Penn Jillette speaks wise. And funny, too. - "We have to leave open possibility that other side is right. Even as we call them assholes!"

I can't watch his show "Bullshit!" anymore, cause he kept, to me, coming off as too arrogant and didactic [never leaving open the possibility, as he says, of the other side being right] but the man gives good interview. And I'm totally with him in his basic libertarian view of things.

Hit & Run > Penn Jillette on Election 2008 - Reason Magazine:

"Penn Jillette: Bob Barr is not crazy enough for my taste. Harry Browne had a kind of purity to his craziness. I couldn’t find anything in Harry Browne’s platform or his books that I disagreed, which didn’t seem exactly right in a presidential candidate.

...I do wish Barr had been more in agreement with me on sex and drugs. That always bothered me a bit. I’m for gay rights, boring monogamous rights, but I’m also for two guys fucking on the floor of my office. I don’t think Barr is. Although I don’t do drugs I’m ok with shooting heroin, and I don’t think he is. Someone smarter than me—I want to say it was P.J. O’Rourke—said if you’re going to go with a Republican or a Democrat, the person isn’t important. If you go with a Libertarian, you go with a nut, because if we do win somehow the first 16 years of Libertarian rule will be spent at the barricades, just rolling back stuff.

...poker is a really good way to talk about libertarianism. Do you think people have the right to bet on card games with their own money? If you say yes, you are a libertarian. Poker is a better example for people, to me, than drugs or sex: it’s a pure intellectual argument. It’s a really good entry point. My mom, if you asked her if she was interested in whether or not people gambled, would say no.

Every poker player is smarter than me. I’m not sure if that’s true of every serious drug user. Poker is one of the smaller issues, and it doesn’t really matter like the drug war matters, but symbolically you have to ask: Does somebody have the right to go into room and win or lose money with a group of like-minded people? It’s a really good test. It’s a real easy one.

...I believe in individual rights so much that I don’t like any sort of “what’s good for the cause”-type question. A little while ago I was at skeptics, atheists conference and a question like that came up. How do we best win people over? As soon as we ask that question, we’re pigs. We have to leave open possibility that other side is right. Even as we call them assholes!

...

reason: Both Barr and Paul ran on the premise that our liberties were disappearing, fast. Do you agree with that?

Jillette: I am the most optimistic person alive who says “motherfucker” on a professional basis. There are more optimistic people out there, sure, but they don’t do that. I think the individual American culture of freedom and rights is very, very strong. There’s no doubt it’s being eroded by the people in charge right now. Our vigilance is always required. But our culture still includes basic lip service to individual liberties.

I don’t worry too much about this because I don’t want to live a life based on fear. I will not counter the insanity of the PATRIOT Act with an overblown fear of my rights being taken away. Bush had more power than he should have had, but I won’t go through the hate thing that Kerry and Gore used to rev us up against him..."