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March 31, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
40:03
167 [Insert Country Name Here] - Love it or leave it!

The joys of debating with geographical bullies

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Good morning, everybody.
It's Steph.
It's Friday the 31st of March 2006.
I hope you're doing well.
And yes, I did in fact take a day off from podcasting yesterday.
It's shocking, I know.
Delinquent in my duties, but I took the day off from work and actually had a bunch of promos and introductions to record for free thought radio.
Who are kindly agreeing to air three of my programs on a cycling basis per week, so that should be good.
And so I had to do some recordings of intros and all that, about six in total, so that took a little bit of time.
And what do you care about the detritus of my day?
Anyway, I started doing a podcast in the evening while Christina was seeing a patient downstairs.
On the French riots, or the riots of the French students at the moment.
But I guess two things.
One is that I started boring myself, and partly because the topic isn't, to me, that interesting.
And also because I couldn't raise my voice.
So, you know, if I can't shriek, really what's the point of opening my mouth at all?
And it was a good idea.
Somebody IM'd me and suggested I have a look at that.
And it was a good idea, but it's just, to me, it's so predictable.
It is like asking a doctor his opinion in the terminal stages of cancer.
I mean, they're going to die.
There's not that much to talk about.
And in France, I mean, France, like most of Central Europe, has this completely disastrous economic policy.
I mean, it's almost pure socialism.
I mean, you have income tax rates on average 40 to 50 percent, and then you have another 18 percent, I think it is, tax on goods.
So you've got people paying, you know, 70 percent of their money just on those two items.
And there's, you I'm sure about a bazillion other taxes as well.
and And so, of course, the young people can't get hired, and you have these ridiculously rigid hiring laws so that young people can never be fired, so they're really reluctant to hire them.
So, you know, all of this sort of sad, empathetic, jobs-for-life-with-no-repercussions nonsense that the government shovels at people in order to buy their votes at the expense of those who come after.
The sad thing about the French, of course, the French students, is that they're left-leaning, right?
Like, let's fight cancer with a shotgun.
And so there's going to be, you know, the usual disasters that are going to happen there and completely predictable, right?
I mean, they import a lot of labor, a lot of the Muslim labor.
They imported it from the empire to do the dirty work.
And then they began to run social programs, all the same thing that happened in the Weimar Republic.
They began to run social programs and then the middle class gets destroyed because the poorer and more volatile classes are funded by taxes into the welfare state, forced out of the middle classes.
And I mean, the rich always get away, right?
But I mean, the middle classes get completely hosed.
And of course, this is sort of an examination of social policy in the absence of the argument for morality, right?
So this is purely an argument from effect.
And this is sort of the dangers of it.
And it's exactly what you'd expect from a government, right?
In the French, they say, Well, there's a law that if you hire somebody who's 26 and under for two years, you can fire them without cause.
I mean, what a wonderful moral theory!
Okay, so, from 26 and under, somebody has a completely different moral nature than they do when they're 26 and older, or older than 26.
And also, for the first two years of their employment, they have one set of moral rules, and then right after, You have the completely opposite set of moral rules.
So the first two years, you can fire them without cause.
Without cause!
Without anything.
You just walk up and say, clear your desk out, you're gone.
And then right after that, you cannot fire them even with cause.
I mean, isn't that just kind of funny?
I mean, this is the intellectual capacities of the ruling class.
Somebody posted on the board, it's like, well, you know, shouldn't we be worried?
Or, you know, how soon until the state turns its guns on us anarchists and so on?
And it's like, oh my God, that's the last thing I worry about.
They won't even figure out what we're talking about until it's too late.
And by too late, I just mean that the state falls because nobody believes in it.
So I have no worries about that at all.
And you shouldn't, I think, either.
So the French thing, it's just as completely predictable, and so the students, now they're rioting against their elders, and this is what is so sad about the young.
Except the young who listen here, you young gods of intellect, you.
But what's so sad about the young is that they're mad, and they should be mad, because, I mean, everybody's preying on them.
I mean, the public sector in France is over 50% of the economy.
And the tentacles reach far beyond that, right?
Because a lot of private companies would be dependent upon the state contracts for their survival.
So, I mean, it's this completely ridiculous social environment.
And, of course, the young have been preyed on.
Of course it's all designed for the rich and their solution is socialism!
Their solution is Marxism!
I mean, holy crap!
Are these people ever programmed to feed more and more of their limbs into the fire?
It's just astounding!
Anyway, so if anybody wants to translate these podcasts into French, I believe that the ranting will actually work out fine.
Actually, PJ O'Rourke has a very funny statement about French waiters in Paris.
He says that they're so contemptuous of you, they serve you as if they're peeing on you from a great height.
I thought that was great.
He can be a very funny writer.
So then I started talking about that, but it's just so mind-numbingly predictable and obvious that I just don't think it's worth talking about that much.
So, what I did want to talk about was something that came up in an IM conversation with a fine young libertarian two days ago.
And it really is about this argument of, insert your country name here, love it or leave it.
And I think that there's not a lot of arguments that make me angry, really.
I mean, not that you should care about whether I get angry or not.
I'm just letting you know because I'm going to get angry.
Don't worry, don't take it personally.
It's just me ranting.
I'm in the car.
There's nothing but stuffed toys around me.
Everything is perfectly safe.
I am wearing my safety restraint.
And I do believe that there's an airbag if I shriek beyond a certain decibel limit that comes out and smothers me, so even your ears should be fine.
Actually, I'm starting to volume normalize these as I become more technically proficient.
I'm starting to volume normalize these podcasts, so hopefully that's helping you a little bit.
So, the idea that America
is owned by someone and that someone gets to set the rules based on some subjective interpretation of the majority will which has been programmed by state schools and is ninety nine percent of the time ignored anyway the idea that somebody owns america interprets the will of the majority enacts rules and that the minority
must either love it or leave it, is a completely, absolutely, revoltingly contemptible idea, and goes against the grain of everything that America was founded to be.
Now, the foundation of America is a controversial topic.
We'll talk about that another time.
There was the little matter of genocide.
There was the little matter of slavery.
There was the little matter of religious intolerance.
And, of course, the federal government in particular generally grabbed more and more colonies through force rather than through active participation, particularly in the South.
But we'll talk about that another time.
But let's just say, let's just swallow the pill, the blue pill I think it is, and say, okay, well, America was founded on the idea of a small government, limited powers, and that individual rights, and blah blah blah.
Now, the thing that I've always had a problem with, with this argument, is obviously it's, you could consider it to be either absolutely fascistic, in a way that not even Mussolini would have dared to proclaim, or entirely communistic, In a way that Stalin was fairly comfortable to maintain.
But it has nothing to do with America.
It is absolutely to do with Genghis Khan-style tyrannies of the oldest and most hideous kind.
And that these people are using this argument to attempt to rebut people who are complaining about the size of government is just astounding.
And it really does show you the level of fear and rage and corrupted thinking That is going on in people's minds.
It's actually not that uncommon an argument.
I mean, I've had that even up here in Canada.
I've had that even up here in Canada when I dare to suggest to people that the welfare state is corrupt and that the health care system is immoral and so on.
It's like, hey, this is your country.
You can either work to change it or you can leave it.
And sometimes you don't even get that first option.
You know, it really is the love it or leave it kind of situation.
So, I mean, my response to that is, let me ask you something, if you don't mind.
I've bought my house.
Do you think that I have bought my house like I own it?
Or do you think like I have bought my house and rented it from George Bush, or Jean Chrétien, or Tony Blair, and that they actually own it?
Because I don't remember them cosigning the lease, and I don't remember any conditional things within the lease that said, in order for me to continue to own my house, I have to agree with every piece of sick propaganda that washes up like a dead duck in the airwaves.
And they say, well, what are you talking about, right?
Because people can't think.
All they can do is bully.
I mean, for the most part.
I mean, we can think, I think.
But I don't remember anybody else cosigning my lease.
My wife and I bought the house.
And that's our house.
And the only people who can take it away from us are the bank.
I mean, ideally, right?
In terms of contracts.
The bank, if we don't pay.
I mean, that's really about it.
As long as we continue to pay, the bank is sort of contractually obligated to let us continue to live in our house.
Which seems to be entirely right and fair, no matter how things should be.
But there's no other contract that I remember signing, or that I've ever heard of, or that I've ever participated in, that says, by the way, if you criticize the government, you have to leave not just your house, but the country.
Or, if you criticize the government, this can be used as a moral argument against you.
You better leave if you don't like it.
Now, I've mentioned in a previous podcast, and I'll just touch on it here, that this is just an indication of sick and bullying parenting of the worst kind.
This is like, when you're under my roof, young man, you will do as I tell you to.
You will obey.
When you start paying the rent in your own place, then you can do as you see fit.
But right now, you live under my rules.
All that kind of crap.
And all it is, is an argument from authority, right?
All it is, is saying, I pay, therefore you are my conceptual slave.
That I'm paying for this, and you're taking them, and therefore you have to obey.
So it really is, it's a family situation extrapolated to the state.
Underestimate how common a process this is.
In fact, it's just about everybody is talking about their family when they're talking about the state.
That's why it's important to get to know them and their history as a person before, I mean, my view, before rebutting their arguments at a fundamental level.
And even if you don't do that, just in your mind understand that they're talking about their family.
They're not talking about the state.
We don't have any relations with the state.
I mean, the state's just, you know, the magic hoover that vacuums up our paychecks.
Occasionally sends us to war, but as far as having any kind of interaction with the state, I mean, I've never had an argument with the state.
I've never had a discussion with the state.
I've never fallen in love with the state.
I've never fallen out of love with the idea of the state or whatever.
But the state is not a person, and so people who have strong emotional reactions to or involvements with an abstract entity are simply using that abstract entity as a substitute As a substitute for the person that they're really emotionally involved with, right?
Your father or mother or whatever.
Except for me!
I mean, I know as soon as I start pointing this stuff out that a number of people, and I certainly don't blame you, it would be my logical thought too, will say Well, how is Steph working out his issues with his family in relation to the state?
And I would say that I'm not.
Because I'm a market anarchist.
Or, as somebody brilliantly posted on the board, a post-anarchist, which I kind of like.
Because anarchism is also associated with...
You know, syndicalism and communes and so on and communism.
So, we're not that.
So, a post-anarchist, I think, is interesting.
But I have no relationship with my family.
I have no contact with my family.
I have no desire for any contact with my family.
In fact, I think if I saw any family member walking along the street, my heart would contract in fear and loathing.
And so, it's hard for me to say that I'm working... I mean, I have closure with my family.
That doesn't mean that they don't bother me if I were to see them.
Because you can't erase 30 years of history, right?
If a particular piece of music is always played while you're being tortured, then you will never, until your dying day, be able to hear that piece of music with equanimity, because it's down in your neurological system, and it's a fight-or-flight response, it's hardwired into the hypothalamus.
There's nothing you can do to get rid of that, and, you know, why would you?
Just don't listen to that piece of music, right?
I mean, you can't erase the history.
So, what am I working out with the state?
Well, nothing.
I don't have any relationship with my family.
I recognize that I don't have any relationship with the state, and therefore it seems to me that by dumping my foo, a family of origin, for those who are cherry-picking the podcast, who are missing the carefully constructed ladder of knowledge with which we manage to ascend to these lofty realms.
I don't think that I'm working out anything with the state, because I'm just saying there should be no state, and I have no relationship with my family.
And because I have accepted the violence that is endemic within my family, and within a lot of other families that I've seen, not just physical, but often verbal, which many times can be worse, Then it's given me a clear-eyed view of violence, and it's helped me to understand that the state can never be anything but violence, and can never be morally justified.
And once you take the moral justification away from violence, it all falls in like one of those massive tents that you take the pegs away from.
Supports away from it, just goes billowing in and collapses down of its own accord because it's entirely sustained and inflated by fantasy moralities.
Moralities of this is one way, then the next day it's the opposite way, but they're both perfectly morally absolute and so on.
I do find that people who are talking about, you know, your country, love it or leave it, that they really are talking about their families, and that their own parents had no other methodology for achieving their allegiance than the threat of homelessness.
I mean, isn't that sad?
I mean, it's sad for a country, of course, but it's particularly sad for parents.
And I remember my own mother.
I mean, we had no respect for her whatsoever.
I mean, we would occasionally be fearful of her based on her capacity for violence.
But my brother and I had no respect at all.
I mean, those caustic teenage years where you just roll your eyes at everything that everyone in authority says.
Oh man, do I know that one well.
Because you feel an unbelievable level of anger and humiliation.
Because the prison guard is so pathetic.
And the circumstances are just such that... I wanted to get to university so I hung in there and kicked my mom out when I was 16 or 15.
I can't remember exactly.
My mother would say the same thing, you know, you boys just don't give me any respect.
She remembers at one point my brother was staying at my aunt and uncle's place when we were younger, and my uncle said to my brother, you left the toothpaste cap off the toothpaste tube, and my mother would always say, and you flew up those stairs to put it back on.
And, I mean, I have no memory of that, so who knows whether it's true or not.
Maybe it is.
But, of course, the fact is that my uncle was not a screamin' banshee, right?
I mean, he was someone that you could sort of respect, so maybe my brother did run back up the stairs to put the cap on the toothpaste tube or whatever.
But my mother wanted that very much, to have that level of respect.
And if you ever watch shows like Super Nanny or Nanny 911, you see a lot of this stuff, particularly with single mothers, that there's lots of screeching going on, and there's lots of Oh, I wish these children would behave.
I wish I didn't have to scream at them.
I want everything to be nice, but everything is constantly deteriorating, and I keep having to bully, and I hate myself for it, and all this... I'm not gonna say whether it's a male or female thing, because I didn't grow up with a father, and I'm sure there are many bad fathers out there.
Probably almost as many as bad mothers, if I may go out on a slightly shaky limb.
But...
They want that level of respect.
They want that level of obedience.
But of course, you can only really get respect through integrity.
You can only really get respect and have other people want to listen to you by integrity, by kindness, by generosity, by this sort of stuff.
I mean, you're listening to me and it's because you think that I have some level of wisdom that is useful to participate in.
And I think that's wonderful.
I'm glad that the conversation is continuing.
Of course, a lot of the ideas that I've had have come out of great conversations that I've had, great people that I've listened to, great books that I've read.
And so, to participate in this conversation is wonderful.
But I'm not yelling at you saying, you have to be a market anarchist, and you have to do this, and if you don't do that, you're a... I'm always saying, hey, you can do what you want.
That's the point of freedom, but there are consequences.
Take what you want and pay for it.
So, if I wanted to get people to download a bunch of my podcasts, I mean, if I started screaming at them that they had to download the podcast because I'd worked so hard at them, I mean, can you imagine how long you'd be listening?
And so, parents who are innately corrupt and brutal, whether verbally or physically or, heaven forbid, sexually, they recognize when people get older, when their children get older, start to think for themselves, start to get a sense of the real world, start to get alternative viewpoints.
I mean, holy, do they ever get aggressive, right?
Because, I mean, they feel their control slipping away.
Somebody else mentioned this on the board, that the state gets violent when it feels its control slipping away.
And I don't think that is true anymore.
I mean, that didn't happen in Russia, when Russia fell, for a variety of reasons.
We can talk about it another time.
You know, I need an acronym for that.
W-C-T-A-A-T, right?
We're cat!
That's going to be my phrase for, we can talk about this another time, but I don't think that that's how it's going to work.
But I think with parents, there's a lot of emotional bullying very early on in life, and then you go through this latency phase from like 5 to 11 or 12, or puberty at least.
And what happens there is you're kind of compliant, you're kind of okay, you kind of sort of go along.
And then your hormones hit and you get bigger and you start to think for yourself.
The brain doesn't finish developing until you're in your early to mid-twenties.
So all of this stuff is still being pieced together in your intellect when you go into your teenage years.
And this is a time of great depression for some people.
This young gentleman was IMing me the other day and talking to me a little bit about this.
His parents are religious, and so I'm not going to give out any personal details, but it really does remind me of the struggles that go on in the teenage years between a sort of growing mind and a petty, corrupt, and vicious mind.
And the parent wants the respect.
They want the respect, but they've done nothing to earn it.
And there's simply no way for them to earn it anymore.
Even if they were to turn around the next day, it's too late.
It's absolutely too late.
If somebody now has a threat over you and you suddenly say, Oh, I was wrong.
I'm going to change.
Well, obviously it's not driven by anything internal to yourself.
It's merely driven by the growing threat, right?
So if you have a gun over someone and you're all bullying and mean and tell them to do this, that and the other, and then you drop the gun, they pick it up and you're like, Oh, wait a minute.
I think torture is totally wrong.
I absolutely regret what I did.
So, so, so sorry.
Well, obviously there's no credibility whatsoever, right?
I mean, that's just a trick or a maneuver.
And so, once the kids hit teenage years, there's no capacity for parents to ever Win their respect.
I mean, that's all long gone.
I mean, I would say between the ages, by about the age of five to seven at the very latest.
Everything after that, you're totally sealed.
Your fate as a parent is totally sealed.
Probably by three or four.
But for sure, after that, your fate as a parent is totally sealed.
And there's nothing that you can do.
So parents who then, who are faced with growing rebellion and skepticism and cynicism on the part of their children, they do two things, right?
They appeal to Social norms, right?
Which, you know, are also equally stupid and corrupt.
And sadly, they also appeal to economic bullying.
So they say, well, I pay the bills, I do this, I do that.
Like, that's not your job as a parent, you know?
It's like saying, if you're an employee and your employer says, I don't find the quality of this report you did diverse typos and the numbers are wrong, and you're like, hey, I showed up to work, didn't I?
It's like, well, yeah, but that's kind of just the base minimum.
That doesn't get you any points, you know?
I was at my desk, wasn't I?
Like, yeah, but so what?
I mean, if you don't do that, you'll get fired in two days.
But you still have a certain amount of requirements for maintaining a job a little bit beyond showing up and surfing the net.
Or, say, working on your board or your podcast.
Yeah, that's it.
So, for parents who then end up with this economic argument, which is, it's my house, it's my rules.
Well, I think that's wonderful.
I think that's a wonderful argument.
And all the parents have to do is to recognize that if they want to pull that, then that's fine.
But then, when the teenager is out of their house, then they do not have any rules.
When they go to visit the teenager's house or the young adult's house, then they have to obey that person's rules.
And also, when the parents get old and the child is supporting them, Then the child gets to set all of the rules, and there can't be any complaint.
And the parent not only has to obey the rules, but they also have to respect the rules, no matter what.
Because the argument is that the rules are determined by who's paying the bills.
Now, that's sort of basically the idea, right?
Whoever's paying the bills makes the rules.
Now, this is transposed onto the state because there's no logical argument whatsoever that would lead you down this road of love it or leave it, right?
I mean, there's just no logical argument at all, so we know that it's coming directly.
But people are so certain of it, right?
And they're so passionate about it, so you know!
You absolutely know it's coming directly from their family experiences.
And so they basically then say in the same way that the parent says to the teenager, it's my house, you respect me or leave or get out.
Well, then the state becomes the parent and the house, the country becomes the house, and the child becomes the citizen.
And it all plays out that way.
It's so obvious that it's sort of embarrassing to see people make this argument.
When I see people make this argument, it's like, you know, if you want to talk about your family, we can talk about your family.
But I don't see much point talking about your dad and calling him the government.
I don't really see how that's going to advance the science of politics at all.
Family therapy, sure, maybe, if we're honest, but political science, really, not so much.
That's not particularly compelling in terms of how you're approaching it.
Which, of course, gets people really angry, right?
Because they don't like to be caught about nonsense that they're talking about, and they really want to be debated at the level that they pretend to be talking about, which is, you know, love it or leave it or whatever.
But the idea, which they're generally appealing to, is that those who have the most power make the rules, right?
Because why is it that the government gets to make the rules?
Well, it's one of two things, right?
I mean, it's either an argument from government equals goodness, government equals freedom, government equals, you know, that...
That sick kind of montage you see on super patriots' cheesy websites with the flag unfurling over a faint blue sky and an eagle with its head turned to one side staring ferociously at whichever foreign person is not in favor with the State Department at the moment, but objectively defending freedom.
That kind of stuff.
So the government equals goodness.
Government is staunchly there to protect your freedom, and the civil servants are there, and they're there to help you, and this, that, and the other.
So it's the virtue.
It's the virtue of the government.
Government is good, and therefore you have to obey the government.
So it's either the argument for morality, or it's the argument from authority, or power.
I guess I don't know what the heck to call it, but it's the argument from power, which says that you have to obey me because I have a gun.
In other words, whoever has the most force wins.
And that really is the argument from democracy, which is the majority rule.
The majority says such and such, and therefore you do such and such.
Well, there's no reason whatsoever, as I've mentioned before, to imagine that A particular proposition, reforming social security, a particular proposition is immoral when one person believes it, immoral when a hundred million people believe it, but when a hundred million and one people believe it, flip, over it goes, and it becomes perfectly moral.
It's like one of those old, sort of quote, digital clocks which had those clacks that rolled over.
And it's like, 1159, evil, one more person believes in it, bink!
It becomes perfectly moral.
And that, of course, makes no sense whatsoever, but really is an argument from force.
It's an argument from violence, which is not an argument at all, but just a desire for you to submit based on superior firepower.
It's that old phrase, right?
Peace through superior firepower.
So, since there's no logical or moral reason, it really is just an appeal to force.
And what that means is that you do as I say because I'm more powerful.
Well, this is, of course, pure fascism and communism.
It's got nothing to do with government by and for the people.
I mean, it really is.
We've managed to wrestle control of the military, and we can point the military at you, and we have the nominal backing of people, but so what?
I mean, Stalin had the nominal backing of the Russian population, because they were all programmed in state schools as well.
So the majority thing doesn't mean anything.
I mean, Hitler was voted in.
What the hell does that have to do with anything?
I mean, the idea that the majority is moral, I think is certainly possible.
I think it's certainly possible that the majority of people are moral.
And I say that simply because in my life, I don't really find a lot of people who want to, you know, clip me one on the head because they disagree with my viewpoints.
They might get angry at bullying, but they usually refrain themselves from punching me up.
Which is why I prefer to deal with that Marine dude through email.
But no, I mean, that's unfair.
I'm sure he would have vigorously debated the issues and he may be working on a response right now, which I just haven't received yet.
In which case, I hope he does.
I mean, if you're out there listening to this, please respond to me.
I would like to be corrected of any errors at all times that I might be making.
And I am not attempting to impose my will upon you in any way, shape, or form.
And this goes out to everybody.
I have absolutely no interest in you believing what I say or imposing my will upon you, which is pure nonsense.
It would be narcissism and intellectual corruption of the first order.
What I want to do is to, you know, appeal to reason and evidence and let you make your own decision, right?
I'm like a scientist putting a science theory forward.
I mean, they don't bully people into believing relativity.
Einstein didn't sort of take people's children hostage or yell and say that they were immoral if they didn't believe in relativism.
He's like, yeah, here's the theory.
Check out the facts and let me know what you think.
Because why obey me?
Even if I did want that, what's the point?
It wouldn't serve morality in any way to get you to obey me, because what do I have to do with morality?
I'm just a guy thinking, right?
I mean, it's reason and your conscience and reality that I appeal to so that we can meet in the common room of reality and not in the It's sort of non-intimate room of one person's opinion dominating and eclipsing the other person's opinion.
So let me just put that out there.
So please always feel free, good Lord, always feel free to correct me if I'm right 51% of the time I'm overjoyed and anything that I get beyond that I consider pure gravy.
And so, if you find that I have a problem with what I'm saying, you know, be a brother to brother, sister to brother.
Please, tell me, tell me, tell me, so I can correct my thinking, because the last thing I want to do is to think that I'm right, rather than I am pursuing truth, which are two very different things.
So this idea that the government must be obeyed either because it's moral, well, then it's just saying that people are immoral and they have to be forced to obey morality and they're sheep and the government has the guns which makes them moral because there's no other criteria.
And there's no sort of in this view of obey the government because it's good.
Well, you can say, well, the government defends freedom and this and that, but of course if people really do believe that, if they believe that you should obey the government, Because the government defends freedom and is trying to help you and be good to you and protect you from old age, poverty, and all this sort of stuff.
Well, that's fine.
Then all you need to do is say, okay, well, first of all, how do you know that's even moral?
How do you even know that's the right thing to do?
I understand that it helps certain people, but I still don't understand how that's moral.
I mean, being in power for the Nazis helped a lot of sociopaths, but it wasn't necessarily moral.
So that doesn't make as much sense.
But even if we say that it is moral, can we say that over the long run, given the national debt, use the argument from a fact, can we honestly say that people are going to be perpetually helped by these state programs and that they're good and they're helping people and so on?
But of course, people haven't sort of started with a blank slate ever when it comes to their political thinking, and I certainly put myself in this category as well.
People don't start with a blank slate.
They start with their family, and to some degree their schools and so on, and their universities, if they get that far.
And so they don't start with a blank slate, and so they're arguing really in a vacuum.
They're not arguing about anything that you're really talking about.
So if somebody says, well, we should obey the government because it's moral, then it's like, oh, that's interesting.
Well, how do you know that it's moral?
You will immediately get irritation.
I mean, that to me is very interesting.
So somebody says, Government is moral, that's why we have to obey it.
And if you don't obey it, then you're a bad guy, you should leave the country.
Start your own country, or work to change the system, or whatever, right?
Of course, if you could actually work to change the system, nobody would ever say that, right?
The only way that they say that is because it's completely rigged to begin with, and everybody knows that you can't change the system until it collapses, of course.
And so, I mean, they know that they're telling you not to change it, right?
It's like the parents saying, oh yeah?
Well, if you switch places with me and you're the parent and I'm the child, then you can tell me what to do.
It's like, yeah, I'll get right on that.
Thanks.
Good suggestion.
But when you say to someone, well, how do you know the government's moral?
I mean, if somebody's talking about ethics, you'd think that they would have a pretty good idea.
You know, and this is what Socrates found, right?
You'd hope or you'd think that they'd have a pretty good idea of what it is that they're talking about.
Because, you know, they've obviously come to the conclusion that something is massive and powerful and stuffed to the gills with the capacity to do harm and violence and death and wield death and destruction across the world.
and rob people of forty to sixty percent of their income and blah blah blah, that they have managed to figure out that this massive and growing all-powerful state entity is moral, which is pretty cool, right?
I mean, that's a tricky thing to do.
So you have to say, wow, I mean, I bow to your incredible skills of moral reasoning because I can't, for the life of me, figure this out.
So if you believe that we should obey the government because the government is moral, then please tell me how it is that you came about to this conclusion, because it would be wonderful for me to figure that out too, and it would put my mind at rest.
And of course it would put me back in the mainstream, which is, you know, kind of a nice place to be in a lot of ways.
As I mentioned in a podcast a couple of months ago, what is conformity paying these days?
But what you get when you ask people why, is you get anger, irritation, frustration, contempt, because they have no idea why.
It's just something that they believe because it conforms with their view of their family.
So you either get somebody who sort of they just hate the government and sort of irrationally and don't really come up with positive and viable and polite solutions or you get somebody who's like just starts worshipping the government because you know I'm a patriot and they always have to have those Alex Jones kinds of voices right no disrespect to the Jones but The man could clear his throat, I think, just once in a while.
So when you ask people about that, they're really talking about their families, and this idea that love it or leave it really translates into the idea that the government owns everything, or the majority owns everything through the government.
and you agree or if you disagree you have to leave the country then really there's no such thing as private property where the government owns everything which means either that the government owns everything and nominally leases it out to private entities corporations and individuals which is fascism or it owns all the property directly and outrightly and can cause you or force you to be exiled for disagreement, which is quite interesting.
And of course, if there was a free country in the world, then I'm sure that much like everybody in the 19th and early 20th century went to America, we would go there.
I certainly would.
Even if it was Iceland, I would go there.
But of course, there is no free country.
So it's like saying, you know, for somebody who's locked in a prison, if you don't like the prison rules, they're unjustly locked in a prison.
If you don't like the prison rules, you can switch cells.
Can I leave the prison?
Is that no-no?
You can't leave the prison.
That's not an option.
Okay, so it's really not much of a choice that you're giving me here.
You're basically just saying, shut up, respect your gods, and get back in your cell.
I don't really think that was the idea behind this great classical liberal experiment or the Enlightenment experiment of limited government.
Small government, government with very prescribed boundaries, which never last, of course, but I think that that argument really makes me angry, because there are absolutely people who make that argument, completely deflecting legitimate complaints emotionally that they have about their family, getting behind the injustice that was done to them as a teenager at this phase, usually.
And that's why you get such hot anger coming off these people, because, you know, it's teenage trauma that's driving it, which is a pretty significant emotional force.
And they don't, of course, have any clue, or maybe they do, but they certainly won't admit it, that what they're Describing is the exact opposite of what America or any free country is intended to do, which is to entice you to stay through benefit, not to bully you to stay through economic control.
I mean, we certainly wouldn't respect a husband who paid his wife's bills, right?
He was the patriarch or whatever.
He paid his wife's bills.
And he said that you have to do X, Y, or Z, or I'm going to throw you on the street homeless and penniless.
I mean, that wouldn't be something I think that we would respect as a moral thing, and of course he can't even force her to leave the country.
It would be sort of like a husband who says, you obey me, damn you, wife, or I'm going to ship you in a crate to Timbuktu.
I mean, I don't think that we would generally say that a prenup that involved that particular configuration of offense would be a particularly good thing or moral thing.
And if that's not the case, then how is it good for the government?
The last thing that I'll say, really, it is the last thing, is that why is it only the government that has this right?
I mean, what you can also say to people who make this argument is something like this.
If it is a valid moral principle to say that if one person disagrees with another person that that second person has the right to order them to move, then, you know, if you're talking to your neighbor, can you say, listen, you disagree with me, therefore you have to move out of this neighborhood?
Well, the person would say, well, what are you talking about?
And you would say, well, you've already agreed that the person, somebody who disagrees with somebody else must be forced to move.
So this obviously is a universal human right.
So everybody has the right to order everybody else to move.
I mean, obviously, it's not exactly a simultaneous right.
We can both move, I guess.
But the government stays, right?
The government stays in Washington, and the people who disagree with the government move to Timbuktu, or have to.
And therefore, I don't know, is it whoever says it first?
Is it like a quick draw?
You move!
No, you move!
No, you move!
Do you have to have tape recordings and play them back to get the split-second timing of who said it first and so on?
I mean, this is all kind of funny, right?
But if the principle is that disagreement can force someone to move, then why is it only George Bush who has that right or ability?
I mean, if it's everyone.
And if it's not everyone, then the argument for morality tells you that it's just a stupid opinion that doesn't mean anything, and the person can't claim that it's any kind of morality, right?
Because if it's morality, it's got to be common to all people at all times in all places.
And so, since this is a right, you know, agree with me or I'll force you to move, it's not a right that can be deployed across everybody, then it's not a right, it's just a silly opinion.
And if somebody says, well, you know, it's a majority thing, it's like, great, okay.
So, if I have another Libertarian who moves in on the other side of your house, then the three of us can get together and say, I'm sorry, you're a statist, and we two on either side of you are Libertarians, you're sort of the gristle in the Libertarian house sandwich, so to speak.
And so you have to move.
We're sorry but you disagree with us and we are the majority among us three and so you have to move because it is, you know, agree with the majority or get out.
And who's to say where that majority is prescribed?
Why is it any more arbitrary to say that the line ends at the 49th parallel for America versus my little country is two houses with you in the middle?
I mean, both are just artificial and completely arbitrary lines drawn in the sand so we can just make up our own and All that kind of stuff.
Like, I mean, if George Bush gets to define the country goes to here and not one inch further, then surely everybody can make up their own countries and create their own majorities and force people to move and this and that.
And if people don't like that particular argument, then it sure as hell, it does not mean that it's a valid argument for the state either.
So thank you so much for listening.
As always, I better stop.
I'm running out of disk space!
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