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Feb. 5, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

39:07

632 The Magic Gun

The 'Excalibur' of Democracy

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	Good morning, everybody. It's Steph, 8.05 a.m.
	on February the 5th, 2007.
	Hope you're doing well. I'd like to open up a topic that we haven't chatted about in a little while.
	Said topic not being free will, but a government and politics.
	Because I kind of want to show, at least from my standpoint, how no matter which way you cut it, it makes no sense.
	Any ethical or practical justifications for the state, it makes no sense whatsoever.
	So, if we take sort of a simple topic like feed the poor, help the poor, charity towards the poor, help the poor, let's just call it, then the basic logic, of course, of the democratic state is people don't want to help the poor, so what they do is they vote in a government to force them to help the poor.
	Why don't I just roll that one around in your brain a little bit to just see the extraordinary and ridiculous paradoxes and, frankly, moral corruption that's involved in that sort of statement.
	People don't want to help the poor, so a plurality or a majority of them will get together and will vote for a bunch of people to pick up guns and force them to help the poor.
	That's, of course, the story that the state gives us.
	And it really doesn't take more than 10 seconds thought to realize or to see just how ridiculous an argument it really is.
	I mean, like Christina saying, I want to go and shop at HomeSense because I really like having my credit card information available to hackers.
	I really want to go and shop at HomeSense.
	So I've made a call.
	And I say, I'm sorry, what do you mean you've made a call?
	And she says, well, I really want to shop at HomeSense, so I've called Luigi, the local no-neck tough guy, to come by and put me in a sack and drive me and tell me what it is that I want, force me to pay for it, take a salary for himself, and drive me home.
	And I say, really?
	That's the plan? You want to go shop somewhere?
	You're going to pay someone to put you in the trunk of a car, drive you there, tell you what you want, force you to pay for it, pay him a salary, and then drop you home.
	I said, well, I don't quite understand that.
	Why would that make any sense?
	And she says, well, that's how it works.
	That's how you get things done.
	And I said, but you want...
	You want to go and shop at HomeSense to the point where you're going to go and phone this guy up and have him put you in a sack and drive you to the store and make you buy stuff and pay him a sale.
	You want to do it to the point where you're willing to submit to all of that, right?
	You're voluntarily instigating all of that.
	That's how much you want to shop at HomeSense.
	Because that's not going to be comfortable.
	Driving in the back of Luigi's car with all those pipe wrenches and bodies or whatever.
	That's not very comfortable.
	So, you must really want to go and shop at HomeSense.
	Oh, I do. Well, why do you want to go and shop at HomeSense?
	Well, because I really want to buy X, Y, and Z, girly-girly knick-knacks for the house.
	And I say, but you won't actually get to do that.
	She said, what do you mean? Luigi's going to put me in the store.
	I'm going to buy some stuff and come home.
	It's like, yeah, but you don't get to choose what to buy.
	Luigi's going to choose that. He's going to make you pay, give him a salary, drop you home.
	I mean, I see what Luigi's getting out of it.
	Some power, some money.
	But I don't see what you're getting out of it.
	And she says, well, yeah, I understand what you mean, but the problem is that I don't want to shop at HomeSense.
	But if you don't want to shop at HomeSense, then why are you calling somebody up to force you?
	Anyway, you get the metaphor.
	I don't need to flog it today.
	But that really is the story of democracy.
	It's the story of statism as a whole, but this is the story of democracy.
	The only difference between democracy and totalitarianism is that in democracy...
	You're considered to be a bad person, so you get to make the call to Luigi, the vote.
	But that's it. That's the only major difference as far as the ethics go.
	Now, we can all sort of recognize that that would be the behavior of somebody who needed an extraordinary amount of psychiatric intervention.
	A whole team in Zurich and, you know, some bags of antipsychotics, fairly large, strapped directly to the arm.
	And that that would not be a practical way to go around solving problems because we would immediately see the basic contradiction.
	If you want to shop at HomeSense, why do you need to be forced to shop at HomeSense?
	If you don't want to shop at HomeSense, why are you picking up the phone to force someone...
	Sorry, so that somebody will come and force you to shop at HomeSense?
	And it's exactly the same thing with government programs.
	And this is the really mad, rabid, squirrely core of the state...
	That nobody wants to talk about.
	And by the by, as I'm sure you're aware, this negative economics is also inherent to the church and to families, right?
	I mean, just very briefly, I want to get too far off my main topic, but...
	The church says that God is good and God is love and you should want to love God and pray to God and so on.
	And then what they do is they bring out hellfire and damnation as a threat and heaven as a bribe.
	But if God has intrinsic value and is wonderful and beautiful and makes you feel great to begin with, And nobody has to sit there and say to teenagers, you know, I'm going to spank you if you don't have sexual feelings, right?
	That may actually increase their sexual feelings, who knows?
	But that's something that just happens, right?
	Nobody has to say, I'm going to take away your television privileges if you don't have puberty, right?
	Because that actually is natural and people kind of want it too.
	So... All of that is the same sort of principle, and the same thing is true with family as well.
	You're supposed to love your family, you're supposed to want to be with your family, but then why do you need any forms of guilt or obligation or manipulation or control or bullying or this or that or the other?
	If you genuinely do love your family, then there should need to be no guilt trips if you don't have a chance or aren't able to see them.
	You should feel no...
	because they have value in and of themselves.
	The moment that somebody starts to punish you, For not performing X, Y, and Z positive action, then you know for sure that X, Y, and Z positive action is not going to work, and is not of value, and is never going to be efficient, and is merely...
	They're not identifying a negative and then prescribing a positive.
	They're not saying, well, we really need to help the poor, and so we're going to put these government programs in.
	That's not how it works at all.
	That's not how the encroachment of power works at all.
	Your mother doesn't say, well, you don't want to come and see us, so I'm going to bully you because coming to see us is the right thing to do.
	Because if it's the right thing to do, like a duty, then it can't be love.
	It's a duty to pay taxes, at least right now.
	You can't say love is involved.
	As soon as love becomes an obligation and a bullied thing, it's no longer love.
	So, what happens, really, is that a non-value is put forward in order to dominate you.
	Your parents treat you badly in order to dominate and bully you.
	They don't dominate and bully you to come and see them because they vaguely regret that they've treated you badly or whatever.
	No. When you treat somebody badly, that's the excuse for power.
	So anyway, I won't get too complicated into all of that, but to return to the question of the state and sort of helping the poor and so on, that fundamental paradox is what nobody really ever wants to talk about, because it is a fundamental paradox that reaches into so many different areas of human life and human action.
	If something is of value to people, then they don't need to be forced to do it.
	If they are forced to do it, then it cannot claim to be of value.
	It cannot be claimed that whatever they're being forced to do is of value.
	To them, for sure.
	I mean, just talking about positive obligations, not like, don't rape, don't kill.
	So, naturally, the poor are wielded, as we've talked about before, as a kind of club to beat people down.
	All the people in power want to do is to get you into that place where you have a question that you cannot answer with confidence.
	So, if you're against social programs, people say, oh, so you don't care about the poor.
	And then, of course, that's a...
	That's a trap, right? I mean, so if you say, no, I don't care about the poor, well, then you're a bad person who's immoral, and nobody should listen to you, and you're automatically excluded from the debate of any reasonable, decent, and ethical people, right?
	So that gets you right off the chessboard.
	If you say, well, I do care about the poor, then ipso facto ergo pronto, you must be in favor of social programs to help the poor, government programs to help the poor.
	It is the old, have you stopped beating your wife question yet.
	I mean, this is the traps that are scattered throughout the statist, the priest, Lee, and the world of the family.
	Don't you love your mother?
	But she's your mother!
	I mean, what's supposed to be answerable?
	But she's your mother, right?
	This is what we were talking about on the show yesterday.
	They say, oh, I'm not going to see my mom anymore.
	Oh, but she's your mother!
	It's like, well, that's certainly true.
	Congratulations on figuring out which hole I dropped out of like a little parachute just way back when.
	But the she's your mother is she has value because she had sex and is fertile.
	So she has value to you.
	She gave you life!
	So you can't deny that she's your mother, obviously.
	I mean, I guess you could, but...
	And you've got to go on a big other quest that somebody's going to make a documentary about, I'm sure, and show on PBS. So you can't say, well, no, she's not my mother, because that would be illogical.
	And if you say, yes, she is my mother, then what is automatically assumed is that you have a love, duty, and obligation towards her.
	These are just the silly traps, but very powerful, that human beings put in front of each other, right?
	It's the other question that Christians ask, you know, if you express doubt of it.
	Don't you believe that God loves you?
	Well, if you say yes, then you're religious, right?
	But if you say no, then, you know, the next is, well, God doesn't hate you, you know?
	Then it sounds like a sort of self-loathing, right?
	I'm so unlovable, not even the all-powerful, all-benevolent, municipent, loving one can find it in his heart to throw me a few scraps of sugar, right?
	So that's the other kind of question that comes up.
	And all of these sort of rhetorical questions, I've never been very good at asking them.
	But there's some people who are just excellent at it, and, you know, the parents, priests, and politicians seems to, you know, whenever I say that, that song, poets, priests, and politicians have words to thank for their positions.
	Words that scream for your submission.
	No one's jamming their transmission.
	That's da-do-do-do-di-da-da-da by the police.
	Well, actually, by Sting. But he said poets, priests, and politicians.
	I would put in parents, priests, and politicians.
	But, of course, his own arrogance as a lyricist probably made him unconsciously put the word poets in there in the hope that somebody was going to call him on it.
	But I'm sure his false self, of which he is largely composed, it would seem, sailed largely and pleasantly over that minor divide.
	So, let's have a look at this question of something like social programs or helping the poor and so on.
	Now, the fascinating thing is that really nobody puts forward any arguments that says a social program should be put in place to allow somebody, a human being, to run 100 miles an hour unaided.
	A social program is never put forward that argues that we need government spending to allow human beings to run 100 miles an hour unaided.
	Bare legs. Because people would say, well, that's impossible.
	That can't occur. That can't be done.
	Simultaneously, no government program is put forward with the goal of ending poverty in 96 hours.
	Why? Well, because that would be measurable.
	We talked about this a fair while back, how religions that say, if you sacrifice a goat, you will get two goats tomorrow, don't tend to last very long, because that's really verifiable.
	So the purpose of somebody who's snowing you, who's defrauding you, is to put off the payment, hopefully in perpetuity, but to make it very large.
	So this Chu, this super cop we talked about yesterday, was being scammed by a guy who said that the price was $100 million, that if he gave him all this money, he would go and get him $100 million, but there was no time frame that this could be figured out in.
	And then it was like, okay, well, the 100 million isn't available, but you're going to get rewarded by the Queen, and you're going to get 10 million, and that's going to be, you're going to get knighted, and all this sort of stuff, right?
	So the reward always has to be in some, it's never going to be in the next five minutes, never going to be in the next 10 minutes, always has to be further off.
	It also has to be large, right?
	The larger it is, if somebody tried to scam you and said, you know, pay me all this money and you'll get 100 bucks in 10 years, well, you just say, forget it, right?
	So the desire to escalate the reward and push off the time frame for achievement is pretty significant.
	I mean, that desire is pretty enormous.
	That's really how these things work.
	So you'll never see a government program where the solution is supposed to show up in the next year.
	Year or six months or three months.
	So, that's sort of an important thing to understand when it comes to looking at social programs.
	The second thing is that the amazing thing about social programs is that they're not considered to be impossible.
	So, the public school system is supposed to be able to help children become educated and to continuously improve in the way that other things in the market, like computers and so on, do, right?
	And other social programs like money for the elderly and sick, money for the sick and so on, they're all considered to be possible.
	So there's no government program that says, give me a billion dollars, and within one month I will have eliminated cancer.
	Because it's too measurable, right?
	And so it would be fairly impossible to provide.
	But a man running 100 miles an hour on eight, it's not possible, obviously.
	It's completely impossible. So, when somebody suggests a program, they're suggesting that something is possible.
	That if we just look at the basics of poverty programs, that money from some people can be redistributed in an effective and poverty-reducing manner to other people.
	That's taken as a given, that that's possible.
	Nobody's saying that this social program will help the poor to levitate and read the minds of hamsters.
	I mean, nobody's talking about that.
	Actually, they might have the minds of hamsters in there.
	It's unverifiable. No, he really is thinking about food.
	Somebody who's into government programs, a statist, concedes that whatever goal he wants the state to achieve is achievable.
	It's not like jumping to the moon or holding your breath underwater for five hours.
	I made it. So, human beings can help the poor.
	It's just that they can't help the poor Without the guns being pointed at them.
	See, it's a very, very important thing to understand.
	The statist is saying that the goals that, whatever it is, whatever goals he wants government to achieve, that they're possible, that human beings can do them, that they're achievable.
	But that they're not achievable if people don't have guns pointed at them.
	So, of course, a statist's fundamental moral premise is that violence is good.
	Violence is a moral good. Violence is a benefit.
	And it's a singular benefit in that violence is the only thing that can achieve whatever good it is that the statist wants the state to achieve, even if that's as simple as the law courts, I mean, quote, simple relative to this current state, as the law courts and the military and police and jails and so on, whatever it is that the guy wants.
	It is possible for this to be achieved by human beings in some configuration, but it's not possible without the gun.
	So, without the gun, you have evil madness, chaos, or whatever, right?
	It has to be something pretty negative.
	People don't say, well, without social programs, 1% fewer poor will be helped, but 10% more poor will get jobs because the taxpayers' money will be left in their pockets to spend as they see fit in the free market, which will generate occupations and demand and so on.
	People don't say it's always a catastrophe.
	It has to be. So, if it's possible for human beings to get together and to transfer money to help the poor, if it's possible, and of course the statist has to admit that it is possible, but that the only way that it's achievable is through violence,
	is through giving a group of people a monopoly on the force of taxation and income redistribution and so on, then the statist is left with a rather challenging It can be achieved, helping the poor or defending the country or whatever, by human beings working together in some configuration.
	But the only way that it can be achieved is through the gun.
	In the absence of the gun, evil, chaos, destruction, whatever, poverty, sickness.
	In the absence of the gun, nothing but evil.
	With the gun, you know, put the gun in, load it up, wave it around, virtue.
	The key premise, the key moral premise in the statist argument for anything, even the minarchies, the key element is that the gun is goodness.
	Because it's the only difference between voluntarism and a state, between anarcho-capitalism and a state, the only difference is the monopoly of the gun.
	And the only difference in the theory is that all other things being equal, and naturally they have to be, it is the gun that makes something virtuous.
	It's the gun that makes something virtuous.
	The gun is virtue.
	Because human beings can help the poor if they want to, enough to the point where they're going to vote in people and submit to taxation and so on.
	Then people can help the poor, and they want to help the poor, and there's other people who will help the poor if they receive some sort of income, and the people who work for the welfare departments and so on.
	So people will help the poor.
	And the state is not imagining that fairies are going to help the poor, right?
	It's that the poor get helped by people in some configuration, in some organization, in some capacity, in some set-up.
	But that the only virtue, the only thing that differentiates voluntarism from the state is the gun of the state.
	So, if a state says, well, that would be bad to have no state in the whatever, X situation, then basically what they're saying is, if you take the gun of the state out of the equation, then you go from excellence to evil.
	Efficiency to chaos.
	Virtue to vice.
	Take the gun out of the hands of a few people.
	And when we say gun, of course, I mean the entire military industrial complex.
	If you take the gun, which is imbued with these magical qualities, it really is astounding.
	It's fetishistic, really, in the pagan sense.
	The gun is imbued with these powerful, magical, sort of Elendil-type qualities to create virtue by being waved around.
	It's like the golden gun or like this magic sword which makes you virtuous.
	You swing it around like Aragorn or whatever and become a great king and a good guy.
	The power and the magic of virtue is in the weapon for statists.
	Because it's not the person, right?
	Because if you say, well, it's not the person, sorry, it's not the gun that creates the virtue.
	It's the person who wields the gun who creates the virtue.
	But then you say, well, it's some combination of the gun and the person.
	Only the leader can wield this virtuous pistol and make good happen, make good flow from the barrel, the heated barrel of passing bullets.
	Well then, the key thing is not the gun, but the person.
	But if the key thing is the person, but he only achieves his ends with the gun, then the key thing is not the person.
	Because if the key thing was the person, then he could be a great speaker, he could set up his own foundation, he could help the poor in any number of ways.
	So it's not that, for sure.
	So it is the magic gun that's at the heart of statism.
	And that's really fascinating.
	It is an absolutely fascinating thing, for me at least.
	I hope it's interesting for you as well, because, you know, it's not the shortest podcast in the world, but it is minus 30 outside here in Canada, so the driving is just a little relaxed, let's say.
	But there's the magic gun.
	The magic gun is at the heart of every argument for the state.
	There's a magic gun. Whoever grabs it is transformed into a noble and heroic and virtuous person.
	And that's this astounding fantasy that occurs in the mind of statists.
	But of course, why should it be any different from all the other things that we've talked about?
	In family, it's the magic gene.
	You fell out of your mom's vagina, so she's a saint.
	It's the magic gene. It's the gene that is just magic.
	Oh, they're wonderful, they're great, I love them to death.
	Why? Well, there's a gene that we share.
	A couple of genes that we share, or more than a couple.
	So there's the magic gene that creates virtue.
	And in the realm of religion, it's the magic language that creates virtue.
	Well, you call it God, and suddenly it's virtuous, even though nobody knows what the hell it means.
	There's magic words, the spells...
	In religion, magic words that make things good.
	In the family, it's magic genes that make things good.
	And in the state, it's the magic gun that makes things good.
	And that's not even the end of the world, right?
	It's not that the words and the genes and the guns are supposed to have value in and of themselves.
	That's not really the problem, as far as I can see.
	The problem is that the magic is obscured, the gun is obscured, the genes are obscured, the words and the incomprehensibility of the words surrounding religion or God are obscured, and this magic is somehow turned into universal ethics, universal morality.
	Because, of course, There is no magic gun.
	I mean, I don't mean to insult your intelligence.
	What I mean is that there is no magic gun, there is no magic sword, because the gun does nothing Unless it is picked up and pointed.
	The gun can't achieve anything lying in a basement somewhere, right?
	I mean, it's not like you see a speech where this big flag-draped Smith& Wesson comes up and starts talking out of its little muzzle hole, right?
	Oh, time to take pause.
	Oh, I can't get that phone.
	Too far away. Soon, later, later, later.
	Can't multitask quite that much, let's say.
	So, there's no magic in the word God, right?
	There's no magic in genes, there's no magic in guns, but that's the only differentiator between that and other solutions.
	The other solution to your family being good is virtue being good.
	Virtue as objectively defined and understood in a philosophical standpoint, or from a philosophical standpoint.
	That's the alternative, right?
	The alternative to words being true is reality, experimentation, the scientific method being true, logic being true, or logic at least being valid.
	And if guns make things good, then everyone should have a gun.
	There's not one magic gun.
	That would be completely silly for a sadist to say.
	But of course, that is what they say.
	It's only the gun that the president wields that is good.
	Suddenly, that's virtuous, right?
	But if guns are virtuous, then everyone should have a gun.
	If guns are not virtuous, then the state is immoral, right?
	Sorry, I don't want to get into a whole other thing, but I recognize that that's not logical.
	Guns are neither good nor evil, and they're just tools.
	It's the gun plus the leader that makes for virtue, saith the statists, right?
	And there are very few people out there who are still arguing for a sort of fascist or communist or some form of totalitarianism.
	So they say, it is the leader plus the gun that maketh the goodness.
	I say, okay, so what we need is a guy with a gun to make virtue.
	It's like, no, no, no, no, no, because he has to have the consensus of the masses, right?
	So it's the guy plus the gun that makes the virtue.
	But... The only thing that makes it virtuous is people want to do it despite the gun.
	The gun is irrelevant, saith the statists, right?
	Because people vote to choose their government.
	So whatever the government's doing, it's because people have evaluated the proposals of the politicians before the politicians get voted in, and they have said, yes, I agree with whatever so-and-so wants to do, and so I'm going to vote for him, and a majority of people want to do that.
	And so the majority of people do not need to be forced to do whatever the government tells them to do, because they have chosen the government and agree with its policies, and therefore do not need to be forced.
	So the gun is the only difference, but the gun doesn't matter.
	Or the gun is a negative, right?
	Because it's wrong to force people to do what they don't want to do, if they haven't committed any crimes.
	And of course, if you take away the illusory participation of democratic voting, then the gun is revealed as a gun, right?
	And then you have all the problems of, well, the gun must somehow be magical, but only when combined with the leader, that the people didn't choose, so the people are being forced, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	So those are all of the illogical problems that you fall into with statism.
	And democracy has been a wonderful invention as far as that goes, right?
	It breeds the illusion of voluntarism, right?
	Just as the magic gene and the, quote, value of family just for being family creates the illusion of love and virtuous participation, right?
	And the same way that the magic words called God and all-loving and all-powerful and all-nonsensical, in fact, create the virtue of participation.
	Invite Jesus into your heart, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	It's like voluntary. But in the back, you have hell.
	And in the back, you have family hatred.
	And in the back, you have the guns and the prisons of the state.
	That's the racket. So that's, I mean, it's a fascinating question to sort of ask your statist friends or your minicus friends.
	If the government must exist because it is necessary, then...
	There's a magic that the government guns have that make everything work that wouldn't work otherwise.
	Although it's still just human beings and weapons that make everything happen, right?
	There's no magic called government that turns people into wise and benevolent human beings.
	In fact, I would say quite the reverse.
	So if government must exist only because it is necessary, then you still have a configuration of human beings getting things done, but you wrap them in the magical word of government, and suddenly it becomes something that's good.
	Because if human beings can do everything that a government can do, which of course is natural, nobody relies on supernatural aid to get, it's not like Christian soldiers go out and arrest, sorry, it's not like angels go out and arrest criminals.
	So it's all human beings who act to achieve whatever it is that the minarchist or the statist wants the state to achieve.
	He just says that these people must have a monopoly of force over everyone else in order to get these things done.
	And, of course, people will bring up things like, well, the problem is the free rider and the problem of the commons.
	But, of course, the problem of the commons and the free rider, as we've talked about before, the state is entirely susceptible and is, in fact, one of the worst exponents of those particular issues.
	I mean, you want to talk free riders, talk about the government employees.
	You want to talk about the problem of the commons, talk about taxation, right?
	I mean, that's the real issue.
	Whatever the problem of the commons is for people, the government is by far the worst manifestation of those problems.
	I mean, you don't solve the problem of the commons by creating an enormous amount of public violence, right?
	And power and, you know, herding taxes all into some particular area.
	So, this is a very interesting question to our status, right?
	Especially those who are Democrats, which of course is the only sane people, even remotely sane people that you'd be debating with, I would say, is to say, so human beings can't achieve what the government achieves.
	They can't achieve defense, they can't achieve reduction in crime or helping the poor or the old or whatever, the sick.
	Human beings can achieve it, but your belief is that the only way that human beings can achieve it is to give a small group of people a monopoly on violence.
	So it's the violence that makes that small group virtuous.
	It's the violence that makes all of this occur.
	And that's an interesting question to ask of status, I think.
	Because then they sort of confront it with this thing.
	It's like, well, yeah, but people vote people in and blah, blah, blah.
	It's like, well, then you're saying that voluntarily People want to help the poor, and enough people will get off their fennies and go and vote for those who want to help the poor and this and that.
	Like, if the government reflects the will of the people, then the government is an unnecessary overhead.
	If the government does not reflect the will of the people, then the government is a tyrannical dictatorship, which no sane human being would try to defend.
	I mean, this is a very sort of very important fundamental thing.
	If the government reflects the will of the people accurately, if the government programs reflect how people want their money to be spent, then the gun is an unnecessary overhead.
	So if everybody wants education to occur to the point, or at least large enough sections of people, and even within the state right now, there are 10 or 15% of people who don't want any of this, who live in the grey market or the black market or whatever, criminals and so on.
	Politicians. But...
	If enough people want the poor to get education, then the statist or the democratic argument is that then they vote these social programs in.
	But then, of course, if enough people want it that they'll vote the social programs in, then you don't need a government.
	And if people don't want this, but the government's forcing them to do it anyway, and you consider that to be a virtuous thing, then you have the problem of the magic gun.
	It's the magic gun that somehow makes people good.
	And it's got nothing to do with voting, because you can't vote a magic gun.
	You can't vote a glowing nimbus of ethics around a particular gun.
	But it's got to be some combination of gun and the people who wield it, as we mentioned.
	But if it's not the gun, but the leader who is virtuous, then you don't need the gun, right?
	So if there's some guy who can make such a wonderful case as to why you should help the poor, And he's that great a guy that he's going to make everybody go and do some wonderful things to help the poor, then he is great because he has these oratorical or reasoning or writing skills or whatever to make people want to go and help the poor.
	That's what makes him great. Not the fact that he's got a gun.
	The moment you throw the gun into it, then the greatness is no longer him, but the gun.
	And the moment that you put the gun in it, it can't be the person who's wielding it who's great, because if the only difference between that person and someone else is the gun, then the gun is the key factor.
	That's the magical spell that somehow makes somebody good.
	So I hope that this sort of helps you take an approach that I think is quite useful.
	Sorry for the squealing. This is my nose now.
	This is my windshield wipers.
	It's beginning to snow a little. Oh, what a fun morning it's been to drive.
	But I'm sorry, I've got a little distracted at times, but yeah, so no matter how you cut it, no matter how you look at it, this challenge of the magic gun, of the irrationality of the democratic state that supposedly reflects the will of the people, is a really fascinating challenge.
	It's a really fascinating problem.
	Of course, it's completely incomprehensible as a problem, I would say, and this is the value that this conversation brings to the understanding of these topics.
	It is an incomprehensible problem as to why people would have in the brace of their brain this magic gun and the wonderful politicians or the efficacious state or, you know, even those who are constitutionalists or minarchists still believe that the state can be virtuous, just needs to be smaller. It's a good servant, but a dangerous master.
	It's incomprehensible as to how anybody would arrive at this rationally.
	You would not, starting from basic principles, ever come up with something like a state or ever come up with any of these sorts of things.
	It just would make no sense at all.
	As you, I'm sure, fully grasped very quickly when I talked about my wife wanting to shop at HomeSense and paying some guy a lot of money to throw in the back of a trunk and tell her what to buy.
	That would negate her wanting to shop at HomeSense, right?
	Because then she wouldn't even get to buy what she wanted.
	So nobody would ever start from first principles and reason this stuff out and say, yeah, that would make sense.
	That's logical. So then the real question is, why do people believe all of this nonsense?
	And naturally, we have to go back to the family and religion.
	And patriotism to some degree, but all of the stuff that children are taught when they're very young.
	Because, of course, if you can get a child to believe the most errant nonsense when he's very young, in all seriousness and so on, then that errant nonsense is going to stay stuck in his brain for the rest of his life, corrupting everything else that it touches.
	And that's why you have minarchists and statists and all these kinds of idiots out there.
	And I only say idiots in terms of logic.
	I don't mean in terms, I mean, a lot of them are very, very intelligent people.
	But they have not made the connection to the nonsense they were forced to imbibe when they were young, to the nonsense that they're spewing forward in the present.
	And, of course, it all does go back to the problem of virtue and parenting, which we've talked about before, but I might do a part or two-er this afternoon to sort of tie this topic together so that we can see, take another run at.
	I don't think it does any harm to do this again from a different angle.
	All roads lead to Rome, right?
	All logic leads to truth.
	And so we can have a look at this this afternoon.
	Thank you so much for listening, as always.
	I really, really appreciate it.
	And thanks to everyone who participated in the call-in show yesterday.
	And I guess welcome to...
	We had almost 800 new listeners last month.
	Thank you so much. I guess it'll be a while until you get to this one, but welcome aboard anyway.

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