Colin Moriarty joins us now. He's the cofounder of kindafunny.com. And he's a gamer. And welcome to the program, Colin. How are you, sir?
COLIN: I'm well. Thank you so much for having me. It's very surreal. I appreciate you taking the time.
GLENN: Why do you say it's very surreal?
COLIN: Well, my father and I -- well, I grew up with my father listening to talk radio and kind of listening to all sorts of people. And when I told him I was going to be on with you, he said he got chills actually because we used to listen to you and watch together.
GLENN: Oh, that's wild. That's wild.
Well, I am so glad that you have joined us. I saw you on Dave Reuben's show. And was fascinated by you, because you say you're a Libertarian, but you're also a proud conservative. And if this was visual, you're all tatted up. You live in San Francisco. And I can't imagine -- it's one thing to say Libertarian, it's another thing to say conservative in San Francisco. How is that going for you?
(chuckling)
COLIN: Not very well, as you can see.
GLENN: Yeah.
COLIN: Yeah. But, no, I kind of take -- you know, I think the good parts of both sides. And I think even the good parts of liberalism to come up with some amalgamation that makes sense to me. So I think -- socially, I think I'm very Libertarian. In fact, I think I'm more Libertarian than many progressive liberals.
But at the same time, I believe in the Constitution. I believe in deference to the Founders. I believe in a small government that stays out of your business. The thing is that I marked those altogether. So a government that stays out of your business, to tell you you can have a gun, for instance, is the same government that I think should stay out of your business if a man wants to marry another man. And I think that's where my Libertarianism comes into play.
GLENN: Yes. Colin, it's why I was in this strange position ten, 15 years ago of saying, look, you know, morally my religion teaches one thing. But my constitutionalism tells me I have no place to tell anybody who can marry and who can't. The government should be out of this entirely. Don't affect my church. And I won't affect your marriage. Just leave each other alone. And that creates some really strange bedfellows that we're currently trying to chase out of the public square. And that's the answer.
COLIN: I agree with you. You know, this is where -- I think people have a hard time identifying people like me, Glenn. Because I'm actually an atheist. But I grew up in a Catholic household, a very devoutly Catholic household. And people of faith have a very great ally in me because I believe that faith is a good thing. I believe it's good for polity. I think it's good for people to have faith in something, in a higher being. I just don't. But I would always protect to the very last a person's right, for instance, to believe.
Just because I don't believe doesn't mean, as you said, you can't believe. And so I also respect -- you know, I'm pro-choice, but I respect the pro-life argument. I think it's a very principled argument. I think it's good that there are people out there that are challenging my beliefs. And so this is the kind of the confusing thing, this kind of -- this kind of thought policing that's happening. This very -- you know, I'm considered an enemy to liberalism, even though I share many of their values, because I believe the government should stay out of your business. So I'm the enemy.
GLENN: Isn't it strange to see how people have flipped on almost every point just because their guy is not in office? Now liberals are concerned --
COLIN: Yes.
GLENN: -- they're concerned about, you know, executive orders. But they weren't under Obama. And now the people who were concerned about executive orders under Obama are fine with it now. It's crazy.
COLIN: To me, I agree with you. It's insane. You know, people that listen to me and know me -- I go off on politics often. And, you know, I was disgusted with the Republican Party. I was a registered Republican. And, you know, I'm not a Trump fan at all. I was sickened by how people took what I thought Republicanism was and, you know, morphed into something that it wasn't, simply to win. And to me, that's not -- that's not principled. And I'd rather lose and retain my principles. So when it was clear Trump was going to win, here in California -- we vote very late, as you know -- I voted for Kasich as a protest vote. And then I disavowed the party completely.
That doesn't mean I'm a conservative -- or, I'm sorry, that doesn't mean that I'm not a conservative. It means that I think the conservative principles and the free principles that we stand upon were actually kind of taken away by people that don't really share our values. And it seems like it's all in the name of winning. It's all in the name of being better than the other side. There is no one talking to each other. There's no gray area. It's just all orthodoxy. And it really makes me sick.
GLENN: So help me out what conservative -- I know what Republicanism means right now. It means the same exact thing as being a Democrat. It means I'll do whatever it takes and whatever it has to, to win. But conservatives, what does it mean to be a conservative? I mean, you're 32 years old. You're out in San Francisco. You're a gamer. You do -- you know, you do a gaming kind of blog.
So who are -- the people you relate to, what does that word even mean to them and to you?
COLIN: Well, I think -- you know, as you said, things are changing. I think we're at an inflection point. And, to me, conservatism simply means -- in my mind, and everyone might have a different opinion on this, I'm sure they do -- you know, a deference to the Constitution. If the government can get out of something, it should get out of something. If the state or local government can take care of something over the federal government, I think that's ideal. To me, it's personal freedom, responsibility, the right to succeed, and the right to fail. And the right to express yourself freely, without having to worry about being called a bigot or being called a sexist, as I was for making a silly joke. And I'm glad you brought that up specifically because there are so many people that play video games, there are so many people that enjoy entertainment that don't have anyone speaking for them.
GLENN: Yes.
COLIN: The video game industry in the United States is out of San Francisco. The media, which I come from -- I used to be the senior editor of the biggest video game website in the world. And two years ago, I quit to do my own thing with my friends.
But it is exclusively liberal. I am the only real conservative voice out there in what I would call mainstream media. Obviously there are people on YouTube that do that as well in the gaming space. And you would be shocked about how many people talk to me every day, and they're like, you are the only person I can relate to. I am a gun owner, for instance. You know, I'm not. But they're saying, I'm a gun owner, for instance, and I would be ridiculed and labeled by these other people. But you support me. Or I'm a man of faith. Or I'm Christian. Or I'm Jewish. Whatever it might be. And you don't judge me for that. So I think that there's a conservative bent to gaming and a conservative bent -- or an independent bent -- or a Libertarian bent to those things that people support.
GLENN: But what I'm asking you is, does the word conservative -- the word itself. Because what you're saying -- to me, conservative has been so bastardized that it doesn't mean anything that we almost -- and this is not the right word because it's so misunderstood, but almost classic liberalism. Because I think -- you know, everything -- I hope. And maybe this is wishful thinking. You will be able to tell me. Is anybody in San Francisco waking up to the point of, "Hey, safe spaces is a restriction on speech. And we're really starting to go down on the roads of fascism, and it's really kind of the progressive side that's pushing hard?"
COLIN: Yes. There are some people. And I want to keep it in the scope of reality. You know, there are people here that are waking up. That said, only 10 percent -- and I'm not saying a vote for Trump is a good thing. But just as an illustration, only 10 percent of San Francisco voted for Trump. So you're dealing with a very hyper liberal society here in San Francisco.
GLENN: Right. Right.
COLIN: That supports those things more than anything. But there are people, even in the gaming industry that are waking up to this and think this stuff is so silly.
And, Glenn, I've expressed it in the past. I went to Northeastern in Boston, and I studied American history. And I couldn't imagine -- you know, I graduated in 2007, and I couldn't imagine being in college now where people are restricted. I took a bunch of classes on Nazi Germany, for instance, or the Civil War, the bloodiest conflict, as I'm sure you know, as you're very learned, in American history. And I couldn't imagine how they might teach those things now to kind of placate people or to make sure that they're coddled.
So, yeah, there are people waking up. But what's disappointing to me is I'm one of the only ones speaking outwardly, and I'm the proxy for a lot of people that are afraid to talk. They talk to me. People at gaming companies, all the way up to CEOs of gaming companies, down to the lowest trenches, as I told Dave, will talk to me and tell me, I believe what you say. But, man, I'm afraid to say it. Because they're going to get ridiculed in the public population.
GLENN: So then what makes you -- what do you say to people like that? What makes you heroic and them not willing to do something that is now considered heroic?
COLIN: I think, you know -- I try not to judge anyone for that. I think that there's a real fear for people's jobs. These people have families. They don't want to be basically blacklisted from the industry, as people have -- you know, de facto kind of tried to do to me over the years. And as you see with this joke, people came down on me -- nobody is offended by that joke, Glenn.
GLENN: Oh, I know. I agree. Nobody is offended by that.
COLIN: They see an opportunity. They see an opportunity to take down someone that speaks a different language than them.
GLENN: Yep. Yep.
COLIN: So to me -- I'm sorry. Go ahead.
GLENN: So to you --
COLIN: I was going to say, so to me, it's just, I understand people's fear, but I'm also kind of getting exhausted by being their proxy because I know they're out there. And, you know, I was so happy that a few people came to my defense in such a way. And people that are not even conservative.
A buddy of mine, David Jaffe, who is a well-known game developer. He makes the game -- he was responsible for the games Twisted Metal and God of War. These are very big games. Came out and said -- basically, I'm just paraphrasing. But, what is everyone's problem here?
So there are even people on the left. He's a very liberal person. That are concerned about that as well. But San Francisco, specifically, is as cartoonish, if not more so, than people think it is.
GLENN: Hey, I would be -- it would be wrong of me to have you on because a lot of people that listen to you don't like me because I have said, quoting, colonel -- I'm trying to remember his name. He wrote On Killing. And he is one of -- he is the leading expert on killing and has developed all these programs for the Pentagon to be able to get people to have a positive shooting experience. How do we get guys to shoot when they first get off the back of an airplane? Et cetera, et cetera.
And he has said -- and his research shows that video games help break down a mental wall that -- they don't make you into a killer. But they break down a mental wall where it makes it easier for you to kill.
And that is somehow very controversial for me to even say. I don't believe video games make you into a killer. I think you have something inside of you or don't have something inside of you. But it does break down a wall.
Do you want to tell me off for that? I want to give your fans an opportunity to say, "Yeah, all right. You told him."
COLIN: I mean, I have no interest in telling anyone offering a differing opinion or whatever like that. But to me, I'm not an expert, and I haven't read the work you're talking about.
GLENN: Yes.
COLIN: What I will say is that, it doesn't -- it doesn't I believe -- for me to say that if a person plays Grand Theft Auto 5 and he might already have some preexisting mental condition or some preexisting propensity, as you said, to do something already that, running around in a car, murdering people with it, might set that person off, is that possible? I'm sure that it probably is.
But I try keep the numbers in balance. This is actually a similar argument to what I use with the right to own a gun, which is to say Grand Theft Auto 5, which is a very violent, very provocative game, had sold 70 million units around the world, one of the best-selling games of all time. If there are five people that play Grand Theft Auto 5 and go on to kill someone because they're inspired by that, I know it sounds kind of strange, but that's a really almost mathematically insignificant number of people, if that makes any sense.
GLENN: Yes. Yes.
COLIN: Similarly to a person that has access to a gun. Should none of us have access to a gun because a mentally unstable person has access to a gun and kills himself? I always defer -- you know, it's like an old Benjamin Franklin quote, you defer to liberty over kind of security, in that regard. And so I take a similar stance there. Can something like that set someone off? Of course. I'm sure that's possible.
GLENN: Colin. Colin, I would love to talk to you again. Colin Moriarty. He is the cofounder of kindafunny.com.
It's great meeting you. Really great meeting you. Thanks, Colin, I appreciate it.
COLIN: Thank you so much, Glenn. I appreciate it.
