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March 28, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
28:22
163 The Gender Politics of Left and Right

Surfing the political divide on a wild wave of base hormones!

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Good morning, everybody.
It's Steph from Free Domain Radio at freedomainradio.com.
I hope you're doing well.
8.35 on the 29th of March?
28th of March?
It's a Tuesday.
I'm pretty sure of that.
So I hope you're doing well.
I'd like to have a ramble this morning.
I have been fairly disciplined with a non-ramble, and of course the pressure's been building up and I'm afraid that it's going to cause my head to explode.
So I'm going to have a ramble, or what I call a voyage of discovery, which is a grand way of saying that I'm going to attempt to Stitch the tangents together in the loosest possible framework.
So I hope that is okay with you.
I'd like to start exploring an idea that I sort of had while I was having my coffee this morning.
And the idea is this sort of left and right.
Left wing, right wing.
It came out of the French Parliament in the late 18th century and it's been plaguing us ever since.
And I would like to explore... We're going to go on a journey.
You're getting sleepy.
I'd like to explore a possible framework for looking at this left and right wing issue That might make some sense.
Now, this is going to be a little gender-specific, so if you don't like political theories that hang on the naughty bits, you might be offended.
But we shall do our best to make it make sense.
Now, I've heard a couple of theories about why we have this left wing and right wing thing, and none of them have ever really satisfied me.
So, I'm going to try and add another one.
I'm going to try and add another iron to the fire, in the hopes that this will sort of advance the questions just a little bit.
Why do we have left wing?
Why are people just divided up the middle this way?
Why is it that people fall into this?
Now, obviously some of it has to do with just pure propaganda, right?
I mean, It's very difficult for any kind of third-party candidates to get any kind of traction in the political landscape, because, of course, the parties have a lock on funding, and they get government money, tax money, and they then actually, of course, they're the ones who are likely to get into power, and so nobody who is interested in receiving government favors, which is just about everybody who donates to political campaigns,
At any kind of corporate level or significant financial level.
Those people want to get the favours of government power so there's no point them... I mean they'll hedge their bets, right?
They'll give a lot of money to the Republicans and some money to the Democrats and vice versa.
But generally they're going to give all this money and all these ballot access laws and this campaign finance laws and all of this kind of stuff.
And up here in Canada, this is back in the days of my political naivety when my political education was still underway, there was a news article in the paper Which said that the liberals, who I guess would be similar to your Democrats, they're sort of centrist.
Which means that they sort of have their bullseye trained right at the forehead of the taxpayer.
Not to the left, not to the right, but right in the center.
So we don't want to just wing them, we want to get them with everything.
That's definitely something to do with what I would call a liberal up here.
But they passed these laws, which said that they couldn't take money from here, they couldn't take money from there, and that they basically had to fund themselves.
And I have no idea why, but I thought it was like, it sort of blew my mind.
Like, it was like, this is against everything that I think is rationally possible, huh?
I made a lot of sounds like that for a little while.
And then of course I was pretty heavily medicated and I began to sort of dig into it even further.
And I found that yes, they did in fact end up wanting to get rid of special interest groups.
and replace themselves as a special interest group.
So the rule was that you couldn't collect money from so-and-so and such and such, although all that meant is that it's plain brown envelopes rather than checks and visas.
But what did happen was, as a political party, you got a sum of money for an election, for a campaign, that was relevant, so it had a ratio compared to the number of votes you got in the last election.
Now, since the Liberals have been the majority for the past three quarters of a generation or so, they felt probably pretty safe in feeling that they were going to get the most money and it was going to help them keep their power pretty nicely.
And then, you know, I no longer needed the medication.
I threw away the Ativan and the Valium and I said, Like a well-picked lock, the world is settling back into place with a series of near audible clicks.
And that sort of made sense.
So what they got sick and tired of catering to special interest groups and then just wanted to steal from the taxpayer directly.
So I thought that was just wonderful in terms of how political machines work.
So that's one of the reasons why it continues up.
It's not that people love the Liberals, it's just the Liberals are now well paid.
And of course because they're in power and nobody else has any particular threat to them for a variety of reasons.
I mean, Canada is probably a little bit more than the States and maybe even a little bit more than England.
The motto of Canada is peace, order and good government because we don't have a good understanding of the word antonym.
And one of the things that is funny about Canadian politics is that all it is is scare stories.
All it is, is scare stories.
So we have a party called the Reform Party, which has just recently merged with the Conservative Party, and all they do is they have some sort of a religious base, and they're, you know, equivalent to the Republicans, but milder.
I mean, here, there's no one saying, let's end socialized medicine.
What there is, is saying, let's supplement it with three rich doctors who are allowed to work for politicians on the side.
Actually, well, politicians have their own health care system, so they don't worry so much about ours.
But, I mean, that's the level of debate in Canada.
That's all you can talk about.
So, everybody's terrified that they have a hidden agenda to make kids say the prayer in schools and, you know, all of this sort of stuff and, you know, that's the level of the debate.
Do we have prayer in schools?
And is it silent prayer?
And is it prayer for every denomination?
We can't have a dominant Christian prayer because that would be rude to...
I mean, this is the level of debate that we're having.
While we heard it in the government schools to begin with, do we get one minute of thinking to ourselves, or do we get one minute of a prayer?
That is the level of freedom that we are discussing in this country, and it is pretty darn funny.
And so here, you've got this, Canada's a big tightrope, right?
So on either side there's some NDP who exist only because ...of the union donations.
Without forced union donations, our Socialist Party simply would not exist.
80% or 70% of the money comes from that.
And so there's just no way that those guys exist at all.
They don't reflect the popular will at all.
The conservatives, of course, they exist to some degree because of religion, which means that religion, of course, exists partly because of tax deductions, and also they're not taxed on their land, they're not taxed on their buildings, they pretty much live tax-free, and then their donations are all tax-deductible, so they get to apply the guilt thing to people, so religions to a large degree exist.
And they also still exist because I remember in school having to recite the Lord's Prayer every single morning.
And so you get the propaganda in schools, you get it at home, there are all these financial incentives.
I mean, churches don't represent the will of the people any more than fascism does.
I mean, if it was the will of the people, then you wouldn't need to indoctrinate children for 20 years to get them to go to church.
And you wouldn't need to keep applying that pressure, right?
I mean, that's just scar tissue.
The existence of an organized religion is just scar tissue.
Because nobody chooses it in a state of freedom, I mean.
Why would that sort of wake up one morning?
It's like starting smoking when you're 60.
I mean, sort of wake up one morning and say, hey, you know, I think that I'm evil by nature and I need to go and pay lots of people to save me.
I mean, nobody when they're 40 wakes out of bed and says that sort of stuff unless they've suddenly developed late-onset schizophrenia or something.
So the church doesn't have anything more to the popular will than political parties.
So I've managed to rope back the tangent and we're now riding shotgun with the herd again.
I went off a little but I'm back.
So it's hard to say that Republican and Democrat meet the popular will or match the popular wills at all, but there is a reason.
They don't just sort of arbitrarily set up these divisions.
and then say uh... let's try and get people to believe this because if it was like republicans like plaid and democrats like paisley it would be kind of hard to get the argument for morality in there and to get all the shrill self-righteousness and screaming and false moralizing and all that kind of shite that goes on in the uh... modern democratic world
So I'd like to sort of put forward a slightly more simple way of explaining why these two ideologies are dominant.
And I'll sort of pull out some random facts.
I don't have any platforms with me, but I'm sure everybody's fairly familiar with them.
I'd like to say that Republicans are dudes and Democrats are not so much with the duding.
There you go.
That's it.
I'm done.
I'm out of here.
Oh, no, I'm not.
I'm out of here.
I'm going 120 on a highway.
Okay, I'll stay in here and keep explaining it a little more, just because it would be kind of horrible to hear that.
Roll, roll!
So, the Republicans are concerned, you know, this is a really simplified way of looking at things, but what we're looking at isn't that much more complex than this particular viewpoint, so it's okay.
There's only a relatively uncomplicated way of looking at a straight line is okay, I think, because it's not that complicated, the object.
So, Republicans kind of get by on two things.
Two things.
Three things, I guess you could say, but two, really, for the most part.
War, the free market, and to some degree religion.
That's a little bit more recent.
I mean, it was Jimmy Carter and afterwards where it became important for a president to talk about his religion, which formerly had been considered a very private affair.
And I mean, it wasn't until Reagan or after Reagan that you had to be this sort of fundamentalist evangelical nutjob who heard voices and yet didn't worry anybody that you had control over nuclear weapons.
So, religion is really used as a support for those things.
So there are a lot of Republicans who are both free market and religious, and we can talk about that another time.
It's an interesting co-joining of experience, which has a lot more to do with the fact that most Republicans tend to be better off And so they tend to view poverty as a punishment and their own wealth as a reward.
And so they're virtuous because they're rich and other people are not virtuous.
And if you take from them and give to the poor, you're taking away from the fruits of God's virtue and giving it to the evil sinners.
And so, I mean, they're not really... Isn't that bizarre?
I'm sorry, I never comment on what I'm driving.
But I'm driving past a very large plastic moose.
It's a sign company.
They have a very large plastic moose.
I don't see a lot of that.
I'm sorry for the distraction.
But I'm not going to edit it out, because I'm tired of editing these things.
I think I've gotten rid of most of my verbal tics, so we can plunge on edit-free.
Uncensored Steph.
Occasionally he'll use the word shite.
So, they're into that free market stuff, not because they're interested in human rights, but because they're the smug, God has been good to me, God loves me because I'm good, and God hates you because you're bad, and so I'm rich and you're poor, and that's, you know, the class warfare is evangelical in nature and has nothing to do with their belief in property rights and so on.
And, of course, it is also, to some degree, a covert kind of racism, right?
I mean, when Republicans talk about welfare moms, I think you can pretty much get a strong idea of the ethnicity of those welfare moms.
They are, in fact, a combination of Scottish and Croatian, and I think we all had the same vision there.
Now, the war thing, of course, is pretty obvious.
I mean, they're very aggressive, and they like guns and toys.
As PJ O'Rourke said once, he was anti-government, and he's become fairly slavishly pro-war, to my understanding, but in an excellent book he wrote called Parliament of Whores, which I think has the most euphemisms for old people that I've ever heard in my life.
He talks about military spending and he's got this rush.
You see this Tomahawk cruise missile goes up and he says, rising into the air like hell's own hard-on.
Now that's the way to waste government money.
And so it's kind of funny, but of course it's kind of not, right?
I mean...
Because taxpayers are being held hostage and lots of people.
It's always interesting to watch the Scud missiles take off.
Probably not quite so nice to watch them come down, and definitely not so nice to be around them when they come down.
So it's fun to look at the flames, but unfortunately when you look at the shattered body parts and broken up children and so on, On the other side, the intestines embedded in walls, which occurs when a scud comes down, then it's not really so fun.
I mean, I would say.
Not for me, anyway.
So, if you look at the traditional things that guys are sort of hardwired for, well, you know, we're hardwired for the hunter-gatherer or the provider and so on.
And so, for us to be interested in the free market, if we're a guy, you know, I can see that being a little bit more.
Certainly, I have never in my life met a woman Who is interested in economics, let's say.
I mean, I've met some women who are interested in politics, but they're not really interested in any of the underlying things around politics.
It just doesn't seem to be that much of a female concern, and there's lots of reasons for that, which we could talk about another time.
But it's a pretty dude-centric universe, libertarianism, which I think is a real shame.
And it's one of the reasons the movement has never worked, because there's just no way to get society to change without talking to the women.
I mean, you just can't, right?
The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world, so to speak.
That's one of the reasons I talk a little bit about relationships, and one of the reasons that I talk about my relationship with Christina, of course, is because I think that it would be nice if we had a few more of the ladies present in our discussions.
So we're always trying to work towards that.
Guys are interested in hunter-gathering, which translates into a sort of fealty to the free market.
There's also a sense of competition among guys, and the free market is deemed to be competitive, so we like that.
There is something vaguely weenie about government solutions.
Except around war and other kinds of things, but definitely sort of social welfare programs are deemed to be kind of weenie.
So guys, they talk about like, I want the free market because they want people to believe or to understand that they're tough and they like to compete and they're doodly dudes and so on.
And, of course, the other thing that has been a concern of men throughout history is war, and so you don't want to be considered to be a weenie or non-macho by being one of those tree-hugging, Birkenstock-wearing, kind of anti-war, peacenicked, tie-dyed pacifists.
Because that actually does make your penis fall off.
In fact, I better not say that again, because I think it's a little loose.
So I would like to talk about just how the guys are sort of into the free market and into war and that sort of translates into the Republican thing.
Because those are what guys are hardwired for.
So those are the messages that work with guys.
And that's why you'll see, you know, somewhat more guys than girls in the Republican world.
Now, on the Democrat side, things are a little different.
On the Democrat side, there are other concerns that we can traditionally say women are hardwired for.
Again, I'm not going to talk about cause or effect or who and how.
But women are generally hardwired to respond to issues around taking care of people.
And why?
Well, because women breastfeed and often will take care of the infants when the infants are young.
And whenever anybody gets sick, generally it's the woman who takes care of them.
And then in the big final prize, she gets to take care of her parents, generally, for many, many years when they get old and feeble.
A recent movie called Proof with Gwyneth Paltrow and Anthony Hopkins, which is not bad, although, you know, the dialogue can be quite good, but the ending is quite disappointing.
There's this whole conflict between sisters about who stayed and to take care of the father and who's virtuous and who left and who was, you know, and of course the woman who left could never question and say, well, what on earth, I didn't like him as a father, what on earth would I, I mean, just, you know, I'll be happy to contribute some money for an old age home, but why would I ruin my life for this guy that I don't love?
That was never talked about, because you can't talk about those things even in popular media.
I mean, you can, but only if you're portraying some kind of a Leona Helmsley kind of absolute scratch-eyed villainess.
Then you can do that.
It's an interesting movie to watch for that debate, just to see how little women can, at least in this portrayal, and I've seen this about a bajillion times, how little women can question the absolute need or absolute right of other people to have them come and take care of them.
So, women are focused on that which takes care of those who they perceive cannot take care of themselves.
And so, typically, in a lot of relationships, the woman is more of the enabler.
It's not always the case, but it can be because the woman is taking care of the guy who's a drunk, or an addict of some kind, or verbally abusive, and so on.
Women are sort of hardwired to respond to messages around taking care of people.
Now, women are not so hardwired for things like brute competition.
And this is largely biological, in my humble opinion, because women generally are a little bit knocked out of the race if they have kids.
And biologically, of course, the sole purpose of women from the age of 13 to 30 was to have children, sort of historically.
I mean, assuming they made it past the first couple, because it's a dying childbirth pretty regularly.
Which is kind of funny to me, just on a minor aside.
It's kind of funny to me that feminists who claim to value women are not enormously pro-capitalist because it's capitalism that's produced a healthcare system that has saved hundreds of millions of women's lives and the misery and all this sort of stuff.
But hey, you know, that's what ideology will do for you, so there's not much we can do about that.
So, messages which are around compassion and kindness and caring and taking care of the poor and the sick and the old, these resonate with women.
War, not so much, right?
War does not resonate with women a huge deal.
The free market does not resonate with women a huge deal because they're not hardwired in their sort of emotional biological makeup to respond to messages around the free market because, you know, they can't compete for a good chunk of their lives because they're, you know, big with child.
And then breastfeeding, and then big with child again.
I think you get the cycle.
I mean, there's lots more to talk about, and you could delve into this, I'm sure, to a fair depth.
But to me, that has a lot to do with it.
Now, you will notice, of course, that matriarchal societies... I mean, if this is true, right, then one of the things that you would expect is that matriarchal societies tend to be more left-wing.
Then right wing.
And the two matriarchal societies that I can think of are the Jewish society and the Blackist society.
And those two societies, certainly the Jewish, for abso-positively-lutely sure, is definitely more on the left than on the right.
I mean, of course, we have some fabulous Jewish anarchists, all praise to them, but that really is the exception that proves the rule.
We know them by name, because they're so rare.
That's why we give names to stars and not the black areas which surround them, because, you know, they're less common.
So, in the matriarchal societies, you would expect that people are raised to be more left-wing and more sort of sensitive to the needs of others and more sort of take care, take care kind of thing.
And also, women's experience with authority generally is a little bit more benevolent than men's experience with authority.
So, men want to compete with authority.
Women want to be protected by authority.
This is a very broad generalization.
I'm not even going to make that joke.
But women have to rely on authority, right?
The man has to go and provide for them while they're sick or big with child and so on.
And so they have to have a relationship with authority where they either get a great guy who is going to do the right thing and stand by them and provide for them and be all loving and great.
And that's wonderful.
Then they have a great relationship with authority or they end up with some Dinkus, who doesn't do any of that, in which case they kind of have to fool themselves that he's a better guy than he is.
I mean, it's very hard for women to look at direct corruption, at evil authority in the face because they're generally dependent or hardwired to be dependent upon men.
I mean, assuming that they want to have children and so on.
If you don't, then women are still hardwired for this, right?
And so the other thing that you would expect would be that the rise of the socialists or the rise of socialist thinking among men would somewhat correlate with the rise of single-parent families.
Because, of course, single-parent families like 90-95% of the head are by women, and if I'm right about this sort of female left-wing kind of thing, then it would seem to me that would be somewhat of a predictor.
I do believe that that is true.
I don't have any stats with me right now.
If you know of any, please send them in.
I'd love to read them out.
And, of course, if you know stats against it, send them in too, and I'd love to chip away at this theory as well, if it's incorrect, of course.
I definitely don't want to waste any time on something which is just a pure pipe dream.
But it certainly is the case, as far as I know, both anecdotally and statistically, there has been a rise in socialist kind of philosophies over the... I'm just looking at sort of the government control of the economy and in which sectors.
There is a rise in socialist kind of philosophies, and I think that that coincides with the rise of single-parent families, because you just get exposed to this kind of be nice, care, authority is always good thing, which leads you naturally and inevitably down the path towards socialism.
So, that's sort of on the female side.
Now, on the male side, you would expect that the stuff that guys would be really interested in would also be diminishing in effect, right?
So as the currency... I'm fully aware that I'm standing and dancing on a cloud out here, but forgive me for the presumption.
Let's just poke around and see if we can't scare out something useful.
The way that we could figure out the male side of things would be somewhat to say that with the rise of anti-male sentiments would be the rise of two things, and the rise of anti-male sentiments.
I'm not talking about female equality.
I'm talking about hostility or negativity towards men, which you can, I mean, pick up just about any book that's aimed at women, and men are not exactly princes, or if they are, They're the kind of unbelievable childish fantasy princes, like the rich guy who's a real cad who ends up wanting to settle down after playing a baccarat insouciantly along the Riviera for most of his life, who doesn't have to work and who has a six-pack and
You know, wavy hair and all this pin-up stuff, right?
It's pin-up for the ovaries.
So with the rise of anti-male sentiments in society, you would expect the rise of two corollary phenomenon.
The first would be an increase in the amount of lip service paid to male values, right?
Because men will react to this kind of hostility or this kind of negativity by sort of thumping their chests and talking about manly things and so on.
But because fundamentally men find women, and I speak openly about my own sort of whatever, but it works for me, and it's what I've seen in society, and it's what I sort of understand biologically and philosophically, so excuse me for the generalization.
But in general, men find women irresistible at more than one level, right?
I mean, it is very hard to have a disagreement with a woman if you're a guy, because Well, that would be 12 podcasts, which I'm sure we're all aware.
I mean, either you're going to believe me on that, in which case you can let me know your experiences, and I certainly would be happy to trumpet them to the world with your name and address included.
Or you don't, in which case, you know, please let me know.
This is why it's so important to find a woman that you don't have conflicts with, because I just generally find it's very hard to win in conflicts or to get your way in conflicts around women.
Christina is a woman who gives men great respect, so I'm very lucky that way.
And that's given us a real equality of negotiation in our relationship.
But in general, I think that men find women irresistible, so as the currency or the value of the currency of men goes down in society, you would expect a lot more chest-thumping, and you would also expect an acceleration of female traits within society, right?
Because, I mean, the chest thumping doesn't do you any good at all.
Because all you do is you end up thinking that you have done something to conquer a certain kind of feminine influence in your life.
And, I mean, there's not feminine influences aren't all bad.
We're just talking about the anti-male, one that's geared towards socialism.
So you expect an increase of chest thumping, but you would also expect a simultaneous increase in socialism within society.
Now, I think that that has occurred...
I mean, I know for a fact that socialism has definitely increased within society.
And at the same time, the kind of chest-thumping has increased as well.
And socialism generally increases with war, or the tendency towards war, because there is a loss of authority to a corrupt kind of femininity.
At the same time, there is this hyperinflation of masculine bravado, which often results in war.
Certainly has happened in Canada here, and we're off now in Afghanistan, getting people killed, and killing people.
At the same time, as the socialism continues to increase, I mean, this is nothing negative towards women.
I mean, I'm not exactly painting guys.
All the women are doing is sort of nagging and producing guilt and making these anti-male statements.
It's the guys who are actually going out and blowing people away and allowing for the spread of this kind of socialism, or in the case of the Republicans, actively encouraging it, right?
I mean, they'll talk all they want about the free market, but fundamentally they cannot fight The feminine influences, the sort of bad feminine influences within society these days, so they really don't end up with anything other than this sort of maddening posturing, where you continually have to discount everything that they say, because they're going to end up doing the socialist thing anyway.
Both in terms of the nice socialists, like health care plans and so on, prescription drugs for the elderly, and social security, so they have to sort of quote, nice socialism, and they also have the sort of national socialism, which is the warmongering, right?
So this is sort of the two sides of the scissors that cut our freedom off, which is, you know, this sort of endless and irresistible sense of needing to be nice and a blindness to the viciousness of authority and a belief that just handing over resources is good.
And basically, it's a reproduction of the family and not a very good family in a state And that's something that happens with women, in my experience.
And it is also something that we would expect, like this hyper-masculinity combined with a continuing degradation of freedom based on the female or socialist model, combined now with the new male reaction, which is endless war.
So I apologize for the rather abstract, unprovable, except in a very vague sense, topic of this morning's podcast.
I think it's interesting, I actually, when I was writing a novel recently, I started writing a novel recently, I didn't go very far, because, I mean, I've actually written five or six of them, but this one didn't go very far.
But a friend of mine read it, and that was what encouraged him to start writing his own book, because he was like, Oh, you know, I always saw your books at the end, so I thought that there were these magic words that came off page by page, and you didn't have to work at it.
And he saw the quality of the first draft, which is always pretty rough, and so that encouraged him.
So I hope that this thinking out loud kind of stuff is of some use to you, and maybe encourages you to keep going along the road that you're going on.
Share on the boards and share with me what your thoughts are, because they're not all as tidy as my other podcasts, and Lord knows those aren't that tidy to begin with.
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