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Jan. 9, 2012 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
10:49
2072 Statism, Cages and the Murder of Conscience

You live surrounded by weapons.

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Hi everybody, it's Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Main Radio.
I hope you're doing very well. This is a shout out without too much shouting to those who wrote to me in shocked and appalled squeamishness at the very idea that I would suggest that a friend of yours who supports Wars and predation and debt and inflation may not actually be that good a friend, and that you should reconsider your friendships if you're for Ron Paul and people won't vote for Ron Paul after you make reasoned, passionate, factual arguments.
They may not be your friends.
Well, people refer to this as emotional blackmail.
Oh dear. Emotional blackmail.
Can you imagine? Well, let me tell you.
To people who think that Saving the World is a pony show, a sunshine, roses, and honey-up-the-nose show, I will tell you that it is not.
Because if you think that the problem with that video of mine was emotional blackmail, you simply do not get it.
You do not understand.
And I will tell you what you do not understand.
You do not understand that a statist, somebody who wants government-enforced laws, regulations, rules, and brutalities to run your life, wants you thrown in jail for disagreeing with him.
He wants you thrown in jail for disagreeing with him.
Let's say you're against the war on drugs, like any sane and moral human being is.
Let's say you're against the war on drugs.
And you make your case and you lay out your arguments and you talk about the non-aggression principle and self-ownership and responsibility and humanity.
And your friend says, no, I still think that the war on drugs is good and I want to support it.
What he's really saying is, I want you thrown in jail for following your conscience, for doing what is right.
I want men in blue costumes to come to your house, stick a gun in your face, and say, come into the windowless van with us for years.
Even if you'd never touch an illegal drug.
Because the war on drugs is all about funding.
And if you find it objectionable that people get locked up in cages for carrying innocuous bits of vegetation, Then you should be able to withdraw not just your moral abstract who-gives-a-shit support, but your actual tangible financial support to such a monstrous, monstrous attack upon humanity.
So if I'm against the war on drugs, what I want is to withdraw my funding for the war on drugs.
To withdraw the money that is extracted from me at gunpoint and used to pay people to throw people in cages.
Where they are brutalized and often raped for years.
That is what it means to have a conscience and be able to act on it.
To not be forced to support that which is evil.
Let's say that you're against the war.
Or the wars.
Or wars in general.
What does it mean to be anti-war?
Does it mean that you can go around the streets and wave your little placards?
Does it mean you can write on your blog that war is double plus oogie?
No. Being against the war means not being forced to fund a war, not being forced to pay for the murder of innocent foreigners.
That's what it means to be against the war.
Are you against the horrors of the permanent underclass that has been created by government education and the welfare state?
Does your conscience say that this is monstrous and evil, and it's the most destructive thing that has ever been foisted on the poor outside of the medieval goddamn plague?
What does it mean to be against these predations?
Does it mean that you can wave your placards and write your blog and say to people, well, I don't really think it's that good and here are the facts behind it.
No. That means nothing.
That means nothing.
If you're a cow in an electrified paddock, And you want to spray paint on your side.
I don't like me paddocks.
Farmer doesn't care. Just stay in the goddamn fence and you can do whatever you want.
The fence is your money.
The fence is your obedience, which is enforced upon you, either directly with the gun to your head of taxation or indirectly with the silent pickpocket of fiat currency inflation and debt.
To follow your conscience, to do what is right, means that you have to oppose being forced to pay for that which is evil.
That is what the government is doing, always.
It is forcing people to pay for that which they object to.
Because if they didn't object to it, it would be called charity for Christ's sake.
The government is all about forcing people to act against their conscience.
The United Way is a charity.
They do not force you to support them.
The government forces people to support its activities because it is directly what they do not want to do.
And generally, it is because they do not want to do it morally.
The government is ethics rape in perpetuity.
So when your friends say to you, I want so-and-so to be in power, I want so-and-so to be in power, I'm in favor of the war, I'm in favor of the war of drugs, I'm in favor of government education, I'm in favor of welfare, social security, national debts, you name it.
What they are saying to you, to your face, is...
If you follow your conscience, if you do what is right, I want you thrown in a cage for years for tax evasion.
If you act upon your conscience and cease to support that which is morally repugnant to you and destructive to the lives, literally, of millions of people, if you act on that which is right, I want you kidnapped and thrown in jail for years.
That is the ring of statists who are all around you.
And that is what they are saying to you.
Follow your conscience.
Go to jail. And I like that.
And I want that.
And if you resist that, you are a bad person who must be double-throwed in jail.
That is the matrix, the statrix, right?
Do what is right, go to jail.
That is what your friends, your family, your companions, your co-workers, that is what they want.
That is what they want, even when you spell it out, even when you explain it, even when you show them the facts, even when you give them the basic arguments, even when you show them the gun in the room, they want you hauled away in a fucking burlap sack and thrown in a cage.
For following your conscience for the mere act of disagreeing with them about the value and virtue of certain ways of doing things in society.
So you are ringed by weapons.
And you are ringed by people whose words praise and arm and take the safety off those weapons.
You are ringed by the snipers of statism.
And those who support you, being thrown in jail for following your conscience.
That is the stakes that we're at.
You're ringed by weapons.
And you say to people, put down the weapons.
Let's reason about this.
Put down the weapons.
Let's reason about how to solve problems in society, how to fix things, how to get things done so that people don't get caged, so that the unborn don't get sold off and stolen from.
So that the solution to problems is not always more guns, more laws, more fucking cages!
Let's just reason together and see if we can't find a way to have a society which is not murder-based, which is not cage-based, which is not violence-based.
Put down your weapons, everybody, and let's reason about this.
That's all you're saying.
That's all you're saying.
If you're into freedom, if you're into liberty, if you're into compassion, if you're into human communication that does not involve...
That is who you are surrounded by.
It's people who like weapons rather than words.
And who only use words to cover up the weapons.
To put a velvet glove...
on the bottomless fist of the state.
And you don't have to bring any of this up with people, of course.
What you can do, if people say, well, I think the war on drugs is a good idea, you can just say something very simple, which describes the situation perfectly.
I submit to your guns Before the welfare state, I submit to your guns.
Before the war on drugs, I submit to your guns.
I surrender to your weapons.
But don't you dare think that emotional blackmail is somehow the problem in the interaction of being surrounded by people who want weapons used against you for following your conscience.
don't you dare think don't you dare think that that has anything morally legitimate in any way to describe the reality of the situation you don't have to follow You don't have to go to jail.
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