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June 27, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
45:04
302 Listener Email: Arguing the Military Option
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Good afternoon, everybody.
Hope you're doing well. It's Steph. It is 5.30 on the 27th of June, 2006.
Hope you're doing well. Well, I'm going to do an email of the day because there's just a very interesting email that came in to me yesterday, which I didn't read until today.
I was a little backed up, but it's got an interesting set of circumstances, which I'm sure are common enough to enough people that it's worth having a chat about them.
So, I'm going to just read this without any identifying characteristics.
I am, perhaps foolishly, bringing up some of these topics during conversations with my dad, who is a staunch Republican.
He is all for the free market, but believes that people are generally evil, and that regulation is therefore needed.
The argument that those people regulating are also probably evil, and made more so by having a complete monopoly, he has simply rejected.
I usually do not attempt to go into the really hard issues, but if I ever bring up my free market solutions to any problem, he always steers it into a defense of the country, immigration, etc.
The problem he sees with reducing the government, much less eliminating it, is the defense issue, and I'm sure we've all run into this.
He believes that if we were to reduce the military or place it in private hands, we would be attacked by radicals such as North Korea or Iran.
He also brings up examples of where the absence of a state has led to chaos and war, such as in some of the European countries after the Soviets left, as well as here in America, at least for its citizens.
I'm sorry, as well as some of the well-known times of relative peace such as under the Romans and allowing, and here in America at least for its citizens, on immigration he says that allowing people to immigrate unregulated would destroy the unity of the country and create ethnically separate pockets of people which would eventually lead to the fragmentation of the country.
Although I try not to get on the defensive, I always seem to end up inventing solutions or alternatives to these problems.
I am accused of having no real alternatives, and since there has not really been a truly free society, it is hard to counter.
There have been many historical examples of governments being overthrown and chaos resulting.
The problem I seem to be unable to overcome is translating the logically consistent ideas of freedom into viable solutions.
If I say that DROs will provide better defense, I am countered with the argument that disbanding the army and instituting private armies would create a state of perpetual civil war, as is seen in many of the African countries, one in particular which is escaping me just recently officially reduced the military with violent results.
So is there any way to present solutions of freedom that are also practical in today's world where the majority of the globe is primitive, religious, and ruled by dictators, communists?
Are our ideas simply an ideal or can they be applied to the current situations which seems to be simply a state of nature between countries with nukes?
Should I just stop debating?
Thanks for the show. I hope you get to do it full-time.
Me too. This is from a gentleman in Hawaii, USA. And unlike many people, he has not offered to meet me for a drink if I'm ever in their town, because I might actually, given that it's Hawaii, I just stay.
So, I can understand that.
Now, this is a very interesting question, and we've all run into this so many times when we're debating with people.
And we feel helpless, we feel frustrated, we feel that there's something wrong with their argument, but we're also viewed as idealists, we're viewed as people who just...
If people were made of sugar and spice and all things nice, then yes, we could have a free society.
But don't you know that evil actually exists in the world?
I mean, people actually say this to me even after they know my history and my family.
Really? Evil? I never would have imagined.
Gosh, what an illuminating eye-opener.
Thank you for helping me out of my little plastic bubble of middle-class banality.
So we've all faced these kinds of things, and we face these tough guys, right?
These tough guys who are like pro-military.
And this is very much on the Republican side a little bit more, although the Democrats are definitely pulling up in this penis comparison scud contest of who's more butch about the military.
But it's typically associated with the Republican thing, and it's considered to be tough-minded and hard on the bad guys.
Tough love at best, right?
Now... The reason that this gentleman is not able to win these debates is that it's not a debate.
This is a pretty important thing to understand when you're having a chat with someone.
Because if you're debating with someone, I think it's fairly important to figure out if you're actually in a debate or not.
What's that line from The Untouchables?
How like a such and such to bring a knife to a gunfight?
And this is true.
I mean, are you debating or are you not debating?
It's a pretty essential idea.
It's a pretty essential question.
Because if he's bullying and you're debating, then there's no point pretending that a debate is occurring.
You don't see scientific conferences where somebody says, if you put forward that opinion, I'm going to scream you down, or I'm going to pop you on, or I'm going to have you shot.
Because if that was occurring, well, it wouldn't really be a scientific gathering.
It would just be a gathering of bullies.
So I think it's pretty important.
When you're in debates like this, or when you're debating anyone, well, you've got to figure out, are you actually debating or not?
In other words, you need to establish criteria for failure of the debate, right?
So, if this guy's debating with his dad, and his dad says, freedom, a free society would never work because people are evil.
You'd say, okay, well, what is it that would help me to understand what criteria might change your mind?
There's no criteria that will change my mind.
People are just evil. We need a military because there are thugs out there who want to blow us up and we can't have immigration because the country would fragment.
And if you say, well, what evidence would you accept as counter to this?
If this viewpoint is gathered or has been developed because of a review of the facts, this is sort of important.
Are you dealing with somebody's prejudice or are you dealing with somebody's rational analysis of the facts?
Because if people are, this is what Jack Welch says, I mean, if you give people the same information, then generally we'll come to the same conclusions.
I mean, that's pretty much the case with science and a lot of logical disciplines.
So, I mean, if you give biologists, like, there's a new species that's like a zebra but without stripes, you know, they're going to say, well, it's probably a species of horse like the zebra or something.
The same information is going to lead to the same conclusions.
So, the interesting thing, of course, and I've mentioned this in a previous podcast, I won't belabor the point here, is just to say, oh, okay, well, how do you know?
How do you know? So, oh, immigration will lead to the destruction of society because we're going to fragment into Vulcan Island.
Okay, well, how do you know?
Like, what... Is this something you believe, just sort of intuitively, and you've never subjected it to a rational analysis or to facts?
Or is it like you had no opinion about immigration and you did a vast amount of studying?
Because it does take years of studying to come to conclusions about things, at least I've found, and I don't think I'm particularly slow.
And so you say, oh, okay, well, how did you come to this conclusion?
So you sort of be curious. Always, always, always be curious.
So you say, oh, okay, so immigration will lead to balkanization, cultural fragmentation, and the disintegration of the society.
Okay. How do you know?
Eastern Europe. Eastern Europe after the Soviets left.
That's exactly what would happen here.
Or, look what is happening in Southern California.
Can't even speak English in some schools.
whatever, right?
But that's not a real study of the situation, right?
That's just a couple of news items, a couple of rants from CNN heads, and there you go.
It's just a kind of prejudice.
It might be right, but it's still a prejudice until you have facts, right?
Somebody runs around saying the free market is great and have no idea.
It's still just a prejudice if they haven't studied the facts.
So at one level, you need to sort of figure out if you're debating somebody who has carefully looked at the information, has understood the opposing arguments, right?
Understood the opposing arguments.
And, of course, a great way to test this is to reverse roles in a slightly more productive way than, say, Podcast 300.
But we can go back to that another time.
You want to reverse roles.
So say, I'm not sure that you understand my position.
Why don't we try switching positions?
And then you can at least see if you understand my position.
If you understand, like, I can argue the socialist viewpoint.
I can argue the fascist viewpoint.
I can argue the communist viewpoint.
I can argue the welfarist.
I can argue for all of these things.
Because I've thoroughly imbibed the opposing arguments.
And so when I oppose arguments that I believe to be false, it's not because I just dismiss them out of hand as stupid things, you know.
Well, there's lots of smart people who believe these things, and you can't just go around labeling everyone corrupt and bad who disagrees with you.
Although, I've got to tell you, it's really fun to try.
But enough about my 20s.
So you want to find out, do they understand your position?
Have they reviewed the information?
How is it that they're coming to such broad sweeping conclusions?
That kind of stuff. Is it a debate or is somebody just mouthing off a bunch of crap that they've ingested which they think makes them a tough guy or makes them hard-nosed or makes them sympathetic and weepy and kind?
I mean, do they just have an emotional attitude about these beliefs?
Like, nice people support the welfare state.
Blacks support affirmative action because we're into brotherhood.
Or tough guys who are clear-eyed and unsentimental and not girly girl in any kind of way support a big military.
I mean, is it just an emotional false self, little pathetic medal that they've pinned to their chest to give themselves some sense of personal definition?
Or is it something that they've actually rationally come to based on the evidence?
And do they know the difference, right?
I mean, this guy's father obviously doesn't know the difference.
He's bringing some arguments to bear, but you can absolutely tell that he is completely resistant to any kinds of ideas because he just keeps throwing up stuff that he's read about in a newspaper or article here or there, and I don't think he could argue the DRO view if you paid him.
Actually, he paid him a million dollars.
He probably could. A million-dollar proposition from way back at the beginning of the podcast series.
But... So that's the one thing you want to do.
Figure out if you're actually having a debate or if somebody's just dominating you with a bunch of prejudicial bullshit.
It's sort of an important thing.
And the prejudicial bullshit could be on the side of anarchism as well.
I've certainly had debates in that realm as well.
But what are the facts?
What are the facts and what is the proof?
What are the facts and what are the proof?
So, that's sort of the one aspect.
Now, that's tough enough to do with family members, but I'll give you something that's even tougher to do with family members and something that is kind of, like, I'll warn you up front, this is like a one-way street, and we've talked about this before, but not in this particular context.
This is a one-way street.
Go down it at your peril.
I personally have found it enormously beneficial to go down it with family and friends, but of course it's up to you.
But just recognize that when you pull these particular blinders off your eyes, they're not going back on anytime soon.
So, of course, we feel that we must convert people to market anarchy in order for freedom to occur.
And that's not at all the case.
It's not at all the case.
You do not need to convert someone to a market anarchist position in order to have a free society.
We, in fact, only need one market anarchist in the entire country for the society to become free.
Even if everybody else disagrees with that market anarchist, the society can still be free.
And so, trying to get people to accept your opinion It's not going to be helpful relative to another approach that you can take, which is very obvious when I tell you, but we don't take it because we're blocked emotionally with family and friends, and we know how volatile this is going to be.
So, the guy, let's call him Dan.
Dan is the paramilitary wannabe SAS guy who loves the military, and Stan is the machin anarchist DRO fella.
The smart one. Anyway, enough propaganda.
It's between the lines. So, Dan says, ah, we need a big military to defend our country.
So, you can say to Dan, well, I assume that you're defending the country because the country is, like, virtuous, right?
Not just because it's your turf.
Because then it's just like a mafia thing, right?
It's not anything like, yeah, well, we defend America because America's free.
America's free. We're going to defend America's freedoms, and they hate us because we're not free.
Or in a business meeting where I debated the war briefly yesterday and talked about Canada's now on the list of the terrorists because we've sent people to Afghanistan and now we're in Iraq.
Well, I've always been in Iraq, but now we're admitting it.
And I said, we're on the list.
And he said, well, it's tough not to be on the list.
I said, well, Switzerland's managed to do it for about 800 years in the middle of Europe.
And so, of course, he came back with, yes, and they'd still be speaking German now.
Anyway, we had a little bit of a back and forth, but it wasn't something that I wanted to get into heavily because it wasn't relevant to the business discussion.
So, you've got to assume that the military, in order to have any kind of virtue and not just be a bunch of thugs, is defending freedom, right?
It's defending freedom. Now, freedom of choice is a pretty important thing to have in a free society.
Like, forced association arranged marriages, and if you get your job assigned to you at the age of 14 by the local unification board or something, these things would not be the marks of a free society.
So, forced association...
It cannot be one of the things that the military is defending.
I mean, that would seem pretty obvious, right?
I mean, it's one of the differentiators between a free society and a dictatorship, or relatively free society, is that a free society does not violate freedom of association and freedom of conscience and freedom of choice.
And that would sort of not be the case.
So, you don't need to convert this guy away from the military whatsoever.
You don't need to get him to think that private armies are better.
For society to be free, you don't need any of that stuff.
And to aim at it is just going to get you frustrated.
It's quite simple. All you do is you say, well, the army is defending America because America is free.
Yes, we want to preserve freedom.
Great. I'm with you there, brother.
I like to be free as much as anybody else does.
Now, I disagree with you about the right way to secure my freedoms.
I don't feel that having a catastrophic national debt, 40-50% taxation, endless amounts of regulations, and a standing army that's all over the world poking their sticks into hornets' nests, personally, I don't think that's the way to secure my freedom.
Now, I respect that you do believe that that is the way to secure your freedom, But I don't think that that's the way to secure my freedom.
In fact, I don't feel particularly free at this level of taxation, and I don't feel particularly free with the threat of people coming over and bombing us because we've been killing them overseas and starving their children and so on.
So it doesn't really strike me.
As a way to secure my freedom.
Now, you want to secure your freedom by having a big-ass military, hundreds of billions of dollars of funding.
You want nukes, scuds, warships, submarines, airplanes, hundreds of thousands of men.
I think it's over 1.3 million men or something in chattel to the U.S. Army these days.
So you think that's the way to secure your freedom.
I don't. Now, do I have the right to disagree with you?
I mean, we want a free country, right?
We're supposed to be defending a country that's good because it's free, right?
So, do I have the right to disagree with you, or should I be thrown in jail for disagreeing with you?
Like, do you think it would be a good country to defend if I said I think we should take another approach to the problem of national defense, and I got thrown in jail?
For that, would you consider that to be a virtuous country that did that?
And a guy would say, he would say no, or Stan would say no.
That's not a virtuous country, sorry, Dan would say no, it's not a virtuous country if you get thrown in jail for disagreeing with someone about the right way to pursue national defense.
Fine. That to me is a civilized response.
Yes, you should not be thrown in jail or killed if you resist, if you disagree with some particular way of securing national defense.
And it certainly is debatable, right?
So, then you're done.
You're done with the argument, right?
Then you say, well, thank you. Then you or I can perfectly happily agree to disagree on this.
And he'll say, yeah, I think you're an idiot, but we'll agree to disagree.
Or whatever. I think you're a namby-pamby, whatever.
The names I get called sometimes.
A lily-livered Brit boy.
But you say, fine, great.
Then we agree to disagree.
And I am free to disagree.
Right? I am free to disagree with you.
And the guy's going to have to say yes, because if he says you're not free to disagree with him and you should be shot for disagreeing with him, then obviously he's going to pull a gun on you, because you've got to do the right thing right away.
And secondly, obviously then the military is just a bunch of thugs defending political turf.
They're not interested in protecting any kind of virtue or value like freedom, because it doesn't exist.
You're shot for disagreeing with someone about national defense.
So you say, yeah, I am free to disagree with you, correct?
The guy says, correct, that's what free country means.
Then you say, fantastic, fantastic.
Then I don't have to fund the goddamn military, right?
I don't have to be thrown in jail, right?
For disagreeing with you about the best way to secure myself, my wives, my children, my extended family, my community's security, if I disagree with you and I'm not to be thrown in jail for disagreeing with you, then you must support, you must support my right to not fund the military.
And it really is as simple as that.
See, If I'm not allowed to disagree with the proposition that we need a million-man army and 800 military bases overseas and all of this to secure your liberty and secure my liberty, if I'm not allowed to disagree with it, then you're not in a debate. Because someone's just saying, yeah, you can say whatever you want, yeah, you can flap your gums as much as you like, but it doesn't matter because if you disagree with me, I'm going to shoot you.
Or have you shot or thrown in jail?
And then it's a dictatorship, right?
And that's a hallmark of dictatorship.
So there's nothing to defend, so there's no virtue in the military.
No freedom to defend, for sure.
But if, on the other hand, I am allowed to disagree with somebody about the best way to fund and secure my own liberty, then surely I'm allowed to not pay for the military.
Because what the hell would it mean to say that I'm free to disagree about the military, but I've got to pay for it anyway, and if I don't, they're going to shoot me.
Can you imagine the following debate?
A woman says to her father or her mother, I don't want to marry so-and-so.
And then say, oh, you're perfectly free to have that opinion.
You're perfectly free to not want to marry him.
Great! Then I'm not getting married.
Oh, no, you're getting married. But you said I was free not to get married.
Yes, you are free not to get married.
But if you don't get married, we're going to shoot you.
If you don't get married to so-and-so, we're going to gun you down or imprison you in our little rape room here.
Can you imagine what a deranged argument that would be?
Yeah, you're free not to marry so-and-so.
Perfectly, we absolutely accept your right to be free not to marry so-and-so with the minor caveat that if you don't marry so-and-so, we're going to shoot you.
In which case, seduction and rape are identical, as we've talked about in a previous podcast.
You're completely conflating free will and force.
And that's all you have to do.
It's really that simple.
Am I free to disagree?
Well, if I'm free to disagree, but if the consequences of my disagreement get me shot, then I'm not free to goddamn well disagree, am I? Now, when it comes to debating these issues with our family, I've got to tell you, brothers and sisters, you're going to have quite the carny ride if you pull out this particular approach.
And I trust you, sorry, trust me, I've done this a number of times.
The last thing I think I mentioned was a war in Iraq conversation that I had with Christina's boss's husband, who was very pro-war, Then I said, well, I'm not pro-war, but surely I am free to disagree.
Yes, you're free to disagree. We're a free country.
Great. Then I'm free not to fund it.
I should be free not to have, like, a checkbox on my taxes that says, I don't fund this bullshit.
And he was very uncomfortable with that, but he was cornered.
What's he going to do? He's going to say, oh, no, no, you're free to disagree, but you have to fund it or you're going to get shot.
Because then he's obviously revealed as a complete hypocrite.
And also his treasured military, the nobility of his imaginary military forces is completely shot down, or is completely in disarray.
Because they're obviously not protecting my freedoms.
If I don't support them, they shoot me.
What kind of goddamn freedoms are they protecting?
The freedom to get shot if I disagree is not a freedom!
It's the complete opposite of a freedom.
So your wife walks into you and says, I'm sorry, I'm not happy, I'm going to divorce you.
Oh yeah, you're perfectly free to divorce me.
Absolutely. Perfectly free to divorce me.
It's a free country. Nobody can force each other to stay shackled and have sex with each other, raise children together.
Perfectly free. Absolutely. I just want to show you something in the basement before you go.
So you lead her down the basement, you run up the stairs, you lock the door.
She pounds on the door and she says, I want to divorce you.
I want to leave. Yeah, you're perfectly free to leave.
Well, unlock the goddamn door.
Now, I'm sorry I can't do that.
Sorry. You're free to leave, but I'm not going to unlock the door.
What kind of deranged, moral, freaking insanity is that?
And yet this is said every single day with a completely straight face.
And, of course, the subtle clue to all of this is that it's not just about the military.
It's about every situation. We say this about the welfare state.
People say, well, we have to help the poor with the welfare state.
I say, well, I don't really think that that's the way to help the poor.
In fact, I've got pretty strong arguments as to why that's directly the opposite of helping the poor.
That's hurting, harming, enslaving the poor.
Well, you're free to have your opinion.
Really? That's fantastic.
Then you and I are in complete agreement.
Because we're already in the DRO model.
You want to fund the goddamn welfare state?
Be my guest! But I have got to, and I reserve the right to not fund what I consider destructive to the human soul.
To not fund enslaving, quote, charity.
To not fund foreign invasions.
To not fund the war on drugs.
To not fund prisons.
To not fund the FBI. To not fund the CIA. To not fund acid forfeiture agencies.
To not fund eminent domain seizures.
If I have the right to be free, which is what is supposed to make the government so justified, then surely I have the right to not fund that which is abhorrent to my soul.
To refrain from purchasing and pressing into the hands of those who would kill me the guns with which they will murder me.
Surely I have that right.
And if I don't have that right, then the military just thugs defending a turf.
And if I don't have that right, oh person that I am debating with, then why the hell are you pretending to debate with me?
It's kind of a fundamental question.
And this is why it's so explosive when it comes to family and friends.
It's kind of a fundamental question.
See, if you're fully keen that I get killed or shot or imprisoned or whatever, if I get thrown into the state rape rooms for disagreeing with you about the value of this or that agency within the state or the state itself, what the hell is the point of debating?
Don't do that.
Don't debate with people when there's a gun in the room.
Don't besmirch the noble act of debating, the noble rationality of two participants searching for an answer with honesty and integrity.
Do not besmirch that noble and honorable interaction by pretending to debate with people who want you shot.
Do not call rape lovemaking.
Thank you.
Do not call a gun pressed to your temple with the safety off an interesting argument.
Do not debate with people whose response to your questions at root is to kill you!
Don't do it!
What a dishonorable approach!
And I say this having dishonored myself on occasion with this too, so I'm not trying to fling mud from the summit here.
But don't do it.
Don't participate in this charade of civility.
Don't participate in this sham where the stiletto goes in under the table and everybody is supposed to smile and wave.
Show the gun in the room.
Show the gun in the room. Show the gun in the room.
Show the gun in the room. Don't debate with a gun to your head.
This is not metaphorical.
The people who say that if you don't fund the military you should be thrown in jail, people who are for taxes and for the state and for these state programs, these people want you killed.
I'm not making this up.
I'm not being a mean guy here.
I'm just listening to what they say in a way that maybe you don't want to listen to them in this way.
Maybe you don't. But it's true.
If you're interested in the truth, then the first thing you have to do is recognize that this is not a debate.
This is not a debate.
This is somebody saying, this is my goddamn opinion, and if you don't like it, pow!
You're in a hole in the ground, and they're throwing dirt in your face.
Or here's your new cellmate, Bubba.
He comes with his own bottle of baby oil.
Grab your shoelaces. That's not a debate.
It's not a debate.
I mean, it's funny because people call this a cult from time to time.
You know the three cults in the world?
Religion, state, and family.
Religion, state, and family are the cult.
And family is the only one that as an adult isn't going to kill you.
And religion in the West.
But the state will kill you, won't even bat an eye.
The state kills millions and millions of people.
The state will kill you, won't even bat an eye.
A religious person will support tax the ones you killed, and your family will cease to talk to you if you disagree or if you point out the gun in the room.
Now that's a cult, my friends.
That's a cult. I don't stop talking to people who disagree with me.
I'm more than happy to keep talking to people who disagree with me.
They just want to stop talking to me when I point out the gun in the room, because they're all supposedly about virtue.
And the other question is, are you really about virtue?
Are you really about the search for truth?
Because I do find it rather baffling when people say, well, I'm very interested in the search for truth and I'm very interested in examining moral issues.
And they continue to sort of quote debate with people who want them killed.
And then they're talking about abstract moral things and the ethics of emergencies.
And it's like, dude, someone's got a gun to your head.
Will you wake up and look around?
Why are we arguing about what should happen in a life raft in 200 years in another dimension?
There's a gun pressed to our temples!
And we debate, and we debate, and we're like scholastics, but like the medieval scholastics.
How many angels dance on the head of a pin?
Did Adam have a belly button?
Because he's created in God's image, and God doesn't have a belly button, because God's not born of anyone.
Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah, hurrah.
You know, let's deal first with the gun in the room.
If we deal with the gun in the room, if we deal with the fact that people have guns to our heads, then I think we've got enough to work on, you know, for a little while, just a little while.
Maybe we get to the life raft in the future in another dimension relatively soon, but, you know, let's start with the gun against our temple.
And then we can start to talk about the abstract moral niceties of should this happen or should that happen or what is intellectual property?
Don't get me wrong. I find those topics interesting.
But, you know, just a little bit down on the triage list of moral calamities that we're facing, I think.
Just a little bit further down on the list.
You know, you deal with the guy who's lost a leg to a shark before you deal with the guy on the beach who says, you know, I have a little bit of a sunburn or my hangnail is really troubling me, doctor.
Okay, hang on to your own jugular.
I'm going to go deal with the guy who's got a little bit of a sunburn.
This is what we're doing, right?
And I'm not saying that you have to confront your family in any way, shape, or form on this issue.
But then, don't debate.
Or don't feel frustrated when it goes this kind of way, where you feel like you're in the defensive, and you feel like you're constantly having to justify, and you feel like everything's falling, and your ground is not steady under your feet, and you feel like you're reeling backwards from blow after blow from people, because they've got a gun, people!
You're trying to negotiate with somebody who's got a gun.
Of course you're not going to feel that confident.
Of course you're not going to feel like you're winning.
I wouldn't. I mean, who would?
First, put down the gun, and then we talk.
Maybe that should be the slogan for free-domain radio.
Put down the gun, then we'll talk.
But as long as you've got the gun up, you know, I don't really see how the talking is going to do us a whole lot of good.
So, I sort of wanted to mention this as something that might be helpful to you, just to constantly have to remind yourself.
Where's the gun? Where's the gun?
Am I free to disagree? What happens if I disagree?
Am I going to get shot if I disagree?
What's the reality of the situation?
Where's the gun? Where's the gun? Is it behind me?
Is it my temple? Is it under the table?
Where's the gun? Where's the gun?
Am I free to disagree?
And if I'm free to disagree, then I'm free not to fund what I disagree with.
Obviously! And if I'm not free to...
If I'm forced to fund what I disagree with, then it's not a debate.
See, it's the simplest way to win any argument with statists or with those who advocate the use of violence.
Am I free to disagree?
Great. Then we're in agreement and we're in a DRO model.
Am I not free to disagree?
Then I'm not going to debate you because I'm not going to provide a certain civility to something which is not at all civil.
I'm not going to cover up the crime of pointing a gun at my head by pretending to debate.
It's efficient, efficient, efficient, people.
Recognition of basic truths is always very efficient.
And so don't waste time with people who have a gun in the room.
And don't provide the moral sanction, the moral approval of pretending to debate when there's a gun in the room.
Say, hey, gun in the room.
I'm not going to talk to you because you've got a gun.
So I'm not going to pretend to debate with you.
It's really very, very simple.
And it's something that we don't feel very comfortable doing because it's explosive, right?
I mean, once you say to your dad, hey, so if I disagree with you, you want me shot?
A lot of times that's a little bit of tension over the old family dinner for a little while.
But, you know...
Don't debate them, right?
I'm not saying you have to do any of this, but if you're going to get into these debates, don't dishonor the rest of us, and don't dishonor debating and rationality by pretending there's no gun in the room.
Just say, oh, gun in the room, don't debate this stuff.
I don't debate with people who have gun in the room.
We can talk about the weather. Thank you so much for listening.
I hope that this was helpful to you.
I look forward to donations.
I look forward to people signing up for FeedBurner.
I also look forward to people filling out the listener, excuse me, the listener survey.
And I will talk to you soon.
And thanks so much for the people who enjoyed Podcast 300.
We had a blast, too. All the best.
Wait, wait! I'm not done yet.
I'm not done. Don't you go anywhere.
I know, I know.
You were thinking that I was done.
And, you know, based on the evidence of a couple hundred podcasts, I would say that you were probably right.
But I wanted to add one little tiny detail about all of this, which I think is interesting.
Just sort of goes to show, at least to my way of thinking.
How little people are actually talking about the state when they're supposedly talking about the state, but in fact talking about family.
So this is a theory.
I'm not going to say that there's empirical evidence for it, unlike absolutely everything else that I've said pretty much ever.
But this is a way of looking at political discussions that I hope will be useful to you.
And I'm just on my way home from the gym and talking about this with Christina.
So I thought it might be worth tacking on just a little bit more insight into this miasma of complex interfamilial relationships.
So this gentleman's father...
He also talks about his fear of immigration.
This is very often associated with pro-military, this fear of immigration, that unfettered immigration is going to end up with a balkanized kind of society where all of these different groups are going to be doing all these different things and they can't all step in line and everyone's going to have different opinions and the country's going to fragment and the country's going to disintegrate into its component atoms.
Now, I'll tell you what I think about this from a psychological standpoint.
These ideas are too passionate for somebody to have...
It can't be deep study that has produced the passion in these ideas, because this doesn't sound like a deeply studied man.
And so I'll tell you what I think is going on, and you can tell me if you think it's true or hooey or somewhere in between.
Well, the fear of immigration resulting in balkanization, resulting in the disintegration of the country, is a very common fear.
And if you trace it to its root cause psychologically in the realm of politics, the fear is the fear of being outvoted.
That's really what people are afraid of when they're talking about immigration.
What the whiteys are saying is, well, we control the government as it stands— The government has gotten so powerful that if we lose control of the government as a waspy, whitey Jewish community, we're toast.
And we really don't want to lose control of the government, and so we're going to resist immigration.
Now, if, you know, a couple of million Swedes wanted to move over, probably people would say, well, that's not too bad, some Swiss, some British, and so on.
Oh, that wouldn't be so bad, right?
But it's all these non-WASPs that want to come over and have children, and, you know, look at the whites, breeding raiders down, and all this kind of stuff.
Well, Basically, it's a fear that foreigners with opposing ideas are going to come in, and they're going to outvote the Whiteys, the founders, the people who have been here at least one generation, right?
That's the definition of an American.
And... That is going to be a terrible thing, right?
So having created this terrifying power of the government, which is not, of course, immigrants' fault, right?
Potential immigrants. It's not their fault that there's this huge American government and all this power.
That's true the world over. It's not just specific to American governments, all governments.
People are afraid of immigration because they're afraid of being outvoted.
That's what it comes down to. It comes right down to the bottom of it.
Now, that's sort of what the fear is in terms of the way it translates from a sort of deeper psychological thing to something around politics.
What is really going on here, though, in my humble opinion, is that the father was a tough-minded father when this gentleman was younger, right?
This guy who wrote me the letter.
His father was tough when he was younger and was an absolutist and do as I say and this is the way it is and obviously has not developed any curiosity and didn't have a whole lot to begin with.
The fear of being outvoted by newcomers, psychologically speaking, is the fear that aging patriarchs have of younger sons.
Psychologically, this is what happens.
If you take patriarchy as a state, immigrants then become a proxy for the next generation.
Being outvoted by immigrants becomes a metaphor within the elder patriarch's mind of the waxing power of the sun, both economically and physically and emotionally and so on, relative to the declining powers of the elder patriarch.
It's the sort of kingly situation.
So this is sort of why it's so, I think, important to understand how little political talk has anything to do with politics.
So what this elder patriarch is saying to his son is, you are getting more powerful.
I am getting less powerful in the equation.
It doesn't really matter how old the son is.
It could be 20 and 40 for the son and the father.
Still, the son is physically more vital and more curious, obviously, intellectually, than the father.
And so we have this situation where the father is saying to the son, your power is going to outgrow mine, and I can't handle that.
The reason that I can't handle that is because I abused my power.
This is the landmines in the future that corruption in the present always lay.
You're going to get payback.
You're going to get payback.
This is the great fear of those who do wrong, especially those who do wrong to children.
That payback is going to occur.
So if when you're a father to young children, it could be a mother and it could be older children, let's say a father to young children, you say, do it this way.
I don't want to talk about it.
I don't want to lip back. You just do it this way.
This is the way it is. God damn it.
However, it could be in a much more sophisticated manner, but basically you do what I tell you to do.
And why? Because I have the power.
I mean, that's really all that comes from. Virtue is not telling children what to do, but helping them to learn what to do.
So you say, I have the power, and I'm going to make you do what I want you to do, goddammit.
You obey me, because I have the power.
Now, the problem with that is that in life, the power gets reversed.
Life is a circle.
It's a big circle, right? So when you're towering over your toddlers as a virile, strapping father in his prime, yeah, you've got all the power in the world.
Absolutely. But you know what?
It kind of changes a little bit later in life.
A little bit later in life, and this is sort of the Cats in the Cradle song, right?
A little bit later in life, Things turn around just a little bit.
Later in life, the father becomes, the elder father becomes more needy, becomes more dependent, becomes more helpless, becomes more, he requires more resources.
And he, in his unconscious, fully and totally and completely remembers how he used his power when he had his power.
Did he use his power as a father, benevolently and kindly and with wisdom, or did he use his power In one or another form of abusive control and dominance and do it like I tell you to do it, goddammit, in one form or another.
Now, if he used his power benevolently and wisely, then he is going to feel confident that virtue will be repaid with virtue, which I believe is pretty constant in human nature.
And so when he gets older, he's not going to fear...
As much the decline of his own powers relative to the next generations, relative to his sons and daughters.
Because their increasing power does not represent increasing risk to him.
Because he did not abuse his power, so he doesn't have the association of a disparity in power breeds abuse on the part of the most powerful.
Because if he does have that, like if he did abuse his power, and as he ages then, he is going to feel that the increase in power that his sons have is going to cause them to act in an abusive and peremptory manner to him.
Now, he can't take that because he became addicted to power because of his false self and so on.
So this guy, in talking about the military, is trying to be tough, and the military is a stand-in for his own fading masculinity and his own fading power.
So he's got to talk about, you know, the military.
And of course, it's got nothing to do with the military.
Nothing to do with the military at all.
Fathers and sons fighting, it's all about the father's corruption.
It's all about the fear, especially as the father's age.
It's all about the fear that the father has, which is like, well, I taught you how to act when you had the upper hand.
And now, because I'm aging, you're getting the upper hand.
So as we treat people when we are fathers, so they will treat us differently.
When we are helpless. When we are old men.
And this is what's occurring within this conversation.
And of course, this is another reason why this conversation can't go anywhere.
Because nobody's talking about politics.
Nobody's talking about philosophy.
Nobody's talking about the military.
This guy says, without central authority and violence, everything fragments.
So without me as the father telling you what to do, the whole family would have fallen apart.
I mean, this is what's being talked about.
This is the level of debate that's occurring.
And I'm fairly sure of this, but of course, if you think otherwise, be sure to let me know.
I'm certainly happy to, and of course, if you're the gentleman who sent me the email, keep me posted, and also let me know a little bit about how you were raised.
That would be helpful, and I promise not to reveal that your name is in fact Sally.
So, thanks so much.
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