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July 2, 2025 22 mins
Is there any excuse for using force even if a country is expressing threatening language? What if that country is doing harm to their own citizens? Is it really a good idea to contribute money to that country even when it shows one of these bad behaviors?

It seems like a better idea would be to encourage a more prosperous population by showing good free market example.

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2 Clips Used from: 
Dave Smith | Regime Change | Part Of The Problem 1279
By: @PartOfTheProblem


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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
You're listening to the podcast Coffee with Mike and Julie
Libertarians Talk Psychology. This is current commentary from an NBA
businessman and a PhD psychologist.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
The general topic for today is the dilemma between Israel
and Iran and the way the US is interacting with
these two countries.

Speaker 3 (00:29):
It's the big news.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
It is the big news, and it has been a
real roller coaster. It's hard to know if we should
be upset with the way the roller coaster has been
presenting itself to us solve the issues that our country
has been involved in. And it's damn the or entertaining
if people didn't have to die or risk death to
be going through all this stuff. But I'm gonna as usual,

(00:53):
which you may object to, I'm going to inject a
little Dave Smith because he's really good at his historical context,
so I'm going to introduce a little of that.

Speaker 3 (01:04):
He does his homework.

Speaker 2 (01:05):
I have to say that he keeps it on the
top of it, and.

Speaker 3 (01:08):
He's anti war in general, so he does the anti
war homework better than most people.

Speaker 2 (01:15):
That's right. But in general, throughout this episode, I'm going
to ask us two basic questions. One is the most
obvious question what justifiers using force? And of course we'll
get into what justifies using force between individuals. Of what
we're talking about also is between countries. And then the

(01:37):
other one that you question, this second question that I have,
but I think I can make it relevant. Is it
acceptable to have racial or religious requirements in a country.
And what I really mean is should we be supporting
or even encouraging disagreeable discrimination in another country? And this particular,

(02:00):
you know, racial or religious discrimination. But I'll get to it.
And I know you're skeptical about being able to discuss
that topic.

Speaker 3 (02:08):
That relates to Iran and Israel.

Speaker 2 (02:11):
Yeah, okay, I'll just go ahead and say. Israel went
through a period where they said, hey, our neighboring countries
need to accept that we are a separate country and
we have a right to exist. And when those countries
started agreeing to that, Israel said, now wait a minute,
it needs to be more specific than that. Israel needs

(02:31):
to exist as a Jewish state. In other words, these
Arab religious people, we're not going to give them the
right to vote and change our government away from a
Jewish state. So we not only have a right to exist,
but we have a right to insist that it be
a Jewish state, and I'm saying that's pretty dicey, and

(02:51):
I do want to get into there. But anyway, let
me go ahead and play the Dave Smith thame to
give you permission.

Speaker 1 (02:58):
Okay, But you know, like Bench Pio at Mark Levin
and all these guys have been coming. So when it
comes to this specific war, way way way back three
days ago, these people were all mocking me because I
said the US was involved in war. And I don't
know if you could even remember back to seventy two
hours ago, Rob, But the talking point then, as they

(03:20):
mocked me for being an ignorant comedian who doesn't really
understand geopolitics, what they were running with three days ago
was America, isn't it war? You're just letting Israel take
care of business. What's your problem, Dave. You criticize us
when we fight other people's wars, but now you're also
criticizing us when we just let Israel conduct its own war.

(03:42):
And by the way, they've completely taken out the Iranian
nuclear program. You remember that, Rob, This was their talking
point after Israel's strike that Israel is so bad ass
they have decapitated the nuclear weapons that Aram does not have.
That and of course right after that, Donald Trump attacks. Now,

(04:04):
when Donald Trump attacks, they say that's it. Now, Now
this was the really successful one. Israel did just about everything,
but Donald Trump. You know, we got these bunker busters
in the might of the American military. We just needed
to drop a couple bunker busters. That's all that happens.
The rest Israel handlebo all of this. Donald Trump then

(04:25):
stends all of his people out to do the Sunday shows.
He's got all his guys going out. They're all saying,
this is a one and done strike. There's no regime
change here. This is not about a regime change. This
was never a regime change war. Then all day that day,
I got everybody, all the hawks on Twitter, go and

(04:45):
see Dave, you're arguing as if this is a regime
change war. Then Donald Trump announces he wants regime change.
That's the next step. Now they're all arguing why regime
change is good. The same thing that they told you
yesterday you were stupid for believing, They'll now tell you
not only is it true, but it's a great thing
that it's happening. By the way, after the US strike.

(05:09):
Israel then picked up their strikes and they're bombing non
nuclear targets, just regime targets, prisons filled with political enemies
of the Iranian regime. Different you know, like uh, strategic
you know, targets some strategic value for the regime that
have absolutely nothing to do with nuclear sites. So again,
it's just like with all these things, it is it's

(05:33):
unbelievable the levels of dishonesty that the warhawks are capable of.
Like it's it's something that's still to this day. It's
like when you just talk to a complete liar. There's
something jarring about it, but they will argue with you,
get you dragged into arguing this point, and then when
you are proven right the next day, they just abandon

(05:56):
it like it never happened and move on to the
next talking point about why you're stupid for not supporting
the war. It is just I don't know, man, it's
unbelievable to witness.

Speaker 2 (06:05):
Okay, So I find that pretty fascinating. Just the history
of the last few days is pretty fascinating. But it
brings up my first point, or my first question is
what does justify using force?

Speaker 3 (06:19):
Well, the idea is it's self defense. The idea is
iron when they get a nuclear weapon, it will be
used against Israel and targets that are us. That's the idea.
So the idea, whether it's correct or not, is self defense.
And so that does hold into your question. You know,

(06:41):
a person who can defend themselves gets widely leeway on
defending yourself. You can kill another person's self defense. You
can murder a person if you believe you're defending yourself.

Speaker 2 (06:54):
Wait, wait, okay, if you believe you are defending yourself,
for get off. If they give you a dirty look.

Speaker 3 (07:01):
People get off on murder trials because that the jury
is convinced that they believe they were under imminent danger.

Speaker 2 (07:10):
Well, we can get into that.

Speaker 3 (07:11):
But I'm not saying it's right. I'm just saying.

Speaker 2 (07:14):
I'm saying it's not right. Yeah, I'm saying that. I'm
saying that just because you believe just because that other
country is making hateful statements is not enough to use
for us.

Speaker 3 (07:27):
Well, that's the conversation of what constitutes legitimate self defense,
what constitutes a legitimate threat. And I don't think that's
easy to prove one way or another.

Speaker 2 (07:38):
Well, and that's part of what I'm wanting to see
if we can arrive at Because I'm fuzy on this too,
I'll admit I'm not real firm moment.

Speaker 3 (07:46):
I heard a statistic on Fox that during the Biden
administration there were three hundred and fifty attack on US
properties and people by the Iranian state and its proxies.

Speaker 2 (07:59):
Yeah, and as you know, I have a little problem
with blaming proxies independent countries who may be doing what
Iran wants and maybe Iran is funding them, like we
fund a bunch of countries.

Speaker 3 (08:12):
You know. Do you feel like when they say Iran's
proxies Hezblahamas, do you believe that they are their proxies
or you don't believe that.

Speaker 2 (08:22):
I don't think it's correct to blame everything only Iran,
just like I don't think it's correct to blame the
United States or its proxies like Israel or any other
country that the US gives significant funding to.

Speaker 3 (08:38):
They say this, now, I don't know if any of
this is right or not, but they say Iran funds
and supports terrorist groups, and those terrorist groups attack Americans
and Israelis. Do you believe that?

Speaker 2 (08:51):
I believe it's possible. I also believe we should not
take it for granted that that's true. Okay, that needs
to be confirmed.

Speaker 3 (08:59):
So these are just criminal organizations in your mind, and
you can't hold Iran responsible for Hesbelah.

Speaker 2 (09:06):
Well, I don't know. I don't know what the proof
is on this, but I know a lot of people
question that Iran is totally pulling the puppet strings on
all this stuff.

Speaker 3 (09:17):
Yeah, I mean some of this is I'm sure arguable.
I don't have an argument against it. I don't study it.
I'm ignorant as to whether those claims are correct.

Speaker 2 (09:27):
But back to the basic thing about what justifies using.

Speaker 3 (09:31):
Force self defense.

Speaker 2 (09:33):
Self defense requires a definition, and I'm saying that you
cannot use force unless force is exerted on you. Now
that is a problem because then you are vulnerable to
someone else using force on you before you can respond
with force. But I'm saying that is, to me what
is required. So I like your analogy. You came up

(09:56):
with it a couple of days ago about a neighbor
who might be yelling across the street about how much
they hate us and they want to kill us. Does
that give us the right to get a gun and
go take them over? And I say, no, we can't
do anything unless if they come on our property using force,
or if they're across the street and pointing the gun

(10:19):
at us, even pointing the gun, they have to shoot
a gun before we are okay with responding with force.
And so I say, the same thing applies to a country.
To me, it is not acceptable to say, hey, that
other country is spouting language that we don't have the
right to exist and they want us to be killed.

(10:40):
That's not justification for going over there using force to
change the leadership of that country, which we have done
a lot of, by the way, and we'll get into that.
But this thing about justifying changing another country because of
their language, I don't think that's good enoughfication. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (11:01):
Well, and I don't know if to strike against Iran's
nuclear facilities was right or wrong. But I told you
this yesterday. I'm glad for it. I don't want them
to have a nuclear bomb, and I'm glad it happened,
But I'm not sure I disagree with you that we
didn't have a right to do it, which is the
old saying might makes right. It's like, if you have

(11:24):
the power to do something, then you have the power
to do something may not be right, and power does corrupt.
It's a corrupting influence and it has to be judiciously used,
and so I don't know if we judiciously used it.
I'm unfortunately happy that Iran does not have a bomb
like that.

Speaker 2 (11:43):
Well, I want to respond to your comment about your
glad about it and point out that Trump is magical
the way he can do stuff that makes no sense,
and the next day he kind of changes the way
he said it, and damn if these countries.

Speaker 3 (12:02):
Don't comply, it's very very persuasive, and.

Speaker 2 (12:05):
We may be headed toward a good solution to this
whole problem. And I would say I think the US's
behavior has been totally irresponsible. There is no excuse for
what the US did, But I think it is quite
possible that this is going to work out okay. And
Trump is just magical the way he could do that. Well.

Speaker 3 (12:25):
They say that the other Arab countries in the Middle
East are formally condemning the action but informally praising and
loving it because they didn't want the situation either.

Speaker 2 (12:38):
So that does leave me, you know.

Speaker 3 (12:39):
We really don't know if any of this is true
or fall Scott Adams says, you know, you can't believe
anything after the first strike of a war. After that,
just consider that it's all propaganda.

Speaker 2 (12:51):
This leads me to the second little clip. Okay, so
that's a second clip that I thought it was kind
of relevant.

Speaker 1 (12:57):
We'll see, Okay, See, you're telling me that you, okay,
for all the regime changes that America has had. You
ever see like where they list all the regime changes
the US has had, like post World War two, But
it's like all the regime changes through direct war or
the CIA, covert actions or colored revolutions or whatever. It's

(13:18):
just like a long list. I think we're at like
seventy something nations that we've overthrown. None of them have
had nukes. We do not overthrow nuclear armed regimes because
it's just even for these guys, it's just too risky.
So you're telling me we will if you completely abandon
your nuclear ambitions, like Kadafi will overthrow you. If you
develop nukes, we won't overthrow you. If you hang around

(13:40):
at sixty percent, that's high enough will overthrow you. So
like it's like all every the incentive is just so obvious.
You're creating the incentive for more people to, you know,
try to obtain nuclear.

Speaker 4 (13:54):
Weapons and worse, worse than that. And this feels a
lot like a lot of what I'm seeing feels like
the problem I've seen before. So if you remember the
Ukraine propaganda, it was Biden refused to say that NATO
will not Ukraine won't be a part of NATO, but
then also pretended like we're not escalating the situation here.

Speaker 2 (14:12):
Okay, that was enough of that. I just wanted to
point out this whole thing about keeping people away from
nuclear and all that is a form of bad b
mid like we did with both Libya and Kadafi, and
we did it with Ukraine and Iran. You know, we
got involved in regime change, and it blew up in

(14:32):
our faces every time.

Speaker 3 (14:34):
I'm confused about whether Trump wants a regime change.

Speaker 2 (14:37):
I don't think he really does. I think he really
does want peace. But his supporters are talking about regime change.
Israel is talking about regime change. Yeah, well that's what
their behavior says they want regime change. Their dialogue says
they don't want nukes. But of course they've been saying
that since the nineteen nineties. There's no significant difference well,

(15:00):
they're in.

Speaker 3 (15:00):
A different situation because apparently the Supreme Leader has said
death Israel. And so that goes back to your analogy.
You know, your example, if you have a neighbor that says,
I'm want to kill you and your family if I
get the chance you're dead, I mean, that's very motivating,
that would be very motivating. The first thing I would

(15:22):
do is move out. Yes, of course there are other
options rather than murder. But if someone were threatening my family,
I would be capable of murder, and they don't have
to murder them. For me to be capable of murder,
they have to threaten them, and I have to think
it's a reasonable likelihood that they would carry through with it,
and I would definitely be capable of murder myself. So

(15:43):
that self defense motive, that's a big motive. And so
you start agree, you start yacking about one somebody did
you better be ready to tolerate the consequences of somebody
thinking they want me dead. I saw they're going to
be dead first. Very very serious stuff.

Speaker 2 (16:02):
It is. And my statement about it is that I
don't care what is said verbally or written or anything else.
That the obligation is to prepare for that person to
follow through with what they're threatening to do. Now, when
they start threatening through, you need to be prepared to
respond accordingly, but you should not try to do a

(16:23):
preemptive Still, well.

Speaker 3 (16:24):
You being a male and me being a female is
a different instinctual basis. You know, I don't have horns
in the wild. The males are prepared for combat. Females
aren't prepared for combat. Mark Zimmerman always talks me about
in World War Two they wanted women kamikaze pilots, but
the trouble with the women pilots where they were too aggressive.

(16:48):
And in Vanderwall's book Chimpanzee Politics, when the males are
out of the picture and the females take over the
dominant coalition structure in the truth, the females are too aggressive. Well,
that's because the females aren't instinctually prepared for combat. They
don't know the rituals. They're just not instinctually aware of

(17:11):
how to play hardball versus how to play nice. So
we may differ. Because you're a man and I'm a woman,
I would be prone to a preemptive strike just because I.

Speaker 2 (17:22):
Know that in a handle, because you're a woman, then
you're overly aggressive if you're going to be the decision maker.

Speaker 3 (17:28):
Because i can't defend myself. Okay, because I'm not prepared
to defend myself toe to toe with a man is
no contest.

Speaker 2 (17:38):
There's another angle to this, and it comes around to
regime change, which is the kind of thing that takes
place between countries. The US legislators, a lot of them,
seem to go along with the idea, Hey, if we
don't like that other country is saying, it's okay for
our CIA to get in there and have a regime
change and try to improve things. Of course, I want

(17:59):
to point out historically that has almost universally been a
bad idea. The end result has been worse than it
was even before. But the justification is, Okay, they're saying
bad things, let's have a regime change, and they go
in by force or assassination and cause a regime change.

(18:19):
The other alternative for regime change is to lead by example.
For example, the US when we had such a big
deal with the Soviet Union and we built up our
military and the Soviet Union was building up its military,
and the US had a prosperous economy, and the Soviet
Union was crumbling. They had to crumble, and that was

(18:40):
also a regime change, but we didn't have to invade
them militarily to make it happen. So I'm saying regime
change by example is okay. I think a bunch of
these countries where we don't like them, we ought to
have an alternative city outside their boundary where the people

(19:00):
that they're murdering or genociding, hey, let them come over here,
will allow free trade over here.

Speaker 3 (19:07):
Well, that's always the option, is that? And that's why
I think Trump is not calling for a regime change.
I don't hear him. I heard Dave Smith, your clip
of Dave Smith say oh yeah, they are calling for
regime change, but I'm not hearing that on the news
I did, so I don't agree that taking out a leader.
I believe that in these tribal countries, and these countries

(19:30):
are very aggressive because the males. It's a harem culture,
and you always have extra males who are willing to
die in a harem culture. I mean, just look at that.
In the animal kingdom, harems are boiling points for males
to grow more and more aggressive. So anytime you have
that situation, you take one guy out. I mean, it
is hot luck as to whether you get I mean,

(19:52):
there's a power vacuum, but you're not likely to get
a better candidate. Nobody is the devil, you know. I'm
an agreement that we shouldn't go in and think we
know best when it comes to eliminating leaders. And I
think eliminating a leader is a bad idea in general.
I don't hold any sway on that. I mean, I
don't think you can eliminate the leader of another country

(20:15):
morally or ethically, or even if they say bad stuff.
You can't. Now, can you eliminate a nuclear facility? We
haven't heard this, but you know, apparently Iran attacked the
Cutter a US space and they told them they were coming.
I think we probably told Iran we're coming for your

(20:35):
nuclear facility, I think, and allowed people to get out.

Speaker 2 (20:40):
I think we probably did.

Speaker 3 (20:41):
We haven't heard that because I'm not sure you would
want anybody to know that, because that would endanger your pilots.

Speaker 2 (20:48):
So I want to mention one last point before I
closed down, is that I think I've made or we've
at least had a discussion about what justifies using force
between countries. I say, a less or more subtle thing
that we need to think about is when some other
country is exercising behaviors that are particularly made I like, well,

(21:12):
even financial stuff, but let's just talk about racial or
religious requirements for that country. I'm not saying we should
go do anything, but I'm saying we should not be
contributing or supporting a statement like Israel needs to be
a Jewish state. Hey, if you want to have people
recognize Israel as has a right to exist, that's fine.

(21:36):
And if Israel wants to make all their people Jewish,
then hey, they're their own country. They can do whatever
they want with their population. But I don't think the
US should be participating in behavior like that.

Speaker 3 (21:47):
I'm not sure how I feel about that. I'm not
sure I understand that I hear your concern about it.

Speaker 2 (21:54):
Okay, that's about all that I have to say about
the whole topic.

Speaker 3 (22:00):
Lo
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