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June 13, 2010 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:47:42

1682 Freedomain Radio Sunday Show, 13 June 2010

Keeping the spark in long-term relationships, the dangers of war propaganda, an analysis of Queen's 'Bohemian Rhapsody', and male versus female parenting...

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	Well, good afternoon, friends, comrades, and beautiful co-oarsmen on the Great Roman Galley of Philosophy.
	I hope you're doing well. Don't forget that if you are anywhere near Spain, go check out The Rain on the Plain and there is a Free Domain Radio European Gathering or Get-Together.
	And I've just been told that the way to remember how to pronounce Malaga is Hey Malalaga.
	And I think that's the way to do it.
	So just any time you need to figure out where to go, just say that and do a little dance.
	And I think that you will get a fair amount of attention.
	So, please drop by.
	What's the first rule of Malaga?
	You do not pronounce it correctly.
	The second rule, you cannot still pronounce it correctly.
	So, if you could just type in the dates into the chat window, I would be sure to pimp it.
	Thank you, everybody, so much for your very, very positive and sometimes correcting freeback questions.
	Somebody has mentioned, Steph, you mentioned perhaps a series on language at some point, how people are currently embedded in a language as a sort of tool for manipulation.
	Any more thoughts on that? Well, it just suddenly struck me that it's a week Thursday that I am doing this speech in New Hampshire, that is at the Porcupine...
	Freedom Festival, of which of course I have gotten an incredibly spiky suit ready.
	And it just sort of struck me that I should probably have something to say there, so I have decided to do the speech on the wonders of language and the challenges involved in using language to communicate about freedom.
	So I won't say anything just now because I'm just starting to make notes and get together the props and costumes.
	For that particular presentation.
	So if you can hold off, I guess it'll be about a week and a half or closer to two weeks.
	You'll hear it live if you're in New Hampshire for the Freedom Festival.
	Otherwise, of course, it will be recorded.
	We will post it, of course, as a video and a podcast.
	It'll be one of these things where I really try to get the audience questions and participations to come in.
	So I think... I mean, it's a tough...
	It's tough to come up with a good topic.
	First of all, at Podcast 12 Million, it's tough to come up with a new topic.
	But it's tough to come up with a good topic for a crowd that is fairly political.
	I mean, I'm certainly not going to argue them out of politics, and I don't think that religion would be a particularly appropriate topic.
	And my yearning burning to talk about UPB would probably...
	Be greeted with some fairly stony stairs and possibly some random air firing.
	So I think that in terms of helping people to communicate about freedom, I think that's the best topic to approach.
	That certainly went well at the New Hampshire Liberty Forum last year.
	I can't believe it was over a year ago.
	Amazing. So I think I'm just going to take that approach, and I think that's the most value that I can bring to that.
	And we hope to be staying for the duration.
	It really depends on Izzy Belli's sleep pattern or schedule.
	And so that's going to be the approach.
	It is a great question. Language is the matrix, and the matrix is language.
	And language as a tool of domination is as old as I think the first word that was invented was taxation, and the second was fire.
	Oh yes, so somebody's asked whether a lot of historical inaccuracies in the Death of the West series is argued in some comments.
	I don't believe so.
	I don't believe so. I'm not the only person to call it a family war.
	In fact, you can look at...
	The book Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War, which came out, let me just check, it was pretty recent, it came out in 2008 by Patrick J. Buchanan, who is a conservative commentator, and I think a fairly religious fellow, I think he ran for president a number of years ago, but I think a pretty good historical researcher,
	and he's the one who called it I've not heard about the assassination of Ferdinand by the blackhand Serbian nationalists as being a false flag operation.
	I don't believe that it was a false flag operation.
	And the reason that I say that is because when Austria-Hungary presented their list of 10 demands with Serbia, Serbia exceeded to almost all of them.
	If it had been a black flag operation, it seems doubtful that they would have exceeded to any.
	But I don't know.
	If there's historical evidence to the contrary, I've never read it and didn't come across it in a fair amount of research.
	But that, of course, doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.
	It's just that I haven't seen it.
	So I'm certainly happy to hear more about that if people know about it.
	Oh, and the idea that France did not declare war on Germany, well, I don't think that's a particularly important one.
	So, for instance, the Schlieffen Plan that the Germans had, which said that the moment that there's aggression from Russia, the first thing you do is invade France, that was known.
	And so certainly when Russia began to mobilize and didn't back down, Germany immediately began to implement the Schlieffen Plan, which was a whole series of dominoes falling, which the fall of 1914 propelled German troops into France.
	So France mobilizing was an effective declaration of war.
	The Schlieffen Plan was not a mystery.
	It was not a highly secret thing.
	It had been openly written about and published.
	So France well knew that the moment that Russia mobilized, they would have to mobilize because there would be an immediate war with Germany.
	So saying, well, where was the formal declaration here or there is not particularly important.
	It was an effective declaration of war to mobilize because they knew that the moment Russia mobilized, that Germany was going to attack France.
	So – and I don't think that these are particularly important quibbles.
	I think it's really, really important to look at the big picture.
	And I think it's also important to recognize that there are those who were initiating and those who were responding.
	There were those who were initiating.
	So, of course, Austria-Hungary declaring war on Serbia was an initiation.
	And then Russia deciding to honor its treaty.
	It all sort of snowballed from there.
	Russia deciding to honor its treaty with Serbia was an initiation.
	France mobilizing was an initiation.
	But there was – so there was the ball rolling and then there was the response.
	And I think we're saying, well, this person didn't declare war when they were mobilizing with the exact anticipation.
	I think it's quibbling to no particular purpose, but people may disagree with that, of course.
	And of course the other thing to remember is that nobody was there, right?
	I mean nobody was in the drawing rooms of the power brokers in Europe in the opening of World War I. So we're all relying on secondary sources and we're all relying on verbal accounts and so on.
	So if there's some stuff that contradicts the accounts that I have, I think that's perfectly valid.
	History to some degree is a little bit of a balance because there is a lot of contradiction.
	So when the British looked at The documents leading up to World War I, they said it was all Germany's fault.
	And when the German historians look at the documents leading up to World War I, they say that Germany had no responsibility or no blame whatsoever.
	History is a kind of narrative.
	It is a kind of fairy tale.
	It is a kind of religion, as I've argued about in a podcast.
	So you have to be careful about...
	And saying this source is authoritative and this source is not.
	I mean, some of the facts, of course, are pretty basic and pretty general, but some of the interpretations, which is why I was being pretty clear that I don't have an open and a shut case for the three major theses that I put forward, right?
	The family conflict to some degree, the role of public education...
	And the killbot theory.
	So I would be careful about saying that there's, you know, absolute falsehoods or absolute errors and so on.
	And of course, people can look at the documentation that I provided.
	And if they can't find any, you know, they're welcome to look at it.
	And if they find that those sources are erroneous or inaccurate, I'm more than happy to put out corrections.
	I had a couple of observations, just things that occurred to me when I was listening to the series, and thanks for the series.
	I think it's really cool. The one thing was when you're describing all the leaders of the world crawling around on all fours over this map, it just struck me as, at least from a psychological side, they're all just As infants, right? Crawling around on the floor, divvying up the world, so to speak.
	Right. Yeah, I mean, it absolutely is.
	It is a child. It is a child's perspective, it seems.
	We all think of, if we played war games, as I certainly did, with little plastic soldiers and so on when we were kids, I think that's how they viewed it.
	And that is a very strange thing.
	I'm sorry to interrupt. Let me just do a very short speech.
	We'll get back to your comments. But it's something that has always struck me as amazing.
	I can't imagine what it would be like to live life.
	And I think it would be a pretty terrible and terrifying thing.
	But I can't imagine what it would be to live life with that kind of confidence.
	The kind of confidence that says, I know how to carve up an entire continent.
	of highly complex histories and cultures and geographies and ethnic groups and languages.
	I know how to cut this up.
	I know how to shape an entire continent I mean, that to me is an absolutely astounding thing to believe about yourself.
	That level of grandiosity, that level of faith in yourself, and it really is faith because it's belief without a reason.
	It's just mind-blowing to me.
	I just can't fathom that kind of stuff.
	I mean, I tend to be pretty tentative about most of the things that I put forward.
	I'm always saying, you know, well, it's just a theory, and I'm not saying this is proven.
	These are my thoughts on the subject.
	I don't know the answer.
	Like, I think that the leaders, I mean, the leaders of these people, Lloyd George and I think Clemenceau and Wilson, I mean, as with the conferences at the end, or even shortly before the end of World War II,
	One with a soon-to-be-dead and possibly already had a stroke, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill carving up the world, carving up the world, knowing how to carve up the world to produce a lasting and beneficial peace, holding the hands. Holding the lives of millions of people in your hand and just tossing them left and right like you're throwing seeds into the earth.
	That is an astounding level of truly insane arrogance.
	And if we had less of that arrogance in the world, I think the world would be a much more peaceful and beneficial place.
	But sorry, go on. That was quite right.
	That was... It's pretty cool.
	No, I really appreciate that.
	That's struck me more and more as well lately.
	The other thing that came to mind...
	Was when you were talking about the creation of government programs to sort of – as a container basically for all these people who – these kill bots.
	It just struck me that the creation of socialized healthcare in the US has got to be part of that for the Iraq war.
	I think that's right. And I also forgot to mention, I kicked myself just this morning when I realized that I'd forgotten to mention that the actual reason that I came up with that thesis, I didn't even include, which was the collapse of the British Empire, in fact, most of the Western empires after the Second World War, caused a lot of these colonial administrators and soldiers and lawmakers and law and actors to come home.
	And where were they going to go?
	You can't take somebody who's been ruling some province in India for You just can't bring them back and throw them into the free market.
	They don't have skills that the free market can use.
	And after living the life of a local lord for decades, if not generations, they're not going to go and say, well, I'll just start out as a clerk in a shoe store.
	They're just not going to do it.
	And so I think that one of the reasons that England went so particularly socialist after the Second World War I don't know.
	The degree to which the people who are from the military who function in the free market were more the administrators within the military, who do gain some skills in logistics and management and planning and budgeting and particularly project management, I think you gain some of those skills in the military.
	I can't imagine, though I'm not saying it's impossible, just all I'm saying is I can't imagine, I can't imagine though Whether...
	I can't imagine somebody who was in the trenches for a couple of years, skewering people with bayonets and watching people's heads get blown off and arms get blown off and digging their half-eaten comrades' bodies out of the mud and stabbing skewering people with bayonets and watching people's heads get blown off and arms get blown off and digging I just can't imagine someone like that being very functional in the free market after that level of slaughterhouse trauma.
	So I think it's different between the people who are on the front lines and the people who are doing more of the administrative stuff.
	I think the administrative people can go more into the free market with some beneficial skills, but I just don't think that your average grunt who has killed and seen death for years or months, I don't think they can just bounce into the free market myself.
	I can offer a little anecdotal, completely anecdotal evidence to that.
	Some people I've worked with over the past year have actually been ex-mil, former mil.
	And the one that was a grunt had a very tough time adjusting.
	The one that was actually team lead had more of the admins.
	So I think that, at least anecdotally, lends a little evidence to what you just put forward.
	Yeah, and I had a team lead when I worked at a job once.
	I had a team lead who was ex-military, and he was just brutal emotionally.
	I mean, he would make the head of QA a woman cry sometimes.
	I mean, it was just abusive.
	And I ended up firing him.
	And I tell you, that was a pretty nerve-wracking experience.
	And so I... And this is just one of a number of run-ins that I had with ex-military people in the business world.
	It is an alarming situation.
	So, again, that's not proof, but it certainly does lend support.
	And I'd said that they've had similar experiences.
	I just don't think that it's possible to go from paid killer to...
	Excellent salesman without a huge amount of transition.
	And whether that's even possible, I don't know.
	So that's just my thoughts on the matter.
	There was sort of a follow-up question from Mr.
	P in the chat. Were the kill bots pacification with government jobs just a natural progression of an increasingly socialized society or a nefarious way of burying the abuse in society and keeping violence at bay?
	Right, right.
	I don't know the answer to that specifically, and I think what he's saying, if I understand the question correctly, and please correct me if I'm not, I think what you're saying, Mr.
	P., is that there was an increasing amount of respect for socialism throughout the 20th century, and did that expand, and that happened to fortuitously provide a home for these ex-military, or was it more consciously, this stuff more consciously created?
	Right. The killbot management I don't think is a huge plan.
	Like, I don't think it's a huge plan.
	But I do think that certainly the people at the top of the government would have pretty good relationships with those who would be in charge of the overseas colonies, right?
	I mean, so when those people came home, they weren't going to just say to them, good luck in the free market.
	I mean, that just wasn't going to happen because they're all – I mean, they all went to the same schools.
	It's a class of people, particularly in England where – The social caste is very stratified.
	So they're just going to find homes for them.
	And if they have to create departments or extend or expand departments, they're just going to do that.
	That's more, I think, that's not so much a sort of management strategy as it is just the good old boys network, particularly in England.
	So I think that kind of stuff is definitely around and out there.
	I think that it's important to recognize, of course, that when fascism and Nazism came to Europe, a lot of socialist intellectuals fled to America and to England and to Canada and other colonies and territories.
	They wanted to get away from the increased totalitarianism of Europe.
	And they were hunted and chased and so on.
	And unfortunately, of course, it spread the contagion, the mental contagion of socialism.
	To America, which is why the 30s sometimes was called the Red Decade and why in the post-war period there was such an explosion of socialism within the United States.
	I don't think it's a particularly honorable thing to do.
	If you flee a country that has become totalitarian, I think it's important that you try to figure out why rather than just cling to your theories.
	But, of course, very few people would really end up doing that.
	Sorry, the answer is I'm not really sure.
	I think it would take a lot more research to figure out the cause and effect.
	Only an hour and a half to go.
	An hour and a half to go. So we do have time for some questions or some comments.
	Or we can have a short show.
	I certainly have... Oh, it was on the radio this week as well.
	I'm sorry I forgot to post it, but it was on a radio station in Oklahoma that was broadcasting out to 19 stations.
	So, of course, I managed to stuff a truly stupendous amount of profanity until I was pulled.
	Not easy. Not easy to get that much profanity in.
	But it was an enjoyable conversation, and I had a great time, and I'll be sure to post it this week.
	How do you keep the spark in long-term relationships?
	Guest CE86. Can you tell me what you mean by spark?
	Do you mean the romantic spark, the sexual spark, the intellectual spark, or all of the above?
	What kind of spark are you talking about?
	Or have you just been an arsonist for a long time and you're looking for tips?
	All of the above. How do you keep the spark in long-term relationships?
	Well, I'm just, I think, because I've had both, right?
	I mean, I have a relationship. I mean, I'm married, of course, at the moment.
	I have a relationship with a wonderful woman.
	And there's been no diminishment of any kind of spark.
	And in fact, it's been nothing but better and better.
	But I've also had the other kind of, you know, dying out of the spark.
	I will say that if I were to quantify it from my standpoint, it's nothing objective, it's just from my standpoint, the relationships where I could not maintain the spark were founded on lust more than a genuine respect for the woman.
	So, of course, where there was an initial physical and sexual attraction and that was the foundation for the relationship, then that spark became impossible to maintain.
	And I'm certainly not the first person to say this and I doubt I'll be the last, but I think that is a really important thing to look at.
	If you're in a relationship where the spark is fading or has faded, then what I would do is say, well, what was the spark to begin with?
	The difference with my relationship with my wife is that, as I said before, we actually weren't that physically attracted to each other when we first met.
	But when we went out for our first meal, there was this incredible spiritual or intellectual connection that has only continued and grown over the past eight years now.
	And don't get me wrong.
	I'm not saying that the sexual spark is bad.
	I mean, heavens no. But I will say that a relationship that is founded on sexuality or a sexual attraction can't last at all, in my opinion.
	But it doesn't mean that it's doomed.
	It just means that you have to find a way to transition it away from sexuality and towards the respect for the individual.
	If you can't summon respect for an individual, and I think that respect, like love and forgiveness, is an involuntary reaction to other people's Then I think it's a problem.
	I just don't think that sexuality is, sexual attraction is just not enough To keep a relationship going in the long run.
	So I would try and say that look for more areas of intellectual commonality.
	Look for more areas of where you can see or experience greater respect for the other person.
	And that would be my suggestion on how to bring that spark back to the best of your ability.
	Somebody says, have you noticed how popular...
	UFC, which I think is a kind of chicken, oh sorry, full contact fighting sport, has become.
	Would you say that violent confrontations between men for show is related to the collapse of empires?
	I think that's a very interesting question.
	Let me mull that over.
	No, I would not say that, but I would say that they are related.
	I... I was at the mall with Izzy on Friday and there was a store that had UFC t-shirts they were selling and it was like guys grappling each other and beating up on each other and so on.
	Well, I mean, as I'm sure people would guess based on my chats in the past, this is child abuse that people are reenacting and re-experiencing.
	And so this kind of physical beating on people is – now, it may be child abuse that they've experienced.
	It may be child abuse that they've witnessed or it may be child abuse that they themselves have perpetrated as siblings or something.
	But being drawn to watch – People beat on each other is pretty vile.
	It's a pretty vile pastime.
	You know, sports as a whole is junk to watch.
	But I think that boxing...
	And I remember when I was a kid, my mom didn't want us watching too much TV, so she would lock the TV in another bedroom.
	And clever TV addicts that my brother and I were.
	We lived on the third floor of an apartment building.
	We actually would climb out of a window when my mom was out and we would climb along this little ledge outside the building and then climb into the window.
	We were like three stories above a parking lot.
	Very clever and not entirely sane, but that's where we were developmentally.
	And I do remember one night when she was out, we went in and we watched a boxing match because we just had a little old black and white television.
	And I remember being quite fascinated but enormously repulsed at the pounding that.
	I guess the losing boxer was taking.
	It was a long fight, so it wasn't like a KO or TKO relatively quickly.
	I just remember thinking, oh man, this is hideous.
	I've never actually watched a boxing match since then, and I doubt I ever will.
	But I will say that I don't think that...
	It is the fall of empires that is driving the UFC focus or addiction for people.
	I think that it's child abuse that is driving the empire and is driving the UFC as well.
	I was watching, I mean, there's a remake of The Karate Kid that is out now.
	And... I guess it's got a picture of...
	It's Will Smith's kid, isn't it, I think?
	He's kicking high.
	He's got a high kick, this little 60-pound or 70-pound kid.
	And I just...
	It's such a strange thing for me.
	I remember watching the original Karate Kid.
	And it is...
	To me, these stories about child bullying and your response to child bullying...
	I think it's a big cover-up.
	I think it is a big, big cover-up.
	To my way of thinking, and it's not just my way of thinking, but to my way of thinking, children are bullied in the school because they're bullied at home by parents or caregivers or whatever, or siblings.
	So they're bullied at school because they're bullied at home.
	The solution to children being bullied at school is for the caregivers to become more positive and supportive, in my opinion.
	Not for the child to go around kicking the teeth out of his bullies.
	I think that it is something that needs to occur at home level.
	It is putting the onus for dealing with bullying on the child.
	It is putting the onus for dealing with bullying on the child.
	On the child becoming a good physical brutalizer.
	And I think that is the problem.
	I think it's a way of avoiding the real source of bullying, which is home, not school.
	I think that's interesting.
	I think that I would agree with you.
	I think that I would agree with you.
	But of course, society is becoming more violent, right?
	Every law that's passed is another act of aggression and the initiation of force for the most part.
	And given how many laws are passed each year and how reflexively people look towards government as a solution, I agree with you that people seem to be more at ease with violence.
	The bullies, yeah, the bullies are bullied at home.
	Yeah, people who bully, I would say, almost inevitably have been abused at home and they're taking that out on others for sure.
	And it's those parents or those caregivers who should try and find more peaceful ways of interacting with their children for sure.
	Somebody said there is a significant difference between bullying and professional combat sports.
	Bullying is only voluntary on one side while UFC and boxing, the fighters work extraordinarily hard to reach a position to be the best and both fighters want to enter into that contest.
	There's nothing like bullying except the fact that punches are thrown.
	Well, I mean, this is the pornography argument, right?
	Which is to say that pornography is not rape because there is voluntarism, you know, the adult performers are there by choice.
	But I don't think, given the number of drug addicts and sexual abuse victims who end up in pornography, I think it's tough.
	I think it's a tough thing to say that there's full and unrestricted choice.
	Because there's such a statistical weighing of previously traumatized people in martial arts, in pornography, and so on.
	I think the question is more like this.
	So, I mean, in pornography, the question would not be, is the adult free to enter into pornography or not?
	Well, at a certain existential level or legal level, yeah, they are for sure.
	But I think what we would do, if we want to look at the real possibilities of freedom for the future, I would say that if you could imagine a sort of platonic realm where babies are floating in the ether, pre-babies are floating, souls are floating in the ether prior to being born, and They say, okay, they're given a choice, right?
	So in this family, you're going to be, as a kid, you're going to be abused, and you're going to be raped, and so on.
	You're going to end up self-managing through drugs in your teens, and you're going to end up in the porn industry, right?
	Or on this side, you're loved, you're nurtured, you're respected, you're encouraged, and of course, people in those environments, it's inconceivable that they would end up in pornography, and you'll get a professional job, and you'll whatever,
	right? I think it's tough to say.
	A peaceful and loving and voluntary and non-aggressive environment would be drawn to throw themselves in a ring and punch the teeth out of other people on a regular basis.
	So it's a tough call.
	I don't want to say that we're determined by our histories because I don't think that's entirely true.
	I think that to some degree I'm evidence to the contrary.
	As are, of course, a number of other people, a large number of other people in this conversation.
	But I will say that while it is not necessary, it is sufficient.
	sorry, while it's not sufficient, it is necessary that somebody be abused to end up in one of these sorts of environments.
	It's a desire for League of Nations playing in the West.
	What role do you see Wilson's desire for a League of Nations playing in the evolvement of the US in World War I? Yeah.
	I don't think that Wilson was an idealist.
	I don't think that he wanted to bring a better world about.
	I don't think that he wanted to end war.
	I don't think he wanted any of these things.
	I think he was just a manipulative, sociopathic bureaucrat with an unbelievably inflated sense of his own abilities.
	So I don't think that he had a desire for the League of Nations and therefore went into war.
	It went into World War I. I don't think that any of those things were particularly driving US policy.
	And of course, he failed to achieve it anyway.
	But I don't think that he wanted a League of Nations.
	I think there was a fantasy about the League of Nations that arose, which is the idea that we are going to create this chamber where everyone's going to sit down and we're going to talk out our differences and so on.
	I mean, but that was all nonsense.
	That already existed.
	Through the old-time diplomatic channels that had been working in Europe for the past few hundred years, if not longer.
	And those diplomatic channels had already averted a potential European war in 1913, which was a conflict that a number of the great powers were involved in.
	And as I mentioned in the video, it was a great tragedy that this was not reconvened to deal with events in 1914.
	So, I don't think that his particular goal to create this League of Nations, which created, when it finally did occur, the great danger of government programs is that you feel like something is being done and so you don't look for alternatives, right?
	So, the BP oil spill, I mean, it's just mad.
	It's predictable, of course, but it's quite mad at the degree to which the regulators and BP were in bed together.
	I mean, they were, I think it was about 10 years ago, they were literally hookers and blow parties that the regulators and BP executives were all at.
	The BP executives got to fill in their own safety reports in pencil and the regulators just put pen to the pencil marks.
	So the problem is with government programs is you feel like something's being done.
	Oh, it's taken care of.
	We don't have to worry about Ponzi schemes, you see, because there's the SEC. We don't have to worry about educating the poor because there are government schools.
	We don't have to worry about the poor because of welfare.
	We don't have to worry about the elderly because of Social Security and Medicare.
	But the reality is that these programs don't work.
	They certainly don't work in the long run.
	And so the problem with the League of Nations, which was not just a government program but a multi-government program, is that people felt that These countries were talking, they were in a dialogue, and that this they had all committed through even the Kellogg-Briand Pact, I think, of 1933, if memory serves, where all nations declared their desire to avoid war.
	It's like, oh, signed a piece of paper, oh, they're all sitting in the same room, oh, they're all negotiating, oh, they're all talking, and therefore we don't have to worry about war.
	And so it's this veneer of the solution that is so dangerous.
	I'm not sure. I certainly wouldn't consider myself an expert on that, but I don't think that there was a strong...
	A strong desire. I don't think it had a strong effect, Wilson's desire for the League of Nations.
	If Wilson was such an idealist, then he wouldn't have violated every single one of his published proposals for peace during the Versailles treaties.
	So I don't think he was an idealist at all.
	I think what he did do was he made people believe that he was an idealist and therefore people said, oh, okay, so he's an idealist and this is what happens to idealists in the real politic world of European politics.
	Like this naive and wholesome American farm boy, you know, wanders into the bloody sweaty sauna baths of Europe and gets utterly corrupted in this sort of eyes wide shut sense.
	I don't think that was true at all.
	I mean, yeah, as I've mentioned before, if what Churchill should have done in 1940 was dissolve the British government, then there would have been nothing to invade and they wouldn't have had to do all of that fighting.
	So there's a clarification on the question of the League of Nations that he did it – he exacerbated – he got the US involved to exacerbate World War I in order to put forward the League of Nations ideal, if that makes sense.
	Yeah, but see, the thing is, though, that he didn't use the League of Nations to sell the war at all.
	And if he had used the League of Nations to sell the war, he wouldn't have been able to sell the war.
	I mean, the U.S. ostensibly entered the First World War because Germany had conspired with Mexico to invade the United States.
	And that is such a ludicrous military plan that it's just embarrassing.
	Germany has never been able to invade England from across the channel a dozen miles or so.
	And the idea that they're going to conspire with Mexico to invade America is completely ridiculous.
	But that was one of them, of course, the unrestricted submarine warfare and so on.
	But that was all nonsense.
	The way that they got into the war was the same as they always get into the war, is they use an act of aggression that has negative effects on American lives because, you see, they're so concerned with American lives.
	They're so concerned with American lives that the last thing they want is for American lives to be lost, which is why they go and throw all of these U.S. soldiers and millions of soldiers into the West.
	A hundred thousand of them get killed, see, because they're so concerned about saving American lives.
	So, the way that they sold the war was, of course, just...
	I mean, the way they got into the war was predictive of exactly how badly Versailles was going to go.
	Because the way they got into the war was through a complete and total demonization of the enemy, right?
	Of the Germans and her allies.
	And so by painting the Germans as the ultimate demonic monsters out to rip out the hearts, throats, minds, and souls of all that is good, kind, peaceful, and civilized in the world, there is simply no way that you could have a rational detente at the end of the war.
	I mean, if you paint an enemy as that monstrous, as that evil, as that macabre, as that almost supernaturally demonic, Then, right, of course you have to impose these brutal peace restrictions at the end of it.
	So I think that – I think the reason that Wilson wanted to go to war fundamentally was that historians love war presidents.
	I mean the man was unbelievably vain and he had not had a massively successful presidency.
	But he went to war because, and there's a great analysis on Mises.org about this, the presidents who initiate wars are always considered the best presidents.
	And he is considered, right? Who are the best presidents?
	Lincoln, FDR, Wilson, all of the people who initiated staggering conflicts, costing hundreds of thousands of lives.
	So, I mean, back then, that was how you get into the history books, was you start a war.
	Oh yeah, Bush. Yeah, for sure.
	I think Bush was a little bit more motivated by his religious nuttiness though, but I think that's still up in the air as far as proof goes.
	Do I have any thoughts on technophobia?
	Do you think technophobia is predictive of other character traits?
	Perhaps you can give me a few more details about that.
	So what to do about Israel?
	Well, that's a big question.
	I mean, the only solution to militarism is philosophy.
	The only solution to To the conflict in the Middle East, which is not specific, this is not a solution that is specific to the conflict in the Middle East, is for people to drop culture, to drop religion,
	to drop collectivism, to drop tribalism, to drop all of the vast, deep, and savage infections of history and replace them with reason, with evidence, with individualism, and with philosophy.
	There is simply no other way to solve this conflict that has been going on for over a thousand years between the Jews and the Muslims.
	As long as there are Jews and Muslims, there will be this kind of fight.
	And we need to transform people from...
	A tribal identity to a true self, individualistic identity.
	A tribal identity is always predicated on keeping your friends inside the circle and creating a circle where everybody outside is the enemy and is going to destroy you and so on.
	There's simply no way to solve that.
	You're not going to be able to negotiate a solution within the existing mindset.
	There has to be an abandonment of tribalism in order for there to be an abandonment of these kinds of conflicts.
	There was something that I would recommend.
	It's on YouTube at the moment. I think it's called American Radical.
	It's a biography of Norman Finkelstein.
	I actually interviewed him. It's in the donated section.
	And he said that he was talking to a woman, a Palestinian woman in Gaza, who was, I think, in her 70s.
	And, you know, she was lying in a bed.
	She was sick. There's no medicine.
	It's just horrible.
	And she said, I'm 12.
	And he said, well, what do you mean, you're 12?
	And she said, well... I was thrown out of my home and my country when I was 12.
	And ever since then, there's been no life for me, so I'm 12.
	Anyway, I think we have somebody else who may want to have a chat.
	If you'd like to speak up, I am all ears.
	Sorry about that. I dropped them because they were echoing.
	So Brian, who I assume is not Brian May, says, "Hey Steph, totally random off-topic question.
	I understand you're a big fan of Queen.
	I've never quite been able to understand if there is deeper meaning or story behind their famous song, Bohemian Rhapsody.
	I understand that Freddie Mercury wrote it, and I'm sure there was something meaningful behind it, but I haven't been able to figure that out.
	I'm curious as to why, if you have any philosophical or psychological thoughts in regards to that particular song." Oh, please don't make me talk about Queen.
	Everybody's last shreds of respect will vanish.
	But yeah, I've put some thoughts into that.
	In order to understand some of the thoughts that I've had about Bohemian Rhapsody, I think it's important to know a little bit about Farouk Bulsara, a.k.a.
	He was born in Zanzibar.
	He was sent away at a very young age on a very long journey to a boarding school for the political and business elites.
	And he was Zoroastrian, which is a particularly small religion.
	I think there are only about 100,000 left.
	And he was in boarding school for most of his youth.
	And as he himself said, yes, there were a number of schoolmasters who chased me around the table, which means that There was probably some pedophiles, or at least that's what he was indicating, but he refused to go into any more detail.
	And so it would seem to me that he had probably been exposed to a fair amount of pedophilia and possibly rape, not just from the schoolmasters, but from his fellow students, the elder students and so on.
	Boarding schools and homosexuality and pederasty, they're all sort of intertwined, particularly back in those days.
	And then I think there was a revolution or a civil war.
	The family all fled to England and he went to art school and it was, you know, pretty flaming back then.
	But he was with a woman.
	He was dating a woman. I'm not at all embarrassed to know all of this.
	I'm just saying that I do.
	Mary Austin, he was dating a woman and he was, at least at that time in his life, heterosexual, as he said.
	But then he came out of the closet, so to speak.
	He didn't ever come out publicly until, he didn't even admit he had AIDS until a day or two before his death.
	Ooh, spoiler. And he ended up getting heavily involved in drugs and heavily involved in promiscuity.
	And I think that we can all see from the Bomb and the Brain series that promiscuity and drug addiction.
	Cocaine, I think he quite shocked Michael Jackson when they were working on a very bad song together called State of Shock that he cracked out cocaine and was taking it openly.
	Freddie Mercury had a very Baroque style of songwriting on...
	I think the first album is pretty bad, but Queen 2 has a very interesting song called March of the Black Queen, which has a lot of the Baroque elements that show up, like where the keys are changing, the lyrics and melodies are changing, and it seems like a schizophrenic snipping together of a bunch of great mini-melodies, and it's very interesting and worth listening to, I think.
	And so...
	This drug addiction and the promiscuity was dangerous.
	It was dangerous even before AIDS. It is a very dangerous lifestyle to pursue.
	And so I think Bohemian Rhapsody is...
	This is all nonsense, you understand.
	I have no proof for any of this.
	This is just my two cents worth of nonsense theorizing.
	But I think that Bohemian Rhapsody, which starts out, is this the real life?
	Is this just fantasy? That is a clear delineation that there is no philosophy of guidance in life.
	He can't say this is a personality that has a great deal of difficulty telling the difference between the real world and the inner world, the outer world and the inner world.
	And the philosophy is very much around delineating these two states of mind.
	A court in a landslide is, to me, being gripped by the passions that are ungovernable because there is no philosophy.
	There is no true self-access.
	There is no introspection.
	And so you're caught in a landslide and he says, is this the real life?
	Is this just fantasy?
	Caught in a landslide.
	No escape from reality.
	So there is no escape from reality.
	That there is doom in that level of dissociation, in that level of confusion, in that level of disorientation.
	Um, Anyway, so the song is ostensibly about a man who has just killed someone.
	Just killed a man, put a gun against his head, pulled my trigger, now he's dead.
	Now... He was very much into oral sex, Freddie Mercury, and at one point, I think for the 86th Wembley show, his big idea to open the show was to have, pardon my frankness, was to have a massive, I think it was inflated penis, fly down and then insert itself into a mouth over the stage.
	And then he would come out in his big poncy uniform of a robe and underpants and a crown.
	And that would be the opening to the show, his more conservative band members.
	And it wasn't hard to be more conservative than Freddie Mercury shot the idea down.
	But I think that there is an association there of gun against the head, his penis, pulled my trigger now, he's dead.
	that sexuality is dangerous.
	Sexuality is a death impulse.
	That it comes out of horror, it comes out of trauma, it comes out of past mess.
	And so I think that when he says, Mama just killed a man, this was, I think he was writing this in the 70s, before the AIDS crisis, but I think he was saying that my sexuality is going to be the death of me.
	Pull my trigger, now he's dead.
	The fact that he's crying out for his mama, to me is, well, this is what you do when you're traumatized in boarding school.
	It certainly is what I did when I was traumatized in boarding school, was I thought of my mama, who was many hundreds of miles away, and I think for Young Farooq Bulsara, she was even further away, but you cry out for your mother during these times of trauma when you're alienated and isolated in this institution.
	And so there is this association that he's just killed a man, and this is when he began taking his drugs.
	It was in the 70s, and I think it's pretty clear that a lot of his creative energies came out of the drug use.
	I mean, drugs can really liberate people's creativity for sure.
	But at the same time, they remove whatever large shreds of inhibition are there.
	And so I think that he's saying that.
	The sort of famous middle part is the mycosystem conversation, right?
	This is a mycosystem without an ego, right?
	So I see a little silhouette of a man, Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you do the Fandango?
	So there's nonsense times, and then there's...
	I'm just a poor boy.
	Nobody loves me. Well, that, of course, is being sent away to boarding school.
	He's just a poor boy from a poor family.
	Spare him his life from his monstrosity.
	In other words, he's killed a man, but he comes from a traumatic history.
	So we need to show him mercy because of his prior trauma.
	And his loneliness and his bad childhood and therefore his crime of killing a man should be forgiven.
	And there is no resolution, right?
	There is no resolution to this inner dialogue, right?
	So if you compare that to another piece of Baroque ecosystem music, which is Pink Floyd's The Trial of the Wall, where there is a man going up against a judge and there's a very gripping set of images in Pink Floyd's The Wall of the Movie.
	Where he goes up against the wall, sorry, he goes up against the judge in trial for his crimes or supposed crimes.
	And there is a resolution.
	There is a resolution which is tear down the wall.
	Tear down the wall of dissociation and distance and emotional blocking.
	And because of that, Roger Waters lived, right?
	Tear down the wall. There is no resolution to Bohemian Rhapsody.
	The chattering that goes on back and forth in that famous operatic piece never has any resolution.
	And I can't quite remember all of the lyrics to the song, so we'll just end up with the beautiful.
	I think the song is incredible and, of course, an amazing piece of music, one of the most amazing pieces of music.
	Certainly in the modern genre that has ever been penned and is likely ever to be penned.
	But at the very end, there is no resolution to the violence of the inner mycosystem conversation about guilt and innocence and history and pain.
	Right? There's no resolution.
	It just erupts into a kind of anger.
	So you...
	So you think you can love me and leave me to die?
	Just got to get right out of here, right?
	So the Miko system is too overwhelming, is too unbearable.
	He's just got to get out. He's just got to get out.
	And then when he does get out, the music pace slows down, it slows down, it slows down.
	And then we have that little bit at the end.
	Nothing really matters. Anyone can see.
	Nothing really matters.
	Nothing really matters to me.
	Any way the wind blows, that is...
	That is the end of the ego.
	That is the end of the ego.
	And that is when you run away from the ecosystem, you lose control of your personality.
	And there is a sad and sweet, I think, in the music release and surrender to the impulses of the moment, to the passions of the moment, to the Destructive emotions that are there when we don't have a full and integrated personality.
	So I think that's to some degree what the song is about and one of the most striking songs That came along just at the end of the last album, Made in Heaven.
	Not the best album in the world, but some great singing.
	He, of course, sang the song.
	Of course, he died from AIDS, from promiscuity.
	And the frustrating thing about Freddie Mercury was that he was in Hamburg and Switzerland, and he was part of this incredibly racy and decadent nightlife of rampant gay promiscuity.
	I mean, the man's stamina was something that was a force of nature.
	And when AIDS first came out, he actually got tested.
	He got tested for AIDS, and the test came back negative.
	He was fine. He was fine.
	But then he continued.
	He continued. He continued.
	And there is a death wish in that.
	There is a death wish in that.
	There is no question of that.
	If you continue, it's the story I've talked about before with Jung telling a patient of his.
	His patient keeps dreaming that he's climbing mountains and then steps straight off into the sky.
	And he says, you better stop climbing mountains because you're going to fall to your death.
	You have a death wish. And I think it's very, very important to understand there's a lot of people out there with a lot of death witches, which is an unconscious altar, in my opinion, that is programmed from parental aggression towards self-slaughter.
	And... So he was tested, he was negative, but he continued on this lifestyle with full knowledge that every sexual act could cause an excruciating, lengthy, and debilitating illness for which there was no cure, and there was no likelihood of a cure at all coming up.
	And so that's frustrating, because the man had enormous talent as a performer.
	He was a mess.
	As an individual, he never had a successful long-term relationship after Mary Austin.
	He continually said that he's not built for love, he's not built for long-term relationships, but he's saying a lot about love.
	I have a great deal of fascination with Freddie Mercury, which is why I have all of this ridiculous information in my head.
	But I really have tried to, and I'm not saying he's aware of any of this as he was writing it, which is why I say it's all pure nonsense, right?
	But it's just my theory.
	I've really tried to learn, in my own particular way, of course, he was an incredible performer.
	I mean, everything came together, right?
	He was a good-looking guy.
	He had the most astounding singing voice ever.
	And amazing control.
	The scale down of Somebody to Love after his falsetto bit.
	The amazing work that he did in falsettos for the Rock in Rio concert where he posted this on the message board.
	Where they do a song called Impromptu, where he just does this amazing live falsetto work.
	I mean, the man's vocal abilities were truly staggering.
	Even the duet album that he did with Montserrat Caballier, it was fantastic.
	The Golden Boy is a beautiful piece of music where his singing is just stellar.
	And he had it all.
	Amazing performance, amazing musical abilities in terms of playing piano and even a little bit of guitar.
	Crazy little thing called love.
	And... He had this amazing songwriting ability, this incredible work ethic, and the patience to record.
	They wanted to do more on Bohemian Rhapsody, but the tape was getting too thin for them to put another track down, and so they had to stop.
	It really was amazing what he was able to do.
	And it's frustrating that the death wish took over, that the unconscious self-hatred took over, and that he was not able to break through to a true ecosystem conversation that might have saved him was, I think, particularly tragic.
	And he wasn't the only one.
	The guitarist also went through suicidal impulses when he was having an affair, and his marriage was crumbling apart.
	He almost drove off a bridge.
	Success is... It's a very difficult thing, I think.
	Yeah, sorry, I hope that that was somewhat helpful, but I'm afraid you cracked a bit of a deep well when it came to that.
	Steph, could you comment on the role of fathers, if distinctly different from that of mothers in regards to parenting?
	I accept that parents are models and examples of how the child will relate to that gender of humans, but apart from that, I'm not sure of what roles or tasks are more specific to either parent.
	I can give you a few thoughts on that, and these are great questions.
	I must tell you, I'm absolutely, completely enjoying your company today and this show, as always, but even more so, because I get to talk about Queen.
	But there are some objective facts that I think are worth reviewing when it comes to looking at the roles of parents.
	Fathers will let their children take more risks.
	And moms will do other things that are obviously beneficial.
	I can talk about my...
	I mean, so there are some general facts that are out there.
	The same-sex parent seems to have the most influence on a child's relationship with himself or herself.
	The opposite-sex parent, of course, has the most influence on the eventual choice of an adult romantic relationship.
	So those seem to be fairly objective facts.
	There are some other things that – I mean, the jokes that float around on television, you know, that you need to find in order to sleep with a woman.
	She has to have daddy issues.
	I think that – what's his head?
	I can't remember his name.
	The blonde guy on How I Met Your Mother.
	He was talking about that, that you exploit women who have daddy issues.
	I mean, that's kind of a piece of pop psychology, but I think there's probably some truth in it that if a woman feels rejected by her own father, then she will be easy prey to manipulative sleep around.
	So I think that there's some aspect of that.
	I will say, just from my own experience, that there are certainly things that Christina and I do that are different when it comes to parenting.
	I am very keen to take Isabella out and show her the world, right?
	So I will take her to the golf store and we'll go and hit some balls into the – we'll go and do some putting.
	I will take her to stores.
	I will take her to malls.
	I take her to play centers.
	I want to go out with her.
	I get a little stir-crazy when we're at home.
	So I definitely have a drive to get her out into the world and doing things.
	I'm not saying Christina doesn't, but with me, it's more of a strong impulse.
	So I think that to expose her to more of the world, like I'm dying to take her to African lion safari.
	I'm dying to take her to marine land because she'll just get so excited.
	We went to a mall yesterday where inside the mall there's a waterfall and there was a big fish tank.
	Of course, Izzy loves water, right?
	So she was really, really into that.
	And I'm very much around, you know, let her do stuff.
	And she's just learning how to, oh, she's so amazing.
	She's just learning how to go down the stairs.
	Sorry, I get a little emotional when she makes these kinds of progressions for reasons I can talk about in a sec, but she's just learning how to go down the stairs, not doing her belly down body surfing where she just kind of rolls down the stairs like a fast motion slinky on her belly, but where she's actually turning and she's walking down the stairs while holding onto the banister.
	It really is amazing the degree to which she wants to do things on her own.
	She just learned how to put a shoe on.
	I mean, this blows my mind.
	I have a tough time getting her shoes on, but she's learned to be able to do that.
	So I think that there are some differences when it comes to...
	Are you there? Yeah.
	Ah, there you go. I can't remember.
	You were just talking about Izzy going down the stairs.
	Oh, yeah. So there does seem to be some statistical evidence that fathers are helping the child out into the world to explore and to try out new things.
	And, I mean, the other day, Izzy, dear God, she may have inherited my night owl fetish.
	That probably doesn't sound exactly right.
	But... I took her out because, you know, we show her she loves drawing.
	She loves it when I draw stars.
	And she loves twinkle, twinkle little star.
	And whenever she sees a star, she says, star!
	But I realized that she's never actually seen a star.
	So the other day, she woke up crying at around 9 or 9.30.
	And she's been such a great sleeper that we have a tough time letting her cry it out now.
	So Christina was doing some work.
	So I went to get Isabella and I took her down.
	To play. And I ended up taking her outside.
	Oh, my God, was it a beautiful thing.
	I mean, it was a warm night.
	There were a few clouds in the sky just hanging up there.
	They're like the tips of little sand dunes up against the dark blue.
	And there were some stars out.
	And I got to show her what an actual star was.
	And we sang the songs and we went looking for more stars.
	We could only find three or four because, of course, it was still somewhat light out.
	It's like the moment that we have a skylight in the house and once when she was asleep, this was many months ago, she was asleep, she woke up late at night and I went to get her and I was going to take her downstairs to see if she wanted some milk and as we passed underneath the skylight there was the moon, was right in the middle of the skylight and it was almost a full moon, it was just beautiful.
	And I looked, I held her up and I looked at her and she was looking straight up the skylight at the moon.
	And I'd shown her the moon once or twice before during the daytime.
	And she looked up and she said, moon.
	And the amazing thing was that I could see, I could see the moon in the skylight.
	And I could see the moon when I looked into her eyes.
	Reflecting out as a tiny little pinbrick of silvery light deep inside her eyes.
	And it was like I was watching the spark of the word moon forming in her mind when she said it.
	It was really just a beautiful, beautiful little moment.
	And I think those kinds of things where you're out and you're exploring.
	I took her out to the woods the other day.
	It's amazing. I showed her the word thistle.
	Thistle is a tough word for her to say, but she's doing well.
	And then when we were in the mall yesterday, they had some little artificial thistles that were in a store, and she's, ah, thistle!
	Like, she remembers things just in the most amazing way.
	So I think those aspects of things, I mean, Christina is really great at sitting down with her and just playing with her sort of more one-on-one.
	Because I've got this kind of relationship where we go out and explore the world, I find it harder to engage Izzy on sort of just her and I one-on-one because she always wants to go and do something.
	And I think that's certainly more to my taste.
	So I think there's some aspect of that as well.
	So those are just my thoughts and hopefully that helps.
	Did you want to talk a bit more about the feelings of the emotionality that comes up around these things?
	Oh, sure. Yeah, I... So, a number of months back, I posted a video called Izzy Crawl's Blocks, which is, we have these little, it's a pink box, and on top there are a number of cut-out shapes.
	There's a triangle, there's a star, there's a circle, there's a square, and a couple, I can't remember, a couple of other shapes.
	And inside there are blocks that match those shapes.
	Even from before, Isabella could crawl.
	Like when she was just a couple of months older, she could just, I think she rolled over at four months or three and a half months or four months or something.
	These have been an absolutely core part of our playtime.
	A little bit less so now recently, but, you know, we would stack them and she would knock them over and we would do that, you know, 12 or 13 million times a day, it would seem.
	And... Then she got interested in stacking the blocks herself, which was great.
	And then she got interested in throwing the blocks around, which was also great.
	And then she got interested a month or two ago in trying to put the blocks into the box with the lid closed, right?
	And so you have to put the lid on and then you can only fit the triangle through the triangle hole and, you know, you understand, right?
	And today, this morning for the first time, she did all of the blocks herself.
	And it's an amazingly bittersweet thing because I'm so thrilled, excited, proud, and happy that she can do it.
	But, you know, parenting is like one of those rockets, you know, one of those Saturn rockets going up into orbit or towards the moon or wherever.
	Bits keep falling away.
	So now she can do the blocks.
	And now she can climb the stairs.
	And she's never going back to the time before she could do that.
	And that stage has sort of fallen away like a rocket.
	That stage of her development, that stage of her life has fallen away.
	And she's never going to go back there.
	I guess until she's 90 or something.
	She's in a walker or something.
	And that's an incredibly...
	It's a bittersweet thing.
	I'm amazingly pleased and thrilled and excited with her development.
	I mean, she amazes me all the time.
	But at the same time, you miss the things that she's outgrown, the things that she's moved past, because those were such wonderful bits.
	Those were such wonderful times.
	Like, I don't think that now she's ever going to be particularly interested if I stack a block.
	I mean, she's, you know, we did it for months and it's done and it's gone and it's passed.
	And it's history.
	It's like when you pack away her early clothes.
	I mean, you're happy that she's grown and that she's outgrown those early clothes.
	But at the same time, you just remember how amazingly, perfectly wonderful it was when she was that small and that size.
	And how...
	I mean, we want her to become less dependent on us, of course, right?
	That's the goal. But I miss having her dependent.
	I miss having her dependent.
	I miss having her need me for more.
	I mean, because that was a beautiful time.
	That was a beautiful time. I'm very happy that she doesn't need me for as much anymore, but it was a completely beautiful time when she did.
	And so it's bittersweet, you know, the development of a child.
	It's much more sweet than bitter, and by bitter I don't mean bitter, but it's definitely there's a little bit of ambivalence in it that I'm so thrilled, but I'm also very sad that...
	That she's outgrown certain things.
	Those phases are done and gone.
	I don't think we're going to have another kid.
	We're getting up there.
	And so I'm not going to revisit that stuff again.
	I'm not going to ever do that again.
	I'm not going to ever help her learn how to walk again, or any kid of mine.
	And so there's this sense that the days that are passing, you know, like leaves under a bridge, they're passing.
	And they're going away, and they're not going to come back.
	That there's a constant progression, and that progression is only going to continue, right?
	So she's going to go... She's going to go to school.
	She's going to get older.
	She's going to get her own circle of friends.
	She's going to need me less and less.
	She's going to go away to college.
	She's going to get married.
	I mean, we still have that great relationship, I'm sure, always.
	But there is something sweet and beautiful about that time of the intimacy of dependence.
	It sounds crazy maybe, but she's really becoming interested in the toilet now.
	And she wants to know how it works.
	She wants to know what you do.
	She wants to know how you flush.
	And this, of course, is because she's preparing herself to become diaper-free and to start using the toilet.
	And... You know, when she learns how to use the toilet, I'll be completely thrilled when she learns how to use the toilet.
	And I will also really miss changing her.
	You know, where we can sing her songs and I can tell her a little story and I can count her toes and I will miss that hugely, though I will be enormously proud and happy that she has moved on to something new and that she's developed more competencies.
	So, it's...
	That's parenting. I mean, as far as I can see, that's parenting.
	You're incredibly proud of what she's achieved, and you miss what she's outgrown.
	Maybe that's why people have more kids, to re-experience it.
	I don't know, but I hope that makes some sense, but that's certainly what I've experienced.
	Thanks. Thanks so much for sharing that, and I echo everyone in the chat as well.
	Thank you. And, you know, she never does anything that's annoying.
	You know, it's...
	She never...
	I mean, you know, she loves watching the Wiggles on the iPod, and, you know, the other day she was going to drop it in the toilet.
	And why wouldn't she? I mean, of course she would, right?
	She loves water, she loves the iPod.
	Let's see what happens when they mate.
	Maybe something even more beautiful will come out.
	Maybe the Wiggles come to life as water statues and entertain me in the bathroom.
	I don't know, because she's still exploring all of that, but...
	It is just a wonderful and beautiful thing.
	It is an amazing privilege to have her.
	She's doing this thing these days where she will grab Christina's leg and grab my leg and pull us together so that we all have a triple hug.
	I mean, it's just beautiful.
	She's also doing this thing where if Christine and I are walking along holding hands and Izzy's walking ahead of her, she will turn and she will try and pull her hands apart.
	And I keep telling her, that's not how you're going to end up with a sibling, trust me.
	Uh, but I don't think she's quite, uh, I don't think she's quite understood that yet.
	Uh, what is my take on the wiggles?
	I think that they are...
	I think they're fun.
	I think they're... I think they're benevolent.
	I don't like them from a female standpoint because the women in the Wiggles videos are just ornamental.
	They don't actually have any personalities, I guess, except maybe for Dorothy the dinosaur, but she's not specifically a woman.
	She's like a female dinosaur or whatever.
	I think that I'm going to look for something slightly more gender positive for Izzy when she gets a little bit older, but Izzy certainly loves them at the moment, and I think that their songs are great, and she loves singing along with them as best she can and all of that.
	And the affection, you know, this is what I would recommend, you know, for anybody who's mulling over or thinking about having kids, the I mean the affection of a kid, the affection of a child, the love of a child, the attachment of a child is a truly, truly beautiful thing. It's a truly, truly beautiful thing.
	And it is the sweetest and most pure thing that can be imagined.
	I'm somewhat surprised the degree of passion that I have for my daughter, which is maybe a weird word, but I feel so incredibly strongly for her.
	Whenever she sees a kid that's sort of her size or roughly around her size, she marches up to them and tries to give them a hug.
	I say, most of the kids shrink away.
	I'm waiting for her to get maced or tasered with something very small.
	But I guess they're surprised or whatever, but she'll just keep marching up and trying to give people hugs.
	It's fantastic.
	But I want the kids to hug her back.
	I say to them, no, she wants to give her a hug back.
	And some of them do, but most of them will just shrink and sort of turn away and so on.
	And the parents say, oh, she's shy.
	Well, we'll see.
	I have not seen the business of being born.
	I'm afraid. Hey, I did...
	Actually, I might have someone on the show, strangely enough, live.
	A friend of mine, who I've not had any regular contact with, For, oh my god, a little over 20 years, is back in town.
	He got his PhD from Stanford and he got another degree and he's quite the academic dude.
	And, you know, blindingly smart.
	I mean, anything that I have any sense to say about biology comes from this guy because he was studying biology when I first met him.
	And we rented a room together.
	We were two of us in the same room at a frat house.
	We weren't part of the frat, of course, but we both came to town late.
	And we sort of kept an intimate in touch over the years.
	He came to visit me once before in Toronto.
	And we got along really well.
	And if you're living in the same room with someone day after day, you have to get along really well.
	And we certainly did. And he was always a very, very smart guy.
	The typical college all-night discussions and someone, he really did help sharpen my thinking in very many areas to do with science, which is not to say that he's responsible for any of my scientific information.
	Fundamentally, that's mine. But he's back in town and we've been pinging each other back and forth.
	And he came over this week And we had a nice long chat, which I wish could have gone on further.
	But unfortunately, I had to go on the radio, so I had to end it.
	But we're going to get back together.
	I think he's traveling for business this week, but he'll be back next week.
	And it was just great.
	It was great to see him.
	And it was great to get caught up.
	We lived together for a year in the same room, an academic year, and then we rented a place together.
	For the next year, which was also great.
	And I just love the guy.
	I think he's just great. And unfortunately, he was...
	Oh, yeah, he's an atheist. Oh, yeah, of course.
	Of course. And he is...
	Yeah, it was great to see him again.
	He's got so many smart things to say, and he's got so many great theories.
	And also what he does for a living is very interesting, so I'm sure he will agree to be interviewed.
	And we'll actually have, you know, we'll sit in the red room, we'll have two cameras going, we'll actually have cut scenes and all of that, so I hope that you will enjoy that.
	But yeah, he's definitely one of the smartest and best debaters that I have ever met.
	I met with, and maybe we can lure him to come by for the barbecue.
	Yeah, he taught for a while at the college level, but barbecue is Labor Day.
	Bye.
	Labor Day weekend. The main day is the 4th of September.
	4th of September. When is Labor Day?
	Labor Day itself is the 6th.
	6th of September. Most people come on Friday and most people leave on early Sunday.
	So that's pretty much when you can expect to be around most people.
	Alright, we have time for one more question.
	Can we pitch a tent? I guess it really depends how attractive the people are at the barbecue.
	Wait, sorry, maybe I misunderstood that.
	Awful, I think that refers to my joke.
	I quite agree. As a comedian, I make a fairly good philosopher.
	No, you can't pitch a tent at our place.
	A question. What age did you start losing your hair, and how did you feel or get over it?
	I started losing my hair when I was 16 or 17, and I didn't like it, frankly.
	I'm fine with it now. In fact, I wouldn't want it back now, but definitely it was a drag, for sure.
	There's something humbling about hair loss, because it is...
	You can't rely as much on your looks because, you know, for a lot of people, it's considered less attractive than a good head of hair.
	And so, yeah, it's humbling a little bit.
	And, of course, it is a minor reminder of mortality because normally it happens to people who are a fair amount older.
	But how did you get over it?
	You know, the reality is I didn't really find that women found it unattractive.
	And so I didn't really mind...
	It didn't really...
	I don't remember any woman saying or even indicating that being bald was a problem.
	I think that maybe it had something to do with me working out more.
	I think... Bald and fat, I think, is not a good look for anybody.
	Bald and trim, I think, can work fairly well, you know, that sort of Bruce Willis thing.
	But I think bald and overhead is not so good.
	And I think that bald and comb-over, very bad, of course, right?
	Bald and long hair, it's just like you have a regular head of hair that you knotted too quickly and it all slipped back.
	I don't think that's a good look.
	I think that in general it's probably a better idea to keep it short when you're bald, but I guess that really depends on the shape of your head or whatever.
	I mean, I like my face.
	I like the way my face looks. So, for me, it's not been a particularly big issue going bald.
	But it definitely was tough when I was younger, for sure.
	I went through a phase where I would check out people.
	They're like, oh man, he's got a really great head of hair.
	What a lucky bastard or whatever.
	And I remember reading an article way back in the day.
	I think it was in Esquire or something about a guy talking about going bald.
	And it's like, oh, that's just terrible how bad guys get great hair.
	Churchill went bald, but Stalin has a great head of hair.
	And it was actually quite a good...
	I don't know if it's online, but you might want to try and check it out.
	Do you think that the Big Bang Theory is a plausible one?
	Which episode?
	I don't know. I'm going to try and get a physicist on to talk about the Big Bang Theory.
	I have no idea. I really would be so far beyond any realm of competence that I would have to say whether or not I think the Big Bang Theory is a plausible one.
	I will say that physics can be uniquely frustrating to a philosopher.
	And that's because...
	I mean, I think that has something to do with the fact that it's government-funded.
	Because... And I've talked about this before, so I won't go into it in any depth.
	But government funding of science is really frustrating because it seems to turn science to the layperson into a kind of weird mysticism.
	You know, where you get idiots like Deepak Chopra talking about the quantum physics of, you know, unconscious desires being reflected back from the universe and so on.
	So I have much more respect for the science that produces an iPod than the science that produces the CERN supercollider.
	I know that quantum physics is necessary for the production of computers, and I think that's great.
	But to me, science should be that which produces stuff we can use, not that which produces incomprehensible articles that continue to debate string theory 25 years after it came out.
	So... I'm all about just, you know, that anti-Dr.
	Stadler from Atlas Shrugged.
	Just, you know, give me some shit I can use.
	That will make me very happy.
	Give me something empirical.
	Give me something that I will pay for.
	Give me something I will pay for.
	Not something that I'm forced to pay for that seems to confuse every layperson into thinking that God is crawling back into the world through subatomic particles.
	so that it might to be just a little bit just a little bit frustrating oh I'm working on a new book by the way it's It's called, so far it's called Against the Gods.
	And it's really, I'm not trying to do anything that's been done before with atheism.
	I'm really just trying to close out the gaps in atheist theory that allow for agnosticism.
	So I'm working on it.
	It's coming along quite nicely.
	It's going to be a short book for sure.
	I think I'm about a little over halfway done.
	But I hope that you will enjoy that when it comes out.
	I've been kind of frustrated with the recent books on atheism, because to me, however brilliant the authors are, and they are, of course, considerably brilliant, they miss a basic and important reality about atheism, which is that agnosticism is nonsense.
	And I think that they, you know, as Dawkins says, you know, I'm 99.9% sure there is no God.
	And I think that I'm just trying to close that last little door so that we can get on as a species.
	It's not so much for avoiding the nonsense that it's religion.
	It is really just, it's the nonsense that is agnosticism.
	Agnosticism to me is more dangerous than religion.
	In some ways, in the same way that minarchism is more dangerous than full-on statism.
	So that's sort of what I'm working on.
	Alright, last call for questions, my silent and magical crew.
	Type them if you got them. Speak up if you wanna.
	Hey, Steph. Hello.
	Hey, this is Jacob. How are you? I'm great.
	How are you doing? Doing good.
	I missed the first part of the show, so maybe you've already talked about it, but I'm really appreciating the World War I, Death of the West videos.
	These are fantastic. And I've really appreciated them so far.
	I really just had a quick question.
	No spoilers or anything, but are you going to be talking about the Vietnam conflict at all as part of that?
	I would be more than happy to continue on up to the present with these.
	I think it's really important that I have a good, solid, interesting and innovative theory for each one of these.
	And I certainly could keep going.
	I've read most extensively on the 20th century, so I would be very happy to plow on.
	Of course, I think it's really tough to do the death of the West without doing The hyperinflation and the stock market crash of 29, the Great Depression that lasted really until past the Second World War and then the Cold War.
	I mean, I would love to keep going. It really just comes down to the number of views.
	I have to be market-driven and so I have to just give the videos and the podcasts a poke to see how many How many views and what kind of feedback I'm getting?
	Again, I sort of have to bow to the demands of the marketplace.
	The shorter videos where I put some clips in seem to be the ones that get the most hits.
	At the same time, I'm very interested in doing a series like this that goes more into the modern world because I think that people who are doing research for papers and so on would be interested in these approaches as well, which they wouldn't really...
	I think they wouldn't really get those theories elsewhere, so I hope that they would find it useful to do that.
	So we'll see.
	I would also very much like to do a Rise of the West series later on, so that we can look a little further into the future about how the resurrection of a rational society can occur, because we're never going to go as dark as it was in the Dark Ages, and they certainly...
	They certainly resurrected themselves from a deeper chasm than we can even consider.
	So I hope that that will give people some hope.
	I would also really like to do a series on the fall of Rome, which I think is something that has way too many parallels to the present to be ignored.
	So lots of things.
	It really just has to do with how popular the series are, and I certainly do appreciate everybody's feedback at the moment, but I will have to see what the popularity of them is.
	If an intelligent alien landed on Earth, what country do you think they would choose to live in?
	They would choose to live in whatever country they came from because it wouldn't be a country.
	Because the only way that we're going to get interstellar travel is if the government has nothing to do with it.
	A stateless society would get to Alpha Centauri in about 10 years.
	The government will never get there.
	So he won't live in any country.
	He will just go back to live in the free society that he came from.
	At least that would be my particular take were I to be an intelligent alien landing on Earth from a free market society.
	Well, I think Canada is a pretty great country to live in, if you have to choose.
	I was thinking of doing a show on this.
	There's a lot of myths about Canada.
	Like, Canada is much more socialist than the US, and it's actually not true.
	A lot of the...
	Canada is not Norway, as far as socialism goes.
	We have, in many ways, a lot more free trade, and so on.
	So, I think Canada is a pretty smart place to live.
	So, I mean, I live here, so let's hope it's not too retarded.
	Somebody's asked, is procrastination a result of brain damage or just a psychological block?
	I don't know. I don't know.
	I don't know if any research has been done on that area.
	Well, you know, people talk about Canada.
	Somebody says Canada is socialism with witches' tits.
	And I think what that means is that there's a phrase called cold as a witch's tit.
	Because I think children of witches are breastfed popsicles.
	But Canada, look, I mean, for those in the States who are talking about how socialist Canada is...
	How's the military-industrial complex?
	So you understand, that's socialism, right?
	And Canada has socialized medicine, which we actually spend less on per capita, sorry, per percentage of GDP than America does.
	We spend less than half of it with similar levels of care, but we don't have a military-industrial complex.
	So there's a massive form of an extremely bloody and destructive socialism that America has that Canada doesn't have.
	And, you know...
	I don't think that it's fair or just or right to pay taxes, but if I have to pay taxes, I would rather pay taxes that go towards an MRI and goes towards cancer treatments than I would paying taxes that goes towards blowing up people in foreign countries.
	So, you know, when you're going to talk about Canada the socialist, I think you have to remember the difference is that we really don't have much of an industrial-military complex that way.
	And Canada's taxation levels, if you are self-employed, are not wildly dissimilar to that of the United States.
	Well, and of course, the crime rates are lower.
	We don't have the same ferocious ethnic tensions up here in Canada as is in the United States.
	And please understand me. I'm not trying to get into a competition as far as which tax farm is better.
	I'm just pointing out some of the myths and some of the positive things around Canada.
	There used to be a fair amount of tension between English speakers and French speakers.
	But that has largely died and simmered down.
	But it is a more blended society, multiculturally.
	I think on my block, there are a bunch of Indians.
	There's a guy, a family here from China.
	I think there's one other white guy down the block somewhere.
	And, you know, we all intermingle and interchat.
	There doesn't seem to be that same level of racial tension that you get between the blacks, the Hispanics, and the whites in the United States.
	And to some degree, of course, that's, you know, we've shipped all of our natives to really remote places or integrated them, so...
	I think I'm going to go.
	We leave toys on the front porch in my house.
	We leave the garage door unlocked.
	It's very safe.
	It's very secure. I've never gotten into a fistfight in Canada.
	I think I've seen one fistfight as an adult in Canada, which was two guys in an SUV shaking each other by the shoulders because they hit each other relatively slowly.
	I think that's the only time.
	And so it is not an aggressive society.
	We don't have the constant influx of killbots coming back from foreign wars.
	So it is...
	There are some positives.
	There are some real positives. And I really do appreciate Canada a lot more as a father and as a family man.
	So... And I don't know the degree to...
	I think that Canadian schools are not quite as bad as US schools.
	At least I don't remember any metal detectors or any of that kind of stuff.
	So... My main question about Canada, since there, or we are several decades ahead of us in the adventure of socialized medicine, have the people started figuring out yet that it's bad?
	No. No, there is no sense whatsoever in Canada that socialized medicine is bad.
	There are complaints about it, of course, and there are waiting lists are too long, and it's sometimes underfunded, and it can be inefficient.
	But there's no sense.
	I mean, it's really almost impossible to set up a private clinic here legally.
	And there's this fear.
	You say these magic words up here in Canada.
	Two-tier healthcare system.
	There's one tier for the people who are rich enough to pay for their own private care.
	And then there's another tier. And what's going to happen is the private sector is going to draw away all the doctors from the public sector.
	And then there'll be nobody left. And then Right, so this fear of this two-tier healthcare system, the idea that there's one egalitarian healthcare system.
	It's complete fantasy. It's what people believe, that this is egalitarian healthcare system.
	And it's not going to change.
	It's not going to change. It's certainly not going to change in my lifetime, unless there's some massive financial collapse, which I don't think is going to happen here in Canada.
	You know, this is another thing, I think, that as far as where you want to be when the shit hits the fan economically...
	As the government debts continue to pile up and all that, I'm happy to be in a place where there are fewer killbots and fewer weapons.
	That is my particular preference.
	And I think that may be something worthwhile for people to...
	To mull over. Again, I'm not trying to be alarmist or anything, but definitely there are going to be significant financial problems in the United States.
	There's not even any guesswork as far as that goes now.
	It's completely inevitable and relatively imminent.
	So, yeah, this is not a bad place to weather the storm at all.
	That's a great question.
	Steph, what effect do you think the fall of states will have in people's belief in statism, given that it will take place sooner than the parenting revolution?
	That's a fantastic question.
	Let me just see if I can come up with something vaguely intelligent about it.
	As I argued last year, I think that statism is dead as a philosophy, and I'm even more convinced of that now.
	There is a real stale tiredness to...
	Two arguments for statism, and they're so unbelievably ridiculous.
	I was reading this thing in the New York Times the other day.
	A guy was saying, well, we need to put stimulus money in so that people will buy stuff, and the governments will get that money back in tax revenue.
	And it's like, oh my God, in heaven, how can you imagine that that's even remotely...
	Sane. You give people money, the taxation system in the US is 30% to 40%, and for most consumers, it may be even lower.
	So even if you could give people a dollar straight, and that's not the way stimulus money works, you don't mail a check to people usually, but you're still only going to get back 20% or 30% of it in terms of taxes.
	So how can you say you get that money back in taxes, and taxes aren't 100%?
	Anyway, even if they did give the money to people directly, which is not how it usually works, but...
	It's really bad.
	I think that...
	I don't think that people will feel that reform is the way to go.
	I don't think that people are going to say...
	I mean, the government is so unbelievably and finally out of answers.
	I mean, it is completely backed into a corner.
	I talked about this a little bit on my radio show this week, on the radio show I was on.
	What on earth can governments do?
	They have staggeringly high unfunded liabilities.
	They have public sector unions, which have a fair amount of ex-military people in them, with whom they have these massive contracts which they can only break at significant risk of social revolt.
	And they will try, and they can't raise taxes because people are already out of work and jobs are already, I mean, even the jobs will never be replaced.
	The jobs that were lost, millions and millions of jobs that were lost since 2008, at the current level, will never be replaced.
	They have a permanent underclass of unemployed people.
	You can't raise taxes.
	You can't. They know that.
	What they will do is they will try and sell off taxes.
	Government property and government stuff, which is going to move some stuff somewhat into the private sector, although it's all going to be politically motivated and massively inefficient and basically a form of bribery to political supporters who will get first crack at everything, right?
	So it's going to be a sell-off of government assets into the ruling class for sure, but it's some level of privatization for what it's worth.
	They will try imposing user fees.
	They will try screwing the most vulnerable members of society, as they always do, because they can do the least harm back.
	But all of this is just pissing in the wind.
	It's pissing in a wind that's blowing towards you.
	It's not going to be enough. I mean, the unfunded liabilities are too high.
	The beast is dead, right?
	It's just going through its last couple of twitches.
	And so what reform is possible?
	What reform is possible?
	What could be reformed?
	There's nothing. There's no wiggle room left.
	There's no choices. They're out of options.
	There's nothing that can be reformed in any significant way.
	I mean, there probably will be a takeover of healthcare in the United States in a massive, massive drive to bring down costs.
	But that's going to be really tough because the only way to bring down costs is to either take on the Doctors' Union or to start rationing healthcare.
	You start rationing healthcare when the biggest voting block are the boomers who are entering into their highest needs healthcare requirements that history has ever seen.
	I mean, how long will politicians last in power if they start rationing healthcare to the elderly who vote more than any other bloc?
	It's not going to happen.
	And so this hole that they've dug themselves into for the past 200 odd years, there's just no way out of it.
	And they'll try twists and turns and here and there, but there are no answers that are coming forward from anywhere in the traditional left and right world.
	I think libertarians have some good answers from an economic standpoint.
	I think that voluntarists like ourselves have the real answers as to the way things are going to go forward.
	But I think there's going to be a, you know, let's get back to the end of Bohemian Rhapsody.
	There's going to be, you know, whatever happens, it always happens the same way in human society when a central myth is dying and There is a desperate resistance to a new truth, or maybe even a new myth you could say, though I don't think what we're putting forward is a myth.
	So, when an old myth is dying, what people become is petty and nihilistic and bitter.
	Because they won't take responsibility for their own actions, right?
	And bitterness and rage is what always flows out when you stab your own ego in the heart and won't take responsibility for your actions.
	So people won't say, wow, I really advocated for a system that has completely fucked up my society.
	And they won't say, damn, this is bad, right?
	In the 80s and the 90s, Every British artist that I can remember was putting out stuff about how cold-hearted and mean and nasty Thatcher was because she tried to privatize some stuff and level out some taxes.
	And now, I mean, you think Greece is in trouble.
	Try England. At least Greece doesn't have a massive military and isn't involved in two wars.
	The next catastrophe to hit Europe is the collapse of the British economy.
	I mean, between a quarter and a third of people are relying on the state for their income, and there's two wars, and there's massive national debts.
	Their GDP to debt ratio is enormous.
	I think it's Japan, Greece, a couple of the pigs, and then England.
	But they don't have the same drain as other countries because they're not as militaristic.
	Now, when that system, when the shit hits the fan there, are any of the British artists going to say, damn, I can't believe I opposed Thatcher, who was trying to limit government.
	Now we've got all the government that we wanted, and the system collapsed.
	I guess I was wrong. I need to go out and apologize and retract.
	Nope. Of course they won't, right?
	People don't take responsibility.
	So what happens is, it's like you picture a woman who just won't do any inner work and keeps getting attracted to bad guys, right?
	Who steal her money, who beat her up, who do drugs and all this kind of stuff.
	And then she's on her tenth guy and then she just gives up on dating and becomes really angry and bitter towards men.
	Rather than take responsibility for her own choices.
	Whenever people won't take responsibility, they end up bitter, angry and petty and vengeful and kind of pathetic.
	And that's where society is going to go.
	They recognize that this system doesn't work, but then rather than doing the work of saying, how do we get it so wrong?
	Let's try and get it better.
	They'll just say, nothing works.
	Nothing works. Human nature is too corrupt for society to survive.
	Nothing works! And that is a very dangerous time, of course.
	Because nihilism is a prequel to totalitarianism or freedom.
	Nihilism is the way that existing mythology dies.
	Certainly people aren't amenable to reason enough yet, but that's why I've worked so hard to try and get as much communication out about this stuff as possible.
	Well, no, sorry, they won't...
	They'll blame capitalism to some degree, and they'll try and find some scapegoats among the capitalist classes.
	But it's very different than it was in the 20th century, because in the 20th century, they had the option...
	Most intellectuals had the option of socialism or totalitarianism.
	Totalitarianism as an ideology fell fairly quickly, although it lasted on the communist side even up to the present day to some degree.
	But, you know, nobody wants bad things to happen to Europe, but the fact that bad things are happening to Europe at least has taken socialism out of the ammo case of status, right?
	Because they always used to say, oh, you see, like Michael Moore, right?
	Goes over to France, right?
	In his Sicko movie, it's like, oh, the French, they've got it so good.
	They got this free health care, and they get to go on vacations, and look at all the sand in bottles from the beaches they've visited, and everybody has this great life.
	And then he goes over to Denmark or Sweden, and it's like, oh, yeah, we had a government-sponsored cook in our house, and, you know, this government masseuse works on this pinky, and this government masseuse works on this toe.
	But at least that shit is done now, right?
	Like, nobody's going to look there and say, you know, because European-style socialism, that works really well.
	And that's all, all that freedom people heard about from the more intelligent and international defenders of statism for the past, I don't know, seems like 500 years, but probably closer to 30.
	All we ever heard about was, well, we just need to move more towards European-style social democracy.
	You never hear that, right? European-style social democracy.
	Well, now that that is all creaking and going under the waves...
	At least we won't. That's not an option for people anymore.
	And that's why they're gonna hit the wall.
	Right? They're out. They're out of options.
	There's not a single mutation that the state could have taken shape with over the past couple of hundred years that hasn't been tried.
	Right? We tried minochism.
	That's the United States. That was England.
	Right? We tried that. Didn't work.
	We tried social democracy.
	Didn't work. Tried fascism.
	Didn't work. Tried communism. Didn't work.
	Tried theocracy doesn't work.
	There's no shape that the government could be put into that hasn't been tried over the past 200 years.
	Nobody's going to be saying, well, let's try it like Iceland.
	Well, no, because Iceland just about fell into the frigid sea from financial catastrophes.
	Right? So, that is the end of the ideology.
	That's why I was saying last year that it's dead.
	Because there's no shape that people can imagine that hasn't been tried, that the example of which has been tried and failed.
	No, I tend to say they've just put new labels on old shit and start again.
	I don't believe that. I don't believe that.
	I don't believe that. I could be wrong.
	I mean, what do I know, right? Nobody can prognosticate to that level.
	But I think the ideology is dead.
	I mean, some people will, for sure.
	I mean, there's still a communist party in Canada, right?
	All right. I believe that we're done.
	Any last questions? Alright, yeah, thank you everybody.
	Just fantastic questions.
	I'm so sorry that I went on so long, but I got very few interruptions.
	So I really, really do appreciate everybody's interest.
	Large number of people in the chat room.
	Great, great, great set of questions.
	I really do enjoy the breadth of thinking and curiosity that goes on in this community.
	Let me end up with this.
	Let me end up with this. I don't know if people ever check out my YouTube channel.
	I mean, why would they? Why would they?
	But I think that it's important.
	If you ever want to put a smile on your face, I think that it's a good thing to go to the Free Domain Radio channel.
	You can go to YouTube.com.
	I think it's Free Domain Radio, forward slash Free Domain Radio.
	And you can have a look at some of these channel comments.
	And some of the channel comments are very nice, are very positive.
	And I hope that you will check them out.
	I'm going to read just a few.
	These are all of the ones that have been posted over the last day or two.
	And the Philosophical Mind writes, I like this channel.
	It's interesting and thought-provoking.
	Another guy writes, great channel.
	Another guy writes, we need more people like you.
	Another man writes, You're a good man and teacher.
	Keep up the good work. Peace.
	Next. Well-thought-out commentary.
	Next. So glad I found this channel.
	Awesome stuff, man. Next.
	Subscribed. Great videos.
	Grandpa Universe says, Well, thank you for the information, youngster.
	And next one says...
	Motivation alone is not enough.
	If you have an idiot and you motivate him now, you have a motivated idiot.
	Laser-focused action is key to our success.
	I just subscribed to your channel so we can stay connected.
	Please sub back buddy. And I'll just go to some of the shorter ones.
	Excellent videos. Thank you.
	God bless you and your child. Well, I guess thank you for the sentiment.
	This channel feels good.
	I like that. While I do take issue with a few of your stances, such as movement towards economic well-being, ultimately leading to greater slavery, which, if I run with, I can twist into all sorts of logical inconsistencies, on the whole, I found both your ideas and your unshrill, lucid delivery of those ideas to be a great refreshment to my mind.
	Thank you for all of your work.
	A truly great channel.
	Keep it up. Since I found your channel a few hours ago, I've been watching your videos nonstop.
	Great stuff. Thanks for taking such a well-reasoned stand in favor of freedom the world desperately needs to hear the message you stand for.
	Yours is a channel I will return to again and again.
	Excellent channel. Peace. Loving your channel content, mate.
	Wow. All I've got.
	Just wow. Great channel.
	Thank you for all your hard work and attempt to open...
	Mines. Excellent channel.
	And you can just keep going on and on.
	I mean, we just get some absolutely wonderful, wonderful stuff.
	Your BP oil spill commentary had me in stitches.
	Well done. Inspiring channel, brother.
	Brilliant job, buddy. Man, I lost my way before you set me straight, Steph.
	Keep up the good work. And finally, not bad, dude.
	Hey! I'll take that too.
	And I just wanted to mention that, right?
	I mean, it's... This is not praise for me.
	Look, this is a collective endeavor.
	What we do here is a collective endeavor, which means I'll be sending you all a bill for the server.
	Just kidding. But it is important, I think, to recognize just...
	How much positive stuff we are getting out there.
	How much amazingly...
	I mean, again, if I had time, I'd copy and paste my inbox.
	I'd just get so many messages about how helpful and useful and powerful this stuff has been.
	I get it from parents.
	I get it from couples.
	I get it from younger people.
	I get it from older people. It is just amazing, the effect that we're all having in the world.
	This is the greatest and most powerful philosophical conversation in history.
	And if you're part of it, At whatever level, I think you should be very proud.
	I think you should be very happy. And I think we should be enormously, enormously satisfied with what we have done, with what we have done as a community.
	It is unprecedented. It is exactly the right time.
	It is exactly the right tone.
	It is exactly the right approach.
	Reason, evidence, self-esteem.
	That is the way to go. So, thank you.
	Thank you so much for making it all possible and for your participation in shows like today.
	You know, Freddie Mercury said, I've quoted him before, but we might as well end with the Fred Meister, a singer can only be as good as the enthusiasm of his audience.
	And I think that's very, very, very true.

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