All Episodes
Previous Next
Nov. 3, 2010 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
11:23
1778 True News: the truth about the midterm elections 2010

Everyone won except the free.

| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
So it's the morning after, my friends.
The morning after the 2010 U.S. midterm elections.
I guess people have now flowed.
It's like this 70s lava lamp, you know, that rolls back and forth.
People have now flowed from the Democrat camp back to the Republican camp, back to the Democrat camp.
And I think we all know Why this is happening?
Because in any breakdown of the human mind, there is a good cop and there is a bad cop.
And in modern American politics, the good cop is the party out of power, and the bad cop, you see, is the party in power.
I also understand why people are so desperate to cling to this illusion that another vote is somehow going to save this Titanic, though the bow is underwater and the spinning guy, who is the middle class, has effectively hit his head on the propeller.
I understand why people need to cling to this.
Hey, if you feel that the last lifeboats have left the Titanic, you're going to look at a banana peel and think you can fashion a schooner, because you need to cling to hope despite all evidence.
And I think that is understandable, and I think that makes sense.
And I also think that it's really time to let this go.
The statistics and reality of the situation is enormously clear.
The system died about two generations ago.
This is just that kicking leg that goes on long after the brain has died.
The system, called American Republicanism, died with the creation of a permanent class dependent upon state benefits.
The American system died with the invention of permanent enemies after the Second World War.
The American system died with government takeover of fiat currency.
When currency is the lifeblood of the free market, and when the free market is not responsible for currency, everything just becomes a weird acid flashback in the mind of the federal chairman, with everybody hanging on like a mosquito lashed to the tail of a kite in a freaking windstorm with flying cows.
The system, as I said years ago, statism as a system around the world, is dead.
The debts are impossible to pay off.
The number of dependents upon the coercive redistributive power of the state is far too many for the system to be reformed from within.
Violence has never been a productive way of solving social problems.
And so the only thing that is left is a revolution of the mind.
When people look at the existing system and say to themselves, It will end.
It has ended.
We are just looking at the death throes, you know, when Arnold Schwarzenegger's Terminator and Terminator 2 goes into that vat and turns into all of these different people to try and escape the end into the molten vat.
Well, this is the situation.
The system is mutating, but it is in its death throes.
And you need to think of the government and what is occurring.
Why is the Fed buying half a trillion dollars worth of securities?
Because they just want to get as much money out of the printing presses before they go up in flames as they're going to.
Mathematically, that which cannot continue will not continue and it will not be long.
You need to think of the government in this way.
The government at the moment is like Indiana Jones In the temple of infinite money, and there is a door called economic reality that is coming down.
And Indiana Jones is grabbing everything he can, knowing that the door is coming down.
He's pillaging everything that he can so that he can get out.
The ruling classes can get out of the system and have the rubble fall on you.
Of course they're telling you everything is fine.
They're all edging towards the door, and they're going to roll, and they're probably not even going to reach back to grab their hat.
The system is dead, and we need to face that in a mature way.
You know when you're in an abusive relationship, as we all are with the government.
When you're in an abusive relationship, and the stakes are very high for leaving it, you have kids, you have mortgage, you have a business together, you're wound in together like two trees with one trunk.
It's very, very stressful.
Emotionally. I mean, everybody understands this intellectually.
Everybody understands that the system is corrupt and mutated and disgusting and vile and violent and abusive and dead.
And that there's no possibility that it's going to continue for even another 10 years.
Everybody understands that intellectually.
You can't miss that if you have your eyes at all open and a pulse in your wrist.
What we face, though, is the difficulty of looking at a system that is dead and not feeling like we have an alternative.
It is not necessary for there to be an alternative in order to let go of what is sinking.
So if you're hanging on to a piece of waterlogged wood that is going underwater, You may not know how you're going to get to land, but you do know that hanging on to this thing is going to drag you down into the briny depths, lock you deep inside Davy Jones' locker.
You have to let go of that which is sinking, because that is certain doom.
You have to let go of that which is sinking.
Then you can come to the surface, you can survey, you can look around, you can look for friendly ships, you can look for places to go, you can look for the Wilson's Ball, whatever you like.
The first thing to do is to admit that the system is dead, that there's no possibility.
I mean, so you changed a few hundred people at the top of government.
Government is composed of maybe a hundred million people all told.
Like a third of people are either working for or dependent on or receiving substantial benefits from the government.
About a hundred million people in America.
So you've changed a few hundred people at the top, but there's a hundred million people Who are continuing and whose benefits will not change.
So, it's like at the end of Thelma and Louise, you know, the car goes off the cliff.
Well, the course is set.
The trajectory of the state is set.
Switching drivers when you're already mid-air on your way down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon is a mere exercise in self-masturbatory futility.
And even self-masturbation isn't futile.
So it is important to just look at the emotions that arise within you when we stand over and look down at the grave of the Republic.
We need to understand that the taps has been played, the mourners have come and gone, the songs have died away into the dead night air.
We're just standing there alone shivering over a grave that the grass has already grown over.
Where the flagstone and the lettering is weathered and faded, where vines have already grown up around the monument, and it is on its way to becoming a tourist attraction from the far future.
It's dead and gone. It's buried.
It's decomposed. It's turned to dust, ashes to ashes.
We need to move on.
There are lots of options, lots of different approaches that are available to organized society.
I have modestly put a few forward.
You can find them for free on my website at freedomainradio.com forward slash free.
I've got books on how a free society can work without a government.
I know it's hard to conceive of.
I know it's hard to understand.
I know that part of us just wants to recoil and look for any excuse To find a way to stay away from the idea of society without a government.
But really, people, come on.
Come on. Keep your minds open.
Keep your imaginations free.
Don't let the indoctrination of the ruling classes bar you from strolling down the avenue of future possibilities to the true shining city on the hill, which is a free and peaceful world without a government.
Is it Startling, of course it is.
But so what? We all understand that slavery was immoral.
Until the end of slavery, in the 17th to 19th centuries, until the end of slavery, nobody could point to a society without slavery.
All human societies had practiced and were practicing slavery.
So it seemed impossible to get rid of an institution as old and as fundamental and as diabolical and as embedded as slavery.
But it was done. Women were subjugated, raped, hauled off as the twitching carcasses of bloody victories in war, chained, beaten, denied basic property rights, the right of contract, the right of voting.
All societies had operated by treading on the throats of women until it changed.
There is a series of dominoes that have gone down in the world, which is our most ancient and unjust prejudices have been overturned in the light of reason and hope and positivism and philosophy.
The state is just the next one.
We've dealt with slavery.
We've dealt with the subjugation of women to a large degree.
We're really starting to deal with the subjugation of children.
And that's all very positive.
And that's all very wonderful.
But we're not done yet.
We're not done. There is one more to go.
One more ancient and bloody, soaked in history, soaked in coercion, soaked in the blood of innocent victims, hundreds of millions around the world, with wars and incarcerations, and the emasculation of the poor, Through indoctrinated miseducation and welfare, there is a bloody visor that can be taken off the human face.
Just another one in a long series of breakout freedoms that have occurred and which still need to occur.
Look at the state as we look at slavery.
Look at the state as we look at the subjugation of women.
Look at the state as we look at The subjugation of minorities.
Look at the status. We look at the lack of protection for children.
It is just the next thing that needs to go.
And go it will. And go it will.
And it is far better that it goes with conscious knowledge, with virtuous planning, with ethical certainty, and with a peaceful and voluntary and charitable transition for those trapped in its innards.
And we can do that.
▲
Export Selection