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July 8, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
29:54
319 Tolerance and Statism

Helping our statist friends understand our view of tolerance

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Good afternoon, everybody.
Hope you're doing well. It's Steph. It is 1.45.
I have about half an hour before I go in for my massage.
Christina's just having her massage right now.
Great day. Woke up, had some breakfast, worked on the board for a bit, went to the gym, had a great workout, actually took a cardio class with Christina.
Because, you know, when it comes to health, given that women live seven or so years longer than men on average, I figure doing what the women do from time to time is not a bad idea.
And now Christina's gone in for her massage, and I've got one in about half an hour.
I just had some lunch, so I thought I'd have a little chit-chat with you and talk about something that was going on on the board at the moment.
We have some wonderful new entrants into the Free Domain Radio Board culture, up to 159 members.
And we have a new member Who is a friend of an existing member who is a statist.
So this is wonderful.
I absolutely and thoroughly and totally and completely appreciate and respect a statist coming in to have a chat with us.
And just as I absolutely respect a Christian coming in to have a chat with us.
Or a Marxist or a socialist or whoever.
Because we really can have some very productive conversations.
And by that I don't mean that we browbeat people.
These people into submission, or we act in some sort of way that is not friendly, but rather that we can explore what we have in common.
Because, you know, we really aren't that radical over here at the anarcho-capitalist side.
We're really not that radical.
All we're saying is, well, we're saying a couple of things, and I'll sort of mention them just for those who are coming on board.
I don't know if you've gone through all 300 million podcasts, but just in case you are jumping up to this one, We're sort of saying that if...
I mean, there's a logical argument which I've gone through before, but there's sort of a practical approach to it as well.
If we can run society without a government, then obviously it's less violent, it's less coercive, and from an economic standpoint...
It's less overhead. It's less expensive.
If we can find ways to get things done without this massive, bureaucratic, high-tax, high-debt, violent, unstable, explosive, warlike entity within society, surely that would be better.
I mean, nobody's going to say that you're going to buy that case.
Because if you think it's impossible, right, then we're probably not going to have that much to chat about.
But... But then you have to say that it's simply for pragmatic reasons, right?
There's no moral way that the government can be excused or justified.
But you could say, well, society would just be worse off without the government.
And then, of course, you have to explain why society tends to be better off with smaller governments than larger governments.
And you have to sort of explain how it is that society is better off when governments keep getting into wars and getting us into debt and Destroying the economic possibilities of future generations and raising taxes and being corrupt and causing foreign governments to stay corrupt or to become corrupt through coups.
You sort of have to explain how that is for the better of everyone.
And that's not the easiest thing in the world to do.
If you don't take the government for granted, which is sort of what we're all about here, let's just not take the government for granted.
There's no absolute reason or guarantee that the government is needed.
Just because it's been around forever, well, so had slavery, so had the subjugation of women and children.
So had the aristocracy, so had kings.
I mean, all of these things that we take for granted, we simply don't need to, right?
You need to start from first principles pretty much all the time.
Otherwise, you're simply continuing the eras and habits of previous generations.
And it's funny to me, in a way...
This is not meant as a dig.
I just generally think it's funny and curious.
And as a former statist myself, I don't put myself above this camp.
But it's kind of funny how...
I think we look back in history and we say, how could people have actually believed in slavery or the divine right of kings or...
The aristocracy or the draft.
How could people have believed in these things with all their heart?
And then when somebody says, which seems the natural progression, the next thing to do as far as the moral development of mankind goes, we've got a fairly good respect for property rights.
We've got a fairly good respect for universal human rights.
We've got some good foundations that weren't around before.
We're definitely progressing.
But if we can sort of do, and we got rid of slavery for the most part, you know, we've gotten rid of the enslavement of children, and women have property rights, get entered into contracts, all these good things.
And I personally don't think we're done.
Obviously the world is in a bit too much of a mess to say that we're done.
But if we can do it, it seems to just be a logical thing to do.
Let's try and see if we can't structure society without a government.
That would be the next thing. And we look back in history and say, how could people who really have believed, how could they have said that slavery is Christian and moral with a straight face?
Well, exactly the same way that people say we need the state, with a straight face.
I mean, it's exactly the same principle.
And so we really have a lot in common with those in the past who believed in these crazy things, because we believe in a lot of crazy things here too as well.
And we should really sort of understand that we're not that far off from the people who believed all these nutty things in the past.
Now, we did get somebody new on the board who is, as I mentioned, a friend of somebody who's been a long-time member and a very productive and a positive member.
And this friend said, I did get a slight whiff of condescension in the post.
It could just be me. But he said, A, I don't want any of you people dead.
Because I guess his friend had been saying to him, well, if you're into the government, then you want us dead, right?
In the same way that we legitimately can say to people who believe in the Old Testament that, you know, you kind of want unbelievers to be killed.
Even if you don't subscribe to that belief personally, you're subscribed to the body of belief of which that is a part.
And that's sort of one of the reasons why we have a couple of problems with the old religious folks, because the genocide of unbelievers is not really that good, right?
I mean, Nazism might be a philosophy where therein are some good things.
We believe in the education of the children and physical exercise.
But a Jew might be forgiven for having some problems with Nazis.
A black might be forgiven for having some problems with the KKK. And atheists might be forgiven for having some problem with religious people whose central primary and God-given text calls for our slaughter, and even if that slaughter is not achieved, sends us to hell for eternity, which seems a little on the cold side, I guess you could say, or hot side.
But this gentleman came in and he said, he said a whole bunch of things, but he said basically his argument was, and you may have heard this argument from people before, he said, I don't want you dead.
And I respect our right to agree to disagree.
I demand, not demand, but I sort of think it's an important principle to be able to agree to disagree.
And I think it's kind of culty for you to say, if you do say, and he hadn't verified this, but I'm sure he understands the general argument enough to be convinced of this.
It's kind of culty for you to say, if I don't agree with you, Then I'm not going to talk to you.
In other words, just surround yourselves only with like-minded people with the same kind of beliefs, and this is considered to be culty and sort of emotionally immature, and you can't handle differences and so on.
And I think that's an absolutely fascinating thing for a statist to say.
And so I'll sort of respond to that on two levels.
The first one, which I posted on the board, was a pretty simple one, which says, well, if you don't want us dead, then we're on the same page and we can pursue truth with joy and brotherhood and happiness and connection and all this kind of thing.
And, you know, we're absolutely on the same page if you don't want us dead.
Because, of course, one of the things that I have a minor problem with with the government is the fact that if I don't obey these particular people who claim to be my masters, then they're going to shoot me, right?
I mean, if I don't pay my taxes, then I get a letter, I get another letter, and then people come to my house, and if I defend against them using force like any other home invaders, then they're going to gun me down and bury me, I guess, in a bad part of the graveyard.
So, if this person doesn't want me killed, it's a little hard to understand how you can be a statist and not want other people killed.
I mean, that's sort of the fundamental issue that we have as anarchists around people who believe in the virtue or the right of the state to use violence against the peaceful.
Because the state is all about the initiation of violence.
I've never attacked. An IRS agent or a policeman, but they can attack me based on the whim of a bunch of politicians, and they are sort of the hired goons that go around enforcing 50% or 60% taxation that I pay, all the regulations, and so on.
And raise the price, of course, of everything that I buy through crazy regulations designed to protect monopolistic friends, and so on.
And so, if this gentleman openly says, I don't want any of you killed, then it's hard to understand how he can remain a statist, because the state is all about killing people who disagree.
So, that's sort of the first thing I said.
Well, if you don't want us dead, then you absolutely are going to defend our right to disobey the government, to not pay taxes, to not support the war in Iraq, or whatever it is that we find morally abhorrent, to not support the welfare state if we feel that it is destructive to the poor.
To not support the military if we feel that that is destructive to other people's lives and our own security.
To not support the educational system if we feel that it is destructive to children's minds.
To not support the war on the drugs if we feel it is destructive towards the personal liberties of others.
Then he and all of us who are on the anarchist side are completely on the same page.
Then he obviously has a contradiction in his beliefs though if he wants to hold that the existence of the government is morally justified.
And yet he doesn't want people killed who disagree with the government.
So I assume that since he says not that I believe in the post, he says not that I believe in the moral value of government, but I don't want you people to get killed.
So obviously he's not a statist from that standpoint.
So I'm looking forward to his response to that, but I think that should clear things up quite a bit.
And then he goes on quite a long bit in the post, which I respect and fully agree with.
Which is that we should not be intolerant of those who disagree with us.
Well, of course we should not be intolerant of those who disagree with us.
Disagreement is a fundamentally valuable aspect of human relations.
Disagreement is where we get progress.
Disagreement is how the species moves up the rungs of ladder towards wisdom and benevolence.
Disagreement is absolutely crucial.
In every human relationship, because where there isn't disagreement, there's usually a good reason for it, which is usually almost always physical force or emotional bullying.
So since he is very keen on preserving the right to disagree, then it's also hard to understand how he is a statist.
And the reason that it's hard to understand how he's a statist if he believes that it's very important to preserve the right to disagree is if you disagree with the state, well, as I mentioned before, you tend to get gunned down and buried in a bad part of the graveyard.
So it's sort of hard for him to say, well, I think that it's very important that we all be tolerant and allow people to disagree with us and to not only associate with those who agree with us and to not enforce our views on others and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
I'm not sure where he's coming from in this in regards to statism.
But it would seem to me that the state is kind of fundamentally a violent organization that if you disagree with it, it will gun you down.
And so when we oppose the state or the moral valuation of the state, or we say that the state is completely unethical, we are actually defending the right to disagree.
I mean, the state is just an enormous torture chamber and slaughterhouse for those who disagree with the state.
So if you happen to agree with the state, then it all looks nice and hunky-dory and you're a patriot and you're for the war on Iraq and you're for the welfare state and you're for the war on terror and you're for the war on illiteracy and the war on drugs and all the freaking violence that the state is constantly spewing out like a tide of blood across the face of the species.
If you're for all of that stuff, that's great.
But those of us who are not for all of that stuff, those of us who would rather see peaceful and voluntary relationships between human beings and not have machine guns pointed at us and lasers on our foreheads if we dare to actually and productively and powerfully disagree with the state by not funding policies that we find to be morally abhorrent,
If those of us who oppose that kind of stuff, I think it would be fairly reasonable to say that we are actually defending the right to disagree, and that those who are statists, those who believe that those who disagree with people in power should be shot, might not actually really be defending the right to disagree.
In fact, they could be said to be far worse than anything else that is occurring psychologically and Even if Free Domain Radio was some massive cult where I was driving around in a Rolls Royce with groupies rubbing my neck, if Free Domain Radio was that, then it would still be voluntary participation, right?
I still don't have any weapons by which I can force people to agree with me or not agree with me.
I just have an endless stream of language that hopefully you enjoy.
And so it's sort of hard for people to criticize.
I find it sort of incomprehensible that people come to Free Domain Radio and criticize people for saying, oh, so what, you're saying that if I don't agree with everything that you say, then I'm not to be your friend anymore, I'm not to be spoken to, I'm sort of cut out of your life?
Well, yeah, absolutely.
If what you're saying is that I should be killed if I disagree with you, then yeah, I think that it would be more than reasonable for me to say that if you want me killed, if I disagree with you, that I really wouldn't want to have anything to do with you, because I wouldn't want to pretend that we have a voluntary relationship when you're advocating my death simply for disagreeing with you.
Now, so that's sort of one thing that's hard for me to understand about the statists.
And the other is that, let's say, that I was advocating a rule which said, those who disagree with you, you must shun.
And I wasn't even saying that those who disagree with you about wanting you killed, but just those who disagree with you about anything, about whether Modelliani is a good painter, whether Henri is a good painter or not.
Those who disagree with you in any way, shape, or form.
What's the best car? What's your favorite movie?
Oh, you've disagreed with me. You are shunned.
You are put out of my life.
Let's just say that I was.
Advocating all of that.
Well, I mean, obviously that wouldn't be particularly healthy, but let's just say that I was.
Then I still am not quite clear on how shunning people is morally worse than shooting people.
That always leaves me a little bit confused.
So if you were sort of appalled at the idea that I or other people in the freedom movement were saying, shun people who disagree with you and everything...
If that was appalling to you, then what you feel is that people should not be over-judgmental, people should not inflict their judgments on others, people should be tolerant and open.
But of course the state shoots people who disagrees with it.
The politicians come up with plans that they're paid for by those who their rules will benefit, and they pass it off as some big moral thing, and then if you disagree, then they send the people over to gun you down.
Or you get to get shipped off to the rape rooms for the rest of your life.
Now, I find that funny.
It fundamentally is funny, right?
It's understandable because of the level of propaganda.
But when you sort of break it down to its component elements, it's kind of funny.
Right? So people, you've got two things here, right?
Let's just say that I was saying shun everyone who disagrees with you in any shape or form.
So on the one side, you have me saying, well, you should shun people who disagree with you.
And then on the other side, you have people who say, I'm going, I'm not should, I'm going to shoot you if you disagree with me, right?
The government. And the status, right?
I support you getting shot if you disagree with these politicians or whoever, right?
These laws. So you have two situations.
One is I'm going to shun you if you disagree with me.
The other one is I'm going to shoot you if you disagree with me.
And who do they pick on?
Well, they pick on me, right?
They pick on us. And we're not even saying shun people who disagree with you.
We're saying don't shoot people who disagree with you.
Can you imagine? Can you imagine if I was saying, I mean, this is the funny thing, right?
If I said in Free Domain Radio that we should gun down Christians, and we should gun down Muslims, and we should gun down the police, and we should gun down politicians, and we should gun down anybody who disagrees with our whims, I mean, perhaps in some sort of rap format, Can you imagine? I would be hauled up for hate speech.
I would be castigated as a horrible, violent, evil, David Koresh-like cult leader, right?
And yet, if I became a politician and did exactly the same thing using the power of the state...
I would get interviewed on TV. I would get to send out mail-outs at taxpayers' expense.
I would be lauded.
I would get the best tables in restaurants.
I would be considered to be an ambitious moral guy who was trying to do the best for his country.
It's just hilarious, really, when you think about it, right?
So if I advocate it privately, I'm the most evil guy in the world.
But if I achieve it through the state, then I'm a good guy who gets invited to nice dinner parties and is considered to be a civilized man of the state and maybe an ambassador or whatever, right?
But I just think that's the funniest thing in the world, right?
If it's wrong for me to do it, to say that people who disagree with me should be gunned down, I can't exactly see how it's right for George Bush...
Or the leaders of Canada or Spain.
I don't really quite understand.
Or Christians. I don't quite understand why it's okay for them to say, if you disagree with me, you should be gunned down.
But if I were to say it, then I am the most evil guy in the world.
Now, of course, I would say that threatening violence or encouraging violence against those who disagree with you is a pretty bad thing.
I certainly would never, ever condone the use of violence against, I mean, except in pure actual self-defense, I would never condone the use of violence against bad ideas or people with corrupt ideas, right?
You don't change someone's mind by pointing a gun in their face.
You might get them to comply, but you're just sowing the seeds of future destruction.
So I wouldn't really ever advocate that or find that to be a useful thing.
But it's just important for people to understand where we're coming from.
If people feel that we're intolerant because we don't want to associate with people who want us killed, then obviously they don't like intolerance.
But if you don't like intolerance, maybe, just maybe, I'm just inviting you, if intolerance is a virtue of yours, or something that you oppose, or if tolerance is a virtue, if intolerance is something that you find abhorrent,
Maybe, just maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe you might just want to spend just a little bit of your moral outrage on the people who do actually shoot you if you disagree with them.
Just maybe.
I'm just trying to invite you to examine that possibility.
That maybe we're not the people to pick on.
Right? Maybe.
Maybe. Maybe the people who don't want to get killed for disagreeing with other people are not the intolerant ones.
Possibly. I think that there's decent arguments to be made for that.
That's sort of really all I'm getting at.
You may not agree with it first round.
You may say, well, the people who shoot you for disagreeing with you are good guys, and the people who don't want to get shot for disagreeing with someone...
Are the bad guys.
I mean, maybe that's your opinion, and that's fine.
But can you at least understand that if tolerance is your big thing, if you feel that people should not be intolerant, then just maybe, maybe there's an argument in there somewhere that those of us who oppose getting shot for disagreeing with people might not be the intolerant ones.
We might not be the intolerant ones.
It's just a possibility.
I'm just sort of inviting you to play around with the idea, because I really don't think that we are intolerant.
What we're saying is people should be free, as long as they don't use violence against others, people should be free to do what they want in their life, to help the poor, to help the sick, to gather property, to hand out property, to take drugs, not take drugs.
As long as you're not punching people in the face, and as long as you're not shooting people down in the absence of self-defense...
That's what we're saying. I think, I mean, to me that sounds fairly tolerant, that we're perfectly happy to have as many people in the world, have as many opinions as possible.
We're just not so happy.
We're just not so happy with being shot for disagreeing with people.
So I respect the virtue of tolerance.
I think tolerance is absolutely essential.
Now, you just are used to having guns pointed at you.
So when we say, I mean, you can't see the guns, right?
You can't see the guns in the room because you've been trained your whole life not to see the guns in the room, right?
You get nice commercials on TV about what your government's doing for you, and everyone in the media talks about what the government is doing, and nobody ever talks about, and if you don't agree with it, you'll get shot, right?
Nobody ever says, and people say, well, the Iraq war's good, the Iraq war's bad, but nobody really says, well, what's wrong with the Iraq war is that you get shot if you don't want to support it, right?
I mean, that's That's kind of funny, right?
That we bring freedom elsewhere by pointing guns at home, right?
Because we want to recreate the same kind of freedoms that we have in our own countries.
It's kind of funny, right?
But you can't see the gun in the room, and I understand that.
I really do. It took me a long time to see the gun in the room as clearly as I do today.
But just be aware that you do have a gun pointed at you, and you're saying that the gun should be pointed at us for disagreeing.
Now, if we point out...
That you're saying that we should be shot for disagreeing.
I think that accusing us of being the intolerant ones might be something that you want to, you know, get a piece of paper, sketch out the logic of it, because we don't create the gun in the room.
It may feel like we do, right?
Because you're not used to looking at it, right?
It may feel like we're creating the gun in the room, but we're not.
We're just saying, hey, there's a gun in the room and we get shot if we disagree.
And I think that taking that gun out of the room is going to actually make people a lot more tolerant, right?
A lot more flexible, a lot more patient with each other, because you won't really get to inflict your opinion on other people at the point of a gun.
Not you, I mean sort of the people who are in the state and so on.
And I think that's going to be, I think that's really going to be for the better.
So I think that just maybe, maybe you should rethink.
What you mean by tolerance, right?
Because it's a little confusing to us.
For sure, it's very confusing for us that you say we should be tolerant and we're saying, you know, people shouldn't be shot for disagreeing with each other.
Anyway, the other thing, just before I go in for eye massage...
The other thing that was on the board, which is a very interesting question, was somebody was on another board.
Shocking, but we'll just try and breathe through it.
Somebody was on another board, and they got into an argument about land ownership.
Should human beings be allowed to own land?
Well, and they tried to use the argument for morality.
I think they didn't do a bad job, but I'd just sort of like to put two additional criteria onto this kind of debate so that you get some sense of how the argument for morality can be used.
Just for those who don't know, it's like if somebody says...
If there's a moral argument, then it needs to be universal, applicable to all people at all times, and so on.
Otherwise, it's just an opinion, right?
So if it's a rule that everyone has to follow, then it has to be universal.
Like, if you may come up with a theory about physics, then it has to be universal.
It can't just be for physics in Spain or Luxembourg or anything.
And so here are sort of two ways that you can use, two additional ways, in addition to the one that the gentleman came up with, two additional ways that you can use the argument for morality in these kinds of situations, right?
So somebody says, land ownership...
Land ownership is immoral.
Well, that's fine. Let's take that as a principle.
So, land ownership for everyone is immoral.
Well, ownership, obviously, is use.
So, if you're standing on a piece of land anywhere in the world, then you are using that space.
I mean, if I'm driving your car, I'm using your car.
If I'm standing on land, then I'm using land.
So if land ownership is immoral, then logically standing on the earth is immoral.
Now since human beings can not really fly or float, then moral behavior is impossible.
So you can't logically have a standard of behavior.
Like if we say that ethics is universally preferred behavior, you can't have universally preferred behavior that's impossible for everyone.
That's not a standard of ethics that would really make any sense.
Because for something to be preferred...
It has to be possible. It's like saying that every human being is moral if they can fly, and immoral if they can't.
Well, you're just defining human beings as immoral, right?
So preferred behavior, I mean, without assistance, fly, I mean.
So then the preferred behavior can't be achieved, and therefore...
It doesn't work, right?
That's why ethics are generally thou shalt not.
Sorry, thou shalt not steal is something that everyone can achieve, even people in a coma.
But thou shalt steal can't be achieved by everyone at the same time.
Somebody's got to be stolen from and so on.
And there's other reasons why the thou shalt steal is logically impossible and a contradiction in terms.
As I mentioned before, it both simultaneously affirms and denies property rights, like the person being stolen from has no property rights.
The person stealing wants the property rights because they want to keep what they're stealing, and so you're both simultaneously affirming and denying property rights.
So there's other reasons why the sort of theft thing doesn't work, and rape and murder, all these sort of things as well.
So that's sort of one approach.
Like if land ownership is immoral, then standing on the earth is immoral.
It's immoral, right? So it doesn't really work, logically.
The second way that you can use the argument for morality in the question of should people be able to own land is if you say, okay, well, land ownership is immoral.
Then, obviously, the products of what is grown on land is immoral, right?
So if I go and pick an orange, the land ownership is immoral.
Obviously, nobody owns the tree, so nobody owns the orange.
And therefore, if I take and eat the orange, right, then the fundamental property right that you have is putting things into your body, right?
We own our bodies, let's just say.
But if land ownership is immoral, then for me to eat an orange is immoral, because I'm taking this non-ownable piece of property and making it my own by ingesting it into my body, right?
I mean, it's not like I could eat the orange, spit it up, and then you want to eat it, right?
We can't share it, right? The same way that we can share air, say.
But, so in this particular circumstance, or this particular argument, if somebody says land ownership is immoral, then obviously...
Nobody can own the fruits of the land, right?
I mean, nobody can eat bread or, you know, drink water or grow food or anything like that, right?
Eat an orange from a tree that's growing in the land which can't be owned.
So, in this particular situation, eating and drinking become immoral, right?
So that the only way to be virtuous is to starve to death, or I guess you'd sooner die of dehydration or something.
And so, in this particular circumstance, the moral result of implementing the moral premise, or the practical result of implementing the moral premise, is that it is universally preferred that every human being should die.
Now, I think that species-side or genocide of the entire human race, in order to fulfill a moral proposition, might not be number one, or at least in the top ten of your moral criteria of how people should act.
So, if you have a moral theory...
That can only be fulfilled by every human being dying, then your moral theory might need just a little bit of work.
If I were marking that moral theory as an ethics professor, I would say that that may not be an A+. It may not even be in the A category because...
The universal death of all mankind might not be the way that you get the best ethics out of people, right?
Because ethics is only possible for human beings, so if they're all dead, it's not like you've added to the ethics of the world or anything.
Anyway, it's time for my massage.
Thank you so much for listening. I appreciate it as always.
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