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June 24, 2011 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
14:27
1940 Porcfest Speech Preparation
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This is take two of the speech for the Porcupine Freedom Festival 2011 as we drive down on Thursday.
So we start with, we are all here philosophers.
We are all philosophers.
Why? Because we're working for first principles, non-aggression, non-initiation of force, property rights.
That is the foundation of our thrust into the future.
And what does it mean to be a philosopher?
What does it mean to be a philosopher?
Well, in many, many ways, it means to be disliked, to be feared, to be held in contempt.
This has been true of all philosophers who've had any effect on the world, and I think we are having strong effect on the world.
But society wants and loves to protect itself from social change.
Society and culture are like dinosaurs.
They never want to see mammals coming along.
The public sector unions want to protect themselves from social change.
The recipients of government largesse want to protect themselves from social change.
The military industrial complex wants to protect itself from social change.
But we've reached the point in society where you can't directly attack those who reason from first principles.
All you can do is insult them.
And one of the things that is very true about being a philosopher, about being a libertarian, or dare we say, an anarchist, is that you have to very quickly or come into the arena with a thick hide for social criticism, for social condemnation.
Haven't we all heard this about a bazillion times before?
Well if you don't want government regulation, you want to feed bad meat to children.
If you don't want government welfare, you want the poor to be served with fava beans and a white wine sauce to the rich.
If you're against public education, you want the children to rot in illiteracy for the rest of their life, despite the fact that half the population of Detroit is functionally illiterate, and they have government schools.
So insults, pejoratives, slander, libel.
Society reacts to philosophers like monkeys in the zoo reacting to threats.
They fling their poo.
And it smells from time to time.
So where do we draw sustenance?
Where do we draw the strength?
Not to gather together and hide from the world because that is not our goal.
Our goal is not a gold sculch with no return.
Our goal is not to hide ourselves in the woods in self-contained enclaves of peace and voluntarism.
Our goal is to win.
Our goal is It's to beat violence.
Our goal is to beat war.
Our goal is to beat debt and fiat currency and all the predations of the state.
Our goal is to beat it.
We aim to win. Through reason, through argument, through peace, through integrity, through love.
We aim to win.
So, we're faced with a paradox.
There's a line from an old Mickey Rourke film.
He plays a misogynist writer.
Somebody comes up to him and says, I hate people.
Don't you hate people? Barfly is the name of the film.
I hate people. Don't you hate people?
And he says, No, I don't hate people.
I just seem to feel better when they're not around.
So we have to love a world that hates us in a way.
That hates and fears us.
That slanders us. So, where and how do we find the strength to save a world that damns us?
I'm talking about mainstream media and general population.
Aunt Mamie is a socialist public school teacher at the dinner table in her family.
Well, I'll tell you where I go in this desert to get my deep draughts of water.
And I want to point out this untrodden path because it is to the well-lit and peaceful future.
Look, everybody who reasons from first principles is slandered in their own time.
That's inevitable. I mean, society's improved to the point where we're not being forced to drink Hemlock.
We're not being burned at the stake.
We're not being banished like Spinoza.
We're not being harassed and threatened like John Locke and my ancestor William Molyneux.
Just people say mean things.
Ooh. They're typing.
Look out. Keystrokes.
But one thing that is very true about the progress of human history, human morality really is the only history that really matters is morality, is that a moral breakthrough, which is what we're talking about here, a moral breakthrough smashing through the lies, delusions and immorality of existing culture.
It's that before you go through, before you break through that wall, the wall seems insurmountable, impossible, and then after you break through, you turn around, you look back, and there's nothing there.
Think of the end of slavery before the end of slavery.
Everyone said, you can't end slavery.
Society will collapse. Slaves grow the food.
There'll be no food. We'll all starve to death.
Is that what you want? Mass starvation for the sake of your utopian ideal?
Society can't function without slavery.
You tell me a society in the past has ever functioned without slavery.
Switch the slavery with the state and we've heard all these arguments before.
And so before the end of slavery, it seemed impossible that slavery could ever end.
And after the end of slavery, it seemed impossible that it had ever existed.
But now, nobody can make an argument for slavery in the West.
It's possible. Equality for women.
Same thing. The sustenance is on the other side of that brick wall, of that membrane of moral change.
And I, I go there for my sustenance.
And I would like to take you there for your sustenance too.
Because that is where our reward is.
I don't think we're going to live to see it.
Maybe if people have had really great sex here, there's an egg and a sperm in the belly that may live to see it.
Hi! Remember us!
But I don't think we're going to live to see it.
But we can travel there because we know what it looks like.
Because what it looks like is our principles made real.
Made flesh, brought into being.
The principles of non-violence, the principles of property rights.
Made real. We can see it in our mind's eye.
You know, like a painter can see the picture in his mind's eye.
It's not there yet. It's slow and painstaking to create, but he can see it.
And it's from that finished picture, that view of utopia, of possible utopia, of a state, of a society, of a peaceful society, of a society without war, without poor, without destitution, without criminality, public or private, with real tangible currency.
With sustainable growth, with a clean environment, all of these things that we're fighting for.
We need to step through time and walk in that world that we are building brick by brick.
And listen to the people who live in that world and who only live in that world because of what we are doing right now.
They only live without fear of wiretapping.
They only live without fear of debt, national debts.
They only live without fear of war.
They only live without fear of an unsustainable, collapsing economy.
Because of what we are doing now.
And they can't be here in person to thank us.
But I've spent enough time in my mind in that world to know what they're going to say.
And what they're going to say is thank you.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.
Thank you for giving us back our children's education, getting them out of these monstrous mental prisons of government schools.
Thank you for standing tall in the face of social attack and condemnation and criticism and ignorance and selfishness and greed and brutality.
Thank you for hanging on to your principles in a truly storm-tossed sea of disapproval.
Thank you for planting this stake in the ground with a chain strong enough that the world begins to swing around your ideals rather than its historical orbit of inevitable decline.
Thank you for blowing these trumpets that hurt the ears of many and are sweet music to the future.
Thank you. For seeing the world that you cannot live in and working to build it anyway.
And we say the same thanks back in time to the people who worked to end slavery, though they never lived to see a slave-free society.
To the women and some men who fought for the equality and opportunity and education ability of women, though they did not live to see it.
It is the vision that starts the work.
And those who start the work do not see the end of the work.
So it is only the vision and only the imagination that sustains us.
And I love this world of the future.
I go there in my mind quite a lot.
I see so clearly the way it is, and the way that people are, and the way that parents are, and the way that teachers are, and the way that children are, and the way that priests are not, and politicians are not, and soldiers are not, and policemen and women are not.
And I ask them, tell me more.
That's my famous line, tell me more.
I ask these people, what do you thank us for?
I'll tell you what they tell me, because I want to pass this along to you.
They say, thank you for your courage.
Because it is very hard.
We are hardwired for social approval.
Studies that have shown that social disapproval hurts as much as physical pain, physical disability.
It's hard to hang on to your ideals in the face of social disapproval.
Very hard. But you did it anyway.
Because you hold the truth higher than the smiles and pat-pats of those around you.
You hold the truth higher.
The truth higher of peace and voluntarism.
Not sticking guns in people's faces and pretending you're getting anything done other than evil and corruption and theft.
Thank you for standing up for the truth.
Thank you for standing up for what is right.
Because it's hard. If it's not hard, if it wasn't hard, A, the world would have changed already, and B, we wouldn't need this virtue called courage.
Courage is for when things are difficult, for when you feel the fear and do it anyway.
We say thank you.
For your love. For your love of the world that can be despite the world that is.
For your love of the potential of humanity despite the slings and arrows of our age of slander hurled at you by the world that is.
Thank you. Thank you for loving those of us who were yet to be enough to create a world that brings us such peace and joy and prosperity and opportunity and happiness Reason equals virtue equals happiness.
You, who live in an irrational and insane world, loved reason enough, loved the future enough to be virtuous and to bring happiness to us, often at your own expense.
There's happiness in this room, there's happiness in this community, but in the world as a whole, which we are not retreating from, but advancing towards, there can be unhappiness, loneliness, isolation, alienation, reading the paper and trying not to have your head explode.
These are challenges. Watching the news, God help you.
So thank you for your love of us and thank you for your love of the truth, without which We would be in cages, not the free fields of freedom.
And thank you for your integrity.
Integrity is holding true to values despite opposition.
If there's no opposition, you don't need integrity.
I don't need integrity to say that the world is round and two and two make four.
But you need integrity to point out the evils of the existing system.
And to provoke those who benefit from immorality, whether in the personal or the public sphere, takes a lot of integrity.
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