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Nov. 20, 2011 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
20:08
2039 Freedomain Radio: Occupy Wall Street Protests, and Spanking Rebuttals
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Hi everybody, it's Sven Molyneux from Free Domain Radio.
Hope you're doing very well. Just a couple of thoughts and comments and issues that have been on my mind, which I wanted to share with you, hopefully to your valued illumination.
So, recently, at UC Davis, University of California, there was police pepper-spraying peaceful protesters who were upset about increases in tuition.
And it really is amazing.
George Orwell said, it takes an enormous amount of work to continue to see what is directly in front of one's nose.
I think that's very true.
So, a UC Davis assistant professor is demanding the immediate resignation of the university's chancellor over the last Friday's pepper-spraying of unarmed non-violent students who were passively sitting on the ground while in the midst of an Occupy Wall Street protest.
He says, I am a junior faculty member at UC Davis.
I am an assistant professor in the Department of English, and I teach in the program in Critical Theory and in Science and Technology Studies.
I have a strong record of research, teaching, and service.
I am currently a board member of the Davis Faculty Association.
And basically I'll post a link to this below.
He was shocked and appalled, you see, that violence was used against student protesters.
The police pepper sprayed them and so on.
And it was monstrous. The police forced to open their mouths, pepper sprayed down their throats.
One of them, 45 minutes after being pepper sprayed, was still coughing up blood.
Wretched. Monstrous.
But... I always wonder the degree to which academics can really take a strong stand against state power.
So, this is Nathan Brown.
Nathan Brown's research and teaching focus on 20th and 21st century poetry and poetics, continental philosophy and science technology studies.
He is currently at work on two book projects, The Limits of Fabrication, Material Science and Materialist Poetics, which examines the concepts of form and practices of fabrication, nanoscale material science and contemporary materialist poetics, updating the context in which poetry might be considered a form of building.
He wrote a book called Absent Blue Wax, which considers the researches of rationalism and contemporary French philosophy in relation to various radical empiricisms.
And one of the courses that he teaches is called The Real Movement of History, Left Communism and the Communization Current, which seems very pro-Marxist.
So he seems to me to be a Marxist.
Maybe he's some sort of redefined Marxist or some sort of...
He says, this course will be devoted not to the idea of communism, but rather to understanding communism as the real movement of history.
The real movement of history.
So, yeah, he seems to be a Marxist.
Now, the one thing that strikes me, well, there are many things that strike me about this, but the one thing that strikes me is that I wonder how our good friend...
Dr. Brown.
I wonder how he thinks his hobbies are paid for.
That was curious to me.
Examining the concepts of form and practices of fabrication in nanoscale material science and contemporary materialistic poetics.
Who pays for that shit?
Does he think that he is working in the free market?
Does he think, since he's so against state violence, does he think that other people can voluntarily interact or associate with him as they see fit?
No, of course they can't. Of course they can't.
He's got tenure, which is protected by the state.
He's got a monopoly, which is protected by the state.
And if people attempt to undercut him or to grant the exact same knowledge content, but outside his particular area of status power, they will be arrested and thrown in jail.
And if they resist, they will be pepper sprayed, they will be tasered, they will be shot.
So this man is surrounded by a ring of police That allows him to practice these masturbatory hobbies and get paid, I would assume, a fair amount of money to do so.
Academics do get paid a lot of money.
So it's always amazing to me that people who are defended by state power and whose income and career and prestige and power is all supported and made possible by the violent power of the state, which is the definition of modern academia, That they are shocked and appalled when they see state violence.
It, to me, is absolutely astounding.
And it takes a huge amount of work to think that you get paid a fairly good salary for writing things like the techniques of prehension on the photography of Nicholas Bauer.
Or, objects that matter, Olsen, Bergvail, and the poetics of articulation.
Or, the inorganic open, nanotechnology and physical being.
Needle on the real, technoscience and poetry at the limits of fabrication.
It's amazing to me that people think that there's any voluntary free market for this Polysyllabic masturbatory whack jobbery.
It's astounding. So why is he able to get paid for all of this?
Because he, through the state, has a monopoly power.
And he, through the state, has monopoly privileges.
And anybody who attempts to violate those privileges will get letters, will get court appearances, will get sued, will get fined, and will get thrown in jail if this process goes far enough.
So, it's like a man...
Moving in a circle of armed guards who will shoot anyone who steps in his way, being appalled that there are armed guards who will pepper spray people they don't like.
It's amazing. It's amazing.
And, I mean, once you see this kind of stuff in society, you see that we live in a house of cards asylum of rampant, fluidic hypocrisy.
And that, to me, is always quite amazing.
Now, something else that happened was I posted something on their Facebook and...
I've been sort of getting emails and communications because I've been talking about hitting kids or how we shouldn't hit kids.
And people have said to me, well, I tried not spanking my children for a couple of days, but it didn't work.
And so I had to go back to it.
And this came out of...
I posted something... I think it was 2020, back in the day, of Hugh Downs.
And John Stossel, that was produced, that was very anti-spanking, that was produced in 1992, almost 20 years ago, where a bunch of, and again, I'll post a link to it below this, a bunch of parents who spank their kids a lot.
We're confronted by experts who sat down with them, like PhD child psychologists, sat down with them for two hours and attempted to talk them out of spanking their kids.
And it just didn't take, didn't take at all.
And I mean, one of these astounding assholes was hitting his child because his two-year-old child had soiled her training pants.
And when John Stossel said, well, they're training pants.
She's supposed to be learning. This seems like abuse.
It's like, oh, she knows.
She knows. She knows that she's not supposed to.
So, I mean, again, this is 20 years ago.
This was in mainstream media.
These critiques of spanking.
And, I mean, it's unholy to watch if you have a shred of fiber still beating in any kind of empathetic heart of yours.
It's just hellacious to watch.
And so I was really struck by this comment, and I've heard this comment before.
You know, I tried not spanking, but it didn't really work out for me, so I returned to it.
And to me, you know, remember your children...
I mean, it struck me today that, you know, the phrase kidnapping.
Well, your children are not with you voluntarily.
They didn't choose you as parents.
They're there involuntarily, and they have no power to leave.
They are, in effect, prisoners in your household.
Which is not a bad thing.
It's not a moral judgment. It's simply a description of the reality.
They did not choose to be there, and they can't leave.
So in a sense, you can look at children as wives who are assigned to you.
They have to marry you.
Now, you can make a wife who has to marry you love you, but you better treat her unbelievably great if you want to overcome the involuntary nature of that relationship.
But the same thing is true of children.
I mean, my daughter, I parent with the expressly, every day I say this to myself in the mirror, occasionally when I'm shaving.
I say that I will parent today with the goal that if my daughter had the choice to choose any father in the world, she would choose me.
If she had any choice, every choice, every past, present, and future, that she would choose me.
And that's the only way to overcome the involuntary nature of that relationship.
But so the logic of saying, well, I tried stopping spanking, but then I started it up again because it didn't work.
It's like saying, well... You know, I hit my wife.
My wife was assigned to me.
It was an arranged marriage.
It was a forced marriage.
And I hit her for seven or eight years.
And then I tried not hitting her for a couple of days, but she didn't love me.
So I just had to go back to hitting her again.
And doing the damage of violence in intimate relationships, particularly violence where there's such an enormous power disparity between parents and child.
I mean, this is all just the logic of the society, you know, that I... That I grew up in, that I was always taught that the greater the power disparity in a relationship The more morally sensitive you have to be if you're the person in power.
So if two co-workers have an affair, you know, that's not necessarily great.
Companies may have policies against it, but it's not sexual harassment.
But if a boss dates an employee, that's a clear conflict of interest.
Because the boss has too much power for it to be a clear...
So the moral responsibility on the boss is far greater than that of a co-worker because the boss has more power.
So with more power comes more...
A greater moral responsibility, and there's no greater power difference in the world than that of a parent and a child.
And so the parent has a much, much higher moral responsibility than anyone else in the world, which is with regards to that child.
So I wanted to mention that.
Of course, the other thing that you hear, or I hear a huge amount, I mean, and it's truly heartbreaking, it's truly tragic.
I hear that people say, well, I was spanked, or I was hit by my parents and I turned out fine, so what's the problem?
It's so sad. Well, there are a few problems.
First of all, you don't know that you turned out fine.
It's like saying, I don't know, secondhand smoke, what's the problem?
My parents both smoked like chimneys.
And I'm 50 and I don't have cancer.
Yet. That's one sort of issue.
And secondly...
Maybe you won't get cancer, but maybe if your parents hadn't chain-smoked around you all the time, you could have been an Olympic athlete or something like that.
You could have been amazing.
Maybe you've turned out okay, but maybe if you hadn't been hit, you would have turned out amazing.
Do you ever think of that?
Not what you have leveled off at, but what your trajectory could have been had you not been frightened and bullied and hit and spanked as a child.
That's one thing. And the second thing is that it's a...
It's a logical corner that people back themselves into when they say, well, my parents spanked me and I'm fine because they're basically saying, and therefore spanking is good.
Now, if they have kids themselves, they're doing one of two things.
They're either spanking their children or they're not spanking their children.
Now, if they are spanking their children and they say, well, I was spanked, And I turned out fine and I spanked my children, then you didn't turn out fine.
Then you didn't. Because you have either avoided the information, very clear, very clear information that shows the horrendous negative effects of spanking on children.
You've avoided that or you've rejected it, which means that you lack reason and you lack empathy towards your children if you are simply replicating the violence that was used against you.
So if you're still spanking your children, if you were spanked, you didn't turn out fine.
The cycle of violence and aggression And the causing of pain continues.
The abuse of power continues.
And if you have stopped and you are not spanking your children, which I think is hugely wonderful.
I applaud that. I think it's magnificent.
That is the brick-by-brick foundation about how we build the cathedral space launch trajectory to a better world.
Well done. Then maybe you turned out fine, but spanking is therefore bad because you're not doing it.
So, there's just no way to escape that.
You know, the other thing that's really tragic about it is that spanking has been reliably shown to cause some pretty significant drops in IQ. And I wonder about the people who say, I was spanked and I turned out fine.
Well, I would argue that only somebody who was spanked would lack the cognitive ability to understand what a terrible argument that is.
What a terrible and painful argument that is to see.
The anecdotal evidence of one person that can't be verified in any way whatsoever is not an argument.
Somebody says, well, I've smoked for 40 years, and I'm fine, so smoking is not a problem.
Even if that's true, and there's no way to verify it, of course, on Facebook, but even if it is true, it's not an argument.
It's not an argument at all.
And that's what's so sad, is to see what people who've been spanked consider a rational argument, which has nothing to do with a rational argument.
Nothing to do with the rational argument at all.
It's sort of like, I say, ice cream is cold, and somebody attempts to argue against it by saying, I like ice cream.
It's a non sequitur.
It has nothing to do with the debate.
The anonymous, unverifiable, self-reporting Of one example with no facts, no science, no evidence to back it up is a completely embarrassing and pitiful non-argument.
I don't mean pitiful like bad.
I just mean I pity people who've been so harmed by aggression within the family and that their intellect has been so crippled by aggression within the family that they consider that a good argument.
I mean, I mean this with all genuine sympathy.
It's like watching somebody with a club foot saying, my industrial accident didn't mean no harm whatsoever while dragging themselves around in a circle.
It breaks my heart.
It really is just terrible to see the effects that occur.
Because I've not had one single person point me to scientific, peer-reviewed, statistically valuable studies that point towards the benefits of spanking.
It's all just personal anecdote and just wishing away and You know, whatever.
Made-up scenarios and so on.
What if your child's running into the street?
Well, that's your failure as a parent.
It's not your child's failure. You don't make your child pay for your failure as a parent.
And my daughter does not run into the street.
If you fail to keep your child safe, if you fail to build a fence, if you fail to whatever, right?
I mean, if you fail to keep your child close, if you fail to explain to your child about cars, and if you fail to have your child's respect to the point where he or she is really going to listen to you, that's your failure as a parent, not your child's failure as a child.
You don't get to hit your child because you screwed up as a parent, right?
I mean, that would be like slapping your employee because you bounced their paycheck.
It's crazy. But it seems sane if you've been hit.
That's what's so awful about this kind of stuff.
And I mean this with all sympathy.
And people say, well, you can't reason with children.
But everybody who's studied this knows that it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Of course you can't reason with children if you've hit them.
Because you haven't been reasoning with them while you're hitting them.
All you've been doing is inflicting negative consequences.
You have not been reasoning with your children when you're hitting them.
All you're doing is you are programming them with negative consequences.
You're not teaching them any understanding.
You're not teaching them any knowledge.
You're not teaching them how to respect.
You're not teaching them how to learn.
You're not teaching them the why.
You're not even teaching them the what.
You're just teaching them the bam!
That's all you're teaching them.
I mean, that's how bad puppy training goes on.
Not... The firing and illumination of a tender human mind.
So of course you can't reason with children after you hit them.
Because you've taught them that might makes right.
And that there's no such thing as right.
And secondly, of course, even if we accept that children are irrational, antirrational, you can't reason with them and therefore you get to hit them.
Well then what we're saying is that if there is a cognitive deficiency present Then we can use pain as a corrective mechanism.
If there is a cognitive deficiency present, then we can train that person into a reduction of cognitive deficiency by hitting them.
Then that's a universal principle, which means that if you're a parent, when you get into your 40s and your 50s and you start to become forgetful and you start to 60s and 70s and you forget things, then your children should be able to pull down your pants and spank you, your adult children, because aging comes with cognitive declines and cognitive deficiencies,
at least to some degree. And if we train people out of cognitive deficiencies through hitting them, then you should welcome the correction that your children will give you when you're an adult and you forget where your car keys are or where you parked your car or whatever, that they will then take you over their knees on a public bench perhaps and pull down your pants and spank your bare bottom to the point where you feel pain and you're crying and perhaps screaming because that's the principle.
Now, We all recognize that that would be a pretty heinous thing to do.
But it is much less heinous to do that than to hit a child.
If you're an adult, And you get hit by your adult children.
You can leave.
You have economic independence. You have legal rights.
You can press charges.
But if you're a child, you have none of those options.
You are in an involuntary, completely and utterly involuntary state.
And so you can't.
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