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Aug. 29, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
37:05
391 Statist Intellectuals Part 2
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Good afternoon, everybody.
Hope you're doing well. It's Steph.
We are now heading home.
I think I may have been able to rig up my headset or my USB so that it doesn't jostle around too much during the drive, except, of course, when I turn the wheel just a little bit.
But let's go on to the most disturbing part of this, because we shall not flinch before the...
Facts before us, or before the conclusions that the theories lead us to.
So let me preface what is going to be...
I don't know. Maybe it's not shocking to you.
It sure as hell is shocking to me.
But maybe it's not shocking to you.
But let me preface this with a sort of...
Let's build up the theory before we start talking about the rabid conclusions.
And... What that means for me is we've gone over the doctor thing, so we know that a misprescription can legitimately result in legal sanction,
let's just sort of say for the sake of argument, and we've sort of established that through not Through non-full disclosure and through not prescribing the same medicine that they prescribe for others to themselves,
I'm simply talking about the socialists here, those of us who are capitalists or libertarians accept that we have valid property rights, accept universal morality, are not prescribing to others what we are not living for ourselves.
The fundamental question around status of every kind, and this includes minarchists as well, Do you solve your own problems through violence?
And if not, then can it really be said to be morally just to prescribe the use of violence to solve problems for other people in the realm of the advocacy of state power?
And I would say that that would not really be the case.
That you could not legitimately Thank you.
Thank you.
consistent in the way that they live by arguing it all.
And there's a fascinating discussion going on with the Libertarian group I've been invited to join, which is around argumentation, and Hans Hoppe has particular arguments around this, basically that if you debate with somebody, you're accepting or advocating that violence is not the way to solve problems since you're not holding a gun to their head and say, believe what I believe.
Thank you.
Of course, I have now poured thousands of hours and hundreds of audio hours, thousands of labor hours and hundreds of audio hours, and now a couple dozen video hours, Of trying to convince people about the truth of the proposition of certain arguments.
And I'm not using force.
I'm not appealing to the government to make people believe what I want them to believe.
I am putting my own debate skills, debating skills forward.
In order to convince people of particular propositions, and what that means is that I can't really then be a statist, right?
Because I'm putting forward mere ethereal argument, the arguments that are bulletproof, as V for Fendetta has it, which I think is somewhat true, but not that useful.
So people who don't take their own prescriptions really can legitimately be viewed, in my opinion, as moral hypocrites of the worst kind.
In the way that a doctor who prescribes death, death-dealing medicines to patients, are also hypocrites of the most destructive kind.
Although, sorry, let me sort of rephrase that slightly.
They are not.
They are not hypocrites of the most destructive kind.
Hypocrites of the most destructive kind are the intellectuals.
As I mentioned in the podcast, the bathroom cleaning podcast from Yo yesterday, The intellectuals are responsible for the deaths of hundreds of millions of people.
And the reason that intellectuals are not responsible for the deaths of billions of people is that intellectuals, and by this I do include priests, those who claim abstract explanations for the world that is, and predictive explanations, The only reason it's not billions is that we intellectuals who actually deal,
who actually truck with reason and who actually truck with non-violence, we intellectuals, We have won historically to the point where capitalism has been able to produce enough goods to increase the human population, which the intellectuals of the status variety have been doing their best to cull by the hundreds of millions and succeeded in culling by the hundreds of millions, and for that they must be eternally cursed.
But without a doubt, the most physically destructive Human being in the world, in terms of the death count, is an intellectual who lies and who abuses his power to serve the state in one form or another.
And I'll put down libertarian...
Minarchists in this category as well, though to a far smaller degree, but also to a far more dangerous degree because they distract a lot of people into thinking that only a small amount of violence is good, which makes the job that much harder for the rest of us, right?
I mean, if everybody was a communist, it would be easier to be an anarcho-capitalist.
This, of course, is just an observation.
Now... If the most destructive human being in the world is the man who teaches that violence does not exist in the statist world and that only certain kinds of virtue can exist in the statist world, then this man is the greatest evildoer in the world.
And I'll give you one other sort of example, and the reason I'm using so many examples is just because the conclusion becomes shocking to me.
And so I want to layer in lots of examples.
I'm sure, I'm sure, without a doubt, this is going to come back to haunt me, and I'm going to be quoted out of context, but that doesn't matter so much, of course, as the pursuit of truth matters.
So... What comes next in sort of logical examinations of this question?
Once we start to talk about the fact that intellectuals don't provide full disclosure and don't live by the edicts that they propose, Is we sort of try and correlate this to an early podcast that I mentioned yesterday, which is that teaching children about religion as if it were true is a form of child abuse.
Then it would seem to me to stand to reason that teaching children about the government as if the government were moral is also a form of child abuse.
And if you want to know why, you can go back and listen to the earlier podcast.
I'm pretty sure that almost all of the...
Arguments from a religious context would also apply from a context of political science.
So if you teach your children about the virtue of the state, if you're just a parent, right?
If you teach your children...
To eat only chocolate and to sit around on the couch and basically to weigh 200 pounds by the age of 10, thus contributing to a life of perpetual dysfunction and diabetes and heart disease and early arthritis and whatever else comes along from being obese, I think that we would be fairly sure in saying that that is a form of child abuse.
Particularly, of course, if...
The parent is paid to do it as part of a sort of experiment.
And also, if the parents themselves are real thin and eat well and therefore know enough about nutrition.
If the parent feeds the child nothing but fat and says that it's healthy and destroys the child's health from a permanent standpoint, right?
Once you've had obesity as a child, you are permanently damaged.
You are going to have perpetual problems with weight at the very minimum.
You're going to have baggy, sagging skin.
You are going to have nothing but reams upon reams of problems if you are force-fed fat and sugar and become morbidly obese as a child.
Now, of course, that is an evidence that is fairly clear to see, which is the evidence of a parent abusing a child's body.
And, of course, we would definitely say, as philosophers and libertarians, that to abuse a child's mind is...
In many ways worse than abusing the body.
The body can be healed to a large degree through the change in lifestyles, but initial first impressions are pretty tough to overcome, and of course it would take quite a philosophical kid to heal his own mind in the way that I've attempted to do so, and I would say with a good degree of success.
So if force-feeding that which is counter to physical health, if inflicting upon the child sloth and ridiculous amounts of extra food is something which we would recognize categorically as child abuse, and therefore... Would feel that a sanction against the parent, and again, just to take the modern example, that a sanction against the parent in terms of a finer imprisonment would certainly be appropriate.
If a parent beats the child, then a finer imprisonment seems an appropriate response.
If the parent force feeds and locks the child up and doesn't let the child exercise, then it would seem to me that a legal sanction would be similar.
And if a parent teaches a child that which is false and that which the parent does not live by, himself or herself, right?
So we want to make sure that we distinguish between mentally ill patients, right?
I mean, if somebody says, I am Genghis Khan to their child, then obviously they're kind of deranged.
But if the parent teaches the child that the child should not use violence, but also that statism is true and valid and morally good, and again, this comes into whether or not this connection has been made for the parent.
It seems to be somewhat obscure for most people, but let's just say that the parent has been exposed to this idea.
Then it would seem to me that...
Teaching a child this would be a form of child abuse in that it would teach a child to support a system which enslaved the child.
Teaching a slave child that slavery is virtuous and that if there were no slavery, his life would be incomparably worse would I think be somewhat less than perfectly moral and may be considered a form of child abuse.
Now, let's start to talk about teachers, right?
Because there are people who abuse their own children, let's just say physically, who are limited in the abuse that they can inflict upon children by the very fact that they only have so many children, right? So this, I think, is fairly important to understand, that...
The question of child abuse has something to do with the numbers.
Right? Fairly important, something to do with the numbers.
How many children actually get abused?
We certainly would say that a man who kills ten women is worse than a man who kills one woman.
I think that that's fairly safe to say.
And the law recognizes this, and the law also recognizes that theft...
is to some degree differentiated by the amount of theft, right?
So there's petty theft up to, it used to be up to like 200 bucks, and then there's, you know, grand larceny, it's over a thousand bucks, or at least it used to be something like that.
So we certainly do understand that there are differences in terms of the kind of sanctions that we apply based on the degree of harm that is done to the victim.
Now, from this realm, then, we can begin to see that if teaching children false ideas which lead them to support their own enslavement, if that is immoral, and if that is a form of abuse which should result in a particular kind of sanction, Then doing it to more children is worse than doing it to fewer children.
I think that we can all survive with that kind of reasoning.
It does seem to be fairly logical and something which we can I think approach From a rational standpoint as a solution to a problem that equates the abuse that is done to a child's body with the abuse that is done to a child's mind and that differences of degree are in fact differences of ethics or not of ethics but differences of punishment.
The more children that you abuse the more that you are going to be morally responsible and culpable and sanctionable So if a parent has one child and inflicts this obesity problem on the child, that is one thing.
If an adult runs a fat camp that is supposed to help children lose weight, but he secretly adds invisible carbs and sugars and glucose and corn syrup and fat to their diet, thus causing them to gain weight when he is in fact promising to Lose the weight for them, or help them lose the weight, then we would say that this person is a criminal, right?
If you say, I'm going to help you lose weight, oh child, oh child, and then you end up working your entire energies to cause the child to gain weight, then you are morally responsible for that.
You can be sanctioned.
You can have sanctions applied against you, and...
Last but not least, the more children that you do it to, the worse you are.
So, if we start to put all of these metaphors and logical arguments together, we begin, I do believe, to come up with a rather startling conclusion.
And this rather startling conclusion...
It's the following. I'm putting this forward as a theory.
I'm still working out why it makes me so emotionally uncomfortable.
It could be because it's completely evil and I haven't figured out why.
Or it could be because it's not evil but I've just had a lot of propaganda to the opposite and it makes me uncomfortable.
But in the interest of full disclosure, this makes me uncomfortable.
But we shall head on anyway.
Okay, here we go. Here's where my reputation really gets put to the test.
Now, if a listener, or I guess a watcher now, if a listener were to write in to me and to say to me, my father came at me with a pipe wrench and I had to shoot him in order to protect myself, I would say, with great sympathy, what a terrible situation.
I wish this had never occurred to you.
It's unimaginably difficult what you had to do, but I can absolutely understand and even applaud, if there was no other alternative, your way of dealing with the situation.
Right? So that's my response to somebody who writes to me and says, I had to shoot my father because my father was coming at me with a pipe wrench.
I tried to block him, to reason with him.
I tried to blah, blah, blah. But he still kept coming at me with a pipe wrench.
And so I had to shoot him.
Well, I would say what a terrible situation to be put into.
I can certainly sympathize and understand with what you did.
I think that you did the right thing because it is evil to come at somebody with a pipe wrench and to initiate the use of force.
Okay, I think we're all relatively okay with that.
I haven't received an email like this and I hope that I won't unless I have figured out the whole ethics of the situation.
But let me put something forward like this.
I receive an email saying, Dear Steph, So I have this Marxist professor at university.
And I've tried pointing out his contradictions.
He doesn't live by what he preaches.
He is teaching all these children that the state is good, that the state is all-powerful, that property rights are evil, that morality is subjective, that we should turn over all our property to the state.
I've tried reasoning with him.
I've tried pointing out his erroneous conclusions, but he will not listen, and he continues to attack and abuse the minds of the youth.
And so I've shot him.
I've got to tell you, the logic of the position is, I'm not going to say unassailable because I'm just trying to work it out, but I've got to tell you, it has a certain kind of logical consistency to it.
Now, I chose a Marxist professor, just to be really on the extreme.
If I chose a Nazi professor and a Jew, I think?
All of the world's wars, and Jews should be killed, and Jews should be, right?
I mean, and the Jewish student tried to reason with this professor, found that he would not either listen to reason or stop teaching his evil garbage, and then the Jewish student shot the professor, because, of course, if the professor has his way, then the Jewish student is going to end up in a concentration camp.
So, I mean, this is sort of important, right?
If a woman shoots a rapist, then she's going to prevent other women from getting raped.
If a woman gets the rapist thrown in jail, just to use a non-DRO solution for a moment, then the woman is going to end up with preventing other women from getting raped.
And there's a certain amount of value in that.
Now, if you can't change the mind of a Nazi or Marxist professor and you shoot that professor or disable him in some manner so that he can't teach, then you are, in fact, preventing this person from continuing to corrupt and abuse the minds of the youth.
And, of course, if the professor gets his way, if you take ideas seriously, if the professor gets his way, then you are going to end up in a concentration camp.
And, of course, I put modern prisons in the realm of concentration camps.
And so, of course, when socialist or statist professors get their way, then I, in terms of trying to defend my property, and in terms of refusing or wanting to not submit to the evils of taxation, then I am going to end up in a concentration camp.
And so, is it not a form of self-defense to shoot those who advocate your murder?
Again, I'm just putting it out there as a possible idea.
Now, it certainly is the case that it's one way to break this cycle that I was talking about yesterday, wherein the state hires the intellectuals to tell everybody how virtuous the state is and how slavery is a moral action, and how there is no violence that the government uses, or maybe a little, but only against evil people, and therefore the government...
It gets the moral sanction of the people, which means that the government has to pay that much less for the enforcement of taxation, which means that paying the intellectuals to abuse and corrupt the minds of the citizens is an economically positive act, and we've sort of went over this, that this is a cycle that seems rather tricky to break.
Now, one way to break it is to disable the intellectuals in one form or another.
And so that people will actually have a caution about advocating the murder of others.
And we do have this, and I'm not saying that I agree with it from a status standpoint, we do have this in the realm of hate speech.
If you advocate the death of Jews, you can be prosecuted for hate speech and thrown in jail, and if you resist arrest, you will get shot.
Now, I'm not saying that I like the status version of this.
But there is an, and of course the fact that the state has implemented it means that we should review it with a good degree of suspicion.
But the argument against all of this, and there's so many arguments against this, I'm sort of just trying to work the idea out and try and find holes in it, so to speak.
Well, not the intellectuals, but in the theory.
The argument against it is to say, well, you should use rationality, not force, To get an idea across.
You should put yourself in the free arena of debate and you should never use force to change somebody else's mind.
You should use, you know, that force is used when you can't reason anymore and it forces an admission of error and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Well, I mean, I understand all of those arguments.
That's how I live.
But if the use of force in the realm of ideas would be a moral evil, this is sort of the argument from consistency.
If the use of force in the realm of ideas is a moral evil and can be opposed with force, so if somebody holds a gun to my head and says, believe this or I'll argue for this, put this in a podcast, or I'll shoot you believe this or I'll argue for this, put this in a podcast, or I'll shoot you or shoot Christina or whatever, if that's something that it's legitimate for me to use force against, then what do we say in Canada to the statist professor who is beholden to
then what do we say in Canada to the statist professor who is beholden to the government for his position but neither lives with the statist policies that he advocates to his students nor provides full disclosure to the students in the form of if I don't teach you this stuff I'm not going to have a job or a profession and I'm whatever whatever right
Or if I teach you this and try to continue to have a job or a profession, at some point I'm going to be breaking the law and they're going to throw me in a concentration camp, so I kind of have to teach you this.
In the same way that in the last podcast we talked about the doctor having to say that, yes, I am beholden to the blue pill morphine company and that's why I have to prescribe these things and I would never ever take them myself.
The doctor, the philosopher or the professor in this instance, is already using...
State violence to get his ideas across.
In that if the citizens do not pay his salary, and if the citizens do not fund the university he teaches at, then they are going to be shot.
So the dissemination of the statists' ideas through the existing media and educational system, and of course the public school teachers are easier to talk about in terms of the fact that they're teaching children and that they're directly paid by the state and you can't refuse to pay them without getting shot.
But if I'm holding a population hostage, I get a bunch of people, lock them in my basement and force them to fund my podcasting, then could it not be said that I'm using violence to get my ideas across?
And therefore these people are able legitimately to use force against me to get free and to prevent the forced funding of my podcasts.
Well, artists and reporters and politicians and philosophers and academics and so on, all of these people are able to get their ideas across because of the use of force.
A use of force which they do not sanction in their own lives, of course, and the use of force which they do not perform themselves, but actually just defer to other people for the performance of that kind of force.
Now, this all, I think, is rather important, and it sort of starts to work towards the question of, not must we...
Not must we use force, because there is no shoulds from this standpoint, but is it legitimate to use force against those who abuse the young with false ideas that corrupt their thinking and lead them into slavery?
Is it abusive to teach a child that Nazism is virtuous and you should go and kill the Jews?
Is it valid for a Jew when faced with a Nazi, racist, anti-Semitic, homicidal, murderous, genocidal teacher to use whatever force necessary to prevent that teacher from spreading his ideas, given that we know the power of ideas when impressed upon the minds of the young?
So we use reason, right, in most situations of self-defense.
I believe that it would be incumbent upon the victim or potential victim to use reason before using force to attempt to reason the situations rather than just blow someone away in that sort of Han Solo in the Cantina kind of manner.
And this is a very scary idea for me.
It's a very unusual idea.
It goes against just about everything that I have believed before.
And again, not to mention this for the last time, it is thanks to the integrity and patience and persistence of the people on the board that I'm beginning to shift my view of the fundamental evil away from the police and towards the intellectuals and the teachers of mankind.
because you can't get people to be cops unless they're taught that it's virtuous.
So, I don't really know what to say from here.
The possibility that when somebody is using force to spread ideas, that using force to defend against the inevitable consequences of those ideas, which are anarchists and free demeaners getting thrown into concentration camps or shot which are anarchists and free demeaners getting thrown into concentration camps or shot if
If somebody is openly and through coercion teaching children that they should applaud the murder of the innocent, which is teaching statism, right?
Teaching communism, fascism, anti-Semitism, religion, right?
Because religion, in religious texts, the murder of atheists is advocated very openly, basically in the big three, in Islam, Judaism, and Christianity.
And so...
If somebody is using force and compelling children and enclosing children in statist schools, and if the children are not in the statist schools, or if the parents don't pay for the statist schools, then the parents get shot.
That is definitely forcibly enclosing children.
In a prison and forcibly causing them to ingest and believe certain ideas.
So it is like locking up a child and force-feeding them fat and refusing to let them exercise.
It is an abuse of the child's mind to herd them into state gulags and indoctrinate them with ideas that are going to cause them misery and ideas which are going to cause them to praise those who enslave them.
That if people are using force to herd children into these indoctrination camps, could it not be said that force might be justifiable to spring them?
Oh man, I've got to tell you, it's just weird where consistent and logical philosophy, or at least what at the moment I believe is a consistent and logical approach to this problem from a philosophical standpoint, if it is abusive and evil To forcibly herd children into these indoctrination camps and to teach them that what is false is what is true.
And if the teachers know that it is false because they do not live their own lives that way and because there's not full disclosure, right?
And where there's not full disclosure, it's because people are not proud of what they're teaching, right?
I mean, if Christina and I were talking last night that she has a friend who's a teacher...
And I'm going to work on writing and podcasting these ideas that we can have full disclosure for a variety of professions.
And she said, well, what would happen if we handed this note that says, here's the full disclosure for a teacher.
I am compelled.
You are forced to be here.
If you're not here or your parents don't pay for this, then your parents will be shot.
If I don't teach you what I have to teach you, then I will be thrown in jail if I continue to teach it and don't leave voluntarily.
And I will have no career or no job if I don't teach you this stuff.
And you can sort of go on and on, right?
So I'm basically teaching you that there's no violence.
I have to teach you that there's no violence in what happens, although the fact is that you are here entirely because of violence.
And I'm also going to teach you that hitting each other is wrong, and I'm also going to debate with you, although fundamentally what I'm teaching you at the bottom is that violence is virtuous, but I'm going to tell you that it's not.
All of this kind of stuff, right?
Teachers, and now if teachers read that, and I'll work on it, I'm not sort of saying that that's the final draft, of course, it's just off the top of my head.
But if teachers read that, and find it morally troublesome, that then they feel that they feel this instant hostility, like there's no way I'm going to tell my kids that, I would never have their respect.
Well, then it's because teachers immediately understand that what is being set up there, what is being said in this statement of disclosure, is not something that they're proud to teach.
So the teachers claim to be rational and claim to use debate and claim that force is wrong and violence is bad, but of course the only reason that children are in their tender care is because they're forced to be there through violence, right?
And so the hypocrisy, of course, and the fact that teachers know this would be evidenced by the fact that I'm certainly looking forward...
To the reaction that teachers are going to give me to this statement of full disclosure that I'm going to put forward.
And if they feel like, yes, I'll be more than happy to read this to my children, then I will go like, wow, okay, well that certainly gets you off the hook morally because you believe it's right.
And then of course I assume that you live this way in your own life and so on.
And so if teachers are perfectly happy to teach all of this stuff, then I'm just shocked and amazed, and then we can look forward to at least some of the effects of propaganda being undermined by the process of full disclosure in the realm of teachers reading these things out to their classes.
But if teachers are hesitant to and refuse to read these things out to their classes, or at the very least mention a website in passing where these things can be received or can be read, even if they're not allowed through their union policies to read these things out directly, to let the children know that they're around in some secretive manner, And then blame, I don't know, a private school teacher or the internet, damn it, how do these kids get these things?
Who knows? If teachers don't feel comfortable doing this, then it's because they know that what they're teaching is morally corrupt and evil and is abusive to the minds of the children.
And, of course, if they then go that route, then they know that what they're teaching is wrong and therefore they're morally responsible.
And therefore, if they continue to teach children that which is false, as if it were true, to corrupt their minds, to propagandize them, to further praise those who enslave them, then you kind of have a problem.
And the question then of self-defense becomes very real.
And so then I have to sort of look at...
This problem. Now, I also do believe, as I've mentioned a number of times before, that morality is a form of technology and that people have to understand or have to have these ideas brought to the forefront before they're fully morally responsible.
So that's why I'm going to work on these full disclosures, and I hope they'll be published in some prominent place.
And so once these are handed out to people or people are made aware of these or these are emailed around...
Then people are fully responsible for the moral content of what they're doing, and therefore, let's say that somebody has been exposed to these ideas and somebody's tried to reason with them, and they refused it and continued to neither live their life by what they're teaching, nor to fully disclose what they're doing to their children, then... They are openly aggressing and abusing children.
They're harming their children's mind.
They're setting up beliefs and indoctrinating people with beliefs that, if followed through, as they always are, will result in the murder and the death and the diminishment of millions and millions of people.
The state. Well, then I think it could reasonably be said that self-defense in this realm would involve the disabling of teachers.
But if I got an email where somebody said they'd gone out and done this, I would have a problem with it, and maybe somebody can help me figure out whether it's just my emotional baggage that gives me the idea that...
This is not morally good, or I've made some logical error, which my emotions are sort of telling me is why I have a hesitation in this area.
Perhaps you can tell me all of this stuff, which would be great, because I can't wholeheartedly and fully endorse this position, but merely put it forward as a sort of logical possibility that I hope is either going to make sense and I can get fully behind emotionally or is something that I've made a grievous logical error in the examination of and therefore need to have it corrected within my own mind and within my own thinking and hopefully that can all come together for me and I'll certainly keep you posted as to my progress in this area.
Thank you so much for listening, as always.
Look at that. I have a potentially 36-minute commute.
I'm actually just going to the store.
But thank you so much for listening, as always.
I really, really appreciate it.
I look forward to chatting with you more.
I look forward to donations, as I consistently say.
And I will see you on the boards at freedomainradio.com forward slash B-O-A-R-D. You can also see the videos at freedomainradio.com.
Click on the video link. You can also...
Let me take these off.
And you can also get the videos at YouTube, Y-O-U-T-U-B-E dot com forward slash Free Domain Radio, one word.
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