Special to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

In the last three years I have found myself becoming increasingly disappointed with certain organizations and people who have called themselves libertarian. My first disappointment was Christopher Cantwell, a libertarian who joined the Free State movement in New Hampshire. I used to be a regular listener of his podcast up until he got involved in the so-called Alt-Right movement, where he found himself mixed up in the fiasco that took place in Charlottesville. To this day I still can’t comprehend how a no-nonsense Anarcho-Capitalist like Cantwell could trade the principles of individual freedom for the principles peddled by a neo-fascist group. Then there was Reason magazine, who blamed Trump for the death of a young protestor in Charlottesville, which led to me cancelling my subscription. I also got tired of libertarians constantly belly-aching about how Trump is far from their ideal president, which is why I stopped watching Kennedy . Though I would say that my biggest disappointment was Judge Andrew Napolitano who had an obvious vendetta against Trump since he seemed to support any charge that was made against the former president no matter how bogus it seemed. At least Napolitano was my biggest disappointment, up until I heard about Penn Jillette’s recent abandonment of his libertarian principles.

When I first discovered Penn & Teller’s Bullshit on Showtime back in 2005, I not only fell in love with the show but with the witty duo. They were never afraid to pull any punches when it came to the subjects that they went out of their way to debunk. It didn’t matter if the subject was gun control, The War on Drugs or just about every form of pseudoscience that Western Civilization had to offer. The most controversial episodes involved slave reparations, climate change hysteria and AA meetings. The episode on the AA meetings was so controversial that their own film crew threatened to go on strike over it. I had the pleasure of getting my picture taken with the duo back in 2008, when I went to see one of their magic shows in Las Vegas.

I can definitely say that I take no pleasure in criticizing Penn Jillette, but I couldn’t believe that he actually said these words on an episode of Big Think : "[A] lot of the illusions that I held dear, rugged individualism, individual freedoms, are coming back to bite us in the ass. It seems like getting rid of the gatekeepers gave us Trump as president, and in the same breath, in the same wind, gave us not wearing masks, and maybe gave us a huge unpleasant amount of overt racism.” When I heard those words, I wanted to ask Penn, “who the hell he was and what did he do with the real Penn Jillette?” This statement sounded like it came from somebody like Edwin Lyngar from Salon, who claims to be a former libertarian, but seems to know very little about the ideology that he now trashes. If I didn’t know anything about Penn Jillete, I would have thought of him as big of a phony as Lynda. It’s hard to believe that this is the same man that went to a TSA checkpoint at the airport with his pants around his ankles to protest the invasive security measures that that they put the passengers through on a daily basis. What happened to that man?

I find it disappointing and perplexing that Penn Jillette would associate any damage caused by the CORONA virus to individualism, when it was a totalitarian government that caused the whole mess in the first place. I don’t know if anyone every explained this to him, but China isn’t renowned for their individualism. I also find it perplexing that a hard-nosed skeptic like Penn can have such a fixation with masks. I remember a time when Penn Jillete would criticize people who put their faith in certain ideas without evidence. It didn’t matter if it was a belief in a deity or a misguided faith in alternative medicine. Yet, he seems to believe in the same quackery that he and Teller used to routinely debunk on Bullshit . Yes, I do believe that masks are a form of pseudoscience and for that matter I believe that most of the measures that have been shoved down our throats for the past year and half are complete bunk. I assume these things are complete bunk because the officials pushing those measures have yet to show a single shred of evidence that they have been effective in reducing infection rates.

As for the part about attributing Trump’s election to the lack of a gatekeeper (whatever the hell that means), I would say that this statement is just flat out asinine. While I can certainly understand that he is not a big fan of Trump after having to deal with him on The Apprentice , Penn should know that the reason why America ended up with Trump was because of the shortcomings of the very people that he now supports. Penn managed to boggle my mind even further, when he threw in his support for Joe Biden. I can certainly say that Trump was far from my first choice as president, but in the end, I decided to go with a loudmouthed nationalist who seemed to love this country than with anyone coming from the Democratic Party who seems to show nothing but distain for this great nation. To me it’s hard to fathom how any self-respecting libertarian could possibly support the Democratic Party on a good day. I have always had a hard time believing that any true libertarian could possibly give up their principles so they could join a side that he has to know is at least ninety-five percent wrong (I am actually being generous with that five percent). That was what I thought before the left went completely insane during those entire four years of Trump’s presidency. Seriously, how could anyone, much less someone as intelligent as Penn support the party of Antifa and BLM. For those who tell me that these organizations only represent an extreme element of the left, I will believe that when I see every Democrat in Congress denounce these two organizations and the mayhem that they have created around the country. This brings me to my last point, about how individualism may have brought about overt racism. For a brief moment I wondered if there was a member of BLM shoving a gun in Penn’s back forcing him make those absurd comments. If I had the ability, I would have asked Penn to blink once for yes if he was being held against his will. Of course, he was never specific about what he meant by overt racism, so I can’t really give that much of a response to that particular comment, except that it sounds just as silly as the other things he said.

I remember when Penn Jillette said that he was the typical Hollywood liberal until he was “beaten up” by a libertarian friend of his. What Penn meant was that his friend used such compelling arguments to convince him that he was wrong about all of his preconceived notions, which allowed him to change his views. I have to wonder how the logic was beaten out of him.