In this episode, the hosts discuss the rise of Barry Goldwater and how he energized a new Republican base with his anti-communist policies that terrified many intelligent observers. Hunter S. Thompson was among the people who were horrified watching his rise.
Welch believed party politics was hopeless and the US was handing Asia over to communism. He strongly condemned US foreign policy in Asia, despite Truman's efforts to scare the Soviet Union with atomic bombs.
The public perception of the John Birch Society was dominated by its conspiracy theory. Despite a negative perception, the group grew to 95,000 members in 1965 with a goal of reaching a million members.
Eisenhower, one of the most powerful men in the world for a brief moment after WWII, said "freedom is better defined as the opportunity for self-discipline" which contradicts the common idea of discipline as a means of achieving success, but ultimately can lead to true freedom.
The reason behind the implementation of Prerestrika in USSR was due to a poor work ethic, low productivity, and low-quality goods. The author questions if the current successors of Reagan and George Herbert Walker Bush have done as good a job as Reagan did in the tail end of communism, where central planning and economic principles were imposed.
The speaker reflects on the similarities between far left and far right authoritarian regimes and theorizes that authoritarians always end up in the same place. They express a shift towards anarchist beliefs in order to break the cycle of authoritarianism.