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Nov. 13, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
33:17
508 Patriotism Part 2 - Tautology or Corruption
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Good afternoon, everybody.
Hope you're doing well. It's staff 1743, quarter to six, on November the 13th, 2006.
Hope you're doing well. Thank you so much for joining us once more on Freedom Aid Radio.
The Infinite Chat continues.
Now, I wanted to continue on, and I'm sorry that it's so dark that there's no point even trying to do a YouTube video.
The Shadow Man Speaks on YouTube will not do much to clarify the issue, and I can't imagine a whole lot of people who sit down to watch a YouTube video but want to just see the Shadow Forehead in action.
So, I wanted to continue on from the topic this morning, but to broaden it in scope just a little, little bit.
And by that, what I mean is that We've talked in a wide variety of contexts about the grave danger of worshipping power as opposed to worshipping virtue.
And we talked about this way back early on in Podcast 13 with regards to do you Love God because God is powerful or because God is good?
And the essential discrepancy between those two positions, the opposition between those two positions in reality.
And this sort of basic question is absolutely essential to ask with regards to the country, your country as well.
Do you love your country because your country is virtuous or because your country is powerful?
And that, I think, is a very, very important question.
Also, is the virtue of your country...
And this is sort of another way of asking the same question, but I think it's equally important to ask, if not more so.
Is the virtue of your country taken as an absolute, or is it something that is verified on a continual basis?
What I mean by that is...
You don't want to end up in a tautological situation when you are ascribing virtue to an entity.
And, of course, you can't really ascribe virtue to a collective entity like a country because no such thing exists, or a government.
You really only can do, or a society, only to individuals.
But let's just pretend for a moment that we can ascribe virtue to concepts like the United States or Iraq or, you know, the American people or the British or whatever.
If we could do that...
Then I think it would be worthwhile for us to sort of ask this basic question of, is my country good?
Because it conforms to an external standard of virtue that is universal, right?
Because it's good in relation to something.
Is my country good in relation to something, or is it good only in relation to itself?
In other words, is it good only in relation to its own definition?
Which is the ultimate tautology, right?
If I say that Coke is it, that's my proposition, Coke is it, and after a huge amount of back and forth and back and forth, I end up defining it as Coke, then all I've said is that Coke is Coke, and I haven't added anything to the debate, which was something that in yesterday's lengthy but exciting call-in show, I was trying to get across to the gentleman who was saying that virtue and oneness and balance and so on, that these are the God within us, and it's like, well, these things don't need an additional label called the God within us.
If they're going to be created, if they're going to create value.
And so if you say something like, well, virtue is the God within us, and then you say, well, what is the God within us?
Well, the God within us turns out to be virtue, virtue, or the desire for virtue.
And so all you've basically said is, virtue is the God within us, the God within us equals virtue, and therefore virtue equals virtue, which doesn't really add anything to the intellectual content of what's being debated.
I wanted to just sort of have a look at this when you look at the virtue within your own country.
And this is particularly true, of course, I mean, it's almost by definition among patriots, but I think it's sort of important to look at this question of people associate virtue with their own country and with their own history and with their own culture.
That's an inevitable aspect of human life and human mental habits, that we associate virtue With our own countries and our own cultures and our own history.
And part of that, of course, is, I think, justly so in the history of the West, that there has been some significant progress in the West towards property rights and human rights, and relative to the historical theocracies of the West and the existing theocracies of the East, to use a very broad set of generalizations, it's a pretty stateless society relative to all of the other nonsense that goes on in the world.
So there has been some sort of specific virtue and so on.
But the question sort of still remains, why do we worship our countries?
Why do we worship our gods?
Why do we worship our governments?
Why do we worship our families?
Now, we do kind of get deep down that we must ascribe characteristics of virtue to those things which we claim to love.
If you say to somebody, why do you love your country?
And he says, because if I don't, they'll throw me in jail.
Then I think we kind of, at a very fundamental level, get that that isn't really love.
That's just conformity and fear and so on.
So if we say to a woman, if someone were to say to Christina, why don't you leave your husband?
She'd say, leave him. He's wonderful.
I love him. But if she were to say, I can't because he'll track me down and kill me, I think that we would understand that there's a difference.
And not an inconsiderable difference.
A difference almost of complete and total opposites in that kind of situation.
And so, when we claim to love something, to have regard and respect for it, it is an inevitability that...
I mean, we have no choice.
But we must describe virtues To the thing which we claim to love.
So, in the conversation we were talking about this morning, where people say, who are Americans, well, there was this treacherous and horrible Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and so on.
And that's...
I mean, there's nothing wrong with saying that, but the moment that you begin to use ethical terms that, you know, the Japanese were treacherous and it was an unwarranted attack and so on, and the United States was right to get into World War II because...
It was attacked and it was responding to that attack in self-defense and so on, right?
Well, the moment that you bring Moral criteria to bear on that which you claim to love and have respect for, like your country or whatever, then you have immediately, just as we were talking about in the conversation with regards to religion, the moment that you have said that God has touched my mind and flicked on the God switch,
which is flicking off the reason switch, that God has touched my mind from outside my mind, then you have something that is an impact upon you from the external world, And what that means, of course, is that You have the criteria.
I'm so sorry. Let me restart this again.
I just rebooted my brain.
I was fighting back a tangent and got swept down a corridor.
Let me find my way back. The moment that you say something external to my mind has touched me, and that's why I know that God exists, it's not just a delusionary fantasy on my part.
The moment that you say that, then you have established a criteria of proof and disproof.
So if you say that I've had this vision of an angel, and you say, but I was really high at the time, nobody thinks that that angel actually exists, or I was asleep and dreaming, or whatever.
I'd hit my head. But the moment that you say, I have a vision from an angel, and that comes from outside my mind, then you're in the realm of reality, and you're in the realm of a testable hypothesis, and so you either never hear anything from anyone about God, or the moment they say so, that something has impacted their mind from outside their mind, then you're in the realm of science and testable hypotheses, and so on.
Similarly, just as when people say that there was a moral reason For something that their country did, then they're appealing to a force of ethics or a principle of ethics would be a better way of putting it, that is not defined as their country.
Right? So if I were to say, and I'm sorry to belaboring this point, but I just sort of want to make sure it comes across very clearly because I'll hear the collective intake of breath.
If you haven't sort of pondered this one before, I'll hear the collective intake of breath.
It'll suck in and shatter the windows of my Volvo when you get it.
So I'm just going to comb over a little bit longer if you don't mind, and I think that you'll find it quite an exciting idea when you get it.
If you have, please skip on to the next podcast.
The moment that I say that the United States was justified in going into World War II because of the perfidious infamy, the day of infamy, the perfidious Japanese attack upon the innocent American blah blah blah, right?
Then I've appealed to a principle that is outside of the U.S. actions, by which the U.S. and the Japanese actions at that time, and of course this would be true for any time, can be judged.
So the moment that I evaluate and judge the actions of my country according to a standard, according to a standard that is external to whatever that country does, right?
Then I can invoke virtue and I can feel respect and love and patriotism and all these kinds of things.
That's wonderful. But by taking out the sword of ethics, I have now also taken out the sword of universality and reciprocity.
Now, you can't take out the sort of ethics if it turns out that ethics is defined as whatever the United States does.
And you'll see this kind of stuff occur a lot when you talk to people about their love of their country, which in its essence is not something that I disagree with, and I'll sort of get to that in a little while.
But when you start talking about The principles by which, say, the United States is allowed to attack Afghanistan because of 9-11 or to attack Japan because of Pearl Harbor and so on,
or attack various South American countries for God knows what reason, The moment that you say that this is good, you can't simply say that it's good because the United States did it, right? Because then you have a tautology.
So if I say that it was right for the United States to attack because Japan aggressed against the United States, and then I say, well, but America aggressed against the United States first, Then it's like, well, that's different.
Or, you know, there's some other story that's sort of dredged up.
But the Japanese were attacking Manchuria and invading China and so on.
But that doesn't have anything to do with it.
That would simply be that those countries would have the right to attack Japan, not that America would have the right to blah, blah, blah.
And then, you know, you'll hear, well, America's the world's policeman, and we had to save the British, and blah, blah, blah, right?
So basically, what will happen is, somebody will put forward a proposition that says, here's why America was right to do X. And then you say, well, if that principle is universal, then if another country was doing X, then America wouldn't like it.
If the principle is self-defense against a foreign aggressor, then...
It would not really be a very fair thing to say that it only applies to America.
Because then where you're back to is, America does the right thing.
And then you say, well, what is the right thing?
Well, it's whatever America does.
So then what you're saying is, America does whatever America does.
But then you want to inject universal morality and goodness and virtue and the knightly republic and the camelot of JFK and all these kinds of wonderful virtues.
But you can't do that if you define the virtuous as just that which America does.
And you get the same thing, of course, when talking to people about the virtue of their families and the virtue of God, right?
So, you know, God is all goodness.
Well, is it good to kill an entire planet because there are some bad people and save just Noah and the animals?
Would you accept That, you know, you obviously would have moral problems with the Holocaust, and so on and so on and so on.
So, God is all virtue, while these actions sure as heck aren't virtuous by any rational standard.
Ah, but God moves in mysterious ways, and God knows everything, and we can't know, and we angered him, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
So all that happens is people put forward a proposition.
The United States was correct, morally correct, universally morally correct in attacking Japan because Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.
And you say, okay, well, what's the principle?
You ask for what the principle is.
Well, the principle is the principle of self-defense.
Well, if the principle of self-defense is valid, then Japan was perfectly valid in attacking Pearl Harbor.
I'm not saying it was. I'm just saying that if you take that principle, but then the principle just shifts.
So really what you're dealing with is a tautology masked in ethical theory.
It's a bigotry masked in philosophy.
And of course, the role of philosophy is to continue to peel back the layers of these bigotries until we actually get to the truth, however much it may feel to a patriot, like we're peeling the eighth epidermal layer, which is the flag from his very skin, causing him untold agony.
It is something that needs to be done, because the last thing that we want to do is to confuse tautological bigotry with moral philosophy, right?
That would be a horrible, horrible misreading of the purpose of virtue, and would be an entirely destructive and horrible thing to do.
So, the thing that...
The thing that...
The thing... I'm now arguing the thing.
Any questions? No.
The thing with the whatchamacallit by the doodly-doo.
Hey, sign sealed and delivered totally proven.
Done. Goodbye.
All right. Let's assume that I haven't quite gotten around to proving the thing yet.
Let's move on with one of the methodologies by which this is created.
Well, if you want to get somebody to swallow the tautology that...
Virtue in a universal sense is embedded in a tautology, right?
In other words, the uniform turns a hitman into a marine.
Why is a Marine so virtuous?
Well, he's out there defending our freedom.
So what does defending our freedom mean?
Well, it means that he's defending himself against people who would attack us.
And it's like, okay, so the people who attack us are bad.
So if people aren't threatening us, sorry, if we're not threatening people and they then attack us, then...
Then they're bad, and we're good, right?
At least we have the right to self-defense.
The aggressor is bad, and he's out there defending us, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And that's fine. Well, then, of course, you look at the history of the U.S. military, and the U.S. military, since 1812, has never had its homeland threatened in any way, shape, or form, even remotely, conceivably, God knows how, except with nukes, which Marines are pretty useless against, right?
So, given that we have this enormous military and the United States is out there overthrowing governments and putting in trade sanctions, seizing assets, occupying islands, raping people, you know, all the stuff that the military has done throughout history, then obviously the Marine is not defending our freedoms but attacking other people.
Then, of course, the Marine cannot be virtuous.
If the Marine is virtuous because he's out there defending our freedoms, then he's actually the bad guy because he's not defending anybody's freedoms, but rather attacking the liberties and lives and properties of other people.
On orders from the government, right?
But of course, what happens is that the people will just twist and turn and all of that, and they're trying to avoid one of two collisions, right?
This is the amount of shit and fog and ink-like squid that gets squirted into your face the moment you start probing into this stuff, right?
People want to avoid one of two collisions.
These truths to basic realities that will cause all of these fantasy worships of these moral heroes to collapse into ashes and a bitter taste of understanding of the history of supporting evil and violence.
And on the one poll, they desperately wish to avoid, and you'll see this with government.
We have people who have status and so on.
They desperately, desperately wish to avoid recognizing that what they've done is defined a tautology.
A marine is virtuous.
Well, why? Well, because everything that a marine does is virtuous.
That's a contradiction. That's a tautology.
It's nonsense. And so that's what they want to do.
They want to avoid that on the one hand.
So they have to define morality as something external to what a marine does.
They have to define morality as something external to what a marine does.
But the moment that they define morality as something external to what a marine does, then it's reciprocal.
And then if the marine does not follow that virtue, or if he acts in a manner that contradicts that virtue, then the marine is no longer virtuous.
And since, of course, marines are far from virtuous, quite the opposite, people want to avoid that.
So they want to avoid the tautology, and they also want to avoid the reciprocity and universality of the argument for morality.
And most people, of course, spend their entire lives up to their nose hairs in this kind of squalid filth, just dodging and evading all of this nonsense.
So you'll get the same thing when you talk to your parents about your history with them and what they have done to you and what you would like from them and so on.
They will consistently say that virtue, that they were virtuous, that they did the right thing, that they did the best they could, that they were good parents, or that certainly the best parents they could be, and so on.
So they will consistently appeal to virtue independent of their actions.
They won't want to say, I'm good because I am.
Because obviously that's not virtue, that's just narcissism, that's just entitlement.
The moment somebody says good, or moral, or right, or true, then they've jumped out of themselves.
If they say, I like jazz, that's not a universal proposition, that's just a description of a particular preference of theirs, and it's not a debate, it's not an arguable point, it's just a nice little tidbit about their personality, I guess.
But the moment that they use right and virtue and did the best we could and so on, these are all verifiable and testable hypotheses.
And so when you sit down and talk with your parents and you say, I feel like you've never listened to me.
And they say, no, that's not true at all.
We do listen to you.
We've always loved listening to you.
We always want to know what's happening in your life.
And you say, well, see, here's an example where I'm telling you that you're not listening to me and what are you doing?
You're not listening to me, right?
No, that's not what's happening, blah, blah, blah.
They constantly will deny that and attempt to say that they're virtuous and you're crazy and so on.
And if you say, well, what is a virtue defined as?
Like, how do you define virtue since you're so sure that you're virtuous?
And virtue, of course, is quite a challenging thing to be sure of.
Since you're so sure that you're virtuous, it must be the case.
That you are deeply versed in the knowledge of virtue, and so tell me what it is that you've done relative to an external standard that if we switch around equally applies to me.
Well, that's never going to happen, right?
So your parents are going to want to constantly resist an external definition of their virtue while at the same time resisting the knowledge that they just defined virtue as whatever the hell they did or do, which has obviously got nothing to do with virtue.
So, the way that people talk about this, or the way that they sort of set it up in your mind, just sort of very fundamental on how propaganda works, is that people will sort of select an entity.
We'll just call it the government, right?
We'll call it the U.S. government, right?
They'll select an entity, and they will infuse it with...
Chin trembling, tears in the eyes, stirring kind of patriotic love, they will infuse it with love in the hopes of creating virtue.
Virtue causes love.
Love flows from virtue.
Love does not create virtue.
But people project All of this imaginary virtue onto an entity and they get all emotional about it and they claim about their love of Jesus and how Jesus makes them so happy and how their country is so virtuous and how their national anthem makes them teary and how they just love, love, love, love this abstract entity.
And then it must be good because they love it, right?
This is the cause and effect. And this is the Stockholm Syndrome as well, if you know anything about that.
It's a psychological quirk, more than a quirk.
It's almost like human nature when it's bruised or broken.
So they will simply get all emotional.
And if you ask any questions, they will get angry.
I mean, this is the basic thing that occurs with all of this kind of nonsense, right?
So, you know, your father will tell you exactly how to fold a flag so it doesn't touch the ground.
You have to fold the flag so it doesn't touch the ground and show respect for your elders, whether or not they're showing respect for you, without even any definition of what respect might mean.
So all of this kind of stuff is consistently talked about.
There's this lip-trembling kind of clenched-jawed patriotism, and I love my country, and this, that, and the other.
And then when you question people, they say, well, I love my country because it's virtuous.
And then you say, well, okay, by what principles is it virtuous?
And they don't want to go there.
They don't want to go there because that is very harmful for them in a pretty fundamental kind of way.
And you'll get the same kind of nonsense about God and you'll get the same kind of nonsense about your family.
Family is everything. Oh, my family.
I love my family. All this kind of stuff that goes on about the family.
Well, why do you love your family?
Well, because they're good people.
They're good people. They're caring people.
It's like, okay, well, what does that mean?
Right? And the moment you ask that question, the moment that you ask someone to provide some evidence for what it is that they love, they're going to get angry at you.
Because in their mind, this translates to an attack, right?
And this is why, of course, with patriotism, you get this crazy stuff where, you know, my country, right or wrong, it's like, okay, well, then that's not virtue, right?
That's just slavish obedience to people in power.
No, it's virtue because my country is the best country, okay?
What is it that makes your country the best country?
Well, it's the most free. Well, define freedom.
Freedom is X, Y, and Z. Okay, so the degree to which your country does not represent X, Y, and Z, and the degree to which other countries do is the degree to which, if you love the principle and not the thing, if you love the principle and not the thing itself, Then you should switch your allegiances to other countries.
So then as your country becomes less free, your love for it should diminish.
And if other countries become more free, then your love for those countries should increase.
Because you don't love your country, you love a principle, which your country represents.
No, I love my country.
Okay, well then you're just saying that you love obedience to people in power, because that's really what your country is.
You don't love some guy over in Indiana, right?
Unless you're George Michael and you seem to get around quite a bit.
But they'll say, no, I love the principle.
Okay, but then the principle is universal and not tied up into your country at all.
And this is how you constantly bounce back and forth between the problems of tautology and corruption.
And this is where you get all of this kind of nonsense, where people will, you know, with absolute wide-eyed emphasis, will say completely lunatic things like, America went into the Second World War to fight socialism and to fight fascism.
And it's like, well, if that is the case, if that is the case...
Then, surely, America should not have been moving in the direction of fascism and socialism before it went into the Second World War.
Because that really wouldn't make any sense.
So, of course, given that everybody knows what happened with the New Deal in the 1930s, which was direct and specifically straight from the textbooks of both National Socialism or Nazism and Mussolini's That the American government went directly towards fascism.
And so there's, you know, obviously America was in the direction of fascism, of course central control of the currency and so on, and there's all of these platforms of the Communist Party that you can see was enacted by the American government before World War II. So obviously if you're interested in fighting fascism, you should not be moving in the direction of fascism Then you're sort of like the narc who wants to end the drug war while escalating his own drug use and dealing.
It may be open to some question.
And of course, even if we accept, though, that America was growing fascistic in the 1920s and 1930s in particular, that America was growing fascistic and it went into World War II to fight communism and fascism, Then we would,
I think, logically expect that if America had woken up to its own danger with regards to the growing aspects of this kind of problem, Then it would be the case that after the end of the Second World War, that America would have corrected its own drift towards fascism and socialism and communism.
And it would have arrested its own slide towards these things and reversed its course, right?
Because it was out there fighting fascism, right?
Because fascism is not Germany.
Fascism is not Germany.
Fascism is not Italy.
Fascism is a principle. Centralization of economic power and regulation in the hands of the state while allowing nominal private ownership of corporations and property.
So, socialism, of course, is just state control of everything, but fascism is state control of the effects of production but not the means of production through regulation and through taxation and so on.
And this, of course, has nothing to do with any particular country.
So if you say America was fighting Germany, well, that's fine, right?
But if you say that America was fighting fascism, then, of course, America was already in the path to fascism, and America, as a result of the Second World War directly, vastly expanded state control of the economy.
And this, of course, is a basically fascistic principle.
And, of course, the degree of state control of the economy did diminish after the end of the Second World War, but it never went back to pre-war levels, even remotely.
And it was, of course, after the end of the Second World War that you began to have a standing army that got up to no end of mischief around the world for the first time in American history.
Permanent standing army, military, industrial complex, the complete corruption of the last shreds of the ideals of the republic.
So, that's all I'm saying is that if you want to say America fought Germany, that's fine.
And was Germany a more evil society than America?
Sure, absolutely.
We always have these things about the cop who fights evil who slides into evil, right?
I mean, this is a pretty common sort of idea.
And this is exactly, of course, what happened to America, right?
That you're fighting evil lends you blind to the evil within your own culture.
The degree that they're bad and we're good makes you blind to the evils within your own society because they all get projected onto the other society, the society that you're fighting.
And so you don't see the inevitable progress towards the society that you're trying to fight, which of course is what's happening in America.
And the only way that people would ever be blind to this is because they do this simultaneous nonsense, right?
They define the good as an external, logical, universal, perfect standard that America, or the American government, let's just say America, that America aligns with.
While simultaneously they say that whatever is good is what America does, and whatever America does is the good.
But it's an external standard, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
So philosophy really does help unravel all of this nonsense, right?
And there's nothing wrong.
I mean, if you want to live a life of sort of moral ignorance and jingoistic, brain-dead, patriotic tub-thumping, Then you can certainly say, if you want, there's no law against it, right?
You can say 2 plus 2 is 5 if you want.
It just means you're no mathematician and, in fact, you're sort of an idiot when it comes to this kind of stuff.
But you can certainly say, if you want, that the Japanese were evil and attacked the innocent Americans and so America had to go and fight to defend itself and this, that, and the other.
Yeah, all of that is certainly possible, but it's complete nonsense, right?
It's absolute and total nonsense.
It's like saying that the First World War was the war to end all wars, and then the war obviously doesn't end all wars, and then saying, well, that doesn't matter.
It was still the war to end all wars, and that's what made it virtuous.
Well, but it didn't end any wars.
In fact, it created more. It doesn't matter.
It's still virtuous. Well, then virtue is a tautology.
World War I is simply defined as virtue, and you'd use the terms interchangeably, and I had nothing to the debate.
So I hope that this is of use to you.
I think it's very important to look at the degree of emotional intensity that people put into these nonsense ideas like state and church and family, just so that you can get, I think, a strong sense of the kind of problems that you're facing in this kind of area.
And so that you can sort of clearly delineate within your own mind the fact that people are going to constantly appeal to an external standard to prove...
The virtue of that which they love, while at the same time basically defining the actions of that which they love as virtuous, which causes their love.
But it's completely the opposite.
I mean, there's no truth in it whatsoever.
The truth of the matter is that they are emotionally scarred and brutalized with these fantasies and that their own parents both invested a lot of passive-aggressive emotion in the worship of these abstract entities like the state, the church, and the family, And they were heavily punished for asking any sensible or logical questions.
So I hope that that sort of clears up, at least from my perspective, some of the challenges that you face when you are talking to these kinds of people.
Because it really is an endless and bottomless pit of people like a bag of eels just squirming around between these twin poles of tautology and moral judgment.
And I hope that this at least gives you some ammunition Thank you so much for listening.
I look forward to your donations, and I will talk to you soon.
Thank you so much for listening, as always.
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