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Aug. 19, 2011 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

34:50

1980 Walter Block vs Stefan Molyneux vs Ron Paul!

I respond to an article by Dr Walter Block about my arguments against the value and potential of political action. Eriginal article: http://lewrockwell.com/block/block180.html

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	Hi everybody, it's Stefan Molly from Freedom Aid Radio.
	Somebody sent me this, an article by the esteemed Dr.
	Walter Bloch.
	He is an atheist, libertarian, anarchist.
	I think he teaches at a Catholic university.
	And just for the record, I really like Walter Bloch.
	I think he's very engaging, very funny, very, very smart.
	And I have some criticisms, as I'm sure everybody does of everybody.
	But he wrote the...
	I haven't read this yet, but let's go through it together.
	He wrote, Karen Kwiatkowski wrote a magnificent blog, exposing Reason Magazine as critics, not supporters of libertarianism.
	I would now like to add to her so-far list of one libertarian who trashes Ron Paul.
	My nomination to be second on this list is Stephen Molyneux.
	Not my brother, just a typo.
	Full disclosure, his speech, that's my speech, Attacking Dr.
	Paul goes on for almost an hour.
	And I didn't have the Zitzfleisch patience to listen to all of it.
	But in the first ten minutes or so, he criticizes Congressman Paul for, yes, wait for it, favoring the Constitution.
	Molyneux also correctly allows that if President Paul takes office, we slaves will have far fewer beatings, but claims that this is an insufficient reason for supporting him.
	I did indeed, until recently listening to this rant, have some respect for Molyneux, unlike for Reason Magazine, which has long ago turned against libertarianism.
	He has authored some very persuasive material on anarcho-capitalism.
	But evidently, Molyneux is one of those free-market anarchists who does not really hate the state.
	See Murray Rothbard on this.
	Certainly not enough to support one of the greatest enemies of statism the world has ever known.
	Well, we'll see.
	I've got to imagine that if I were a student of Walter Blocks, and I do sometimes feel that way when I'm listening to him, if I were a student of Walter Blocks and I... I chose a particular essay or speech to critique, and I handed in my critique of that speech and said, well, the speech was an hour long, I really only got about ten minutes into it, and here's my conclusions.
	I'm sure that Walter Block would say, well, if you're going to criticize something, you should probably listen to all of it, because you wouldn't want to jump to premature conclusions.
	The use of the word evidently is often a substitute for actual evidence.
	So he says, but evidently Molyneux is one of those free market anarchists who does not really hate the state.
	I don't know how evidently, it's actually the production of evidence.
	And yeah, I'm a philosophical anarchist, and so I criticized Congressman Paul for favoring the Constitution.
	Yeah, that's a minor point, but I'm against the initiation of the use of force.
	And the Constitution centralizes and legitimizes the initiation of the use of force for a particular group within a specified geographical area called the United States, which doesn't exist.
	So... I'm just against things that aren't true.
	I don't hate Ron Paul.
	Actually, I quite like Ron Paul.
	I think he's very charming. I think he's an excellent writer.
	I think he's a great communicator about economics, which, you know, it's pretty cool when you're a doctor and you're really good at economics.
	That's quite a special...
	That's quite a renaissance thing, and obviously he's a great politician and so on.
	So, yeah, I don't know how it's strange when someone is philosophically against the initiation of force for me to be against...
	The Constitution. I mean, this is a Lysander Spooner argument.
	This goes way back in time. But let's continue.
	We are now at a point in time where, thanks to Dr.
	Ron Paul, people are hearing of libertarianism to a degree that possibly never before occurred in our entire history.
	Congressman Paul's efforts in 2008 were responsible for putting our freedom philosophy in front of the American people in a gigantic, stupendous way.
	His present campaign is even more successful, far more so, at a time when Ron is creating libertarians wholesale and including the entire world Introducing the entire world to the case for liberty, Reason and Molyneux are doing everything they can to stop this process for shame.
	Well, that's easy to misunderstand, so I really want to accept that.
	There's a difference between putting philosophical arguments for liberty in front of people and trying to gain control of a criminal organization to turn it towards virtue.
	Education and politics are two separate things and I have consistently praised Dr.
	Paul for his educational achievements, which I think are considerable.
	But that's very different from taking tens of millions of dollars from people or inviting them to send in tens of millions of dollars With the hope or with the promise that an individual can ascend to the leadership of a criminal organization called the state and then turn it towards virtue.
	My argument, very very briefly, which I've made for years, is that if We have the power to turn evil institutions to virtue.
	Then let's test that power on smaller criminal organizations.
	Let's join a local mafia and try and turn it into the United Way.
	Or even if we don't want to do it in criminal organizations, let's join a local group which advocates for Hispanics and attempt to get it to advocate against Hispanics.
	Because that's what the government does, right?
	I mean, it... It lies to people.
	It indoctrinates children. It threatens everybody with force in order to extract resources and obedience.
	It's all completely stone evil.
	And if we have the power to rise to the top of an evil institution, an evil organization, and turn it to virtue, let's test that theory on something a little more small and a little more localized, like a local drug gang or...
	A local criminal organization, a local group of pickpockets, let's infiltrate them and get them to start putting stuff into people's pockets rather than taking stuff out of people's pockets.
	That tests the theory of whether you can join a group, ascend to the top, and then turn it towards virtue.
	I put this case out years ago, and I don't believe anybody's ever tried it, and that tells me something about whether people actually believe that the infiltration of the state to turn it to virtue is actually possible.
	But to say that I'm opposed to the process of educating people about freedom, I think is not true.
	I'm opposed to political action as the way of solving problems, solving the spread of tyranny within the world, and for reasons I've gone into many times before, it's not because I don't want the spread of freedom, it's because I do want the spread of freedom, but I have significant differences relative to people who think we can achieve it through politics.
	So, fantastic. Now, the other thing that's important, and I'm not telling anything that Walter Bloch doesn't know, but I'm just sort of highlighting it for others, is that, you know, that the entire challenge of economics and to some degree philosophy is the seen versus the unseen.
	It's a great challenge.
	So, to take a typical example, if the government creates a thousand jobs by spending, what is it, usually a hundred million dollars these days or something like that, creates a thousand jobs, Then, clearly, those thousand jobs have been created and everyone who's gotten those jobs is a big fan of the state.
	But what the economist has to point out, to be a good economist, is the unseen versus the seen.
	What I mean by that is that the economist has to say it's not the thousand jobs that are created, it's the two or three or five thousand jobs that were destroyed through the extraction by force of productive resources from the productive sector of society, the free market, private sector of society, to create these thousand jobs.
	It's not the thousand jobs.
	That looks like a plus, and who can argue against it?
	It's the loss. It's the hidden loss.
	Now, Ron Paul has Philosophical inconsistencies, to say the least.
	I mean, he's a pretty fundamentalist Christian.
	I am a strong atheist.
	I can't...
	I mean, to me it would lack integrity at a very fundamental level to say, well, this guy advances a particular course that I like, namely the education of Austrian economics in the general population, and therefore I'm going to overlook This religious fundamentalism.
	Ron Paul, obviously, is a doctor, has studied a lot of science and medicine, and rejects evolution, at least according to the videos I've seen.
	That, to me, is a significant problem.
	So, of course, I get many, many emails from people saying, well, I wouldn't be where I am in the libertarian movement or even in the anarchist movement if it weren't for Ron Paul.
	Well, sure, but that's like the guy from who got the government job from the jobs creation program saying, I wouldn't have a job if it wasn't for stimulus spending.
	Sure, but let's look at what is not there.
	Let's look at the people, if we could ever identify them, and it's very hard to identify them.
	Economists also recognize that it's hard to identify where the jobs weren't created because they're just not there.
	But how many people looked at the Ron Paul campaign and said, okay, so he's a scientist who's against evolution.
	He's got some... I think pretty inconsistent policies with regards to immigration, with regard to sodomy laws and other things.
	But fundamentally, the Christianity, the rejection of evolution, and say, okay, so libertarians love people who reject evolution, who are, despite being trained in biology and medicine and science.
	How many people have turned away from libertarianism because of that?
	It's hard to say, but it's not inconsequential, and it certainly is worth asking that question.
	So, um... So he said, It's troubling,
	I suppose, to think that I oppose Ron Paul as an individual.
	I don't know Ron Paul. Ron Paul doesn't know me.
	Ron Paul is certainly going to continue doing what he's doing.
	I'm going to continue doing what I'm doing.
	I hate the guy as an individual.
	I mean, I think it's interesting, and I think there's a lot to learn about approaches to problems.
	Ron Paul, as I've always said, may be right.
	First of all, Ron Paul may be right, and I may be completely speaking out of my armpit with the solutions that I provide, namely ostracism of statists and intervention in the realm of child abuse and so on, and improved parenting, peaceful parenting.
	That is where the science, the evidence, the experts, the interviews, the data has led me in terms of how we build a peaceful world.
	And so that's my focus.
	I think that politics is a massive distraction.
	I think it is the tail wagging the dog.
	I think that the authoritarian structures within society exploit the early authoritarian structures that so many people go through with their families and with their churches and with their schools.
	And I think that we need to bring children up and to encourage people to bring children up in a nonviolent, non-intimidating, non-coercive, non-yelling way, where children achieve full personhood as early as humanly possible.
	And for my daughter, this was at about 14 to 16 months of age.
	I think that if we treat children as full individuals, as protected, if not more protected by the non-aggression principle, as every other member of society, that is how we spread the non-aggression principle in the world.
	through peaceful parenting and through ostracism of people who support the initiation of the use of force in the form of the state.
	That's my argument. I know that's a very, very brief overview.
	If you want to look at some of the data behind this reasoning, you can go to fdrurl.com forward slash bib, tons of data and interview with an expert.
	And of course, I've got interviews with lots of psychologists and mental health professionals on my channel.
	That's my approach. But I think what's interesting is, and I'm not going to speak for Dr.
	Block, this is pure theorizing, of course, right?
	I think it's interesting that Dr.
	Block, can I call you Walt?
	Dr. Block looks at the economics of the situation because he's an economist, of course, right?
	And so he says, well, look, Ron Paul is doing great stuff in getting people to understand economics.
	No argument, never argued that.
	But what I do is, I mean, my training is in history, and, I mean, I've been to years of therapy, so I think I have some degree of self-knowledge.
	I'm not saying Walter Block doesn't, but, I mean, that's sort of where I'm coming from.
	So what I do is I say, okay, well, classical liberalism has been around for about 150 years or so, and it has consistently tried to use political power to reduce the size and power of the state.
	How's that working out for us?
	Well, pretty frackin' terrible, I think would be any objective standard for looking at that.
	It's been really working out very, very badly.
	You can look at some of the compromises that Ayn Rand made in terms of support of Barry Goldwater and other politicians.
	How did that work out? Pretty wretched.
	Murray Rothbard, of course, was very pro or keen in alignment with the new left.
	And how did that work out?
	Well, not very well at all.
	So, and this is just, you could go on and on about the degree to which people have said, okay, well I'm going to try and use the political process to achieve freedom in my life.
	And the evidence for it working is not good, in fact.
	And it's the opportunity cost that bother me.
	Because if it is about what we can do in our personal relationships, ostracism and furthering and supporting the peaceful treatment of children, if that's how we do it, then all of the I don't know, probably billions of dollars and how many millions of hours that have been poured into political action have actually taken us further away from that starting point.
	Because it goes in the opposite direction.
	And so what frustrates me, if I'm right, is that we put so much energy into political action rather than the stuff that we can actually affect.
	You and I cannot get Ron Paul elected.
	You and I cannot make Ron Paul do the right thing if he is elected.
	And I'm sure that he will try. I have no question that he will try.
	But what we can do is we can affect change in our personal relationships.
	We can affect change in how we treat our children.
	We can affect change in how we treat our spouses.
	We can affect change in who we associate with in a private Personal relationship, situation.
	That's where we can affect change.
	And, you know, call me a crazy loon, but I think that we should start when we want to change the world with that which we have most control over, not that which we have virtually no control over.
	Again, that's just my argument, but it's not an opposition of Ron Paul.
	Ron Paul seems like a nice guy.
	I'm sure we'd have a great dinner if we ever did have dinner together, unlikely if we ever did.
	But to say that I oppose Ron Paul is a bit of a straw man.
	So then he moves on to why is it that we have so many self-hating, quote, libertarians?
	So his diagnosis, I guess, of me and of Reason Magazine is that I hate myself and that's why I make strong arguments against the efficacy and historical validity of political action to achieve freedom.
	Oh, and by the way, I mean, I've also been an audiobook reader for a very scholarly work which is available on my website at freedomainradio.com forward slash free called The Origins of War and Child Abuse, which shows very strongly the correlation and causality between early childhood abuses and the resulting drive and movements towards war.
	I have a tough time with religiosity when it comes to the protection of children, particularly fundamentalist religiosity.
	I mean, the Bible is replete with beat your kids' commandments, and it is really not a very positive manual when it comes to how to raise children.
	I'm not saying, of course, that Christians all beat their kids, but what I'm saying is that that's what the...
	The Holy Book is sort of all about.
	And even if they don't, they're telling their kids stuff that is not particularly true, to put it as nicely as possible.
	And of course, a lot of them on the Catholic side are saying to the children that you are kind of born evil because of your sin, and that's why Jesus died, because you were bad.
	I mean, just... Wretched, wretched stuff.
	If child abuse has some sort of causality, and again, the science seems overwhelming to me in this area, if child abuse has some causality, For the acceptance of violence within society and the drive or the lust for political power, people who are power-hungry, and I'm not putting...
	Ron Paul, I don't believe, is power-hungry, but people who are power-hungry in the traditional Republican-slash-Democrat way.
	All presidents that I've ever read about have absolutely wretchedly abused childhood.
	So, anyway. So I think we move on to that I'm self-hating.
	And again, there's no evidence. And unfortunately, Dr.
	Block has not actually addressed any of the arguments that I put forward in the series about Ron Paul.
	And that's a shame, because certainly if I've made a mistake or made an error in reasoning or made an error in analogy or made an error in my examination of the evidence, I'd love to be corrected.
	I mean, I've admitted quite a bit of fault over the years and changed perspective based on better evidence over the years, so it was certainly my hope, maybe it's still a little further, we're almost done, but certainly it's my hope that People will find errors in my thinking and help me correct it.
	I'm just a guy reasoning to the best of my ability.
	There's no omniscience beneath this chrome dome in any way, shape, or form.
	And yeah, self-hating. I have minor problems with my man boobs.
	But I think, for the rest of me, I think I'm fine.
	Okay, so he says, several theories present themselves as to why we have so many self-hating libertarians.
	He says, consider the following. One, inside the Beltway suck-ups, realize that their very tenuous connections to Washington DC power brokers will all but vanish with a Paul administration.
	I guess that—maybe that's a reference to Reason magazine.
	I don't think that I could be considered an in-the-belt way.
	Suck up. Two, Plano, jealousy and envy.
	Ron Paul has done more for libertarianism than all of his critics put together.
	Indeed, the two do not even belong in the same sentence, so widely disparate has been their success in promoting liberty.
	I would perfectly, reasonably, and with a great deal of empirical evidence, support the claim as true that Ron Paul has done far more than I will probably ever do in my life to support the spread of economic literacy.
	There's no question of that in my mind, and I would certainly include Walter Block in that as well, so I think that's great.
	Where am I at? I don't know, maybe 30 million downloads, 6 or 7 million video views.
	I've spoken at a whole bunch of conferences and so I have done a huge amount to promote the non-aggression principle in personal relationships.
	How much has that freed people relative to people who get heavily involved and spend a lot of money and time in political campaigns?
	Well, I think that you could make the argument that freedom from violence and those who support violence in one's personal relationships probably does a lot more for one's personal freedom, and I would argue in the long run for political freedom, than getting involved in campaigns that don't achieve political freedom, or at least haven't as yet.
	So I don't think it's jealousy.
	I wouldn't want Ron Paul's life.
	I mean, probably wouldn't want mine, but I certainly wouldn't want his.
	Okay, three. Ron Paul is from flyover country.
	He is not sophisticated. He is a rube.
	If you look closely, he has hay on his suit.
	Only sophisticated libertarians thus see him as an embarrassment.
	I think that Ron Paul is exactly...
	He's not at all an embarrassment.
	I think he is... I mean, I think he's amazing.
	I mean, obviously you have pretty significant disagreements with him around religiosity and support for the Constitution and support for minimal statism, which always just lays the foundation for a massively large state again.
	Let's say we go back to 1776, to a tiny state, minus slavery and with support of rights for women and children, you know, we'll just end up back where we are even faster.
	Because small governments breed economic growth, economic growth breeds large governments.
	Anyway. 4.
	Congressman Paul does not look for second-best solutions.
	He is not skilled in the art of compromise.
	He is a man of principle. The contrast between Dr.
	Paul and his many critics is all too glaring.
	Do you know how easy it would be for me to support Ron Paul and how much praise I would get in the libertarian community?
	I think... I mean, I think that I'm a pretty staunch man of principle.
	It doesn't mean I'm perfect, but for instance, I believe in the free market, and so I don't have a tenure position protected by the state at a university.
	I go out into the free market and talk to people, you know, as Socrates did.
	I go into the marketplace, talk to people, and ask for donations if they find what I'm saying to be valuable.
	I think that's more of a free market relationship than, you know, working three to four hours a week for a six-figure-plus salary at a state-controlled, tenured university.
	I think an atheist working at a Catholic university has some questionable questions of integrity around that, which we could go into perhaps another time.
	And that's not personal sniping, it's just that As far as integrity goes, once I accepted the argument that intellectual property rights were invalid, I released all of my books for free, and I'm very happy that I did so.
	I've had a couple of hundred thousand downloads of books, which I think is hopefully useful and good.
	So I have very much gone into the free market when it comes to communicating about the free market.
	And I think that's very important because I think, you know, there's that old statement that says, I can't hear what you're saying over what you're doing.
	I've made this argument years ago that I think that free market professors should step out of tenure.
	And should step out of the university system and should appeal directly to people and get paid directly by people.
	You can't say to other people, you should give up your unjust privileges.
	Oh, you mandarins in bureaucracy.
	Oh, you farmers receiving subsidies.
	Oh, you people on welfare.
	Oh, you people on old age pensions.
	You should give up your unjust benefits and protections from the state.
	And I'm going to tell you this while receiving huge amounts of benefits and protections from the state.
	I just don't think that works in the long run.
	In the same way, I would argue that Ron Paul can't legitimately or consistently advocate that people should expect less from government and pay more for government, which is the only way that the government shrinkage is going to occur, right?
	Unless he's going to default on the debt or inflate his way out.
	No, he's not going to inflate his way out because he's an Austrian.
	He's into Austrian economics, but he then will have to pay off the national debt.
	Or he's going to say he's going to repudiate it.
	If he's going to pay it off, then people are going to have to give a lot more to government than they're going to get out.
	And he's been unable to make that case to his constituents because he's pulling huge amounts of money to his constituents from the federal government.
	So... He's then going to say to other people, you need to sacrifice in order for us to reduce the debt.
	You're going to have to pay more to government than you get out in services.
	But that's not how he's worked with his constituents, right?
	His constituents, he gets lots of money for his constituents.
	Now, I mean, I understand the argument is, well, the money has been taken from his constituents, and therefore it should be returned to his constituents.
	But that's a bit specious, because the money that Ron Paul gets for his constituents has not been taken from his constituents.
	The vast majority comes from Printed money.
	The vast majority of it comes from debt.
	So it's not the money that's been taken from his constituents.
	I mean, there's not zero-sum game with the government.
	The government pays out far more than it takes in because of debt.
	So the money that Ron Paul is giving to his constituents is based on debt.
	I'm not saying that I have any perfect solution to that.
	That's why I don't appreciate political action.
	And I know that it's a complex argument.
	I'm just saying that there are some questions around it.
	Let's move on. So, for some libertarians, this philosophy is only a parlor game.
	I think of Nozick in this regard.
	It is a beautiful philosophy.
	True confession, I see it this way too.
	But it has nothing to do with the real world.
	A poor administration, however, would actually do things.
	Bring back the troops, save the dollar, drastically lower taxes, legalize victimless crimes.
	What then would happen to professional libertarians in such a relatively free society?
	Horrors, there might be fewer jobs for such presumed opponents of statism.
	Well, that certainly wouldn't be the case.
	For me, I strongly counsel action in the real world, and I think that the action that I counsel in the real world and the action that I've taken in the real world is a lot more challenging, a lot more powerful, a lot more effective, and a lot more difficult than pounding some Lord's signs and sending some money in to Ron Paul.
	I don't believe that there's any savior out there.
	I think the savior of the world, the salvation of freedom, and the beating back of tyranny is going to come through personal actions and personal integrity, not through somebody else riding in on a white horse and saving us.
	Uh, six. Ron Paul is too old.
	I'll bet if there were a physical test between the contenders for the Republican nomination, e.g.
	time in the quarter mile, number of push-ups in three minutes, weightlifting, a bicycle race, something like that, Ron would outclass competitors a decade or two younger than him.
	But wait, this would not be a fair test.
	Dr. Paul was a national-class athlete.
	Most of these others are couch potatoes.
	Can you picture Newt Gingrich swimming 200 yards?
	This picture, it wouldn't be pretty, puts that charge.
	It's this picture, it wouldn't be a pretty one, puts that charge in context.
	I've certainly never had any particular complaints about Ron Paul's age.
	Funny thing is, I'm sure for a lot of my listeners, Ron Paul and I are sort of in the same age category.
	Walter writes, I have no idea as to whether or not these theories are true.
	They are only speculations on my part.
	Perhaps they apply to some libertarian opponents and critics of the Ron Paul revolution.
	But if we are to counter them, the first step would appear to be to understand them.
	And perhaps these explanations will lead others to get us that proverbial one step closer to the truth.
	So, Walter, if you are going to counter these arguments, the first step would appear to be to understand them.
	But at least as far as delving into my speech, you only did ten minutes and then stopped, and then didn't address any of the arguments.
	So I'm not sure how that fits together with that we need to understand the opponents of Ron Paul, for want of a better phrase.
	Anyway, it's a short article.
	I mean, I still like the way he writes.
	I really do. And I appreciate...
	I appreciate the conversation and I appreciate...
	I can't really say that I appreciate the criticisms because none of the arguments that I presented have been critiqued in this...
	essay?
	I can't really call it even a rebuttal, but I do appreciate the conversation and I'll tell you why.
	I think that we need to have conversations about strategy, about how it is that we're going to achieve a free world.
	My examination of history and my understanding of how it works is that intellectual revolutions take 100 to 150 years and you could say well this time could be shortened.
	Through the internet and so on.
	Maybe this is true. Maybe this is true.
	But, you know, we have the internet, but our enemies have the internet.
	And they can almost completely control the mass media.
	So I don't know that we can shorten it hugely.
	Introduction of the idea that slavery was wrong, to the credit of Christians.
	It was some Quakers who were instrumental in this.
	It took about 150 years for slavery to end around the world.
	It took a little longer. Mary Wilson Craft Shelley, the author of Frankenstein, also wrote a book called Vindication of the Rights of Women in the early 18th century, and again, took 150, 160 years for this to become what we now call modern feminism, which in its best aspects has advocated, rightly so, for the equality between women and men.
	It takes a long, long time.
	The American Revolution was the culmination of 150 to 200 years of Renaissance and Enlightenment philosophy about the equality of man and the opposition to the use of force and the idea of a small estate, opposition to monarchy, to hereditary hierarchical control, and opposition to the terrible medieval restrictions on Free trade of any kind or entrance into any kind of occupation through the guild system and through manipulations of the currency that have been going on since currency was first invented.
	I think currency was actually invented to be manipulated like most things that are controlled by the state.
	So my understanding is that it takes about 100 to 150 years, probably closer to 150 years before the revolution is even possible.
	Now, you could, I think, argue that As far as mainstream libertarianism goes, or as far as it's penetrated into the mainstream, could you say 1960s, 1970s?
	Possibly sort of foundation of the Libertarian Party in the early 1970s.
	Ayn Rand's works, I think it was 1971 or 1972 that the Nobel Prize was bestowed on the Austrian economist.
	Hayek, right? Anyway, so I think that we're only a few decades really into this kind of revolution.
	I think it's far too soon for a general acceptance of the non-aggression principle.
	The great challenge that libertarians have, I mean, I really strongly urge everyone who's a libertarian or an anarchist or even a small-c conservative, this is the great, great question and problem we have to have to answer.
	We have to answer whether you think I'm an idiot or not.
	We still have to answer this question.
	We have very simple arguments.
	The non-aggression principle is accepted by everybody.
	Every sane, reasonable human being in the world accepts the non-aggression principle in private relationships.
	In private relationships.
	Don't steal, don't hit, don't rape, don't beat, don't assault.
	We all accept that in our private relationships.
	Now here's the challenge.
	You flip to the public sphere and everything becomes the complete opposite.
	So violations of the non-aggression principle are considered evil in the private sphere Violations of the non-aggression principle are considered both virtuous and necessary in the public sphere.
	So the question is why?
	Why is it so hard for people to take a universal principle called the non-aggression principle and actually apply it universally?
	Why do people freeze up?
	It is an emotional thing.
	It is an emotional thing. Because it is a very simple argument.
	Taxation is theft. It's a very simple argument.
	And people's inability, complete failure, most people's complete failure to process this argument, if we don't understand what the barrier is to the acceptance of a very simple argument which is three steps above, two and two make four, we will not be able to affect change in the world.
	We will not be able to affect change in the world.
	The last thing that I'll say is that so many people in the Western economies are utterly and completely dependent on the state.
	So many people are vastly uneducated and in the future they'll be viewed as functionally retarded when it comes to their capacity to think and reason and accept evidence and have the ego strength to correct oneself in the face of better arguments and evidence.
	I mean, the physiology of this seems pretty clear.
	Early trauma breeds ex post facto justifications.
	Whatever early trauma people have gone through, when they are presented with an anxiety-provoking statement, such as taxation is theft, they seize up emotionally, they get a fight-or-flight response, and then they just make up whatever they can in order to avoid the anxiety that that statement creates within them about the true nature of the society that they live in.
	The science is very clear.
	It doesn't mean it's a completely done deal and maybe new evidence will come along, but the science as it stands so far is very, very clear.
	And this is why things tend to be a multi-generational change.
	Looking at something like if Ron Paul were to achieve the presidency, which he won't, but if he were to achieve the presidency, what would happen?
	Well, look what's happened in Wisconsin, right, to Walker.
	What did Walker want to do?
	Well, what he wanted to do was to say to the public sector unions, you can only negotiate for pay because pay comes out of the tax base that currently exists.
	If you negotiate for benefits 20 years down the future, you're taxing the unborn.
	You're taxing people who have no capacity to say no.
	At the moment. That's all he tried to do was to say you can only negotiate for wages which can be extracted out of the existing tax base.
	You cannot negotiate for wages to be extracted out of people who aren't even born yet.
	That is about as tiny a sliver of libertarianism as you can conceivably get.
	A tiny, tiny sliver.
	And this was not even going to affect the existing benefits that have been negotiated.
	That's a tiny, tiny, tiny little sliver of libertarianism that tried to be affected at a state level on what happened.
	People fled. The Democratic politicians fled so that no vote could be occurred.
	There were recall elections.
	There's been massive slander.
	And, I mean, he's had to back down in certain areas.
	And that's just a tiny little local sliver of libertarianism.
	The world is simply not ready. The world is simply not ready.
	We have to accept the empirical evidence for that.
	And so that we can work to actually begin to build a proper base.
	And I will leave you with a biblical metaphor.
	We cannot build our houses on sand, on the shifting irrationality of existing prejudicial thinking.
	There is too much propaganda.
	There is too much trauma among kids in schools and in churches and among certain families.
	There is too little capacity to think rationally as yet for us to build.
	This cathedral called freedom in the future.
	So if we attempt to build it now, I guarantee you what will happen is if Ron Paul gets into power.
	And tries to enact his policies.
	There will be massive strikes.
	There will be riots. There will be tear gas.
	There will be bloodshed. People can make enormous sacrifices for freedom if they accept the moral argument to begin with.
	People go and fight Nazism.
	People fought in World War I because they accepted the moral argument.
	I'm not saying that moral argument was perfect, but they accepted it.
	And therefore they were willing to make sacrifices if they accept the moral argument.
	People are a million miles away still from accepting the moral argument of the universality of the non-aggression principle.

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