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Feb. 17, 2012 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:15:53

2095 Freedom for the Children!

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	Well, hello Stefan and thank you for joining Unplugged Mom.
	I am really honored to have you with me today.
	Thank you. It's a great pleasure to be here.
	I'm glad that we were finally able to get the planets in alignment and actually have the conversation.
	Yeah, I'm glad too. I've been trying for a while because I've been really interested to talk to you.
	I find you fascinating. Well, thank you.
	And I also wanted to return the compliment and say that I've really been enjoying your website and the mind-bending, benevolent, evolutionary chaos of your approach to parenting and education is a real pleasure to see.
	And I'm glad that you're an icebreaker a little bit further ahead.
	My daughter is three.
	I've been a stay-at-home dad since she was born.
	Actually, I guess you could say before she was born.
	And so seeing somebody further down the road who's following a philosophy that I think is very exciting and seeing that it's not falling off the edge of the world is a great comfort to me.
	So thank you. Well, hey, you're welcome.
	That's why I'm here, right?
	And now, you know, we don't fall off the edge of the world.
	And chaos, I guess I do bring chaos to what otherwise would be order.
	Yeah, so I guess what I do is break the ice for a lot of people.
	You know, kind of paved the way.
	You mentioned bringing chaos.
	I've been told before that I've brought chaos to order and I guess the order being the system and me unplugging from it brings a little bit of chaos and some of the shows are kind of chaotic and some of what I do is chaotic but you'd be surprised to learn that I'm a little bit of a control freak in my life and I require a lot of order so I guess that's a little bit of trivia that you can have right there.
	Well, I must confess to being a little bit surprised.
	That's right. Maybe this will be a very revealing show for everyone.
	Excellent. I have some questions for you, Stefan.
	All right, Stefan, I'm interested to know how you began.
	What is Free Domain Radio?
	Introduce us to Free Domain Radio and tell me, how did you get started with Free Domain Radio?
	Well, I mean, the...
	The beginning, I guess the backstory is that I sort of got into philosophy through Ayn Rand when I was 15 or 16.
	A friend of mine who was into the band Rush decided to lend me a copy of The Fountainhead and I just found the The story, the philosophy and so on gripping so I plowed through objectivist literature that led me to the psychological writings of Nathaniel Brandon that opened up a whole new world in terms of self-knowledge and principles and reason and evidence and all of that kind of good juicy stuff.
	And so I pursued that.
	I went, started studying in college.
	Then I went to, I actually went to theater school.
	I was an actor and a playwright for a while.
	And then I finished up my undergraduate in history.
	And then I did a graduate degree in history, really focusing on the history of philosophy.
	And then I panicked and fled academia because I was in my sort of mid to, I think it's 26 or 27 when I did my master's.
	And I sort of did the math in my head.
	I said, okay, well, by six or seven years to get a PhD, a couple of more years to get a tenure-track position, I could be getting my first regular paycheck when I'm 40.
	And of course, back then, 40 seemed like a lifetime away.
	Now it seems like, wow, 40, that would be nice to see you again.
	So, I ended up going into the business world.
	I've been interested in computers and software since I was 11 or 12.
	And so, yeah, I co-founded a company, grew it, and traveled around the world selling software, building software, and all of that.
	And I sold the company with extremely lucky, it seems like business genius, but it was pure luck.
	I sold the company just before the tech crash, took a year or two off, and wrote novels, and and rested from my entrepreneurial activities and then I sort of missed the business world and I went back into the director of technology then director of marketing at a couple of different companies and I had a long commute and I wrote a couple of articles and got them published and I thought you know I've got a long commute I'm tired of listening to audiobooks and the radio just gives me a facial tick with the news so I thought I'll just start recording so I Put a recorder in,
	and I started recording all of the thoughts low that had washed up on my brain's shore, low these 25 odd years, or I guess 20 years back then.
	I started publishing them just as a sort of hobby more than anything.
	And I was definitely interested in philosophy, but I was in therapy for years, and the self-knowledge aspect was really, really important to me.
	I felt and still feel, I think, that libertarianism, which is sort of where I'm orbiting to some degree, is really great at diagnosing systemic or hierarchical or social ills, but I believe that self-knowledge really is the key to human freedom in the long run.
	And so I began mixing that stuff.
	And I think that gave people something that they couldn't get easily elsewhere.
	And so, yeah, I did that for a while.
	And then after, I don't know, a year maybe of doing that, people said, hey, you should have a donation button.
	And I never really thought of that, but I decided to put one out and donations started flowing in.
	And then after a while, I You know, with excessive nail-biting consultation with my wife, I decided to quit my corporate career, my entrepreneurial career, and do this thing full-time.
	And so, I did that.
	I wrote books. I started to speak at a lot of conferences.
	So, yeah, it's the Socratic model.
	You know, you talk about philosophy with anyone in the marketplace who's willing to listen, and in return, you hope they'll buy you lunch.
	That's the model.
	Yeah. Well, you know, you're giving something to the world, Stefan.
	And when you give something to the world, it just has a way of balancing itself out when you're doing what you're meant to be doing.
	And while I'm listening to you, I'm thinking to myself, it doesn't seem fitting that you, based on what you talk about and your philosophy and your ideas, it doesn't seem fitting that you should work for the corporate world.
	Yes. So it makes sense that this is what you're doing.
	I agree with that. And the tipping point for me was, does the world need another software product or does the world need more philosophy?
	It's really hard to justify the former, although, of course, the economic stability.
	I might take a 75% pay cut to start doing things.
	So, yeah, I think I sort of go with what Churchill said, find something you love and you'll never have to work a day in your life.
	Yeah, yeah. You find something you love and the money will come and that's exactly what you've been doing and it really resonates with my own personal story because I was a corporate slut, if you will.
	Can I say slut? Is that okay?
	Yes, you certainly can.
	I think you work for Gateway and the advertising world.
	I worked in the advertising industry, yes.
	I left the advertising industry and then I went back to college.
	And then I somehow or another ended up in retail.
	And instead of continuing to pursue, I went to school for broadcasting.
	degree in broadcasting that I never used because like I said I stayed in retail because I was making so much money and I was doing so well and what I did was I spoke for a living.
	I trained employees. I was very good at selling so I trained salespeople to sell gateway computers and after I had my kids though everything changed because that never felt fulfilling to me.
	The money was there but I hated it.
	I hated my life and I felt like a sheep.
	I felt like a cow you know being herded from place to place which ironically I worked for gateway So after I had my kids… Yeah, because they have a cow logo, right?
	Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
	After I had my first daughter, everything changed.
	And I say that my world changed and my perspective changed, but it really didn't.
	It was there all along.
	It just became more clear and it undulated and I was able to focus more because I realized I wasn't… I wasn't willing to put my children through the same rat race or herding procedure.
	I wanted something more for them and I wanted to start right from the beginning and right from the root, which of course, if you know me and know my show, I believe the root to be schooling and how we're schooled and society kind of schools this knowledge out of us.
	But before I get into that, you mentioned Atlas Shrugged and that struck a chord with, you mentioned, I'm sorry, the Fountainhead and Ayn Rand.
	My favorite books and my introduction book to Ayaan Rand was Atlas Shrugged.
	And I think that really nailed for me what the libertarian philosophy is.
	She made very compelling arguments for the non-aggression principle and for property rights, which to me is foundational to parenting.
	Property rights derived from self-ownership.
	Your children own themselves.
	I was trying to explain to my daughter the other day, you're not my daughter.
	I own you. I may be a coach, I may be a companion, I may be somebody who's got a little bit more wisdom, but...
	You know, people say, don't you teach me how to discipline my kid.
	It's like, that's how they used to talk about slaves.
	My field hand, my slave.
	And so I think that when you take those principles of non-aggression and property rights and apply them to parenting, you end up with the self-ownership of children, which is great.
	And you end up with, thou shalt not initiate force or threats towards your children.
	And that is something that's certainly never occurred in my household.
	It's never been hit. Never had a voice raised against her, never been called names.
	It is negotiation from day one, and she's responded just incredibly well to that.
	So trying to bring that libertarian philosophy into parenting in the libertarian community and elsewhere is quite an exciting challenge.
	Well, when you start from the beginning, With that kind of concept and that kind of idea of non-aggressive anything.
	And it's not only non-aggressive parenting.
	The whole philosophy is very best summed up for me in nothing by force.
	No other human being should be forced against their will.
	We all have the rights, the basic rights to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness in the way that we want to pursue our lives, our liberty and our own personal pursuit of happiness.
	Now I think where that kind of message gets muddied and confusing, and the reason that I think it gets confusing for people is because we've been trained, we've been indoctrinated, we've been conditioned, and we, I think as a society, have trouble really grasping personal freedom.
	And we have trouble really understanding what that means.
	It doesn't mean that life is going to be peaches and cream for you.
	It doesn't mean that everything's going to be wonderful.
	It means that you have not only the opportunity but also the responsibility to make your own choices and then live with the consequences of your own choices.
	And when you apply this in your house, With your children right from the get-go, it makes a big difference in how your family is established and how your family grows.
	Now, my husband and I have always treated our family in this way.
	Nothing by force, nothing by aggression.
	So it's just a natural way to live around our house.
	Now, our children are older than yours and we've been doing this for a little bit longer.
	I don't think there's such a thing as really a parenting expert.
	I don't like the word parenting expert because I think that we're all on a journey and we all just go along.
	But I think where the philosophy gets confusing in the libertarian philosophy as a whole, but if we're going to focus just on parenting, Is when somebody says, like you said, don't tell me how to parent or don't tell me how to discipline my kids.
	And you're faced with the whole ownership thing where you don't own your children.
	Nobody owns your children, especially the state.
	The state doesn't own children.
	They are their own people.
	But then you say to yourself, okay, if you believe in freedom and you believe that people should be free to do whatever they want, then those parents who are behaving in a way that we might not agree with are still free to do things in that way.
	And they'll say, well, my way includes force or coercion.
	And I know that I've run into this problem myself because I don't call myself anything.
	I don't call myself by any label.
	And I'll hear it from both ends of the spectrum where I'm just not unschooling enough for the unschoolers and I'm just not rigid enough for the school at Homer's.
	So I'm getting slung out from both directions and it's okay because I could take it, but...
	Have you run into that, where the philosophy gets confused, and how do you respond to that?
	Yeah, I mean, the parent-child relationship is such a unique relationship that it's hard to fit into a lot of people's philosophical paradigms, right?
	I mean, my daughter did not choose me.
	My wife chose me as a husband, and she can unchoose me as a husband any time that she wants, right?
	My daughter did not choose me as a father, and she cannot unchoose me as a father.
	You know, she's three. She's stuck with me.
	Now... In a sense, it's almost like an involuntarily arranged marriage, sort of way back in the day when this stuff used to be common, as it still is in some places in the world, tragically enough.
	So the way that I view it is my daughter is in an involuntary relationship with me.
	What happens is that people, I think, feel that that means they have to have lower standards because you can't leave.
	Like, you know how the government has a monopoly on something and then they think they can just deliver any kind of crap they want and you'll just live with it because they have a monopoly and, you know, like public schools, we'll get into that, right?
	They deliver this crappy service at a very high cost and because it's an involuntary relationship, they feel the standards could be lowered.
	To me, the exact opposite is true with parenting.
	In parenting, because my daughter is in an involuntary relationship with me and cannot leave...
	The analogy is sort of like if I want a wife who was forced to marry me, to love me, I have to treat her even better, infinitely better than a woman who chose to marry me.
	Because I have to overcome the involuntary nature of the relationship in order to generate the love.
	Like overcompensating?
	Yeah, you have to because she can't leave and she didn't choose to be here.
	So I have to act.
	my sort of general philosophy is I have to act as if she had the choice to choose any father in the world to be her father and if she had that choice would she choose me.
	That is how it has to work.
	And so when people look at the relationship between the parent and the child it's sort of analogous to the state and the citizen.
	I mean you can leave the state but it's usually the country but it's very difficult to just go to some other country that will tax you and abuse you.
	But to me people think that they can lower their standards with children.
	And you see this. I mean, you saw this lunatic on the internet pumping bullets into his daughter's laptop.
	And he would never do that with any other human being.
	He wouldn't do that to his wife. He wouldn't do that to his customers.
	He wouldn't do that to a waiter who was annoying him or someone at a coffee shop who was playing music on the laptop too loud.
	But he feels he can with his daughter.
	And so I think that people feel in that involuntary relationship that you can lower your standards.
	My argument is no, that's exactly where your standards have to be the very highest to compensate for that involuntary nature.
	I hope that ramble made some kind of sense.
	Yeah, it makes perfect sense.
	With that particular example, I have to wonder whether or not he actually would behave like that in another situation.
	And I think that's something, when I look at that situation, I say to myself, there's so much here that I don't know.
	I don't feel like I'm in a place to really make comment on this or really insert my opinion about this because there's so much here that I don't know.
	I don't really know what their dynamic is.
	I don't know what's going on at home.
	I don't know what was going on in his mind.
	I definitely don't know what kind of person his daughter is.
	Not saying that I'm not condoning his behavior at all, but there's so much that I don't know, and I was fascinated by Just how many people there are out there that to me arrogantly feel that they know the situation and they can comment on the situation and say what he should have done and what he should not have done.
	And that's a really, it's a really good example to me, it's a microcosm of so many other problems that arise in our society Because we think we know what's going on in the situation and we say everything that we have to say about the situation.
	It's really very narcissistic because it's all about what we think and it's all about how we see it and what we know about it.
	But we really don't know.
	And when we're talking about philosophy, I think one of the most important lessons that any of us has ever learned from studying the great philosophers is that the only thing we know for sure is that we don't know.
	You know, so that's a really...
	I'm glad that you brought up that example because it does really exemplify behavior and how we are responding to him.
	But also, let me ask you more about...
	Let's use that as an example and say, okay, clearly there was some kind of aggression here and there was forced behavior here.
	Now, we don't know why he did.
	We don't know what his motivations were really and we don't know the rest of the story that's going on in their household.
	But... This is a very typical behavior, not shooting the laptop, but this aggressive kind of behavior is very typical in this day and age.
	And I think that we've been conditioned to behave this way, and that's why people behave this way.
	And my belief is that we're conditioned in the school system from the time we're very, very young.
	So that kind of brings me to my next question to you.
	I know that you're a relatively new father.
	You said your daughter is three.
	Right? So when it comes time where she's four or five years old, I'm assuming that you of all people will not compulsively enter her into the school system.
	Am I correct in assuming?
	You are absolutely correct in that.
	Yes, you are absolutely correct. Talk about that a little bit.
	What? Oh, it's horrible.
	It's a horrible decision to have to make, right?
	I mean, I went to boarding school when I was six, so I went to the real traditional, let's groom them for a colonial rule kind of route, or at least I was forced that way.
	I certainly won't send her to public school.
	I can't imagine any extremity of situations where that would be the case.
	If she wants to try out a Montessori school or some other form of education where we have more control as customers, I would be fine with that.
	But if she wants to stay home with us, and we've begun to talk about it a little bit with her, and so far her opinion is that she wants to stay home, which I think is great.
	You know, people – I was talking to a parent the other day who was complaining that his parents want to stay – his kids want to stay up.
	With them and how frustrating that is, I said, dude, that's a compliment.
	You know, it means that they want to spend time with you rather than go to bed.
	That's, you know, it's like being on a first date and the woman doesn't want to go home.
	That's good, isn't it? I mean, if she calls in sick after 15 minutes, that's not a compliment.
	But if she wants to stay out, that's good.
	So, yeah, I mean, I'm fascinated by...
	I mean, I was blown away by homeschooling because I didn't know anyone and never heard about it.
	Looking into the Sudbury School, looking into unschooling.
	I talked to Peter Gray, a professor, I think, of psychology about this kind of stuff.
	I'm fascinated. Now, so far, her thirst for knowledge, we're just starting on reading, her thirst for knowledge and her...
	Excitement at mastering skills is such a force of nature that I don't think that there's any way to stop it.
	I think all I can do is try and channel and facilitate it.
	I don't think I need to urge her to learn, urge her to want to do things.
	She takes such a joy.
	In mastering things and learning that, I think the best I can do is be available as a resource, give her the materials she needs, hire the tutors of things that I don't know, and if she wants to stay at home with us, she can.
	If she wants to try school, she can.
	If she doesn't like school, she can come home.
	I mean, that's where I'm sitting right now, if that makes any sense.
	Yeah, of course it makes sense, and I think that's what a lot of parents would say, no matter where they are in their parenting journey, whether it's for a young child such as yours, and there are also parents of teenagers and older kids that would say the same thing.
	If this is something they'd like to explore, then I'm all for it, but they draw the line at public school, which is something that you've already mentioned.
	Why would you draw the line at public school?
	What is wrong with the public school system, Stefan?
	Tell me. Tell me like I don't know.
	How much time and bandwidth do we have?
	You know, interestingly enough, I mean, it has something to do with the teachers, but I think it also has a lot to do...
	One of my main objections to public school is the problems with peer relationships.
	I think that's underestimated.
	People always say, well, the public schools will be teaching things against my values.
	But in her life, when she grows up and becomes an adult, or even as a teenager, she's going to be exposed to Ideas, arguments, approaches that are radically at odds with things that our parents have taught her.
	And so we have to teach her how to think, not what to think, and assume that everything's going to work out from there, which I think is the case.
	But I am concerned.
	I think the major damage that was done to me in my education was done to me through peers rather than through teachers.
	I mean, the teachers were mostly just indifferent and bored and droning, and we had a few ones who were okay.
	The major damage was the Lord of the Flies madness of the peer relationships, and I think that would be my major concern with public school.
	I think when you force children who come from a wide range of parenting backgrounds, to put it as nicely as possible, you force them into this sardine can, you lock them up basically for six hours a day with each other.
	It's like trying to find your best friend in prison.
	I just don't think it's a very good social environment.
	Well, it's a manufactured artificial social environment.
	It's not a healthy social environment whatsoever, which is why the question of socialization is usually a question that drives me bananas, because this socialization that's going on in school, it's a process.
	It's a socialization process.
	They're doing something to the children, and it's a very bizarre manufactured and artificial situation.
	So you're absolutely right. That is one of the top concerns, in my opinion also, of the things that are Necessarily not right about the school system.
	Something else that I talk about a lot on the show is that society is, people are purposely manipulated through the school system.
	That it is the root that they get children when they're four or five years old and they condition them to believe a certain way and to think a certain way and to feel a certain way toward government and to accept government in a very particular way.
	And kind of to accept the artificial reality as real and to accept the illusion of left-right paradigm as real and to accept the illusion that government is the king and that you're there to serve them.
	And then that's why we have these compulsive behaviors like automatically getting permission to drive and permission to marry through a marriage license and everything else because we accept this from the time we're children.
	So I actually think that it's a very purposeful indoctrination system.
	And do you have any thoughts on that?
	I know that you've talked about it somewhat on your show, but what are your thoughts as far as whether or not it's a purposeful indoctrination to accept an artificial reality?
	Well, I think that's right.
	I think it's evolved over a long period of time, as I'm sure you're aware, probably even better than I. You know, it came out of the Prussian world.
	I agree.
	I mean, there's so much that's wrong with it.
	You know, we could do 10 shows on that.
	I have. Fundamentally, yeah, you've got that market cornered.
	But fundamentally, my issue is what I remember most from school is sit down, shut up, and I'm going to feed inconsequential data into your gullet like a mother-turn regurgitating food that you ripped from the ocean.
	You know, you said a phrase that you said that struck me was to teach them to think a certain way.
	But that, of course, is not to teach them to think at all.
	What I hated was being stuffed with conclusions.
	What I hated was being stuffed with data that made no valid sense to me.
	There was no reason to learn it and that I knew I was never going to use again.
	And that learning was a passive thing.
	Learning was something that was not directed by your interest as a child.
	Learning was directed not even by the teacher's interest because the teachers, I could see them chafing against the curriculum, the more creative ones.
	That it's anonymous people in anonymous offices in anonymous cities from the viewpoint of a kid who's making the whole thing happen like a bunch of marionettes dancing on these, not even strings, like steel cables or something.
	It's so little give. And just the lack of flexibility, the lack of possibility, the lack of interaction.
	I mean, I just remember being so bored.
	I literally felt like dust was settling on the nooks and crannies in my brain in public school.
	And I think boredom is one of the worst punishments to inflict upon the young.
	And of course, now there is, of course, the looming issue of drugging of children as well, particularly those who are energetic and intelligent.
	And That is something I could never, ever countenance.
	So I think there's that issue as well.
	So, I mean, there's so much that's wrong with it, but I agree with you.
	I think it really is designed to turn out good little citizens.
	Just last thing I'll say, I was at the library a little while back, playing with my daughter and some other kids, and one of the kids...
	Suddenly broke into our national anthem.
	Kids all jumped up, saluted, and stiff-backed, chanted out this national anthem, and they were three and four years old.
	And I was just like, oh my god, I mean...
	Do you find that creepy?
	That is incredibly creepy.
	That is like a mix of national socialism and 1984.
	And I just find that stuff really, really, really, really creepy.
	And I just, you know...
	I can't teach her about Santa Claus.
	I can't teach her about Zeus as a real thing.
	And I can't teach her that countries and governments are real and have legitimacy.
	But of course, if I turn her over to be educated by the state, you're giving your children to the state to educate.
	If that doesn't send a chill up your spine or at least cause you to hesitate, then I think you've missed the point.
	Yeah. As you're describing that scenario to me, I'm actually feeling sorry for the children because that is actually very creepy to me.
	In my mind, the way I'm picturing it is like a bad sci-fi movie.
	It's really creepy.
	frustrated that more people out there don't find it just as creepy because that is it really does epitomize reactive behavior just it's it's complete Pavlov dogs kind of behavior we're going to ring this bell and you're going to salivate and we're going to say that you know we're going to say the national anthem and you're going to stand in your and salute and you know don't even get me started on the actual words of the the pledge of allegiance and the whole thing about pledging your allegiance to an object and there's
	It's really just this training center.
	Which brings me back then to the question of, you said yourself a couple of times that you would draw the line at public school and not subject your child to that kind of situation.
	Because that really is a forced situation.
	It's force-fed.
	And I agree with you that teaching them a certain way to think is really not teaching people to think at all.
	It's giving them an idea and forcing them to accept that idea.
	And I agree 100% that we don't – something that we do in my house also, we don't teach our kids what to think.
	We don't tell them what to think.
	We try to encourage them to think.
	And we try to be the example.
	And that's all about what our family is.
	And the education part is kind of just incorporated into our family life.
	There's no separate time that we're gonna, you know, learn.
	We're just always learning and it's incorporated into our lives.
	But there are some things that I find important that I make a point out of talking about with my kids and going over with my kids.
	Now, people have said to me, well, if it's about them and it's about their choice and free choice and, you know, nothing by coercion, then if they decided they wanted to try out school, why wouldn't you put them in?
	And to me, that falls into a different category because that's a protective mechanism.
	Yeah, I mean, if my daughter wants to try driving a car at the age of six, I'm not going to let her.
	If my daughter wants to grab a fistful of medicines and stuff them in her mouth, not that she would, but I wouldn't let her.
	She does not have the choice because she doesn't have the context and she doesn't have the knowledge.
	To decide things that are against your self-interest in the long run.
	My other sort of philosophical principle is do that which your children will thank you for when they get older, right?
	So my daughter does not want me to brush her teeth or did not want me to brush her teeth because she found it uncomfortable or, you know, But, you know, I'm pretty sure that when she's 16 and has a pearly white smile that she's not going to sit there and say, I'm still angry that you brushed my teeth when I was a kid.
	What will they thank you for in time?
	And they don't have the knowledge of the context to understand why the public school system is dangerous for them.
	And so, yeah, I mean, I don't have the option as a parent, as you know, right, to put them in situations that they want at the moment.
	You know, it's like the breakfast of M&Ms, you know, sorry, but...
	You know, I have to live with you this afternoon and so do you, so we can't, right?
	Well, it's very interesting and it's very refreshing to hear you say this because you seem to be coming from the same perspective where things shouldn't happen by force and learning, especially learning, should never happen by force feeding or by coercion and certainly not by conditioning, but there's still that balance of You have a role to play as a parent and you know where danger lurks and you know where danger lies and it's your job to protect them from that danger.
	So, like, if they want to have a breakfast of M&Ms, believe me, Stefan, there are many, many, many parents out there that have actually called me and accused me of being abusive And coercive because I would not let my child have M&Ms for breakfast or chocolate or candy bar for breakfast.
	So I was interested to talk to you about that, not using that specific example, but if a kid wants to go to school or if a kid wants to try heroin or wants to pick up a handful of razors when they're two years old.
	It might sound outrageous, but believe me, there is this whole paradigm of people that are out there that would actually say, well, Yes, they should be allowed to have whatever they want for breakfast and they should be allowed to go to school if they want to go to school even if it is a dangerous situation because they have the freedom of their own choice.
	Now you're coming along and clearly, clearly you know what you're talking about and you have a brilliant show and you talk about brilliant concepts and you understand the concept of of freedom and education.
	You understand the concept of non-cohorsing and non-aggressive parenting, but you seem to also get that there is a role here.
	There is a context here, and I think that we do ourselves and we do our children a disservice if we don't try to pass along our knowledge from one generation to the next.
	And to me, that's very natural.
	This is what Native people did all throughout history.
	They passed down their wisdom and their knowledge from one generation to the next.
	Is this making sense to you?
	It does. It's a very volatile area for people to talk about because this is where the endless arguments for spanking basically arise out of the ethics of emergencies.
	You've heard this a million times.
	If your daughter is reaching for a bucket of boiling water on the stove, you slap her hand back so that she learns not to do that or if she's going to run on the street.
	That has never arisen in my household.
	First of all, No, I don't think it—yeah, spanking is not something that I would ever condone.
	I wasn't meaning to— No, no, I know you weren't.
	I certainly know you weren't, but I just sort of want to point out for the other parents who, you know, where this is still 90% of parents, 80 to 90% of them are still hitting their kids, right?
	So for the majority of people who are out there, they think that if there are these emergencies, then somehow the rules change or these things are justified.
	It's not. I mean— If your child is in a situation of danger, that's not the fault of the child, that's the fault of the parent.
	You are responsible for creating a safe environment for your children.
	Now, of course, my daughter is born with a brain that's about a third, or maybe less, a third the size of what she's going to end up with in adulthood.
	So naturally, she cannot process the consequences of her own actions.
	She's still working out yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
	And so she doesn't know...
	The way that we explained to her is you need to eat your vegetables because otherwise your poops are going to be owie.
	The generally abstract thing of like you'll grow and then she can just counter with, but I like being small.
	And what do you say then? Yeah, yeah.
	And so it really is just the challenge is to recognize that children – you know, freedom is really around recognizing the consequences of your actions.
	You're really not free. If you live consequence-free, in a sense, you're not really free because you can't weigh costs and benefits.
	Well, there's no freedom in ignorance.
	No, there's no freedom and ignorance.
	That's right. And so it's like saying somebody's free if they have no idea about nutrition.
	Well, no, they're just free to get diabetes and get fat and, you know, whatever it is.
	Right, exactly. And so knowledge really gives you choices that are rational, and children have, you know, we know this.
	I mean, scientifically, this is very clear.
	Children are impulse-driven in many ways.
	They don't even have the capacity to figure out the consequences of their actions in the long run.
	They lack knowledge. Why are we trying to make my daughter eat a broccoli rather than a yummy M&M? I feel we're being sponsored by little guys.
	But from her standpoint, it's just simply arbitrary cruelty to not give her what she wants or to give her something that she doesn't want nearly as much.
	But our challenge then as parents is to find a way to explain it to her in a way that makes sense.
	And she really does understand it.
	As long as it fits into a system of knowledge that she's familiar with and it's framed in ways that have consequences that mean something for her.
	So she doesn't want to go to bed and then she doesn't want to get up in the morning.
	That's a natural thing.
	She gets that from me. And so, you know, when she doesn't want to go to bed for her nap, I have to remind her.
	Well, you know, you remember how you don't want to go to bed for your nap, but then when I have to wake you up, you're very, very tired.
	Well, if you go to bed earlier, then you will wake up on your own, which is much more pleasant.
	She can really start to understand these things and make better decisions, but it's my job to substitute my knowledge for hers until she rises to the level.
	We don't just throw a bunch of books at her and expect her to learn how to read.
	We substitute our knowledge and transfer our knowledge.
	And the same thing, I think, is true of dangerous situations and consequences and so on.
	They're children. I mean, of course they can't entirely self-monitor.
	Otherwise, they'd be out there with jobs.
	Right. You know, I think it's important that I like the example of diabetes that you brought up because I believe that freedom, true freedom, comes from knowledge, through the liberation of the mind and through knowing.
	And that's something that, it's part of the decision that I made to home educate my kids in the first place because I wanted them to be free.
	Therefore, I wanted them to know.
	I wanted them to be intellectually curious.
	And I felt that the school system would just completely strangle that out of them.
	They would not have intellectual curiosity anymore.
	I wanted them to learn how to think.
	I wanted them to learn how to learn.
	And I knew that the school system couldn't do that for them.
	And I wanted this for them because I wanted them to want for themselves.
	I wanted to give them the opportunity that I didn't feel that I had as a child to really find freedom before they became adults.
	And I had to struggle to find my own personal freedom.
	And I like the example that you use where you can think that you have this total food freedom by eating anything you want, but really you're still enslaved because you're still going to live with the consequences of Of not eating the proper diet.
	And the same goes through for knowledge and understanding our world and understanding government and politics.
	If you don't understand how the system works, if you don't understand the corruption, if you don't understand how the game is played, then you're victim to it.
	You're destined to be enslaved by it and victim to it.
	So there is truly knowledge, there is truly power and freedom in understanding.
	But that doesn't necessarily mean that we have to force the information into them.
	And I think you're providing a very good example right now because if you start right from the get-go with the children, and this is what I found because they were never in school, you start right from the get-go treating them with respect and talking to them.
	And providing them with an explanation and knowing that they deserve an explanation instead of just like, no, I'm going to take your M&Ms and I'm going to force you to eat this broccoli.
	You don't have to force the food down the child's throat, but it is important that you explain the difference and the consequences.
	And when you start from the beginning, it never has to become a forced or coercive situation.
	So I'm glad that you're bringing this up because I think you would agree with me that there is freedom in Yeah, but there's only freedom in knowledge.
	And I was also, when you were talking about, you used a wonderful phrase, I want them to want it, right?
	You want to internalize the joy and love of learning, which of course is the exact opposite.
	And also, I mean, I don't know if this was your experience too, I'm sure that it was.
	Lorette, but did you find in school that there was a pretty grinding medieval relentless anti-intelligence, anti-ability, anti-intellectualism that came from the peers?
	You know, the brainiac, the nerd, you know, like if you do well… Yes.
	A keener, a suck-up, you know, a teacher's pet.
	That is something I want her to recognize because, I mean, I think she's fiercely intelligent.
	Hopefully she comes by that honestly.
	And I don't want her to go into a situation where intelligence is viewed as a negative.
	And I really felt that was very much going on and for reasons I haven't particularly figured out yet.
	That anti-intellectualism, that anti-intelligence was so strong.
	In every school, I went to school in a bunch of different countries, and every single school, it was the same thing.
	If you stand out intellectually, that marks you as way down on the totem pole, and I really don't want her to get that association at all.
	Stefan, I think you do have it figured out.
	You're saying that you haven't quite figured it out yet, but I think you have it figured out because I know that I have it figured out.
	Well, first of all, I agree 100%.
	I know it happens to men as well as women where if you're smart, then there's some kind of negative association with that, a geek or a dweeb or whatever.
	Even today, we can look back as adults and say, yeah, well, The geeks are all making all the software money and the engineering money and everything else, but that doesn't matter for a kid that's 15 years old in high school and they're being made fun of.
	Now, the effect that it had on me is I'm a girl, you know, so it was a totally different peer situation for me, which we talked about peer situations and we know how traumatic that can be and how much that can affect.
	I meant to say affect and I said in fact, that was Freudian.
	I didn't do that on purpose, but I could have.
	How much it could affect a human being, especially in the teenage years.
	Now, what happened to me was I was actually in situations where I would pretend to be dumb because I didn't want that stigma.
	I didn't want that going on.
	And my closest friends knew that it was an act and it would irritate them and aggravate them, but especially when I was around guys and, you know...
	I acted flighty and dumb because they seemed to like that.
	They seemed to dig that. You know, I wanted to go out with guys and I wanted plenty of dates, so I acted dumb.
	But now that backfired because I dated dumb guys.
	And I got very frustrated very quickly and very easily.
	So, you know, by the time I got older and I met my husband, it was like a breath of fresh air to say, no, you know what?
	You have a brain. You're smart.
	I'm going down this direction.
	But it really can, when you think about that, if that didn't happen to me, I could have went in a very strange direction.
	Now, looking back now, knowing what I know now, I know that it's on purpose and I know why it happens that way and so do you, Stefan.
	The school system doesn't want intelligence.
	They don't want people to think.
	They don't want people to learn.
	They don't want people to know because there's freedom in knowing and there's power in knowing.
	If you know, Then you know how to avoid being ensnared.
	You know how to avoid being enslaved, okay?
	They don't want everybody to know how to avoid that.
	They don't want that. They want people to accept slavery like it's reality.
	So they insert this purposeful kind of weird social structure and pattern where intelligence is actually seen as a bad thing and a negative thing.
	So when you say you don't quite know why, I think you do.
	Yeah, that's interesting. So you're saying that they kind of have to get the herd to shun the smarter ones because they might point out that they're all heard and they're enclosed and maybe freedom and the wild steps of the frontier would be better.
	That's interesting. I'm trying to think of the mechanisms by which that was implanted because, of course, the teachers in general seem to be quite positive about my intelligence when I was younger.
	But, yeah, among the peers...
	Well, the peer situation, the social peer situation has a bigger impact on children than the teachers do.
	I mean, I don't think that all teachers are innocent, but I think most of them are because I think they enter the profession with noble reasons and noble causes because they're products of the system themselves, too.
	And they think, well, this is what you do, and I want to help kids, and I want to help kids learn.
	And then... It's only usually after about five or six years that they start to get exhausted because they feel just as oppressed, which was the story with John Telegato, why he left.
	And speaking of John Telegato, you had mentioned that your daughter is fiercely intelligent.
	And I believe you.
	And I think most of our children are fiercely intelligent.
	And John Telegato said that we're all born geniuses, that children are all geniuses until it gets bred out of them.
	Which is, I think, something else that happens in society.
	And from a libertarian perspective, there is no freedom anymore.
	But, you know, I guess that's the doom and gloom part.
	But the good news is that I think voices like yours and mine and plenty of other voices out there, we're out there and we're being vocal.
	And more and more people, and I know that I'm meeting more and more people that are beginning to see it, just like you and I do.
	And the knowledge is spreading.
	Therefore, the freedom is spreading.
	Yeah, the most revolutionary act is parenting, is peaceful parenting, is philosophical parenting.
	To treat children with all of the respect that their personhood deserves and requires is the most revolutionary.
	People say, politics, let's do politics, let's do agorism, let's trade in silver.
	And those find their stopgap measures or whatever.
	But to me, the fundamental revolutionary act is to raise your children in a way that is fundamentally incompatible with the existing system.
	Yeah. I know that sounds like you're trying to make a square peg into a round hole, but the reality is that to raise children according to rational principles, and we all accept this.
	We all accept that women must be treated equally.
	We all accept that minorities are not unequal.
	We just have that constant widening of personhood that is the essence of progress in the moral process.
	We've just got to start pushing it out to children, and if children are treated with all the respect and personhood and extra special loving source of human rights that they deserve and earn, That is a way to create a society in the future that is radically different without having to go march, without having to wave placards, without having to lay down in front of cars, without having to spend millions of dollars on political campaigns.
	That is how you do it.
	I really believe society is an effect, particularly the state, is an effect of the family.
	If you want to change the state, you have to change how children are raised.
	It's a slow multi-generational process, requires more patience, but it is the only thing, I think, that will actually work.
	Absolutely. I agree with you 100%.
	And that's why I consider school to be the root.
	And that's why I advocate so strongly for home education.
	Not so that the kids could be brilliant or not so that they could be smarter or not so that they can wear whatever clothes they want to wear.
	But I advocate for it because I think it's necessary for society.
	I think that the...
	Problems arise from the school system because it was based on oppression system, and we're still using it today, and we're supposed to be...
	The school system is supposed to train docile citizens and employees that just accept reality as it is.
	So by that example, we can see that it has been a success.
	So if we use the same formula by keeping them out of that system...
	And by changing the way we parent as a society and accepting that what they learn and how they learn is really just a natural part of family life and a natural part of parenting and keeping them away from that system, we're actually doing the same thing but in reverse.
	And as far as fitting a round peg into a square hole, the idea is to change the shape of the hole.
	Yeah. Right. Have the patience to realize that this is going to be something that has to happen generation after generation after generation.
	We're not going to all wake up tomorrow in a free society.
	As wonderful as that might be, it's not going to happen.
	It has to happen over time.
	The great temptation of the demagogues is they will attempt to draw people into trying to have an effect on something they cannot control.
	And at the same time, they will try and draw their attention away from the areas in which they have control.
	And that's how they get us to waste our energies on things that we can't change.
	So people will say, well, let's go and change politics.
	Let's go change Washington. Let's go change wherever, right?
	But you can't change those things.
	You can't change those things.
	They're immune to change, at least certainly by any individual.
	So they get you to spend all your money, all your time, all your energy on trying to control aggression in a general hierarchical sphere you have no control over, which distracts you from the sphere you can control over.
	over.
	You can control the level of aggression within your home.
	You can control the level of aggression as a parent, as a friend, as a spouse, as a lover, as a whatever.
	That you have control over.
	And by drawing you into spending and wasting your resources on that which you cannot control, they effectively get you to ignore what you can control.
	The non-aggression principle and self-ownership is some things that you can enact in your life that you can have direct control over.
	And if you fall off the cliff of politics, you just uproot yourself from where you have some real control.
	And I think that's what's so tragic about that approach.
	Mm-hmm. You know, let's talk about that a second.
	When you're talking about this, I'm thinking of the video that, which was actually one of my favorites, by the way, the video that you did when you talked about the OWS movement.
	And what I liked so much about it is that you weren't angry, you weren't slinging insults, but you were being very philosophical and very intelligent about it, and you were...
	Kind of pointing out the waste of effort and the waste of energy that it is.
	Are you still kind of feeling the same way about the OWS movement, which has lost momentum by now?
	But I know personally the problem that I had with it was I had problems articulating.
	I was just very frustrated and I said, you know...
	You're finally coming together and you're finally having a voice and you're finally saying, okay, enough of this.
	We won't have it. And what do you do?
	You're asking for more government?
	And I felt like my head was going to explode.
	But then when I watched your video, I felt like you were articulating everything that I was feeling.
	Do you still feel the same way about, well, not only that, but movements like that, similar to that when people behave in that way?
	Look, I'm enthralled and thrilled that people got angry enough to feel the urgency and the urge to change.
	Complacency is the death of any culture.
	And so I'm thrilled and excited that people got angry.
	But Aristotle said, it's easy to get angry.
	It's easy to get angry. Every idiot can stub his toe and string out a curse of profanities.
	It's easy to get angry.
	It's hard. And it's also easy to not get angry, right?
	To turn away, to turn the other cheek.
	Those two extremes are very easy.
	What is hard is to get angry intelligently, to get angry in a way that you can actually do something.
	So what I would say is, you know, to the people who are angry about the system, good, good.
	Now, don't just be angry.
	Think. So what's wrong with the system?
	Well, a whole bunch of bankers stole a whole bunch of money.
	Okay, fine. So, who morally educated those bankers?
	Who is responsible for the moral education of the citizens, the state?
	How's that going? How's that going?
	Are we producing people with great integrity, with great virtue, with great ethics?
	No. So, that's a problem.
	Government already has control of 15,000 hours or whatever it is of the moral and practical education of the young.
	And we're producing, it seems like, pretty much generic sociopath 101 running the system.
	So, you know, okay, so you just have to think about it.
	If we're not satisfied with the quality of the individuals within a particular society, first, the most obvious place is to look at their educators, and the state is not educating people to be moral, and then say, okay, well, why?
	What would moral be? Well, moral would obviously be not stealing.
	Not stealing from people.
	Let's at least start with that.
	Well, what is stealing? Well, it's using...
	Violence or the threat thereof to take property against someone's will.
	Okay, so how is the public school education funded?
	If there's something wrong with the educational system, let's look at the morals of how it's funded.
	Well, it's funded by force. It's funded by the threat of violence.
	And, yeah, I don't want to go through the whole argument, but that to me would be, I'm really angry at the system.
	Good, good. Now sit down and think before you start writing down on your banners and your placards.
	Sit down and think What is it that you're angry about?
	What would you like? And what is in the way?
	And very few people will sit down and think before they go.
	And I think that was really the case that was going on with the Occupy Wall Street.
	It was kind of inchoate. They didn't have any particular principles that I could tell.
	But they were all upset.
	And it's like, upset is great.
	But if you don't harness it, it dissipates.
	Or it goes into the service of immorality, which is even worse.
	Yeah, yeah. Well, just to kind of piggyback on what you were saying about the Occupy movement or any movement that's like that, that's what I liked so much about what you had said about it because I didn't think it was well enough thought through and I was very excited that people were finally getting fed up and people were finally coming together and wanting to do something.
	But I was very frustrated with I didn't feel that that would be helpful.
	I didn't feel that that would be useful.
	And I felt that the core, the root of the problem was overlooked.
	And I hate to keep sounding like I'm beating the same drum, but I think it's so important to beat because it's so clear to me that it's in the way we're educated.
	It's in the way that we're trained from early ages to accept what a reality is when that's not really reality.
	That's not The way that the system's supposed to work, that's not what freedom is, that's not what true knowledge is, that's not what true power is, that's not what independence is, and we're just not understanding this.
	Which brings me back to why I think it's important for a parent to impart knowledge or to share knowledge, and that doesn't mean by force or coercion, that just means making a part of your family routine and making sure, I know in my house it's important that my kids understand I government and they understand history and they understand politics not so that they could grow up and become a politician but so that they understand the way the system works and they understand what we're doing and they understand American history and they understand the principles of personal responsibility Which is personal freedom because with freedom comes responsibility.
	This is something that the schools are purposely not giving children.
	And yes, I do think that it's maniacal and it's on purpose.
	And I'm glad that there are people like you and I who were the misfits in school who can stand out and say, no, you know, there's a problem here and we don't want to change the round pegs.
	We want to change the shape of the hole that we're trying to fit into and just kind of make a better place for everyone.
	And I do have just one more question for you.
	Well, to satisfy the listeners that I know want me to ask you this, I have to ask you what your ideas are on anarchy and total nonparticipation.
	I think that we need to stay in the marketplace of ideas.
	I don't think that exiting the marketplace is a good thing.
	I think you just turn over the conversation about virtue to the least moral among us.
	So I'm very much for staying in the conversation.
	I'm very much for staying in fighting the battle that is necessary for the hearts, minds and freedom of the future.
	I mean, I do.
	Everybody's a huge fan of anarchy.
	I mean, I think that's something—people think anarchy is some sort of bizarre foreign concept, but it's not true.
	This conversation that you and I are having is anarchic.
	Neither of us is using compulsion.
	Neither of us is using threats or aggression or anything like that to engage and to debate ideas, to even set up this conversation.
	Nobody kidnapped each other's kids to make— We're good to go.
	But then what happens is we pan back a little bit and suddenly everything is upside down.
	Everything is backwards. You know, up is down, black is white, cats and dogs living in sin.
	And suddenly we think that then, okay, so for you and for me, for everyone I know and for my company and for my club and for my dance group and for my, you know, hip-hop bandwagon, Barbershop quartet, we want peace and voluntarism as the way of organizing ourselves.
	But suddenly, boom, you go out to the country level and suddenly we've got to go back to, well, we need force.
	Here, at a personal level, every level that I actually interact with people, I want peace and voluntarism.
	But suddenly, boom, you go out to the social level and it's like, well, now we have to have violence.
	We have to have a small monopoly of people with a huge monopoly on force.
	That doesn't make any sense.
	There's no weird moral realm that suddenly everything flips around and becomes completely different.
	I mean, you don't sort of take a plane up to 10,000 feet and then at 10,001, the entire laws of physics completely reverse themselves and it turns into a squid-like submarine that can surf on clouds and reach up and pluck the very stars from the sky and put them in your jumper.
	That's not how things work.
	There's a constancy of rules in the world.
	We know that in the world of physics and biology and all that.
	And it's the same as true in virtue, in ethics.
	I mean, it's just one set of rules.
	It's not this big, complicated thing.
	You've got to make up these opposite magic rules for people in power.
	No. The initiation of force is immoral.
	Violations of property rights is immoral.
	And the immorality leads to destruction in the long run, as we all know.
	I mean, it's a drug. It'll give you a high in the short run and cause a collapse in the long run.
	We've already had our high, you know, from the post-war period until the 1970s was the high.
	Ever since then we've been fighting this fall as an economic and political and even artistic culture.
	And so we're getting the hangover from the drinking binge and we just have to recognize that the degree to which we're willing to violate and create exceptions for these moral rules is the degree to which we are going to continually Revolve around, circle the drain of disaster.
	And I'll just finish off by saying there's two places where these moral rules reverse themselves.
	And it is among the very powerful and among the very powerless.
	These are the two areas.
	So we say governments, individuals within government, have the legal right obligation to use force to achieve their goals.
	That's good. And if they don't do that, that's really bad.
	And that's weird. We'd never accept that in our life.
	We put people in jail for doing what people in the state do.
	And then we have this weird thing where those who are small and powerless and helpless and dependent upon us, our children, well, we're allowed to hit them, or we're allowed to yell at them, we're allowed to control them, we're allowed to indoctrinate them, we're allowed to take away their choices by putting them in these horrible education...
	I hate to even use the word, you have to say public education like it's not a complete oxymoron.
	These lack of concentration camps...
	Well, yeah, it's not education, it's school is what it is, and that's why I consider what we do outside of it to be not school.
	So if we take this middle road, which is adult-to-adult personal-level interactions, and we say, well, what makes them valuable?
	Choice, freedom, voluntarism, and so on.
	We get that. The pizza store doesn't get to shoot us if we don't order a pizza.
	We think that's a good thing, and we think it would be horrible if it were any other way.
	We just take this broad middle band of adult ethics, of voluntary ethics, of the ethics that we live.
	All we have to do—I know it's not a small thing—all we have to do is stretch those ethics up to the very summits of power and stretch them right down To our own families, to our children.
	And we have no control to stretch them all the way up to the summit of power.
	We're going to talk Barack Obama into embracing a peaceful and voluntary system of interaction.
	But, you know, the flowers of the future are planted in the seeds of the present.
	Poetic, perhaps even badly poetic, but true.
	And so if we raise our children without coercion, we should surely end up with a society that has no coercion.
	Expecting children raised peacefully to grow up to be violent is like expecting them to spontaneously know Mandarin if they've never been exposed to the language.
	We teach the children the language of interaction and that is how they will write large on the face of society in the future.
	Right. Well, yeah, it starts with the children.
	And again, that brings us back to just having patience and knowing generation after generation, which is why I advocate strongly for parents pulling their children out of the school system so that they can avoid ever having to suffer through that kind of conditioning.
	I guess the core of my question about anarchy was whether or not to be To pay attention to or be involved in the political process when it comes to legislation and voting and voicing our opinions.
	And that's where I guess what the question really was.
	Sorry, sorry, sorry. No, I mean, the anarchic and I think the rational definition of the status is an agency of immorality.
	This doesn't mean that everyone in the state is immoral.
	I understand propaganda and so on.
	But the reality is that you do not infiltrate a criminal organization and attempt to turn it to virtue.
	If we could do that, then, you know, we would just all go join the mafia and turn it into a nice charity that rescues kittens and helps the homeless.
	That's not going to happen. I mean, the mafia is set up as an agency of violence.
	The state is set up as an agency of violence.
	You don't go in there with your rhetoric and your good intentions and expect to get anything other than either turfed right out or turned into mincemeat and corrupted inside.
	So, no, you don't go in there.
	You don't. It may be a decent vehicle for education to go out and I don't know what, right?
	But no, no, no, no. Do not get distracted by that which you cannot control.
	It is designed to render you impotent, to have you beat your head against the wall you cannot possibly get over or break down when right next to it, Right next to it, there's a revolving door constantly going around, which you could just walk right through and live peacefully and voluntarily within your own life and bring those values, rational, universal values, to your children.
	That's the only thing that brings down the wall anyway.
	So, yeah, don't get deluded or tempted.
	What is it? The devil comes down to Jesus and says, I will give you the entire world if you simply obey me.
	And this, of course, is the great temptation.
	The devil will never keep his word and politics will never make us free.
	Yeah, I'm the government and I'm here to help.
	You know, I think I'm personally struggling with this because I am from the mindset of don't comply and don't obey.
	Don't comply with the things that make us not free.
	We don't have a marriage license and we don't believe in thumbprints or driver's licenses and things like that.
	We don't believe in living with social security numbers.
	We don't use social security numbers in our family.
	Almost everything As much as we can, we're unplugged.
	And we try to be as off-grid as we can.
	We don't comply and we don't obey.
	As far as paying attention to what's going on in local legislation and local politics, I feel like there's still some that we will be affected by, even if it's something as simple as whether or not I get a traffic ticket for going 30 miles an hour in a speed zone.
	I can have some say in what that speed zone should be.
	And I think part of me...
	Really believes that that's partially my responsibility as someone that lives in a community and kind of we're supporting each other in this community to go to a community gathering and have a say in it and say, well, I think the speed limit should be this on this road and, you know, if someone goes over it, this should be the fine.
	Because there has to be some kind of establishment in any community where you say, okay, well, how is our community going to run?
	Who... What kind of rules do we want to establish in our community?
	Who's going to enforce these rules?
	And when the rules are enforced, what kind of punishments are they going to be for those who don't follow the rules?
	How do we decide this as a society?
	Not as a dictatorship, but how did we decide this as a community?
	And everyone in the community has a right to have a voice in how their community functions.
	So I think that's where...
	The idea kind of comes into play with me.
	Well, you have to have some kind of involvement because you're living here and you have this voice.
	And the system was set up initially, the government system was set up initially by the Constitution and by the very Declaration of Independence to keep us independent from Britain.
	And I understand that we're not.
	And I guess that's a whole other show that we could do on that whole thing.
	But it was set up to be a voice where the people have the voice in this system of checks and balances.
	And we've come so far away from that.
	There's something inside me that's still clinging to the hope that if we can have a big enough voice, we can make change happen.
	And maybe that means staying at home, pulling our kids out of school, and arming them with enough power and knowledge to get in there, and maybe generations from now give us better legislators and better public servants that are actually understanding that they work for us.
	Now, I've been met with a lot of opposition, which is basically along the lines of what you're saying, and you're making a lot of sense to me right now, I have to tell you.
	That's... But you're actually saying it a different way.
	Even if it does take a while, even if it is something that's going to happen generation after generation, even if it's something that we have to wait for and be patient for, I don't know that...
	I'm all for not complying with an evil system.
	And like I said, we practice that in my family.
	We don't comply with the regulations, quote unquote, that we don't agree with and we don't allow ourselves to be forced into those situations.
	But I think walking away from it completely, I guess it just doesn't seem practical to me.
	It doesn't seem like something, like there is, in any society, in any community, there is going to be the inevitable structure because the people are gonna wanna come together, even if you just think about it on a small scale and say, okay, how do we want our community to run?
	What do we want the traffic laws to be?
	What do we want the speed zones to be?
	How fast do we want people to drive?
	Who's going to be in charge of keeping the streets clean?
	Who's going to be in charge of whatever?
	Whatever there is that's going to go on in our community and how is that going to function?
	So I think that that's okay as long as there is this system and checks and balances that there's supposed to be.
	I think the problem wasn't with the establishment of our government 200 years ago when the country was founded.
	The problem was with the marriage of the corrupt bankers and monopolies and corporatism and the school system.
	So I don't know that we just need to...
	Completely dismantle government altogether.
	I don't know if that's really the answer, and I don't know if it's a practical solution.
	Well, I mean, I'm not tempted by accusations of impracticality.
	I said I don't know.
	I'm very kind of on the fence with this whole thing.
	No, I understand. And look, it's a wise thing to be skeptical of all solutions, so I appreciate that.
	We don't know. We don't know how all of this stuff is going to be dealt with.
	So, I mean, I'll give you an example.
	I gave a speech at Libertopia recently, and I'll just give you a very brief example of that.
	We don't know how...
	Traffic lights will be dealt with in a free society.
	We do know that, interestingly enough, traffic accidents and congestion go down when you get rid of all of them.
	And when you get rid of lanes, and when you get rid of stop signs, and when you get rid of all traffic signs that's been experimented in a number of European cities, your traffic accidents go down.
	It's one of these counterintuitive things that happens, and so we don't know how it's going to work.
	And it doesn't matter because we have to make our decisions, I would argue, based on principle, not on consequence.
	So, for instance, if you and I were debating slavery, I'm going to give myself the halo and be the pro-abolitionist, and you'll be the slave advocate, right?
	And you say, well, how on earth will the cotton be picked without the slaves?
	And every society in history has always had slaves.
	You can't give me a single example of a society without slavery.
	So how on earth will cotton be picked without slaves?
	And if I were to say, no, no, no, here's what I think is going to happen.
	Oh, Lorette, I've got to sell you something here.
	Okay. In about 50, maybe 60, 70 years, there are going to be these giant robots that sweep through the cotton fields, and they're going to be powered by crushed dinosaur juice, millions of years old, and you're just going to need one guy who's going to sit there, he's going to turn this just with his finger, and it's going to pick up all of these things with its robot arms, And it's going to just pick them all and that's how it's going to work.
	You'd look at me like I just completely lost my mind.
	You can't conceivably predict how these problems are going to be solved in the future.
	But what you do know is that...
	The initiation of force is wrong, and I would love for there to be a valid government.
	Boy, it would be just so much easier to make the argument, and I was that way for 20 years, and I really, really sympathize and understand it.
	But our failure to know how these problems are going to be solved doesn't give us the right to break principle.
	The principle is...
	The initiation of force is wrong.
	Government, by definition, is the initiation of force.
	Now, we can break principle because we don't know how problems are going to be solved, but that is placing our own lack of knowledge, which is inevitable.
	Who knows how every problem is going to be solved in the future?
	But we cannot elevate our lack of knowledge above principle.
	Because that is, in a sense, to reward ignorance at the expense of virtue.
	And I can't, you know, at a very practical level, I really can't see my way clear to doing that.
	As far as getting rid of it, ah, yeah, of course we can get rid of it.
	Of course we can. I mean, we got rid of slavery, got rid of the subjugation of women.
	We got rid of child labor for the moment.
	We can get rid of all of these things.
	I mean, society is ours to design.
	It is the most compelling, the most moral, the most consistent, and perhaps the funniest argument that wins.
	I don't know. But I do not stand before the monolith of the state and say it's impossible.
	Of course, it's a big task.
	I'm not saying it's not. But bigger tasks have been overcome before.
	Before the end of slavery, there wasn't a society with almost no slavery.
	But before the end of government, there's already been a society with almost no government, you know, America, 18th, 19th century.
	And so, you know, we've already been close before.
	The abolitionists had no such prior example to work with, and all societies all over the world, throughout history, everywhere, and all the same embedded economic interests, and, you know, bingo, bango, bongo.
	You keep making the moral arguments, and I don't care how the cotton is picked in 100 years.
	I do care that we set people free.
	You know, I cannot disagree with you.
	Morally and personally and with every fiber of my being, I cannot disagree with the idea and the concept of freedom and personal freedom.
	And that is who we are.
	That is human beings. Every living creature strives to be free, wants to be free.
	And that's basically what's driving this whole conversation right now, and that what drives me to advocate for pulling away from the school system because it's enslavement, it's on a societal level, not on just, you know, "Oh, it imprisons the kid in the classroom." It's much deeper than that.
	It enslaves our minds.
	It makes us all slaves to the system.
	I think the one thing that's resonating with me, like you said, is that a government, by its definition, is coercion, is force.
	And right now it is, and we recognize that it is, but it wasn't supposed to be.
	And I think that's what still nags at me, is that it wasn't set up that way.
	In early America, it wasn't set up that way.
	What the role of government is supposed to be is to protect our freedoms, not to give us freedom, because we already have it.
	But to make sure that it remains intact and to protect it.
	Now, that's not how it exists right now, and that's not how it is right now.
	But I keep wondering, and maybe I'm too young and I'm too idealistic.
	I don't know. I just keep hoping that there is a way that we can return to that.
	You know, where we actually have a government that protects our freedom and that works for us and that serves us.
	Because I think if we were to go out and say, okay, this is what we're going to do 100 years from now, we're going to all move to a system where we don't have any government.
	And yeah, we can rely on the proof of the European countries that don't have things like speed limits and street signs.
	And yes, they do have far less accidents.
	And you know what? I would support that.
	I guess maybe there's a pragmatist part of me that's not allowing me to go there.
	Because I keep thinking to convince an entire nation to go in that direction, it just seems like nobody's going to go for this.
	They're not going to go for this. And if we force them to go for it, then we're defeating our own moral code, you know?
	It's a philosophical conundrum for me that I was kind of hoping you can work it out for me, Stefan.
	Look, I appreciate that.
	And I mean, I totally get it.
	I totally get the struggle, Lorette.
	I mean, I really do.
	I came up with all sorts of convoluted things like, let's have voluntary taxation.
	Yeah, I was going to, ah, listen to that, we solved the problem.
	That's weird, voluntary taxation.
	Yeah, let's have voluntary rape.
	No, it doesn't, you know, the reality is that, I mean, of course, you know a good deal of this, that, you know, when Jefferson wrote that all men are created equal, You know, he just had to stop there and he's got anarchy.
	Okay, well, you've got that period, just don't write anymore and you're all set.
	Because if all men are created equal, then some men should not have the power to tax.
	Because you can't protect your property by creating an institution with the monopoly to take it away at will.
	You can't protect your property.
	By creating a monopoly. I mean, as you know, I mean, the Constitution was convened in secret.
	It was closed door meetings. Nobody was allowed in and they were just delivered this ultimatum.
	Very few people ever ratified it.
	Of course, none of the women did. None of the slaves did.
	None of the kids were even consulted.
	The vast majority of the population never even heard of the damn thing before it was imposed as the law of the land from here to eternity.
	You know, the bones of the Native Americans were coming back to life and saying, hey, I'm glad we died for this because that sounds great to us.
	You know, it was a very small group of upper class white guys who imposed this on everyone else, you know, minorities and women and children and dead be damned.
	And so that was a problem.
	I mean, the Pennsylvania farmers weren't keen on the whiskey tax and George Washington rode down and slaughtered a whole bunch of them at the head of an army.
	In Pennsylvania, also there was, as Murray Rothbard writes, there was a society that lived for dozens of years without any government at all.
	They wanted the last thing they wanted because people will come together and solve problems of their own accord.
	You don't need a government to organize a parking lot.
	People just park sensibly based on whatever, right?
	And so... If you are going to go with the non-initiation of force and you create a magical exception for government, then you have to give up the principle.
	I mean, this is just the logical reality and it's a confrontational thing to say, but if you're going to break principle, then why bother with the principle?
	And it's not an extremist thing to say that...
	The principle should apply most to those who have the most tendency towards violence.
	And people always say, well, what are you going to do with psycho killers in a free society?
	It's like, hey, let's not give them an army.
	How's that? Let's not give them badges and guns and the right to do pretty much whatever they want.
	And of course, once we raise children peacefully, the number of people who want power over others, who want something for nothing, who are willing to use and manipulate and use violence to get what they want is going to diminish almost completely.
	You know what? Like I said, I can't disagree with you because you're making too much sense for me to disagree with you.
	And the core of the matter is that I am a non-compliant person.
	I don't comply with any force.
	I just simply refuse to comply with it.
	And the more we go on through our lives in my family, the more we're able to unplug from more of what we consider to be oppression.
	And, you know, the further away we get, And the freer we are, the happier we are.
	And that's why it was so important for us to start with our children and offer them that freedom right from the get-go so they never have to be enslaved to that kind of system.
	They never have to be in the school system.
	They don't have to have social security numbers.
	They don't have to have birth certificates.
	My children will never request a license to marry the person that they love.
	And permission from the government.
	So, you know, I'm just starting from the get-go.
	And I know what I'm doing in my family is right.
	So maybe what I'm gleaning from my conversation with you right now is that is...
	I'm doing what I need to do already.
	That is the most magnificent thing that you're doing.
	And, you know, compared to the speed limit on a street near your house...
	Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Let them put up, you know, a pie, six digits...
	Well, I take it one step further by getting...
	Right. And I take it one step further by getting on my microphone here and by trying to let the world know that they can do it too.
	They can live free too.
	They can, you know, pull their children out of school and they can refuse to comply.
	And they can refuse to comply with those that knock on their door and say, we want to see your homeschool records.
	And they can flip them the finger and shut the door and say, you're trespassing and I have a gun, you know?
	And just to say, I'm not going to comply with you and I'm not going to comply with your rules.
	You know, so maybe I'm already doing what I need to do, and you're already doing what you need to do, so we both deserve a pat on the back.
	And on that... A hug from the future.
	What's that? More than that, a hug from the future, I think.
	Yeah, a hug from the future, exactly.
	Well, you know what? When we see each other in 3D, then we can definitely make that happen.
	Absolutely. I'm not much of a traveler, but we'll see.
	I'll end up at something one of these days, right?
	I hope so. You should definitely come and talk.
	I mean, it's a great crowd to talk to, and you have a huge amount of important things to say.
	You know, I'd like to.
	Of all things that I've declined because of my unwillingness to travel, although I managed to get through the TSA without much of an incident because we're just that cool in my family.
	We're just that free.
	But that is something that I think I'd really like to talk at.
	I'd really like to meet, you know, and greet and just be involved with that kind of crowd.
	So that's something I'd really like to be involved in.
	On that note, before we wrap this up, do you have any questions for me?
	I will, but unfortunately we actually have guests here, so I can pack this in too.
	Let's do another show, because I do have some questions for you, and I just want to make sure that you, it's the unpluggedmom.com, M-O-M, not for my British listeners, it's not M-U-M, we have colonialized the word, but it's unpluggedmom.com, my website of course, freedomainradio.com, so that we can cross-pollinate.
	I'm sure we'd have a lot of listeners interested in each other's material.
	Absolutely. And you know what?
	Yes, let's definitely make this happen again and possibly again and again because I really enjoyed this.
	It was great fun. Thank you so much.
	Thank you, Stefan. Have a good one.

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