Dave Smith and Robbie the Fire Bernstein dissect the #CancelNetflix controversy surrounding the film Cuties, arguing that consumer backlash against its poster sexualizing prepubescent children is a legitimate market response rather than moral panic. They contrast this with advertiser pressure on figures like Dave Chappelle, asserting that while libertarians oppose victimless crimes, children cannot consent, making such content akin to statutory rape. The hosts critique hypocrisy in defending free speech while ignoring the normalization of child sexualization, urging parents to reject eroding digital norms and adopt a balanced view of rights and responsibilities. [Automatically generated summary]
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Target of Opportunity Documentary00:14:40
Hey guys, today's show is brought to you by Target of Opportunity, the U.S. Navy SEALs and the murder of Jennifer Evans.
It's a devastating documentary exploring the 1995 murder of a young tourist in Virginia Beach.
After an eight-day search for her body, two Navy SEAL trainees were arrested for abduction and murder.
Their account of how the crimes occurred could not be more different.
Prosecutors convicted Dustin Turner and Billy Joel Brown in separate trials using two different versions of how the crime occurred.
Is that even legal?
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Retired Navy chief turned documentary filmmaker and anarcho-capitalist J.D. Leet knows the Navy SEALs warfare world well, having worked in it for most of his 20-plus year career in the Navy.
He turns his camera and his active investigative skills around on his own community, the justice system, and the exploitive media of the mid-1990s in a mind-bending journey through an extraordinary tale of sex, murder, loyalty, and betrayal.
You have to check this out.
It's available on Amazon Prime for free, or you can get it on iTunes, or you can purchase it directly at neargeniusfilms.com.
All right, let's start the show.
Fill her up.
You're listening to the Gash Digital Network.
We need to roll back the state.
We spy on all of our own citizens.
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If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
You're listening to part of the problem on the Gas Digital Network.
Here's your host, Dave Smith.
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
It must be a good day in the war on Optimum because I, Dave Smith, am joined by he, the king of the caulks, Robbie the Fire Bernstein.
What is up, my brother?
How are you feeling today?
I'm doing good, and let's not plug him.
Let's not give him credit.
Let's not try and speak him up.
They provide internet some of the times, and enough that I'm not currently at war with them as I focus on my AIDS, but let's not endorse them.
Oh, are you taking some time to focus on the AIDS?
I'm still healing up.
It's almost at the level that I can get out there and rage again, but you know, I might just channel my focus on other activities.
But I'm just saying, let's not endorse them.
They're not good people.
I didn't mean to endorse them.
I was endorsing you in your battle against Optimum.
Okay, thanks.
Not actually Optimum themselves.
I misunderstood you.
This thing kind of gets me going, you know?
So sometimes I hop on the wrong people.
I know.
I know it does.
I know it does.
All right.
Well, for today's episode, I wanted to talk about a topic that has really been getting a lot of people worked up on social media.
And I think is really interesting and says a lot about our culture.
And I think there's a lot of different aspects of this that we can talk about that we might talk about in a slightly different way than you'd hear from other shows or outlets.
And what I'm thinking of is the cancel Netflix hashtag, which is all about this movie, Cuties.
And there's been tremendous backlash against Netflix having this movie on their streaming service.
And I think there's a lot of interesting stuff going on here that's worth breaking down.
Did you watch it?
Because I loved it.
I spent the whole weekend.
I don't know which one's your favorite.
I got the little blonde girl.
I don't know which one you were going for.
I certainly did not watch it.
And I know that you didn't either.
I also knew when I was like, oh, God damn it.
I was like, I want to do a show on this.
I was like, oh man, Rob's going to be fucking Rob's going to make some really uncomfortable jokes.
But that's, you know what?
That's part of what you bring to the table when you have internet access.
So I appreciate that.
No, look, full disclosure: I did not watch the movie.
I'm not going to watch the movie.
I know you didn't either.
And I've also seen a lot of people defending the movie, saying, you know, pointing out that a lot of people who are criticizing the movie haven't actually seen it and this and that.
Listen, I'm not here on this show to make a comment on the film or what the message of the film was or anything like that without watching it.
I'm not doing that.
But I do think that there's a bigger picture that is almost aside from what was actually in the movie.
The truth is that what most people are objecting to, what the controversy started with, was with the poster for the movie that Netflix put out.
And then, of course, there are other aspects to the movie itself.
Now, I'll just say as a definitely promoted it as, hey, if you're a pedophile, we've got something for you.
Well, look, yes, there's the poster was a bunch of what seemed to be 10, 11-year-old girls in very scantily clad outfits doing sexual poses.
There is no arguing this.
That's what the poster was.
If you're going to argue that, you have to get into something about like twerking, not being sexual.
And now you're into goofy la-la-land where no serious person can like have that opinion.
So that was the poster that they used.
The other, now, I will, for the sake of argument, I'll even concede.
And I don't know because I didn't watch this, and there's been debate about this.
But some people are saying, look, if you watch the movie, the message was not that this is good.
Now there is debate.
Some people were saying the message really was kind of that it's not so bad.
Others are saying it wasn't.
But the fact is that they used children this age to they had them in these outfits doing these dances.
Evidently, they also auditioned hundreds of girls.
So they're sitting there having hundreds of different 10, 11-year-old girls get into these outfits and do these poses.
There were also a bunch of people who were critical of the camera angles and how they were kind of zooming in on their crotches and asses and stuff like this.
Look, again, I didn't watch the movie.
I did watch the trailer.
The poster and the trailer made me uncomfortable enough that I'm not going to watch the movie, but I still think there's a lot going on here that's worth talking about.
Let me just start by saying this: I think that the fact that there was tremendous pushback after just the poster of this movie was released is a really, really good sign for the culture in America.
And in 2020, and really for years now, but particularly this year, in my opinion, there hasn't been that much positive signs of where the culture in America is and where it's going.
And so I did think that this one was okay.
That I got to say, I think it's at least nice that there were a lot of people who kind of drew a line here and were like, yeah, this is like way over, this is out of bounds.
It is not okay to be sexualizing 11-year-old girls in this way.
Make whatever movie you want to make, make whatever comment you want to make, but you can do that without sexualizing children.
And I'll tell you that there's something different that I feel like this movie tried to do.
And again, not speaking to the actual movie, but the trailer and the poster.
That is, you know, there's certainly a lot of sexualizing of young girls in America.
And that's been going on for a long time.
I mean, I was in high school when like Brittany Spears was the it girl in America.
And I think she was 16 or 17 when she first blew up.
And, you know, so stuff like that's gone on for a long time.
And there's certainly a legitimate conversation there to be had about, you know, whether or not we should really be doing that.
Is that good?
Is that good for young girls?
Is it good for young boys?
Is it morally wrong?
But there is obviously a whole different level in evil and in the disgust reaction that you provoke out of people when you're talking about pre-pubescent 11-year-olds.
It's just different.
It is a different reaction that human beings have when you sexualize pre-pubescent children.
It's, you know, levels more disgusting than sexualizing a 17-year-old girl, but which still might be wrong, but it's not, it doesn't exactly get the same reaction out of people.
So cancel Netflix has been trending.
I don't know if it still is, but it was trending for, I think, over a week.
I mean, people were very upset about this.
There's been a lot of back and forth of different kind of opinions on the stuff.
And so I think it's kind of interesting to go through all of that.
One, another layer of this whole weird thing is that, you know, one of the themes that I've been talking about for a while on the show is it really got to the split amongst libertarians and what libertarians find themselves condemning this shit and what libertarians find themselves, you know, apologizing for it or even condemning the people who are condemning it.
Did you see any of this stuff online, Rob?
Were you like, before I mentioned that I wanted to talk about this, had you seen it?
I had skipped this story entirely until you mentioned something you wanted to talk about it.
Yeah, listen, that's not the worst thing to do in this situation.
But I do think that, so Julie Borowski tweeted something the other day that I retweeted.
And I thought she made a good point about it.
That truthfully, there are like this was so in this poster for the movie, the graphic was so in people's face and so over the top.
And as I said before, you know, provoked such a disgust response from people that it almost did kind of start a conversation about a whole lot of other things that we don't really talk about that much in our society that are worth bringing up, that are really kind of important things.
And perhaps my perspective on this is somewhat influenced by the fact that I have a daughter who's almost two.
So, okay, that's a different perspective than having a daughter who's 10 or 15.
And it's also a different perspective than not having a daughter or things like that.
Not to say that that makes my opinion more correct or less correct, but just bias cards on the table.
I mean, I have a young daughter, so this stuff does concern me.
But the point that Julie Borowski was making, who I believe also has two young children, was that it's like, okay, like you can be outraged by cuties and fair enough.
But the truth is that in our society, We are young girls like around this age are growing up with access to Instagram and TikTok.
And probably young girls and young boys have access to porn online.
It's probably pretty hard to keep that out of their hands, seeing as how most of them have computers and cell phones and tablets and all this other shit.
They're grinding and dances at middle school.
There's like all this other shit that, you know, is out there and in the culture.
And no one really talks about it much.
It doesn't really come up.
But I would say I think it's really bad.
And the fact that we really don't seem to make it a priority to deal with the sexualization of children and to try to eliminate that is awful.
I just think it's awful.
And it's something that doesn't come up nearly enough.
Any thoughts?
I'm with you.
I gotta, this is kind of new to me.
And I just gotta, yeah, I think things are over sexualized, but it's also kind of weird for me to step in in any capacity as trying to play the moralist or try and be like pro-censorship.
And so, but I mean, this is kind of one of those things where I think it's why, I mean, bigger picture, you know, this stuff shouldn't be left to your middle school or government.
It should be left to your community and parents.
I agree with that.
I agree with that.
But I think that it's like parents and communities who need to step up and figure out what to do in this situation because something kind of has to be done.
You know, it's really weird because I think certainly my generation, and I think you're like, you're like five years younger than me, which might actually make a difference in terms of some of this stuff.
For sure.
Are you kidding me?
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's like that was internet porn was not a thing when I was a kid.
It was a thing like when I was in college, was like the technology had gotten to the level where there's like, oh, look, there's like, you can get videos streaming like on your laptop.
But it wasn't really like that beforehand.
It was like porno magazines.
And there, there certainly was like a sexualized culture.
You know, like I said, like Madonna was old news.
Madonna was a star when I was like six.
You know what I mean?
Like she, she was, that was old news.
And it was Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera when I was a teenager and things like that.
So there's a very sexualized culture that kids were very aware of.
But I think it's really changed.
And it might have been a little bit different for you, but it's really different for kids today.
And the truth is that all of this stuff has become completely normalized.
And, you know, I remember this maybe getting into a little bit of the libertarian angle, but I remember when, so we talked about this.
Normalizing Prostitution and Deviance00:15:41
I don't even know if you recall, but this must have been a couple years ago where Tom Woods was getting into it with Nick Sarwalk and some other people about his comment that they deemed to be un-libertarian, which I thought was perfectly libertarian and reasonable, that he was against the normalization of prostitution.
That they had a problem with the fact that he basically someone had said that a libertarian goal should be normalizing sex work.
And Tom Woods was like, well, look, I'm all for legalizing it, but like normalizing it.
Like, do we really have to say that it's a normal thing for young girls to become prostitutes?
Like, that doesn't seem like a great vision or goal.
And they were all like, oh my God, you're, you know, this is so outrageous.
And it's very interesting that there is a group of libertarians who really have a problem with anything that they see as policing, for lack of better term, sexuality.
Now, this isn't talking about policing in terms of government force.
This is just like moral, you know, feelings.
Like, okay, I don't, listen, I don't think it's a great thing to be a prostitute.
I'm not saying you don't have a right to do it or that the government should have laws against it, but like, I certainly don't think it's a great thing.
And my personal opinion, which I got in a little bit of, you know, I got trouble for, but that I said, I just like, yeah, you don't have my respect if you're a prostitute.
I don't know what to say.
I think it's a shitty thing to do.
I think it's a very low value.
Like, and I don't know.
I don't like it.
And I like we got into the whole conversation, but like, yeah, if you're okay with your daughter becoming a prostitute later in life, I think you are a horrible person, like truly evil.
And those same libertarians, right?
Those left libertarians, they have no problem condemning racism and bigotry.
Like they have no problem with that, even though obviously they're not, at least I don't think, suggesting that there should be laws against it.
Like it's within your rights from a libertarian perspective to hate any racial group, but they'll be very quick to tell you, but we think you're horrible for that.
You know, the LP will tweet out, we, you know, condemn bigotry of all forms.
Like, okay, well, fair enough.
You can feel that way.
You can be against racism, even though you think people have a legal right to be racists.
But what about like, why can't I also say, if you're okay with your daughter being a prostitute, you're a horrible person and an absolute failure as a father?
Like, I think from my personal values, I think, even if we're talking about adults, not children here, where there is a legal, you know, justification to come in.
But if you're talking about adults and there's some guy who says, if when my daughter is 20, she wants to go blow guys for 100 bucks a pop, I'm fine with that.
And then there's some other person who just hates a different race.
I know who I'm judging more.
And it's the guy who's okay with his daughter being a whore.
That's the guy who I have way, I have way more contempt for.
Now, again, this makes some of these like left libertarian types uncomfortable, but it's very weird to me that we can't like you, what you can't be against, sexualizing children or normalizing prostitution, but you can be against bigotry and these other things seems like a very weird, very strange values, even though none of them technically contradict libertarianism.
Just to build off that point and what you were saying with the, you wouldn't want your daughter to do that, I think another standard that kind of applies here is a good one for like your brain is while it's okay to do these things, would you legitimately date or want to start a life with a person who did that?
So for example, would I legitimately want to date and possibly marry someone who either is a prostitute or was a prostitute?
I legitimately want to date someone who either is a racist or yeah, let's go with is a racist, but I legitimately want that in my home or to be starting having kids with someone who's legitimately a racist or even more than that.
And this is one that people don't like, you know, get a little bit more upset about shaming, but let's say someone who's really, really unhealthy, like passionately unhealthy, either as an alcoholic, as a cigarette smoker, as just being a fat fuck, whatever category of really unhealthy.
But this was a Charles Murray point I read in one of his books that I thought was really interesting.
But he said, one of the problems in America is that people, and let's just say the noble class, like their upper middle class, they've got this feeling like that they can't judge other people.
And the result is that, is that they live a certain lifestyle, which is better.
And because they don't want to shame other people for not living that lifestyle, it doesn't really permeate in the culture or uplift other people.
Yeah, 100%.
That's and I remember you bringing this up before and Charles Murray is spot on on that.
And it's something that's really, it's like ironic in a way, because their instinct to not want to shame the lower classes fuck over the lower classes.
You know, upper class people, if you look at the rates, they don't have children out of wedlock.
They don't drop out of school.
They don't do all of these different things, but yet they won't, you know, kind of like. criticize other people for doing that.
But by criticizing that, you might push them into the lifestyles that are more likely to lift them up out of the situation that they're in.
So it really, it ends up fucking them over.
Bring that bullying.
It inspires people to be better.
Yes.
But also that there have to be some standards and norms and kind of like acceptable and unacceptable behavior in a society.
And you can criticize what you think those standards should be, but there can't be nothing.
And the truth is that it's there's been, there is some results in from this kind of experiment in normalizing and sexualizing children.
And the results are not good.
They're not good.
Young people are not doing well in this country.
If you look at the rates of anxiety, of depression, it's very bad.
And, you know, you look at things like whether it's like Snapchat and TikTok and Instagram and OnlyFans, there are a whole lot of young girls who are involved in sex work of one form or another in America today.
And I'm sorry.
I think that's a really bad thing.
I think it's an unhealthy thing for our culture.
And I think it's a really sad situation that those kids are in.
And so if you are kind of to your point, to Charles Murray's point, if you are like a father, a mother, an uncle, a brother, or any, you know, and you would be outraged and just like destroyed if your daughter or niece or you know, was involved in this, but then you're not willing to criticize it when other children are doing that.
How exactly are you being the good person in this situation?
You're allowing other girls who that is someone's daughter and someone's niece to like be put in the situation that you fucking know is an awful situation that you would never want someone you loved to be in.
So it's again, it's it's harsh and it's uncomfortable for a lot of people.
But as I've always said, those are the most important points to make.
The ones that are, you know, the bitter medicine is like the most important medicine to take.
Also, and just not to be a total hypocrite here for me, not for you.
You live a different lifestyle.
But I think there's, at least when I was more of a practicing man of the Jewish faith, there was a concept there that even if you're doing wrong, they're like the Jewish law kind of makes a break between doing things wrong in public and doing things wrong in private.
And even within that faith a little bit, God has a little bit more respect for if you've got shame for doing wrong and like you're keeping for yourself and trying to like, which is the opposite of some other people who go, hey, you're being the hypocrite that you're doing this behind closed doors.
But the point being, it's like, just imagine a town that's got one strip club on the outside and you're one of the assholes that goes to it, but you kind of realize like, all right, this is great.
I love it.
And you celebrate it, but you're like, we shouldn't be doing this versus a town where the entire downtown area is everyone just going, no, this is 100% okay.
Now, while I'm going to be the guy who goes to the strip club, I still think it should be the outside of town.
Hey, we shouldn't be here.
And I'm going to enjoy being there.
I'm not saying I won't like being there, but you're not supposed to run around in a total pride about like that you're doing shitty things.
Yeah, I completely agree with you.
And I think that's, you know, no one makes that point, but it's a really good point.
And the main reason why I agree with you is because of the fucking kids.
Like, that's what really matters is kids.
And this is something you really realize when you have kids, but I think a lot of people who don't have kids still recognize that.
But it's like for the kids growing up in that society, they have no idea that that shit's going on.
That shit's shielded from them.
It's on the outskirts.
It's over here.
Now, there's some deviant shit going on.
There always will be.
You know what I mean?
And that's fine.
But you don't want kids growing up in an environment where that's normal behavior to them.
You want them to discover that as an adult.
Sexuality is something you want to discover as an adult.
You'll have little signs of it.
People, you know, when you go through puberty, you start realizing this shit, but you don't want to like inundate children with this like with this stuff young.
It's very damaging to them.
And it's particularly damaging to those children who are or would be targets of sexual abuse.
You don't want them to think that that's normal.
And, you know, it's just, again, I think that normalizing this stuff really has detrimental effects towards society and toward the prospects of liberty.
And that's particularly why I think libertarians should care about this stuff.
Well, just when you say that it goes against the prospects of liberty, I think the idea to expand upon there is that liberty is somewhat based upon people's ability to delay gratification and not just being a little bit more intelligent, but understanding time preference, wanting to make future forwarded investments, wanting to save.
In other words, being slightly more disciplined, smarter people.
And so if we're celebrating all of the compulsive, short-sighted activities, it's going to be hard to have a society with people that want to make forward-looking investments for the future.
Yes.
What time preference basically is, which is central to praxeological understanding of economics, is in layman's terms, it's delayed gratification.
And what all of this stuff is celebrating is immediate gratification.
It's the opposite of the process of civilization, as Hans Hermann Hoppe would put it.
The process of capital investment is the process of delayed gratification.
You're taking money that you could spend right now on consumption, and instead you're going to invest it in more future consumption.
This is the essence of civilization, right?
The difference between civilized behavior and barbaric behavior is working for the future, building something for the future.
And yeah, I mean, I think that there's really no question that now, of course, nothing, you know, leads to lower time preference and delayed gratification like having children, because your whole life becomes about building for the next generation.
That's what your major concern, at least if you're a decent parent, that's what your major concern becomes.
And this is what's more likely to lead to a society where people embrace liberty is the fact that people want to do well for the future.
I mean, if you don't want to do well for the future, then you should embrace what we have right now.
Let's borrow from the future and rack up $30 trillion in debt and consume it all right now.
But that's not what we are for.
And so, you know, I also, I got to say, I mean, there's like there's been so much undermining of very basic family values in this country.
And you see it when, you know, look, like there's been a whole bunch of reports that people, experts believe that child abuse has been way up this year, largely due to the lockdowns.
It's no coverage.
It's just like not a priority in this country.
And what could be a bigger priority than that if children are being abused?
And so you see this.
And that's why I thought it was actually really healthy that there was a big kind of snapback response from just seeing this poster of this movie, Cuties.
People are like, wait, no, fuck this.
What are you doing here?
What's going on?
We're not sexualizing 11-year-old girls.
This is like not okay.
And I'm all for that.
I think another thing that's been going on that you can't kind of remove from all of this, because it's all kind of interlocked, intertwined together, is that there has been, right, major kind of conspiratorial movements, if you will, or maybe that's not the right word, but conspiracy theories out there about pedophile rings and the elite and how this has all become completely normalized.
And while there certainly are some of those conspiracy theorists who go a little bit too far and believe in some crazy shit that probably is not exactly real, I think there certainly is something to it.
And it's not the worst thing in the world that people are waking up to this shit.
You know, there is, as we talk about a lot, there's a huge populist wave that's just been sweeping this country.
And it's not, this predates Donald Trump.
Donald Trump is a result of this populist wave.
Look, there's the movie Loose Change and 9-11 truth became huge in the mid-2010s.
It was or not the first decade of the 21st century.
It was huge.
Now, a lot of people were really intrigued by this concept.
Now, some of them fully believed some goofy shit.
So, you know, but the actual truth of the situation was probably somewhere in like, well, the government is lying their ass off about 9-11.
The official story is bullshit.
They are using 9-11 to launch aggressive wars based off lies.
So it's not as if they're completely wrong.
Like, it's not as if they're not sniffing out something, but the truth is that people were so aware of what lying pieces of shit their rulers are that they wouldn't put it past them to have been in on 9-11.
Now, that's pretty, that really says something, you know, like that's that's a pretty intense distrust or hatred of the ruling elite.
And of course, you've had all types of like kind of populist movements since then.
I think the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter, the Ron Paul campaigns, the Bernie Sanders campaign, of course, the Trump campaign.
And one of the things that's that's really blown up over the last three years or so was this kind of like the Pizzagate type conspiracy, where basically what happened was John Podesta's emails got released, either leaked or hacked.
Cancel Mob Dynamics Explained00:17:55
No one still fucking knows what exactly happened there, but they and they were talking in this fucking clearly some type of coded language.
And all these people online were like, hey, this code is like code that pedophiles use.
Now, who the fuck knows?
The truth is that we don't have a real media made up of journalists in this country.
So nobody asked the questions that should have been asked, which would be like, hey, John Podesta, what the hell do these codes mean?
Because you're clearly speaking in code and a whole lot of people are saying this is code for pedophile shit.
So the answer can't be any worse than that.
Why don't you tell us what the answer was?
Like whatever it is you're trying to hide, it can't be worse than what people are assuming it is.
So give us, and no one asked these questions.
All they did was mock and ridicule the people who were talking about Pizzagate.
And after all that, you know, kind of like with the 9-11 shit, even if they're not exactly right and it's not like nuclear thermite in the fucking towers, there were a lot of lies going on there.
And then this Jeffrey Epstein thing blows up.
And it turns out that, like, okay, well, maybe they weren't exactly right about all that shit.
Maybe they were.
Who the fuck knows?
But look at this.
There was this huge ring of pedophiles that many powerful people were in close proximity to, at least, let's say, if not getting fucking like massages from underage girls and God knows what the fuck else.
And then we know, right?
Like we have the tape of that ABC reporter saying that she was going to blow this story wide open and implicate Prince Andrew and Bill Clinton and all these people.
And that ABC came down and squashed the story.
So this is all in the backdrop.
You know what I mean?
Like you can't completely remove the kind of QAnon people and all the pizza gators and all this shit from now seeing this picture.
And the conspiracy theory is that there is a lot of pedophiles amongst the powerful, amongst the elite, and that they are trying to normalize pedophilia.
And if you believe that, and I'm not saying that this was the intention of the director of this movie, but if you already believe that in the backdrop and then you see something like this, you can understand where people would be appalled by it.
And I just don't, you know, I think it's a very normal reaction, a very normal reaction to have.
That's my take.
But so, all right, guys, let's take a quick second.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
Anyway, that's so that's more or less how I felt about that.
Maybe we could get into some of the libertarian reactions to this because they just, there were a couple that I thought was, I thought were pretty interesting.
So just to play double's advocate for one second.
Do you think there's anything to be said?
Because I think if you're trying, let's just use the word art.
Let's be pretentious.
If you're trying to create art, sometimes you got to really go there in order to make your point.
Like, so if you're writing a joke and you got your premise, you need to come up with the goofiest fucking situation that's actually going to elicit a laugh.
You watch some of these drama things, like even a Rocky movie, they got to throw in that Rocky's got cancer.
They got to throw in that this lady's deaf.
It's because they're trying to be dramatic actors.
So you got to come up with situations where people can cry and really love and scream and holler and be dramatic.
So if this director really says, hey, I've got a commentary on that we're over sexualizing women and she wants to show why that's bad.
And I guess a woman, I didn't watch the whole movie.
I just read the synopsis, leaving her faith and coming back to it.
Well, I get this: hey, these images shouldn't exist because these are kids.
But I guess the fact that we're having a conversation, if that actually was her goal, and I didn't see the film, so I'm somewhat talking, you know, half out of my ass here.
But if that was her goal, and then they put forward these images and everyone actually was disturbed, and now we're having a real conversation about are we over hypersexualizing women?
So, from an art perspective, doesn't that somewhat like accomplish its goal?
Um, well, I mean, okay, so then take this to its logical conclusion.
And say someone just wanted to make child porn and claim that it's art.
It's like, oh, this is really going to get a reaction out of you.
So, where's the line?
The line to me, as a libertarian, is quite clear: it's children, that's the line.
Children cannot consent.
And so, yeah, no, I do not think that underage girls should be playing any type of sexual role.
And I don't think that they should be sexualized in any way in any type of art.
I think that should be illegal and illegal in a libertarian sense, the same way that having sex with children should be illegal because they cannot consent to this.
Now, if you want to make any type of art with adults, that's fine.
I also wouldn't even object to a movie that talks to young girls about the pressures that they have and all of this.
And you can find a way to get into those topics, the important conversations that need to be have, but you don't have to put girls in scantily clad outfits and have them shake their ass while you're passing the line.
I think that makes that makes sense to me.
And then, when you go outside, when you're just like, hey, you can't target children, you can't sexualize children, that's the only like law, like forceful rule.
Then, outside of that, it's on the market.
And by that, I just mean it's on people to decide what art they think is fucking distasteful and what art they think is important and makes a point.
And that I'm fine with.
I'm fine with letting the market decide all of that.
But a line needs to be drawn about children.
You can't in a libertarian law society.
So, you're a law society, libertarian.
Who has agency?
If you're saying that a child can't give consent, like who has agency over orphans to make decisions for them?
Well, I mean, look, children essentially, from my perspective, like advanced libertarian philosophy, is that children have rights, they have natural rights just like anyone else, but that they essentially those rights are held in escrow.
So, like, they are not, they can't exercise their rights.
Up and what age.
Well, okay, so that is an arbitrary determination.
And, and that, you know, that's going to be decided by local communities or, you know, individual contracts or something like that.
But here's the thing, right?
In the same sense that you'd say, and this isn't just a libertarian question, this is a question for any, any society, like socialists, uh, uh, corporatists, anybody has to answer this question: is when are you a citizen?
When can you vote?
When can you drive?
When can you enlist in the army?
All of these things.
And all of us, not just libertarians, everybody comes up with somewhat of an arbitrary answer.
If you make it 18, that's arbitrary.
If you make it 17, that's arbitrary.
But it seems like more or less reasonable to be in that, you know, that range.
It's arbitrary that we make 21 the drinking age.
That seems to me to be a little unnecessarily high.
Now, that being said, right, in the same way that you'd say, if you were to ask anyone of any political philosophy, what age should you be allowed to drive?
Nobody has a perfect answer.
You go, 16, 17, 18.
I don't know.
One of these ages, somewhere in there, we could debate that.
You could look at different data and make different arguments about it.
But everyone knows that a 30-year-old should be allowed to drive and that a 10-year-old cannot be allowed to drive.
And well, let me just, so my point is that what the a lot of what the disgust response to cuties is, is that that is so clearly below what the light, uh, the age should be.
Like you've gotten, there's an arbitrary middle ground, but you've gotten into the black and white area where this is clearly too young.
So, anyway, no, I accept that.
I don't have to get too into autistic theoretical libertarian lives.
In terms for what we're discussing here, I think that all makes sense to me.
Okay, fair enough.
So, I wanted, so I wanted to read a tweet that just kind of drove me crazy.
But so, this was Kathy Young, who is a, she's a writer for Reason magazine.
And Reason Magazine seems to be going pretty hard at condemning the outrage about cuties as nothing but, I don't know, moral panic and policing of the culture, which I just think is so batshit crazy.
Like, to me, moral, like, and again, this is just, this is just, you have to use your judgment and look at the real world and say, what is what, what world are we actually living in here?
So, to me, something like saying, oh my God, there's a huge threat of white nationalists taking over the country.
That would be moral panic based on nothing, like based on no evidence.
Like, oh my God, three years ago, 200 people had a march in Charlottesville.
And now we have to be so concerned about the alt-right that, you know, they're under everyone's mattress or something like that.
That would be like a moral panic based on nothing.
To be disgusted by graphic sexual images of 11-year-olds, that to me seems pretty reasonable.
But hey, that's just anyway, that's my take.
So let me pull this up.
So Kathy Young, writer for Reason, and several other outlets, tweeted, here's two tweets of hers.
A quick thought on cuties, which I haven't seen.
So she's in the club with all of us.
It's pretty obvious the film was made by a female director to condemn sexploitation, I guess, sexual exploitation.
So it was made by a female director to condemn sexploitation of underage girls.
Many think it fails because it inadvertently does what it condemns.
Others disagree.
People of goodwill can differ.
That's fine.
So initially, like the idea that people can differ, look, and that's fine.
It means absolutely nothing to me that this was made by a female director.
And it is absolutely, patently absurd to say that they inadvertently sexualized these children.
There was nothing inadvertent about Netflix putting out that poster.
There's nothing inadvertent about close-ups of asses and crotches of 11-year-old girls.
It's not inadvertent.
That's like clearly intentional.
So that right there, like, no, I don't think this is a like, there's fine people on both sides type situation.
One group is saying it's disgusting to sexualize 11-year-old girls, and the other group is saying it's acceptable.
I don't think that those are just, ah, just two opinions.
Like, I, okay.
But here's the kicker.
Here's her next tweet.
But if you're calling for cuties to be censored by government as child porn, spoiler, it's not, or calling people pro-pedophile for defending it, please not another word from you about cancel culture, free speech, et cetera.
You're just in it for the culture wars.
So this is Kathy Young's brilliant take on this situation.
Now, first of all, I should acknowledge that I don't know.
I haven't seen a large group of people calling for the government to illegalize cuties.
I have seen a cancel Netflix hashtag that's gotten hundreds of thousands of people tweeting about it, which is, let's be honest, the libertarian answer to dealing with a problem like this.
Like the most libertarian answer you could have.
It's an organized boycott.
Now, for her to say, if you want, if you want this to be canceled, I don't want to hear another word about cancel culture from you.
This, this shit drives me fucking crazy.
It drives me crazy.
It's actually hard because Kathy is a smart person, and it's actually impossible for me to believe that smart people actually don't get the difference.
Like that anybody, like if you, now I don't mean you have to be a really smart person.
I mean, if you're capable of reading a book, tying your shoes and wiping your ass after you shit, I don't understand how you could see a difference, how you could not see a difference in this situation.
So if I'm going to say this term cancel culture has become this broad term where now people say, well, if you want anything canceled, then you can't complain about cancel culture.
Like really.
So I can't say that like, like I, I think here's how here's my opinion, right?
I think that my friend Shane Gillis should be allowed to make jokes as a comedian on his podcast and he shouldn't get fired from Saturday Night Live for making those jokes.
I also feel that you shouldn't put out semi-pornographic pictures of 11-year-olds shaking their ass in scantily clad clothes.
Tell me where the hypocrisy in that is.
There's zero.
There's absolutely zero.
Of course, as a society, as a culture, some things are going to be determined to be out of bounds and no good, and some won't be.
I'm just arguing what those things should be.
I don't think the standard for comedy should be that, you know, a standard, a bar so high and pure that Pryor, Carlin, Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle, like all of these people would be canceled in today's society.
That doesn't mean that I think that like sexualization of children is acceptable.
There's no hypocrisy there.
And it's just like, it drives me fucking crazy.
Like, I don't think that some fucking lady should be fired for Facebook posting All Lives Matter.
I also don't think you should sexualize children.
And there is no hypocrisy there.
I can keep talking about the first one and also have this opinion on this cuties movie.
And there's no, it's just ridiculous to pretend that there's a contradiction there.
I agree with you 100%.
And, but, and like, I mean, 100%, I agree with you.
There's a difference between criticizing the, you know, basically children porn or disgusting images of kids and what Shane Gillis is doing.
However, it does put us into a position where we can't, we can criticize people's decision to listen to a mob because the mob is unjustified in what they're trying to rally about.
But if we're okay with being a part of a like a cancel mob, even for something that is justified to cancel, I don't think we can then be upset at the existence of a mob over things that we think, you know, they're unjustly calling for it to be canceled, but we're still listening.
A mob can be right sometimes.
I mean, they're just a group of individuals.
Like, I don't know.
Like, I don't think there's any problem with saying, like, yeah, the mob has a point in this case.
And it's also a little bit different when it's like, look, people are Usually, right, when they're with the cancel culture that people rail against, it's a very small group of people that don't actually represent the majority of consumers.
So, there's something like Dave Chappelle's special, where, remember, they had that great graphic where it's like 99% on Rotten Tomatoes by the audience, and then it gets like a 19% by the opposite, by the way.
It's like 70% or like it's got a high percentage by critics and then a 3% by the audience.
Yes, so that's the point here, too.
This is really, this is truly a market response, whereas a lot of that other shit is this kind of small group of people trying to impose their will on the large group of consumers.
Another example of that is like Tucker Carlson, where advertisers are pulling off his show.
He's got the number one show in cable news.
He literally smokes everybody on CNN and MSNBC, yet they can get advertisers easily because this small group of activists are going to make life hell for these companies.
This is a little bit different.
This is a legitimate response from Netflix consumers.
So, I do think there's differences there, and there's also differences in what you're trying to cancel.
Libertarian Rights vs Responsibility00:06:18
Now, I'll go a step further and say that, truthfully speaking, even by strict libertarian theory, there is an argument for law to do something in a situation like this.
The fact that these are not just minors, but like really young girls, that does, I don't know, like in the same way that reason, I think, would acknowledge that it's legitimate for statutory rape to be illegal, even though they are consenting, right?
Like in the strict sense of the word, it is a voluntary interaction, or at least could be, it's still illegal because we determine that children cannot consent, which is a very reasonable determination, if you ask me.
So, I don't know.
I just don't see why this is the like libertarian response.
And again, you know, I just think that like to me, it's completely like consistent with libertarianism.
And even beyond that, as we were saying before with all the time preference cultural stuff, it's like the best position for libertarians to take in terms of promoting a culture that could actually support a free society.
But look, I think you go, look, kids are off limits.
You absolutely cannot do anything sexual with children.
I'm sorry.
I think that is like, not only do I think that's a completely reasonable position to take, I think it's insane that anyone even argues with that.
But so, so that's a position.
And then, on top of that, I don't think that destructive, degenerate behaviors should be glorified or promoted.
I don't think there's anything beneficial about that.
And so, while, yes, like as a libertarian, for a few reasons, I don't believe there should be laws against adults in consenting activities.
Number one, there is the moral position of it, that I think you own your own body.
And I think that when you get into the business of other people enforcing their will on others, it's wrong.
And that, you know, somebody, you know, whatever, like life is very complicated.
And we don't always know what the best thing for someone to do is.
You know, but that being said, we kind of know that some behaviors are pretty bad and destructive for you.
I still wouldn't be for laws against voluntary, victimless, nonviolent crimes that I don't think are crimes.
But let's get real here.
I don't really like I'm not against heroin being illegal because I really want more people to do heroin or because I think that it's some great act of liberty if you shoot up heroin.
I'm against heroin being illegal because I think it makes the situation worse.
It creates black markets.
People, it creates violence with the people who need to protect the black markets.
It's just a very bad way to do things.
And also it leads to expanding state power, which is a disaster and has been a huge disaster throughout all of history.
So I don't think heroin should be illegal.
And I don't think prostitution should be illegal.
But that doesn't mean I have to celebrate or wish to normalize either of them.
In fact, I don't.
I think they're both awful and destructive.
And usually, like the vast majority of the time, are engaged in by people who have had tough lives, are not doing great.
And anyway, it's just, I think it's like tragic that people are swept up in that shit.
Now, of course, there's exceptions.
I mean, there might be someone who just dabbled in prostitution and then gets their life together and is fine.
There might be someone who dabbled in heroin and then gets their life together and is fine, but it's still just not great and nothing that should be promoted.
And I don't see why libertarians feel the need to, I don't know, push back against people who are like rightly condemning this stuff.
Also, of course, if you're a libertarian, there's a separation between whether or not you're involving law or just speaking your mind about these issues.
Like one of the reasons why Jordan Peterson became so wildly popular, far more so than any libertarian that's out there in the last few years, is because while everybody else is pushing rights, he was pushing responsibilities.
And there was like a real thirst amongst people to actually hear about this stuff.
And truthfully speaking, if you're a libertarian, rights and responsibilities are like two sides of the same coin.
They're basically everything that we believe in.
It's your rights, but then what comes with that is your responsibility, that you're responsible for whatever you do with your rights.
In the same way, like you have a right to your life, to your liberty, to property, to all of this stuff.
But if you go and do something shitty with your life, liberty, and property, now you have a responsibility to deal with the ramifications of that.
And what's happened is that leftists have perverted the meaning of rights, and they mean something completely different at this point than libertarians mean.
I mean, they believe in all of these kind of different extra positive rights.
And so all you ever hear about is rights, rights, rights, rights.
Like that's what our society is all about.
And none of it really has to do with what libertarians mean when we say rights.
And so it's like, you know, you know, talk about like whatever, whatever group, or it's LGBT rights or, you know, women's rights or all these other things.
And usually they don't mean what libertarians mean when we speak about rights.
But no one really talks about responsibility in our society.
And Jordan Peterson started doing it and people really responded to that.
Investing in Gold and Crypto00:02:25
And I think that libertarians could learn something from that, especially seeing as how that is the other side of the coin of what we're pushing.
And it's kind of like, okay, yeah, you want to go do this fucking destructive, degenerate behavior.
It's like, okay, you have the right to do that, but you're also responsible for that.
Like, don't fucking, you know, if that fucking ends up destroying your life, then that's on you.
And you got to fucking deal with that.
So anyway, I just think that I think that's something we might want to think about.
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Populist Moments and Social Media00:08:40
I guess, I don't know what else I saw.
There was also a lot of just really stupid criticisms that were made of people who were pushing back against this that I saw on social media.
I mean, they were saying, I saw people were saying stuff about like, you know, like there'd be, they'd go, oh, okay, so you're so outraged about cuties, but you know, you have no problem with like beauty pageants for little girls and things like that.
And I don't really see those.
I mean, if you made a disgusting documentary about it, I'm sure I'd be like, oh, this is fucking weird too.
Yes, that's the quick answer to that right now.
Yeah, that's weird too.
That shit sucks too.
You could just bring up something else that also sucks and give yourself cover for it.
Are you arguing that those things aren't weird?
They seem pretty weird to me.
Yes, I'm against anything that sexualizes children.
Okay.
Anything.
And that's if you're saying there's this other thing that also sexualizes children, great.
Let's be against that also.
I've also seen the most ridiculous one of all of them that I saw was that people were saying, they were basically like, well, look, there's nothing sexual about the movie.
And if you're seeing that, you're the creep, you know?
So that's them being in this range where they're like, no, twerk dancing in scantily clad clothes.
That's not sexual at all.
And if you see this as sexual, that's because you, you must be like a secret pedophile or something like that, which I found to me was the most.
That's some real douchey art shit.
Like this is art.
And if you're seeing it as anything else, that's your own sickness.
And you got to purge that from yourself.
But it's kind of this like fucking hilarious, like, you know, attempt to fucking like manipulate, like reverse the situation.
Oh, no, you guys who are against pedophile bait, you're the real pedophiles.
Cause if you, why would you be fighting it so hard if you weren't really on board with it?
Like I think about like a.
And by the way, even if that was true, let's just say theoretically, even if that was true, that would still be the noble approach to go, hey, I kind of am intrigued by this and I don't want to go down that road.
So let's get rid of it because it's absolutely immoral.
So even if that was what people were saying, bullshit was true, that would still be, it would still be the right thing.
And of course, the bullshit is not true at all.
It's like, right.
It's like if you say, like, your grandfather fought in World War II or something like that.
And you'd be like, oh, really?
What was he a Nazi?
And you'd be like, no, he was like shooting at Nazis.
But why would you be shooting at Nazis unless on some level you were really kind of a Nazi yourself?
You know, I mean, it seems like you're overcompensating for your own Nazi fans.
It's like, no, maybe he just wanted to kill them.
Maybe he wasn't one of them at all.
He was just that opposed to it.
Like that, that can also happen.
But yes, you're right.
Even if it was the case, it would still be the correct response to not want this garbage out there.
So anyway, I think that it's like I said, I'll close with what I started with: that I think it's healthy that there is pushback against this shit.
I also think that people are, and partly because there's this populist moment.
People are really the trust in institutions, the trust in the elite is like at record lows, and people are questioning a lot of different things.
And one of the things that people are questioning, which I do think is really healthy, is where the lines and values in our societies should be.
And I think that as technology keeps expanding and all of this stuff, this is something that we're going to have to grapple with more.
Like, okay, we're not an old style society that is like bound together by religious norms and, you know, like tradition and chivalry and all of these very, you know, rigid rules about society.
But that doesn't mean that we have to have nothing.
And we can find reasonable alternatives.
You know, not that I, I mean, look, I think in many ways it would be great if just more, you know, like religion and family and those structures made a big comeback, but at least family has to.
A society is not going to function unless there's some degree of family values.
And like, I just see this as a good sign.
It's at least a good starting point to be like, hey, none of this, no sexualizing children.
And let's like work to fucking cut that down.
And the truth is that parents are going to really have to step up.
And you're going to have to, you know, start like being more involved and aware of the fact that like, yeah, now your 11, 12 year old daughter is looking on Instagram every day, looking on all this shit, seeing like these fucking, you know, like really sexually promiscuous photos and stuff like that.
They've all got phones that they can get this shit on.
They also all have cameras on their phones.
You know, like there's a lot of dynamics to growing up today that didn't exist in the past.
And I think it's like it's possibly at least a good thing that there's maybe, you know, people are thinking about these issues.
And that's not giving credit to the movie because you could do that without having to, you know, sexualize children.
On that note, you got to realize just how many safeguards or, you know, common decency must have eroded for you and I to be like, hey, this content shouldn't exist.
You got to realize just how out there and inappropriate what you've done is for me and you to be like, oh, you shouldn't be doing that.
But that's, that's 2020 America.
It's that everything is flipped upside down.
So the point is like now you've got these fucking comedians, you know what I mean, who live in a world of like inappropriate shit to be like, oh, yeah, guys, no, you can't do this.
What are you fucking crazy?
Like, this is, and again, like, there's just, I think that there are, I saw some people, and it's always like the most basic, fucking, you know, unimpressive take, but it's like it kind of the Kathy, the Kathy Young thing where it's like, listen, man, like, you, you can be against the cancel culture shit.
That doesn't mean there should be nothing ever that gets canceled.
Like, all of this shit has to be applied within reason.
And yeah, I don't know.
The, the idea that that poster, that, that flower, that shit should have never fucking been put out.
I'm going to make, I'm going to make a poster of cuties too.
We're going younger.
Yeah, right.
Right.
But I saw other people being like, oh, like, you know, like, well, there was, you know, pointing out like, I don't know, other things that Hollywood has done that were creepy.
Oh, you know, there was a 17-year-old girl in this movie and she did some like wild shit or something.
And it's like, okay, well, number one, there's a big difference between 17 and 11.
And number two, maybe she shouldn't have.
I don't know.
Like, just because something happened in the past once and wasn't, you know, like, and was accepted doesn't mean it was right that that was accepted.
I mean, I think that's completely a reasonable conversation to get into.
And yeah, I don't know.
Like, maybe they shouldn't do shit like that.
Maybe, look, maybe like, I think it's fairly reasonable to say something like, Britney Spears shouldn't have been put out the way she was when she was 16 or 17 or whatever.
Like, oh, maybe you should have to be 18 or older to do that.
That's a reasonable conversation to have.
I think there's a strong argument against sexualizing teenage girls.
Like, I'm for it.
But 11?
Are you fucking kidding me?
Does this even need to be a conversation?
Like, no, that shit is fucking disgusting.
And look, like, if you are, here's the problem for any of those people if you are trying to normalize this shit.
Like, even to the ruling elite, if you're running your secret like pedo rings or whatever, understand that most normal people want to kill you.
Most normal people want to take you to the wood chipper.
So maybe stop pushing that shit.
Maybe stop trying to shove it down people's throats.
But, or maybe that's what they're trying to control: is the fact that normal people want to take them to the wood chipper.
Anyway, that's our show for today.
Thank you guys for listening.
We'll be back on Wednesday.
Peace.
She was a pre-med student enjoying a break from school in Virginia Beach.
She returned home from vacation in a body bag, the victim of what police called a brutal attack by two Navy SEAL recruits.
City Murderers Deserve Justice00:00:14
At the time of my investigation, I felt like most of the city had both of them were murderers and deserve what they got.
It wasn't until after I investigated it that I realized it wasn't what it appeared