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Dec. 20, 2005 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:01:51
22 They hate us because we're good? (Part 2)
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Well, thanks for tuning in again.
It is the aforementioned 5 o'clock in the afternoon, and I am heading home.
So, I have also, just in case anybody is interested, I left my coffee cup on top of my car and drove off and tried to come back and find it, but no luck!
So, I guess we'll just chalk that up to professorial absent-mindedness.
I'm, I guess, somewhat comforted by the fact that Adam Smith, when he was talking with, I don't know, David Hume or someone, was walking along in such a degree of animation and intellectual stimulation that he fell into a pit because he didn't see it coming.
I suppose that I can take comfort in the fact that forgetfulness might be a sign of intelligence, and I guess consider myself comforted by that.
So, now, as to this question, which I was talking about this morning, that we're free of the idea, we anarchists are free of the idea, or the fear, that a centralized state can impose censorship, because there is no centralized state in the stateless society, of course.
This means that we can talk about the evil of ideas without worrying about censorship.
And this opens up some interesting topics.
I will not, for a moment, say that I have reached any kind of broad-based conclusions here, as yet, but I think that the thoughts that I've had might be worth sharing for those who are interested.
Somebody who does wrong, some sort of evil, is a particular kind of predator.
Somebody who's a murderer, rapist, or, you know, is a particular kind of predator which, of course, you can take defensive steps against.
But somebody who What corrupts the minds of children through falsehoods is a particular kind of parasite.
And to me, there are a number of different moral levels to these.
And I think most importantly, what I'd like to do is sort of point out that Those who teach false ideas are always interested in doing so for the sake of allowing evil to exist with relative impunity.
So, what do I mean by that?
What I mean is that everyone who is evil in this parasitical sense is a moral hypocrite.
And this is the worst thing, I think, that you can do, especially to children.
And this is where it all occurs.
You know, all of our moral education occurs before we hit puberty.
The majority of it occurs, of course, very early on in life.
And if you teach children the wrong moral ideas, it is, you know, crippling, destructive, and, of course, it allows evil to run rampant throughout society.
So, you know, for me, this is analogous to, you know, if you do not feed a child any calcium, then their bones will be brittle for the remainder of their lives.
They'll have to walk very delicately.
They'll be prone to breakages.
They'll be unable to participate in sports.
You know, you'll probably be taking, you know, 20 or 30 or more years off their lifespan.
So, to me, the moral instruction of children is sort of, you know, to stretch the analogy, hopefully not, to the breaking point, it's similar to, you know, some guy can come up with a pipe and break my arm and that sucks, you know, I've got a broken arm, I've got to rehabilitate and so on, but that person
Who walks up and breaks my arm is much better morally than the person who underfeeds me calcium knowingly when I'm a child and leaves me susceptible to, you know, lifelong osteoporosis and bone brittleness and all of this sort of stuff.
And how do I know that that person is morally worse?
Well, it's pretty simple.
If somebody gave me the choice between having, you know, a healthy arm broken Or having an unhealthy bone structure for my entire life, I know which one I would choose.
And I'm sure you would choose the same one.
So, you know, just at a gut calculation level we know that somebody who, you know, destroys the bone structure as a whole is worse than somebody who just breaks a healthy bone which can be repaired.
So, it is in the formulation of a child's moral identity or moral sense that the greatest harm can be done throughout their lives.
Now, to just cast a sort of cold and calculating gaze across the world, we can sort of see that morally, you know, the world is in pretty bad shape.
I mean, it's not in great shape even in the West, although we have some pretty strong vestiges of a healthier morality left over from the Enlightenment and the sort of early 19th century.
But, you know, religion and the state, after being momentarily stunned by the rise of capitalism, you know, reformulated, re-knit themselves together and, you know, managed to head off, you know, the direction that society was going into, which was, you know, a society without masters, without political, legal, a society without masters, without political, legal, violent masters, which is, you know, paradise.
It is paradise to have a society where nobody can take out a gun and tell you what to do and tell you that you have to thank them for doing it.
So when it comes to the dissemination of ideas, I put those who teach false moral ideals to children, I think.
I put those in a lower circle of hell than those, you know, tax collectors and thugs and, you know, stick-up artists and so on as adults.
I am aware of the moral evil of the state and I pay my taxes with full knowledge that I'm doing so because I'm coerced.
And so, as an adult, I have a capacity to resist the moral arguments that are sort of jammed into my face day and night, and to, you know, successfully resist them.
Whereas, you know, as a child, you really have no capacity to resist moral arguments at all.
You might question them, you might feel skeptical, but because morality, false morality, is such an emotionally explosive topic for everybody, you know, if you question somebody's ethics, if you're a child and you question your parents' ethics or a teacher's ethics, you're just going to get slammed like you would not believe.
It is.
Unbelievable!
I mean, you'll start saying, well, I don't think that's right.
That doesn't make sense to me.
How about this?
How about that?
Well, you say this but you do that.
Well, you try that with parents.
I mean, even ones who aren't so, you know, supposedly touchy.
You will get all of the parental warning shots fired upon you, as is the case with teachers.
People will laugh at you.
Isn't it cute?
The little Socrates.
If you continue to push, they will get irritable.
If you continue to push, they will get cold.
If you continue to push, they will get angry.
If you continue to push, they will withdraw.
If you continue to push, they will get enraged.
It doesn't matter.
You simply can't break through these hellish defenses that people have around a false moral core.
Right?
Because there's no one to argue with.
If you don't have a moral core that is in tune with reality and in tune with sympathy and empathy for the common nature of all mankind, you have no identity.
You have no way to relate to people on any positive level.
You're just a hollow, horrible, acidic shell.
You know?
And all you can do is wander around the earth like this black scarecrow and carve the souls out of others.
Right?
You are, you know, the darkness that eats life.
If you have no moral center.
And of course, this is just almost all of mankind, you know.
This is almost everybody, you know, is enslaved to a devilish and horrible form of empty false morality.
And, you know, this is not natural to human beings at all.
You know, naturally we are, you know, we're like seals in the water when it comes to learning principles from reality.
I mean, we have to be bullied and threatened and manipulated and punished and beaten and yelled at and put in the corner and mocked and ridiculed.
I mean, just for years and years in order to hollow out our moral center and our natural benevolent common humanity with others.
And so those who engage in such practices, to me, are the worst evil.
It is the worst evil, because it is the evil from which all other evils spring.
You know, the The destruction of the child's integrity and humanity is the evil from which all other evils spring.
So, to take a slightly different metaphorical approach to it, if we say that evil is a kind of virus,
that human beings are naturally resistant to, then, you know, anybody who goes and spreads this virus among children and causes it to enter their system and take them over and, you know, damage their health permanently and continually for the rest of their lives, well, you know, the virus is bad, sure, but the person who is ensuring that it spreads most completely is the greatest evil, far worse than the virus itself, which can be, you know, protected against.
So return to, you know, to having sort of established that, at least at a sort of semi-rational and metaphorical level, to sort of return back to the thing we were talking about this morning.
You know, they hate us because we're good.
I mean, absolutely a fascinating, a fascinatingly complex psychological, epistemological, and moral construction.
The most common place That we've all heard this invoked recently is, you know, in the attacks on September 11th in New York, and I think Pennsylvania, and the Pentagon, and so on.
That, you know, why did they attack us?
You know, we're such nice people.
You know, it makes no sense why they would attack us.
And, of course, the interaction was incredibly complex, as you may or may not know, and I won't turn this into a history lesson, which I'm sure many people are aware of, but, you know, this bin Laden fellow was, you know, CIA operative, armed and trained by the CIA, sent into Afghanistan
To oppose the Soviets in the 80s and, you know, Mujahideen were not having any luck against the Soviets because they were just getting gunned down by these aerial helicopters until the US saw fit to supply them with all the Stinger missiles they could point skyward.
Which, you know, from an economic standpoint, completely turned around the invasion.
Because, you know, you can take out a $20 million fighter with a $20,000 Stinger missile.
Or a $5 million helicopter with a $20,000 Stinger missile.
And I don't believe that the Mujahideen were even paying for these Stingers!
So, you know, economically, it doesn't take an advanced degree in accounting to figure out that You know, if you can take out a $20 million fighter with a $20,000 Stinger missile, that, you know, it's going to pretty much be worthless to continue the invasion because, or to continue the occupation because you simply can't afford it.
I mean, the accumulation of debt on the side of the Soviet Union was pretty significant and was the major factor to cause them to withdraw.
So, you know, Bin Laden is then well aware of the fact that if you can get a superpower to attack you, then you will be on the winning side of that conflict, because you'll be able to perform a kind of guerrilla warfare.
And of course, if you can get them to attack you in a city, I mean, even better.
So, you know, and also that, you know, this is the only way to beat a superpower and if you do that the superpower will withdraw its troops eventually because the superpower will become bankrupt.
I mean, I'm not suggesting that it was the invasion of Afghanistan that caused the Soviet Union to become bankrupt completely, but, you know, it certainly was a factor in it.
So, you know, Bin Laden is a monster entirely created by the CIA, funded by the CIA, and taught this incredible lesson that, you know, troops that are occupying Muslim lands can be forced to withdraw if you engage the enemy in a manner that is economically unbalanced.
Let's say.
I mean, this is very true, I think, of warfare, modern warfare in general, that defense is far cheaper than offense.
You know, in the Second World War, to shoot down a bomber...
cost pretty much about the same as the anti-aircraft guns to shoot it down.
Like a bomber costs the same as the anti-aircraft guns to shoot it down.
So defense and offense were roughly similar economically and therefore, you know, all wars, you know, until the very end were pretty much fought to a standstill.
This was certainly the case in the First World War because it was all fought to a standstill.
In the modern warfare, of course, offensive weapons are much more expensive than defensive weapons and so whoever attacks is going to go bankrupt, right?
Now, the troops, the Russian troops that were stationed in Afghanistan were, of course, a certain level of, you know, horror for, you know, these sort of fundamentalist Muslim types because you had, you know, godless communists troops invading or occupying a Muslim country.
You know, Saudi Arabia, I mean, there was 200,000 troops were stationed in Saudi Arabia due to sort of these false satellite photos claiming that Saddam Hussein was about to invade Saudi Arabia.
in the first Kuwaiti war, or the first Iraq war.
So, you know, they sort of lied to the Saudi government and said, ooh, Hussein's about to invade you with these sort of falsified photos.
And then, you know, hundreds of thousands of troops poured into Saudi Arabia, and, you know, they've sort of been there ever since.
And so, you know, bin Laden, as a, you know, a good lunatic Muslim, is pretty appalled at, you know, infidel heathen Christian soldiers being stationed in Saudi Arabia, a Muslim land.
This is nothing.
This is probably still is nothing compared to the amount of subsidies that the U.S.
is throwing to the House of Saud, right, which is, you know, $200 billion of aid.
You know, all of the troops are there to, you know, make sure that the House of Saud simply plays around on its yachts and ships oil relatively cheaply and doesn't, you know, fall to some sort of more radical clerical organization that might decide to stop selling oil to the West altogether.
I mean, all this sort of nonsense has a long and complicated history.
But the simple fact of the matter is that Bin Laden was created and funded and taught by the United States government and learned how to drive troops out of Muslim-occupied lands by causing superpowers to attack you and defending with cheap weapons.
Is exactly what he's doing.
I mean, this is no question about that.
I mean, economically, it's a fact.
And this is also what he says he's doing, right?
So, and of course, this is probably one of the reasons why he wasn't caught, right?
Why they didn't work very hard to catch him because If they catch him, you know, if they kill him, well and good, but if they catch him or somebody else catches him, then he'll go on trial, in which case all of this stuff would probably come out.
Not that it's that far undercover, but, you know, a trial of bin Laden would be pretty sensational and, you know, he would talk about how he was armed and supplied by the U.S.
I mean, a lot of people don't know any of this history about bin Laden.
They think he's just some religious nut with a hate on for the the old stars and stripes.
So, You know, what he did, of course, was he spent, you know, as Bin Laden himself put it, you know, he said, I spent, you know, $500,000 on 9-11 and the US government has now spent $400 billion responding to it.
You know, it's exactly what he wants.
And of course, one of the reasons that they invaded Afghanistan was so they could withdraw their troops from Saudi Arabia, which is one of the reasons why there hasn't been another terrorist attack and blah, blah, blah, at least in America.
Also, am I the only person getting sick and tired of the phrase soil?
Like, why is American soil... Why is the word soil used so often?
I mean, it's just annoying.
I mean, that's just my particular gripe for the moment.
You know, it's one of these supposedly emotional-laden, you know, words.
Attack on American soil!
You know, boy, if they'd only been attacking American soil, how about, you know, attack on American bodies?
You know, they can beat up the sand as much as they want.
It's the flesh and bone that we object to, right?
So, you know, Bin Laden is, you know, very clear in his objectives and, you know, has been pretty frank, you know, in saying, well, of course, you know, we're trying to break the back of the U.S.
government economically because that's the only thing that's going to force them to leave the Middle East, because, you know, they won't be able to afford it.
And, of course, the Bush government fell exactly into this trap, as you would expect, and did a lot of chest-thumping and invasion, none of which had anything to do with 9-11, but was part of a sort of program that had been around for quite a long time.
I mean, the Patriot Act came out, what, like 11 minutes after 9-11?
It wasn't like they just started writing it right away.
But, you know, the story, you know, the question is, you know, why...
Sorry, let me finish the bin Laden thing.
So, you know, so bin Laden is attempting to bankrupt the American government to the point where American government can't station troops in the Middle East and has to withdraw from the lands of Muslims and so on.
And, you know, that's working perfectly fine.
So, you know, in a bizarre kind of way, Bin Laden is sort of an ally of, you know, the sort of freedom-loving American population, simply because when the government goes bankrupt, you know, governments that go bankrupt, generally there's an opportunity for freedom, right?
I mean, certainly people are generally freer in Russia now than they were before Russia, you know, hit the wall financially.
So, So the question then, of course, becomes, how do we explain this level of hostility towards us?
You know, for the sort of the American government, right?
Well, and the response, of course, is, and the reason that this became alarming to me, is that this is also common within Ayn Rand's writings, right?
It's like the hatred of the good for being the good, is what she talks about quite a bit in her fiction and her nonfiction.
Also, this is what is used to explain why Al-Qaeda was so interested in attacking America on September 11th.
It's hatred of the good for being the good.
They hate us because we're free.
They hate us because we're rich.
They hate us, hate us, hate us.
There's so much that's wrong with that formulation, you know, I could spend a week on it and still not be finished, but, you know, everybody would die of boredom because you only need one or two points to establish how silly that is.
I mean, I hate the government, but I don't strap bombs to myself and go and blow it up.
People don't wake up on the other side of the world one morning and say, boy, you know that America!
I've never been there and I've maybe only seen a couple of MTV videos, but, you know, my life is now worth nothing to me because I just hate this distant land so much that I'm going to go and, you know, Work for six months, learn how to fly a plane and crash it into a tower and, you know, just vaporize myself.
I mean, this is really not how people work at all.
I mean, this is just not how human psychology works.
You don't just sort of wake up with some wild hatred for some country and, you know, then go and attack it.
Also, you know, they don't believe that we are free.
You know, I mean, it may be hard for us in the sort of mostly secular West to understand the religious mindset, but, you know, they view, you know, material possessions and political liberty as enslavement to the senses, enslavement to appetites, you know, enslavement to, you know, the material.
So, they don't view us as free.
For a devout Muslim, obedience to the will of God is freedom.
Because what you want to be is free to go to heaven.
What you want to be is free to stand solidly within God's graces.
You don't want to be free to go to strip clubs and play pinball and drink yourself senseless, because that's not freedom.
That's just licentiousness.
So, it fundamentally does not It's a lack of understanding of the religious mindset to believe that they recognize that we're free, and they hate us for being free, and so they're going to go and kill 3,000 of us.
For what?
How does them flying planes into a building make us less free?
Okay, there's the Patriot Act and so on, but that's not what they were after.
You know, what they might want to do is convert us to being Muslim so that we could be happy and free and wonderful like them.
But if you hate a country for being free, you are not going to simply fly a plane into a building and then say, well, now I've dealt with that whole problem of freedom because I've killed a couple of thousand people and, you know, put a lot of smoke over New York.
I mean, that's really not the case at all.
Also, I don't assume that these people are morons.
After all, they're not exactly a government.
Another thing that wouldn't make any sense is that if you feel that people are too free in the West, that if you don't like our style of government or you don't like the power of the government in the West, then they're going to know that the power of the government is going to increase if they attack the country because there's going to be this repercussion and so on.
And so, you know, if you're afraid that the U.S.
government is too powerful, then attacking, you know, a U.S.
target is only going to make the government power increase, because that's what always happens when a country is attacked, is the government power, you know, goes up and up and up, and people flock to the government to protect them from the boogeymen that the government has, of course, created.
I mean, it's all pretty standard Orwellian stuff.
So it can't be that they thought we were too free because they don't view us as free and it can't be because they feared the power of the US government because they knew that the US government was going to retaliate.
It can't be because they wanted to protect Muslims in the short term from the US government because they knew that by being Muslims They knew that the U.S.
was going to retaliate against Muslims because it was all Muslims who, you know, they're not going to retaliate against like Reykjavik, Iceland or anything.
So, you know, given that Al-Qaeda has a lot more knowledge of and understanding of what the effects are of provoking a superpower, because they learned all about that in Afghanistan, Then they absolutely knew that the response of the U.S.
government was going to be a sort of military attack upon a Muslim country.
I don't know if they knew it was going to be Iraq.
I'm sure they could have guessed that it was going to be Iraq, because even people within the U.S.
administration knew.
That Iraq was going to be, you know, they were just looking for an excuse to go in there and attack Iraq.
So it seemed, I mean, they knew Afghanistan was going to be toast for sure.
And, you know, that was fine because they knew how to fight in Afghanistan to cause a superpower to fall over.
So, you know, I'm guessing that they attacked America saying, OK, well, what will happen is America will attack Afghanistan and we will have lured America into the same place that we beat the pants off Russia and bankrupted the government.
That's causing the Russian troops to withdraw from Afghanistan.
Therefore, the same thing will happen with the US troops in Saudi Arabia.
However, I mean, you know, if they didn't know that Iraq was going to be invaded, then they got a real, a huge benefit.
You know, I mean, what a bone to be thrown if you're interested in sort of picking away at a superpower until it goes bankrupt.
I mean, you really can't ask for anything better than to have them invade Iraq because You know, it's easily accessible from countries across the border like Syria.
You know, it's got a lot more urban settings than Afghanistan could ever have.
And so, you know, your guerrilla warfare is just going to be, I mean, it's just fantastic.
I mean, it's a double plus bonus to have American troops in, you know, urban Iraq than it is to have them in the mountains of Afghanistan.
So, you know, the way to sort of figure this out, you know, if this was in fact the strategy of Al-Qaeda is simply to look at what happened afterwards.
Well, if they had... if the attack upon America in 2001 did not achieve the aim that they wanted it to, then they would have continued to attack, right?
I mean, if you want to knock some guy out and you punch him and he gets back up, then you're not just going to stand there.
You're going to punch him again, right?
So you know for sure that whatever they were trying to do on 9-11, they did.
I mean, it's absolutely no question of that, because they haven't done it again.
So, you know, obviously the U.S.
reaction was exactly what they wanted.
And, you know, the other thing that you would expect if they wanted to bankrupt the U.S.
government is that they would not put up a resistance to the U.S.
invasion, right?
Because they want to draw as many people, as many U.S.
soldiers into Iraq and into Afghanistan as possible.
You know, for two reasons.
One, it's more targets for them to attack.
And second, number two, it's because the more troops that the U.S.
has stationed overseas, the more expensive it is, the more, you know, it's going to drain the treasury and so on.
So, you know, you would expect them to let all the U.S.
forces come trouncing all the way through to not attack, right?
And because, you know, as the U.S.
forces invade, the civilians, you know, scatter as much as humanly possible, and therefore, you know, if you're sort of blowing up or attacking the U.S.
troops as they invade Iraq, they'll just, you know, use a lot of bombs and, you know, civilians... there won't be any media crew, there won't be... civilians aren't entangled in the conflict during the actual first-round invasion.
So, what you're going to want to let them do is you're going to want to let them come all the way into the country, settle in, get thoroughly embedded into the urban environment, and, you know, get them to declare victory.
I mean, that's just icing on the cake, I think.
But, you know, get them to do all of this.
And then, what you want to do is you want to just start picking at them.
You want to start picking them off.
You want to start, you know, just Injuring and killing and maiming as much as possible.
And, you know, maiming is generally better than killing, right?
If you are a guerrilla warfare person who wants to cripple the spending of the superpower, you know, this goes all the way back to World War I.
One, it was considered better to wound a German than to kill a German because a wounded German still consumed food and medical resources and time and attention and so on.
So you're going to want to put these explosive devices where Americans get wounded rather than killed.
And you're going to make sure that you sort of attack them when there's lots of possibilities of civilians getting hurt because it's bad for the U.S. morale, but it also ensures that the U.S. troops are going to be that much more concerned but it also ensures that the U.S. troops are going to be that much more concerned about firing back, which means they're going to need more troops And And, you know, of course this is exactly what did happen, right?
I mean, the American forces marched in and conquered in, like, five days or something like that, two weeks, conquered Iraq and, you know, then they settled in and then, you know, as, you know, was entirely predictable, the insurgency movement kept on going.
Now, what is going to be interesting is when the U.S.
decides to try and extricate itself from Iraq, Then, you know, one of two things are going to occur.
If Al-Qaeda is at all concerned, or if the Muslim Mujahideen are at all concerned that America is going to leave troops in the Middle East, or is going to, you know, continue a lot of financial support to regimes that they consider pretty corrupt, like the Saudi regime and so on, then, as American troops start to withdraw, they will start to foment a civil war.
Because they will then realize, look, the American troops are getting out, but the American government isn't bankrupt yet.
So we need these American troops to stay, so as the American troops start to pull out, we will foment a civil war.
And then the American troops will be forced to stay, and we can't leave, all the civilians are getting killed, and so on.
So that's one sort of possibility.
But if they do believe that the Americans are in fact going home and leaving the Middle East, right, which is very unlikely to happen because, you know, there's all this oil fetish.
But if they did believe that the U.S.
was leaving and not coming back, then they would not provoke any civil wars and they would make that transition to get the Americans out of the Middle East as As smooth as possible.
They would try and make it as easy as possible for that.
So why are we talking about all of this?
Because I think this is sort of my perspective on this idea.
That's sort of the view from the outside of what's going on in this sort of war on terror, so to speak.
What's being said from the inside is they hate us because we're good.
They hate us because we're virtuous.
Now, of course, that's very interesting, and it's one of these things that you often get from the state or from, you know, institutional power, which is sort of impossibility, the impossibility of any other option.
I mean, I'll give you sort of an example of this, right, which is, you know, they say, you know, Bush was saying, and Rumsfeld were saying to Iraq, You know, we know you have weapons of mass destruction.
So, you know, tell us where they are.
Whatever, right?
So if Saddam had, in fact, had weapons of mass destruction, and of course we know he didn't because the Americans were willing to invade, and they just don't do that if you can fight back.
But if Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, then the Americans would have said, aha, he's broken all these UN resolutions, let's go and smash him down.
You can run, but you can't hide and all this kind of stuff.
And of course, if he'd said, as he did, I don't have these weapons of mass destruction, then they'd say, ah, he's lying.
We're going to invade and blah, blah, blah.
Right?
So there's no way that Saddam Hussein could have gotten out of this, you know, the invasion scenario.
There's just no way.
I mean, if he'd left, the Americans would have invaded.
If he'd stayed and said, I have no weapons of mass destruction, as he did, well, the Americans invade.
If he'd produced the weapons of mass destruction, then they just invaded anyway, because they'd say, we don't believe that's all of them, and look, he's broken the UN resolutions, and so on.
So these kinds of situations, you know, they're sort of analogous to when I was a kid and my brother would say, no means yes, and yes means no.
Do you want me to hit you?
You know, no, yes, no, I don't know, right?
Because it wouldn't matter.
You're going to get thumped no matter what you say.
And, you know, so this is the kind of situation that is set up when you have something like, they hate us because we're good, right?
Because either people like you and they like you because you're good or they hate you and they hate you because you're good, right?
And this is the problem with Ayn Rand's formulation in my particular view as well, you know, which is that, well, what is the negative test, right?
Can somebody just hate you for some other reason?
You know, could they hate you because you're bad?
Could they hate you because, you know, for some other reason than just because you're the most perfect and virtuous person?
Now thinking, and this is all sort of personal stuff, whether it's a, you know, a value epistemologically, I don't know.
But, you know, when I was a kid, before I sort of had my enlightenment phase, you know, I was about 16, I read The Fountainhead, you know, started learning about the free market and, you know, fascinated by it.
Aristotelian philosophy and so on.
And before all of that, you know, I did resent people.
I mean, there were a number of categories of people that I resented.
I'm not going to go into them all here because it's lost to history and it doesn't really matter now.
But, you know, sort of thinking back, I did sort of hate the really pretty people.
Not hate them, hatred and envy and so on.
But because I wanted what they had.
I wanted to be the pretty person or whatever, and have all of the social cachet and sexual success that goes along with that.
I had a problem with the rich kids, because I remember there was a school trip to Russia in 1978, and it was 1500 bucks, which was just a staggering sum in those days, certainly for my family.
These were the days when we were getting eviction notices.
You know, it was incomprehensible that I could go, but I so much wanted to go to see Russia.
Always loved the Russian writers, and so... So, you know, I resented those people, and with sports I was okay, so I didn't really resent those.
But I resented people who had money, and good-looking, and, you know, all that kind of stuff.
I didn't really resent academic achievement, because I didn't really respect what the teachers were saying, even before my sort of enlightenment phase.
But, you know, that's sort of the extent.
You know, I just kind of resented, you know, the fact that people had more than me, or were prettier than me, or more handsome than I was, or whatever.
I guess I sort of resented it.
I like to sing, and I resented this guy had a really great singing voice, because, you know, he sang better than I did, and I envied that.
But, you know, this was all just sort of transitory stuff.
It's like, eh, that guy sings better than me, or that guy's handsomer than me, or...
That guy has more money than I do.
So there was a little bit of that, but nothing that would really make me blow anybody up or anything.
And that was the case where it was impossible for me.
I can't buy a better singing voice.
I guess I could try and buy better looks, but what's the point, right?
But these are things that I simply could not achieve, and so there was a certain amount of resentment, but who cares, right?
But, you know, to resent people who are doing better than you to the point where you're going to shoot them, it just doesn't happen in life.
You know, you don't get a lot of assassins who say, I didn't like Reagan because he had a head of black hair and he was, you know, nine hundred years old or whatever.
Or because, you know, his wife was so attractive.
He rode a horse better than me.
They attack him for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with that they perceive him as good.
I've certainly found that in my experience, I would say that I've become a much better person, certainly before I learned something about truth and morality, but I've become a better and better person over the years.
What I found is that I make corrupt people uneasy, and occasionally I will make them sort of frightened and angry, but that's not by being a good person.
If I'm just sitting there being a good person, well, who knows?
So if somebody gives me too much change, I'll hand them the change back, or if I find a pen and somebody's dropped, I'll give it to them.
Who knows if I'm a good or bad person?
I mean, my wife knows.
I know.
When we have kids, they'll know.
But nobody knows that I'm a good person.
I mean, they may get it in some sort of existential or abstract way, but they're not going to get it.
I've got some sort of aura or halo around me.
And of course, Yeah, forget that.
So nobody's really going to know if I'm a good person.
Because what's going to happen is all I'm going to do is stop associating with bad people.
And that sort of, as I've mentioned in other podcasts, has been the journey of my last sort of seven or eight years that, you know, I've just stopped associating with corrupt people.
So, you know, do they resent me for that?
Well, maybe a little, but I probably just have irritated them, right?
Because they think that they're right and they think that I'm some sort of stuck-up jerk who's self-righteous and, you know, has just, you know, out of nowhere decided that I'm just right and better and, you know, whatever.
Like I'm sitting on some high throne of self-aggrandizement and so on.
But, you know, I don't think they frankly give it more than a minute's thought a week, if that.
You know, do they miss me?
No, not really, because they don't really have any emotional centers, no identities, so they don't have enough to value to miss anything.
You know, they're certainly not envious of my life.
You know, I'm this wonderful marriage and, you know, I'm a very happy guy.
And, you know, nobody, of course, ever sits there and says, you know, my marriage could use some polishing.
What is your secret?
How come you're so happy with your wife all the time?
And, you know, so they don't really know.
They don't really register.
They don't really recognize it.
So I don't think anybody hates me because I'm good at all.
Because I just don't associate with bad people.
So they don't know that I'm good.
And they don't, you know, the people who just passing by me on the street, they don't know that I'm good either.
And I don't care whether they know or not, because, you know, I care about my opinion of myself, my wife's opinion of myself, and, you know, my boss's, I guess to some degree, but not much else.
So, does anybody hate me because I'm good?
I don't think so.
Do I hate other people who I consider more moral?
Well, I don't think I do.
You know, if I find somebody, you know, come across somebody who's more good than I am, I'd certainly would be, to me, it would be an exciting possibility.
You know, maybe I come across somebody who, I don't know, like never cuts in front of other people in traffic, or I don't know, I mean, whatever it is that they could come up with that I could do that would be nicer or better.
Then I would be like, wow, I didn't even know that was possible.
You know, tell me about that.
How does that work for you?
What's good?
What's bad?
I mean, that would be fascinating to me.
And I would be more interested in finding out all about that.
So, you know, I don't hate someone who's better than I am.
I'm sort of curious and fascinated and, you know.
You know, now, who do I hate?
You know, I'll tell you who I do hate and I think this is sort of where we get to the heart of the matter, right?
And I don't think I'm alone in this.
You know, what I really hate is pompous moral hypocrisy.
I mean, that's something that just, oh, it just gets my teeth on edge.
That's something that just, oh, makes me want to just fly at someone.
I don't mind, you know, if somebody's a bad guy and they're like, yeah, I wake up in the morning, I look in the mirror and go, I'm a badass guy, I'm a bad guy.
I mean, so what?
I don't know who the hell these people are.
Maybe they don't even exist.
I don't mind that.
What I do hate is, you know, these smug, pompous, smarmy, you know, better, holier-than-thou people who are wrong, you know?
You know, I don't care if somebody's holier than me, if they're holier than me, because I try to respect the facts of reality.
But, you know, if somebody is holier than me, and they're just kind of wrong, you know, like, I get this all the time whenever people find out that, you know, I don't see my family anymore.
Well, you know, I get a lot of this kind of crap, which is, you know, well, you really should learn to forgive.
You know?
And, you know, delivered with all of the sincerity and all of the smug, teeth-gritting, pompous self-righteousness that you can, you know, you can stuff in a whale.
And, you know, they're absolutely certain that they're telling me some moral rule that I've never... Oh, really?
Forgiveness?
I've never heard of that before, that you're supposed to forgive people in order to be happy.
Wow!
You know, I really should listen to anything anybody ever says because, you know, you hear that kind of crap all the time.
So, you know, they say, well, forgiveness is a good, you know, you should forgive people, you know.
And I'd say, well, you know, my family hasn't forgiven me for things that they consider that are wrong.
So, should you forgive people who don't forgive you?
Forgiveness, is it a virtue?
Like, I've got to forgive people even if they don't forgive me?
Yes, you should.
You should forgive people, they might say, or they do say sometimes, you should forgive people who don't forgive you.
Well, then it's not a universal value, right?
Because if it is a universal value, if it is a good thing to forgive people, then the people who don't forgive people are bad people.
If you should forgive them, then it's just a rule for you.
It's not a universal rule that has any kind of reality.
You should like tartan, or you should like shortbread.
It's not a rule, it's just a preference that's sort of stupid.
So, you know, and it doesn't take a lot of brain power to figure this stuff out.
Like, I certainly don't think that I'm sort of any, you know, epoch-arcing genius.
It's just sort of common sense.
If you're gonna make a rule up for me, then, you know, sort of have a clue what you're talking about.
You know, that's sort of important.
If you're going to be some nutritionist and tell people exactly what they want, then at least have thought about the issues for more than 20 seconds and don't just repeat something you saw in a Quaker's granola ad or something.
Put some work into it.
If you're going to claim to tell people how to live, then think about how people should live and don't just repeat cliches and stupid crap you hear on TV.
So, I do hate moral pompousness.
I do hate, you know, if I were to refine that statement, the statement of, you know, they hate us because we're good.
I would probably refine that, and I would probably say that they hate us because we think we are good.
I think that is really the heart of the matter.
I know it's been quite a long time to get there, and I've taken what may have seen to the uninitiated like a lot of tangents, and maybe they were.
But, you know, I think that this does sort of lead us to the core of the matter.
You know, I don't hate people who are bad.
I mean, I actually feel a certain amount of sympathy for people who are bad and who are honest about it, right?
I mean, not that I've met, I guess, many of these people, but, you know, let's say that they're a theoretical entity, or maybe I've met one or two if I sort of sat down and thought about it.
And I don't hate people who just don't know and say, I don't know.
What I do hate is people who use false moral arguments with absolute certainty.
Without ever thinking about them.
What I do hate is people who claim to be good or claim to know all about rightness and righteousness and integrity and morality and are not good.
I hate the marine recruiter who talks about honor and integrity, which is just crap.
If being paid to kill people is honor and integrity, then a hitman should get a medal.
So it's that kind of hypocrisy.
Patriots, of course.
Oh, my God.
Oh, we love America because of its freedoms.
We love America.
It's like, freedoms?
Then you should love America now less than you did ten years ago because we sure as hell are a lot less free now than we were ten years ago.
Do you hate America?
Do you love America less than you did ten years ago?
No, I love America more because we're being attacked.
You know, that's all crap, right?
I mean, any sort of, you know, then you don't, you know, people say, I love America because it's free.
It's like, well, then you don't love America, you love freedom, right?
You know, you know, if you, it just is, you don't love America if you love it because it's free.
And, you know, of course, then you love America less now than you did 10 years ago or 20 years ago because it's less free.
And, you know, at what point does America's lack of freedom become an issue in terms of you loving it?
And, you know, all this kind of crap.
You know, another thing is sort of, you know, support our troops.
You know, like it's a virtue to support your troops.
And what does supporting your troops mean?
Well, they're in harm's way, so let's keep them there.
I mean, maybe I'm missing something, but, you know, support our troops.
It seems to be, you know, like if you want to help people, maybe you can pull them out of a, you know, a wasted situation where they're getting their legs blown off.
But no, of course, support your troops is... Or, you know, just tell you what, you know, if supporting your troops is such a virtue, then, you know, send them, you know, a $10,000 check every six months, you know, so that they, you know, can have their income restored to perhaps their pre-deployment days.
And, you know, support your troops... All of this stuff, I mean, it's all just pompous nonsense, right?
I mean, people just say this stuff, right?
And, of course, you know, it's all...
None of it is true.
None of it is for the reasons that people say that they are, right?
The reason that people say support your troops is because they're guilty as hell.
You know, the reason that people have those stupid stickers on their cars is because they're evil people who have advocated, supported, or funded, or have given birth to, or are related to somebody who's in the military.
Right?
I mean, so if you've been for the Iraqi war, Then, you know, you've stood up for the slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent people.
And, you know, of course you're not going to look at yourself and say, well, you know what?
I was completely duped by the government.
I advocated a war that was completely immoral.
And, you know, my son is out there shooting dead people who've never done anything to harm us in any way, shape or form.
So my son is a murderer.
I'm a moral hypocrite.
And I've advocated the use of unleashing of the horror of modern warfare on an innocent population.
Well, you know, people say, well, I could either do that kind of rigorous self-examination, look myself in the mirror and realize that I'm pretty sick and evil, or I can stick a sticker on my car and say, well, you know, what more can a man do?
That's sort of what I'm here for, is to support our troops.
So, you know, really, it's the moral hypocrisy, I think, that I find the most repulsive, and that's something that I really hate.
Because the reason that I hate it is it's so manipulative and it's so aggressive.
You know, for somebody to be a moral hypocrite and to get you to believe things that are morally false, I mean, the only reason that they're doing it is to exploit and rob and, you know, perhaps kill you.
You know, the reason that we're taught that welfare helps the poor is not because anybody has any interest in helping the poor who tells us that, but because they want power and they want money and they're using that to disarm us.
So, false morality is the most aggressive thing that somebody can do to you, other than directly sticking a gun in your face, and it is one of the major ways in which guns get stuck in people's faces anyway.
So, you know, it's the top of the list as far as moral evil goes, is the dissemination and drilling into people's heads, especially children, of false morality.
Because that is the source of all the evil in the world.
It's not the fact that people do bad things that is the problem.
It's the people do bad things thinking that they're good things.
That's the problem!
And it's common.
Hitler thought he was doing a good thing.
They're boxing us in.
We've got to fight to the sea.
It's kill or be killed.
I've got to avenge those who died in the First World War.
Shrug the Treaty of Versailles off our back.
The middle class capitalists are sucking this country dry.
The Jews are evil.
You know, he had all these moral justifications, you know, I am the manifestation of the world spirit and the godhead of the country and I'm the, you know, I mean all of this crap that, you know, and of course he made everybody swear these allegiances, right?
And I will obey the Führer and blah blah blah.
And there's a reason that he did that, so that anytime anybody just tried to disobey, somebody else could just turn around, they didn't have to shoot them, they could just say, but you spoke an oath, you made a vow on your immortal soul, you know, whatever, right?
So it's this, you know, we fear and hate those who pretend to be good.
Those who are communicating or living or inseminating a false morality into those around them are the root of all evil in the world.
The root, absolute root of all evil in the world is false morality.
And it's those people.
False morality is what people hate and fear.
And this is, you know, if you look in your own gut, this is exactly what you hate the most.
It's not the fact that people tell you, you better give me your money or else.
But people tell you, only a bad person wouldn't give me this money.
Oh, you don't want to give me this money?
Well, you must be a bad person.
Oh my goodness, you must just be a terrible person because you want to pour this and you're selfish.
It's like, God, you know, can you just stick me up in an alley and have done with it?
Like, to hell with all your moral posturing and your empty moral Stuff!
Sorry, I don't have the explicit tag on, so I'm having to restrain myself a little bit.
But, you know, it's this mommy Sunday school or kindergarten sort of pinch-lipped, finger-wagging nonsense.
You know, share be nice, share be nice, share be nice.
You know, all of this stuff, that is the stuff that is the real root of moral evil in this world.
Because it programs people to do the exact opposite of what is good and to continue doing it because they think it is good.
So, you know, to return to the Muslim world, you know, yeah, okay, they're crazy fundamentalists and they don't like Christians and they don't like Jews and, you know, Jews don't like them and Christians don't like this and that.
I mean, it's all the same religious cauldron that's been going on.
But so what?
You know, so what?
If it's so absolute that these people are all gonna hate each other and kill each other, then, you know, I gotta wonder why this wasn't occurring in America in the 19th century.
I mean, you had this huge melting pot of all of these cultures coming from everywhere.
And they, you know, pretty much got along without a lot of suicide bombings.
And they got along without a lot of, you know, I guess at those days it would be like ramming carriages with horses into buildings or something.
But, you know, they managed to get by without slaughtering each other.
Because, you know, fundamentally, cultures don't like to deal with other cultures.
You know, because culture is just another lie.
I mean, it's another scar tissue.
I mean, we'll have another podcast about that.
And culture is just scar tissue on the brain, right, from abuse, you know, from falsehood.
So cultures, they really don't like to deal with other cultures because it points out, you know, the fact that they're just lies.
You know, and people from one religion, they really don't like to deal with people from another religion.
It's uncomfortable.
It's discomforting for sure.
I mean, they don't like to because, you know, these other religions, what are you going to do?
Are you going to say, well, your religion is as valid as mine?
Well, then why believe in yours over mine or, you know, whatever?
Are you going to say, well, you people are stone evil, and you know, blah, blah, blah.
Well, of course not.
You know, because that's sort of frowned upon these days.
And, you know, people don't really care.
You know, in the absence of a centralized state, religious people are like, you know, they just club to themselves, sort of sad little group of lost souls.
You know, they sort of huddle together and, you know, pray over these sort of empty relics and waste their lives.
You know, they don't do any harm to anybody.
I mean, their own children, of course, is a stone evil.
But, you know, they're not out there, you know, terror bombing and, you know, dropping bombs or anything.
So, you know, they're just this sort of sad group of sort of pathetic people.
But, you know, you start to get the government involved and they start to have a club which they can beat other people down with their morals, then they're dangerous.
But, you know, cultures by and large will stick to themselves and kind of huddle in their own isolated little bubbles so that, you know, they don't, horror of horrors, find out that everything they think is good is just, you know, sort of a nonsensical load of crap that was fed to them so that other people could profit from their illusions.
So, I don't think that people hate the good.
I really don't.
I think people who are false We'll avoid the good, like they will avoid anybody with any kind of mental rigor.
I certainly have found this to be the case in my life.
You know, the moment I started actually speaking the truth and being passionate and certain about it, you know, people just shunned me.
I mean, they didn't pile drive me with a 2x4.
They didn't drive me off the road.
They just, they don't want to have anything to do with me, you know, and I don't pursue them.
Because it's sort of pointless.
I don't sort of corner people and yell at them that they're irrational because, you know, they're irrational.
So all they're going to perceive that is is a crazy attack.
You know, I mean, you go for the people like all political parties, right?
You go for the people who can go either way, right?
You go for the people in the middle.
You don't go for the people on either extreme.
So, you know, in my experience I've become a much better person over the years and you'd think that people would hate me more and they don't.
All they do is they just don't associate with me.
So, you know, that's been my reaction about, you know, people don't hate me because I'm good.
Now, if I was in their face, like, let's say, I mean, I believe that I'm right, but if I was in their face, you know, messing them up, you know, and constantly haranguing them, or being, you know, pompous and self-aggrandizing about my moral superiority in there, you know, they would probably start to hate me a little bit, because I sure hate people like that, and I like, I'm very interested in morality, and I kind of hate people.
You know, pompous self-aggrandizing, interfering people.
I mean, I would say the one time that I've done that is, you know, a friend of mine who, you know, without getting into the whole story, was married to a woman who I didn't think was a good choice for him because she was kind of abusive.
And this is a guy I've known for like, oh Lord, coming on for 30 years.
And so, you know, they had a kid, and then we're gonna have another kid, and I sort of sat him down and said, you know, my friend, you know, I don't like to at all get involved in other people's marriages, but in this case, I'm gonna make an exception because, look, you have, you know, you have one kid, With this woman and your marriage is, you know, been on the verge of dissolving a number of times.
If you have another kid, you know, you face under the current legal system, you know, that the worst cataclysm that can happen to a man which is, you know, you end up getting divorced and your wife has two kids so you pay alimony and You can't have a new family because you can't afford alimony and a new family and you don't get to see your kids very much and your wife is kind of hostile.
So, you get locked in this death embrace with, you know, a sort of difficult woman or, you know, and paying through the nose for a family you don't get to see very much and you can't start a new family.
You know, 20 years of your life just goes down the tubes and, you know, you just, you know, the core of your happiness is just shot, right?
I mean, there's a huge, huge danger for men.
And, you know, what happened?
Well, he listened sort of politely.
He said he'd think about it, and then, you know, a couple of weeks later, I was talking with him on some unrelated issue, and he said, oh, I, you know, I really thought about what you said, and I was like, really?
And he said, yeah, you know, and my wife was, you know, nagging at me or ragging at me the other day, and I said, and you know who else thinks you're a real bitch?
And so, you know, my name came up, I guess you could say, and, you know, really I haven't had anything to do with them since.
Because what do you do, right?
I mean, this is what happens when you try to do the right thing and help somebody out on some sort of moral ground.
And I don't think I could have done it any more nicely.
But what happens, of course, or what happened to me was that, you know, this friend of mine just, you know, completely betrayed me and revealed something in confidence to his wife.
And now, of course, I'm not going to go over there and sort of sit across from his wife and have tea when she knows what I think of her.
I mean, that would be ridiculous, right?
And, you know, my friend hasn't sort of called back and said, you know, and I said I was pretty appalled at what he did and he's like, oh, you know, like, oh, really?
You know, the fact that I repeated that you thought my wife is a bitch is a problem?
How?
You know, because, you know, people don't ever like to admit they've done anything wrong, right?
These people who don't want to grow.
So, you know, this, I mean, whether this personal life stuff, I mean, I just sort of throw it in as sort of supporting evidence as to how I get to these ideas.
I mean, I'm not claiming that they prove anything, you know, other than, you know, there's some support for the idea that as you get to be a better person, people don't end up hating you more, they just end up dissociating from you.
There's lots of evidence that cultures really don't like to interact with each other.
Because, you know, the cultures are false.
Or philosophers do, if they're not, you know, mystics.
But, you know, cultural people don't.
Because, you know, you put an Icelandic guy together with a... There'll be some curiosity about each other's, you know, myths or whatever, beliefs.
But fundamentally they don't really have anything in common, because they're both living in these little bubble chambers of fantasy.
So, you know, cultures don't really like to have anything to do with each other.
People don't hate people who get better or who become better or who are more moral or more free.
They just don't associate with them.
I mean, they just stay stuck in their own little caves of sad, lost, lonely lives.
And they just, you know, they try all they can to forget about better people.
But boy, you know, if you really do want to start sparking up somebody's resentment, just go lecturing them about how to live and say, you're such a great guy.
And if you really want to make them go totally insane, lecture them on how to live and that you're such a great guy and be the exact opposite of what you're saying.
That will absolutely drive people insane because then they're completely aware at a very primitive level that you are attempting to snow them with morality in order to exploit or harm them in some manner.
And so, you know, to come to the conclusion of all of this, I'm sorry if I've gone on a little bit too long here.
I wasn't actually intending to.
We are, I guess, almost at an hour.
But boy, oh boy, have I ever had a slow drive.
You know, three snowflakes fall and nobody can get out of first gear.
But, you know, I think that this sort of helps, I hope it helps sort of explain Why I think the proposition that they hate us because we're good is such a bad idea.
It doesn't really follow logically, from my experience or the experience of those that I know.
My wife is included in that, of course.
It doesn't follow, sort of, historically, you know, that Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda did not attack the US because the US was good.
It also follows that the people who evoke the most hatred in others are people who manipulate morality in order to benefit themselves, while at the same time lecturing everybody else on the morality of doing the exact opposite of what the lecturer is doing.
So moral hypocrisy, because it's so dangerous to people, because it's the root of all evil, moral hypocrisy is what enrages people the most.
And so if you're really looking for a clue as to what's really going on in the War on Terror, I think that's a pretty good place to start looking.
Read House of Bush, House of Saud, or listen to the kind of stuff that's on some of the audiobooks, or listen to Harry Brown's show, or read some of his articles.
And you'll find that America is a complete moral hypocrite overseas.
The view from outside is a little bit different from the view from inside, although I must say, they are getting closer.
What enrages people about America is this pompous moralizing coupled with this absolutely filthy foreign policy of murder, corruption, slaughter, support of dictatorships and so on.
That's sort of my take on it.
I hope that it's helpful to you.
I do think it's a fascinating topic and there's lots more to say about it but, you know, I'll give your ears a rest.
Thank you so much for listening.
As always, I really appreciate any time that people put into these issues because they are, in my view, the sort of heart of what is good and important and right to think about in the world.
So, until next time, have yourself a great morning, afternoon or evening.
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