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May 19, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
50:21
763 Agnosticism and Ron Paul

A few snippets of thought...

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Good afternoon, everybody. Hope you're doing well.
It's Steph. 19th, 20th of May or something like that.
2007. And I hope you're having a wonderful, wonderful day.
And I wanted to chat just about a few little topics today.
And thank you so much for tuning in as we begin to saddle down after the recent exciting altercations and begin to move towards back on track, baby!
Back on track. Although I don't consider the...
As I mentioned, I don't consider the recent stuff to have moved us off track, so to speak.
But it is sure nice to be able to get back onto the regularly scheduled coursework of Free Domain Radio.
So, if you will excuse me, it's a beautiful sunny day and my car, I have not done a good cleaning on it in...
Oh, a few moons, let us say.
So, I'm going to be doing that while we have a little channel.
So, if you will forgive my chore doing, I still think it will be worth having a chat.
So, I guess the thing that I'd like to start with is a question that has been posed on the board.
Which we've talked about before, but I have no problem taking a number of different swings at a particular topic.
You know, when boxing with illusion, you never know exactly which blow is going to land productively and help people out of a particular kind of problem or challenge with their thinking.
So, for me, I wanted to begin with a topic that has come up with regards to agnosticism.
And to me... Agnosticism is to atheism as libertarianism is to anarchism.
And it's hard for me to be harsh about this, of course, because my road was through minarchism.
To anarchism. So it's hard for me to say, well, this is a really bad thing, and so on.
It was my sort of entree.
But it is also a very dangerous and seductive trap to get into this kind of stuff.
You know, in a lot of ways, for me, it's the moderates who are the real problem, and I'm certainly not alone in taking that perspective.
But it's the people who say, well, there is no particular sort of final truth in these areas, and therefore, We sort of have to be tolerant and open and so on, and use those kinds of cat phrases as if they're sort of automatic virtue, you know, tolerance is automatic virtue, without any particular definition.
So, in a recent debate upon Ron Paul, which we'll get to later in the show, I said that Ron Paul is like an exit on the road to truth that leads back to the land of illusion, which is...
Some pretty heavy metaphor wrangling, and I hope that you'll forgive me for that.
But to me, that's sort of very true, right?
That if there was no such thing as libertarianism, then people would not be able to give themselves that productive...
Fantasy, if that phrase can be used, that sort of forgivable fantasy or that fantasy which allows them to forgive the state or to believe that you can work within the existing paradigm, then they wouldn't believe that at all, right?
So for me, sort of the emotional equivalent is the woman who is being abused by her husband.
She says, well, I can reform him.
I can reform him.
And giving up on that illusion is really quite a challenge.
At least it certainly was for me in 20 damn years, right?
But I didn't at least run into the kinds of arguments that we're trying to develop in this conversation, so I think that maybe...
We can be forgiven for starting to become a little impatient.
Maybe? Maybe. I don't know.
Who knows? Anyway, so the next sort of aspect of things that I think is important is that if you say, well, if the woman believes that her abusive husband is somehow going to, you know, turn around and that he's reformable in some manner, then clearly her...
Ability to get out of the relationship is pretty much thwarted.
And this, of course, is a very, very common phenomenon that I don't think is really encouraged by the best aspects of society, to say the freaking least.
That when you look at these people who sort of say, well, there's a moderate solution, there's this, there's that...
Or there's hope for an evil institution, there's a way to make evil work for you, there's a way to make evil serve you, there's a way to use violence in the form of the state in some sort of productive manner.
Well, I don't think that that idea as a whole, and I'm not talking about everyone who believes it, but I don't believe that the idea as a whole is really put forward by very good people.
It's like the idea we've talked about in terms of forgiveness.
I don't think that the idea of forgiveness is really put forward by very good people.
So if you do bad things and people get mad at you and then you preach the virtue of forgiveness, it's because you want to be able to keep doing bad things.
Or you at least want to be able to Get off at least relatively scot-free from the bad things that you've done.
It's not the creditors who counsel the cancellation of debt.
It's not the creditors who say, well, we should not enforce these debts.
We should forgive these debts.
That's not the role of the creditor, i.e.
the person who has something to lose in terms of value if the debts are forgiven.
It's not the creditor. It's the...
It's the debtor. It's the person who owes the money, who wants the debts to be forgiven.
So it's not the good person who says we should forgive evil actions or evil people, because what would they gain?
But it's the bad people who have that philosophy.
I think that when we say that the state is reformable, that we can use this kind of centrally coercive violence to achieve good within society, that that is a very sort of dangerous aspect of things.
And in the same way, I think that portraying religious beliefs as a kind of vague possibility based on the existence of God in some other dimension and so on, I believe is also a rather dangerous approach to truth and approach to life.
And I think also, like, and this sounds harsh, again, I could be wrong, but at a sort of fundamental level, to me at least, kind of really totally hypocritical.
And I'll sort of not put that out without some hopefully vaguely justifying statements, but let me sort of tell you what I mean by that, and then you can tell me if it makes any sense.
So, the existence of God, of course, is just one of many, many, many interesting questions, But the reason that the question is so interesting is that there are specific morals that come out of the existence of God, i.e.
obedience to crazy ancient texts that, of course, if you believe in God, are neither crazy, though certainly ancient texts.
And so there's this very strong sort of moral element to whether or not God exists.
And, of course, there's an implicit, though I won't say universal, kind of morality that is put forward in the realm of agnosticism, which is to say that it is bigoted and intolerant to say that God does not exist, because, you know, there's a possibility that God does exist based on some alternate dimensional X, Y, and Z, and so we can't say, and this and that and the other.
And, I guess the problem or the challenge that I have with that is that it doesn't really seem to be applied very consistently.
Right? So, for instance, I think that you could make a very strong and logical argument...
With regards to Nazism, right?
So it's generally accepted that Nazism is...
And I'm sorry for using the N-word in debating, but I think you'll see that it makes some kind of sense.
I tried on an IM chat with a gentleman, fine news listener from Australia, to use the example of the KKK, which I will fall back on a little later for our American guests.
But he doesn't really know much about the KKK, and so this was not a metaphor that really worked for him, so I'm afraid I'm going to have to invoke the N-word in debating the Nazis.
So generally, it's considered to be that Nazis are a bad bunch of fellows with a bad ideology, who achieved an extraordinary amount of evil in the world, and this, that, and the other, right?
Now, I don't think that I've ever...
In fact, I'm quite sure that I never, ever have...
Ever had a conversation with someone who is of the agnostic persuasion, let's say, who says, well, we can't say that the Nazis are bad, right?
Saying that the Nazis are bad is unjust and bigoted and closed-minded, right?
And why is it bigoted and close-minded to say that the Nazis are bad?
Well, you see, because in some alternate dimension, the Nazis might be good.
Do you see the challenge that agnostics have when they only apply the...
Question that other dimensions may support the existence of God only with regards or to the existence of God, right?
Because logically, if it's true that in some alternate dimension contradictory, irrational, non-provable entities could exist and therefore we say they can't, then clearly you can't say that the Nazis are bad,
right? Now, also, if, as has been the case with me, and this works on two levels, both the moral and the sort of merely rational in terms of argument, but if someone says that it is incorrect to say that God does not exist,
because in some alternate dimension God may exist, then clearly it is also wrong to say that it is wrong To say that it is wrong to say that God does not exist.
Ooh, one too many letters. Let's try that again, shall we?
If I say to you, like, if you say to me, God does not exist, and I say to you, well, that's an incorrect statement, because God may exist in some alternate universe where up is down and black is white, and consciousness can exist without matter, and so on, right?
Well... There's no reason to believe that in some other alternate universe that it is completely correct to say, as it is in this one, that God being illogical in a self-contradictory concept means that he does not exist.
She does not exist. It does not exist.
If you're going to say that any positive statement about the existence or non-existence of something is invalid because of some alternate dimension, then it is also as illogical to say that the atheist is wrong for asserting that God does not exist as the agnostic is for asserting that God may exist and thus correcting.
The agnostic. Sorry, I know this is a really horrible thing, and I'm not doing a particularly good job of explaining it, but let me continue to try, and we shall see if we get anywhere.
The agnostic objects to the atheist's claim that God does not exist, because he says that any statement of fact is invalid, because there may be other dimensions that Wherein God may exist.
But if the agnostic says to the atheist that all knowledge statements are invalid, negative knowledge statements like God does not exist, if all knowledge statements are invalid because of the existence of these other dimensions, then I think quite clearly telling the atheist that his knowledge claims are invalid is also invalid.
Right? The agnostic says, we cannot say that God does not exist because we don't know everything about everything.
But if an atheist cannot make a knowledge claim about the existence of God, then the agnostic, by his own argument, cannot make a knowledge claim about whether the atheist knowledge claim is true or false.
Right? It's exactly the same.
Agnosticism is exactly the same as radical skepticism.
There's no epistemological or metaphysical difference between these positions at all.
It's radical skepticism.
Radical skepticism is you cannot make any truth statements.
You cannot make any truth statements.
And radical sort of subjectivists, and almost all subjectivists in fact are radical subjectivists, but radical subjectivists do make this sort of claim that you can't know anything for sure.
And, of course, the rank contradiction of that is clear to anybody.
We've talked about it before. You say you can't know anything for sure.
You're making a certain statement of surety, right?
So, the statement falls apart.
The statement goes off in your own hands, right?
Whoever you aim it at, it shoots you down first.
So... What the agnostic is really saying is you can't make any positive knowledge or negative knowledge claims about the existence of God.
But what the agnostic is really saying is that you can't make any positive or negative statements about anything.
Which also means that you can't make any positive or negative statements about positive or negative statements.
Do you see what I mean?
I'm so sorry, this is probably one of the worst explanations I've ever put forward.
But it's a really tough one to put forward.
So, rather than me repeating it, if it's still unclear for you, either I'm totally full of it, or, you know, perhaps go back and listen again.
So, if we go back to sort of the moral dimension, right, then the agnostic opposes the atheist, and the theist, of course, but let's just talk about the atheist position.
The agnostic opposes the atheist, right?
Because the agnostic says that it is universally wrong to make positive knowledge statements about the existence or non-existence of God.
And why? Because alternate dimensions where we can never prove or disprove anything invalidate any knowledge claims that we make in this dimension, right?
I mean, dementia, dimension, all too close in so many ways.
So, much like any sort of radical skeptic, Any time you make an absolute knowledge statement, then you are immediately shooting yourself in the foot, right?
Because if the agnostic can make a knowledge statement that is absolute relative to the fact that it's wrong to make a knowledge statement that is absolute about God, then clearly...
The agnostic is contradicting himself, right?
If you sort of say that basically what the agnostic is saying is that because of the multidimensional possibility of the universe, the multiverse sort of thing, every claim that is made about any conceivable fact is mere opinion.
And the reason that we say that it's mere opinion is, opinion is, as we've talked about before, opinion is defined relative to X, right?
Compared to what is sort of the question, right?
I say, X is true, and you say, compared to what?
I say, I had a dream about a fish last night, you say, right, so compared to what?
And of course, there is no compared to in that particular statement.
And so, when the agnostic says that positive knowledge claims about the existence of God are incorrect, are false, cannot be established universally, totally, completely, cannot be established...
Then the atheist says, well, compared to what, right?
And the agnostic says, well, compared to the multidimensional universe where anything is possible and therefore we can't make any positive or negative knowledge claims about anything with any certainty.
And then, of course, you say, well, then, given that the multiple universe may be exactly the same as this universe, or there may be no multiple universes or other dimensions or whatever, or we may never visit them or may examine them, Then you can't make any positive claims about the invalidity of saying that there is no God.
Because you don't know anything.
It's a null. It's a compared to null, as we sort of talked about.
And the thing that kind of makes me a little suspicious, as I mentioned before, with the agnostic position, is that it's only ever about God.
It's only ever about God.
I mean, I've never seen an agnostic or an agnostic group...
Take to the streets to protest the, I don't know, pedophilia, right?
Pedophilia, murder, I mean, whatever, right?
Some heinous crime that pretty much everybody recognizes, even if they're not a moral philosopher, and perhaps probably even more clearly if they're not a, quote, moral philosopher, that everybody recognizes is pretty heinous, right?
Right? Like, I've never seen...
An agnostic person or an agnostic group take to the streets in defense of Catholic priest pedophilia on the grounds that in some alternate dimension pedophilia may be the most moral thing in the world, so we can't judge.
We can't judge pedophilia because in some other dimension pedophilia may be the best and most moral action that you can take.
Therefore we can't make any positive claims about the evil or inequity of pedophilia.
I have never seen a group of agnostics take to the streets, as logically they should, with consistency to their position.
If their position were based on logic and consistency, rather than some other motive, which we shall get to in a little bit, then...
If ever Nazism is called evil, then the agnostics should take to the streets and they should argue vociferously that we cannot say that Nazism is evil because in some alternate universe, Nazism may be the highest moral good.
So it's only with regards to atheism that we see this obfuscation, word of the week, this massive obfuscation with regards to the processing of basic reality.
It is only with regards to religion that these agnostics pull out the n-dimensional confusion card, the NDC. And that, of course, is, I think, quite instructive.
A little depressing and a little unpleasant to see when you have the eyes to see.
But it is quite nasty and unpleasant to see that absolute statements of opposition to absolute statements are never portrayed in regards to unpopular things.
Right? In regards to unpopular things.
Like, I've never...
I've never seen an agnostic defend a Holocaust denier by saying that in some other dimension the Holocaust may not have happened.
So we can't say that this guy is wrong to say that the Holocaust did not exist.
They only ever come out of the woodwork with the NCS, the N-dimensional confusion card, with regards to the existence of God.
In no other realm does it ever show up, and maybe you know.
Lots of agnostics who are out protesting against the existence of, I don't know, criminal legislation or prisons of any kind, moral judgments of any kind, because they say, well, we can't judge murder and rape to be wrong, because in some alternate dimension they may be right.
Right? One day, I do believe that I will.
I really do. One day...
I'm going to say to an agnostic, give me your wallet.
Give me your wallet and give me your car.
And the agnostic, of course, is going to say no.
And I'm going to say, well, you can't refuse me this, because in some alternate dimension, they might be mine.
Then he's going to say, well...
We kind of have to make our decisions based on reality, logic, and facts as they present themselves to us.
And I have the pink slip, and therefore, you don't have the car, right?
And I say, well, no, but you can't say that it's not my car at all.
Because in some other dimension, it might be my car.
Or, in some other dimension, property rights may be the ultimate evil.
And giving the car to somebody who demands it may be the ultimate good.
So you cannot refuse me this car.
The same way that one day, perhaps, I shall find a professor who says that war is good for the economy and key his car.
And then when he comes to the parking lot...
I'm not really serious, but it's still kind of funny to think about.
I'm going to key his car and slash his tires.
And then when he comes...
To his car, I'll be standing there and he'll get angry.
And I'll say, no, no, no, no, this is good for your economy.
The destruction of material is good for your economy.
So I'm just following your rules, right?
I'm just putting into practice what it is that you preach.
So you have no right to be upset.
In fact, you should really give me an A for understanding You're teaching as well as I have, right?
You owe me big time for my understanding of your course materials.
So, when you start talking about things other than the existence of God with people who are agnostic, right?
Because agnostic is just a subset of other beliefs, which says you can't make any positive statements about fact because of the existence of other dimensions, except for, of course, that one, right?
But they never take on an unpopular opinion, right?
They don't defend the pedophiles.
They don't defend the Nazis. They don't defend the Holocaust deniers.
They don't defend genocide.
They don't say, well, we can't have any policies against genocide because, in some alternate dimension, genocide may be the ultimate moral good.
Then there's never any of that sort of stuff, right?
It's always, only, and forever...
The highly popular position and the highly, quote, respected position of agnosticism with regards to religion, with regards to the existence of God, and the existence of God alone.
Nothing else in particular.
And that, to a very large degree, that leads me to believe that agnosticism is merely a species of rank intellectual cowardice.
As I've mentioned before, but this is sort of another example as to how, you know, you take any road when error is at the root of an argument and they all lead to the same conclusion, right?
So if somebody is into agnosticism and the only people whose absolute knowledge claims that they oppose are those people who claim that God is It does not exist, but they don't take on the Nazis and the pedophiles and the murderers and so on, right? And also, of course, if you were really and genuinely and totally a...
And agnostic with regards to nothing is true because there are other dimensions, then clearly you would be much more on the market anarchist side of things, but we generally don't find that to be the case, right?
If nothing is true, then government is always wrong.
If nothing is true, then religion is always wrong.
But of course, these noble warriors of truth spend all of their time undermining atheists who are making knowledge claims about God.
The non-existence of, and I don't think, at least they could be, and they could be, I don't know.
I've never seen it, but I've never seen them go for religious people, or religious institutions in the same way.
See, if agnosticism is a valid position, and any knowledge statements about God...
Our incorrect, his positive or negative existence.
And then clearly, teaching children that God exists and is watching them and will punish them for their sins and so on, it's far more egregious than simply not believing in God at all.
Of the two positions, clearly, it's far more egregious to put forward knowledge claims about the existence of God, which have an enormous amount of and therefores associated with them.
So you really couldn't logically Take the position of agnosticism without being far more active in your opposition to religion than you are to atheism, right?
Because atheists don't take children and put them in atheist camps for 15 years.
They don't say that if you don't believe in atheism...
You will go to hell and burn forever.
They don't take children and baptize them with atheism, right?
In fact, most atheists take a fairly neutral position when it comes to teaching their children.
They may teach their children about God as a fairy tale, as a Santa Claus kind of thing, something that you're supposed to figure out is not true relatively quickly.
But they don't have active propaganda machines about making knowledge statements about God in the way that religious people do, right?
So clearly, if you are an agnostic, then the first people that you should be taking on are the fundamentalists, right?
Those who say, not only does God exist, but mankind was ruined by a talking snake and Christ walked on water, you can have a birth without intercourse, and all this sort of nonsense, right?
And therefore, right?
Atheists have far fewer and therefores than religious people do.
So I've never seen an agnostic take on a religious person with the same fervor that they take on atheist positions, right?
So basically, I think from all of this, we are fairly justified, I would say, in taking the position that agnosticism is merely a form of Of really quite unpleasant intellectual conformity,
and that agnostics take extraordinary pride in really undermining thought in those who are thinking the most, the atheists, rather than challenging those who are thinking the least, i.e.
the theists, right? So from that standpoint, I think it's pretty rank and pretty unpleasant.
Now, religious people don't have a problem, really, with agnostics because agnostics don't tell them that they're wrong.
I mean, agnostics are more than happy to tell atheists that they're wrong, but atheists can survive that.
The religious people, on the other hand, are fairly large fans of agnostics because agnostics give them room to say what it is that they're saying.
Because if you are an agnostic, you should be virulently anti-theist.
Because if you're an agnostic, then you clearly are saying that no knowledge statements about God are possible.
And therefore, religion is far more egregious and far more harmful and false than atheism.
But of course, that's not really what is put forward.
What is put forward is that the claim that God does not exist is much more opposed.
And maybe you've had different experiences, right?
But this is certainly over 20 years of debating these jokers.
This has sort of been my experience.
Of course, it's a very hardened position.
Certainly, it's not arrived at empirically.
It's not arrived at empirically because there is no evidence of any positive or negative truth statements that can be made about these alternate realms.
So, clearly, it's not a position that is taken from the standpoint of empirical observation of these other realms and some possible evidence of the existence of God in these other realms.
So, there's nothing empirical In the agnostic position, because as they say, knowledge statements are impossible.
When knowledge statements are impossible, empiricism is impossible.
Empiricism is a contradiction.
You can't have empiricism in a situation where knowledge statements are impossible.
So, that's...
I would be really, really happy if agnostics spent a lot more of their time defending Nazis and pedophiles and attacking any form of theist who has anything to say about religion.
And particularly, of course, I would be more happy if agnostics spent a lot of their time virulently opposing the indoctrination of children through statements of knowledge with regards to a deity, which theists do.
and which, in general, atheists don't do, right?
I mean, obviously don't say anything about God, Other than, you know, mythological creature, which is far closer to the agnostic position.
But they don't, right?
If I see agnostics saying, well, we can't put anyone in jail because we don't know what's immoral.
What's moral and what's immoral, right?
Clearly, because we don't know what, you know, in some other dimension, this heinous behavior, pedophilia or rape or whatever, murder, it may be perfectly moral.
And that I have not seen. And so I sort of have no choice but to believe that agnosticism is a pseudo-intellectual position that is taken on because people don't want the bother of religion, the sort of, quote, structure of religion, the responsibilities of religion, of which there are some.
And they also don't want to have the...
They don't have the courage to be atheists, right?
They don't have the courage to sort of openly state, well, this stuff is all nonsense.
So they're basically opposed to thinking.
I mean, they're opposed to the effort involved in thinking, and they're opposed, in a cowardly fashion, to the confrontation that inevitably results from you making claims that are knowledge claims about God, that God does not exist.
Because it really is singular and solely within the realm of religion that this radical skepticism is applied.
It's a sort of posture.
It's like a sort of game. It's a fool's...
It's a fool's philosophy. It's not really philosophy.
Any kind of radical skepticism is a fool's philosophy.
Because if you are a radical skeptic, and agnosticism certainly falls into this category, then you can't say anything.
If an atheist says to you, God does not exist, you can't say anything back.
In some universe, this might translate to, God does not exist.
In some universe, English may be completely reversed.
In all universes, God may not exist.
So you can't say anything back.
You can't make any knowledge statement.
It's a null. It's a comparaton to null.
But, of course, radical skeptics don't ever like to do that.
What they do is they're sort of just antibodies that attack the truth.
They attack any positive statement.
But they always and only and forever, at least in my experience, attack the knowledge statements that are put forward by those who are the most rational, i.e.
those who are going to be the least aggressive when crossed, right?
I have not seen any agnostics march into an imam, like a Muslim mosque, and say that what is being put forward is completely and totally false, right?
I don't see agnostics doing that, at least I can't remember seeing an agnostic Go into a mosque, right?
Now, of course, the agnostic may say, well, I don't see the atheist going into the mosque either, right?
But that's not really part of the atheist philosophy, right?
The atheist, I mean, it certainly would not be counter to the atheist philosophy to march into a mosque.
But it's a little bit different, right?
Because... An atheist is perfectly comfortable in saying, well, propaganda has a huge effect on people and there's no point just going out and wasting your time on people who are never going to be converted and so on, right?
And agnostics don't make those sorts of things, right?
Agnostics only pick on the religious people.
And, of course, agnostics do have to logically sort of pick on everyone and the people who are more certain about religion they should be picking on the most.
And that is, of course, not the case at all.
So... Anyway, I just sort of wanted to go over that, that sort of bit of business, and if you are an agnostic and I totally mischaracterized the position, please feel free to correct me.
I could be totally wrong, as always, but this is the way that I have been able to reason things through rightly or wrongly.
Now, as a sort of final topic, and it's very nice to be working on these shorter topics, on a final topic, this sort of question is really rolling around quite a bit with regards to old Ronnie, right, Mr.
Ron Paul? And there's quite a little bit, there's quite a bit of people who are saying, well, you know, he's saying all the right things, right?
Of course, they're not responding to the question of how much Ron Paul was able to shrink government within his own state, or his own writing, but that, of course, is because Ron Paul was not able to shrink the government in his own writing.
And I'll sort of give you my perspective for what it's worth, and an analogy of sorts, which you can let me know if it just seems like total nonsense or not.
The analogy I'd sort of like to put forward is that if your son, and this is where the aforementioned Ku Klux Klan metaphor is going to come in, if your son joins the Ku Klux Klan, because he says that the Ku Klux Klan lynched too many blacks, The lynching of the blacks in the Ku Klux Klan has gotten totally out of hand and needs to be significantly reduced.
They're stringing up too many blacks.
You know, the original idea behind the Ku Klux Klan was to sort of lynch one black a month.
Sort of lynch and kill one black a month.
And now these crazy bedsheet-wearing nutjobs, they're killing one black a day, right?
And I'm outraged and incensed by this.
I consider this to be completely immoral and against the founding principles of the Ku Klux Klan, which was moderate killing, right?
Moderate lynching, moderate hanging and torturing and so on, right?
Moderate murder.
And... So this gentleman, your son, he's sort of in the Klan for years, right?
He's in the Klan for years, and he keeps saying, you know, I want to get rid of the Klan, their addiction to this excessive murder, right, that they have going on, right?
And every time the Klan votes on whether to go and lynch a black guy, or, I don't know, a white girl who's dating a black guy, or whatever horrible stuff they get up to, Every time they vote on whether to lynch a black guy, your son votes against it.
Not every time. Not every time.
Because he believes that the lynching should only occur once a month.
So once a month he'll vote for it, but the rest of the times he'll vote against it.
And he's drawing a salary because he's on the executive of the Ku Klux Klan.
And he says, well, you know, he runs for the leadership of the Ku Klux Klan, and he says, well, we've kind of gotten way out of the bounds of where we started as an organization, right?
Originally, the idea of the Klan was only to lynch blacks once a month, and now it's up to once a day, and that's just outlandish.
That's totally immoral. We need to scale it back to once a month.
This is completely out of intention with regards to the founding.
Of the Ku Klux Klan. And he's taking his salary from the Ku Klux Klan.
And all but once a month he votes against...
You know, to his credit, to some degree...
To some degree... He votes against the...
The lynching of the blacks.
And he takes a salary, though, and he goes along with it and so on.
And he's kind of viewed as like a kooky joke within the Ku Klux Klan.
You know, that he's like, yeah, yeah, okay, well, let's get back to one lynching a month.
That's kind of funny. He's kind of kooky.
It's interesting to have someone like that around.
I guess it doesn't do us any real harm.
And every time he gets up to make a speech about how fewer blacks should be lynched than are currently being lynched, Everybody just kind of leaves the chambers and he's just sort of talking to himself and so on, right?
I mean, this has been going on for years, right?
This has been going on for years, coming on for decades, right?
I mean, how would you feel if your son had joined the Ku Klux Klan, voted all but once a...
All but once a month, he voted against the lynching of blacks and said that he wanted to reduce the lynching of the blacks.
How would you feel? Would you feel that he was doing great stuff?
And you would say then, well, you joined because you believed that fewer blacks should be lynched.
And now, you've been in this Ku Klux Klan for like 20 years.
I don't know how long he's been.
Pretty old. You've been in the Ku Klux Klan for 20 years.
Now, when you joined, they were lynching one black a month, and you thought it should be one black a day.
What's happening now? And he says, well, now they're lynching five blacks a day.
Right? And say, well, obviously, what you're doing is achieving the opposite of what you want, right?
The... The organization that you're part of, that you're trying to reform, is far stronger than you are able to manage.
You can't achieve the kind of effects that you want in this organization.
And not only have you been saying that we should lynch less, and not being able to achieve less lynching than before, but also the amount of lynching that you...
That is going on in the Ku Klux Klan since you joined, and I'm not saying it's causal, right, but has gone up, you know, five times, five times, six times, whatever, right, some not insignificant number, right?
Well, would you say that this is somebody who you should really support?
I mean, really, sort of, just think about it.
Forget about Ron Paul. Just think about your son taking a salary from the KKK for 20 years and trying to get the KKK To lynch less, to be smaller in its lynching, to kill fewer blacks.
Well, I think the first thing you'd say is that, well, why do you think that fewer blacks should be killed?
Well, it's not, you know, relative to what?
Well, the government should, you know, get out of her life, says Ron Paul, which is sort of equivalent to saying...
That the KKK should lynch anyone, in which case, why are you in the KKK if you think it's a completely immoral organization?
Now, if it's not a completely immoral organization, then clearly some level of lynching is fine with you.
In fact, some level of lynching is good.
To have no lynching at all, you would consider to be a bad thing.
He's not a market anarchist.
He's a minarchist. So for him...
Some level of murder, some level of force, is right.
It's not just, oh, we've got to have it because, because.
It's like, it would be bad, right?
So if someone comes forward and says, you know, I don't think the blacks should be lynched at all.
I don't think that there should be murder of blacks at all.
I think that lynching and this sort of mob slaughterhouse, I think that that's completely and totally wrong.
Then he's going to strongly disagree with you, right?
He's going to strongly disagree with you.
He's going to say, well, come on.
I mean, let's be realistic.
We can't not kill any blacks, right?
Because they've got to be put in their place and society would collapse if we didn't offer a few blacks from time to time.
And, you know, I mean, don't be ridiculous.
I mean, we can't not kill blacks.
But we definitely shouldn't be killing this many.
Would you feel that this response would put him on the moral high ground?
Would you feel that this response would give him real moral credibility in your eyes?
If he said, well yeah, we've got to kill some, we've just got to kill fewer.
Would you feel that this would rescue his moral appeal?
Well, and some people would say, well, that's all well and good, but we're not about to get rid of the KKK, so getting in there and working the KKK to produce fewer murders is a good thing to do, right?
Getting in there and being the voice of reason within the KKK, or at least the voice of some sort of moderation, is really good, right?
It's really good. And I would say, well, sure, I can understand that.
Like some people, if you're a doctor, some people work on developing a cure for cancer, which isn't exactly going to help people who are struck with cancer, like in the present, right?
So that's sort of the philosophers are looking for the cure for cancer.
And there are lots of people out there who are fighting to reduce the symptoms or save some people from cancer.
And, of course, those are the people who are fighting the state in a sort of more...
I don't have any problem with that.
But what I would say is that, well, that's an empirical statement, right?
It's a testable statement.
You don't just say these things, right?
I mean, you can say whatever you want, but if you want to be a rational human being, if you want to be somebody worthy of intellectual respect, then you don't just say stuff, right?
You sort of test it, right?
You put it forward to empirical, logical, rational testing, right?
So... So when people say, well, but we're not about to get rid of the KKK, so having someone out there who's saying that the KKK should kill fewer blacks is good, because, you know, with any luck, fewer blacks will get killed. It's like, well, that's very interesting.
And certainly, if Ron Paul were out there causing government to get smaller, I would certainly think that that was a good thing.
I don't have any problem with people who are out there trying to get government smaller.
You know, if they say, well, government should be smaller because only a small amount of violence, so less violence is necessary, but we should have less of it, then they're not really my friend.
They're not really the friend of virtue, right?
Because they're saying, well, we can't have a society where blacks don't get lynched.
I mean, that's crazy.
That's insane. I would never, ever support that.
That's madness. And anybody who says that we should have a society where blacks don't get lynched is, like, totally wrong and insane and blah, blah, blah, right?
Well, that's not really...
That person's not really my friend, right?
Right, that would be in the metaphor of curing cancer by preventing it...
Sorry, of preventing cancer, finding a cure for cancer versus treating the symptoms.
In that analogy, that would be like...
Somebody who is trying to cure cancer, sort of the immediate, the sufferers, the people who are actually suffering from cancer, that somebody who's trying to cure that is actively attacking The people who are trying to prevent cancer from occurring will find a real cure, right? So if somebody's out there saying, well, I want to manage the symptoms of cancer.
I want to reduce the remission rate and so on.
And then somebody says, well, I think we should get rid of cancer completely.
And that person says, oh, good heavens, no.
Don't be silly. We can't get rid of cancer.
Getting rid of cancer would be totally immoral.
Cancer is needed to weed out the weak or something.
I came up with some justification.
It would be immoral to search for a cure for cancer.
Well, clearly this person is heavily invested not in finding a cure for cancer, not in preventing cancer, not in the health of his patients, but in making a good deal of money and having a good deal of prestige and exposure from attacking the symptoms rather than finding a cure.
And I don't think that if you were a research scientist and you had dedicated yourself to finding a cure for cancer or preventing cancer, I don't think that you would view someone Who attacked you for saying that cancer could be cured, and that's what we should really be focusing on.
Not everyone, but that's the right thing.
That's certainly a viable thing to focus on.
If someone attacked you for that, and said that you were immoral, and said that it was crazy, and so on, and kept saying, well, a cure for cancer would be worse than cancer.
We definitely want to keep cancer.
We just want to make it less virulent.
Do you see where I'm going with this?
Somebody who's making a good deal of money and getting a good deal of publicity out of their rhetoric about...
I mean, it's a government agency, right?
A government agency is set up to fight cancer, and while that government agency is running...
The incidence of cancer increases multiple times.
Cancer gets far, far worse.
So, a government agency is set up to fight cancer, and during that fight, during the time that they have complete control over the war on cancer, cancer gets much, much worse.
The incidence of cancer gets much, much worse.
Cancer becomes epidemic and virulent and much more destructive than it was before.
And then when people say, you know...
I don't think that this approach is working and I think we need to look at a cure for cancer and we need to put it in the private sector.
We can't have the government managing the treatment of cancer because it's just making everything worse.
And then the person who's in charge of the government cancer treatment agency attacks you and says that you're immoral and you're wrong and you want people to die and you're crazy and blah blah blah.
Well, would you look upon that person as some kind of helpful, benevolent, positive ally?
Well, I don't think so. And again, I don't know.
Maybe Ron Paul is a market anarchist and, you know, he believes that force is totally wrong, but that does not at all jive with what he says, right?
So I'm only going by what I could report on what he says.
So that's my particular approach to the Ron Paul thing.
The problem is that if people think there is a state solution, they won't take that final step to the truth, right?
They won't take that final step to moral consistency, which is opposition to violence in all of its initiating forms, right?
That's why I say, like, Ron Paul and libertarianism and minarchism is a detour, right?
You're on the road to truth, and there's this really attractive detour that leads to the promised land, and it takes you right back to illusion, to mass illusion.
And that's the problem that I have with Ron Paul.
Don't know the guy personally, of course.
Love to debate him. No idea.
I'm sure he'd never take the debate, but this is sort of the major issue that I have.
So, if you wouldn't be proud of your son joining the KKK to reduce the amount of lynchings, and during his entire paid tenure with the KKK, the number of lynchings goes up and up and up, and he still claims that he wants to reduce it, and he doesn't quit, and he doesn't look for alternatives, and he opposes alternatives, right?
So the people who say there should be no lynchings, he attacks them.
Can't say that that's noble.
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