This is part of a series of interviews in the series “Reinventing the American Dream.” How do you feel about the new Supreme Court justices? What kind of legacy do you think they will leave in their short time on the Court? Some people would say they will be seen as a legacy of a conservative bent, and others, a legacy of limited government. I think it will be a legacy of the principle of freedom. Freedom must remain a top priority for the American people. Freedom has been under attack for a long time. The people who lost this fight didn’t take it well. And they worked hard to undermine freedom, to try to force things that could not be forced on Americans. There is no substitute for freedom. Freedom is an essential underpinning of prosperity. Free societies succeed. They don’t succumb to corruption, fraud and failure. What’s your overall assessment of the 2016 presidential election so far? It has been difficult to find one person who has emerged as an acceptable choice for president, who meets the criteria we all need. Most of the time, I get disgusted with both parties. We desperately need to change. We need people to join us who can be considered respectable. How do you see Donald Trump fit into this picture? He has come out with a strong message. He doesn’t like big government, and he’s said things to that effect. This message appeals to people who are not members of any political party. I’m also a fan of the idea that he wants to bring in American expertise. He wants to get people who know something about what he is talking about. That would mean people from the private sector, and from the military. Does he strike you as a man who could govern? At the moment, his mind is not on the campaign, his mind is on the campaign. I don’t think he has given any consideration as to whether he could get elected, or could be of service. I’ve never heard him say he could win the election. I think he wants to be on the right side of history. I have great admiration for Donald Trump. I think he’s on the right track. I think he’s doing the best he can do at this stage. I don’t know what he might do once he has gotten the nomination. I suspect, like most politicians, that he might not do it the way he said he would do it. That’s one of the frustrations with politicians: you need to have faith in their integrity, but they don’t keep their word. What about the Libertarian Party candidate, Gary Johnson? I don’t know anything about Gary Johnson, except that I like the color of his hair, which is an important consideration when you’re choosing a president. His ideas are so close to mine that I’m sure he would have no difficulty becoming my president. What do you think of the Libertarian Party? In my opinion, the Libertarian Party does not hold the same vision of government as we do. They seem to be more about “freedom for me,” but I think we must remember that freedom is not the opposite of slavery. Freedom is a precious thing, and if we allow government, any government, to undermine freedom, we are not really free. At the same time, we must take care that government does not grow unreasonably large. We must remember that freedom and our liberty is at risk in a lot of ways today. Not all government is bad. I want to see a strong hand guiding our nation’s affairs. We are not going to get everything right in a single four-year term of office. Our democracy is designed for incrementalism. I think people who think they can get everything done in one term do not understand democracy. I wish them well. It might be interesting to take a hard look at where our economy is going. With unemployment as low as it is, you would think there is a lot of labor surplus. Why don’t we have unemployment rates under 10% like they were in the 1940s? Our economy has been distorted by policies of the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department. The policies since the Great Depression have distorted our economy in ways I think are going to have consequences for a long time. There are also a lot of structural problems that need to be dealt with, and they cannot be dealt with by government action alone. But here are a couple of things we can do to deal with unemployment: One, we have got to get rid of a whole bunch of unnecessary regulations that inhibit business from getting started. We also need to deregulate the Federal Reserve, so that people can make more money doing business and not having to pay so many unnecessary fees to the government. We have to get the government out of the business of providing health care for our citizens. These three things could result in a lot of employment, and help create a more vibrant economy. We also need to work on the issues of jobs, which is something I’m concerned about. Our economy is not going to grow if we don’t get people back to work. We need to get people on the streets. The way we are going, we will not have an economy to speak of in a few years. On health care, as far as the Republican candidates, if one of them is elected, I think we should look at some reforms that would make it easier for people to deal with these issues. Why do you support civil liberties so much? It might seem strange for someone whose reputation was built around tough national security issues. The thing is, it’s tough, but in the long run it’s really stupid not to have a vibrant civil society, and that is what freedom is all about. For the most part, the reason civil liberties got lost is because people stopped practicing them. The government has to provide security. When it begins to exceed its constitutional role, and starts treating the citizens in a discriminatory way, we don’t need to be living in a police state. If we are going to have a police state, let’s be honest and have it right at the front door, and let’s have enough security to protect the people. The police officers are the people’s best friends, not their enemies. When I was growing up, my parents took us to the police station because we were going to see the Chief of Police who had arrested one of our neighbors. The Chief of Police was like Santa Claus when you were a kid. He had a little red chair in the back, and he always had candy, and you were happy to see him. The Chief of Police was a gentleman. People were glad to see him when you went by their house. In the police station, we had the best coffee ever. I really liked him. So there’s nothing wrong with government. But you must have a vibrant civil society. In a civilized society, everybody respects the law, even if they don’t agree with the law. So everybody has to obey the law, the government has to follow the law, and they have to respect the rights of individuals. Does a candidate’s stance on gay rights really matter? Yes, and it’s important to bring out the role of people like you who have been involved in this struggle. This was not an issue until recently. The right to vote has not been granted for people in same-sex marriages. The right to marry a person of the same sex has not been extended to everyone, which means you could lose your job for being gay, because it is still against the law in some places. There are people who make a fuss about the right to vote of people in same-sex marriages. I think there’s a big problem with that. But the fight is important to show the world that the homosexual community is a community. Homosexuals can do all the things you and I can do. They can have families, they can produce children. They can be productive members of society. The homosexual community has been discriminated against and persecuted as much as the African-American community. The homosexual community deserves to be treated as equals, and we should treat them that way. We shouldn’t discriminate against them because they are different. In the past, we used the state to discriminate against gays and lesbians because we were afraid of them. Now, we do it because it is so easy to discriminate against them. What do you think of social issues when it comes to libertarianism? How do you explain libertarianism to a general audience? I think it’s important to start at the top, and work your way down. The libertarian message is that government is not the solution to every problem. There are problems we need a government to solve, but then there are problems that government can’t solve. This is why I say the government can’t solve every problem. I think we need to have people who speak truthfully to the public, and who do not demagoguize the issues. The public has to understand how important freedom is, and the role government should play in protecting freedom. The second point is that we need to reach out and explain to people that the Libertarian Party shares many of the same ideas as the Republican Party. We have a great platform. We support civil liberties. We support our founding documents, we support equality, we support prosperity. We oppose the war on drugs, we oppose the war in Iraq, we oppose the war