Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

All Episodes

Previous Next

Nov. 30, 2008 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:05:12

1225 Sunday Call In Show Nov 30 2008 - Koen Swinkels and Liberating Minds

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	Hi everybody, it's Steph. Just wanted to do a little intro to the show that you're about to hear because if you don't know the background to the show, it will make a whole lot less sense.
	And the background is simply this, that I guess about a year and a half ago, I banned a fellow from Free Domain Radio for what I consider to be difficult, abusive, destructive interactions.
	on the board and he went off and created a forum called Liberating Minds and used the FDR message system to contact other people who had been banned and they got together and for the last year and a half have been pretty savagely attacking myself,
	my wife, my friends and using the most Absurd and violent and destructive language and all that kind of stuff.
	And it's like, okay, well, you know, the internet is free for creeps as well, right?
	So I didn't really pay it much mind.
	But unfortunately, what's happened is, due to the recent interest in free-domain radio from the mainstream media, of course, the first thing that reporters do is they will read the Guardian article or some part of it and say, ooh, you know, this is controversial.
	And then they do a search, and they find, of course, Free Domain Radio, and they also find this site, Liberating Minds, which I know is run by a fellow named Koen Swinkles, K-O-E-N, Swinkles is S-W-I-N-K-E-L-S,
	and I don't toss around identities lightly, but he revealed his identity to me on another forum by attacking me using his real name, and then bragging about that attack on his forum, so I know exactly who it is, and Of course, if he feels comfortable using my name in ad hominems, I at least should feel comfortable using his name when talking about what he has said.
	So, of course, if you have this courage of your convictions, your name should not be an issue.
	It certainly isn't for me. So, unfortunately, what happens is then people who search for free domain radio will find this hate site.
	And again, I don't use that term lightly, but I will read you a couple of entries.
	With no pleasure, and if you don't like strong language, you might want to skip past this stuff.
	But they find this hate site, and they say, oh, well, the Guardian article was critical.
	And then there's this other site, which seems to be very critical.
	And the site doesn't have a search feature, and of course, everybody's on their best behavior when the reporters come over, so they can't really see what's under the icing, so to speak.
	And so, after...
	The Guardian article, I was contacted by more media people for interviews, and they cited that it was controversial and so on, and mentioned this forum, Liberating Minds, run by Mr.
	Swinkles. So, I mean, I don't have any problem with people having criticisms of my theories.
	I think criticisms of me personally, it's kind of retarded and embarrassing and intellectually very...
	Immature. It's worse than immature when you get into your 20s.
	Then it just becomes out and out malevolent.
	So, you know, criticisms of the theory is fantastic.
	You know, personal attacks on me for 18 months.
	And it's the same people. Like, I've looked at the logs of who comes from Liberating Minds.
	Over the last year, it's been less than 2% new people.
	So, it's just the same people over and over and over.
	And it's just, you know, slander, attack, innuendo...
	It's just a bunch of disgruntled people.
	And of course, all it does is completely confirm that it was damn well the right decision to ban these lunatics, right?
	Because they're just full of rage and manipulation and hatred.
	And that's not what I want around in a philosophical conversation.
	You know, the metaphor I've always used is a dinner party, right?
	And if people start swearing at me and so on at a dinner party that they're hosting, you know, stuffing their faces with my food, it's like, well...
	You know, that's not on, right?
	I can't accept that.
	No moralist could look himself in the face, in the mirror rather, and contentedly accept his intellectual and moral courage if he was, you know, if I say I want to take on the state and I say that voluntarism and property rights and ostracism are the way to deal with conflicts, then I kind of have to live that, right?
	I mean, otherwise I'm just talking.
	So, what I did was I I went through their site for about half a day, which is tough.
	Again, there's no search feature.
	And just dug up some of the more horrendous and hellacious and ugly and violent things that have been said about me over on that site.
	And I didn't dig up the stuff about my wife.
	I mean, there are just no words to describe how vile that is.
	But anyway, so I'm not engaging with these people or with Mr.
	Swinkles. I'm just, you know, that's disinfectant in sunlight, right?
	This is what they've done and this is what they're doing.
	And the reason that I had to do this was, of course, I mean, to take a silly example, right?
	I mean, if you're doing Obama, right?
	Barack Obama sort of emerges...
	And the first thing, you don't know anything about him, and then there's this critical article, and the first thing you do is a search, and you come across some website that is very critical and hostile towards Obama, and you're like, wow, that's a controversial figure.
	Some people like him, some people hate him.
	And if you don't know that the site is a racist site, then you won't know the motivations or the credibility of the people who are supposedly, objectively putting forward their criticisms.
	In the same way, if a site that savagely attacks a Jew turns out to have an anti-Semitic bias, that is no longer an objective source of information about Jews or a Jew, right?
	So, I just had to point out that these people are nuts, right?
	I mean, they're not rational.
	This weird obsession that just goes on and on, and unfortunately, the policy of complete You know, ignore it and it will go away.
	It didn't work, unfortunately.
	It's a shame, right? Obviously, it would be better if people spent their lives doing more productive things than attacking a podcaster.
	But, you know, everybody has their own ways of doing things, I suppose.
	So I had to gather together this stuff so that I could send it to reporters, the reporters who were contacting me saying, wow, you know, it seems to be controversial.
	And it's like, no, it's not controversial.
	It's only controversial if you accept that people who communicate in this kind of way have anything objective and rational to say about Free Domain Radio or myself.
	So, without sort of any further ado, I'll just read some of the stuff that is out there on this forum, and you can, of course, make up your own mind.
	Now, just briefly, I mean, this, you know, I mean, I... I mean, I have some credibility in business and academia.
	I was a software entrepreneur executive.
	I co-founded a successful company, worked for many years.
	As a chief technical officer, I studied English Lit for two years at York University.
	I have an undergraduate degree in history from McGill University and a graduate degree from the University of Toronto, focusing on the history of philosophy.
	I received an A for my master's thesis analyzing the political implications of the philosophies of Immanuel Kant, GWF Hegel, Thomas Hobbes, And John Locke.
	And Cohen Swinkles, he goes by the screen name Conrad, C-O-N-R-A-D, on Liberating Minds.
	I don't know much about him. He's had some articles published on the Rockwell, seems to have presented and studied at the Ludwig von Mises Institute.
	And so he, you know, just confirming the thesis that idealization almost always turns to hatred, he first contacted me in March 07, writing, quote, It really is truly amazing, as you say, that somewhere in a dark little corner of the internet there are these people who seem to be just correct about, well, all the important aspects of life and science and philosophy, about all the stuff that philosophers and scientists and moralists and theologians and so on have discussed for millennia.
	Amazing, but true.
	Now, Mr. Swinkles was on the message board at FDR for about two months, starting in April 2007.
	He listened to...
	Over 700 podcasts and was effusive and positive.
	That's a lot of podcasts, right?
	And during the time that he was around, he became increasingly difficult and unpleasant.
	After some really ugly interactions between Mr.
	Swinkles and myself, as well as some other listeners, which I was not able to resolve with him, I asked him to stop posting on the board and closed his account.
	And this has happened 30 or 40 times over the past couple of years out of 3,400 members.
	So about 1%.
	It's not a big deal.
	Unfortunately, Mr. Swinkles did not take this decision to close the account down very well at all.
	He founded the Liberating Minds Forum, where he and others who have been banned from FDR started viciously attacking me.
	He began creating fake free-domain radio user IDs, picking fights, and so on.
	He also began using the FDR message system to speak ill to me of my listeners.
	And almost all the people who regularly post on Liberating Minds are people I banned from posting at FDR for reasons which I hope will be clear below.
	I've generally ignored this hate site for the last year and a half.
	This is from the page itself, in the hope that they would get tired of bored.
	I've not engaged in any debates with any of its participants or posted on their hate site.
	Unfortunately, they have continued to escalate their attacks and now are using the media to act out their resentments.
	I mean, come on. If a woman broke up with a man and then saw him post ugly personal attacks about her online for over a year with increasing ferocity, this would be a kind of vicious stalking.
	It would not Constitute a viable and objective source of information about her personality and choices.
	A hate site is not a source of objectivity any more than a viciously anti-Semitic site is a source of objectivity about Jews.
	Below are some quotes from Liberating Minds.
	I hope this helps explain why I asked these people to stop posting on FDR and why I describe it as a hate site.
	Of course, there is nothing like this on the FDR board.
	I would never tolerate such rage and hatred.
	There's a lot more, but for obvious reasons, I'm not exactly spending, enjoy spending any time with this ugly forum.
	So, from a thread called Go, and again, I apologize for the language, but here it is.
	From a thread called Go a Fucking Head.
	Mole. Fuck all of you.
	So you want to talk shit?
	Suck my dick, you cockmonglers and ass clowns.
	I'll rip your heads off and shit down your throats.
	Oh, and thanks for using my idea, asshole.
	Coneswinkles. Hey Jewboy, if you hate this thread so much, why don't you go someplace else where you will be welcome?
	You know, like Auschwitz.
	Alex. Let it all hang out, Cunrod.
	Oh wait, I guess you have let it hang out.
	Just couldn't see it without my handy Jewboy magnifying glass.
	Fucktard. Cohen Swinkles.
	Yeah, well, who the fuck cares about liberating minds anyway, you goddamn Jew?
	From the thread Steph's Wikipedia page deleted.
	Cohen Swinkles.
	Fuck you in your nose.
	Non-entity is another listener who was banned, or another poster there who was banned from here.
	From Cohen Swinkles.
	Regarding a video where I laugh.
	Cohen Swinkles. I hate the laughter so much, too.
	Steph would, of course, say that we hate it because we can't stand to see true happiness and joy.
	Oh no, I'm mind-reading.
	I want to beat it, the laughter, not Steph, to death, saw its limbs off, then beat it to death again, pour gasoline over it, set it on fire, and then vomit all over it.
	You catch my drift?
	Dilba's Another band member replies, yeah, if it were on fire, I wouldn't even piss on it to put it out.
	Burn, motherfucker, burn.
	On the thread about the recent Guardian article from band member Dilboz, quote, Good article.
	I want there to be more.
	I really, really hope that the media picks up on it.
	He's a terrible, manipulative, malignant narcissist.
	Reading that just roiled my meanest emotions.
	I have nothing but loathing for this man victimizing young people, taking advantage of their vulnerabilities, and turning them against their families and friends, all to feed his ego, soothe his raging insecurity, and, all caps, TAKE THEIR MONEY! I wish she had pointed out that he has no other source of income than these, quote, donations. Fucker.
	I can't stand him.
	He makes me mad. So much more because I fell for his shtick.
	Makes me feel stupid.
	And I don't like being made a fool.
	At least I figured him out.
	And I never did feel comfortable with the whole confessional vibe, the denouncing of your parents and dredging up the worst bits of your childhood.
	It all seemed so, I don't know, Orwellian, like some combination of the Two Minutes Hate and Room 101.
	He goes on to say, his childish, pathetic, petty lie and his dishonesty about why he was telling it, which was just to make Cohen Swinkles look bad, then going back to his captive audience where he could frame reality and leave out all the relevant bits after he got totally embarrassed on Kinsella's libertarian Google forum,
	this is where the attack took place, by the way, It was so awful, A-W-E-F-U-L, and stupid and sad that I immediately lost all respect for him, and suddenly I had him cornered, and he was petulantly clinging to this stupid little lie.
	I wanted him to admit it.
	In fact, if he had, it would have totally redeemed him, but I now know he's utterly incapable of admitting error, and he hates being ostracized because his self-esteem is so low, his self-image so fragile, he is so insecure that he is afraid of his own fucking baby.
	So much that he would rather lie, and lie, and lie again, manipulate, and twist, and squirm, and writhe, ban people from his message board, and act like he's the noble, long-suffering victim, but never admit the truth, and over something so fucking meaningless, and petty, and tiny, and all caps, PATHETIC, oh my god, dot dot dot, what a pathetic, immature, weasley douchebag.
	From a user called D-Food Dad regarding the Guardian article.
	This is a fellow that I was heavily criticized for banning, I think, and just was the most horrendously abusive father.
	D-Food Dad. I'm sure Dickface, that would be me, has read it by now.
	Choke on it, Steph. More from Dilpoz.
	Quote, I hate that man.
	Really, I really, really do.
	He is the sick son of a bitch.
	Cisera. Cohen Swinkles.
	Dude, I would almost give my pinky toe to have a conversation with him.
	I can now see through all of the manipulation techniques that he uses, and it would be so capable and willing to expose him to show him for what he is, a gigantic douchebag.
	Non-Entity, another member from FDR, it does support my contention that Steph is a scumbag, is dishonest and hypocritical.
	Dilbo's addressing me from the site.
	Fuck off, you douchebag.
	You are driving so many good people who could be an asset to the freedom movement and libertarianism into a ditch.
	A great big pseudo-psychological amateur philosophy game of Swedish cracker.
	I don't know what the hell that means. You look more and more like some kind of CIA operative sent to neutralize anarcho-capitalist to me all the time.
	I'm not inclined to that kind of conspiratorial thinking, but if the shoe fits.
	Cohen Swinkles. Fuck you, Steph.
	You lie and you manipulate and the FDRers, Freedom Aid Radioers, are relieved after this interview after you lied to and manipulated everybody listening to it.
	Fuck you, Steph. Go on Swinkles.
	The thing is, Steph is a very sophisticated liar.
	So he will be very precise in his lies so that he can always wiggle his way out of things.
	The thing is, we've been, quote, debating Steph and following him debating others for over a year now.
	I know, it's bad.
	And if there's anything I have learned, it is that you have to be super careful in such debates in order to really expose Steph's hypocrisy and dishonesty.
	He always creates ways out for himself, but if you understand how his mind works, I know, I know, then you can expose him.
	In short, don't worry, my and others disgust with Stephan is as great as yours.
	Zebrafall. I've never believed that Steph is that fucked up.
	I mean, he's narcissistic and a, quote, successful psychopath, but I think he uses and embellishes messed-up-edness for his very calculating, mercenary, power-avid, self-flattering ends.
	I do not believe that Steph came from a horribly abusive family.
	I think he's an opportunist, embellishing on more or less regular stuff to further his narcissistic goals.
	As I said elsewhere today, I also believe he is a, quote, successful psychopath.
	Just apply the skin crawl test and you will see.
	Note, felt by researchers interviewing psychopaths, it is thought to be an ancient vestigial reaction to being in the presence of a predator, the feeling of your skin crawling.
	Whenever I listened to Steph's voice, I had it.
	When he addressed me on the board, my skin positively got up and crawled away.
	From another band member, fairly disappointed with Steph's blunt one-answer treatment of divergent theories, plus his gang of sycophants who would promptly lick his bunghole without even reading the discussion at hand.
	And Steph does not have that disgust many of us have in having our asses kissed.
	Best expressed in that phrase, nobody likes an ass-kisser.
	One thing that strikes me about the FDR quote methodology is how convenient it is to just chalk it up to a fucked up psyche or having been brutalized as a child every damn time someone disagrees with you.
	It is like Marxism and the bourgeois logic.
	For a while I was swayed by that siren but snapped out of it after hearing podcast after podcast where he would end with that is because they were brutalized as a child.
	It was like goddamn mad libs.
	Go and Swinkle's at work.
	It'd be much appreciated if you did post it, though.
	I'm at work now and can't access FDR. I am quite interested in his response since Travis Post seemed spot on.
	Because I've been blocking.
	I mean, I've just been...
	I mean, they're huge.
	Like, just the... Anyway, it's like number five in terms of referrals, and I got tired of people I'd banned leeching material and poking around the website using up bandwidth and resources, so I banned their IPs, and so they just tried to do this in discussions on their forum about how to find ways around the IP ban and so on.
	So I just point out, like, well, I banned him, but he's just trying to find other ways in.
	And when Cohen Swinkles revealed his identity, this is Kinsella's forum.
	I never mentioned the name, but it was mentioned on their site, so, you know, there it is.
	He says, the past few days, or week even, I think I have DFDR'd quite a bit.
	Especially since David, it's David Heinrich, and I brought down Steph on the Libertarian Forum, I sort of have peace and calmness in my mind about the whole thing, like it has reached its natural ending for me.
	That was all good. Actually, that was about a year ago, and of course, it doesn't solve the problem.
	Violence only makes things worse, right?
	Aggression. Verbal abuse, I mean.
	And then we had an academic drop by.
	Her name is Sonia Mansour-Robay.
	S-O-N-I-A M-A-N-S-O-U-R-R-O-B-A-E-Y I banned her because, I mean, she's just truly nutty.
	They're all truly nutty, but this woman...
	Just comes in, and I've never met her before.
	All she's done is read the Guardian article.
	She's not done any research.
	She, by herself, she calls me a fraud, a cult leader, destructive, irresponsible, just the most astounding claims, and says, well, you know, how can he call himself a philosopher?
	I don't think he even has a degree or a graduate degree in the subject.
	And, of course, that's right on my about page.
	It's not hard to find, right?
	So just completely launches into it, goes into a massive tirade.
	I ask for proof, and she just says, you know, the proof is in the Guardian article.
	Proof for what? I mean, all that means is that one kid left his parents, and, you know, there was a conversation with me.
	It doesn't prove anything, right?
	So I ask, and then she just goes off on more tirades and so on.
	And this, so she's...
	She's an academic. She's got degrees, but, I mean, this is astonishingly irresponsible.
	And she actually used her university computer to make these posts, which is terrifically unwise.
	Anyway, so she's posting.
	Of course, they all swarm over to Liberating Minds, right?
	They either get contacted by people sneaking in and using the message system, or, you know, they contact her in some other way.
	And, of course, she used her full name here, so I have no problem revealing Mr.
	Obey's identity, because she already uses it, right?
	She's got it on her blog and so on.
	So she wrote just two remarks, the first being that the Molyneux cult bans everybody who disagrees with them, therefore keeping their followers under tight thought control while being discussed at other forums.
	I don't know what that means exactly, but...
	I doubt that the Molyneux followers visit other forums, so we have to be careful here to discuss Molyneux in order to expose the cult, but not to give it a non-deserved publicity.
	I found it very disturbing, for example, that Molyneux's thinking was discussed on the Mises forum.
	We are giving him too much credibility here.
	The second is that I think we have to go from discussion into action.
	One possibility I see is to sue the cult for hate speech targeting a special group in society and leading to psychological damage and suffering.
	I leave you with that.
	I don't have time to be enough on the forum, something like that, but I will check your reactions and advice whenever I have little time.
	And she also wrote, right, so she's talking about suing me for hate speech, and we've never had a conversation.
	She's just going completely full-tail boogie on me in an unbelievable way.
	I mean, it's hard to believe this is really an academic, but we have to take her at her word.
	And then she says, thanks to all of you on this forum who reproduced the exchange between me and the FDR cult members and their, quote, leader.
	I cannot access the forum anymore, but I will be visiting this one.
	FDR cultists were boasting about having some publicity from the Guardian article.
	Let's use this publicity to let people know the truth about Molyneux and his cult.
	From her blog, my brief exchange with the members of the FDR cult Detailed with additional post banning comments, last Sunday I read an article in The Guardian about an internet forum that goes by the name of Free Domain Radio coaching young adults who have issues with their own emancipation and into cutting ties with their families.
	I had a brief discussion with members of this cultist forum before being banned by their maitre de pensée.
	One of her posts on the Free Domain Radio site, I mean this is of course just the kind of stuff that if you can't back it up it gets you banned, right?
	What Mr. Molyneux does is to feel opportunity at every vulnerability, opportunity to profit from the vulnerabilities of the people who are seeking a way to their emancipation in a difficult personal context.
	I think that's context. Sometimes pathological.
	This is called predation.
	To my knowledge, Mr. Molyneux does not hold a degree in philosophy.
	Philosophy is not just words.
	Philosophy is rigorous thinking combined with an ethical methodology.
	Mr. Molyneux has neither.
	He doesn't even have doubt. Philosophy could not exist without doubt.
	And this is a woman who knows nothing about me other than there was an article in The Guardian.
	I mean, so this is not exactly rigorous thinking combined with an ethical methodology, right?
	Barbara Weed, this is Tom's mom from the article commenting about Freedom Aid Radio on the Liberating Minds site.
	I identified myself and my son because we're the subjects of an article in The Guardian which is yet to be published.
	Right, so...
	Obviously, the Guardian, Kate Hilpern, it's almost certain that she would use Liberating Minds as a source, right?
	I mean, how did she find these quotes from podcasts which were...
	Buried in podcasts, and I think one of them was even a premium podcast.
	Well, obviously she didn't listen to 1,000 or 1,200 podcasts in order to get these quotes.
	They would be supplied to her, and they would be supplied to her by people who've listened to a lot of podcasts and really hate FDR, and the only people who would qualify in that category would be Cohen Swinkles and his company at this site, right?
	So this is why I have to point out that this is not an objective source of information about FDR, because they're, you know, abusive and...
	Well, just hostile and kind of nutty, right?
	So... She also writes...
	FDR is a cult.
	Sadly, your story is very familiar.
	She's saying to another parent.
	Like yours, my other children confirmed that their childhoods were happy.
	Try to hang on to that knowledge.
	There was no actual reason for the defu.
	Like many others, your child has been manipulated by Steph.
	And... Anyway, so, I mean...
	This... I just gathered these quotes together.
	I'm not engaging in a debate with these people because you can't debate with people like this, right?
	I mean, it's not possible.
	The level of virulence and hatred towards a podcaster, I mean, it's nutty, right?
	I mean, I've got bigger fish to fry than to respond to hate sites.
	I've got more important things to do, right?
	So I'm not engaging in a debate with these people because I don't...
	Think that people who use this kind of language and throw these kinds of aspersions around without any proof, right?
	It's actually not that hard to prove a cult, right?
	I mean, there's some very objective and specific definitions on the internet, you know, like telling people they should separate from their families, which I don't do.
	I tell people they should try to get close to their families, but they're free to separate if that turns out to be too unpleasant, right?
	And of course, as I say in the show which is about to start, Libertarianism and anarchism fully recognize that relations between adults should be voluntary, are voluntary and of course that it's evil to initiate the use of force or threaten the use of force against people and they just don't like that I do it in the real world with families,
	right? Because Tom's father initiated the use of force against him and that is evil in libertarian definitions so when I say that he's a devil for doing that and it's utterly and completely wrong Then that's perfectly in accordance with people who violate the non-aggression principle, which libertarianism calls evil.
	It's easy to call the Fed evil because nobody gets that mad, but when you call actual individuals immoral for doing what they're doing, for threatening and bullying children for many years, that's more alarming.
	I get that. I get that.
	It is more alarming, but the principles are the principles.
	We either abandon the non-aggression principle, or we refrain from Applying it, which is the same as abandoning it, or we should feel as comfortable as we can when people do initiate the use of force for 18 years against a helpless and defenseless child, calling that immoral is simply a real-world application of the theory.
	That's all it is. And reminding people that their relations are voluntary and that the initiation of the use of force is wrong, that is perfectly in accordance with libertarian theory, right?
	So anyway, I mean, it's easy to prove cult relatively.
	I mean, certainly it's easy to prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt, right?
	But nobody does, right?
	Nobody goes to the definition and grinds through it and says, here's specific examples that are consistent and reproduced.
	But, you know, people just use the smears, right?
	They just say, oh, it's a cult, right?
	Because that's easy. It's easy to smear, and it's hard to prove, right?
	And, of course, these people are responsible because, as you can see, they're well-read, they're intelligent, they're educated.
	And so they know what rigorous thinking is.
	And so for an academic philosopher to say it's a cult without going through any of the rigor of proof, without knowing virtually nothing about the site itself, I mean, she's fully morally responsible for that libelous slander, right? Because she knows better, right?
	She's not dumb.
	And it's a standard that she herself puts forward, right?
	Anyway, so... I just wanted to go over this unpleasant topic and I really don't want to continue on this topic because, you know, they have discredited themselves to the mainstream media.
	I mean, there's no mainstream media person who would even conceivably be able to quote this as a reasonable source about free-domain radio.
	That really was my only goal.
	Not to discourage criticism, but to point out that It's not an objective source of information about me, and therefore it can't be used to balance the good that we do, the admitted and known good that we do.
	So I've done that.
	Obviously, they're going to continue wallowing in this little swamp, and that's fine.
	I mean, it's their life to do with, of course, as they see fit.
	So I don't want lots of emails about this topic or subject.
	I think it sort of speaks for itself.
	I'm not engaging, I'm just shining a light on what these people are like.
	Of course, it is my hope, sincere hope that they will get, you know, the anger management classes, figure out what is really bothering them, because I can guarantee you it's not a little podcast from Canada that is putting them on such a rage and hate fest.
	I mean, it's just not possible, right?
	So I hope that they will figure out what is really troubling them and find some way to ease their, obviously, Not very happy hearts and find something more productive and beneficial to do with their time and considerable intellectual skills and energies.
	But, you know, the prognosis is not good.
	But, you know, you can always hope that people will find a way to live happier, more productive lives.
	So, with that having been said, this, I hope, puts the show that is about to start in some context.
	And thank you so much. And I just wanted to mention, if you wanted to verify these quotes for yourself and see others, you can have a look at a page at freedomainradio.com forward slash liberating underscore minds dot html.
	The link's also available at the bottom of the homepage at freedomainradio.com.
	Also, of course, I don't know for sure what are the real psychological motivations for these people to act out in this hateful and raging manner over the internet.
	I don't have anything to do with them and haven't forever.
	So I do talk about some possible motivations in this show, but of course, it's all just theory, and I wanted to mention that up front.
	And I just wanted to mention as well, in this conversation, Greg...
	He says something which is not the case, right?
	He says that, Steph, you're the philosopher who's worked out ethics from the ground up over the last hundred years.
	This is not true, of course. It was just we caught up in the moment, and I've subsequently clarified that with him, but just wanted to mention it, that this was a statement that was not correct, of course.
	I mean, there's plenty of other philosophers who've done this kind of work.
	I just wanted to mention that up front.
	As always, thanks for listening.
	I will talk to you soon. Well, good afternoon everybody.
	It's Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio.
	It is Sunday, November the 30th, 2008.
	Happy Thanksgiving to all our American listeners and I hope that you had enough turkey and red wine to slip into a coma and test out UPB. So, I just wanted to start off today with a brief discussion of ethical theories and how we look at them because there's been quite a lot of excitement About this.
	Recently, of course, based on what happened in the Guardian article and subsequent and so on.
	I was actually contacted by Sky News in England for an interview.
	And actually, I think it was for television.
	And I wrote back to them and said, I would be happy to have a discussion.
	Just so you know, I'm not just an IT worker and former actor.
	And I listed my academic credentials.
	Because that was like, if they were interested in an intelligent discussion, they would have been relieved to know that I wasn't some...
	Well, if I'm a lone nut on the internet, at least I'm a well-accredited lone nut on the internet, but I never heard back from them, so clearly that wasn't their interest at all.
	So, I just wanted to go over a couple of things around this article, because I'm not particularly impressed with the libertarian and anarchist community at the moment, just in general, and I could be completely unjust in this, but this is sort of my thinking.
	You see, anarchists, libertarians, free market thinkers, what we have such a problem with is that people will respond emotionally to moral questions, right?
	So, because people are conditioned to think that the welfare state helps the poor, and we say, well, the welfare state is immoral and impractical, people don't say, well, what is your argument from first principles about This.
	What they do is they say, they respond emotionally and usually in a volatile, angry and often accusatory and in a condemning manner.
	They respond and they say, oh, but without the welfare state, the people would starve in the streets.
	You want poor people to starve in the streets.
	You want to create a permanent underclass and blah, blah, blah.
	And we spend huge amounts of our lives dealing with this emotional, frankly, kind of bigoted reaction to Moral questions.
	People don't ask what the reasoning is.
	People don't say, well, that's interesting.
	I'm interested in the theory behind that.
	People just kind of blow up.
	They just fly off the handle and just get upset.
	And to me, it's enormously ironic and kind of sad that this is also happening within the libertarian or anarchist.
	I just say the freedom community.
	That an argument or a moral argument has been presented by me, and we really saw the effects of it in the call, the original call with Tom.
	And I'm not getting questions from people in the freedom movement saying, can you clarify your position, right?
	All I'm getting is It seems to be pretty anti-family.
	Maybe it is a kind of cult.
	He does say this.
	But nobody's asking any questions.
	The ironic thing is that we, of all people, we as a community of all communities, should understand that curiosity about surprising or alarming moral arguments is something we've all experienced continually.
	When we talk about voluntarism, when we talk about a stateless society, Even when we talk about smaller government, right?
	And so to me, it's not particularly ennobling to see a community that has suffered so much from a lack of moral curiosity about the arguments respond in almost exactly the same way as those who have railed against us for years.
	It's like when the heat is on, principles go out the window, and that is not a pretty sight, right?
	And I'm just saying what I've seen.
	Maybe there's this whole thing that I haven't seen, but this has been...
	I've received a lot of condemnation, criticism, mudslinging, and so on, which of course is what free marketers are constantly experiencing, right?
	People don't... But people don't actually examine the moral content of our arguments.
	They just fly off the handle based on a kind of emotional prejudice.
	And we dislike that. And so, of all the communities in the world, I would say, we should be the ones who should be the most curious about moral arguments.
	So, I just wanted to spend a few minutes going over the basic moral argument behind this conversation that ended up in this article.
	So, the moral reasoning is something like this.
	It's sort of a six-step thing.
	And then I'll say how you can oppose it, and of course if I'm wrong, then I will withdraw the position and apologize and so on.
	So moral reasoning, the initiation of the use of force is evil.
	This is the foundation of most ethical systems, however inconsistently it is applied.
	In the freedom movement it is applied very consistently.
	So the initiation of the use of force is evil.
	That's the first premise. The second premise is the longer the violence continues, the more evil it is.
	The longer the violence continues, the more evil it is, right?
	If I punch you, that's bad.
	If I kidnap you, lock you in the room in a basement for five years and punch you every day, that's worse, right?
	Because the longer the violence continues, all other things being equal, the longer it goes on for, the worse it is.
	Number three, the greater the disparity of power, the more evil it is, which is why the freedom movement focuses on the abuses of the state, right?
	Because there's such a disparity of power.
	Four, Creating and enabling conditions where evil can flourish is immoral, right?
	So, if you create and enable conditions where evil can flourish, that's immoral.
	I'm not saying I've proven all of these.
	I'm just saying that this is the sort of moral reasoning, right?
	So, these are all open to question, but this is sort of what I'm talking about, right?
	So, number five.
	All adult relationships are voluntary, right?
	Right? That is a basic argument of libertarianism, particularly of anarchism, right?
	All adult relationships are voluntary.
	Should be voluntary because they are voluntary.
	And six, which is not a good evil argument, but more sort of a kind of moral aesthetics, it is not advantageous for a good man to remain in the company of unrepentant people who have committed evils against him for many years.
	Let me say that again. It's a mouthful.
	It is not advantageous, or good, I would say, for a good man to remain in the company of unrepentant people who have committed violence against him for many years.
	Because if that's not true, if you're an innocent man and you're put in jail and you're tortured, then you should never leave that jail cell, right?
	Even if you're free to go, you should never leave it, right?
	Now, The initiation of the use of force is evil.
	Well, Tom's father repeatedly terrorized him through the threat of violence for many, many years.
	This went on for a long time, and you could say, if you wanted, that discipline, you know, like grabbing a child who's walking into traffic, but of course we would do that to a blind adult as well, right?
	Diminished capacity does not justify the initiation of force, right?
	Otherwise we could all punch people who were retarded, right?
	Or we could all cut the throats of people in comas, right?
	So diminished capacity does not eliminate the NAP. But even if we say it does, and even if we say, well, children, you can aggress against them, we understand that there's a difference between aggression with regards to discipline.
	However, misplaced, I think, that's spanking for stealing, right?
	I think it's not right to use violence to discipline children at all.
	But even if you accept that it is, clearly what Tom's father was doing had nothing to do with discipline.
	Nothing! Even if you are a very aggressive and violent child raiser, so to speak, there is no theory under which trashing a room and smashing windows and terrifying your child that way would have anything to do with disciplining a child.
	Even if you were a spare the rod, spoil the child kind of person, we understand that that is not discipline, right?
	So clearly that is the initiation of the use of force or the threat of force against the child, right?
	Because the violence doesn't have to be direct.
	If I shoot a gun and it misses your head, it's still terrifying, right?
	So if a room is smashed up around a child, windows kicked in and so on, that is still terrifying.
	That's still the initiation of threat of force, right?
	And if the longer the violence continues, the more evil it is.
	This continued for 18 years.
	If the greater the disparity of power, the more evil it is.
	Well, parent-child relationships have just about the greatest...
	Power disparities, because children didn't choose to be there and they can't leave it well.
	Creating and enabling conditions where evil can flourish is immoral, so if a mother creates and enables conditions where violence against a child can flourish, that's not good.
	And, of course, the conversation was, if all adult relationships should be voluntary, which is the basis of voluntarism, which is the basis of anti-state philosophies, Well, reminding a child that adult relationships are voluntary is in perfect accordance with basic anarchistic principles, basic philosophical libertarian principles.
	Reminding him that I don't think it's good for a moral man to remain in the company of unrepentant and evil people.
	So try and work it out, and if you can't, if they remain unrepentant, then move on.
	Now, if people find that what I did to be so objectionable, then they can either be jerks about it, And just start throwing names around like spiteful children.
	Actually, that's an insult to spiteful children because these people are adults.
	People can just start throwing names around like, oh, it's anti-family, it's a cult.
	But that's as retarded as the stuff that is thrown against voluntarists.
	Oh, you don't care about the poor.
	Oh, you're a slave to corporations.
	We hate those arguments, right?
	So why the hell would we use them within our own community?
	Right? Where is the moral curiosity that we so wish others showed towards our moral arguments towards this situation?
	So here's ways that you can overthrow the moral argument that I made in practice, right?
	Because this was in practice.
	This was podcast 1057.
	This was not podcast one.
	There's a lot of theory that went into that conversation.
	So if you want to overthrow what I did or find moral fault with what I did, that's perfectly fine.
	I mean, I'm open to correction.
	So if the non-aggression principle is invalid, then clearly aggression against children is fine.
	Aggression against anyone is fine.
	But then you can't then say, well, aggression against children is great.
	But standing up for children is bad.
	I mean, that would be a complete inversal.
	Basically, that would be, well, nothing is right and wrong, and therefore nobody could criticize me for anything that I did in that call or anything else, right?
	So if the non-aggression principle is invalid, then child abuse is fine, right?
	So if we're willing to give up the non-aggression principle, then people can say that I was incorrect, but they can't say I'm wrong, because obviously if child abuse is not wrong, nothing is wrong, including anything I did or do.
	If we are going to say that, if we can't do that, if we're not willing to give up the non-aggression principle, that's fine.
	Then what we can say is that a short amount of violence with a small disparity of power is bad, but 18 years of violence with a huge disparity of power, parent-child, is good, right? So if two equal guys get into a fight, the guy who throws the first punch is really bad.
	But if you terrorize a child you have almost complete power over for 18 years, that's good.
	Now, if you believe that, I mean, I don't really believe that it's possible, but I would be happy to hear the arguments and if they make sense and if they're logically verifiable and empirically valid and so on, right? To then, you know, you make the case, right?
	Make the case that the longer the violence goes on for and the greater the power disparity, in other words, the more helpless the victim, the less bad it is.
	That's fine. You can make that case.
	You could also make the case that putting children into a state of extreme physical danger and failing to protect them for many, many years is not wrong.
	Right? Letting toddlers wander onto train tracks.
	Not child-proofing your house.
	Not putting your children in car seats and then braking violently just for the hell of it.
	Not feeding your children and then risking malnutrition or dehydration.
	That creating children and putting them into a state of extreme physical danger for many years is not immoral.
	And you can make that case.
	Good luck if you want.
	I'm happy to hear how there's nothing wrong with that at all.
	You could also make the case that adult relationships are involuntary and that it is corrupt or immoral to act as if they are voluntary.
	And I'm happy to hear arguments for that as well.
	Adult relationships, you have to make the case, are involuntary, and it is corrupt or immoral to act as if they are voluntary or to remind people that they are voluntary, in which case what you have to do is you have to be for laws against emigration.
	You have to be against any possibility of breakups in romantic relationships or any kinds of friendships.
	So you have to be for a fixed and permanent state of human relationships that people can't get divorced, they can't stop seeing their friends for whatever reason, they can't ever leave their town, they can't ever stop shopping at a particular store, they can't ever quit their job, because human relationships are not, adult relationships are involuntary, and that to act as if they are voluntary or to remind people that they're voluntary is immoral.
	I'm perfectly happy to hear that case as well.
	The last thing, you could go on and on, right?
	But I just wanted to give people a sense of how all of this can work, right?
	How you can actually apply some intelligence to this moral question that came up in 105.7 and not react like a fool, like a reactionary and emotionally volatile and bigoted fool in this situation, right? Now, you can have no opinion.
	You don't have to do any of this, right?
	But if you're going to respond to it, try and do it with some intelligence, right?
	And the fifth way to overthrow this moral argument is it is not evil to initiate the use of force against a victim, an innocent victim.
	It is only immoral to escape such violence.
	So it's not immoral to physically terrorize a child.
	It is only immoral to escape such violence.
	In other words, it's not immoral to unjustly lock an innocent man up in prison.
	It is only immoral if he walks out on his own.
	There's no lock on the prison.
	Let's say some guy kidnaps you for no reason, throws you in an airplane hangar in the outskirts of town.
	There's no lock. There's no guard.
	So it's wrong to It's okay, in fact, it's fine and right for him to kidnap you, to beat you up, to slap you around, to knock a teeth or two out, and then to dump you from a fairly fast-moving van into this airplane hangar.
	That's fine, but it is immoral for you to leave that airplane hangar if they want you to stay, even if there are no locks, right?
	And that's perfectly fine.
	You can make that moral argument.
	Now, the last thing that I mentioned about this, and I'm happy to take calls about any topics, I just sort of wanted to get this out of the way.
	Because, you see, there's another thing that I think is important in this situation.
	You could also make the case, if you want, which says this.
	Because we all know libertarians the world over, anarchists the world over, Love, love, love, love, love to talk about that Lincoln wasn't as good as people think, right? That the Fed is bad, right?
	That the military-industrial complex is wrong and immoral, that public schools should be privatized, that this and that and the other.
	This is fine. I mean, I have no problem with that.
	Not that anyone would care if I did, right?
	But clearly...
	We can't do anything about those things.
	We can't. There is no article on the planet that is going to bring down the Fed or end the military-industrial complex.
	So you could argue, if you wanted, when given a choice to advise about ethics in a situation where your words can have some effect or in another situation where your words can have no effect, It is immoral to choose a situation where your words can have some effect.
	Right, so if you have the choice to write about the Fed or Lincoln or how FDR really started World War II by provoking the Japanese and you want to do all of that sort of stuff, write about the free market and how good it is and so on, which will affect nothing directly, So you can choose to do that, and that's really good.
	Because it has no effect on anything particularly tangible.
	And, of course, has not worked for hundreds of years in terms of freeing the world.
	Or, you can remind adult people, you can remind sovereign adults, that they are free to flee the initiation of violence in their own lives.
	Where your words...
	Which are right and true and moral and reasonable and reasoned out.
	You can remind people that they are free to flee the effects of violence or those who initiate violence or those who have historically for very many years initiated violence against them.
	You can remind them that they're free to flee such evil situations.
	That's all I did in the call.
	The initiation of the use of force, particularly against children, particularly in a cruel and sadistic manner, is evil.
	It is. Come on.
	Who can say that it's not?
	It's a ridiculous standpoint for any moralist to take any other position than that bullying helpless children, using violence to intimidate helpless children for many, many years.
	That is immoral.
	It is immoral because of the non-aggression principle.
	The length of the abuse and the power disparity.
	And what did I say?
	That's totally evil.
	Stone evil. And that's fine.
	If you don't agree that it's stone evil, just smearing me as culty and anti-family is retarded.
	It's embarrassing.
	It is ridiculous. It is beneath any intellectual integrity.
	And it is what we so dislike when such bigotry is applied to us, right?
	For our arguments about voluntarism and so on.
	Reminding an adult that relations are voluntary, well, the whole point of voluntarism is that relations are voluntary.
	If people can tell me that they're not, fantastic, I'm happy to hear the argument.
	And I, of course, I could understand if people could, like, the people might...
	Rail against this if they didn't know anything about the theory that I've put out.
	But in my book, which is free and has been downloaded thousands and thousands and thousands of times, I go through the entire argument about the non-initiation of force.
	Right? So, I'm consistent with my theory.
	I'm consistent with libertarian theories.
	I'm consistent with virtually every theory of ethics in the world that the initiation of the use of force is wrong.
	It's perfectly consistent with objectivism.
	Perfectly consistent with what Murray Rothbart writes about.
	Perfectly consistent with what von Mises writes about.
	And so if people want to get mad at me for standing out for an adult who was Significantly terrorized and abused as a child?
	Fine! But don't just cast out labels like fools.
	We're better than that.
	We're bigger than that.
	We're smarter than that, for Christ's sake.
	Think! Reason!
	Debate! Be curious!
	Ask.
	Don't just react like a foolish bunch of startled doves and flutter around, oh, it's terrible.
	But we're smarter than that as a community.
	be.
	We know how to reason from first principles.
	I know it's scary.
	When theories come out of the ivory tower and into the world.
	But that's exactly what we're asking the world to swallow in terms of voluntarism, right?
	In terms of a stateless society or a minimal state society.
	To reject the initiation of the use of force.
	And we have strong moral arguments as to why we are right, which I think are great.
	But the non-aggression principle...
	Does not part like the Red Sea around the family.
	The non-aggression principle does not only apply to citizens but not to children.
	It most applies to children because they are the least voluntary members of society, the most helpless and dependent, right?
	There is no magic wand that can make a universal principle part and exclude the most vulnerable and helpless in society.
	And if there is, please let me know.
	But if I take our theories off the web and off the blog and out of the books and out of the academic ivory towers and actually put them into practice in the real world with real people who are suffering from the initiation of the use of force and you panic, it means you don't believe what you preach.
	If you say, I have this wonderful bridge diagram, there's blueprints for this bridge, and this bridge is going to be the best thing ever.
	This bridge is going to be the most wonderful, permanent, amazing, beautiful, stable bridge ever, and all other bridges are mere rickety footbridge that Indiana Jones would faint to cross.
	And then someone says, great!
	I'm going to take your blueprints and I'm going to actually build the bridge.
	And you say, no!
	Don't do that! Don't build the bridge!
	It's just here on paper.
	It's not for building in the real world, you see.
	It's for jabbering about on my blog.
	It's for writing about on the web.
	It's for submitting as a paper.
	It's for talking about as a conference.
	At a conference. It's not for actually building a bridge.
	If you panic when someone takes your blueprints that you say are the best and actually starts building the bridge, all you're saying is you don't believe your blueprints.
	You don't believe it's the best bridge.
	All I'm doing is taking the blueprints and building the bridge.
	Putting it into practice in the real world where it can have some effect.
	Right? If you panic when your ideals are put into practice, Look in the mirror for the source of your anxiety.
	Don't pretend it's me.
	Don't do it that.
	Don't pretend that it's me.
	When I apply voluntarism and the non-aggression principle to an ethical situation and you freak out, examine your own relationships to your theories.
	Don't freak out on me.
	It's ridiculous. Let me tell you, it is ridiculous to see all of the people fluttering about like a bunch of chickens with their heads cut off because I dared to apply the non-aggression principle and voluntarism to a familial situation where something could actually change rather than write another goddamn paper about the Fed.
	I mean, no one had any problems with me, right?
	When I was writing about the stateless society and how we deal with violent crime and The free market analysis of future societies and handling national defense and wars and roads.
	Everybody was fine with that.
	When all I did was talk about the non-aggression principle, which was the first 180 podcasts, everybody was fine.
	They had no problem. It got published.
	Everybody was happy. No controversy, right?
	Because that was all theoretical.
	It was never going to actually touch the world that we live in.
	It was never going to actually change anyone's life.
	It was all just farts in a wind.
	And I'm very proud of that stuff and it was great to have the theory down and I'm very pleased with it.
	But at some point, my friends, don't we actually have to put these cars on the road and hit the gas?
	At some point! Don't we actually have to get out of the tower and into the world?
	Don't we have to get off the goddamn blog and onto the street of the people whose lives we say we want to improve through virtue and truth?
	And reason? And ethics?
	Right? We live in a plague.
	At some point, we have to start screwing around with the Petri dish and actually go out into the world and apply our theories to situations where we can actually have a real effect.
	Right? Rather than write yet another online essay about how the Fed really caused the Great Depression, which will change no one's life In particular, in the moment.
	It's time we started taking our theories and putting them into the world and see how they stand up to practical application.
	If we keep talking about how wonderful our bridges are, it should not be the worst thing but rather the best thing when someone actually starts building one of our wonderful, wonderful bridges, right?
	If we panic and lash out at whoever dares to put into practice the virtues that we have talked about for hundreds of years in theory, if we lash out at the person who starts putting our theories into practice, we kind of are missing the point of theory, right? Especially, especially ethical theories.
	Ethical theories We need to work them out and we need to be logical and we need to have evidence.
	I fully accept that.
	I've got a whole book about that.
	But the whole point is to put them into practice, right?
	That is the whole point.
	Otherwise, the whole point of business is to write a business plan.
	No! A business plan is a necessary but not sufficient condition to having a business.
	You actually have to make decisions.
	Something or provide a service and put it to test in the free market, right?
	Because we're all about the free market, rational, objective, empirical tests of theories, right?
	So if we agree with the non-aggression principle and we agree with voluntarism and we say to the victims of abuse your abuse was evil and your association with your parents remains voluntary That is a perfectly rational and consistent application of every libertarian theory I have ever read.
	And if you freak out about practice, you need to examine your emotions.
	If you feel that a rational response to a practical application of a theory that you agree with is culty and evil and anti-family and corrupt, All it means is you don't believe what you say.
	If you're afraid of seeing your theory put into practice, it's because you don't believe the theory.
	I believe the theory.
	Why? Because I put it into practice.
	In my life, in the lives of listeners, I've helped them to understand the theories we all agree with and actually put them into practice in their own lives and not focus on the things that they can't change.
	The government, the Fed, the national debt, fiat currency, the initiation of force overseas, the wars, the war on drugs, the war on poverty, the war on illiteracy, the war on ignorance.
	All of them can't change any of these things.
	So the theories remain abstractions.
	But when you take theories and put them into practice in something in your life that you can change, well that's when you really start to understand What philosophy is all about.
	Philosophy, you see, virtue, truth, ethics, integrity, helping the world, not writing another blog entry, not typing on a little board somewhere.
	Philosophy is about thinking in order to do.
	Philosophy is about reasoning Followed by actions consistent with the theory.
	Philosophy is not about the internet.
	It's not about a blog. It's not about an online zine.
	Those things are fine. Work out the theory.
	I have. I understand. At least I've worked out the way I approach it.
	And, of course, leaning heavily on smarter thinkers who came before.
	But philosophy is about doing.
	And if you object to what I do, find a flaw in the theory, reason me out of my errors, or shut up and get out of the way.
	Thank you.
	Sorry about that.
	I mulled the.
	Moldover introduction. I just wanted to throw that out there to start with.
	But I am more than open to questions, comments, issues, whatever is on the collective Borg brain.
	I am more than happy to listen to and respond to if I have anything useful to add.
	If you have questions, you can just type them into the chat window.
	If you can whisper them to Christina, that would be beyond excellent.
	And... I will then call on you.
	If you could mention your screen name, I guess it would be in your...
	If you don't mind, we'll use your name that's on the board.
	Any questions?
	No?
	Hmm?
	No.
	Oh, just while we're waiting.
	I mean, it's almost like we're afraid to be seen, right?
	Right.
	It's almost like, well, we agree, we all, for the non-aggression principle, we all accept that it applies to children.
	Of course we do. Of course we do.
	It applies to children first and foremost.
	So we all accept child abuse is bad, non-aggression principle, voluntarism.
	But then when somebody puts it into practice, well, of course the mainstream media is going to dislike it.
	I mean, that's amazing, right?
	So many libertarians are so skeptical of the mainstream media.
	Whenever the mainstream media talks about voluntarism, people always get things completely wrong about voluntarism.
	They always characterize it as evil and creepy and nasty and cold and heartless and this and that.
	And yet it was amazing to see how many libertarians, when they see The Guardian or hear me on the radio, talk about FDR. Suddenly, it's all true!
	Right? Suddenly, the mainstream media is bang on about voluntarism, philosophy, and libertarianism.
	Every other single story that has ever been written about it from the mainstream media is completely false, offensive, libelous, and distorting.
	But, by golly, by golly, when they write about someone you dislike, oh, suddenly they're all completely correct.
	Isn't that amazing? Isn't that amazing?
	It's a miracle. Okay, Greg, you had a question?
	Yeah, just sort of thinking about this whole problem over the last couple of weeks.
	And, I mean, there have been...
	Throughout history, there have been various philosophers and political activists and whatnot who've devoted a lot of energy and effort to going after the state, going after the church, and a couple of...
	Who've actually gone after both at the same time and gone insane in the process.
	But none of them ever really approached family, which is sort of that third leg of the three-legged stool of society.
	And it seems to me that...
	Until that lag is addressed, which you've kind of proven here with this whole media explosion, minor explosion.
	I mean, it's really the...
	It's the point of the inverted pyramid, right, of where freedom really lies.
	And we can see that from people's reactions that there's a lot of...
	I mean, people are heavily invested in a view of virtue that is defined for them by the people who raised them, right?
	Well, sorry, let me just add something before you go on there, just very, very briefly.
	When you live opposition to aggression, when you live the NAP and you live voluntarism, then you gain certainty in the theories, right?
	It's like if you say, my pill cures cancer and you have cancer and you refuse to take the pill, no one else is going to take it, right?
	If you say voluntarism, the non-aggression principle, is the foundation.
	For a happy and virtuous and productive life, and then you refuse to apply it to your own life, it just means no one's going to believe you, right?
	And so the best thing that people can do to spread freedom and reason is to live their values themselves, right?
	And not to attack people like myself who cancel living those values, which we all agree on.
	Because all that does is just show, you know, Provincial narrow-mindedness, a fear of practicality and addiction to theory at the direct expense of action, right?
	And a shame in the theories, right?
	If someone's actually building the bridge you say is the best and you attack them, it just means that you're ashamed of your theories, despite your praise.
	But I just wanted to mention that.
	People got to live the values to spread it.
	We spread it through credibility, not through words and blogs and shit like that.
	Sorry, go on. Right, right.
	I can't hear what you're saying over the noise of what you're doing, right?
	Yes. The shame wouldn't be there if they weren't personally invested, if their personalities weren't wrapped around a view of virtue that included acting on a principle of nonviolence.
	Yes, and I also think that libertarians need to provide something to people which gives them something other than an endless lifetime of studying and annoying arguments.
	Right? Annoying debates.
	Because that's what libertarians, for the person who doesn't become a professional, i.e.
	mostly Christian-subsidized libertarian or state-protected in the academic world, for somebody who is not going to end up being paid to be a libertarian, well, what do we provide?
	Okay, you're going to end up disagreeing with just about everyone you meet.
	You're going to have to do a lifetime of study to overcome the propaganda you were given, blah, blah, blah.
	It's a heavy weight to carry, right?
	But if we say voluntarism and the non-aggression principle have direct application to your life, to improve your relationships, to work to become closer and freer with the people that you're in, right?
	What is the point of wanting political freedom if I have to spend my entire Thanksgiving weekend not talking about what I think?
	That's not freedom! And we can't do anything about taxes and political freedom, but we damn well can do something about being free to speak openly in our personal relationships.
	And that is something that we can offer that is a plus.
	Everything else that Libertarian offers is Kind of masochistic, in my opinion, right?
	Because it just raises your sense of futility and hopelessness and gets you into endless fights with people and you've got to study forever and run around looking up all these stats to prove your point.
	I mean, that's kind of an annoying hair-shirted monastic life.
	And I think that we need to basically offer a little bit more sugar in the stew.
	Well, and it's...
	I mean, that whole...
	That whole lifestyle is really hooking into that sort of Not desire for, but the impulse toward, barterdom towards self-annihilation, right?
	To take up that, to use a religious metaphor, to take up that cross is to sort of agree with the notion that freedom isn't really possible, right? Even though you consciously don't realize it.
	Without a doubt, libertarianism remains a highly segmented, highly subterranean subculture, right?
	We have not even remotely been able to cross over to the mainstream culture.
	Even close, right?
	And this is despite hundreds and hundreds of years, right?
	And for philosophy, it's even worse, right?
	Because in Socrates, it's been 2,500 years.
	You can count the pre-Socratics and go back a further couple hundred years.
	Thousands of years without even the basics of philosophy, right?
	The three laws of logic, even the basics of philosophy, right?
	People are still very confidently asserting that nothing is true, that everything is relative, right?
	And these are philosophical things or philosophical propositions that were detonated thousands of years ago.
	And so people are still absolutely confident in saying, The government is needed to solve virtually every problem, which has been detonated by economists and libertarians for hundreds of years.
	And people are still making the most ridiculous and basic errors in philosophy.
	Nothing is true. Nihilism is valid.
	Agnosticism is valid. Well, agnosticism is a little more complicated, but even the basics.
	People are still very confidently, thousands of years later, making these same ridiculous, nonsensical arguments and being completely shocked when they're...
	When they're pointed out as self-detonating, right?
	And so we have to try and find a bridge to the mainstream culture.
	I mean, we have to. Otherwise, it's a circle jerk, frankly.
	I hate to use a coarse metaphor, but that's what it is.
	It is a complete waste of time.
	In fact, it's an embarrassing waste of time.
	In fact, it's a destructive waste of time because we're kind of needed.
	By the mainstream. So we have to provide something which non-philosophers can appreciate and can benefit from.
	Everybody agrees with the NAP. Everyone agrees with voluntarism.
	That's what everyday anarchy is about for their personal lives.
	We can't get anarchy in through the state.
	We can get anarchy in through people's personal lives.
	We can get NAP and voluntarism in through people's personal lives because that's where it is already for the most part.
	So we're just widening that concept.
	They can't understand how it could come top-down and it never will.
	So it's interesting to me that the people who are supposedly closest to this philosophy, the freedom movement in general, it's interesting to me that they're the ones that are primarily Your loudest critics.
	And that the mainstream is, for what little exposure you have had, either mildly negative or largely indifferent.
	Sorry, you found the Guardian article to be mildly negative or largely indifferent?
	No, the Guardian article was extremely negative.
	That was extremely negative.
	But what I'm saying is, most people who fly by the site, they don't hang around and hate on you.
	They're like, oh whatever, this is weird, I'm out of here.
	Whereas people who are supposed to be passionate about freedom in all aspects of life have done that, have hung around and have made it a sort of personal mission to rail against what it is that you're doing.
	All right. Sure, and is your question why?
	I'm just curious why. I know all of this.
	If you could just get to a question, that would be great.
	Right. I'm just curious why.
	Two questions, really.
	Why that is.
	Why, you know, for people who are...
	I mean, when you think about UPB, really, you're the first person in, what, like 100 years to come up with An ethical theory that is, to me, a welcome defense of the NAP, and yet it gets panned everywhere it goes.
	Where's the gratitude in the freedom movement for the work that you've done, regardless of whether or not anyone can find any flaws in it?
	Just the fact that you've put the effort in, to me, would warrant at least some gratitude, not the vociferous hatred that it's received.
	Sorry, I think I understand.
	Your question is, why the hostility?
	Is that right? Yeah.
	Well, but, I mean, to me, I understand the difficulty with the question, and I'm not putting myself in this category in terms of class of thinker, but this is exactly the same story as Socrates, right?
	Corrupting the youth, right? Isn't that what people are so mad about?
	Corrupting the youth and causing people to disbelieve in the gods of the state.
	And one of the gods of the modern state or modern society is family, right?
	That it's automatically virtuous.
	But what fundamentally...
	Sorry, you were going to say?
	Well, only because if you take the Socrates analogy...
	The difference would be that it wasn't a member of Socrates' crew, right, or a group of them that split off and made it their job to make a case with the state against Socrates, right?
	Yes, it was. Sorry, one of the reasons why Socrates was so offensive to people was because two of his followers became dictators and killed thousands of people, right?
	Now, that's not the same story with me, of course.
	So far, so good. No dictatorships coming out of FDR. Excellent.
	That, to me, is mission plan number one.
	Do not create dictatorships.
	But in a more fundamental way, the hostility towards Socrates had been building more from the sophists beforehand, right?
	Because there are people...
	I mean, you know the basic story, but I'll just reiterate it for people who don't, right?
	That Socrates... Goes to the oracle and says, I want to learn philosophy.
	He's the smartest guy around.
	And the oracle says, you are.
	And he says, well, that's ridiculous. I know almost nothing.
	And he goes around trying to prove the oracle wrong because there are all these people who say that they know stuff.
	I know what truth is.
	I know what virtue is. I know what justice is.
	I know what reality is.
	And so Socrates will go and ask them.
	He will examine them, as he calls it, cross-examine them.
	And he very quickly finds out that nobody...
	Knows what they say they know, right?
	They don't. It's just a bunch of assertions and rhetoric and fancy-schmancy language and so on, right?
	This is the sophists, right? The people who claim to teach people to appear correct, right?
	So politics and law and so on, right?
	To take any argument and make it convincing or compelling, that sophistry.
	And they're only interested in manipulation, not in In the truth, right?
	So they don't reason from first principles, they don't admit error, they just change topics, they're manipulative, they're florid, they're, you know, whatever, right?
	Emotional. And I've tried to learn from that, because it works.
	I think if you can unite truth with passion, so much the better, right?
	I don't like the Kirk-Spock dichotomy.
	Never really worked for me.
	But the people who claim to know are the people who most dislike those who reason from first principles, right?
	Right? Because you're kind of proving that they don't know, right?
	And particularly in the moral realm, particularly in the moral realm, this is where things are incredibly volatile.
	This is the Krakatoa.
	This is the burning hot supernova of mankind.
	And when people say...
	Let's just take the two, and I know there's more than two, and you could boil it down to one.
	But if people say, non-aggression principle plus voluntarism equals good, right?
	Let's just take a very simple equation.
	And you say, well, if you believe that is virtuous, then you should live it, right?
	That puts people in a very, very, very difficult and uncomfortable position emotionally.
	You've been there, I've been there, thousands of listeners to FDR, thousands of people who've never heard of FDR but who've tried to live these values in their own lives.
	It's really excruciating, right?
	And so when I say, great, and this is of course when When libertarianism kind of blew up, right?
	The ride of the Valkyries music and all of this began, the napalm, the exploding foliage and so on, is when I said, okay, fantastic.
	We've got our theory down. Let's go put it into practice.
	That's... When the shit hit the fan, right?
	Theory was great. Nobody had any problems with me with regards to theory.
	No fundamental issues, right?
	They disagree or whatever, right?
	But nobody got offended.
	Nobody got mad.
	There were no hate sites, right?
	But when you say, okay, great, we agree with voluntarism, we agree with the non-aggression principle, so here's how you can put it into practice.
	That is really, really, really, really volatile, right?
	Because people who claim virtue are bathing themselves in a penumbra of truth and juicy goodness, right?
	They're saying, I know virtue, I know goodness, I understand what is right and what is wrong, and I rail against the evils of the state and I praise the voluntarism and non-aggression of the free market, right?
	And then you say, great, then you now act on it in your life, not on your blog, right?
	Not in a magazine, but act on it in your life, not online, not on paper, not in theory, not in the library, not in a book, not in debating, right?
	But actually live it.
	Well, some people make that transition, And some people won't.
	And if they won't, I become a monstrous enemy.
	Because of my failings?
	No, of course not. Because of their own failings.
	And I sympathize with that.
	We all know how hard it is.
	I really do. I don't sympathize with the bitchy hate-on.
	Of course not. That's ridiculous and pathetic and immature and embarrassing.
	Right? These people who say, I'm discrediting the movement while...
	Sending fuck you flame wars across the internet to somebody who hasn't talked to them in over a year and a half.
	It's ridiculous, right? This liberating mind site.
	And others, right? Not other sites, but other people.
	My inbox and so on. But if I say, here's how to put the theory into practice, and people fail to do that, I understand that's uncomfortable.
	I understand why they would have to rail against me, because I've caused, quote, a whole bunch of discomfort in their lives, right?
	And they feel humiliated.
	Because they have failed to put it into practice.
	And so what they do is they feel put down by me.
	So they have to level up by trying to claw and bite me down all the time.
	And what we do and those who have succeeded, right?
	And that's why they don't come up with anything new.
	Right? This pathetic little site's been running for what?
	A year and a half? Christ almighty!
	In a year and a half I've produced what?
	50 videos? 150 podcasts?
	5 books? Grown the listenership?
	500-600%?
	4-5 million downloads a year, around 700,000 video views?
	That's what I'm doing.
	What are they doing? It's not a successful place.
	These are not successful people, clearly.
	Because if I'm so wrong, they should just let the free market of whatever, let it figure it out, and then go and take on Scientology, right?
	If they're so concerned about manipulation, go take on the Catholic Church, right?
	Because they actually propagandize the children about hell and devils and burning, right?
	That's a little more significant than a podcast, right?
	But they have to stay, because they have not...
	Like, they stood before practice.
	They stood after trumpeting and being pompous from theory, and we've all done that.
	Lord knows I have, right? Oh, I know the rite.
	I know the truth. I know the voluntarism, non-aggression principle, free market, blah, blah, blah, right?
	Yeah, I read my rand too, right?
	I know all about virtue.
	But that transition to actually living it rather than reading about it and blathering on about it is a rite of passage through hell itself, frankly.
	It is a trial process.
	By the fiercest fire I've ever felt.
	And if people, if their courage fails them, it turns to hatred.
	Because they weren't put in that position until someone came along and said, stop talking about it and do it.
	Right, so the process then really kind of, for lack of a better word, metastasizes their inverted view of virtue.
	And from that, they have no choice but to hate you as what they see as vice.
	Yeah, it's kind of like some guy says, I'm an amazing pilot.
	I am just, you know, I'm an incredible pilot.
	I can do Immelman dives.
	I can do loop-de-loops.
	I can, you know, I'm the most amazing pilot ever, which is libertarians in terms of theory, and I actually agree with most libertarians in terms of most theory, right?
	Not that my agreement means anything, but just happens to be the case, right, based on similar reasoning, similar evidence.
	So it's like this guy, he's talking all the time.
	And this is a Stark comic character, right?
	The Bragadicio, right?
	This is in standard Italian mime comedy, right?
	The guy who talks about what an amazing pilot or lover or warrior or whatever he is, right?
	And then someone comes along and says, oh, fantastic.
	I've got a plane here for you.
	Show us, right?
	And he's been lying the whole time.
	Who's he going to be mad at?
	The guy who comes and says, great, here's a plane.
	Show us. The guy who's got a counterfeiter is going to be the most mad at the guy who invents the counterfeit detection machine.
	The guy who says, I'm an incredible boxer.
	I could take down Joe Louis stacked on Muhammad Ali, stacked on Mike Tyson.
	And someone says, oh great, meet me at the gym tomorrow.
	I used to spar a little. Let's...
	Let's do it, right? And, you know, bring your girlfriend, bring your family, and bring everyone you've ever bragged about what a great fighter you are.
	Let's see you do it, right?
	And not in a way that is confrontational, because I don't know who's going to do it or not going to do it, right?
	But just like, great, I like to spar, let's do it, right?
	He's going to feel revealed, right?
	He's going to feel humiliated.
	He's going to feel enraged.
	He's going to feel like I'm torturing him.
	He's going to feel like I'm manipulating him.
	He's going to feel like I'm consciously driving him to a place of public humiliation, and he's going to become enraged at me, right?
	Right. Right.
	A very specific example of that was I remember an exchange on the board with someone from some time ago where You said specifically to him.
	We can continue to debate about Murray Rothbard's relationships from 30 years ago, or we could talk about yours right now.
	And that caused a lot of really serious fallout.
	Right, and this is of course when I start talking about people's personal relationships or their history or that which they can actually affect to be free, to become free.
	That's when people get the most angry.
	He's manipulative, he's psychologizing.
	You try to confront Steph on theory and he'll just start asking about your childhood, right?
	They get so mad, right?
	Right. And the theory behind that is that the personality is invested in In a belief, in a false belief that, like the bragging pilot you were talking about, a false belief that the relationships that they're invested in currently are virtuous.
	Yeah, well, I mean, people who study a lot of theory, and I mean, God, I mean, I really do have sympathy with this, because this was my life for many years, and it still is my life sometimes.
	People who invest a lot in the theory of ethics feel that that makes them good, right?
	Like reading a lot about surgery makes you into a surgeon, but it doesn't, right?
	It doesn't. The only thing that really makes you a surgeon is cutting and sewing, right?
	Putting knife to skin, right?
	And with good effects, right?
	With healthy effects, not like a shiv, right?
	So people who read a lot about ethics feel that they have become good through osmosis.
	It's sort of similar like thinking that if you put the math book under your pillow, you're studying for the test, right?
	And so the more that people invest in their virtue is a result of theory, and the more you invest in theory, the less you will invest in action.
	It's been my experience.
	I'm not saying that's a proven fact or anything, right?
	But the people who are the most invested in theory tend to be the least invested in action, right?
	So the guys who I've debated with on the board and sometimes on YouTube who are heavily invested in theory are the ones that you can never get to talk about how their lives are going, right?
	What's actually going on in their lives which they can actually affect and have some control over, right?
	They're the ones who get the most offended.
	The guys who are most into theory get the most offended when you ask about life, right?
	Right, that's right. That is quite true.
	We've seen that over and over and over again.
	Sure, and how could it be otherwise?
	Because we all want to be good.
	We all want to be good. And if you feel that investing in theory and taking a wide berth around or keeping as far away as possible from applying that theory to your actual life, the people who do that are doing that precisely because they want to be good without actually having to be good.
	To do good. They want to have knowledge and they think that knowledge equals virtue.
	And knowledge is a necessary but not sufficient prerequisite for virtue.
	Knowledge is...
	You can't drive a car to the right destination unless you know which roads you're going to take.
	But if you never put your foot to the gas, you never get anywhere.
	With all the knowledge in the world, it doesn't budge you.
	You have to get in the car and drive.
	So you need the knowledge. And then you need to do it in your life.
	Right. And even for those of us who actually decide to do, it's still very, very...
	I mean, it's a lot of work.
	It's a lot of struggle and...
	Oh, it's horrible.
	And there's the additional shame, just before we take another question, there's an additional shame too, which is something that I talk about and which seems to be one of the most enraging topics for people, which, again, I totally understand.
	Which is that I say, look, if you talk about your theory and you live the opposite of your values, you are actually doing the world a great evil.
	Right? Because you are disconnecting theory from practice.
	You're saying theory leads to the opposite of practice.
	Well, and it's even worse than that because you're saying that virtue is not at all related to behavior.
	No, it's actually the opposite, right?
	Because if you have voluntarism and the non-aggression principle in your life, right?
	Let's take liberating minds, right?
	So they have...
	I mean, they're all voluntarists and anarcho-capitalists or libertarians, right?
	So they're into the non-aggression principle, right?
	And... We all understand that you can't master the big virtues until you master the little virtues.
	I mean, that much we can all understand, right?
	You can't lift 100 pounds if you can't lift 5 pounds, right?
	Right. And so, how can you be really, fundamentally, opposed to violence in the world if you're saying to people, burn, motherfucker, burn.
	I want to rip the fucking smile off his face.
	The guys are, you know, words that I wouldn't even say, and I, you know, I don't mind taking a dip down to Saylorville, right?
	If your personal expression is vicious, ugly, defamatory, and violent, and you can't master your own temper to the point where you would look inwards and say, why am I so angry with this podcaster?
	Right? It can't be the podcaster, right?
	Guy's never stolen from me, he didn't punch me, he didn't blah blah blah, right?
	But if you don't have the wisdom, the knowledge, the self-regard for your life, not mine, right?
	Because this kind of acting out of rage does not make people happy, right?
	It's not going to lead to happiness, right?
	It negatively impacts my day once a month, you know, an hour, right?
	Except, you know, lately I had to dive in and sort it out.
	But if you can't control the violence and abuse within yourself, then I don't think it's fair to say the government is an immoral institution that operates on aggression, and that's wrong.
	Because if you can't master your own temper to the point where you will refrain from ugly and vicious and perpetual abuse and the encouragement of it in other people in this shark-fest, pathetic feeding frenzy on a whole bunch of bigotry and bile and hatred, if you can't be virtuous,
	if you talk about virtue and voluntarism, the non-aggression principle and integrity and this and that, and this is how you actually act, you are discrediting Ethical theories of the world over whoever sees this occurring, right?
	Because you're saying virtue, a deep knowledge of virtue leads to verbal abuse, rage, perpetual rage acting out, right?
	Lies, misrepresentations, falsehoods, attacks, abuse, misrepresentations, right?
	It's the consequence of inverted virtue in theory, which would be the inverted virtue in practice, which is that goodness leads to hatred and violence.
	Right. If you are If you deeply study the voluntarism and the non-aggression principle, the result is bitter, venomous, destructive rage that goes on for a year and a half with a guy you're stalking all over the internet who hasn't talked to you in 18 months.
	That's where it leads, right?
	Now, these people, of course, will then say that I am somehow discrediting voluntarism, right?
	Right. But, of course, it's not the case, right?
	Right. I mean, the people who are acting out this kind of vile rage, and, of course, the indifferent majority who say nothing about it, they're the ones who are discrediting, right?
	I mean, if we're going to say that we're the most virtuous community in the world because we believe in non-aggression, voluntarism, stateless society, the free market, property rights, whatever, if we're going to say we are the most moral community in the world, then we kind of need to be the most moral community in the world, right? Otherwise, it's bullshit.
	Otherwise, it's just yakety-yakety academic blog bullshit, right?
	And, of course, the libertarian community as a whole seems to have no particular problem with what's happened on this Liberating Mind site.
	A lot of the guys who were there are heavily involved in other libertarian organizations and so on.
	And it's the old thing.
	thing.
	It's like, if the libertarian community can't deal with the hatred and viciousness coming out of this, or at least condemn it as wrong, then who's going to listen to us when we talk about really big problems in the world in terms of ethics, right?
	If you can't lift five pounds, no one's going to believe you can lift a hundred, right?
	We can't take on the state if we can't deal with the likes of these people, right?
	Right.
	Well, I mean, it's a barometric reading of where we're at, right?
	Thank you.
	In terms of the potential for this message outside of this community.
	Well, of course, libertarians say we don't need a state because we can deal with aggression Because we can deal with aggression through things like exclusion, through things like avoidance, and so on.
	We don't need a state because we can proactively, voluntarily deal with the problem of aggression.
	That's the theory.
	We don't need the state to deal with aggression.
	And yet when a complete hate site has been running with the full knowledge of most libertarians for a year and a half, and I've openly posted about it last week, tons and tons of people know about it.
	And no one's lifting a finger, all they're saying is that we need a state, right?
	Like, no one's coming and saying, look, you can't work, look, Cohen-Swinkles, you can't work at the Mises Institute, or you can't present, or I'm not having you here, if you're this kind of crazy, right?
	Like, you need to take anger management, you need to deal with these psychological issues that you have, because that would be putting the theory into practice, right?
	Saying, look, Steph has a master's degree, you have a master's degree, attacking his character, attacking his wife, attacking his whatever, right, personality repeatedly, calling him the most unholy names in the book.
	That is not civilized behavior.
	Right?
	That is not civilized, decent, reasonable, intellectual behavior.
	Right?
	And so if the libertarian community really believed that voluntarism could solve the problem of aggression.
	And of course, I mean, this is not a violation of the aggression principle in terms of ethics, but it's pretty unsavory to say the least, right?
	Then the general libertarian community should step in and prove these theories of voluntarism through emotional courage and moral courage to deal with this, right?
	I mean, there are people in the libertarian community who have some...
	Influence over these people, right?
	And as far as I've known, or as far as I've seen, they've not stepped in to do anything.
	In fact, all I've seen is huge avoidance of the issue, right?
	And all that means is that they don't want to step up and put these principles of voluntarism into practice.
	Like, if you could say, well, look, we've had this outbreak of real vicious aggression and rage against Steph in this In our community.
	And so here's a perfect way that we can test the theories of volunteerism, right?
	Of how we're going to deal with an outbreak of aggression within our community, right?
	And so far, it's silly, right?
	And it's embarrassing to see, just in general.
	I'll give you a tiny metaphor. It's like we've got a whole bunch of people, thousands of people, tens of thousands of people maybe, but thousands of people who all say we are the best firefighters ever.
	We know everything there is to know about fighting fires and they study firefighting and they talk all about firefighting theory.
	They can whiteboard firefighting theory in practice till the cows come home.
	They spend decades studying it.
	They have conferences. They have magazines, webs, blogs, newspapers, everything, right?
	All about fighting fires and how Excellent firefighters they are, right?
	Which is people studying the non-aggression principle and voluntarism, right?
	And then what happens is there's a little fire in the garbage can in the firehouse of all of these self-proclaimed master firefighters, right?
	And they all just kind of slither away.
	And then they congregate again and say we can put out a forest fire that is raging across half the world, right?
	And someone points out and says, well, you actually weren't able to put out a fire that was in a little fire in a garbage can in your office.
	You all just ran away. Right?
	So if you can't put out the little fire in your fire station, what the fuck are you talking about putting out fires consuming half the world?
	If you can't lift one pound, you're not going to lift 100 pounds, right?
	Right. So, if the libertarian community can't step up and deal with this vicious aggression emanating from a bunch of people within the libertarian community that people have some influence over, then, I mean, why talk about taking down the state if you're not even interested in proactively dealing with this situation?
	Or you avoid judging or, you know, because, I mean, there's stuff that's ambiguous, but this is pretty clear, right?
	I haven't engaged with these guys in a year and a half, and this crazy hate fest just goes on and on, right?
	And so it just means to me that the libertarian community, unless I've missed something completely, just kind of don't want to get involved in dealing with aggression.
	In which case, that's fine, but then don't talk about taking down the state.
	Well, they don't want to put theory to practice.
	Well, they also don't want to go on the hit list, right?
	I think it's more practical than that.
	Right? They don't want to be the new people who are being discussed.
	Right. Well, and that's...
	Right, and that's fundamentally the problem here, right?
	Since we know that, to use the term I used before, since we know that this inverted virtue is metastasized to the point that you're not going to reverse it, So how do you deal with it then?
	You really have only two choices at this point that I can see, and that is either ostracism or self-defense.
	And if the libertarian community as a whole...
	Sorry, what? Sorry, the libertarian community as a whole, is that right?
	Did I cut out? No, I got lost in what you were saying.
	I didn't know if you meant me or other people.
	You said ostracism or self-defense?
	I'm not sure what. Right.
	Well, since there's no possibility that you're going to be able to reason These guys out of their position, right?
	They're invested in this inverted view of virtue that they have, this self-proclaimed virtue that they have.
	Since they're invested in that to the degree that they're completely unreasonable, what other choices do you have than ostracism and self-defense?
	And who's the you here?
	I'm still not sure who you're talking about.
	Well, in this instance, you, right?
	Well, but what do you mean ostracism?
	I don't talk to these people. Sorry, I don't talk to them.
	I don't read them. No, right.
	No, no, no. Right, right.
	And I apologize if I'm being confusing here, but you were talking about the libertarian community as a whole and dealing with this problem, right?
	So... Putting that into practice would be telling Swinkles and his folks, look, if you keep this up, I'm not going to associate with you anymore.
	It's really the only way you can affect any change in his behavior.
	No, no, but you wouldn't do it to affect change in the behavior, because that would be an argument from effect, in my opinion, right?
	You would just say, look, I'm against aggression, and this is obviously verbal abuse, right?
	Now, I can't do anything about the state, but at least I can say to this guy, look, this is way off base.
	I mean, you're way off the reservation here, right?
	This is like crazy. This is not good, right?
	Right. And people are like, I don't know, well, maybe he did something, maybe Steph did something to provoke it, right?
	It's like, well, come on, I haven't talked to these guys for a year and a half and it just keeps getting bigger and bigger, right?
	So, of course, right?
	It's not possible, right? Well, and if that really was a question, they'd come to you and ask you, right?
	Well, and of course, if there really was something I had done that was so provocative, it would be all over liberating minds, right?
	I mean, that would be front and center, right?
	Here's why, you know, we hate this bald bastard so much, right?
	Right. So the fact that there isn't means that the...
	I mean, imagine if...
	I mean, I disagreed with Walter Block when he writes about a couple of thousand deaths to Christianity, right?
	So what I specifically don't do is create a hate site dedicated to trashing Walter Block and his wife, right?
	Calling them every name in the book, corrupt, evil, you know, threatening, violent language...
	Right? Calling down reporters and feeding them quotes.
	If I did that against Walter Block, who is, I mean, I have disagreements, and I'm sure he would with me as well, but what I do is I create a video that doesn't talk about him by name, where I provide the evidence for the opposite position.
	And that's all I do, right?
	Because that's called an intellectual debate, right?
	Right? But if I founded a hate site against Walter Block because I disagreed with one of his premises or one of his arguments or I found him in my own mind evasive or manipulative or something like that.
	If I founded a hate site against him, I can't imagine that this would go unmentioned or unnoticed within the libertarian community.
	That this would be something that people didn't want to get involved, right?
	Right, of course, they would circle the wagons.
	Well, if they did, then it would just mean that they don't believe that voluntarism can solve the problem of aggression, right?
	That freedom of association, that moral people acting in reasonable concert can deal with the problem of aggression, right?
	Because the whole point of the DRO theory is that when people do bad things, you know, people will withdraw associations, right?
	And that's the whole point of a lot of libertarian theory, right?
	That people will voluntarily come together and do the right thing.
	Give money to charity, help out the sick.
	They will voluntarily band together for collective values like self-defense and things like that.
	And people will do the right thing in a voluntary situation, right?
	And here's a situation of extreme aggression in the libertarian community.
	Like a real ragey hate site, right?
	With the evidence very clearly there.
	Offensive on every level.
	And I'm not a crank, right?
	I mean, I have a master's degree from an Ivy League university.
	I studied at three universities.
	I got an A on my final thesis, dealing with the totalitarian implications embedded in four major Western philosophies.
	So, I'm not Tom Cruise out here talking about Scientology, right?
	And if libertarians genuinely believe that voluntarism can solve the problem of aggression, isn't this a perfect laboratory for that?
	Isn't that a perfect place to test out the theory?
	Here again, we have the theory.
	We have the talk. Let's walk the walk.
	Let's attempt to use voluntarism.
	To deal with a problem called aggression within the community.
	Because obviously it's not good for people who come and do searches for anarcho-capitalism or libertarianism and so on to see this going on, right?
	To see on my site this hateful stuff that is posted about me and others, right?
	So clearly that's not good, right?
	Now clearly it's not a supportable situation for me with the mainstream media with no knowledge whatsoever Doing a search for free domain radio and finding free domain radio and a site full of people who say the most unprintable things about me and free domain radio and my wife and my friends and so on, right? Clearly that's not supportable for me, right?
	Because they don't know, right?
	They read the Guardian article, they go and find a hate site, and next thing you know, right, I'm being interviewed by national newspapers Basically having to defend why I'm not a harmful cult, right?
	And that's not objective, right?
	I mean, going to Liberating Minds...
	Not at all. Going to Liberating Minds for objective information about me is like going to the KKK sites for objective information about Barack Obama, right?
	Not to put myself in the same camp, but you understand, right?
	Well, fundamentally...
	Well, fundamentally, they've manipulated people who are manipulable.
	Well, but again, there's no history they don't know.
	All they know is the Guardian is critical, and the radios are critical, and then these guys are hugely critical.
	And then there's this controversy, right?
	Because, you know, I banned some people who metastasized, right?
	Which I can't control, right?
	And so that's not a supportable situation for me.
	The only option that I had, or at least the only option that I exercised, was that the best disinfectant is sunlight, right?
	So I had to create this page so that I could point out that these are not objective people, that they are a form of highly threatening cyberstalkers who say the most unbelievably offensive and horrendous stuff And that if you think these people are objective critics,
	then you're basically going to an Aryan nation website for objective information about Jews and saying, well, Jews are controversial, you see, because racists really hate them.
	Well, no, they're not.
	There are racists who have psychological problems, who project all of their unhappiness and their own life onto other people or other groups, and it's not an objective source of information.
	So When I started to get lots of interview requests, I had to point out, and this, of course, is where Barbara is posting, Tom's mom, right?
	She's posting over there as well, which does not exactly help her credibility, right?
	Such an obvious and deranged hate site is not a good...
	So I think, and it has been very effective in terms of saying, look, if you're getting information from this site, I just want to point out...
	What they're like. Because they're not going to go digging.
	There's no search function on that site.
	They're not going to go digging around saying, gee, I wonder what's underneath the frosting, right?
	So I just had to say, look, this is what these kinds of people are like.
	If you think that this is an objective source of information, these people are all banned.
	They're all obviously pretty unhappy.
	They're all full of rage. They all have very poor judgment in terms of what they post because everything on the internet is forever.
	Right? I mean, when The Guardian was looking for stuff to damn me with, what did they come up with?
	Relations are voluntary. And I don't think there were any really good parents, and I think that was in a premium cast anyway, but still, I mean, but no context, no sort of reasoning as to why I would say that.
	But, um... It didn't take me more than half an hour to find the most hellacious stuff over on their site, right?
	So, you know, with my 1,500 podcasts and six books and all that kind of...
	They can't come up with much that's just, oh my God, jaw-droppingly, oh, it's horrible.
	In fact, anything, right? And it took like half an hour in that hate fest to find stuff that is just offensive beyond words to not just me, but any reasonable person, right?
	And so, just pointing that out, right?
	That... That this is not a credible source of information about FDR. I mean, that's why I had to do it, because reporters were going there and saying, wow, you know, this must be objectively bad because a bunch of people are upset.
	And, of course, pointing out that it's what...
	Maybe 20 people, maybe.
	And about 10 or 15 people who were banned who are core haters, right?
	Just repeatedly, obsessively coming back to the site, coming back to the site, coming back to the site, picking apart the podcast, focusing on everything.
	I mean, it's sad, right?
	It's a sad way to spend your life.
	Right? And, you know, I think deep down they can't break the addiction on their own, so they needed help, right?
	But... So I have options, right?
	And the only options that I have are to point out the realities of the people and what they say over there, right?
	Because I don't believe in involving the state, right?
	So I believe that volunteerism is valid, right?
	And because Cohen had attacked me openly on...
	I knew who he was, right?
	And then bragged about it on his site.
	So, it's just a matter of saying, look, I don't care fundamentally, it's just that for the reporters who were contacting me saying it's controversial, it's like, you know, it's really not controversial, right?
	Because this is what these people are like, right?
	Right. Nope, that's exactly right.
	All right. Sorry, we went off on a bit of a tangent there.
	I know, but I've been getting some requests as to like, well, why did you do it now and so on, right?
	And it's just because reporters are saying, reporters think that this is a valid source of objective information, right?
	And it's not, right?
	And I just needed to...
	But saying that doesn't mean anything without the proof, so I had to go get the proof, and then I thought, well, let's just get it out in the open and deal with it.
	Because, of course, also I was getting questions like, well, if I'm friends with those people, why can't I be friends over here?
	It's like, well, because that's just a...
	I mean, that's just...
	I mean, I don't even know how to explain that, right?
	You know, I went to this party where they burned you in effigy.
	How come you don't want me back at your dinner party, right?
	Yeah. Right.
	Right. Well, I mean, it would be like being, you know, asking a woman who's an ex-wife of an abusive man if it's okay if you're still friends with him, right? Yeah, and it's like it's fine with me, but you can't have both, right?
	Yeah, go over there, you know, have fun.
	Best of luck with those people, right?
	But no, not...
	It's not... No.
	No. Anyway. Look, is there anything else you want to...
	Let's move on in case there are any other questions.
	I don't want to sort of end on this temporary downer.
	You know, this is just something that had to be dealt with.
	I was hoping that after a year and a half they'd want to get on with their lives and get something productive done with their time on this planet.
	Unfortunately, that didn't happen, so the escalations continued, and with the involvement of the mainstream media, it just became something that had to be dealt with.
	So, it's dealt with, and we can move on.
	I don't particularly care about it as a topic anymore.
	No, I guess just my main question was how you take this third leg of the stool out into the public and find that way to avoid defenses and reach people Sorry, are you asking that, like, that there's something different than what we've been doing?
	I mean, isn't that what we've been doing?
	Maybe I'm missing something.
	You're on a raft going down the river saying, how do we go down the river?
	Maybe I'm missing something.
	Do you have an outflow that I don't know about?
	We're doing it, right? We're doing it.
	It's fine. It's working.
	It's chugging along. We're bringing philosophy in action to people and, you know, huge numbers.
	You know, obviously we've got some haters, but sorry, here we lost a little bit of audio.
	Nothing too crucial. We pick up again.
	All right. Well, thank you everybody so much for joining this Sunday afternoon, November the 30th, 2008.
	And a happy Thanksgiving to everyone again and as well.
	And thank you everyone for Your support, if you have any loose change rolling around the old pockets, it has been a bit of a, quite a brutal month as far as donations go for the second half of the month, really since the Guardian article came out.
	People have been a little scared off.
	So if you could, if you haven't donated for a while or you feel like we have handled things well and are back on track, and I think that we have and I think that we are, and there has been a boost in listenership, As a result of the article and hopefully the quality of the arguments in the conversation will help people to understand that this is a philosophical conversation and not anything weird.
	It's not very weird.
	So if you could donate something this month, I would really, really appreciate it.
	It's all very exciting that this is happening just before the baby comes.
	But this is, of course, partly why.
	It's good to get this stuff.
	Out of the way so that we can move on.
	I have lots of juicy new stuff to talk about.
	Thank you everyone who spent time promoting status in part 3, that matrix video.
	It's doing quite well and I really do appreciate that.
	So thank you so much everyone.
	I really do appreciate your time and attention and generosity.
	And onward and upward as always.
	We're doing fantastically and I'm incredibly proud of what we've done during this difficult time.
	And I think you can't control, of course, what people choose to do to you, with you, at you, or for you.
	But all you can control is how you respond.
	And I think that we responded with dignity and strength and courage and reasonableness.
	Some good quantity of reason.
	So thank you everybody so much.

▲