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Oct. 19, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
46:16
887 Fear of the future - a listener conversation
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So, you had put something on the board, which we were going to discuss, and for a thousand apologies, I can't for the life of me remember what it was now.
Was it to do with freedom, modern freedom?
What was our topic going to be again?
Yeah, it was about this podcast, Hope for the Future.
Yes. And, yeah, you argue always that, yeah, it's all about the family and I post...
The message that there are still a lot of worries around the state as well that do really feel threatening even though you claim it's all about the family.
Now can you tell me what you mean when you say that I claim that it's all about the family?
Because I mean as you know I have hundreds of podcasts on Other topics than the family, including ones about the state and economics and psychology and aesthetics and so on.
So if you could just tell me what you get from the show or the series that makes it all about the family, that would be at least for me a helpful place to start.
Yeah, I think you said in this podcast also, I will repeat it a thousand times, when people get very, especially when people get very worked up about it, about the dangers of the state, then it's not really the state they're talking about.
Right, sure, for sure.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, what I mean to say by that is that it's not that everything that has to do with human liberty is only about the family, but I do think that when people get very stressed or worried about the state, that obviously is a net loss to your freedom, right?
Because the stress doesn't do anything to dislodge the state from where it really flourishes, which is in people's minds, right?
No, no, it probably doesn't help very much, no.
Well, I mean, I'm not trying to be pesky, but where does it help?
Because people do get very worried and very stressed out about the state.
One thing I have noticed is that when people's personal lives are free, it's not that they aren't concerned about the state.
It's just that it's sort of less important.
Because when you achieve as much freedom as you can in your own personal life by getting corrupt or negative or difficult or obstructive relationships out of your life, Then I think you become a much more potent force for the incremental progress that we need to get rid of the state, which is for us to sort of outgrow the state and to outgrow corrupt relationships in our own personal lives.
So I've sort of noticed, and you can certainly let me know what you think, I've noticed that the people who worry the most about the state are often the ones who are the least free in their own personal lives.
Does that ring a bell with you or is that not true in your case?
Yeah, I do recognize what you also mentioned in one of your podcasts, that sometimes libertarians are not so free in their personal life.
I don't know if that is true for me also.
I have not said farewell to my family.
Which is not necessary, of course.
I mean, it's not like I say that the only way to get free in your personal life is to get rid of your family.
I mean, it depends on your relationship with your family.
So what is that like?
Well, yeah, they're Christians, so yeah, it's not all too good.
So they're pretty culty that way, right?
I mean, assuming we can reasonably say Christianity is a very successful cult.
Yeah, very successful, yeah.
But yeah, I think if you cut everyone out of your life that is in the cult of the family or the state or religion, then there's not many people left.
So yeah, I wouldn't know how to deal any other way with that.
Sorry, I just want to sort of understand what you mean.
So you're saying that there is no, at least for you, there's no reasonable way to get corrupt people out of your life, because then you'll be completely and totally alone.
Is that my understanding?
Yeah, pretty much, I think, yeah.
Now, do you do much debating in the realm of libertarian ideas?
Yeah, yeah. And how do you feel in general when you come up against what I generally call or what some people call scare stories, right?
So when you talk about a free society and people then say, well, if we have a free society, then the poor are all going to starve in the streets and there'll be no health care for anyone except the super rich and blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
Is that frustrating for you when people do that?
Well, it's sometimes scary.
You can feel the hostility and anxiety, but it doesn't bother me so much if I talk to colleagues or something.
It is a bit more problematic if I Some friends also have the same pattern and then you get in the situation that you cannot really talk about this anymore with friends without getting into this nasty feeling situation and what to do with this friendship then.
Right. No, I see what you're saying.
So, it is sort of annoying when people come up with unverified scare scenarios for a free society, right?
Yeah, but also if you try to talk about it, that it is fenced off and it is treated with kind of hostility.
And I must admit, of course, I've changed over the past few years into this area.
And then you change away from people that, yeah, if they haven't changed, then you suddenly are on a different track.
And yeah, it's difficult how to deal with that.
Right, right, okay. And the reason that I sort of wanted to bring that up was because it seems to me that you are sort of doing that same sort of scare situation, right?
So you're saying, well, if I end up, sorry, if I become, if I start living with real integrity, then I'm not going to have anybody in my life, right?
Yeah, maybe at some point.
That's a pre-conclusion, right?
I mean, you don't know that. It's just something that you believe, and it feels true, and so that's your false dichotomy, if that makes sense?
Well, if you just start crossing people out, then it's not a belief that you end up with zero, isn't it?
Maybe you can add other people...
Well sure, but I mean, you're saying that if I get rid of Unhealthy people in my life, then I'll have no one, right?
But then, of course, there's no chance for freedom, right?
Because if you're not going to live with integrity, because there are no good people in the world, then...
I mean, this is why you have this despair about the world, right?
Because if you know the truth, but you don't want to live according to the truth, because you're the only good person in your country or in your city or something...
Then, clearly, the truth has no chance, right?
Yeah, I'm not saying that I'm the only good person, of course, but, yeah, if you come from one direction, you go to the other direction, then, yeah, the people you have around you, yeah, it's a kind of wasted investment, maybe, or it's...
Sorry, so there are other good people around?
Yeah, probably, but it's difficult to find them.
Well, sure, but would you say, like if somebody said to you, I agree with you that a libertarian society is the ideal, but it's just too risky, would you say, okay, well, we won't try and achieve it then, right?
I don't quite follow you.
I wouldn't consider it risky, but...
But if somebody did think it was risky, would you then say, well, I don't think that you...
You don't have to try then.
You don't have to try it. I would try to convince this person that it is not risky.
Well, but it is risky, for sure.
I mean, the transition to a free society would definitely be risky, right?
And it certainly would be disastrous for some people, right?
I mean, people who make their living off selling arms, people who are tax collectors, people who are tax lawyers, for some people it would be a disaster, and for some people it would be risky, right?
Yeah, but I would think it would find its way.
Well, sure. It's risky, but we should take that risk, right?
Yeah. Do you sort of see where I'm going with this?
Not yet. Ah, okay.
So, it is risky, you say, to have a free society, but in the same way, you say that there may be good people around me, but it's risky to try and find them, to let go of the people in my life who are not as good, and to hold out for good people.
There's risk in that, right?
And I'm telling you that for sure you'll find better people if you let go of the corrupt people in your life.
But you feel that may be too risky.
But at the same time, you're asking people to accept that they should be a stateless society or a libertarian society, which is far more risky than you letting go of corrupt people to find healthy people.
So you're asking people to do something that's a thousand times worse than something you don't want to do yourself, right?
Which is to take a risk for a better life.
Yeah, I wouldn't say so much that it is the point of risk or that I have to let go of the few people.
There's lots of room for people in my life, I think.
Also for libertarians or for...
I wouldn't say that that stops me or that there's a risky feeling about going that direction.
I'm sorry, I didn't quite understand that last part.
I don't feel it so much that the feeling of risk is what's stopping me trying to change the people around me.
Maybe it does play a role, but...
Well, have you had any luck changing the people around you?
Well, there are not so many freedom-loving people around.
Well, sure, but you're also surrounded by Christians and statists, right?
Mm-hmm. Right, so you know how there's an economics theory in libertarianism which says that when you have a mixed economy, the government part is either getting bigger or it's getting smaller.
It never stays the same, right?
Well, I think that the same thing is true in our personal lives.
So if we have corrupt people in our lives, then like if you met a woman, and I'm going to assume that you're straight, if you met a woman and she was a real woman who had gotten rid of the corrupt relationships in her life, right?
And she didn't want to have anything to do with corrupt people.
How would she view, and she was a rationalist and an atheist and a philosopher and so on, how would she view your association with your family?
Yeah, that would maybe be a problem, yeah.
Well, for sure. She would say, help me understand why it is that you're very into political freedom, but you won't get rid of corrupt people in your life, which is much easier than getting rid of the state, right?
Yeah, and still I would say that having some corrupt people in your life, say, to water your plants if you go on holiday is far less dangerous than the maniacs that control nuclear weapons.
But you can't ask people to give up the maniacs if you can't give up that which is less dangerous.
You can't ask people to take...
I mean, I don't think you can reasonably or with integrity ask people to give up the state when you won't give up your culty parents, right?
Because it's far easier for you to give up your parents than it is for people as a whole to give up the state.
So you're asking people to take a risk and to make a stand on virtue that you are not willing to.
Do you see what I mean? And I'm not saying this because I think you're a bad guy or hypocritical.
I mean, maybe it's just never struck you and this is just my idea.
But I don't think we can reasonably ask people to do something which is much harder than what we won't do ourselves.
So it's easier for you to give up your family if they're Christians and won't change their minds to something more reasonable, or if they're statists and support moral principles that cause violence against people.
If you're not willing to give up those people in your life, Then I don't see how you can ask people to give up the state in the abstract.
And the reason that I say, if you get your personal life sorted out, what happens is you get a kind of certainty and you get a kind of passion and you get a kind of momentum in your debates that really helps change people.
But if you're not willing to give up your cult, your personal cult, then you can't ask people, effectively you won't be able to ask people, to give up the social cult of religion or the state.
It won't work.
It will never work.
And we know this because libertarians have been trying this for 150 years, which is to get people to give up the government without giving up their own corrupt relationships, and it just doesn't work.
Because what changes people's minds is passion and conviction.
And until you have put your own principles into practice in your own life, you just don't gain access to that passion and conviction.
It just doesn't happen emotionally, which means that you won't either get a free society or become free yourself, if that makes sense.
Yeah, it makes sense, but if you take a job, then you already have to associate with other people, and otherwise you have to quit the world, more or less.
Well, no, no, you see, you're putting up another false dichotomy, so now you're saying that...
I either have to spend time with my culty family or I have to leave society completely.
But there's something in the middle, right?
Which is where you deal with people at a professional level and in a work level and you go and buy groceries from them and you whatever, right?
But the alternative is not, if I give up my family, I have to go and live in the woods until the end of time.
I mean, there's a way to live in the world with integrity without having close associations with corrupt people.
Okay, but you can have a relationship with colleagues at work.
You could have a relationship like that with your family also.
No, that's not possible though, right?
Because you have a close personal relationship with your family, right?
In a way that you don't have with your work colleagues.
Also, your family inflicted irrational nonsense and pain upon you when you were a child.
I know this because they're Christians, which your colleagues did not do, right?
So you can have a professional relationship with your colleagues that doesn't have anything to do with an ugly and virulent personal history.
And that is not even close to what happens with your family, where you have a close personal history of being intellectually or emotionally abused by them, which is not the case with your work colleagues.
Or, if it is, you shouldn't be in your work business.
You should change jobs, right?
Yeah. What makes it hard also is that it doesn't feel right for some reason.
Well, to say to your family, well, bye-bye.
I don't know. It doesn't feel right for some reason.
Well, what feels wrong about it?
It feels mean or something.
It feels mean or something.
Harsh. Right.
You don't recognize that?
Yeah, you had maybe a different relationship?
No, I mean, it's not fun, for sure.
It's a very difficult thing to do, right?
But the way that Your political theories work is that there's no unchosen positive obligations, right?
You don't have to pay taxes because you were born somewhere.
You don't have to obey the laws just because that's where you were raised and so on, right?
So I can't impose an unchosen obligation on you.
That's the way that libertarianism works as a political theory, right?
Yeah. So, in the same way, your parents, your family, your lovers, your friends, they also cannot impose unchosen positive obligations on you, right?
And so, you should not be in a relationship with someone because you'll feel bad if you're not in that relationship with someone.
That's not a positive situation to be in.
You should be in a relationship with someone because it brings you pleasure.
Not because not being in the relationship would bring you pain, if that makes sense.
Yeah. And if it feels mean, what that means is that you don't really believe, at some level, in your politics, right? Because if you don't have to be a good person if somebody else thinks it's going to be mean...
then whoever thinks that getting rid of the welfare state would be mean, you have to agree with them, right?
Yeah, if it's for them, if they want to stick with the welfare state, then as long as they don't bother other people with it, then it wouldn't be then as long as they don't bother other people with it, then I would say that I would not bother other people with my meanness of letting my family go.
I'm sorry, I just didn't quite follow that.
If you could try that again.
Well, if they say you have to stick with the welfare state because I think it's mean to let it go, then I could say you can stick with it if you feel it's mean.
But that is not an obligation to me.
But my relationship with my family, if I feel that it is mean to let them go, then I don't bother anyone else with it.
Well, first of all, you do, because I think you come on my board, right?
Which is fine. I'm just sort of pointing it out.
And you create a lot of worry about political states, which is fine.
But if it's the case that what you're really concerned about is your family, then you are, in a sense, inflicting it on others.
But that's fairly abstract.
So let's go towards something a little more personal.
Do you think that your parents think it's mean or do you think that it's mean if you have people who are irrational and who support doctrines that would get you killed if they put them into practice, right? So Christians in the Old Testament and in some places in the New Testament The Bible says kill atheists, right?
And of course, so there are people who want you dead, right?
I mean, the ideology, I don't mean your parents directly, but what they believe in.
And then there are statists, right, who if you don't pay the money that they say you should pay, then they support you being thrown in jail.
And if you resist that, they support you getting shot, right?
Mm-hmm. Yes.
So clearly, to hang around with people who think that you should get shot is not good, right?
No, that's where a lot of debates come from, yeah.
Sorry, what do you mean by debates?
Well, yeah, I have a lot of debates with these Christian people about this subject.
They become, yeah, very heated also.
Well, and have they accepted that the God they worshipped commands them to put you to death?
No, they always deny that, yeah.
Deny that it's in the Bible?
Yeah, I get this story that with the New Testament, the Old Testament has been fulfilled, and I cannot replay the whole discussion here.
It would bore people to death. Well, but it's not true, right?
I mean, first of all, Christ does talk about And also Christ says in the New Testament that he has not come to take away any of the rules of the Old Testament and that all of the rules in the Old Testament, according to Christ himself, stand firm. So this is just not true.
Christ explicitly confirms the Old Testament laws.
Because otherwise, God would be evil before Christ came along, and then moral afterwards.
Obviously, he couldn't do that.
He couldn't come and say, well, God was evil, but now I'm here to make God good.
So he explicitly supports all of the rules in the Old Testament.
Yeah, I also said that.
I mean, also a lot of Christians did not get that revoking of that law because a lot of murdering has been going on since then.
Right. There's people who say, well, I don't support you being killed, and then if you say, well, your doctrines support me getting killed, if they then do not change their allegiance to this murderous ideology, then you have a decision to make, right?
Because if you say, "I'm perfectly willing to hang out with people who want me dead," then you don't really believe your beliefs, right?
Yeah.
And again, I'm not trying to be a mean guy.
I'm just sort of pointing, I'm trying to help you free yourself from your worry about the political.
Because the reason you're worried about politics is because you're not able to convince anyone in your life.
And the reason that you're not able to convince anyone It's that, on the one hand, you passionately believe in these ideals, but on the other hand, you don't want to put them into practice because you're afraid that you might end up alone.
But being alone is better than being with people who want you dead.
And you won't end up alone anyway.
And right now, you're worse than alone.
And so if you won't take the risk to live with integrity, for sure, you're never going to be able to help change the world.
And I think, obviously, you're a smart fellow, very articulate, very well-read, very learned.
And I think that you should feel passion, optimism, and happiness about changing the world.
But there's a little hump that you have to get over, right?
Which is, to take these ideas...
Really seriously. And I know that you do, but there's a difference between knowing them in your head and putting them into practice in your life.
And if you say, well, I don't want to put these ideals into practice in my personal life, that's fine, but that means, of course, that you're never going to help change the world.
In fact, what you're really doing, if you believe these things and speak about them but never act on them, is you're discrediting These ideas for everyone else.
You make my job harder and the job of other people harder, right?
Because people say, well, you know, people have these libertarian ideas, but they don't really mean anything, right?
So the next time I come along, people have this belief that you've helped to spread, which is that these ideas are just for books or for libraries or for debating, but they're not for actually living.
Yeah. Yeah, I can see the line of argument.
I mean, it takes a horrible amount of courage to be a philosopher.
I mean, it truly is horrible.
I mean, it's beautiful, but it's horrible in the short term.
In the short term, it's very, very difficult.
Yeah. Because if these things are true, right, if these beliefs about nonviolence, voluntarism, virtue, integrity, courage, if they're all true, then we have to do some very hard things.
And if they're not true, then let's stop believing them.
Because right now, I mean, you could go join the church and you could live a life where you are accepted, quote, by a whole bunch of people.
And you have a community and you have, you know, places to go on Sunday and you have nobody.
You don't have to fight with everyone all the time.
So what I'm always concerned about is people who get stuck in the middle, right?
So they believe these things just enough to alienate themselves from everyone around them.
But they don't believe them enough to really change their life and find better and more virtuous companionship.
Do you see what I mean?
Yeah, I kind of see it, but I also wonder, will I end up hiding on my attic if my parents ring the doorbell?
You might. You might.
I mean, absolutely, I was just...
You might.
That also doesn't sound free.
Well, but I don't compare 20 minutes of hiding in my attic to...
What I compare is...
8 years without having to go and spend time with corrupt people.
I will trade 20 minutes of feeling nervous in my attic for 8 years of being free from my family.
That's an easy trade, right?
I can control whether I go and pretend to have a relationship with my family.
I cannot control whether they show up on my doorstep.
But the comparator is, for me, very easy.
That I have a free and wonderful relationship with my wife.
That I have good friendships.
That I have been able to achieve my sort of livestream of talking about this stuff and being annoying to people like you, but I only have control over my own choices, and those choices have made me immeasurably more free.
And yeah, every now and then I have to hide in my attic.
But that's a whole lot better than having to spend a couple of hours a week for the past eight years going over and pretending to have a relationship with people I don't respect or like.
Yeah, I have to kind of plot a plan.
Amen.
Thank you.
Well, I think it's just something to think about.
I mean, you know your own relationship with your family of obviously far, far better than I do.
I don't know much about it at all.
But I would just say to myself, if this stuff is true, then I'm going to live by it.
And if it's not true, I'm going to stop pretending to.
Because... Where you're heading now is the worst of both worlds, because you're going to end up alienated from people anyway, or you're going to end up feeling like, well, I can't talk about this, and I can't talk about that, and you're going to get hemmed in, and you're going to get boxed in, and people are going to look at you funny, and so on, and you're going to get split off from those who are close to you, and you're going to live an isolated life intellectually, even though you maybe have people around you, but you're going to feel very alone.
And that's not good.
Plus, you make my job more difficult.
But if you really do live by these values, assuming that you're not a surf in a 12-person village, then you're going to have a chance to really connect with people who hold...
Good values, good ideals, good virtuous, they act in a virtuous manner with integrity.
But you have to think about making that leap, because what you're suggesting for society is a massive leap.
But if you're not willing to take a much smaller leap, Then you won't achieve what you want in terms of helping the world.
And what will happen is, unconsciously, that will translate into a fear that the world cannot be saved.
But the reason that you would fear that the world cannot be saved is because you're actually working against saving the world if you believe these things but do not live them.
Yeah, it is also, I do speak out to both sides of the, yeah, if you can say that you're between the ship and the shore.
I do speak out to Christians, my criticism, and also To, say, status.
But maybe it doesn't carry enough conviction.
Well, it won't, right?
I mean, I hate to be bossy.
I apologize. But it won't, right?
I mean, what I had to say to my family was, you guys believe in a system that wants to shoot me.
Now, I can't view that as a loving action.
So, you either need to give up your belief in a system that is irrational and destructive, or I'm not going to be in your life.
I mean, that's like, if I'm in a Jewish family, and one of my brothers becomes a Nazi, right?
Then I have the right to sit down with that brother and reason with him and say, look, you've just joined.
I mean, forget. Let's just say a friend of mine becomes a Nazi.
Otherwise he would be a Jew as well.
Yeah, stop hating Jew, right?
Two mothers, right? One mother who's anyway, forget it.
So if I'm a Jew and a friend of mine becomes a Nazi and is going to Nazi rallies all the time and, you know, Then I have to sit down with him and say, look, this ideology kind of wants me dead, right? And he's like, well, I don't believe in that part.
It's like, but you're a Nazi, right?
I mean, that's sort of the reality.
Whether you can't pick and choose, right?
People always deny that.
Sorry? People always deny that if you put it so bluntly and you say...
Well, sure. Hitler denied it, too.
I mean, that's common, right?
Everybody does that. That's inevitable.
But I think if I were Jewish and I had a Nazi friend, I'd say, sorry, you either have to give up your belief in Nazism, your adherence to Nazism, and we need to figure out what ended up with you in that mindset, or I'm not going to be your friend.
Like, I'm not going to be friends if I'm a Jew with a Nazi.
Because then how on earth could I oppose Nazism?
Do you know what I mean? I think Nazism is terrible.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go and have a nice long lunch with a friend of mine who's a Nazi.
Yeah.
Like, it will never work.
You'll never change anybody's mind because what people do in life is they don't listen to you.
They watch you. 80% of communication is non-verbal.
And I say, well, they listen to podcasts.
Yes, but the podcasts have conviction because I have lived this and I know how well it works.
So people don't listen to your debates.
They watch your life.
And that's what changes people's minds.
Not words, but actions.
Not thoughts, but deeds.
Because people will say, well, if you don't believe it enough to put it into practice, why on earth should I bother?
If you're saying this is the greatest, this libertarianism is the greatest thing ever, but you're not putting it into practice in your own life, then you're like some doctor saying, oh, this is a miracle cure for an illness that we both have, but I don't want to take it.
You take it, but nobody will believe that.
No matter how much data or data the doctor has, if the doctor's not going to take his own pills, nobody else is going to, no matter how convincingly he argues, right?
Yeah, the strange thing is how did all these other ideologies get so, and cults get so far, and how did religion get so far?
Well, because they believe it.
They go to church. They act on it.
Christians will break with a non-Christian.
No, they also don't believe it.
They say they believe they will go to heaven and it's the greatest place on earth.
Well, it's not on earth, but they don't jump off a building because they're not sure.
But that's because suicide is wrong.
Suicide is immoral.
But they live by what they believe, right?
So people who are statists, they go and vote.
They support government programs.
And they say to us openly, yeah, if you're not on board, you're going to get thrown in jail.
And if you resist, you're going to get shot.
Sorry, that's the way it is, right?
So they're willing to do that.
They're willing to live by their values.
I think those values are really bad, but they're willing to do it.
And a Christian will break with a non-Christian, and a Christian will, right?
You know the emotional intensity behind the Christian's crazy beliefs.
So everybody lives by their beliefs, except libertarians.
And we have the best beliefs.
We have the beliefs that are true.
But we're cautious, right?
So we don't like to live by them because we keep wanting to double-check the data and go over the arguments again and read more promises and, you know, post on Lou Rockwell's blog and this, right?
So the reason that they get so far is that people pour themselves into it, heart, body, and soul, and change their behaviors to match their ideology.
And we don't very often.
And I think that's why we always lose.
But how can they live their belief?
Because it is inconsistent.
The law and the Bible are, yeah, you mentioned it yourself, there are so many things that are contradictory, and here they say God changes, and there it says God never changed.
You cannot live something that is contradictory.
But it's not really contradictory if you understand that people don't judge ideas, they judge behavior.
Right? The reason that people think that Christianity is true It's because people genuinely act as if Christianity is true.
Most people can't evaluate an idea to save their life, right?
So all they can do is evaluate whether or not somebody else believes those enough to change their behavior, change his or her behavior.
So Christians act as if it's true, and therefore it seems true, whether or not it's consistent or not, it doesn't matter.
Communists act as if communism is true.
Of course it's not, but they act, and that's all people judge it by.
But how can you act to a belief that it's inconsistent?
Because how should you act?
Should you act like A or like B? Well, it doesn't matter.
It's the action that counts.
It's the action that changes people's minds.
In what direction?
Well, obviously in a bad direction.
If it's Christianity or something, right?
Or statism, it's in a bad direction.
But they do act as if it's true, right?
right and we don't yeah I hey still know because my I mean my my my parents are religious but if they would act to that and then they shoot the throw me out of their lives But they don't do that either.
Well, sure, I understand that, but they also are the majority, right?
So they don't have to feel like you're trying to change the world.
They're not. They're living in a world that conforms to what it is that they believe, right?
But of course, they would be They would be rejected if they tossed you out.
They would be viewed as crazy fundamentalists, right?
Yeah, probably. Like, if they killed you and they said, well, the Bible says to kill your son if he rejects Jesus, right?
They would be disapproved of, right?
Yeah, most likely, yeah.
So, I mean, in a sense, they're just doing what's approved of, right?
Yeah.
They have it then approved of by whom?
It's by... Yeah.
But they have an ethic, which is, I'm going to act with integrity to what people will approve of, right?
Mm-hmm. And you have a belief which says that there's no unchosen positive obligations and that violence is wrong, and those who support the use of violence, once they understand that they're supporting the use of violence, those who support the use of violence are immoral and corrupt, right?
That's your belief. But you don't live by it with your family.
You say, well, okay, so they're mystical and collectivist and statist, and they support doctrines that would get me killed if practiced consistently.
Right? Yeah, but they don't live dead.
Well, it doesn't matter, though.
It doesn't matter whether they believe it or not.
That is the core of their doctrine.
And for you, it's like, okay, let's meet for dinner.
And if you were to force them, in a sense, to choose between the ideology and you, right?
So if you said, look, if you guys stay statists and Christians, I'm not going to be part of this relationship.
What would they choose? They would choose their religion, yeah.
Right.
So, what are you doing with these people?
Yeah, it's...
I mean, they don't even care enough about you to give up false beliefs.
And destructive beliefs, beliefs that have gotten a billion people killed over the course of human history.
That's just religion.
Statism's got another couple of hundred million people killed.
And they want you shot!
Or at least that's the ideology.
And you're like, okay.
I'm good with that. I mean, I'll still stay around with it.
But we are in a minority.
Well, the only way we get into a minority is if we act with integrity, right?
If we act like it's true.
Because if we don't act like it's true, nobody's ever going to believe it.
It's difficult this...
I'm so sorry, I have to give you about a thousand apologies, but I do have to run.
I have a class tonight.
But I'd like to...
I'll send you a link to this.
I'll compile this and I'll send you a link.
I think that you...
I really do appreciate you staying in this conversation.
I know that it's an annoying conversation at times, but I really do appreciate it.
And... Have a listen.
I think that a lot of people are dealing with this same stuff, right?
And so I'd like to release this as a podcast, and obviously you didn't mention your name, which is good.
Bab! But if you could have a listen to it, I'd appreciate it.
All right. I will.
Well, thank you very much, and I will talk to you soon.
Okay. Have a nice evening. You too.
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