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Nov. 10, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
34:37
503 The Optimism of Euphemisms
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Good afternoon, everybody.
Hope you're doing well. It's Steph. I hope you're having a magical day.
It is the 10th of November 2006, and we're back to audio only.
So, hello to the new YouTubers who are joining us.
I'm not sure exactly where the mass migration to the boards is coming from.
We passed 300 members today.
Over the last week, we've had, I don't know, 30 or 40 or actually about 50 or 60 Welcome to everybody.
I hope that you are enjoying the shows and I hope that by the time you get to this show 500 and change that you are not 90.
So I wanted to talk on my way home tonight about the beauty and power and optimism and hope that for me at least is involved in In euphemisms, and what euphemisms say about the glory and virtue of the human soul.
So I'm going to take an example of a post that was put on the board, and then I'll sort of put in my substitutions, and then we'll talk a little bit about what I see as so beneficial from all of this.
So somebody posted on the board, they said, here's the quote.
It was a debate about governments.
If you say government A doesn't work, he said, you are really saying that the way that individuals in that society are interacting is lacking in some way.
There are many threads on this forum that address the real debate.
This thread's counterarguments all focus on government versus free market society.
The rules defining a free market are all agreed upon interactions at some level, just as government is.
Don't debate that a government is using guns to force others when it's really individuals with guns.
Instead, show...
turn the page, instead show how other ways will have less guns forcing others or how those guns could force others in a more beneficial way.
Now, it is a very basic sort of fact of logic that a major category can also subsume a minor category.
So what I did was I said, I'm sorry, I'm having trouble with this paragraph because government is forced, right?
And it seems that it's not very clear in your paragraph.
So let me put another paragraph in and see if this...
So let me substitute another way of putting this and see if it makes any sense.
If you say that rape doesn't work, you are really saying that the way individuals in that society are interacting is lacking in some way.
There are many threads in this forum that address the real debate.
This thread's counterarguments all focus on rape versus dating.
The rules defining dating are all agreed upon interactions at some level just as rape is.
Don't debate that a group of rapists is forcing others when it's really individual rapists.
Instead, show how the other way will have less rapists forcing others or how those rapists could force others in a more beneficial way.
And I think it's sort of a bit more clear to see when you get rid of the euphemisms What is actually going on in the conversation that's occurring?
And I would say that a very fundamental aspect of libertarianism is the peeling away of and discarding and exposing of the violence which these metaphors and euphemisms and so on cover up, right? And I'll sort of get us to the positive side of that in a bit.
And this is all part of an article that I haven't written for Lou Rockwell in a while, so I'm putting another article out.
And I just wanted to talk about some of the ideas in that article so that you'll get a skewed and rambling preview to what hopefully will be a fairly concise argument in the long run.
But when you substitute the word rape for government, which is not an unjust thing to do at all.
I mean, this is not a trick.
This is not a rhetorical trick in any way, shape, or form.
In fact, the government is a superstructure, is a parent metaphor, is a root of violence, of which rape is really just a...
A tiny little leaf, one of the many leaves that grow from the evil tree of government violence.
Government is responsible for far more rapes than private citizens are, private criminals, right?
Think of wars and think of prisons and so on, right?
Rape is a sort of key area within government, and we've talked about this before, so I'll keep moving.
When people use the word government, it is perfectly viable to substitute the word rape for that.
And you can see that the way in which the arguments for the use of force are unmasked with the use of the word rape and rapist, which the use of the word society and government doesn't show as easily, right?
Because they're all abstract and vaguely pleasant metaphors for what is actually going on, which is all the guns coming out and being waved around and forcing people to do stuff.
And not even based on rules, right?
I mean, the government is anarchy, as we sort of talked about before.
The government is not a set of rules that if you obey them, you're doing fine, right?
Who here knows for an absolute certainty that he or she is obeying all government edicts?
Well, Nobody knows that for sure, of course, and that's sort of the point, right?
You don't feel too secure, and so that the government will always have something on you so that you can be forced to do the government's bidding in one way or another.
The government always wants to have rules that they can nail you with about something so that they'll always have something over you.
So, the power of euphemisms It's very, very strong, and it obscures an enormous amount of political debates.
So to our communist lady friend who has joined the boards in the last couple of weeks, hola, dasvidani, and I wanted to just sort of point out an interaction that we've had, which didn't go particularly far, which was sort of the point, but which I wanted to sort of mention.
Once you get rid of these euphemisms, then you can get to some very positive You can eliminate conversations very quickly or you can eliminate conversations which are never going to go anywhere very quickly.
And so this was around the question of public schools, right?
Public schools. And this is something that you will get into as a libertarian or as a market anarchist.
You'll get into conversations about public schools where people will say, ah, but public schools are, you know, people need to be educated.
And what about poor kids?
They need to be educated. Social stability and blah, blah, blah, blah.
Democracy to function has to have educated people and so on.
And you can take the approach of like, well, you know, literacy rate was over 90% before public schools came in and can you say that people are really educated now and certainly you ask the average person what's in the Bill of Rights who's in high school or even grade 10 and they have no clue, right?
What's the Constitution? They have no clue.
It's a holding pen, basically for producing criminals.
Public school is not for education.
You could go down that whole route, which is sort of like the argument from effect.
And there's nothing wrong with that argument, except it's not going to get you anywhere, right?
Because it doesn't confront the real issue.
The real problem with the public schools is not that they don't educate people.
I mean, in some parallel anti-gravity universe, you're waving guns around, makes everything great, and the only way to get kids really well educated is in public schools.
But... Then you're in this sort of upside-down, topsy-turvy, Alice in Wonderland world where violence achieves good things.
But even if it did, it still would not fundamentally affect the basic fact that people are waving around guns to get things done.
And not in an abstract sense.
This woman was waxing eloquent, and she's a good writer, so more power to her for that.
But she was waxing eloquent about the glory and beauty and wonder of the public school system and how essential it is for a peaceful, functioning community Great, juicy, wonderful, perfect society.
And you don't have to disagree with someone about their conclusions.
To say to somebody, I need for you to no longer believe...
In a statist society, in order for me to be free, is really putting your freedom at the mercy of other people and their potential for rationality, which for a good chunk of the human race doesn't seem to be particularly high.
Or you could say that their potential was for rationality, but it was broken by the social institutions.
But, you know, you really don't want to leave your capacity for freedom at the mercy of other people accepting a market anarchy position, or a libertarian position at the very least.
So, if you say, well, I can only be free when other people agree with me that public schools are a bad thing and we need private schools or free schools, Then you're trapped, doomed.
And there's a lot of tension in what it is that you're doing.
Because it's like you're trying to get out of a trap.
You're trying to free yourself from the jaws of uninformed opinions of others.
And this is not to say ignorant, just uninformed.
And that's a pretty stressful thing.
And you don't see that sort of going on in restaurants, around the topic of restaurants.
So you don't get... A whole bunch of people in society who say, you know, Mother Tucker's is the best restaurant.
The government needs to, you know, should run Mother Tucker's, and anyone else who tries to set up an alternate restaurant chain should be shot.
Right? I mean, that's not really a...
So, and the reason... And so nobody really cares.
What do I care what your favorite restaurant is?
More power to you. I really could care less what your favorite restaurant is.
I really could care less what TV shows you like.
Because you watching a TV show doesn't take away from me watching a TV show, other than in some vague abstract.
If nobody watches the show, it goes away.
But I don't really care.
What's your preference in music?
I don't know. I don't care.
I think if it's rap and country, we might need to talk.
But I don't care because it doesn't take away from me.
It's not a zero-sum game.
You like something and it takes away from something that can accrue to me.
Same thing, Tide versus, I don't know, some other laundry detergent.
And there's no holy wars about these kinds of things, right?
Because it's not a zero-sum game.
But, of course, if the government was going to only have one chain of restaurants, then, of course, all the restaurateurs would get up in arms.
There'd be all of this political campaigning, ads, and negative campaigning, and these people serve you dead rodents on a stick, and we serve you nothing but, you know, angels' tears and spleens.
And... We're great, they're evil, and there'd be a lot of hysteria, and then people would get into violent debates about which restaurant chain was the best before this legislation came down and even afterwards and so on.
So the need to agree only arises from the presence of the state.
The state generates the violence of the state and the single enforced solution of the state.
This is what creates the need to agree.
And I would let that go if I were you.
People don't need to agree with you.
Right? About whether public schools are good or bad.
People don't need to agree with you about whether the war on drugs is good or bad or whether the invasion of Iraq is good or bad.
That's not what you need from them.
It's agreement. Right?
That's taking the state as principle that there's only one solution and we've got to have that or that they have to advocate freedom and so on.
They don't. They don't have to advocate freedom at all.
They don't have to agree with you that public schools are bad and private schools are good or that public schools don't educate children or anything like that.
Also, that's a pretty exhausting thing, because they've got to then agree with you on everything.
They only have to agree with you on one thing.
People only have to agree with you on one thing.
And the reason that you don't use this one thing is because it's explosive.
It's not because you can't figure it out, but because it's explosive and it's a very volatile component to bring to bear on a particular conversation.
So let me tell you, and of course it's pretty obvious what it is now, but I would say that you don't know how explosive it is until you start using it in conversation, right?
So when you're debating public schools with someone, you think that they're bad and that person thinks that they're good or essential and so on, right?
An answer which you can, I think the most productive answer that you can use or come up with is something like the following.
So somebody says, you know, I think public schools are good, and you say, you can say something like this.
Well, I think that's fine.
My question to you is, am I allowed to disagree with you without getting arrested?
I mean, that's a fundamental question.
It's the fundamental question of freedom.
Am I allowed? Will you permit me?
Will you have the grace and magnanimity to allow me to disagree with you and not get shot and not get arrested?
I'll use those two terms interchangeably.
Am I allowed to disagree with you?
This is a much more fundamental question than are public schools good or bad?
Am I allowed to disagree with you?
Am I allowed to disagree with you?
Because, I mean, this is the basis behind argumentation ethics, right?
That if somebody starts arguing with you, then they have to issue the use of force.
They have to reject the use of force.
Because if they're going to use force, then there's no point arguing, just in the same way as if they're going to fall back on faith, then there's no point debating, right?
If there's no rational standards, otherwise they're going to change their minds, there's no point debating.
So that really is the most fundamental question.
And that's what I would just urge you, urge you, urge you, urge you, urge you.
To use over and over again.
Libertarianism is not that complicated when it comes to debating it.
Freedom is really not that complicated.
Freedom is just being a broken record.
Because it's only the broken record technique, which is a well-known technique of negotiating and debating.
It's only the broken record technique that can break this foggy, distracted, dissociated, evil, corrosive power of euphemism and metaphors.
Asking how government can be more benevolent is asking how rape can be nicer for the woman.
it.
You just need to keep going over and over again.
Somebody says, public schools are great, private schools are bad.
You say, hey, I got no problem with you disagreeing with me.
I got no problem whatsoever with you having that opinion.
I certainly would never sanction the use of violence against you for having that opinion and being allowed to act on it, right?
Because it doesn't really matter if you have an opinion, but you're not allowed to act on it.
I mean, that's not a right. It's not a freedom.
And will you grant me the same reciprocal respect?
You're perfectly welcome to prefer public schools.
Am I allowed to not prefer public schools?
Now, if the person says, yeah, you're allowed to not like public schools, it's like, well, then you and I agree that people should be free to choose whatever schools they want.
Then they're going to get all screwed up.
There's no question. Everybody knows deep down that if people have a choice, they're never going to choose public schools.
Never in a million years. And so they know that they're forcibly restricting people's choices.
They're passing it off as a kind of virtue.
Their true self knows.
The false self gets a feeling and the true self knows.
They got all screwed up.
And then they'll go back to all of this stuff.
Well, it's required for social unity and the poor people have got to get educated and so on.
It's like, I understand that that's your opinion and I appreciate that and I respect that that's your opinion and I would never imagine or dream of using violence against you for holding that opinion and acting on it.
Will you accord me the same respect?
Will you accord me the same civilized respect to allow me to disagree with you without advocating that I get shot or arrested?
Can we at least have that conversation?
Can we at least be clear that I should be allowed to disagree with you without being shot?
Now, people will just run away.
Most people will just run away at this point, but it's a very important thing to get across to someone, to get across to people.
Am I allowed to disagree with you?
That's really all it comes down to. Am I allowed to disagree with you?
And that's all you need to ask.
Oh, the Fed, the government has to have the right to print currency.
Oh, the war in Iraq.
Am I allowed to disagree with you about the war in Iraq?
Am I allowed to not support the war in Iraq?
Am I allowed to not support the war in Iraq?
And not get shot. I'm allowed to oppose the invasion without getting shot.
Now, of course, even the most super patriot, the guy with stars and stripes where his eyeballs should be, is going to say, yeah, you've got to be allowed, yeah, I have nothing but contempt for your pansy-ass, long-haired, granola-chewing kind of opinions, but yeah, you know, I hate it, but I'll take the Voltaire approach that I disagree violently with everything that you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it.
Yeah, you should be allowed to disagree with the invasion and not get shot.
Because, I mean, if they say, no, anyone who disagrees with the invasion of Iraq should get shot, then clearly it's not so much because of the virtue and the freedoms that we're trying to defend that the war is in Iraq.
It loses all moral stature.
The person's just revealed as a sociopath.
Or an executive at Halliburton, or, well, the two may be synonyms, we don't know.
Actually, we do. But, and of course, then if somebody says, yeah, you're allowed to disagree, right, then you can say, okay, well, am I allowed to, if I, am I really, do I really have the power of freedom of speech?
If I get shot for speaking my mind.
Oh, I've got the right to freedom of speech, but if I speak my mind in a disapproved manner, I'm going to get shot or arrested, right?
It wouldn't make any sense to say you have freedom of speech, but you get shot for all opinions but this one.
You're allowed to praise the state, you've got freedom of speech, and if you don't praise the state, you get arrested.
That wouldn't be freedom of speech. That would just be nonsense, right?
And so if you have the right of disagreement, but you're not allowed to act on it, you effectively don't have that right.
If you're allowed to disagree with someone, but you get shot if you disagree with them, you're really not allowed to disagree with them.
I'm sure people would, unless they're completely insane, would agree with that.
And then you say, okay, well, clearly then if I disagree with the invasion of Iraq, I should not be forced to fund it.
Because that's like having freedom of speech.
I'm being arrested for speaking your mind, right?
If I'm allowed to disagree, but I still have to fund it, then I'm not allowed to disagree in any fundamental manner, right?
It's like you have freedom of speech alone in your washroom, right?
But you don't have freedom of speech anywhere where it counts, right?
So if I'm not allowed to withhold my funding for the war in Iraq, then clearly I don't have any right to oppose the invasion, which means that it's like you support the invasion or we're going to shoot you.
So, am I allowed to disagree with you in any practical sense?
Or is it just a bullshit word that you use?
Yeah, you're allowed to disagree with me, but if you really disagree with me in any practical way, you get shot.
Yeah, you have the right of free speech, but if you actually try and exercise it, you're going to get shot.
That's just Soviet-style, fascistic-style dictatorship.
On paper, Russians had lots of freedoms.
It's just in the real world, you can't liberalize yourself with paper.
It tends to work into that sort of Brazil scenario.
Tuttle, I think his name was, the Robert De Niro character.
Now... When you do this sort of broken record approach with libertarianism, which kind of comes down to one sentence.
That's sort of what I would suggest.
Something to play around with, batter it around like a struggling-to-be-free mouse in the paws of a lion.
Just bat it around and see what you think.
That's sort of what I'm working with.
The sentence that libertarianism comes down to, and market anarchy in particular, comes down to is the following.
First, put down the gun.
Then we'll talk.
First, put down the gun.
Then we'll talk.
And I would suggest that's really all that freedom, liberty, Minarchism to a small degree and market anarchy to a complete degree.
That's all it really comes down to. Put down the gun.
Then we'll talk. But as long as you've got the gun pointed at me, it's really not a whole lot we can talk about.
Not a whole lot that I'm going to be willing to talk to you about while you've got a gun.
To my head, because I'm not going to pretend that it's a civilized debate.
I'm not going to participate in this fraud That there's some sort of civilized debate going on when all that's happening is you're putting a gun to my head and then pretending that...
Like, I'm not going to pretend we're dating if you're raping me.
I'm not going to pretend it's charity if you're robbing me.
I'm not going to pretend that it's voluntary when you're forcing me.
I mean, that's what Ayn Rand talks about.
The withdrawal of sanction.
You have to de-euphemize The reality of the state and of the church and of the family.
But let's talk about the state, just sort of focus on that.
So, 99% of libertarianism, 99% of market and 100% of market anarchy is put down the gun, then we'll talk.
Put the gun down.
Sir, step away from the weapon.
Ma'am, step back from the napalm.
Put down the rocket launcher.
That's really all it kind of comes down to.
Put down the gun and then we'll talk.
Now, the reason that I find such enormous pleasure and hope and optimism in this reality, in the reality of the constant need to peel away the euphemisms from the barrel of the gun, right?
To take the icing off the gun is that People are already libertarians, and the reason that we know that they're already libertarians is that they desperately need, as the state knows very well, and libertarians, I would say, don't, they desperately need their euphemisms.
So when you say to someone, am I allowed to disagree with you, or are you going to shoot me?
Are you pretending to have a debate or are you pointing a gun at me?
Well, people are already libertarians because they don't want to shoot you.
Like, I've never met somebody, been debating this stuff for 25 years, never met anybody, who when I say, am I allowed to disagree with you, or, like, without being shot, I've never had anyone say to me, hell no.
Hell yeah, you should get shot if you disagree with me, punk.
Hell, you disagree with me one more time, I'm going to blow you away, why should you stand?
Nobody wants to say anything remotely like that to me.
People, you know, with very few exceptions, people, they don't like the violence.
People no likey the violence.
And that's a very important thing to understand.
There's a reason that all of these euphemisms, you know, I'm not forcing people to do stuff at gunpoint.
I'm in hot pursuit of the social good.
I don't shoot people who disagree with me.
I'm interested in educating the underprivileged.
I'm not interested in gunning people down who won't support this war.
I'm interested in protecting freedoms.
There's a reason that all these euphemisms and Metaphors and abstractions exist.
There's a reason why the gun is buried in mountains of fog and obfuscation and pretty garlands and dancing girls and candy and all these kinds of things.
There's a reason why vice has to so completely and aggressively cloak itself in virtue.
Which is that people know likely the violence.
People don't support or want or condone, really.
People don't like the violence.
And because people don't like the violence, the ruling classes kind of got to invent all this bullshit.
To pretend that there's no violence going on, that the war on drugs is about keeping your children safe, or you don't want your children to be safe?
It's all kind of like a joke, right?
Are you so selfish that you don't want poor children to be educated?
I mean, good heavens, how... I mean, if you don't have public schools, there's going to be a widening divide of the rich and poor, because the rich are going to have all this money for these great schools, and the poor won't, and there'll be a widening class divide, and tear society apart, and there won't be democracy, right? Because, Lord knows, public schools are getting more and more money, and we're really closing off that divide, huh?
I mean, hasn't it been working beautifully now that the...
I mean, there's no excuse left, right?
Public schools get like $8,000 to $10,000 per student, and, of course, the social divide gets wider.
But the real facts of the matter or the facts of the situation are pretty simple and pretty obvious.
They're not debating with you.
I've sort of mentioned this before. You sort of come up with the public school thing.
People are just afraid of the gun in the room, and they're afraid of realizing that there is a gun in the room, so they just mouth all the platitudes that they've been taught to mouth.
It's like a ticker tape. They have as much conscious control over the language that comes out of them as a ticker tape machine does for the indexes that it prints.
It's like calling the printer a great writer because it's produced a good book, right?
I mean, this is what people, they just say stuff, like whatever they can say, whatever they can come up with that's going to get you to shut up and stop probing the issue.
They'll just say, oh, you're, you know, and they're heavily mined against any kind of reality, right, any kind of truth and honesty.
They're heavily mined against all of that kind of stuff.
So, So fundamentally, they just make up whatever shit they can fling at the wall to get you to go away.
Oh, you're selfish.
You don't want to pay your fair share.
So, you know, you can just metaphorize that, or de-metaphorize it, right?
So a bunch of soldiers have cornered a bunch of nuns, and they're raping them.
And one nun opposes the rape.
And the soldiers say, hey, you're just not willing to give up your fair share.
Would that be something that...
Oh, I don't mean to be selfish.
Here, let me loop myself up and you can have your way, you fine soldiers.
I mean, that's the reality, right?
This is the reality of what is occurring in the world that people don't want to see.
So, yeah, I mean, I wouldn't say that the hypocrisy points are fairly high.
And that's a little stomach-turning, but...
The fact that there is hypocrisy is a really good sign.
The fact that people need and desperately cling to these euphemisms is a damn good sign.
If people didn't need euphemisms, I'd never be a market anarchist.
Fundamentally, that's an important thing to understand, at least about me, and I would say is a pretty validly universal claim.
If people didn't need euphemisms for violence, if people were totally comfortable with just shooting people who disagreed with them and you didn't need any euphemisms...
Then I wouldn't really be a market anarchist, right?
Because it would mean that people are very comfortable with using violence to get their way.
And that would mean that in the absence of a state, it would just be a war of all against all.
But the fact that people desperately need these euphemisms and resist the elimination of these euphemisms and the revealing of the gun in the room and the smell of cordite and the blown up people and the rape rooms.
The reason that people can't look at this kind of stuff is because people don't like...
They don't like either violence, right?
So that's the reason why I'm an anarchist, is because of these euphemisms.
Because you get rid of these euphemisms and people won't be violent.
And to me, that's a very fundamental thing to understand, that the fact that people avoid the reality of the violence in the current system, that is the majority of people's social interactions, the fact that people avoid the direct talk in conversations about these violence, It means that people are kind of good, right?
They can only be turned bad by having the badness obscured from them.
If the U.S. Army felt comfortable showing all the blown up bodies coming back from Iraq and felt comfortable showing all the pictures of all of the hundreds of thousands of murdered Iraqis and dead children, blown up houses and pregnant women blown to bits...
If this stuff wasn't hidden, then I'd never be a market anarchist.
If this stuff was just all out there and was on the nightly news and people sort of ate a steak while watching it going, oh yeah, that's good stuff.
Oh, look at that. That's a shattered female.
Oh, look at the bones sticking out of that puppy.
My God, that's some seriously excellent violence.
I'd never be a market anarchist because it means the human race is sort of fundamentally sociopathic.
But the fact is that the violence...
That is at the root of these historical social institutions, has always got to be hidden, has always got to be heavily layered in bullshit.
For people to swallow it.
Okay, bullshit swallow, not the best combination of metaphors there, but I think you sort of get what I'm talking about, that the fact that human beings so desperately need these euphemisms to obscure the violence that's in their social institutions, I think is very essential, and I think that we should really treasure that as a wonderful part of human nature and the greatest and best hope for a free society.
And also, my God, doesn't it make our lives just so much easier?
Doesn't it make our lives as market anarchists just enormously easier?
Because people don't like the violence, right?
So, there's only one thing that we've got to do.
There's a gun in the room, there's a gun in the room, there's a gun in the room, there's a gun in the room.
Put down the gun and then we'll talk.
It's really simple. We don't have to study masses of philosophy.
We don't have to read through, you know, 14 volumes of Rothbardian and Hayekian and Miesian material.
We can. It's certainly good stuff to read, and it's good stuff to listen to, and I certainly appreciate the efforts of those giants of thought, but it didn't work, right?
Their approach didn't work.
So what we need to do is just keep pointing out that, you know, keep asking the question.
I'm allowed to disagree with you without getting shot.
Will you shoot me if I disagree with you?
Will you shoot me if I disagree with you?
I won't shoot you. Can we at least have like that?
Can that be established? I'm not going to shoot you for being pro-state schools.
Will you return to me the same civilized discourse and capacities and realities of not shooting me if I disagree with you?
Can we at least... Establish that.
Now, if you can't establish that with someone, then just don't debate with them.
Don't even dignify that level of homicidal rage with a debate, right?
So if somebody's not willing to say, yeah, you know, I don't think you should get shot for disagreeing with me, then I would say that would be a good place to start, because then they're already saying, you're a market anarchist.
You're a libertarian. If I get fired, do you think I should be allowed to go in and hold my boss hostage until I get my job back?
And if they say no, then it's like, okay, then you already agree with me about the minimum wage.
And you already agree with me about state-sponsored and supported unions.
And you already agree with me about tariffs.
And you already agree with me about corporate welfare.
Because it's all the same thing, right?
You already agree with me about that stuff.
If I don't have enough money, do you think I should be allowed to go and shoot other people to get it?
No. Well, then you already agree with me about taxation.
There's nothing to debate. All we're saying is that the little values, sort of quote little values that we all live by, are the values that everyone should live by, right?
As Adam Smith said, what is wisdom in the management of a small household can scarcely be folly in the affairs of a great kingdom.
And I would say that what is moral in the affairs of an individual can scarcely be immoral.
In the affairs of a great nation, what is immoral in the affairs of an individual can scarcely be moral in the affairs of a great nation.
People already agree with you.
You have to keep ripping the scales off their eyes.
You have to keep taking the fog out of their brains.
And if you can keep doing that persistently and patiently and repetitively, then we'll be free.
Because you take away the euphemisms and you take away the gun.
When people see the gun the gun goes away.
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