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July 4, 2009 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
22:38
1409 Stefan Molyneux: Speech in Philadelphia. July 4 2009

Stefan Molyneux of Freedomain Radio gives a speech in Independence Hall, in Philadelphia, July 4 2009.

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The glorious day, so I'm going to try and give you some principles of efficient debating, because the way that I see people who are involved in the liberty, the truth, freedom movement, is we are physicians of the mind,
because what we face when we are talking to people who are uninformed about the truth of the world that we live in and the nature of the society that we live in, It's that they have mistakes.
They have errors in their head.
And we are trying to bring reason and evidence and passion and energy to the cause of fixing the errors in people's thinking.
So I look at us as kind of...
We have an absolutely monumental task ahead of us because the accumulated errors of the world are huge, significant, and it would seem insurmountable.
So, given the size of the task and given the challenges of fixing errors in people's thinking, which is something which has come today but which goes all the way back to Socrates 2,500 years ago repairing the irrationalities in people's thinking, we have a huge task and life is short.
And because life is short, I think it is really incumbent upon us to focus our energies as much as possible.
And from this I say, let us learn from the politicians.
And why should we learn from the politicians?
Because they're kicking our asses, frankly.
And we always want to learn from those who are beating us.
Like if you're a boxer and you go into the ring and you get knocked out, next time you go into the ring, do what that guy did, because he won, right?
So you want to make sure you do what the guys who are winning do.
Now politicians spend a lot of time and energy focusing on one particular group.
That one particular group Here's the undecideds.
The people who might change their minds, right?
So the Democratic Party, when they're campaigning, they don't sit there and say, let's call on the Bush twins and see if we can move them over to the Democrat side, because they know that they're out drinking.
No, they know that they're out drinking.
Change their minds. So, my argument, I'm going to give you some tools, I hope, today that will really help you zero in on the people who are going to most effectively and most efficiently come to life, because that's really what intellectually we're trying to do.
We're trying to stimulate people and get them to come to life and start to really think about the world that they live in, what kind of world it is, what kind of world we want it to be.
So I'm going to use a metaphor and then I'll actually start to give you some useful tools.
And the metaphor that I would use, since we are physicians of the mind attempting to heal errors in people's thinking, we're kind of like battlefield surgeons.
And that is about as macho a metaphor as I can come up with as a geeky internet philosopher.
But we are battlefield surgeons.
And if you're a battlefield surgeon, what you need to do, other than have the ability to help people, is you need to say, Who's going to make it and who's not going to make it?
And that's really, really important.
And the sooner we can come to that conclusion when we're debating with people, who's going to make it, who's not going to make it, the more effective we can be as communicators in the short time that we have with this incredible monumental task that we have to achieve.
So, I'm going to talk about an argument here called the what are you doing argument, which is a little bit different from the how you doing argument, which I think is a little more specific to New Jersey, if I understand the geography correctly.
Sorry, I think I mispronounced it.
I have too many E's, not enough O's and I's.
So, this is called the what-are-you-doing argument.
So, if you are talking to someone about a free society, and most of us here would define that as non-initiation of force, protection of property rights, you're talking to someone about a free society, and they say to you, as they always do, what about the poor?
Oh, the poor, what are we going to do about the poor if there's no welfare state?
The poor, they die in the streets and this and that, right?
A perfectly valid objection, and we all generally have this tendency, what do we do?
We run out and we research, and we go, we become the human Wikipedia talking point planet of infinite facts, and we try and give everybody statistics, and we give everybody historical examples, and we say, well, they've been using friendly societies in the 1920s, and the fact that I find useful is that the number of poor people after the Second World War was declining 1% a year because of the free market when the welfare state came in, It stopped declining and stayed steady, which is exactly what you would expect.
If you subsidize something, you increase its prevalence, and if you subsidize poverty, you get more.
But it doesn't really become that effective.
When we talk to people about facts and statistics and arguments from history and arguments from effects, they can say, well, that study came out from the Cato Institute, so I don't believe it.
There's always something that they can find, some counterexample, some counterfact.
So I'm always trying to To fashion self-contained arguments that you don't need to go out and do research for.
Not that there's anything wrong with research, but it doesn't tend to work very well in the moment.
When you're in the middle of a passionate debate, saying to someone, hold that thought, I'll get back to you tomorrow.
It doesn't really have that kind of momentum that I think really helps change people's minds.
So, if you're debating with someone, What you want to find out is, can they think?
Because if they can't think, you can't change the mind.
Why? Because there's no mind to change.
You have to, you know, you're like a doctor, you know, there's medical shows, there's always that clichéd scene, right?
There's the doctor who's, you know, sweating and pounding the chest of some guy, he's dying, and they're defibrillating him, right, and he won't stop because he wants to save this guy, pounding his chest and all that, and finally the nurse has to, you know, pull him off, and he's dead, Jim.
You know, like, they have to just, you know, and we don't want to be that doctor who's trying to resuscitate the guy who's been decapitated.
We don't want to be debating with people who fundamentally can't think.
And so I'm going to give you these approaches, and I think that that would be very helpful, and hopefully they will be.
So somebody says, well, what about the poor?
Well, I would suggest, come back to them and say, oh, so you really care about the poor?
And they say, yes, I really care about the poor, and that's why we can't have a free society, right?
Then, you can say, well, what are you doing about the poor?
What are you doing with your time and energy and resources about the poor?
And there's going to be three responses.
The first response is he's going to say, I give a kidney to a poor guy every week.
I'm just a troll. He's going to say something.
I donate $1,000 a year to United Way.
I help out in a soup kitchen, I grow chickens and throw them out of buses in poor neighborhoods, whatever.
He's going to say something about how he's helping the poor, right?
So then you can say, okay, I help the poor.
I'm sure everybody here does something to help the poor, like donate to FreedomInRadio.com.
You do something to help the poor.
So you have two people in a room.
One of them is saying, well, what about the poor?
And you say, well, what are you doing? He says, I help the poor.
And then you say, well, I help the poor.
So, so far, we have 100% of people helping the poor.
And that's how the poor will be helped in a free society.
That is a self-contained argument that you don't have to run out and get graphs and statistics and bore people with long lectures.
So, that would be my first impulse to say, what are you doing about the poor?
Now, the second response that someone might have to that question, what are you doing about the poor, is they might say, I do nothing for the poor.
And then the question is, you say, well, you just told me you really care about the poor, and that's why we can't be free, so if you're not doing anything about the poor, I don't understand!
And the reason that that's an important question to bring up is you want to know, can they process A contradiction between their ideals and their practice.
Can they notice that they just said that they care about the poor, and now they're just saying, I do nothing to help them?
Because if they don't notice that those two things don't fit very well together, decap, and you want to keep moving.
So, there's a third.
Does anyone want to try? Audience participation time.
Does anyone want to try?
There's a third answer that somebody might give.
Yes, young man in red.
I'm sorry? Let the government do it.
Let the government do it. Okay, and that is a very, very good...
You've been here for years, I can tell.
That's wonderful. So, he said, they're going to say, I like to pay my taxes to help the poor, or, you know, I believe the government is helping the poor, and that's all going to be good stuff.
Well, so then, that's perfect, because then you can say, So you're going to say, if you already are happy to pay 10% of your income to help the poor in a free society, you will be happy to take 10% of your income to help the poor, because you care about it, right?
So that's another answer that solves the problem of this.
And you understand this can happen with national defense, it can happen with roads, police, this system just using the poor because it's something that we all run into.
There's one other evil answer that might be out there.
Anyone? Anyone want to take a stab?
What about the poor?
How are you going to help the poor?
Anyone? I hate the poor.
I hate the poor. They're tasty.
Alright. Oh, is there a silent grief?
Oh, God! Absolutely.
I'm sorry? Oh, yeah, okay.
So, I asked for an evil answer because I really wanted to identify the most evil person in the audience.
Thank you, man in green, for coming up with that.
So, one guy said, soil in green.
Here we have a man in green.
He has a fork. Anyway.
So, the answer is that people will give you, and these will be people I guarantee you will be college educated.
They will give you this answer.
Which is, oh yes, I am very happy to help the poor, you see, but I'm only willing to do it if I know everyone else is being forced to do it as well, right?
In economics, they call this the free rider problem, right?
Which is not as much fun as it sounds.
Which is that, yes, I'll do it, but only if I know everyone else is going to do it too.
Now, it's a bit of a trickier response, but I'll lay out the way that I think you could respond to this issue, and you can tell me if it makes any sense.
So the first thing that I would say is, so you're only going to help the poor if you know everyone else is being forced to do it.
Yes. But, of course, even if we take the current system as is, there's tons of people who don't pay taxes to help the poor.
You... No, I'm just kidding.
There's tons of people who don't, right?
There's the poor who are receiving benefits themselves.
They're net takers, not contributors, so they're obviously not being forced to help.
There are retired people who aren't paying taxes.
There's the former speaker.
There is... I mean, talk about taking a bullet for the cause.
Braver man than I, I'd be behind you like...
But there are children.
Sadly, we haven't found a way to tax them yet.
There is tons and tons of people out there, criminals.
Not just the ones that you were talking about, but the other ones, you know, with the...
Italian undershirts and all that, right?
There are people who work under the table.
They're not paying their taxes. So if someone says, well, I'm only going to help the poor if everyone else is forced to, well, they have to deal with the fact that not everyone else is being forced to.
Does that mean they're going to stop? Now, the second thing you could say is, by this logic, that I will only help people if other people are forced to help them, there should be no religious organizations at all, right?
Because Christians know for sure that not everyone's a Christian, and Muslims know that not everyone's a Muslim.
Yet, still, they contribute hundreds of millions of dollars to religious organizations around the world, so clearly that's not necessary for there to be aid.
But the third thing that you can respond to with that is, Well, you know, it's a little bit more of an aggressive dig, but I think it's fair, you know, when you're dealing with people who are being kind of obstructed.
And I would say, look, there's guys out there who strangle cats, I'm just gonna say.
I don't know. There are, let's assume.
And so, would you say, well, I'm not going to refrain from strangling cats because there are guys out there who do it.
So unless everyone forgoes strangling cats, it's an option for me.
Right? No, you wouldn't say that.
Of course, right? Because we have a thing called personal integrity, which is around doing the right thing and the moral thing regardless of what the majority says.
We don't want to have that Athenian blind rule democracy where you just do whatever the mob says, right?
So you have a personal integrity around helping the poor that doesn't have to do with whether the guy next to you is doing it, but it's around personal integrity.
I think that would really help. Because, I mean, I'm going to simplify a little here just before I finish up.
I sort of find there's two kinds of people that you debate with about freedom.
When you bring new information about illuminating people, right?
When you, to use the matrix metaphor, you give them the red pill, hopefully, orally.
Yeah, they know. There's two kinds of people who, when you're faced with new information that is surprising and there's evidence, right?
The first kinds of people are the people you really want to talk to.
And those are the people who are skeptical but curious.
Because you don't want to be with the bobbing head guys who are like, you're so right, and the next guy, you're so right too, right?
You want people who are skeptical, who want proof and reason and evidence, but are curious and open-minded about what you're saying.
The second type of people that you're going to run into a lot are the yes-but people, right?
You know, you say, well, what about the poor?
And you give them these big solutions, right?
And then they say, yeah, but what about the roads?
Oh, here's all these solutions.
Well, yes, but what about national defense?
Yes, but, yes, but. Anyway, these people you don't want to spend a huge amount of time with because they're not actually interested in discovering anything about freedom.
They're just interested in slowly sucking your will to live out of your body.
I think we've all been in those debates, but at the end it's just, I don't want to live anymore.
Right, so you don't want to be with those kind of mental vampires, because fundamentally, you're giving them new information and what's happening, it's like plugging a robot in backwards.
They just can't process it, they get alarmed, and they just want to stop what you're saying, so they just throw out roadblock after roadblock.
And those are the people you don't want to spend a huge amount of time with, in my opinion, because, as I said, the task ahead is enormous and life is short, and so we really do want to focus on that.
On my website, there's a link to a talk that I give in New Hampshire, where I talk about the against me argument, which I think is another very powerful way to communicate messages of voluntarism, peace and freedom.
But I think if you really focus on what are you doing about the poor, take it out of the abstract future, take it out of the research, take it out of the library, put it into the visceral moment of what you're talking about with the person.
If you care about the poor, my friend, you should be doing something about it.
If you are, that's how the poor will be taken care of.
If you're not, then let's move on to something else, because clearly, you don't actually care that much about the poor.
And I think, I find this a very effective way to eliminate the people who functionally really can't think, and you don't really want to spend a lot of time on them, and really focus on the people in the middle, the people whose lives can be ignited and lit up by reason and evidence, and those are the people you hold firm To your bosom if you can and move forward in life with them because they're very exciting companions to have in the search for truth.
That essential discrimination, I really urge you, you know, stay away from the people who are the yes-bots.
really focus on the people who are curious but skeptical because they have the minds that you can change and the meaning of minds is how the future will be set free.
Any questions from people who don't look really well educated?
Anyone? Just kidding.
Sorry, go ahead. What are you going to be doing tomorrow?
What am I going to be doing tomorrow?
I'm going to attempt to stick the landing with a debate with the esteemed Michael Badnarek.
You saw him up here with the suit, and he is a constitutional scholar of the first order, and we are going to be having a very exciting, and I'm just I'm totally looking forward to it.
I've been working out, eating meat all week, and bench pressing all of the chihuahuas I can find.
So we are going to be having a very exciting debate with lots of audience participation, and by that I mean significant quantities of Rotten Fruit.
And so I hope that you will be able to come.
I saw on the Facebook page, it was either, did it move to 1pm?
1.30? What is it, just we're chasing the sun here?
1.30, 2.30, 3.30, go!
Okay, so it's gonna be 1.30 tomorrow.
It's at Drexel University.
Is that right? Yeah, it's either in the parking lot, the roof, I can't remember, but it's one of the...
I'm sorry, in an alley, right?
It'll be cool. But yeah, I hope that you can come.
The debate topic is how much government is necessary.
And we've actually just decided to switch sides.
So it's going to be exciting. And then we'll switch sides again.
I hope that you'll be able to come out with that.
I promise you a scintillating intellectual for us in Harry.
So thank you for that question.
Any other questions or comments before we yield to the next speaker?
How do you take yourself out of the debate so that personal attacks aren't in the debate itself?
Sorry, say one more time.
What's the best way to take yourself out of a debate so that personal attacks aren't influencing the issues of the debate itself?
Right. Can you give me an example?
The question is, how do you best take yourself out of the picture or out of the debate if personal attacks are cloudy?
Yeah, and let's say, uh, Drew Gamer was, uh, Governor Shepard was going to talk about family values.
And somebody says, well, look at you.
And they're attacking him.
But it's disqualified by his own personal experience.
Right. So, Duke Ingridge is talking about family values and he ditched his cancer-dying wife or some new woman.
Like, who are you to talk about family values?
Something like that. Right. Like, I talk about jail or something.
Okay. My first solution would be to actually live your values, so that you can't get that wedge put into you.
That would be my first thing. But the second thing, of course, is that if your doctor is a chain smoker and says you should quit smoking, he's still right, even if he's a chain smoker, right?
So you look at the facts, not the behavior.
But the most important thing is, you know, it's really, really tough to lecture other people morally, unless you're really trying to live, you know, an annoyingly upstanding life yourself.
So, my focus would be, you know, not talking about Newt Gingrich, but say, look, I believe these values, I'm living these values, they work beautifully for me, I'm a happy guy, and I'm really helpful, and I want to, you know, make the world a better place, and so, don't you want some of this beefcake?
Oh, whatever. Oh, oh!
Yeah, sorry. I'm referring to myself as beefcake, it's a little surreal.
Lark and Rose's speech focused on our right to defend ourselves against the state and to You take,
obviously a different approach where it's more convincing others using rational debate to not endorse violence but actually win over people that accept these premises.
Why do you focus on that approach rather than the right to defend themselves against the state?
So he's saying that Larkin was talking about the right to defend ourselves against the predations of state violence and I focused more on rationally convincing people but to be fair, I mean he was not waving a gun unless it was an invisible gun.
right? So he was relying on reason to make the case.
I personally have I have no faith whatsoever that armed resistance to the state will do any good other than get people hurt.
You know, there's quite a lot of them, and they're very well trained, and they have nukes, and they have aircraft carriers, and so on, right?
And again, I have some of those in my BAFTA, but I just don't feel it's going to be enough to sway the fight.
So, I'm very much around that we need to reason, and with passion, and with example, we need to get people to look upon the state as ridiculous, as embarrassing, in the same way that if we were sent back in time to, like, the early 19th century, We'd look at slavery and it would be like, are you kidding me?
Slaves? I mean, this is insane.
It's so counter to anything that is reasonable and decent.
We need to, I think, live and inspire people with reason and the way that we live to make people enthusiastic about the human possibilities that arise in a peaceful, voluntary, and rational society.
And I think that's how it's going to come about.
I'm not going to plug anything because everything that I do is free because I have the business sense of a piece of toast.
I'm just working on a book called How to Achieve Freedom because when I say I don't believe that politics is ever going to work, I don't believe that armed resistance is ever going to work, people say to me, well, what will work then?
I do have some thoughts about that.
I'm just working on a book which should be out in a month or two.
It'll be available for free on my website.
So hopefully that will give people a plan of action about how we can bring about freedom.
I think it's a lot closer than we think.
But I think that what we're going to have to do to achieve it is much more around personal example, enthusiasm and living our values in our personal lives.
Because people say, well, how can a free society work?
Government's not ordering people around.
And it's like, but that's how marriage works, right?
That's how people date, right?
I mean, at least here, if not China, right?
That's how your job search works.
The government doesn't give you an occupation, right?
So, voluntarism and freedom is all around us.
It's how we actually live, and we just need to extend those principles until they eclipse the very legitimacy of using violence to solve people's problems in their minds.
The state only exists.
This is just buildings.
Guns and buildings and costumes and pieces of paper.
It's all it is. It is a complete fantasy.
And the only way that we can get rid of the state is to get rid of the fantasy in people's minds, and that is reason Thank you very much for the opportunity and thank you for the AV Club for coming out and filming everything.
I hope you can light the forehead alright.
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