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June 29, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
36:05
305 Anger or Compassion?

Some thoughts on the appropriateness of anger in debates

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Good morning, everybody.
Hope you're doing well. It's Steph.
It's the 29th of June 2006, and I will give you an idea just how shallow I can be in terms of meaningless statistics.
The board is doing fine.
We have 151 members.
Welcome to the fine lady who is our newest member.
I've IM'd with her from time to time, and she has finally decided to pop up.
Like a geyser of intellectual activity on the board.
Thank you for joining.
Obviously, we appreciate your input and welcome aboard.
So, this is how shallow I can be around the numbers.
So, we've had great and steady increases in visits to Free Domain Radio.
Since we started, basically started in early March.
And this month is a short month.
And the numbers have been sort of escalating fairly rapidly.
And I wanted the numbers to continue to escalate to the same degree they did last month, even though this month is a short month.
And also because I've been quite busy and taken vacation, I haven't spent as much time sending out the endless stream of invitation emails that I do to invite people to come to Freedom Made Radio.
So not only did I polish off a Lou Rockwell article last night, or hopefully a Lou Rockwell article last night, but I also spent a whole bunch of time sending out emails where I should have been mowing the lawn.
And why? Why did it have to be done last night?
Because I wanted to raise the numbers for this month!
It's very funny. Just how you measure these things sometimes in your head and then you feel like you have a goal and you've just got to get there.
Freedom is a hard thing to maintain sometimes in the face of vanity statistics.
I thought you might enjoy that little tidbit.
And also thanks to, I got a private message, which I'm going to make massively public with the person's name involved.
I got a private message yesterday, and it had to do with appreciation.
And it came from a lady, and so I think this is interesting just for those who are interested in roping in the fairer sex to the freedom movement, which of course is key, because the hand that rocks the cradle does rule the world.
And at the moment, the hand that rocks the cradle is delicate and feminine.
And she said that she appreciated that I talked about my own limitations and problems and struggles with freedom and that I wasn't sort of coming across as one of these Randian heroes Who are made of iron and do never falter and sadly have the sense of humors of Greek statues and that she appreciated that it was communicated that the goal for personal freedom and so on was communicated as a struggle.
And as a sort of joyous combat with the false self and something that was not...
You're not sort of born with this iron soul of integrity in the Howard Rockian model or the John Galtian model.
And that it is an exciting and challenging struggle and the greatest thing that you can do for the soul of yourself and for humanity as a whole to set yourself free...
And that it is not something that is a rigorous and purely intellectual exercise, but is a rather exciting grappling battle at times, and at times a very relaxing and sort of bubble bath enjoyment of freedom, but that it is a seesaw and a struggle at times, and that even those of us who've been working at it for a long time have their stumbles and challenges.
And I think that's very important, because that's the truth.
I mean, that is the truth about what it is to become free.
So, I'd like to talk this morning because I've sort of noticed that I've been somewhat yelly over the past two podcasts, and I don't have any problem with that, of course.
I think that the topics were worthy of a few extra decibels, and I sort of wanted to, obviously...
I'm not yelling at anyone.
I'm yelling at false selves that are dangerous.
And if you see somebody trapped in a burning house and you yell at them in a sort of energy and enthusiasm, I guess you could say, say, you yell at them to get up and get out of the house at the same time as you're trying to tear the burning door from its hinges and cast it aside and you're coughing from the smoke and you're trying to save them, you're going to feel some anger at the flames, but the person trapped inside is why you're doing it all.
I mean, that's a sort of metaphor that might be helpful just in terms of approaching your own temper and also your own communication that may be...
Let's just say a little energetic, as mine is sometimes, that when you are trying to save a soul from the grip of a false self or a false morality or an illusion or the cult of modernity, then you can get energetic, right?
It means something. It means something to go in and try and save a soul.
It means something.
And you don't always save a soul by patiently listening and explaining.
Because sometimes the soul is in an extremity.
And sometimes you need to tear doors off their hinges, verbally, mentally, however you want to put it.
Not literally.
Well, you know that. What are you talking to?
The smartest group in the universe?
Of course you know that. But it's okay to throw some energy in.
And the reason that I remember this, and one of the ways that I learned this, when I myself was in therapy, With a woman who was very well tuned to the subtext of emotional discourse and taught me an enormous amount, my therapist, she taught me an enormous amount about understanding and listening to the subtext of emotional communications.
Because prior to that, every time that I would be in a conversation with someone and I would feel irritation or anger at the way that I was being treated, I would always default to this position that I felt Was noble and taking the high road and reaching out to hands across the water,
all that nonsense. And I would increase my sort of fixed-grin benevolence to that person because I thought that it was immature of me to get angry.
Because I grew up in England and went to boarding school, as you know, and some of my family.
I was never allowed to get angry, and my brother is very much of the...
Passive-aggressive, take the high road and show the person what a really virtuous person looks like by never getting angry.
And every time they mistreat you, you treat them better in this Buddhist passive-aggressive way.
I mean, that's so common in the culture.
It's part of what Nietzsche calls the slave morality.
And I'd like to talk a little bit more about Nietzsche's definitions of morality and to master and slave morality.
Absolutely fascinating.
Doesn't teach you a damn thing about ethics, but it sure does teach you some of the motivations for ethics, which is very important to understand as well.
So I would always try and, quote, take the high road and be nicer to the people than they were to me and suppress my own irritation as an immature response that was problematic and based on my own inadequacies.
And I remember once with my therapist, this is after I'd been going to therapy for about...
I think eight months.
And I was going twice a week for hour and a half sessions each time.
And I was doing homework like you wouldn't believe, like an hour or two of writing every night and introspection.
And I was really, really working at this because I knew that I needed to change my life.
And I knew that I needed to have more integrity, but I was not able to achieve it by thinking about it.
Rereading the Fountainhead wasn't doing it for me.
Because I was acting in a way that contradicted my values, and I didn't understand this until much later in therapy.
I was acting in a way that contradicted my values.
I valued honesty, truth, integrity, all the goodies, and yet I had lunch with my mother.
When my father flew over, I would see him, and I was embedded in a business relationship and a personal relationship with my brother, who I did not respect in these areas.
And I was in a romantic relationship with a woman that, It was not working the way that I felt deep down.
I could be in a relationship and have it work.
And I just knew, I knew, I knew, I knew, and my unconscious was giving me very clear signals that my life had to change, but that I had to change first, and I had to change my mental attitudes, and I had to let go of this idea that thinking would catapult me into a life of virtue, that simply thinking about virtue would make me virtuous.
It wasn't the case at all.
I had to act virtuous in order to become virtuous.
Not just think about virtue and argue with people about virtue.
I actually had to do what I criticized other people for not doing.
This is sort of the core hypocrisy.
And I say this with all gentleness to myself because I was struggling with the knowledge that I had.
And it's hard to invent the whole wheel, the whole car, the whole road system, the whole whatever...
The whole gasoline distribution system, the whole thing for a new sort of system of mental transportation.
It's a little tough to invent all that at once, so I was doing the best that I could with the knowledge that I had, and I certainly wasn't corrupting anyone, and I certainly wasn't harming anyone, I guess except myself, by having these disparate ideas about virtue which I wasn't putting into practice.
idea that not only were my ideas absolute, but I also had to change people in my life in order to become free, rather than just offer them the chance to explore these ideas with me, or if they were opposed and going to undermine this exploration, to invite them to be elsewhere other than in my or if they were opposed and going to undermine this exploration,
That really wasn't a possibility for me, because of course, I'd also imbibed all the usual crap about family is everything, and you've got to be close to your family, and if you don't see your parents, when they die, you're going to feel such regret, and all of this stuff that is just out there that's just total nonsense.
It's Total nonsense spewed out by people who have corrupted others and who wish to receive the benefits of virtue, despite the fact that they are not virtuous.
They put out all this other stuff.
And so this particular idea or approach that I was taking was entirely false, not consistent with my values.
And so the values became...
My true self yearned to be free.
And my true self, buried in my unconscious, was entirely bisected by my false self.
So I had aspects of my conscious mind which were very interested in integrity.
And then there was my true self, which was the emotional integrity that I really needed, because you can't think through everything intellectually.
In order to live, it doesn't work.
It's like trying to pedal a jumbo jet.
You'll move, but not very fast, right?
And you'll be working very hard, right?
But there's just a mix of metaphors in the unconscious of the jet engines, which will cause you to fly.
And you're out there pushing the jumbo jet, maybe you'll make it rock a little bit, but you're going to spend a lot of sweat because you're using the wrong tools for the wrong things if you're trying to think through everything in life, rather than getting your emotions in line with your values, which require that you change your life and change what you do.
So, when it came to getting everything in line, I had to give up the idea that my conscious mind controlled everything and listened more to my unconscious, which told me very clearly what I needed to do, which was to get the corrupt people out of my life.
I was very quick with that particular process because I'd already spent half a dozen or a dozen years or more with some people talking to them about freedom and liberty and so on.
So I didn't really need to sit down with them and say, oh, listen, by the way...
I'd like to talk to you about freedom.
It's very important to me. These values are very important to me.
I'm trying to live my life according to consistent and rational values.
And I cherish and love and feel very passionate about this aspect of my life.
So I need you to join me on this journey, or at least not oppose me.
At least not every time I talk about it, tell me that I'm wrong, to be patient and condescending or hostile or denigrating with me because that's really painful to me.
I'd already gone through this conversation for half a dozen or a dozen or more years with some people, and so I knew what they were going to do.
And I did not feel that it was going to be a good thing to do to say to them, you need to join me on this journey or I'm going to dump you from my life.
I don't think that those kind of threats actually work.
I think that they will force compliance, but then you're really hosed.
If you don't make those kinds of threats, I think in relationships, you just make your decisions based on the history that you have with that relationship, with that person in that relationship.
So these kinds of end games where it's sudden death and you do it or I'm out of here, Well, one of two things is going to happen.
Either the person then says, fine, go.
In which case, maybe it's a guy thing.
I just think that's kind of humiliating that they have then made the decision.
The whole point of ethics is that you get to make decisions about things.
And the whole point of philosophy is you get to make intelligent decisions about things.
And so if you say to someone, join me on this journey, or I'm not going to see you anymore, and they then turn around and say, fine, I think you're an idiot, go.
Well, you really haven't made a decision.
You've put forward a proposition, the other person has rejected the proposition, and you, and now you're gone, but you're left with the kind of taste that you didn't make a decision, which is a little bit...
I think it feels a little bit humiliating, and I'm certainly willing to go with that.
I guess the end result is the same, but you haven't made the decision, and so I don't think you've strengthened your own ethical nature by putting the decision out to people who you know are corrupt.
Should we have a relationship is something you decide, not something other people decide.
So from that standpoint, I don't think it works.
And the other thing, too, is if the other person then says, Oh, you know, I didn't really get how great philosophy was, but now that you're threatening me...
I think it's great.
Their emotions aren't going to change because you threaten them, right?
Any more than an abused wife's emotions of love grow towards her husband when he threatens and abuses her.
It doesn't really work, right? So, I mean, force or threats don't work unless somebody's openly aggressing against you and you're just trying to get out of an immediate situation.
So, I just never felt in my life that sitting down with people and saying, you better respect what it is that I'm doing and who I am, or I'm not going to see you anymore.
Because if the person then did decide to comply, I was totally hosed.
So, let's say I'd sit down with my brother and I'd said, oh, you know, you really need to respect my journey.
Well, first of all, you can't demand respect.
You can demand anything from anyone other than sort of a justice.
Because demanding respect from someone is like trying to make a rose grow by yanking it up.
It just pulls it out and dies, right?
I mean, it doesn't work. But if I'd said to him, I need you to respect, he'd be like, wow, you know, now that you've been really honest with me and now I understand how important it is for you, I absolutely will respect what it is that you're doing.
Right? So he's now put this out there that he's going to respect what it is that I'm doing.
But of course, I know that he's not because I've been talking with the guy for 35 years or 30 years and he didn't respect what it is that I was doing in the pursuit that I was underway in.
Oh, what a weird... Okay, just straighten that out in your own mind.
If you don't mind, I'm afraid of circling back because I'm going to lose my thread.
Oh, did I lose my thread? No.
Because he hasn't been doing it for 30, 35 years and he's not going to change just because I threatened him.
But now we're in a situation where how do I honorably get out of the situation now?
Well, I've already said to someone, if you change, I will stay.
And they've said, yes, I will change.
So now I can't just say, you know what, I'm going to leave anyway.
Because then they're going to say, well, what the hell was the point of all of that?
And they'll justly get angry at you.
And sure, the end result will be the same, but it's just not going to be as emotionally, there's not going to be as much emotional closure.
And so, if they then say, well, I'm going to change and I'm going to conform and respect your ideas more and respect your thinking more and learn more about what is important to you, then they're going to go about that in a really manipulative and annoying way.
So they'll nod and they'll smile and they'll pretend to be interested, but the moment you turn around, they'll roll their eyes.
All the passive-aggressive stuff in the world that you can imagine will occur.
If you've sort of forced their hand and bullied them into being more respectful of you or whatever, then they will to your face.
But you won't feel satisfied with that interaction.
But the interaction on paper will look like or sound like or that they're interested in what you're saying and that they've listened to you and they've changed.
But it won't connect with you at all emotionally because it's not actually occurring spontaneously and out of a genuine desire and curiosity on his or her part.
So now you're really stuck, right?
Because you said, well, if you don't show interest, I'm out of here.
And they're now sort of, quote, showing interest.
It's not true or real or valid or satisfying.
And now what are you going to do, right?
Now what are you going to say? Well, you're not showing interest.
Well, yes, I am. How can you tell me what it is that I'm doing?
Well, you won't get anywhere with that.
You're not going to find the interaction satisfying.
In fact, you're going to get more angry at it because it's going to be more manipulative, but you won't have anything to really fix your mark on, so to speak, to deal with it.
Then if you say, well, I'm still not satisfied, they'll say, well, obviously you're just not satisfied, and obviously there's nothing I can do to satisfy you, so why don't you just go?
And then they're making the same decision.
They're making the decision for you, which is not going to be satisfying, and it's not sort of the purpose of philosophy, it's not, I'm unhappy with my relationship with you, do you want...
To stay in a relationship with me.
That's not logical at all.
It's like phoning up a store and saying, this vacuum cleaner I bought doesn't work and burns my carpet and explodes and took off my little finger.
Do you want me to return it?
It doesn't make any sense.
It's your decision to make.
You're the one who's involved in the interaction.
So, all of that sort of having been said, I'll get back to the topic I was going to start with, which is the question of when is anger appropriate in a relationship?
When is anger appropriate in an interaction?
So, sort of back to the burning building metaphor.
If somebody has an avenue to get out that you can figure out and that you can communicate to them...
About how to get out of the burning building.
You don't have to rip the door off and all that, right?
To extend the metaphor, you have one of those big pillowy things, those mega air mattresses outside the window.
You can sort of say, jump from the window, we got you, whatever, right?
If you can talk them out, then you might have some urgency but no anger.
It all comes down to how somebody processes the experience of doubt.
How does somebody process the experience of doubt?
Because doubt is a true self phenomenon, right?
Doubt is the opposite. The false self is totally sure of everything.
The false self is a total know-it-all.
The false self always tries to shift the onus of proof to other people.
The false self will always sit back skeptically and shoot down everything that other people say.
And the false self is designed to not experience doubt.
And of course, the false self exists because of an excess of doubt that That has been inflicted on the true self.
This is the scar tissue that forms where you become a know-it-all, right?
When you don't have any self-esteem and you don't have the ego strength to deal with ambiguity and doubt, which are two particular hallmarks of maturity and of a mature and responsible mind is to deal with ambiguity and to deal with doubt, right?
So, for instance, Ayn Rand, brilliant philosopher, a fantastic writer, could not deal with ambiguity to save her life.
She was a very polarized thinker.
It was either this or it was that.
There was no ambiguity in her particular way of processing things.
And for her characters, even like Hank Reardon, her transitional characters or The Wet Nurse, they transition themselves by thinking and reflecting on the intellectual content of philosophical theories.
They do not grow by crying or being unable to sleep or having breakdowns, which is all...
Throwing off the false self is really like wrestling with fog at times, with a kind of claustrophobic and poisonous fog that interferes with your ability to breathe, and it really is a fight to the death, and it really is a cosmic battle of the first order.
Ayn Rand couldn't deal with ambiguity with transition.
And you could see this very much reflected in her personal life, this sort of tyrannical approach to her personal relationships where she got to judge.
And you're either good if you agreed with her or evil if you didn't.
And don't worry.
I've been tempted. Don't get me wrong.
I just don't think I can enforce it yet.
But, you know, the moment I can.
Oh boy, the kangaroo courts are firing up, baby!
So, the ability to deal with...
And then this is sort of what people get from Ayn Rand, that she's brilliant, but there's a certain childish and tyrannical aspect that's probably an insult to children, but there is a polarized and tyrannical aspect to her personality that was never particularly warm, curious, forgiving, open, and so on. She just had a lot of the old...
Old Testament rage to her in that aspect of dealing with people who conformed or didn't conform.
There was a certain narcissistic absolutism, black and white, to her.
And, I mean, I certainly believe in black and white.
I'm not a gray guy, but I also believe in gray.
I believe in transitions. I know, because I've experienced them.
No one else in the world may experience them, but I sure do, so they definitely exist, right?
So, the question is, how do people that you're Debating with or having conversations with about freedom.
And this doesn't have to be about the minimum wage.
It can be about the value of family.
Is it independent of their actions towards you?
Do you judge family differently than you judge everyone else?
If so, why?
If not, why not? And so on.
Or anything that you're passionate about in terms of anything that you're talking about.
It can be which stamp is the most valuable, if you have a stamp collector, whatever it is.
If somebody puts forward the proposition that, you know, for instance, this new lady who posted had the question with a law student about the poor, you know, we should abolish government, and of course the question comes back, well, what about the poor?
How are the poor going to be taken care of?
And if you, you know, one of the responses you can come with, there's dozens of them, but one of the responses that you can come with, and you just feel your way towards which is the right one, that's just an instinctual thing.
Can't reason that out, you've got to go with your gut.
You can say, well, how well are the poor going to do when the state becomes bankrupt?
So the poor have been lured into a state of dependency upon the government, and they have not put in their own job skill development, they've not figured out...
People have made really bad decisions vis-a-vis families and children based on the existence of the welfare state.
All of these people dependent on the welfare state have had too many children because of the welfare state, who are not educated.
Because the welfare state exists, well, what's going to happen to these people when the government goes bankrupt?
I mean, are they going to do well or not, right?
Or basically, are they going to be in a whole lot more trouble than they would have been if the welfare state had never existed and they had to rely on charity?
Well, obviously, it's going to be a complete disaster for the poor when the government becomes bankrupt.
Now, that's something which they may not have thought of.
In fact, I guarantee you that they probably, unless they are libertarians, in which case you're probably not having this debate, they haven't really thought about that.
For them, the government is like God, right?
I mean, and this is true on so many levels, right?
The government is like God in that it's just there.
It's permanent. It's eternal.
It's benevolent. This is why you have to deal with the issue of God if you're a libertarian.
It's used so much to justify secular power.
I mean, the whole purpose of religion is to justify secular power.
So, you just can't get by this particularly in the U.S., right?
But for them, the government is just like God.
It's there and it's just perpetual and eternal and omniscient and benevolent and so on.
And so... When you say to someone, well, the government's going to become bankrupt, you see, so how are the poor going to be helped?
Let's just say that they are helped now.
What happens when the government becomes bankrupt?
Now, if they then say, bah, forget it, the government's never going to become bankrupt, that's a ridiculous conspiracy theory.
Well, this is a very interesting thing.
So they have said to you, the government helps the poor, the government is good for the poor, we can never transition out of the government, right?
I mean, that may be a phrase that's useful.
It's just sort of struck me now. Sort of transition out of the government rather than let's just get rid of the government because it sounds like you're going to...
But transition gently out of the government, right?
We're never going to wake up and it's all gone one day, but you have to have the goal of transitioning out of it.
And if you then say, well, what happens when the government runs out of money?
And they say, oh, that's never going to happen.
Well, that's irritating to me.
I mean, that would irritate me, just sort of putting myself in the shoes of somebody who's debating like that.
I would find that irritating.
And why? Because the person's a know-it-all.
And the person is not interested in debating.
They're just bullying and dominating you with unthought-out and emotionally explosively communicated opinions, right?
This is not somebody who's interested in exploring the truth, right?
Because somebody who's interested in exploring the truth may absolutely believe, based on all the propaganda they've ever received, they may absolutely believe that the government helps the poor, and without the welfare state, the poor would be in terrible shape, right?
And And so they may believe that, and that may be based on their honest pursuit of truth.
They just happen to have only read 99.9% of what is written about the state and not the 0.1% that we're all trying to expand here.
So they genuinely believe that the welfare state helps the poor.
Now, they probably haven't connected the fact that, say, almost all Western governments, we'll talk about the U.S., is over $8 trillion in debt, $110,000 of debt per household of four, I mean, sort of, per four, so $35,000 per person.
Well, they may...
If they feel that these two things are not connected, you're sort of making this connection for them, right?
If they believe that helping the poor is important, then having the poor become dependent upon the welfare state and then having that welfare state vanish is not good.
It's not good. It's not going to be good for the poor at all.
And this is probably a new fact for them, right?
I would assume it's a new fact.
And so what I would do, if somebody made a connection that I hadn't made before, Is to say, well, that's really interesting.
I hadn't thought of that before.
Tell me more. I can certainly see that that would be a problem.
If the government becomes bankrupt, then for sure the poor are going to be in a deep load of doo-doo, technically speaking.
So that would be an honest response.
But if their response is, ah, the government's never going to become bankrupt, well then, of course, the next question you can ask them is, oh, well that's interesting.
Perhaps you can tell me which government programs get cut in order to pay for the national debt, in order to pay it off, right?
And then they're going to say, well, I'd cut a little bit of foreign aid and say, well, you're not even making a dent, right?
For instance, the The entire budget of the Department of Education for the entire country of the United States is $60 billion a year.
The interest payments on the debt alone are over $400 billion.
And so you could cut all of education.
It's not going to make a difference. And if they don't know, if they don't know, Then it's okay to get even more irritated at them, right?
So if you say to someone, let's transition out of the government, they say, well, we can't because the poor are helped.
It's like, well, how are the poor helped if the government goes bankrupt?
The government's not going to go bankrupt.
Okay, well, you obviously have a plan about how to deal with the government debt.
Perhaps you would like to share that with me so that I can understand.
I would sure love to believe that the government wasn't about to go bankrupt or within the next generation.
Because that would give us just a little bit more time to get the word out, so perhaps you could help me, since you've worked out this, you obviously believe that the government is never going to become bankrupt, and you've obviously worked this out, so perhaps you could share it with me.
And if the person just says, oh, it's just never, don't worry about it, it's never going to go bankrupt, they're never going to let it happen.
Then you can say, well, why do you believe that?
How do you know that? Why do you believe that?
And you'll continue to ask them questions.
And if it turns out, and I guarantee you, virtually without exception, it will turn out that they don't have a freaking clue about anything.
They're just mouthing off platitudes designed to stop you from making them feel uncomfortable, frankly, about their families, but we don't have to get into that again.
But people, they're just mouthing stuff off.
They don't have a clue what they're talking about.
And yet, they're talking about things as if they know.
That's the thing that made Socrates angry, and I can certainly understand why.
Because somebody who says, oh, I have a solution for society's ailments, and it's called a continuation of an unsustainable situation, then they're really doing an enormous amount of damage to people, to society.
If you're going to put yourself forward as a doctor of social ailments, as somebody who's going to help cure society of its ailments, Then it really would, I think, be incumbent upon you to have a freaking clue what you're talking about.
This is what makes me angry when I talk about people like this.
And I think it's perfectly fine to get angry.
Because these people are very dangerous.
I mean, if you are out there setting yourself up as a doctor, and you have fake degrees on the wall, and you have a nice office, and you've faked your way through everything, and you're putting yourself forward as a doctor, And you don't have a clue what you're doing, and people come in to you and say, what should I do, doctor?
And you say, I don't know, rub two sticks together and sing Hail Mary.
Then they go off and do that, and then they die of whatever it was that they could have been cured of.
To me, that's an incredible act of hostility.
To put yourself forward as somebody who is knowledgeable about a solution, who can correctly diagnose and solve a problem of social ailments, and you don't actually have a clue what you're talking about, that's incredibly destructive.
It's these kinds of people who get dictatorships in and cause the deaths of lots and lots of people.
Hundreds of millions in the last century, as I may have mentioned once or twice.
And so it's a direct assault.
It's a direct assault for people to put themselves forward as experts in solving social problems, and they haven't thought about it one damn bit, and they don't have a clue what's going on, and they're just mouthing platitudes.
Well, stop that.
Don't do that.
That is incredibly destructive.
It's incredibly destructive.
Because you are causing people to continue to believe in a system that is going to destroy itself and take a lot of poor, sick, and old people with it.
I mean, these people who say that libertarians don't care about the poor, my God, there is nobody out there fighting more for the poor than libertarians, frankly.
We actually do give a rat's behind about the poor, because we, at least me, I don't want to see these people.
I mean, you want to see a real, social disaster of the first order.
You see all these people who've become addicted to state largesse and have made significant life decisions based on their imagination that it's going to continue forever.
What is going to happen to these people when the government runs out of money?
I see it perfectly clearly in my mind's eye the disaster that these people are going to experience when the state runs out of money.
The old, the sick, the poor.
The helpless. What is going to happen to them?
I see it totally clearly in my mind's eye, the disaster.
The sword that is hanging over the necks of these people, the disaster.
That, I mean, the house is burning.
The house is burning, and everyone's up there playing patty cake, and I'm saying, dudes, the house is burning.
Get the hell out! And there are all these other people who are phoning in, right?
The people who are having all these opinions aren't poor people.
They're not trapped in the burning house that's about to go down.
And they're all yelling up through the windows, don't worry, there's no fire, everything's totally fine.
And to me, I want these people to shut the hell up, because the house is on fire, and there are people who are at significant risk, significant risk.
Not just among themselves, but outside of that too.
When welfare runs out, there's going to be some unpleasantness.
There's going to be some significant unpleasantness.
It's going to make what happened after the Rodney King case look relatively tame, right?
So I don't want people to get shot.
I don't want people to riot.
I don't want looting to occur.
I don't want the poor neighborhoods to eat themselves and destroy what last remaining capital they have within their demands.
I don't want all of that to happen.
So transitioning out of the government is the only way that that can be avoided, right?
So, we care about the poor in a way that smug, self-satisfied, know-it-all idiots really don't have a clue about it, and they don't understand that by not acknowledging the danger that the poor are in, the degree to which they are harming the poor, and yet claiming to be these noble people only interested in helping the poor, is to me absolutely stomach-turning and quite enraging.
It makes me quite angry that people are out there shouting up to the poor who are stuck in a burning building, Oh, there's no fire.
Relax. There's no problem.
Just keep doing what you're doing.
Keep playing your patty cake.
Have a nap. No problem.
Everything's totally under control.
You're fine. Well, isn't that just a lot of hidden rage against the poor?
I mean, if somebody was doing that in front of a burning building, wouldn't you assume that they were just full of a lot of anger?
And so in my sort of particular approach to things, and we'll talk about it more this afternoon, anger is a perfectly appropriate response in the face of anger.
Because you treat people the best that you can the first time you meet them, and after that you treat them the way they treat you.
So if somebody has this enormous amount of hidden rage against the poor, that they want the poor to just keep doing what they're doing, despite the fact that the government is totally running out of money...
That's a lot of rage to the poor, right?
It's really going to screw the poor.
And if somebody is not open to hearing about that and to examining their own thoughts and motives, then they really are incredibly hostile towards the poor.
There's a lot of hatred and contempt in saying that the welfare state should continue.
There's a lot of destruction that's going to accrue to the poor when the government runs out of money, and not just to the poor.
So if somebody is a know-it-all and doesn't want to hear about that and responds in a contemptuous and aggressive manner to anybody pointing that out, then, well, I've got to say I think anger is an appropriate response, and we'll talk about why this afternoon.
Thank you so much for listening. Donations more than welcome.
Please come by and throw me some shekels.
I massively appreciate that.
You get for $50 a copy of The God of Atheists, which I think is a great book that I wrote, which goes into these sorts of ideas in a dramatic and I think quite funny form.
And for $100 you get the first couple of hours of it in audiobook as well as the novel itself.
For anything more than that you get a copy of Almost, which is my big historical work about two families from 1912 to 1940.
And anything more than that, I will come over and wax your car personally.
So thank you so much for listening.
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