Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

Dec. 10, 2010 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

57:38

1805 Living Free in an Unfree World: Stefan Molyneux Speaks at Libertopia 2010

Stefan Molyneux of Freedomain Radio addresses the audience at the Libertopia 2010 conference in Hollywood, California. 'Commentator Stefan Molyneux challenged his listeners to acknowledge the importance of unspoken consensus in maintaining the status quo and of resisting social pressure to treat the state as legitimate.'

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	Let me just say a quick couple things about Stefan.
	Molyneux is how you pronounce your last name?
	Give me it your way.
	Molyneux. I was sent a What do you call it?
	MP3 online from a friend in Buenos Aires, Argentina, who was listening to Stefan's show on the air from Argentina and said, Body, you've got to hear this guy.
	And I listened and I just went berserk.
	And then I said, oh, this is the same fellow that Wilt Alston is hooked up with.
	And Wilt lives in Rochester, where I'm originally from.
	And this whole hookup globally is coming about because Stefan's insight into what's going on here when we talk about volunteerism and sovereignty and individual liberty and all that.
	Just strikes at the heart of what needs to be done and how it needs to be done and how our thinking and how our mind has to be changed.
	Even some of us in this room who agree on this whole thing about sovereignty and volunteerism, but he was so clear and he was apologizing to the Ron Paul people throughout his speech saying, Folks, I'm with you. I'm with you, but you're in a pipe dream, and here's the reason why.
	And it was absolutely marvelous, but with no further ado, I present to you Stefan Molyneux.
	came all the way from Canada, no less.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	Thank you so much.
	Thank you. Wait, I need my notes.
	Look, it's my speech.
	Well, thank you, everybody. I appreciate that so much.
	Thank you for coming out. Did many people fly here today?
	Or I guess yesterday or today?
	Isn't travel as an anarchist a special kind of hell?
	Don't you find that?
	I mean, I came from Canada.
	The free market took me 3,000 miles in the same time as it took the government to take me about 300 yards.
	I mean, people say we should extend human longevity, just get rid of government time, and it's like we all live for 500 years because we just don't have all of those delays.
	It feels like, you know, when you...
	When you get involved with the state, like when you're in the free market, it feels like you're flying, you know?
	And literally, I was, right?
	There's no government above 5,000 feet.
	You're up above the clouds, and you're in a stateless society.
	So you're rocketing along, and you're in this amazing metal tube.
	It's got exploding death engines doing stuff behind you, and you've got in-flight entertainment, and you're rocketing along, and then it's like...
	Fresh hour traffic in Los Angeles.
	I'm in the government now, right?
	So it's just horrible.
	And you have this, have you ever had that, where you get the frozen drinks, right, and you slurp them up, and you slurp too quickly and you get brain freeze, is that what you call it down here too?
	It's like state freeze, right?
	It's like, I've had too much government today.
	Oh, my head, I can't take it.
	And you get that special little Klingon pulsing A aneurysm, the anarchist aneurysm, when you're going through all of this ridiculous government stuff.
	I feel like it's going to show up on the scanner.
	You're going to walk through that x-ray, and the guy's going to stop me and say, sir, you have a pulsing A in the middle of your head.
	I'm like, yes, and it's just getting bigger the longer you delay me.
	So yeah, that was quite exciting to travel.
	Because, you know, you look at your ticket and it's half taxes and you look at all the stupid delays for stupid reasons.
	Because you guys have idiotic foreign policies, I have to sit here and stand in line and take my shoes off because that's the problem.
	It's not you guys blowing up people all over the world, it's my footwear.
	That's the problem. Madness.
	So, I wanted to talk today, the talk is shamelessly borrowed from Harry Brown, the topic, how to live free in an unfree world.
	So, I was listening to the definitions of the state that were put forward by the other excellent speakers, and thank you so much for everybody, it's been really illuminating.
	And I agree, geographic and monopoly of force, all of that, no question, no problem.
	But I would say that the state is a little bit more than that, and there's stuff that we can free ourselves from in this life that is quite different from the monopoly of force that we all know from a political and violence perspective.
	So let me put forward a thesis, and if you have questions or comments or criticisms, you don't have to, you know, sit there like you're in a government classroom.
	You can't just, you know, throw your hand up, hit me with a blow dart, here is good, and I'll try and slow down.
	I'm going to put forward that People live...
	Like, we need models of the world that make sense, right?
	Because sense data is just sense data, right?
	You get a few basics, like fall down, boom, owie, as my daughter is currently learning.
	So you get a few basics, but you need a structure.
	You need a way of looking at the world that makes sense.
	And in general, this is going to come from two places.
	It's either going to come from... What we quaintly call reality, from empiricism, from reason, from science, from evidence, from philosophy, I hope, or it's going to come from culture.
	I really, really don't like culture.
	Culture to me is defined as everything that is false.
	It's not culture to say that two plus two is four.
	It is culture to say my dance is the best, you know, whatever your cultural dance is, which I'm not going to do for you right now.
	Maybe later. The only thing that's important about culture is the first syllable.
	So, if it comes from culture, then it's false.
	So, things that are false, that your government exists, that your country is the best, that your sports team is the one you should root for.
	I mean, there's whole loads of things that you can talk about.
	But the problem with things that are false is that they continually need...
	Am I too loud, by the way? No?
	Okay. The problem with things that are false is they continually need reinforcement.
	So, how many people in the audience believe in the almighty Zeus?
	Anyone? Usually there's one contrarian, often with a dog.
	Yes, there you are. Oh, wait, that's my wife.
	She is a contrarian.
	So, we don't believe in almighty Zeus.
	So, how many people need to go to church every week to continue to not believe in almighty Zeus?
	Do you have to go to the church of anti-Zeus every week?
	Of course not, because you don't believe in Zeus.
	There's no such thing as Zeus. So you don't need it to be repeatedly pounded into your head.
	But things that are false, we need constant repetition to prop up this nonsense.
	And that's what we call That's what I call culture.
	So we all know the narrative.
	We can probably recite it in our sleep, you know, like the ingredients through the Big Mac in those commercials.
	Two eggs, patties, lettuce.
	Remember that till the day I die.
	We can recite the story of the 20th century from the statist perspective, right?
	Or I guess late 19th century, right?
	So Lincoln Freed the slaves, and then there were the robber barons, and in response to the robber barons, we had the progressive movement, and we had to found central banks to control the power and the randomness and the unusual business cycles of the free market, because, Lord, no, that's been solved. And then we had the First World War, which was to make the world safe for democracy, but something kind of went awry.
	And then in the 20s, we had the free market, which created the boom.
	And then after the boom was the Depression, and the government tried everything.
	Gosh, didn't it just so much to get us out of the Depression?
	Unfortunately, it didn't work. So then, World War II came along and saved capitalism.
	We all know this mad fairy tale.
	The evidence, of course, is the complete opposite.
	But this is the story that people have.
	Has anyone heard that the recent financial crisis has resulted from deregulation?
	Anyone? Anyone? Right?
	Deregulation, right? I mean, it's madness.
	The thing that's mad about that is that even if it's true, It's ridiculous.
	Even if it is true, it's not true, of course, but even if it was true that government deregulation caused the financial crisis, we still have a system that can deregulate at will and cause massive crises.
	So you would naturally think, let's stop doing that, right?
	But that's not the result that people get from it.
	So people live in this world of words, this world of myth.
	And through this world of myth and this world of fairy tales and statist fantasies, the future is written.
	Because the moral lessons that are perceived to be drawn out of history Are that the free market is like a highly fragile toy in a kindergarten room and everybody who's in the free market is just like drooling on it and banging on it and breaking it all the time and the government has to be, you know, that prim little school mom who comes in and takes the toy away and cleans it up and you have to go sit in the corner and we all get a time out.
	This myth That freedom is chaos and destruction and randomness and the government needs to come in and set rules is what defines the future decisions about how to deal with the problems that are perceived to come from freedom.
	So I'm going to put forward that if we accept this, then we understand what mainstream culture is all about.
	Mainstream culture is all about Reinforcing these fragile delusions that people have about the world that they live in.
	The indoctrinations that people have.
	So, when things go really wrong in the state of society, as they always do, because violence is the worst way to solve social problems, because it gives you the illusion of a solution.
	When things go wrong, and I mean, since I started about a quarter century ago in this way of thinking, the amount of things that have gone wrong, I mean, they completely stagger the mind.
	Education is a disaster.
	The war on drugs is a disaster.
	Foreign policy is a disaster.
	Regulation is a disaster.
	Wars, well, always disasters.
	Welfare is a disaster.
	I mean, there's nothing that you can think of that the state has touched that hasn't turned to absolute crap.
	So the evidence continues to accumulate that the person or the entity that's considered to be the salvation of society is continually getting worse and worse.
	So people need to run back to this cultural nonsense to reinforce that which the evidence is killing and crushing, the evidence that it doesn't work.
	I mean, we are in the final stages of Atlas Shrugged, in my opinion.
	And even Ayn Rand, that great smoky goddess of Russian reason, is not getting the respect that she deserves for predicting this stuff 50 or 60 years ago.
	I mean, that's pretty impressive. I don't even know what the price of gold is going to be in five minutes.
	She got it right 50 or 60 years ago.
	That's amazing.
	If you don't understand philosophy, it's hard to understand how that happened.
	But because the disasters are accumulating and accelerating, people are continually rushing back to, you know, the matrix drug that they need to get injected every week because it wears off.
	Reality undermines delusions.
	Reality undermines illusion.
	And so you have to keep going back for your hit, and that's why you have the New York Times.
	That's why you have Paul Krugman.
	And that guy, oh my lord, he's like, reading him, I have to have like a motorcycle helmet on because I get that throbbing A gives me like scanner's potential, you know, you can't take it.
	Because nobody makes any reference to the fact that the government is catastrophically in debt, so there is no money to spend.
	Anyway, so people need to continually go back.
	And the problem that we have is that when we peel back this layer of fantasy, And we expose the, you know, rotting maggots of statist reality, people recoil.
	Like you just, you poke them in the eye or something, they have to run back.
	Oh, I gotta get my, oh, Krugman.
	Ah, everything's better, you know?
	Whew! Blue pill, blue pill, blue pill.
	Right, so whenever we confront people on the irrationality of their society, of our society, they run back for another fix to the media.
	And this is why it's so frustrating to try and get people to take off these blinders, right?
	To take the red pill. So I'm going to make a case here about what the government really is.
	And I agree with the technical definitions that have been given forth.
	But we think of the government as a hierarchy, right?
	It's like a pyramid with, I don't know, some Illuminati eye on top or something, but it's a pyramid, right?
	So there's guys at the top, men and women at the top, and then the power flows down and you have all of these people who are indoctrinated and indentured into this kind of tax slavery.
	In, you know, as you see from space, the countries, you don't see any countries from space, but if you look at a map, as I've argued before, you're seeing not countries, but farms, where human livestock are grown for the sake of producing tax revenue, which is why we're given certain liberties, because it makes us more productive. But I don't believe that the government is hierarchical.
	I mean, I think it shows up that way, but I don't think that's the way it really works.
	And if I'm right, and if you agree with me, then there's an avenue out Of statism.
	There's an avenue out of statism.
	That doesn't mean living in the woods, because that's always the option, right?
	We can live in the woods. But the problem is, of course, if you go to live in the woods because of the state, you're not free of the state, because you're living in the woods because of the state, right?
	So you haven't escaped it.
	You've just run away.
	But the running is because of the government.
	So let me put it forward to you and tell me what you think.
	It's true that the government appears hierarchical in the same way that an oil slick from the bottom of the ocean puts oil on top of the ocean.
	You look at the oil on top of the ocean, you say that's the oil slick, and kind of it is, but the cause is much deeper.
	So I'm going to put forward to you that the state manifests as hierarchical, but the state is in fact horizontal.
	The state is in fact horizontal.
	How many people here have gone to jail for their beliefs?
	Very few. Very few.
	How many people here have experienced social attack, condemnation, rejection, scorn, hostility?
	Everybody who's not raising their hands is either not putting their ideas forward or lives in a place that I want to move to.
	So, look, I'm an empiricist, an empiricist, an empiricist.
	I'm constantly trying to get rid of theory, get rid of theory and work from the evidence.
	The evidence is that the enforcement of statism does not come from the state.
	The enforcement of statism does not come from the state.
	Where does the enforcement for statism come from?
	Our fellow slaves.
	That's the genius, evil genius, of the state.
	Guess if I were a little shorter.
	Anyway. But that's the brilliance of it.
	It's that the fences, the jail cells, the prisons that keep us in the state is each other.
	It's horizontal.
	Now, that's the genius of the state, but that's also the incredible potential of anarchism, because once you have tried to change society, you recognize how amazingly society self-reinforces.
	If we could just move that self-reinforcement to a free situation, it will last forever.
	I genuinely believe that.
	Because anyone who thinks that anarchy can't work has never tried opposing the general culture and seeing just how amazingly it closes ranks and just how amazingly consistent it is in rejecting and attacking anything that might threaten its basic premises.
	So because the slaves attack each other horizontally, the state can grow vertically.
	But it is the horizontal attack of the slaves That is the fertilizer, that is the soil that allows, I don't know, I should come up with a better metaphor than a tree, because I like trees, but I don't know, the evil spire of the state grows out of our willingness to attack each other horizontally.
	It's like that, I don't know, we probably have a few Monty Python fans in here, right?
	Did you ever see The Life of Brian?
	There's that bit where the revolutionaries come in to attack the Romans.
	The People's Front of Judea and the, what's the other one?
	Judean People's Front, right?
	And they both arrive to attack the Romans and they are upset because they're competing revolutionary groups and so they all fall on each other and they're hacking each other apart and cut each other to bits.
	The Roman guys are just, you know, sitting on their swords like, I guess they're doing our job for us, right?
	And that is, that is the state.
	This to me solves the mystery, this profound, vicious mystery, of how it is possible for a tiny group of individuals to rule hundreds of millions or billions of people.
	It's not possible.
	And historically it was never possible.
	It's more possible now, nuclear weapons and blah, blah, blah, weapons of mass destruction and all the surveillance and apparatus of the state.
	But the state developed in the Stone Age when a sword arm was a sword arm was a sword arm and the young regularly overthrew the old.
	In my opinion, the state was invented so that the old could continue to reap their rewards even after they lost their physical strength.
	But anyway, stay on target, don't go on a tangent for once.
	So if the state is horizontal in its fundamentals, and if it only grows vertically because of this horizontal attack, well then we have an opportunity to get out.
	We have an opportunity to get out, but it is very, very hard emotionally.
	Intellectually, I mean, Freedom theorists since Socrates have closed the case for 2,500 years.
	Since the rise of classical liberalism, are they building a tank back here or something?
	Has anyone heard of this? But since the rise of classical liberalism 150 years ago, we've clinched the case.
	I mean, as somebody said earlier, I'm not an anarchist, I'm a kindergartenist.
	Because everything I learned in kindergarten I just assume is true, right?
	Don't hit, don't steal, don't push, don't shove, and all that kind of stuff.
	I mean, I'm just a kindergartenist, but that doesn't sound quite as cool.
	So the case, the intellectual case, is very, very easy, but the emotional case, I would submit, is very, very difficult.
	So let me run you through an argument or a scenario about how you free yourself from the horizontal state.
	If we can free ourselves from the horizontal state, there is no vertical state.
	If we can stop attacking each other horizontally, the whole spire collapses.
	But it's really hard to do.
	Because it requires taking a stand and putting your feet down in the ground so hard, so far, and so deep that the world, it seems, almost has to revolve around you.
	That's how deep we have to plant our convictions to change the world.
	You know, it is always amazing to me that people say, well, if you do what I suggest you do, you're putting ideology above people.
	Well, that's mad. That is mad.
	Somebody who's for the war on drugs is putting ideology above people because they're putting people in jail for a dislike of herbs.
	I can live with oregano.
	I can live with what was passed around.
	I'm fine. Basil, my middle name, I'm happy with that too.
	But putting people in jail for not supporting your social programs, that is putting ideology above people.
	Saying we should not use violence to solve social programs, that is not putting ideology above people.
	That is putting virtue above everything.
	In Common law, there's this argument, this idea, that you don't have to pull the trigger to be committed of a murderer.
	And the way that it works is this.
	Let's say I come into a convenience store.
	And I don't have a gun, I've got, you know, this guy.
	And I say, give me your money.
	And the clerk Probably Quentin Tarantino.
	Reaches under the counter and he pulls out a gun and he shoots at me.
	But I pull Keanu Reeves and, you know, whatever, right?
	I dodge. The bullet goes off a paint can, you know, in this sort of Roger Rabbit fashion, goes off a pipe, goes off something else, and hits someone and dies.
	Does anybody know who, even under a contemporary Western law, would be charged with the murder?
	And who's charged?
	Is it the guy who pulled the trigger? It's the guy, it's me, even though I don't actually have a gun, right?
	I am charged with the murder because I set into motion the events that resulted in the death.
	I did not pull the trigger. I was not armed.
	I did not have a gun. I did not threaten the person who died.
	I did not touch him. I did not touch anyone.
	I am so charged with the murder because I set into motion the events that resulted.
	Not in Europe. In Europe, the guy who shoots against the prison for life.
	Is that right? In Europe? Unless he's Tony Blair, right?
	If Tony Blair sets into motion events that result in the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, he gets a goddamn book deal.
	Yeah, I was asked this a while back in a debate.
	What do we do with the crazy, violent sociopaths in a free society?
	My answer is, we don't give them armies.
	Or the state.
	Because that's what they want, right?
	That's where they'll go. So, let me give you, so that's one scenario.
	If it is the obedience to the state, if it is the emotional and intellectual and moral support of the state that creates the possibility of the state, that creates the state, then support of the state is this.
	You don't pull a trigger, but it is your support of the state that results in the crimes of the state.
	And it is serious, serious stuff.
	I mean, we all understand how evil Nazis are.
	Nazis killed six million Jews and homosexuals and intellectuals and gypsies and retarded people and so on.
	It started a war, you could argue, that resulted in 40 million deaths.
	Anybody know the death toll for democide in the 20th century?
	States killing their own citizens, even outside of war?
	What do we got? 262 million, and who knows?
	They can't even get within 10 million of the right answer.
	262 million people!
	Who's good at math? How many holocausts is that?
	30? 29?
	44. Thank you.
	That is serious stuff, right?
	People are dying because of states.
	People are being imprisoned.
	I was reading a statistic the other day.
	One out of 28 American children have a parent involved in the incarceration system.
	America, as you know, has a higher per capita prison population than China, the evil dictatorship, right?
	It is savage, savage, savage what happens to people.
	And that's just the direct crimes of throwing people in jail.
	We're not even talking about the softer and, in many ways, more dangerous crimes of destroying children's minds Through this indoctrination camps and public schools.
	And foreign policy, the funding of dictatorships through foreign grants, which is effectively taking money from the poor people in rich countries and giving it to the rich people in poor countries.
	The crimes of the state stagger the imagination.
	There is no possible way to conceive of them.
	If those crimes are only possible because people support the state, then the people in our lives who support the state Or this guy in the convenience store would be convicted of complicity, of being an accomplice in those murders, in those genocides, in those incarcerations, in the destruction of families, of cultures, of countries, of individuals.
	So let me give you another scenario.
	So let's say that you've got a friend, and your friend says, My brother just asked me to park the car outside the bank, keep the engine running, because, you know, he's just got to nip in and make a quick withdrawal.
	He said, make sure I don't leave and keep the engine running, because he's in a hurry.
	He said he has to get to the airport after he makes his withdrawal.
	So maybe your friend is not the brightest spark in the night sky.
	And he's like, okay. And so he goes and he sits.
	He's idling, you know, he's got his M&M on.
	And you go up to him and you say, I just checked, you know, the bank camera's on my iPhone, because I'm sure there's an app for that.
	And he's robbing the bank.
	And he's going to be done in about three minutes.
	So you have three minutes to drive away from the scene of this crime.
	Because if you stay, You are now complicit in the crime of the bank robbery, because there is no bank robbery without a getaway car.
	There's no bank robbery without a getaway car.
	So you sitting here in your car idling while your brother is robbing the bank is why the bank is being robbed.
	Which is why you get charged, even though you weren't in the bank, you didn't pull a gun, you don't.
	But when we tell people the truth of the nature of the state, we are saying to them that these crimes have been committed because of your support.
	that you are sitting in an idling car as people jam guns into other people's faces.
	screaming at the top of their lungs.
	We are saying that your continued support of this immorality is the only reason this immorality is possible and continues.
	That is a harsh, harsh truth for people to hear.
	Is that fair to say? How many people have had that conversation with people?
	How'd it go? How'd it go?
	Hands up, how many people who were like, Damn, I'm out of this car!
	Let's go! Anybody?
	Did anybody get anybody to get out of that car?
	Got a few. How many people?
	Three people out of the car.
	That is great. That is great.
	That's not fair. I like the show.
	I've met a lot of people.
	They get out the car. They're like, damn, I didn't know I was involved in a crime.
	I'm out of here. But the overwhelming majority of you write are the babies if they're not adult enough to do that.
	You have an explanation.
	I may have a different one. We don't know who's right for sure.
	Yes? Look, I'm not talking about an action.
	I mean, I know the metaphor says get out of the car.
	I'm not talking about any particular action.
	What I'm simply talking about is the withdrawal of the emotional support for the state.
	I don't care what people do, fundamentally, because you can't control what people do.
	You can't even control what they think.
	But when the truth is revealed, and taxation is forced, you're not asking people to parse the theory of relativity in Sanskrit, right?
	You're just asking, do you pay your taxes because you're afraid of going to jail?
	Of course, a bunch of do-goers are like, I'd love to pay it anyway.
	Then you go ahead, right?
	I've gotten hundreds of people out of time.
	Oh, beautiful. Thirty years, hundreds of people.
	We might need to step that up a little, but statistically there's more people coming into the world than we're taking out of the car.
	No, that's fantastic. You may be humble, right?
	Because we don't know, right? We don't know.
	But in my experience, and tell me if this is different for you, in my experience it tends to be pretty quick.
	It tends to be like, people are like, or they just dig in.
	Like my daughter, no pushing, they just dig in, right?
	Glad I didn't fart just then.
	That would be pretty embarrassing. Suddenly the metaphor becomes all too tangible and we start talking about trickle-down economics.
	Anyway. Oh, look at that, a good fart joke for a libertarian audience.
	Well, not a good fart joke, but a fart joke anyway.
	It is a tough conversation to have with people.
	Now, what's the explanation?
	Why is it so hard? People say, well, everybody's indoctrinated.
	Oh, that's true. That's absolutely true.
	But it's also true that statistically, lots of people overcome their indoctrination all the time.
	Anybody know? I know you guys are all into factoids, so I think this is a safe question.
	Here's an obscure one. How many people born in the United States changed their religion during the course of their lifetime?
	Anybody know? General figure.
	They've actually done studies on this.
	Because, obviously, the religion that you're brought up in is kind of like an indoctrination, right?
	I mean, whether you're religious or not, you understand that Muslim kids don't teach their children about the love of buddy Jesus and vice versa, right?
	So, anybody know?
	This is a pretty obscure statistic.
	It's almost 40%.
	Almost 40% of Americans will change their religion over the course of their lifetime.
	Some to no religion, some to other religions, but they will change their religion.
	How many people do you know have the exact same political beliefs as their parents?
	Not many, right? I don't know the statistics for that, but let me just look at the religious one.
	40% of people overcome the indoctrination of their religion as children.
	Man, if we had 40%, we'd be free tomorrow.
	So I don't give people the excuse of, well, there's lots of indoctrination.
	Because people overcome that indoctrination all the time.
	Yes, sir? How many adults believe in Santa Claus?
	How many adults believe in Santa Claus?
	That's exactly right. We overcome that kind of indoctrination.
	I'm not even going to ask for a raise of hands, because there's always one guy in the back.
	And you know what? He never has any presence.
	So I don't even want to talk to that person.
	Sorry, go ahead. I refused to get a finalist, but I let go to my high school position.
	And the kids were excited.
	And I did it again.
	I did it again.
	But, you know, I was trying to jump off those things.
	Oh, yeah, well, teachers and testing, right?
	Oh, don't give me that aneurysm again.
	Oh, teachers and testing. Let me just, one tangent, pretty quick.
	Okay, so teachers and testing, right?
	So they're all about teaching the children so that they can test the children because testing is really, really important.
	Testing is how you know whether somebody knows and is doing a good job and so on.
	Try to introduce teacher testing.
	No, no, no, you see, you can't test us.
	Testing is for the children, not for the adults.
	State freeze. Oh.
	Anyway, you know, you've got to be healthy as an anarchist because you go through so much stress.
	I was in this morning working out and all that.
	You really have to be healthy. So let me put forward a, sorry, did anyone else have anything they wanted to add to this part of things, this People overcome their childhood indoctrination because their adult indoctrination goes on and on.
	Every day on the media, every day on TV, the newspaper, the indoctrination goes on.
	The children, when they grow up and they start asking them questions, but it never stops for You are from Europe, right?
	Because only a European guy can get away with that kind of rap, I'm telling you.
	And I say this in all admiration.
	I throw that on with my accent and suddenly I'm Liberace.
	But you pull it off in a beautiful way.
	Look, it's true, it's true, but the difference is that religion does not make specific, predictable It doesn't have specific, predictable measurements.
	The government is always putting forward specific and predictable measurements, right?
	Healthcare is going to cost this much.
	If we, you know, increase this much funding in education, we're going to get these benefits and so on.
	And so, adults know when something doesn't match their expectations, right?
	Take your average status to a restaurant, have more efficient chips, and deliver a bowl of chili.
	What's he going to say? Oh, it's okay.
	It's a government program. I guess I wanted chili.
	No, he's not going to say that.
	He's going to say, that's not right.
	Fix it. So, the fact that there's all this empirical evidence continually piling up, that's available.
	We don't live in the Soviet Union.
	In the Soviet Union, everything was lied about.
	You know, another smashingly successful five-year plan, as Winston Smith is crossing all these things off and saying that it's more chocolate than we ever imagined, right?
	But in the government, we hear about the failures continually and perpetually.
	So, I think that you're right, but I think this testable metric is continually pounding away at people.
	How are we doing for time? Not too bad.
	Okay. So, oh my god, I'm on time.
	I can't believe it. Nobody will believe it.
	So, I'm going to make a case.
	Another case. When you are in the dominant cultural paradigm, it doesn't matter what you do.
	It only matters what you say.
	This is a very, very important thing.
	Anybody come here through Republicanism?
	Republicans? There's some brave people fessing up.
	Good. Yeah, I did too. I came in through the right wing.
	The Republican is the party of small government, right?
	And you know that because that's what they say.
	Like, I have a great notebook.
	Does anybody know? This is stupid statistics time, but why not?
	So, the Republicans of the Party of Small Government, the 2010 platform, what's the new contract with America that just came out from the Republicans?
	What's it called? The Pledge for America.
	The Pledge for America, right, right, okay.
	In the Pledge for America, they say that the Party of Small Government.
	What percentage of the deficit has been identified for cutting in the Pledge with America?
	No, it's not zero, shockingly.
	Two percent? Not even two.
	I think it's about a third of a percent.
	One third of one percent, not of the budget, of the deficit, you see, because they're the party of small government.
	But see, we laugh because it's so ridiculous.
	But the general culture, like Sean Hannity and company, they're like, well, it's the party of small government, right?
	People think that Reagan was a small government guy because there's a picture of him on a plane with Nancy drooling on his shoulder reading The Freeman.
	The federal government grew by two thirds under Reagan.
	But if you're in the dominant paradigm, you can say stuff like Reagan was small government, like the Republican Party is the party of small government.
	I mean, you could go on and on about how ridiculous a concept that is.
	I mean, just look at how the government grows under Democrats versus Republicans.
	There's no difference. In fact, it often grows faster under Republicans because of the warfare state, which has fewer limitations to growth than the welfare state.
	At least the welfare state is limited by the growth in population and bureaucracy.
	The warfare state is limited by nothing because you can bomb everything forever.
	But you can say this stuff because when you're in the dominant paradigm, it doesn't matter what you do.
	It only matters what you say.
	I mean, I know feminists who are still pro-Bill Clinton, despite the fact that he used a 22-year-old intern as his cigar holder, and not a very sanitary one either.
	Because it doesn't matter what you do, it only matters what you say.
	And he talks, you know, rights for women and all that, and he's married to an ambitious, intelligent woman, and so he's, you know, so feminists like him, despite the fact that, I mean, he's just this wretched predator.
	Eliot Spitzer has a talk show.
	I mean, I'm still naive enough to be shocked by this coke and hookers man-whore that he's getting his own talk show.
	I mean, that literally still blows my mind, because I still am surprised at the depth to which culture will sink for ratings.
	Because it doesn't matter what he's done, it only matters whether he fits, whether he's lucrative, what he says.
	So, you can't fight the dominant culture with language, because the dominant culture is based on language, not based on reality.
	It's not based on reality.
	People love to base things on language because you can manipulate the hell out of language, right?
	This is a sophist trick that Socrates was battling almost three centuries ago, three millennia ago.
	Like, if I'm in the woods and some grizzly bear comes to attack me and I'm like, you're a bunny, you're a bunny, you're a bunny!
	What happens? I'm scalped, baby.
	I'm toast. I'm going to be a bald little rug on the floor of the bear.
	It's like vengeance, right? Because you can't manipulate reality.
	But you can manipulate the hell out of language.
	So people love to base cultural language, but you can't fight language with language.
	I mean, it's like strong winds, you fight it by going.
	It doesn't work, because you're using the same thing that's coming at you, right?
	So if you're in the dominant culture, it doesn't matter what you do, it only matters what you say.
	And I'm going to propose that to To change the popular culture.
	It doesn't matter what you say.
	It only matters what you do.
	Words will not save us.
	Language is killing us.
	It will not save us.
	The only thing that will save us, that will save the future, that will save probably the thousand or two thousand people who've died during the course of this speech is the result of the government.
	The only thing that will save us is the integrity of our actions.
	I'm not a big fan of disobeying the law.
	I'm not a big fan of, you know, as they do in the Free State Project, they smoke pot on the court steps and they get thrown in jail.
	I mean, I don't think there's anything wrong with it, and I certainly am not a big one to spit on fellow travelers, but I think that there's so much more we can do that is risk-free.
	That is risk-free. We are fast and loose with what I call the E-bomb.
	And the E-bomb is the word evil.
	It is a grenade that we roll everywhere.
	The initiation of force is evil.
	I agree with that. I think it's right.
	I got a free book on ethics on my website where I take that step-by-step proof.
	But when you use the E-bomb, the pin does not go back in the grenade.
	If the initiation of force is immoral, and if support for the initiation of force is this, the only thing that makes it possible, then people who support the state are complicit in the crimes of the state.
	I'm not saying this is a clinched argument, I'm just saying this is the perspective I've been putting forward.
	I'm perfectly happy to hear objections to it.
	I believe that it's right.
	That doesn't mean it's right, it just means I believe that it's right.
	So we're rolling this E-bomb around everywhere, right?
	But how much do we live by it in our relationships?
	If you have a friend who supports the state, to use an extreme metaphor which isn't actually that extreme, is this not the same as being a black guy who's got a friend in the KKK? Is this not the same as a Jew being friends with a Nazi?
	With the exception that the Nazis in the KKK caused far fewer deaths than statists.
	Is this not the moral reality of our relationship horizontally?
	Because if it is the support of the state, morally, emotionally, intellectually, artistically, if it is the support of the state that creates the state, then people in our lives who support the state are supporting these actions.
	And, last but not least, and I'll stop to give time for questions, last but not least, If I'm against the Iraq War, as I am, and I'm debating with somebody who's for the Iraq War, and I've done this on my show, I'm perfectly happy to have them before the Iraq War.
	Before the Iraq War. Send them a check.
	Go fight. Privately.
	Do whatever you want. Think it's wrong?
	I think you're a murderer. But I'm not gonna shoot you to stop you.
	All I ask in return for the statist, from the statist, It's the same respect for plurality of opinion that I'm willing to grant the statist.
	In other words, if I'm against the Iraq war, will you support, do you support me being thrown in jail?
	Tortured, possibly raped, because I'm pretty.
	Do you support me being thrown in jail for disagreeing with you?
	Because that's what statism comes down to.
	Statism comes down to, I support you being kidnapped and thrown in jail and tortured For disagreeing with me.
	A statist supports the use of violence against me, not in the abstract, not in the impersonal, not in the social contract, not in the collective, not in the national, not in the theoretical, not in the ideological.
	But the statist supports the use of violence against you.
	Against you. You would not be friends with a man who in an argument pulled out a gun and pointed it at you and said, this debate is over, you obey.
	But it doesn't matter whether it's him or a friend of his in a nice suit or a blue costume or a green costume who does the gun pointing.
	The principle is the same.
	So I said that we need to stand so firm on our Beliefs on our virtues, on our principles, that the world begins to revolve around us.
	I also said that you cannot change language with language, that to oppose the dominant paradigm, it matters not what you say, it matters only what you do.
	So, the question is, and I'm not saying this is a clinched answer.
	This is just put out as an argument.
	I've applied it in my life.
	It's brutal emotionally.
	It is hard. You get a lot of attacks.
	You get a lot of resistance. You ever want to see the ferocity of your fellow slaves point out to them the complicity that they have in the crimes of the state?
	Smiles turn to snarls so fast it's astounding.
	It is astounding when you pull people out of that treacly womb of pro-status delusion and you point out the blood on the hands of those who clap the state.
	That's how you know.
	If you've not experienced this, you need to.
	Because that really is our opposition.
	We cannot pull down the spire of the state.
	All we can do Is unravel its base.
	But that takes a ferocious conversation with our fellow slaves.
	Because it is only in the undoing of that base that it topples.
	And that's something we can do without going to jail.
	That's something we can do without getting elected to office.
	That's something we can do at any dinner table, at any conversation, at any time.
	That is available to us at all times, that conversation.
	I don't have status in my life.
	I don't. Oh, my dentist.
	But private sector dentist, at least.
	No, I don't. Look, I'm not going to break bread with people who support criminality.
	I'm not. I'm not going to break bread with people who support the use of violence against me.
	Because this stuff, as we all know, is literally deadly serious.
	It is deadly serious. People are dying by the millions.
	And people are supporting that And the moral cowardice of the average slave to attack us for speaking the truth rather than those who throw others in jail for non-crimes, who start wars, who indoctrinate children, who brutalize the old, who steal their money and give them cat food to live on in their old age, who sell off the unborn to others for the sake of political expediency in the here and now.
	They get off scot-free and we get attacked.
	Come on. We have to stand firm enough on our principles that we do not associate with people who support crimes.
	That is not the highest moral standard in the world, is it?
	I'm not saying go out and get crucified for the sake of the state, tie yourself to a policeman with a video camera.
	I'm not talking about any of that.
	I'm just talking about doing what we know is going to work in a free society.
	A free society enforces through ostracism.
	Doesn't it? Isn't the dominant social paradigm supported through ostracism and maintained through ostracism?
	Ostracism is the most powerful weapon in the human arsenal.
	It's staggeringly powerful.
	I was a waiter. Imagine you had a business plan that said, well, I'm not going to pay my employees too much, but don't worry, my customers would just throw money down on the table and pay them for me.
	What? Or I'll hand out all my podcasts and books for free.
	People will send me some money, right?
	Ostracism is the most powerful weapon in any social arsenal.
	It's what keeps paradigms alive.
	It's what keeps culture running.
	It's what keeps the state alive.
	It's ostracism of those who disagree with the immorality of the state, who expose the immorality of the state.
	So if that's the most powerful weapon that there is, why aren't we using it?
	Because that is what it means to take your values and your virtues seriously.
	Which is to not break bed with people who want you thrown in jail for disagreeing with them.
	To not associate with people who support war and genocide and theft and torture.
	That's the stand that I've taken, and that is called living free.
	How many people self-censor in social situations?
	Come on, everybody does.
	I do. I got a kid.
	Oh, you're a public school teacher.
	Evil! I can't do it.
	My kid's got to have someone to play with.
	I mean, we all do it, right?
	That's not government censorship, is it?
	That's the censorship that comes from ostracism.
	Let's not let the bad people have the best weapon, the only weapon, the only weapon that requires no initiation of force, no risk to your personal property.
	All you have to live with is disapproval and bad names.
	If we can't pay that price, there will be no freedom.
	Thank you. Oh, sorry, no time for questions. No, go ahead.
	I'm just wondering if you've had any success talking with military personnel or anything to attack everyone who comes up with those kind of conversations?
	Yeah, I do actually.
	I had a long conversation with a guy who wanted to become a doctor and he felt that the only way that he could do it was to join the army and get that.
	If anybody has an online connection, you can just check the podcast number and let me know and I'll let you know.
	That is a tough conversation.
	It really depends. If the person is philosophically inclined, I would start with the non-aggression principle.
	But the problem is then joining the army is going to be the least of their problems because it's a whole brain slide, right?
	It's a whole mudslide of problems.
	What I would do is say that in the short run, as I made the argument with this guy, it was all arguments from effect.
	I'm talking more about the argument from first principles of morality.
	The argument from effect is there's a very convincing economic case to be made that If you look at the amount of time commitment that you have in the military and the pay that you get, even counting the benefits that you get afterwards, it's ridiculously bad pay.
	It's ridiculously bad pay.
	Like, dollars an hour.
	Below minimum wage, for sure.
	And not even counting the risk of future stop losses and, you know, being yanked back ten years after you've left or whatever, right?
	Because once you're in, I mean, you know, it's like Carlito's way, right?
	Just every time I try to get out, they pull me back in.
	So there's a strong case to be made that it is a really bad idea.
	I make that case with actual numbers with this guy who wants to become a doctor.
	The increased income that he makes through becoming a doctor will pay off his student loans in far less time than it takes for him to go through the military.
	So I would do that argument from effect in terms of the financial case, and if anybody can, some people are online, if you can just do a search on FDR. I did a conversation, it's called Dr.
	Soldier, because he wants to be a Doctor.
	Anyway, we'll get that podcast number for you.
	Listen to that. I'm not saying that's the only case.
	I've also had some conversations with people who are heavily involved in getting people out of the military, conscientious objection status or whatever.
	And I think it's worth pointing people to those resources.
	I also have a conversation with someone who sits on YouTube and on my website called How to Stay Out of the Army, where I'm taking somebody who's much poorer through that argument about the effects of going into the army and the financial effects.
	It's a really bad deal to go into the army.
	Even if you take the best case scenario, financially it's a disaster.
	It's just that it's more of a hidden disaster and it's more of a sort of secure way of doing it.
	So those would be the approaches that I would take.
	But also, I mean, I would also say Pull out the ostracism weapon, right?
	If you go into the military, I'm sorry.
	We cannot be associated.
	We can't be. Because you don't even support the state with your words now.
	And you're supporting the state with your gun.
	You are now a hitman in a green costume.
	I can't do it.
	Sorry, anybody else?
	If no anarchists have status at the dinner parties, how are we supposed to convince them that they're wrong?
	How are we supposed to?
	If they're wrong, then they're just more to failure.
	Well, anarchism is not convincing.
	As I say, words won't do it.
	Can I take two more minutes?
	One more minute. I'll do it in one minute, I promise.
	So, this is my suggestion.
	Of course, there's online stuff you can do that's amazing and staggering.
	This is the whole reason why we have this possibility at the moment.
	This is what I suggest. Statistically and psychologically, and this is very well validated, more than 90% of communication is nonverbal.
	Nonverbal. Which means that it is the integrity that you embody that will change people's minds.
	It is not the words at your command.
	It is the integrity you embody.
	They've done amazing studies where children as young as two years old can detect whether their parents are racist based on completely tiny little interactions.
	As young as two years old, that is how much communication is non-verbal.
	That's almost a pre-verbal phase.
	You've heard these blink studies from Malcolm Gladwell, where they can predict how likely a doctor is to get sued by listening to 15 seconds of his garbled interactions with a patient, where there's not even any language.
	They can tell the success of a professor with 15 seconds of garbled.
	We process stuff so incredibly rapidly and incredibly deeply that it is not what you say.
	You need to embody what it is to be free.
	If you live in a world where everyone is 600 pounds, And you can't convince anyone to lose weight because they say, well, 600 pounds is healthy and you're emaciated at 200 or whatever.
	All you have to do is lose weight.
	Just lose weight yourself.
	And then, hey, look, I can do cartwheels.
	I can, you know, I can do the maramba or whatever, right?
	And then some people are going to say, that looks like fun.
	Hey, look, that guy can go up the stairs without, you know, without half dying.
	He can throw his kid around in the air without breaking his back or something, right?
	Yay, that looks great.
	He lives longer. It is through the example that you can set yourself.
	You need to be kind of like a portal through which people can see the free world of the future.
	It's not about sitting down with people and hammering them with statistics and arguments.
	It is about being free yourself.
	This is what I'm talking about. Not having status in your life is being free.
	You don't have to self-censor. You don't have to self-censor.
	You don't have to pretend you're something that you're not.
	That freedom will either attract people or it will anger them.
	It will do nothing in between. But if it attracts them, then they will come to you saying, how did you lose all that weight?
	That's what I want. But you're not sitting there saying, put down that brownie, put down those chips when they think that they're already at a perfectly healthy weight.
	It's never going to work. I think that everybody understands what a metaphor is.
	But, you know, if I'm dressed in black and, you know.
	Anybody else? So, I was wondering, first of all, I guess it's kind of similar to what the gentleman asked, but I find that with my interactions with family and friends, I'm able to bring up these topics repeatedly and have these conversations repeatedly and actually change a lot of people's minds and bring them to perspective they wouldn't otherwise.
	Whereas, maybe the one nuclear option is just cutting on contact and Forgoing all those conversations in the future, it doesn't seem like a value, like a winning trade.
	It seems like a losing trade to me.
	And I think that, you know, even in the example, the extreme example we had with the black guy in the KKK member, which is more likely to change the KKK member's mind and so he stops behaving in a way.
	Repeated interactions, seeing that the black person is human and the black person expressing that the KKK member, that what he's doing is wrong over time.
	Or just one time being cut off and then not having that influence.
	Well, sorry, just to be clear, I'm not talking about taxation or theft, decide, right?
	I'm not talking about that.
	I mean, the poor guy outside the bank in the idling car has three minutes to decide, and that's a pretty rough thing to do, right?
	Family or values.
	So it's not a one-time conversation for sure, because it takes people a while to acclimatize, to adjust.
	They may have to hear a bunch of different arguments and so on.
	So it's not a day, but it's not a year.
	Because at some point, there has to be a line in the sand.
	People aren't dumb. People aren't dumb.
	This is not a complicated argument that the state is forced.
	It's not. So, I give people time to adjust?
	Absolutely. It took me a while to adjust.
	Be civilized, be positive, be enthusiastic, and so on.
	But seriously, there has to be a line in the sand, at which point somebody has I've been given every opportunity to understand, and there is a moral choice part that has to be made to stay in saying, well, maybe they'll change their minds next ten years or whatever.
	I think that's too long.
	I don't think we have that kind of time anymore, unfortunately, because this argument hasn't been applied in the past as much as it should have been.
	So sorry.
	What do you do with the people that really believe that we are the good guys, we're standing up for evil in the world, and when you say we're the evil ones, you're anti-American, you're so wrong, we are the good guys?
	Nobody's anti-American.
	Nobody's anti-American.
	Nobody's anti-Zeus.
	We're just anti-error. I mean, I'm not anti-state.
	That's like saying I really hate those goddamn leprechauns.
	There is no state. There's people with guns.
	I'm not anti-American. I'm not anti-pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
	There's just no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
	So I just answer with that.
	I'm not against what you believe.
	I'm just against things that are untrue.

▲