotional connections to.
On Iraq & Serving In The Military:
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When I got back from Iraq, I was still in the fog of war. It wasn’t until I got in trouble with the marines, when I went back to Iraq, that I was disgruntled and started questioning things. I needed that. I’m not especially open minded or creative in my thinking in any special way. It took me a long time and it took those personal experiences to challenge my thinking in a deeper way. When I got out, I joined Iraq Veterans Against The War and that led me to a lot of debates and that urged me to deepen my own understanding of philosophy. I wanted definite answers on these political questions and that led me to be a constitutional orientated Ron Paul republican. Being anti-war is a position born of libertarianism and it is the biggest motivator for me. When I look at humanity as a whole, government is clearly the greatest cause of human suffering and the greatest manifestation of the evil is in war. I’m not a Libertarian because I want rich people to keep their money. I want rich people to keep their money so that the government can’t steal it and use it to kill people with the military.
On Cryptocurrency:
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Cryptocurrency is the future of money. One way or another, some version of it. I’m a huge fan of the idea and concept of cryptocurrency more than any one currency. It’s really just a matter of time before we implement the technology of the internet that is making it possible to have decentralized voluntary system. It’s exciting and I wish I had more time to study. My biggest regret is spending so many $10 bitcoins on the Silk Road back in 2011.
We would like to thank Mr. Kokesh for performing this interview with 71 Republic. Find more info on Adam at thefreedomline.com/.
Subject: Anarcho-Capitalist NEWS: Libertarian Adam Kokesh Doesn’t Want To Be Your President 
Sat Feb 03, 2018 2:44 am
