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June 17, 2012 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:44:15

2163 Freedomain Radio Sunday Show, 17 June 2012

A soldier drops his sword, a thinker struggles with loneliness, and evil suffers.

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	Excellent.
	All right.
	So, is it the 17th?
	I am bewitched, bothered, and bewildered by a Mobius strip kaleidoscope of travel that had me leaving Sao Paulo in Brazil yesterday evening just after dinner and arriving home.
	Now, I guess, 20 hours or so.
	22 hours later.
	Nothing too horrendous, just lots of lineups and a big delay in...
	Detroit.
	A couple of hours delay in the plane from Detroit.
	And then massive lineups in Toronto and so on.
	And then, of course, slow traffic.
	And I'm happy to be home.
	It was a great and I think highly productive trip.
	It was wonderful to meet.
	All of these great and amazing libertarians in Brazil.
	Brazil may well be the future of the libertarian movement, I think.
	I think that what libertarianism has really needed for quite a long time is salsa-enabled hip.
	It's not something that I, in particular, bring to the table, but it is in abundance down there, and we managed to throw in a day trip to Rio and It is wonderful to be in a country where my butt no longer stands out.
	That, to me, was the essence of the trip.
	I had a great speech, I think, if I do say so myself.
	I gave a speech at their ideas and movements of ideas.
	And it was to a bunch of politicians and academics and other interested parties.
	So that was very exciting.
	Nothing more exciting than making the taxation is theft case to a bunch of politicians, but something that needs to be said.
	And then I had a very engaging and actually very enjoyable debate with one of the leading Brazilian socialist intellectuals.
	I think if you say Brazilian intellectuals, for the most part, socialist is taken for granted.
	But we had a couple of hours of debate for which, tragically and not too surprisingly, he was quite unprepared in terms of research on the position that he was going to be debating.
	The context or the theme was the role of the state in society and I approached it, I hope, with my usual rigour.
	Defining all of the necessary terms, putting the argument together, and then he basically said, well, Thatcher and Reagan weren't great.
	And we went from there.
	But, you know, to his credit, this fellow, he did seem actually quite curious.
	The second half of the debate was him peppering me with questions about how the voluntary society, how the peaceful society, how the non-aggression principle society works.
	And...
	I resisted making jokes about naps, NAPs and siestas, because of course they don't have siestas in Brazil.
	And met some wonderful friends down there, a real pleasure.
	Was shown around, had some great dinners, great conversations about the libertarian movement, great conversations about possibilities.
	And I'm also extremely thrilled to say that the Portuguese-Brazilian translation of Everyday Anarchy is complete, and I will post a link to it.
	On this video slash audio.
	So I'll go into more details about the trip as a whole.
	I just wanted to mention that it was a real pleasure and of course before that I was in Dallas, Texas where I was speaking and doing some moderating at the Texas Libertarian Party Gathering which was quite exciting and it was a lot of fun.
	So I'll go into more details about that later but this is of course a call-in show so enough of my rambling.
	Jim James, we have A caller?
	We have a handful.
	Up first, Manuel.
	Give me the one that's the middle finger first.
	I guess that would be Manuel, actually.
	Oh, right.
	That sounds about right.
	Hello.
	Hello, Steph.
	Can you hear me?
	I can.
	This is amazing.
	How are you doing?
	I'm very well.
	A little tired, but not too bad.
	Well, I was going to ask you a question.
	Have you had a chance to visit our community in Reddit called Against All Arkans already?
	I have not.
	I would love to invite you there and have you post your material, your videos, your interviews and everything there.
	Because we have a significant percentage of people who actually enjoy a lot of what you do.
	We started this community to be specifically about anarchy applied universally, including to children.
	Unfortunately, I discovered that in the previous community, in the anarcho-capitalist community that we had before, there was a large number of people who were in favor of child abuse.
	Of course, they call it spanking, right?
	Yes, I just had this very debate in Texas.
	For quite an energetic amount of time at a social gathering.
	It is a very fascinating thing to see.
	I think we have some understanding of why that is, but it really is fascinating to see the degree to which libertarians will classify spanking as a non-violation of the non-aggression principle.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	That's correct.
	I'd have people who would even engage in backwards reasoning saying that the NAP couldn't possibly be applied to children because that would mean that every parent would be an aggressor to their child.
	And then, therefore, the NAP would be invalid.
	Not every parent.
	Just those who aggress against their child.
	And the argument I hear back is, well, you can't reason with children.
	And, of course, you can't reason with most adults.
	That doesn't mean we get to hit them.
	And, of course, the reason that you can't reason with children is because you hit them, right?
	The cause and effect is backwards, right?
	People say, well, I have to hit my children because they don't listen to reason.
	And it's like, no, no, no, no, no.
	They don't listen to reason because you're hitting them.
	And it's something that people, you know, it's like, I have to beat my wife because she keeps wanting to leave me.
	It's like, no, no, no, no.
	She wants to leave you because you're beating her.
	Anyway, sorry, go ahead.
	Correct.
	It's the cart before the horse logic.
	And I've always found it amusing.
	I've always had a particular...
	I'm sorry, I just wanted to mention too, as I pointed out in Texas, that we libertarians have the least excuse for this cart before the horse.
	Because we say, well, the only reason the government builds the roads is because it taxes and has a monopoly.
	Whereas other people say, well, if the government wasn't there, the roads would not be built.
	And we are very good at reversing other people's erroneous cause and effect, but of course we need to do that with our own lives even more so.
	But sorry, go ahead.
	Kind of interesting, right?
	So I'm always interested in trying to find a way or an explanation or Not a justification, but a more understanding, more of an understanding of why people attempt to, you know, square this unsquareable circle, right?
	So I was going to recommend to you, I've been reading a book, I've been reading a book again, a book that I read quite a few years ago, before I even was introduced to Freedom in Radio, if I recall correctly.
	It's a book called The Authoritarians.
	And it's a book that is from a renowned psychologist that explores the problem of authoritarianism and the social dominance and apparently they complement each other very well and it has amazing insight in the personality profiles and the rational abilities of people who are authoritarians.
	He basically calls everybody who is willing to follow authorities and doesn't actually think About the implications of their own beliefs and finally who have a propensity to be very very aggressive against anybody who doesn't follow their authorities.
	He calls them authoritarians.
	I would highly recommend that you read that book.
	It's actually called The Authoritarians and you can find it at...
	I think it's theauthoritarians.com.
	You can probably find it there.
	I would love it if you don't have a show about it, because I'm pretty sure that the book itself is going to blow your mind as an explanation for how we, in our society, we see so many people that have that tendency towards aggression.
	Though it doesn't actually go too much into root causes, it does have a lot of scientific facts behind it.
	Right, right.
	No, and it's useful.
	And for those who are making the case for peaceful parenting and so on, I think that the two questions that I found helpful to ask, and more recently this is the ones that I asked of the people I was debating with in Texas, The first, of course, is were you spanked as a child?
	Because we all understand that if you were spanked as a child, it's going to be harder for you to be objective about spanking, obviously.
	So it's like if you're debating someone about who should build the roads, and it turns out that they're a contractor profiting from the government road contracts, And you say, well, they should be private, then of course he's got a conflict of interest when it comes to the debate.
	And a conflict of interest doesn't mean that you're wrong.
	It just means that this is something to be aware of.
	Or if you're arguing for privatizing schools and you're talking to someone who's high up in the education ministry or whatever, then they have a conflict of interest, which they need to admit to ahead of time.
	And if they're not willing to admit to it, then either they don't know that there's a conflict of interest, which means that they don't They know how to tie their shoes and they have their pajama bottoms on their heads and a thong stretched between their shoulder blades and they're really not going to be much use to anyone.
	Or they know that there's a conflict of interest but they won't admit to it, in which case this is not an honest way to debate.
	So the first thing is, were you spanked?
	How were you raised?
	How were you disciplined?
	And the answer you want to hear is, what do you mean?
	I was never disciplined.
	What a silly thing to say.
	It's like saying, how do you discipline your wife?
	You don't, basically.
	The first question is, were you spanked?
	The second question is, what do you know about early childhood development?
	Of course, you don't have to be a professional.
	I certainly am not.
	You don't have to have a PhD in childhood studies.
	You don't have to be a psychologist.
	But you do have to know a little bit about the basics.
	So, you know, this is something I've done where somebody says, well, your government has to run education.
	And I can say, well, what do you know about the history of education?
	And if they don't know anything about the history of education and they work for the government, then they can be dismissed out of hand as simply not being objective, not being honest, and not being knowledgeable.
	And so, yeah, I asked if people were spanked, and of course they said they were, and that this was something that was good for them and so on, right?
	So obviously they had not processed or anything.
	And then you ask them, well, You say that children must be spanked because they're not rational, and what research have you done to verify this?
	You know, because we don't like it.
	We don't like the lazy thinkers in the non-libertarian world who say, well, government has to build the roads.
	Well, do you know anything about it?
	Have you studied it?
	Do you know anything about the history?
	Do you know anything about the alternatives or the ethics?
	No!
	But I'm absolutely sure the government has to build the roads.
	I'm absolutely sure the government has to provide education without welfare, the poor people will starve in the streets, and blah blah blah.
	I mean, this is, right?
	So, we don't like those kinds of people, so let's not be those kinds of people when it comes to these absolutely much more important topics than who build the roads, which is who builds the children.
	Much more important.
	So let's not be the kind of people who we roll our eyes at.
	Let's get educated.
	Let's look at the conflict of interest in our own history and let's get educated about how children develop and what the child's mind is capable of.
	And only then can we really come to a conclusion.
	Otherwise, we're simply bouncing off propaganda and we might as well be someone spouting back all the nonsensical rubbish people get fed in public school without ever doing any research or studying it.
	So, let's just not be that which we hold in contempt.
	I think that's pretty important.
	I agree with you.
	That's actually very, very good insight.
	I've read many people, perhaps even including me in the past, haven't actually looked at it that way, right?
	I didn't know that I was wrong when I was a kid, and I couldn't quite put the finger on why that was wrong, right?
	Until I actually discovered Liberty Movement and started applying these ideas to me.
	In a very, how do you say this?
	In a very personal and not scientific way, and it's only when, you know, the scientific evidence appears that everything begins to make sense and you go like, ah, so that's why it was wrong, right?
	Which is a big eye opener, right?
	For me at least.
	I would also like to point out that...
	In the book that I was talking to you about, there's a significant amount of information on that part of authoritarianism which is not very much discussed.
	I'm sure that you're aware of people's tendency to perceive authority as being right and having good intentions and to excuse their behavior with the traditional few bad apples Irrational technology, as I'd like to refer to it.
	And the book actually goes into the other side of the equation, which is explaining why the social dominance, the people who are in charge, in power, the people who strive for power, that those guys that you have said in the past are the guys who will be drawn to power because they'll be They'll, you know, they'll be more successful at dominating people if they have this power.
	That is completely confirmed by the research.
	Completely confirmed.
	And there's a psychological profile of the ethics of the people who are like this, which allows me to say without the shadow of doubt, without being afraid of being wrong, that most every politician is actually a complete scumbag and a liar and a social dominant.
	When you read that chapter, you're just going to go, oh my god.
	And so we've known this for a decade now and nobody knows about it.
	This should be more known, right?
	Yeah, I mean, how many politicians have gone through therapy?
	We obviously need wise people.
	If we were to even consider having a political system, we would need the wisest people.
	And wisdom, as we all know from Socrates' first commandment, know thyself.
	Wisdom means that you first have to learn about yourself before you make proclamations about the world so you can avoid the problems of projection and repression and defensiveness and so on.
	And how many politicians exhibit significant degrees of self-knowledge?
	Well, none, right?
	I mean, none.
	None of them that I've ever seen have gone through therapy, can write wisely about themselves, are honest about their own defensiveness and shortcomings, and of course, right?
	Because if you know yourself, then you know the barriers to truth, you are humble, and humility is the opposite of people who think they can run the world.
	So, yeah, they're completely blind.
	Broken power seekers and a true virus in the veins of mankind.
	You're right, you know.
	Though I'm not so sure if these people that we're talking about right now don't actually know themselves.
	Or maybe if they know themselves, they have only a partial understanding.
	Because there's a scale, right?
	It's called the Exploitive Math Scale.
	And this is a psychological test that they're administered They're administered anonymously in this college where the research was...
	Well, this actually has been replicated everywhere.
	So this is administered anonymously.
	And anonymously, these people will actually admit openly to things like, for example, you know that most people are out to screw you, so you have to get them first when you get the chance.
	Or, for example, there is really no such thing as right or wrong.
	It all boils down to what you can get away with.
	Or one of the most useful skills a person should develop is how to look someone else straight in the eye and lie convincingly.
	So these are beliefs that are strongly held and they're aware that they hold these beliefs.
	Maybe they don't know the reason.
	Knowing yourself, look, a killer may anonymously say, I killed someone.
	That's not the same as having self-knowledge.
	I mean, that's like saying, I have a mole on my leg and that makes me a dermatologist.
	Well, I can say that I have a mole on my leg, but that doesn't make me a dermatologist, right?
	I mean, you really need true self-knowledge, which is, why do I hold this belief?
	What was the template?
	I mean, once you have self-knowledge, you realize, and it's so invisible to people who don't know themselves.
	And it's so obvious to people who do know themselves.
	I mean, the paradigm of the state is, well, the citizens are bad, and so they need the government to control their badness, right?
	I mean, this is the basic, right?
	So if there's no welfare state, people are just going to step over the poor and, you know, pee on their eyeballs and not give a damn about them.
	So people are bad, and we need the government to To keep them good and to make sure they do the right thing.
	But they don't want to do the right thing.
	You have to be forced to do the right thing.
	Well, that's exactly the same as the people I was talking to last week who say that children are irrational, they don't listen, and so you need to spank them to make them better.
	It's exactly the same as Adam and Eve.
	They bit that damn apple and so they have to be cursed with childbirth and labor and death.
	It is all the same thing.
	Nobody's talking about the state in any objective way.
	They're talking about their family.
	And until people understand this and talk about what's really going on, what's really going on, you know, it doesn't It doesn't mean anything.
	It's like that old story where a guy comes out of a bar and he sees a drunk guy looking under a lamppost and he says, what are you doing?
	He's like, the guy's looking around.
	He says, oh, I dropped my keys.
	So the guy sits down and helps him.
	They look around for like five or ten minutes, can't find the keys.
	He's like, man, I don't know where they've gone.
	I mean, I can't find them.
	I don't know how to help you.
	Where did you drop them exactly?
	He's like, oh, I dropped them like a block from here.
	And he's like, well, why the hell are you looking here?
	It's like, well, there's no light over there.
	The lamp post is here.
	Right?
	So, you're just looking at the wrong place for the wrong solutions.
	It's ludicrous to see this.
	When you look at how people talk about the state and the use of violence in society, it is exactly the same.
	Down to the last conceivable detail, it is exactly the same.
	And libertarians...
	Are exactly in relation to the state as those of us into peaceful parenting are with aggression within the home.
	You don't know what you think you know.
	These dysfunctions are the result of violence.
	They are not the justification for violence.
	Everything you're doing is an ex post facto justification for a violent system that nobody chose.
	It is all exactly the same.
	As those of us who are trying to promote non-aggression within the family, it is directly analogous, down to the last detail, of libertarians who are promoting the non-aggression principle.
	If you would allow me the position, I would say that definitely not all libertarians I've had the pleasure to know and we're forming a group of libertarians that are explicitly against this kind of thing and they accept this and they just find it equally baffling that anybody would just use statist arguments to defend the beating of children, right?
	So I find there's a lot of people who are Basically on their own or through the exposure to interesting and obviously true arguments, they have come to the conclusion that if libertarianism is going to be, it is going to be for everybody.
	It's not just going to be for men, it's not just going to be for certain ethnicity, it's not just going to be for a certain age group, it's going to be for everybody.
	Yes, and the priority is children first.
	Children first.
	There's nothing that you could do in society that you don't include in children first.
	Everything that you try to do in society, every fundamental you try to make in society, will never work until you start in your own home, in your own life, and particularly with children.
	Correct.
	If you want everyone to start speaking Esperanto, I guess you could try and convince everyone who's an adult to spend five or ten years learning Esperanto.
	But what you would want to do, first and foremost, is teach Esperanto to your children.
	I mean, so this is just kind of fundamental.
	And to my mind, libertarians who are opposing the state but avoiding the family are expressing, in an unconscious way, hostility towards their own upbringings, but they're using the state as a safer stand-in and event for that, which is why when you actually bring the topic to that which has actually occurred for them and that which is actually vivid for them, They just short-circuit out of the conversation because it's a stand-in for complaints against parents.
	Again, this is not all libertarians and this is certainly, you know, I'm not even sure what percentage of it is but I don't think it's inconsequential.
	You know what you say goes even to the most basic beliefs in belief systems?
	I mean, before I actually started exploring why, I wouldn't be able to understand, for example, when I have a conversation with somebody who claims to be an anarcho-communist or something and is completely against property, I would never understand why would they hold such contradictory beliefs that seem so all over the place and arbitrary and abstract.
	And completely disconnected from reality, right?
	And why would they support the use of violence while at the same time claiming that they wouldn't support the use of violence and they think that property is violence and things like that.
	Just absurd, right?
	Sorry, it's not absurd from the point of view of an infant, right?
	Because for an infant, there is no I and thou.
	There is no me and you.
	There is no mine and yours.
	To the infant, the breast, the mother's breast, the nutritional source is indistinguishable from his own body.
	That's correct, yes.
	And so the oneness, the idea that people want to get together and live in communes with no property and they're all going to raise their children collectively and communally, this to me, again, this is the first place I would look, it's not the only place, but it's like, okay, what was your infancy like?
	And my guess is that the merging, the union, of which you then separate later, did not occur, emotionally unavailable.
	Caregiver or no caregiver or adoption or problems, a disrupted bond and then they have this yearning and property feels like a violation because they've never experienced the union out of which individuality, separateness, selfhood, self-ownership and property grows out of.
	So because they missed that step they can't see the value of property because they're missing a fundamental development stage that is so early that it's very hard to make that conscious.
	I agree.
	I would like to suggest a different theory.
	Not to say that you're wrong.
	I think that it's actually quite an insight.
	I would like to suggest a different idea you came up with a few months ago.
	Actually, no, a few years ago.
	And it's the idea that if you see a person, right, who is advocating for communal ownership and he wants you punished because you have more stuff than he does, it is quite probable and quite likely that in his childhood, and you can see this, you know, in public school all the time, right?
	So it's not something that just happens in the family, too.
	It also happens in public school.
	It is quite likely that the person was told, you know, you need to share and things like that, And then when, you know, the person as a child said, I don't really want to share right now and this is really mine, and he attempted to enforce or assert his property rights or basically, you know, property rules, he was punished.
	And then this created some sort of split in their minds.
	Where it's okay if the authority steals stuff from you because you're being bad.
	To assert property rights is immoral, yeah.
	But the authority figure can assert and violate your property and that's good.
	But for you to assert your property rights is bad.
	Yeah, that's the root of taxation.
	I think it's also important to remember, since the body is the root of property, and of course, just to look at the sexual violation of children, which is one of the most ultimate violations, if not the worst violation of personhood, is a sexual violation, and that's incredibly common, discouragingly, depressingly common in society.
	And so, for somebody who's had their personhood violated, Whether it's sexually or through physical abuse or even through extended and powerful verbal abuse, how can they be expected to have an objective, philosophical, rational view of property if their personhood, which is the foundation of property rights, has been repeatedly violated by an authority figure that they probably Stockholm Syndrome with and had to try and find some way to bond with?
	You just can't expect people to be objective without a huge amount of self-knowledge.
	About these kinds of topics, which is why these conversations just go off the rails so much because it's never about what it seems to be about.
	I agree.
	I have a question for you.
	All right.
	Sorry.
	Let's just make it quick because I want to make sure we get on to the other callers.
	Yes, finally I've encountered a lot of resistance in people trying to spread my ideas and I encountered something that I would dare say is systematic antagonism against FDR and people coming out and trying to prove that nothing good can come from FDR because FDR is suspect or something.
	What's the best strategy to deal with that?
	I mean, suspect is not an argument.
	I agree, yes.
	Suspect is not an argument.
	Look, obviously, where philosophy becomes actionable, it becomes highly controversial.
	And if you genuinely do good in your relationships, you hope that you're going to sweep people into the good that you're doing, obviously.
	But there are some people who don't want to be swept into the good.
	And so if you do good and people remain committed to bad, then the bad people suffer.
	Of course, right?
	If you take penicillin, then the bacteria suffer.
	If you do good in the world, then it comes at the expense of bad people.
	As libertarians, we all understand that completely and totally.
	If you get rid of sugar tariffs, that is at the expense of the people who are currently profiting from sugar tariffs.
	If you introduce now divorces, moral and legal, then the abusive husbands and wives, but at the beginning I think it was more the husbands, but if you introduce voluntarism into the marriage, then the abusive husbands are probably going to suffer.
	Now the husbands who change their ways, who woo their wives, who respond positively to that voluntarism, hopefully their relationships can be much better than if this had never occurred.
	But when you introduce voluntarism, when you introduce virtue, It is going to come at a huge cost for a lot of people.
	And the funny thing is, of course, that libertarians, I think, can sometimes be a bit cavalier.
	Oh, let's just get rid of the tariffs and the taxes.
	And this, of course, is going to throw millions of people out of work, and it's going to harm the financial interests of huge numbers of people.
	If you privatize the Fed, I mean, truly privatize it, in other words, not just sort of State cartel thing, but if you privatize currency, then there is going to be a massive, wrenching, monstrous change in the economy, and hundreds of millions of people are going to lose out over the long run.
	So we know that when we do good, bad people are going to suffer.
	And yet bad people don't want to say, I'm suffering because someone's doing a good thing.
	Nobody wants to say, I'm suffering because I was profiting from evil.
	So the sugar producers aren't going to say, well, I'm going to lobby to get my sugar tariffs back because I'm too damn lazy and corrupt to compete, and I would rather work my political mojo than compete in the free market.
	Nobody says that, right?
	Yeah.
	They're not going to admit to being evil, right?
	Yeah, they're not going to admit to being evil.
	The single biggest driver in their public image is to try and appear as noble and good and generous.
	Everything is associated with virtue.
	When the expansion of virtue threatens the interests of evil people and they don't want to not be evil, then they slander.
	Do you remember when Ron Paul started doing really well?
	What happened?
	They just called him a racist.
	It's not an argument.
	Read anything to do with Ayn Rand.
	You never hear an intelligent rebuttal or analysis of her arguments.
	You just hear all of this yellow stream of horrible language and slander and it's just verbal abuse, right?
	And so, you know you're doing good in the world when bad people don't like you.
	I mean, that seems to me, I don't know any other way to measure it.
	I mean, obviously it's great if good people, but good people cannot become better without harming the interests of bad people.
	I mean, I don't know how that can happen.
	I can't imagine how that could conceivably happen.
	Congressmen really like power.
	They like having power over other people.
	I mean, Obama wants another term.
	He loves this power.
	And if you got rid of the state, these people's interests would be hugely, hugely harmed.
	So I don't know how to do good in the world or promote virtue in the world without harming the interests of evil people.
	And it's not because I want to harm the interests of evil people, it's just you can't build a statue without making a shadow.
	I just don't see how that's possible.
	So, yeah, I mean, if people are yelling and bitching about a free-domain radio, if they don't have an argument, It's pretty clear what their motive is that, I mean, the more angry they are, my guess would be, the more likely somebody has improved in virtue in their life and they are enraged by that.
	And that obviously has nothing to do fundamentally with free domain radio.
	It's just that they faced a fork in their life and they faced a choice in their life and they chose a bad path.
	And because they won't accept responsibility for that, they're going to just rage against the show.
	But, you know, I always come back to Tell me how I'm wrong.
	People can go, I've been running a call-in show for five years.
	Hours!
	You know, I don't think I've ever said no to a listener conversation where it's at all possible or in a topic that even fits roughly within the bounds of the show.
	So, you know, I'm open.
	I'm available.
	I'm happy to be corrected and criticized.
	But people who just mutter slander, who just libel and smear, I mean, this is, to anybody with any eyes to see, this is such a confession of impotent malice.
	To my mind, it's just not worth engaging in.
	If the expansion of virtue harms your interests, I think that tells people pretty clearly where you are on the moral spectrum.
	I agree.
	That's true.
	Well, I really do want to thank you for your time today, and I hope the rest of the show is going to be as interesting as this conversation was to me.
	They usually are, by the way.
	And I also would like to say, have a great weekend.
	Thank you so much.
	Adding a phone caller for you.
	This is Todd, when he picks up.
	Hello.
	Hello, FTR Pizza.
	Hello, FTR Pizza.
	You want a pizza?
	You want some pie?
	Oh, hi, it's Steph from Free Domain Radio.
	How are you doing?
	Pizza?
	I'm sorry, I'm a little hungry.
	This is what came to mind.
	You had a question or a comment?
	I did, Stefan.
	From my understanding throughout history, whenever political change has occurred, it always has been 3% of the population or less that's caused the change.
	And I know you've not completed your book, Achieving Anarchism, yet.
	But I was wondering if you could give any insight as to how this could either be achieved with 3% or less of the population or how we could get more than 3% of the population to participate.
	Well, I mean, I don't believe that we should focus on collective action.
	I think that we should focus.
	We can't.
	You can't control what other people are going to do.
	And the interests of people who are profiting from the existing system, both the rich, the poor, and the middle class, and those who are seeking power, I mean, they're too concentrated, right?
	The benefits are too concentrated and immediate.
	And the benefits...
	Sorry, yeah, the costs to the general population are too diffuse.
	The benefits are too immediate.
	And the benefits to the general population, if we have a free society, are, you know, 20 years down the road or 10 years down the road and very diffuse and unmeasurable to any particular cause.
	Whereas, you know, the cost to people who profit from an evil system So I don't think we can aim for collective action.
	I do believe that history is the will of the individual.
	I think that there are choices that individuals can make that fundamentally affect the flow of history.
	I'm not a big one for historical movements or, you know, the guns, germs and steel arguments and so on.
	I think that it really comes down to the choices and the willpower of individuals.
	And so I think that's what we focus on.
	You know, we focus on living a moral life as best and with as much integrity as we can stomach.
	And we put our principles into action.
	And, you know, I think that it is...
	That's all we can do.
	We can live virtuously.
	We can be honest and open about the effects of living virtuously.
	We can urge other people to live virtuously.
	We can choose not to associate with people who are committed to the use of violence against us.
	And that I think is the best we can do.
	Whatever effect that has in the long run in society is beyond our control because everyone has a choice.
	Everyone has a choice.
	We have a choice to act morally.
	Other people have a choice to look at our acting morally and can choose whether they're going to join virtue or oppose it.
	There's really nothing in between.
	And I don't pretend to control that choice in other people.
	I do not pretend to control that choice.
	I can be as hopefully convincing as possible and urge people I think that with few exceptions, it's never too late to try and do the right thing.
	It's never too late to turn around, to try and repair broken relationships, to reject propaganda, to overcome Anger and hatred and self-contempt for doing wrong.
	I think that there's an enormous amount that people can do to repair and restore relationships.
	And every moment that you're not doing that is a choice.
	And it's a choice that you can make differently.
	You can go to therapy.
	You can pursue self-knowledge.
	You can really understand the roots of your own dysfunction.
	That choice is available to everyone.
	So I don't think there's any magic pill.
	I'm not saying you think there is, but I don't think there's any magic pill.
	You simply try to do the right thing as consistently as possible and you urge other people to do the right thing as consistently as possible.
	You urge them to live publicly the values that they all accept privately and after that it is up to the choice of each individual and it's out of your hands.
	Does that make any sense?
	It does make sense.
	I was just thinking about an earlier video I've watched of yours I mentioned something about you can't use the state to control the state because it just keeps getting bigger if you try to do that.
	I'm just wondering, you know, what would a good argument be?
	Because people want to see change.
	They want that magic bullet.
	What would you suggest, you know, for people to basically look into anarchism and follow the basic guidelines that are set forth instead of becoming politically active and trying to change the 3%, you know?
	Well, it's, you know, it's the man in the mirror argument.
	You know, if you want to change the world, look in the mirror and fix your own life.
	If you want the world to stop smoking, then stop smoking first, you know?
	And then show people that it's much better to not smoke and run a marathon and live longer and that will, you know, your example will encourage people.
	And then people who will ask you about it, you can share your methodology and the way to do it.
	But no, it's, you know, it's your own...
	You know, we're continually pushing the envelope of peaceful parenting in our household.
	You know, I think a couple of months ago we made the commitment to each other, to Isabella, that she will face no punishments, no negative repercussions for her actions, no punishments.
	And, I mean, it's not like there wasn't a lot of punishments before, you know, maybe once every month or two, but we made that commitment and We apologize for even the few punishments that remained.
	It's been absolutely fantastic.
	Now we are continuing to push the envelope and encouraging negotiation rather than manipulation, which, you know, she's three.
	That's what happens, and it's our temptation as well.
	I speak for my wife.
	It's my temptation as well as a parent.
	But just continue to push the envelope of what can be achieved peacefully, what can be achieved without punishment.
	And, of course, we do this all the time.
	This is how we're raised.
	You get what you want, and you try and get what you want, and if you don't get what you want, you punish the other person.
	Then you punish the other person Through withholding of affection, withholding of love, withholding of generosity, withholding of time, avoidance in other words, or through lashing out in one form or another.
	And this withholding and lashing out is kind of what we have as a template for how we pretend we're solving problems in society.
	And just keep undoing that.
	Just keep undoing that in your life.
	Have no punishments with your friends.
	Have no negative repercussions.
	This doesn't mean that you don't say, I didn't like that.
	I'd like it to be different.
	I'm not saying be spineless.
	I'm not saying don't communicate your needs.
	But how about a personal society with no punishments, with no negative repercussions, with no withdrawal?
	When you feel scared, you get closer.
	When you're angry, you get closer.
	When you're disappointed, jealous, upset, when you feel despair, you get closer.
	You say, I feel despair.
	I don't know why.
	I feel angry.
	I don't know why.
	Let's explore it.
	Let us reason together, saith the Lord.
	And if you keep expanding that no-punishment paradigm in your world, with your children, with your lovers, with your friends, With your spouse.
	With your parents.
	No punishment.
	Well, isn't that...
	Yeah, I mean, that to me is how we change the world.
	To be distracted into trying to change other people is a way of avoiding the challenge of changing yourself, right?
	So people are desperate for politics because They think that the state is imposed.
	My argument is the state profits from our willingness to attack each other.
	The state profits from the horizontal slave-on-slave violence that it provokes and encourages.
	And so to stop attacking each other is to undermine the state.
	It is to undermine the state, but everyone's hoping that they don't have to bring virtue to their personal relationships, that someone's going to bungee in and set them free.
	And anyone who says, Give me money and I will set you free.
	I will solve your problems and you won't have to do it yourself is a liar.
	It's a liar, a cheat and a con.
	I'm not even going to say in my opinion but to be free you must live virtuously in your life and there's no other way to do it.
	There is no other way to do it.
	Anybody who gives you a shortcut It's a liar and a cheat and it's going to take your money and give you nothing but disappointment.
	And disappointment leads to despair and despair leads to evil, to corruption, to compromise.
	And so, yeah, people, I mean, God, wouldn't it be great rather than me having to sit down and talk with my friends and my family about virtue, about what was important to me, about the thirst and the love and the desire that I have for a world without the initiation of force.
	My God, if somebody had been able to come in and just repeal some legislation and make me free, oh man, wouldn't I be a complete horse's ass if I did what I did and I didn't have to do it?
	But, you know, it's like the science fiction story that I read a long time ago, where they sent off this ship to go to some Betelgeuse or some star that was pretty far away.
	And it went so slowly, it took like 5,000 years to get there, you know, many generations and so on.
	And by the time this spaceship got to Betelgeuse, You know, like 20 years after they pushed the spaceship off, they lost track of it or whatever.
	But they invented faster than light travel.
	And they've been zipping around, you know, 20 minutes it takes to get there.
	It took 5,000 years.
	And they were like, dope!
	You know, this is the case that the hare and the tortoise, the fairy tale, this is the case where the tortoise was an idiot and because the hare was faster.
	But I don't believe that that is the case in these situations.
	And I think history bears this out.
	We live virtuously in our own lives with the greatest integrity we can muster with surrendering ourselves to the greater good of ourselves and humanity.
	Taking that which is uncomfortable in our stride, promoting virtue, shunning evil, that's how you do it.
	That's a slow and steady that wins the race that has never been tried in any consistent or measured manner.
	So, that's my argument.
	I think anybody who's going to offer you a shortcut, you know, the ten points of libertarian arguments is how we're going to change the world.
	No, no, no, come on.
	Checking a box and ceding your authority to some other person is going to save your world and is going to help.
	You're not going to have to have these difficult conversations with friends and family about virtue and pointing out the gun in the room using the against me argument.
	And giving people the reality of the moral system they buy into?
	No.
	No, it is hard.
	And you damn well hope it's going to be hard, because if we've been trying to have a virtuous and violence-free society for 2,500 years or 3,000 years, and in some ways it seems we're further away from it than ever, then it really has to be the very hardest thing that can be imagined.
	If politics could do it, it would have been done years and years ago.
	Socrates tried politics.
	Plato tried politics and was arrested and sold into slavery and almost killed.
	Aristotle had to flee politicians.
	Socrates was put to death by them.
	You could go on and on.
	If we could do it through politics, it would have been done by now.
	It has to be the hardest thing that can be imagined.
	That stands between us and a free society, and a virtuous society, and a society without war, and a society without abuse, and a society without debt, without intergenerational enslavement, without prisons, without sadism, without rape.
	It has to be the hardest thing, the most unfathomable thing, the thing that makes you want to throw up in your own mouth to even consider doing it.
	It has to be that hard.
	Otherwise, it would have been done already.
	Well, do you think it'll get easier as more people start to understand and start to act on these ideas?
	I mean, a lot of people think these are great ideas, but actually living these ideas, like you said, that is the hard part.
	Do you think it might get easier?
	Oh, yeah.
	It will get easier.
	It will get easier.
	I mean, the fact that I had a debate, or that I have debates where the word statism is used, It's fantastic because it means that statism is something that is no longer like oxygen, like the water that fish swim in.
	It actually is a position that can be questioned.
	I mean, that's astounding.
	I mean, it used to be that talking about a society without a state was like going to a physics conference and suggesting a universe without gravity.
	What are you talking about?
	There is gravity in the universe, so don't waste your time pretending there isn't.
	Whereas now, this is something which has, even to a tiny degree, has been open to question.
	Has been open to question.
	I mean, I've reached hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people, you know, with the cooperation and support of everyone involved in this show, and have got them to...
	I mean, I get so many emails of people saying, I couldn't conceive of it when you first talked about it and now I can't conceive of anything else.
	And that change where what is is no longer like physics.
	It is a choice.
	It is no longer inevitable.
	It is a choice.
	It is no longer that which has always been and that which will always be.
	It is no longer grounded in the myth and the lie called human nature.
	It is actually something that is a choice that we can choose.
	And once choice And reason and evidence come into the equation, philosophy, peace, and reason and virtue will always win.
	The only way that philosophy, peace, reason and virtue lose is if they're not even on the table.
	The moment that they're at the table, the moment that they enter into the discussion, well, then they're going to win.
	I can understand that, but it seems to get hard sometimes to discuss Virtue and philosophy with some people that they already think they know how the world works.
	I know you can't convince everyone.
	No, absolutely not.
	And you don't have to.
	You don't have to.
	I mean, I've never made the argument that everybody has got to push every relationship they have to the crossroads of good and evil and ditch everyone who, you know, even hesitates before virtue.
	No, that's not the case.
	Now, I have a higher need for support than most people because I'm out here on this high wire act of running...
	The world's biggest philosophy show.
	I have a greater need for support than most people.
	If you have a family full of statists and you want to go to family dinner and you don't want to push philosophy, then don't push philosophy.
	Philosophy is all about choice.
	There's no have-tos.
	Once it becomes have-tos, then it's physics, not philosophy.
	It's not philosophy that we have to die.
	It just is.
	We're going to die.
	We're going to get older.
	We're going to die.
	At least with the current technology that we have.
	I don't see that changing anytime soon.
	And so, yeah, I mean, you don't have to push anything.
	I mean, all I suggest or request is be aware of it.
	Be aware of it.
	And don't not talk about virtue just out of fear.
	Or if you're going to say, like if you've got some family dinner coming up, and you're like, oh, you know, three public school teachers, two tax collectors, and an ex- Army ranger, whatever, right?
	I don't want to bring up statism and voluntarism and the non-aggression principle and property rights.
	I don't want to, because it's too terrifying for me, because I'm just so scared about what's going to happen.
	To me, that's perfectly fine.
	No problem with that.
	Not that anyone should care whether I have a problem with it or not.
	I'm just telling you my personal feeling.
	Don't do it.
	Don't do it.
	All that I ask is you be aware that you're not doing it and be aware why you're not doing it.
	That I treasure virtue and I'm too scared to bring up that which I treasure with these people.
	That, to me, is perfect philosophy.
	It's perfect philosophy to simply know what you're doing and to be honest with yourself about your motives.
	That to me is perfect philosophy.
	Now, if you then want to go out into the world and promote virtue, truth, reason and evidence in a very public way as I've done, then I believe that you need a very strong support team.
	So if you're just driving around aimlessly and you get a flat tire, then you don't need a crack team of NASCAR pit crews to get you back on your feet because you're just driving around a little bit.
	And that's fine.
	There's no problem with that.
	We all do that.
	But if you are entering into a NASCAR race...
	Then you need a very good pit crew, right?
	You need people who can change your tires, you know, like the little assistant in the movie Cars, right?
	You're in, you're out.
	If you're going to do a high-wire act, then you need a lot of support.
	And so, yeah, if you go public and if this becomes something that you do, then I think that you need a lot more support.
	I mean, for reasons that I think are too obvious to bother going into here.
	But, yeah, if you just...
	You know, if you see a kid being hit, you don't have to say anything.
	Your brother can be spanking his child right in front of you.
	You don't have to say anything.
	You don't have to say anything.
	You don't have to.
	Because the moment it becomes a have to, it's no longer a choice, and it's no longer philosophy.
	It's a commandment.
	Commandments are religious, not philosophical.
	But what philosophy will require is honesty.
	What philosophy will require is The truth.
	I will not intervene in this situation because I am too scared to do so.
	Or because I'm afraid I'm going to beat up my brother.
	Or, or, or.
	And then you may say later, well, I know my brother did this.
	I am not going to say anything even later because I know he's going to blow up.
	I know his wife is going to turn against me.
	I know I'm never going to see whoever it is again.
	These things are all fine.
	All that philosophy requires is the truth.
	It does not require specific action.
	The moment that specific action is demanded or instructed, you are in the realm of irrational theology.
	You are not in the realm of philosophy.
	All philosophy requires is the truth.
	So I hope that helps, at least that's my argument.
	And if you consistently find, like let's say everyone in your life, you can't talk to them about philosophy, you can't talk to them about truth and virtue, it's too scary, it's too upsetting, you tried and it just blows up and so on, Then, let philosophy go.
	If you don't want to change your social situations and you can't speak the truth about that which you're passionate about, let philosophy go.
	It will still be here.
	There are enough of us here who can pick up the slack.
	You do not have to march in this army.
	But I think that you cannot productively be in a long-term relationship with someone That is according to, I'll say your philosophy though, I mean philosophy.
	Somebody who according to your philosophy is immoral, I don't know how you can sustain a relationship with that one.
	So I would either drop the relationship if the relationship cannot be improved or drop the immoral, the judgment, drop the judgment.
	And I think that to me is, it's cruel and it's unpleasant and It's cruel and unpleasant to be in a relationship with someone that your philosophy defines as immoral.
	You know, if you say you're against racism and you've got a friend who's in the KKK, you have a problem.
	And you can choose not to say anything about your friend's membership in the KKK. But if you want to stay, right, philosophy is all about evidence.
	If you're going to stay friends with the guy who's in the KKK, then recognize empirically That anti-racism is not that important to you.
	That what you prefer is ease in your relationships, not anti-racism.
	And that's fine.
	I don't have a particular problem with that.
	But then don't pretend to be an anti-racist.
	That's really all I say.
	You know, if you're an anti-Semite and, you know, your second cousin is in the Nazi, like, sorry, if you're against anti-Semitism, And your second cousin is in the Nazi party and you say, well, you know, I don't really want to confront him.
	That's fine.
	Then empirically you know that being against anti-Semitism is not that important to you relative to your relationships.
	That's fine.
	Then let go of being against anti-Semitism.
	That's my argument.
	Live consistently.
	Live consistently.
	If, empirically, you don't want to bring the against me argument into your relationships, you don't want to point out the gun in the room, you don't want to point out the murder-based society that we live in, the initiation of force that is the essence of just about every way we try to organize society and pretend we are.
	If you don't want to bring that to your relationships, then recognize empirically that your relationships are more important to you than the values that you have.
	I know that sounds like some sort of passive-aggressive criticism.
	I really don't mean it that way.
	Let go of philosophy and live in your relationships.
	But don't get stuck in the middle.
	That's really my basic argument.
	Sorry if that was too long-winded, but I hope that makes some sense.
	You made a lot of great points.
	My whole way of thinking is when I'm Trying to live my life and follow these principles of liberty and virtue.
	You know, I don't live alone.
	I live in society just like everyone else, and you don't have to convince everyone.
	You just have to know what the truth is and what's right.
	It just seems like there's got to be some other way to, I don't know, I think of wanting to go off and Join some commune or like Buddhists or something, you know, where you give everything up and you live life, you know, according to their principles.
	It just doesn't seem like there's enough people, like, I mean, on the internet, there's a lot of people involved in the philosophy discussion, but where I go to day-to-day, and I know there's places to meet up and stuff, it just doesn't seem like very many people are...
	We have the same line of thinking, and it's hard to get through to people in general.
	And look, that's a bitch and a half.
	I mean, I agree with you.
	It's a bitch and a half.
	And of course, without the internet, it would take another thousand years, if we were lucky.
	If we were lucky.
	So I agree with you.
	Philosophy now has the great advantage of the example of science, which Socrates didn't have.
	And it has the example of the success of the free market.
	And these two things are Reason, evidence, and voluntarism.
	You know, you put those three things together, then you get science and you get the free market.
	And so philosophy has gotten a huge amount of validation, verification from The success of science and the success of the free market.
	So yay!
	Good for us.
	But it's really early.
	It's very early days.
	And it's artificially early days because the internet has come along and screwed up the whole tribal restraint and fear of ostracism that really retards so much of moral progress.
	But I'll make a very brief case here as to why I think that Ostracism, the ostracism of evil is important.
	So picture in Germany, like in 1930, or no, no, it's too late, 1926, 1927.
	Imagine if everyone who was friends with a Nazi said basically, no, no, I'm not going to associate with you if this is your perspective.
	If this is your values, then I am not going to I don't think it would have gotten very far.
	Well, there's a lot of people that don't agree with me on many different subjects.
	Sorry, let me just get back to...
	Let me just finish that point, though, right?
	This is not you should or you must or anything.
	I'm just pointing out the cause and the fact.
	So, because people didn't ostracize Nazis...
	And I'm not...
	Please, I understand.
	I'm not saying every statist is a Nazi.
	I understand that.
	I mean, this is...
	Right?
	But just to go back to that example.
	If everyone had ostracized the Nazis, if everyone had ostracized the communists...
	There would have been no Nazism and no Communism.
	Or they would have been so quarantined.
	Isn't this what you do with somebody who's diseased?
	You quarantine them.
	And if somebody has a moral disease, that is much more dangerous than a physical disease.
	And so you quarantine them.
	And if you do that, you stop the spread.
	And philosophy recognizes that moral diseases are much more dangerous than physical diseases and therefore quarantine is an appropriate response.
	But because people didn't quarantine the communists, they did not cease to associate with those who are advocating the use of violence against them, we got communism which killed hundreds of millions of people.
	Hundreds of millions of people.
	This is what you get if you don't quarantine that which is destructive.
	If you don't quarantine some god-awful airborne virus that makes your head turn into jelly, Then hundreds of millions of people will die.
	This is why people rush to quarantine so quickly.
	And in the spread of immorality in the world, if you don't quarantine, it's ostracism or war.
	It's ostracism or death.
	Now, I don't think that it's You know, we don't have that power yet in society because we're still very rare.
	Truly philosophical are still very rare.
	But it still does come down to a choice.
	I just want to point out that the consequences of not quarantining, so to speak, the consequences of continuing to associate with people after their immorality has been explained to them repeatedly, you know, month after month after month, That the cost of continuing to associate with them is not neutral.
	Do you know what I mean?
	Like people who say, well, you know, he's a Nazi, but, you know, that's his thing, but I disagree, but, yeah, well, live and let live, right?
	Well, the problem with immorality is it doesn't say live and let live.
	Statism certainly doesn't say live and let live.
	And so I just wanted to point that out, and I don't mean, again, I'm not trying to say to people, Corner everyone, yell UPB and NAP into their ears, and if they don't immediately agree 100%, kick them to the curb.
	I'm not saying that at all.
	There is a process of wooing.
	There is a process of examples.
	There is a process of explanation.
	There is time to adjust.
	It is not a quick process to take this band-aid of propaganda off, and I think patience and positivity is very, very important.
	I couldn't be doing what I'm doing if a significant number of people in my life rolled their eyes and thought I was crazy.
	I couldn't do it.
	I couldn't do it.
	I'm as vulnerable and susceptible to all of that as anyone is.
	I'm just another dude.
	And so it would not be possible.
	And I've made the commitment to this.
	And I'm certainly, I don't know if people understand just how unbelievably committed I am to what it is that I'm doing, how unbelievably committed I am to spreading philosophy, how unbelievably committed I am to nagging for virtue.
	I am ferociously, unstoppably, unfathomably, like gravity, committed to this.
	Because I know what the consequences are.
	And I know where society is heading without a significant intervention.
	It is heading to a night that conceivably, and I think very probably, will not have another dawn because the free market has handed enough technology to governments that they may be unbeatable.
	So I do believe that it is an urgent race against time.
	And if ostracizing Nazis Can stop a war that kills 40 million people and surrenders half of Europe into multi-decade enslavement of communism?
	Well, I think that the social discomfort is worth it.
	Because you know what's really socially uncomfortable?
	Bombs.
	You know, internment camps.
	Fascism is really socially uncomfortable.
	And I think You know, it's like quitting smoking.
	Yes, it's uncomfortable.
	You know what's really uncomfortable?
	Lung cancer is really uncomfortable.
	You know, putting down the candy is uncomfortable, but it's still a lot more comfortable than diabetes and heart disease and obesity.
	So, this is the case that I make.
	Again, it's not a have to.
	This is the perspective that I have.
	And because I believe that the future is made by the will of individuals, I am willing to add my voice to the chorus of those individuals who are uncompromisingly calling for virtue in society, for us to give up on the historical bullshit of violence.
	The evil and historical bullshit of violence.
	All the way from spanking to war, which are two sides of the same coin.
	I am never going to stop.
	I am never going to stop trying to communicate in this entertaining, engaging, and passionate method that I can conceive of.
	I'm never going to stop flying for 20 hours straight with a three-year-old to tell politicians that what they're doing is immoral.
	I'm not going to stop doing that.
	I hope that other people We'll join in.
	But that's up to everybody's individual choice.
	But I think it is incredibly heroic to be one of the first over the hill.
	I think that the harder it is, the more honor to those who are doing it.
	Anyway, sorry, go ahead.
	I understand what you mean.
	It's extremely hard.
	I've wanted to run away, you know, a lot of times because I've had the idea that, well, you know, I can't change people's minds, and I already know what's right, so why don't I just live my life and my principles the way I want to?
	It just seems like there's so many things in life that you have to interact with other people on, you know, like having a family, and if you have a job, you know, you have co-workers, and, you know, it just seems like This is all affecting you, whether you say something to them or not, and you want to change things for the better.
	But sometimes, you know, I think that maybe it would be easier just to not have people involved.
	Like, you know, you're saying that you can't, you know, if you tell someone they're not seeing what they're doing is immoral, and then, you know, you tell them for three months and they still don't get the picture, you pretty much have to dissociate yourself with them.
	Otherwise, you kind of have a moral conundrum.
	Well, again, you don't have to.
	You don't have to.
	Again, you've got to avoid the have-tos, right?
	But you've got to be clear and honest.
	And my suggestion would be then to drop the moral judgment.
	Okay.
	But look, I have this belief.
	I don't know where this is going to go.
	Traditionally and historically, we know where this goes.
	The expansion of the state.
	The collapse of the economic system.
	It doesn't generally lead to a freer and better society.
	But I've always had this thought.
	This is just a thought I have.
	Who knows what the hell is going to happen?
	But I really believe that if I hadn't been so certain in my choices about relationships, let's say I just said, oh, well, you know, this is kind of my thing.
	You know, if you think differently, that's okay.
	That's fine.
	But I knew what was coming, of course, historically and philosophically, it's not hard to say.
	And let's say that my friends and my family were all tossed into internment camps, right?
	Let's just say.
	FEMA camps or whatever they are, right?
	Do you know what they'd turn and say to me?
	They'd turn and say to me, why the fuck didn't you push us harder?
	If you knew this was coming, why the fuck didn't you push us harder to get it?
	Because now look where we are.
	You studied this.
	You had the knowledge.
	You had the certainty.
	And you let us just waddle off in our ignorant, pussy-ass way into this fucking camp?
	Are you kidding me?
	Why didn't you take us by the neck and wake us the fuck up?
	Because now we're screwed.
	And it's too late.
	You know, you got a friend...
	Who's overeating, over-smoking, over-drinking.
	And you're like, hey, you know, it's your thing.
	I don't want to intrude.
	I thought you might get mad if I said, you know, what's going on?
	Tried to help you stop.
	And then he gets cancer and heart disease and diabetes.
	He's like, why the fuck didn't you say more?
	And I know it's petulant.
	I get it.
	But I think this is the clay we're working with.
	And can you imagine how you'd feel?
	People say to you, why the fuck didn't you push me more?
	You knew what was coming.
	Why didn't you make my dinners a little less pleasant?
	Because I would have taken a bit of difficulty swallowing my goddamn Brussels sprouts if I didn't end up in this place.
	And this is a standard Christian argument, right?
	Why didn't you bug me more about Jesus if you knew I was going to end up in hell?
	And I'm not saying this is not, oh my god, tomorrow.
	It may never happen.
	But this is something that I think of.
	Because wouldn't you feel like one of the biggest assholes in the world if that's what happened?
	People said to you, Well, now we're in the camp, I get what you're talking about, but why the hell did you only bring it up once every couple of months in a mild way?
	If you really believed that this is where the expansion of state power leads, oh my god!
	I've had people get angry with me, telling me, you know, I'm paranoid, everyone's out to get me, but I still keep on, I just drop it and then bring it up later, maybe to one of their friends, and then it kind of gets brought into the conversation again, but it's definitely hard to...
	Get people to take you seriously.
	If you are very serious about it, people listen to you a lot more.
	People listen to authoritative people, whether they're right or not.
	They look for direction a lot of times.
	Especially with family, as any salesman will tell you, it's hard to convince your family and friends.
	It really is.
	It really is.
	But the first person you have to convince is you, obviously, right?
	Obviously.
	And this is why, for me, you know, obviously working from first principles, I had to really, before I even thought about continuing or not continuing relationships, I had to really think about whether I knew what the hell I was talking about in terms of ethics.
	I mean, that's what UPB is for me.
	It's like, I've really got to be sure of this stuff.
	This is what the bomb in the brain stuff is.
	This is, you know, why I... Load up the shotgun with statistics and fire it across the internet because I really have got to be sure.
	You know, when I say, look, spanking is bad because of X, Y, and Z. Yeah, I got to be sure.
	I got to be sure.
	That doesn't mean perfect, right?
	Maybe better data, maybe new information, whatever.
	Maybe it turns out that I was wrong.
	But with the best available information, I have to be sure so that I can say with as much confidence as reason and evidence can give you, No, this is wrong.
	This is immoral, and here's why.
	That's what UPB is for me.
	I was not willing.
	I found no ethical system that gave me certainty, because they all seemed to be ranked subjectivists in their core, all the way from Aristotle through to Ayn Rand.
	And I was not willing to take a stand on sand.
	You can't.
	Tide comes in, and you fall over.
	So I had to, if I was going to Make a stand, then it had to be on rock.
	It had to be on bedrock.
	It had to be with the roots of my certainty reaching down to the very center of the world to give me the stability for the storms that come from certainty.
	So if you are certain yourself, I think that you just get a kind of authority that comes from being certain.
	I mean, if someone comes along, like the earth is flat, I don't think that it's, you know...
	No, sorry.
	Sorry.
	Yeah, I mean, you're wrong.
	Oh, I was going to say that different experiences, you know, I usually am pretty sure about where I stand on most issues, but sometimes, you know, you'll get into a situation that you haven't been in before, and you really have to kind of question...
	For example, I was babysitting for my sister probably a year ago, and I'm extremely against any kind of violence or spanking-ish punishment, but I was responsible for her child, and she kept breaking the rules and having people over at night.
	Oh, she's a teenager?
	Oh, yes.
	You know, I wasn't sure how to handle the situation.
	I knew I was responsible for her in a way because I was left as the guardian of her.
	So, what I ended up doing, she wouldn't clean her room, so I cleaned her room for her and I put her stuff in her mother's room and told her when she finished her chores she could get it back.
	Well, it all went downhill pretty quick after there, but I wasn't sure the best way to handle a situation.
	It seems like using force in a way to take your stuff away from her, but if I walked away from the situation, that would be abandoning my responsibilities as well.
	I'm just not sure.
	How I could handle a situation like that, because I tried talking to her all week, and it seemed like nothing was getting through.
	I felt like I had to give some kind of example, but I'm just not sure what the best way to handle a situation would be without...
	I would talk to your sister, not the child, in my opinion.
	It was your sister's kid, right?
	Yes.
	She was on vacation at the moment.
	Well, I know, but beforehand, right?
	What I mean is if you're going to have authority over a child, if you're going to have responsibility for a child or a teenager or whatever, then you have got to figure out how it's all worked up to them.
	You're inheriting a situation at that point, right?
	You can't steer a car after it's off a cliff.
	I mean, you can try, do some Thelma and Louise stuff, but it's not going to change much in terms of the direction, right?
	So I think that's...
	You can't manage effects, so you have to go to first causes, right?
	So what discipline issues are there?
	What lesson issues are there?
	And, you know, the three of you would sit down and say, okay, look, okay, so I'm going to just, you know...
	You know, your uncle is going to have some responsibility for you, and so, you know, how are we going to work this out?
	Get commitments ahead of time, get a history of consequences, discipline, punishment, whatever within the family, so you can get a sense of whether this is even possible at this time.
	I mean, this would all be, I think, in the preparation, not, you know, here's my kid, you now have responsibility, good luck.
	But no history, right?
	And I'm not saying you don't know the history, but that would be...
	It's all in the preparation, right?
	And if you can't get agreement about how things are going to go, then I wouldn't take the responsibility, right?
	Well, that makes sense.
	Yeah, I did try to call her during the week before she got back into town and let her know what was going on, and her answer was that she talked to her about it when she got home.
	So it kind of left me with making a decision on the spot at that point on what I personally would do Right, but I mean, if you have a teenager who is not listening to an adult, then this is a teenager who's not been listened to as a child.
	I mean, this to me would be the first place to look, right?
	If there's no respect for authority, that's because authority has had no respect for the child.
	If the teenager won't listen to the parent, it's because the parent didn't listen to the teenager.
	If the child is imposing their will unilaterally on the parent, as a teenager, then that's because the parent imposed his whole will unilaterally on the child.
	It's just a big boomerang.
	It all is just a big effect of the cause of parenting.
	And if you don't have a clear map of that stuff, then I think trying to impose order, it's like suddenly saying, okay, you have her for a week, I want you to start speaking to her in Portuguese, and I want it to work beautifully.
	No.
	We wouldn't expect that.
	But the language of authority and consequence and discipline and punishment and all of that, I mean, this is something that if you speak a different language, you're simply not going to have any effect.
	Certainly not in a week, unless there's a huge amount of work ahead of time.
	Does that make any sense?
	Si, obrigado.
	Obrigado.
	Yeah, I just learned that too.
	That means, screw you, you bald bastard, if I remember rightly, in Portuguese.
	Yeah, I mean, thanks, right?
	So, I mean, that would be my, you know, you can't just sort of bungee in and, hey, now she's going to, I mean, because these patterns have all been set.
	This is a language that she speaks, and you can't just, I don't think you can just up and change it.
	You can try, but it's not going to work, right?
	Well, that makes sense.
	Well, I don't want to take too many precious minutes away from the other callers, so I will speak with you later.
	Fine, thank you for the insight, and you have a good weekend.
	You're welcome.
	Thank you so much, and you too, my friend.
	All right, let's do one more before my candle completely gutters out and I face plant into a keyboard.
	All right, so then, Nate, you're up.
	Can you hear me okay?
	Yes.
	Oh, how are you doing?
	It's good to talk to you.
	I'm going to give you a little bit of a brief history.
	I just want to make sure you can still hear me.
	I'm trying to mess with technical stuff.
	Yeah, just speak a little slowly.
	Your connection isn't super great.
	Okay.
	Let's get a quick little brief thing.
	It's getting a little bit difficult.
	So I came the whole route.
	I usually see a lot of people to actually seeing your videos.
	I'm sorry, you're breaking up a lot.
	Are you on a cell phone?
	No, I was on a Skype call.
	Skype call.
	Okay, just try moving the mic a little bit away and just speak a little more slowly if you could.
	Okay.
	How about that?
	Let's give it a shot.
	I came out the same way you find a lot of people with, you know, first you start off with, mine was a buddy who let me, that was shrugged, right?
	So I read that, and I was like, wow, that was actually quite powerful, and I felt something with that.
	Like, man, that does seem like a little bit better way than what you're doing or what I was doing currently.
	And it led me to, you know, Ron Paul later.
	Well, the usual thing you find out, and then I I started watching, actually, Adam Kokesh.
	And then I saw you on there.
	And I was like, oh, this is interesting.
	So I started and listened to a lot of stuff.
	And then afterwards, I felt guilty.
	And I was like, wait a minute, I need to...
	So I set up a monthly subscription because I really was listening to a lot.
	I mean, a lot of stuff.
	And a lot of it has made...
	Well, pretty much everything has made sense to me.
	Mine is UPP. Going for the first time through a UPP book, it was like, ah, ah.
	I'm not intelligent enough right now to understand everything going on.
	But because of these things, I kind of find myself in a weird place, because all the revelations made to me, one for myself, of the things that I've been doing wrong.
	And...
	I'm sorry, you said you just cut out one for yourself, the what?
	Oh, from one understanding, like thinking about myself first, like that's where it's got to start.
	If I don't understand who I am, how am I going to try and change anything, right?
	Well, not really change anything, but live better.
	And unfortunately, I found all this stuff after I got married already and I have kids.
	It kind of set me off on the path to find what truth is when my son told me he was scared.
	And he was scared of me.
	He didn't want to tell me that he had an altercation at school and what happened from that.
	And that, honestly, that was the biggest thing that hit me.
	It's like, why?
	And this kind of coincided with listening to some of your stuff, which after this I nearly moved to a lot of the parenting stuff.
	I said, why if I'm responsible for this child and I say that I love him and I do all these things that supposedly create that, then why would he say that I'm scared of you for some reason?
	And it rang in my mind, like, oh, there's something wrong in that situation.
	And so I've taken appropriate steps and move forward.
	I'm going through therapy for myself, one, and to figure out what exactly, where exactly within my life that stuff happened that made me seem the way I parented was exactly how pretty much I was when I was a kid.
	So if you have another thing of proof right there that's telling you that if you get yelled at when you're a kid, it's most likely going to happen to when you're an adult.
	The difference of which I understand is I can change that.
	I have the power to stop that, analyze what I'm doing when I'm older, and change it.
	Good for you, man.
	Good for you.
	Where the child, like you said, children have no choice.
	No, they're completely stuck with us.
	Yeah, totally.
	And so I see that, and I'm doing the best I can to make that.
	But what I'm actually caught about was...
	I guess I was listening earlier, and I'm at that point you were talking about, almost like in the middle, right?
	Whether I either go through this all the way or I just stop entirely because it's going to be difficult, right?
	But then I keep thinking, like, I don't want to stop going through that route because if I do, it's going to feel empty now.
	I don't know if that makes sense to you or not.
	Yeah, yeah.
	And the top is all off like I'm actually in the military currently, right?
	And I can honestly say I despise it with a passion.
	Right?
	Yeah.
	But because of the situation where I'm at, I've got a family that I need to take care of.
	I'm not planning to end this, just by the means in this case.
	But if I would just still get out and leave, and leave my family in need of resources, right?
	And that would have to lead to other things.
	If I haven't, then I might get a job right away.
	We're going to have savings, and we could live up there for a while.
	But would it just not be as...
	I don't know where to describe it.
	Where does it not be training one evil for another evil, almost?
	Like, putting it in the hard way more?
	I just want to tell you your opinion.
	I'm not asking for, you know, the wrong thing is going to happen, or what you think I should do, but it's kind of your opinion.
	I know.
	Look, I mean, that's an incredibly brave question to ask.
	I get how much has gone into that, and so I really wanted to tell you how much I incredibly respect that question.
	And I also really want to tell you just how incredibly and deeply and warmly and affectionately I respect what you're doing with your children, that you're doing therapy, that you're making the commitment to not scare them.
	I mean, it's terrible.
	We don't want to see that in our children's eyes, right?
	We don't want to see that.
	So, I mean, fuck.
	Fucking A, brother.
	I mean, holy shit.
	That's incredible.
	That is fantastic.
	I mean, if there were a metal made out of half of the sun, I would carve it off and jam it right there on your chest, and you'd go, man, that's hot.
	Take that off.
	My nipple is falling off.
	Whatever, right?
	But...
	But, Jesus, great.
	Great job.
	You know, for what it's worth, you know, some idiot on the internet, I'm just, I'm telling you, that is fantastic.
	That is, that is peacekeeping.
	You know what I mean?
	Send people off to Sarajevo and shit like that.
	That is peacekeeping.
	That is building a war-free world.
	So, just, yay.
	I mean, I don't know how to put it across in manly ways, so, good for you.
	I'm doing a little happy dance.
	I do want to tell you, though, with that, and I also recognize the fact that the peaceful parenting approach And it all, from how I get it, it all starts with your preparation beforehand.
	Now, I'm coming this a little late in the game due to my own fault, right?
	You know, no one made me do any of this stuff.
	I mean, I did it willingly.
	I get that, right?
	But I can't change it.
	And I've made the commitment, you know, because it's morally right, not because I need to.
	Because to not ever, not ever spank again, because I did spank before.
	And I realized that that had to be one of the causes.
	I mean, it had to be.
	I mean, If I was with a child who loves me or says they do, why would they ever say they're scared of me?
	There's no other way around that.
	But I find that it's much more peaceful and I enjoy it, although there's a lot of stuff I have to undo with the stuff that I've caused.
	Yeah, I mean, it's weird, you know, when you take that approach, and look, I get, I mean, that's one of the reasons I'm saying how admirable, right?
	Because, I mean, you're learning how to swim 20 miles from shore.
	That's incredible.
	I mean, that takes balls, I'm telling you.
	To do it right the first time is not so hard, but to turn it around when you're halfway along, that's, you know, hey, let's not land this plane, let's just change the wings.
	This is going to go great!
	I mean, that takes some serious commitment, and that's one of the reasons I just want to say that's incredible what you're doing.
	So, good.
	We just took Isabella on 20 hours of plane rides.
	She sat still for a two-hour debate that I had with this Brazilian guy.
	She only spent about half of it trying to make me laugh by putting breadstick up her nose.
	Good for her.
	People were just amazed.
	How is this possible that a three-year-old is going to sit There for that long.
	But because, I mean, it works really well, and you'll discover that more.
	And, you know, as men, we grow up, you know, I think, I'm not going to put myself in a manly category of you, but I think that we grow up thinking, like, to apologize is to admit faults, to give other people power over us, and to downgrade our status, and so on.
	But I think if you've ever been on the receiving end of a real apology, you get that that's a courageous and noble thing to do.
	And so, you know, to say to your kids, I wasn't a bad guy, but I was really badly informed.
	You know, this doesn't mean that I'm not responsible, but I don't live in a culture which says, know thyself, and spanking is wrong.
	When my dad said, that's a door, I didn't question him.
	Okay, I'll use the word door.
	You know, this is how I grew up, but I'm getting that it's really bad, and it's been really bad for you.
	It wasn't your fault, and I want to change this.
	I'm sorry.
	You know, I mean, there's lots of great things that you can say that will bring you really close to your children, and will do a lot to heal what has happened.
	So, I mean, just great.
	Just great for you.
	I mean, that's amazing.
	As far as the military thing goes, I mean, obviously, I don't know.
	I mean, it's a It's a hell of an economy out there, right?
	Yeah.
	Go ahead, sorry.
	Continue.
	No, no, go ahead.
	No, I was just going to say, I mean, just to finish off of the kids thing, that's one of the first things I did once I realized, because my wife and I kind of had a break.
	She went to go hike the Grand Canyon, you know, spring.
	She didn't do anything like that, right?
	But it was kind of a break for us and for me to get me, I guess, get myself centered, for lack of a better word.
	And I realized, you know, if I'm truly sincere about this, the first thing I do is acknowledge it.
	And most importantly, to the person who involved the most, which would be my older son.
	We have a younger son, but the older son is definitely more of a mind to understand.
	So I did exactly what you said and apologized.
	And next to him being born, that's the second greatest time between he and I where I was able to just be truthful for the first time, really, ever, and let him know that was like what you said.
	But anyway, yeah, go ahead.
	No, and it's an amazingly powerful thing.
	And don't you feel like...
	Like, you're mixing souls, like your hearts are touching.
	I mean, there's no non-hallmark bullshit way to put it, but it's electric intimacy where you're really looking at each other and you're really talking, human being to human being, soul to soul.
	I mean, people who don't get that, I mean, I just hope that you'll back me up on this, man.
	Invite them to do it.
	It's an incredible experience.
	And that's where I'm trying to get, you know, with my wife is we, you know, we see different things in different ways, right?
	And what I've come down to is if we're going to have different values, that's fine, right?
	That's totally acceptable.
	I would never use your arguments.
	I would never try to change who you are.
	If you want to believe, that's fine.
	But if we at least can't talk about it, then I know good things can come from that.
	But if not, then that's another subject entirely.
	But exactly.
	I mean, the feeling in that relationship, you can't really explain it until...
	You can't explain it fully with as much of an emotional and mental magnitude as to experience it, right?
	Now, as far as the army thing goes, there's a couple of thoughts that have popped into my head, you know, which, as usual, could be complete nonsense, and you can just toss them overboard if they're of no use to you.
	But how old is your eldest son?
	He's four.
	He's going to be five in July.
	Right, right, okay.
	Yeah, he may be a little.
	If he was older, I'd say you could ask him what he thinks.
	That would be possible.
	How would you feel if he's, like, 14 and says, Dad, I want to go in the army?
	Well, I would have praised it as a me before, before I realized all this other stuff, right?
	But as of now, ultimately, the first thing I would say, you know, if that is what you choose to do, that is, you know, that is your choice.
	I would not...
	I'm going to say...
	I don't know, it's difficult.
	I've never been faced with that question.
	I feel like if I said, well, I support your decision, that means I'm lending...
	I'm letting my support in and making something that obviously I know is not going to be good.
	Yeah, if he said, look, I want to join the Mafia, you wouldn't be like, well, you know, if you look good in a shiny suit and, you know, your hair takes gel well and you don't mind leathery shoes that reflect the sun, go for it, right?
	I mean, that would not be right, like, oh my god.
	What has happened to you?
	What I would tell him, I get what I'm saying, I would just tell him the truth.
	You know, what I felt about it.
	When I honestly feel about it, not when I was using the past to cover up my feelings.
	Which is still difficult today, especially as I'm still in.
	Just take for example, yesterday, or Friday, I was like, what if we aren't respecting the flag was wrong?
	That's a common thing.
	Sorry, what was the one?
	What if you just mindlessly respect paganism, the flag, what if all that was wrong, right?
	And a couple of people around me looked at me like I just spit out nails and said, Satan is the greatest, you know?
	Yeah, sure.
	And it was like, it was almost another epiphany to me, like, wow, this really is almost like brainwashing.
	Well, what if, okay, so what if your son is 14?
	And you're like, don't do it, don't do the army, and you tell him why, but you're still in it.
	Well, that'd be hypocritical, bottom line.
	Well, sorry, just before you go to the judgment, the hypocrite or whatever, I don't know, but how would that feel?
	If I was still in it and he decided to do it?
	Yeah, it's one thing to say, don't do what I did.
	It's another thing to say, don't do what I'm doing.
	He would, uh...
	If I was him, it almost seemed like a...
	I mean, like a betrayal, almost.
	Thank you.
	Because you know you are his god, right?
	Yeah.
	You rule the world, you make the thunder, you roll the sun around the sky like a bowling ball.
	You are what makes the water comes out the tap and the fire come out of the lighter and you are, you know, physics and chemistry, biology and science and everything to him.
	And I think you keep that as long as possible.
	Yeah.
	And I think to build towards those questions, because I don't think we can ever give other people advice that we haven't followed.
	I mean, we can, but, you know, it's not really going to work.
	Yeah.
	And so...
	To make sure I understand what you're saying, it's like a...
	If that situation was to happen, I really couldn't offer him a true opinion of why he shouldn't do it, because I was still doing it, correct?
	Well, no, you could.
	I mean, you can do whatever you want, but it would be very tough for him to process.
	Because you would be saying, listen, son, this is not a choice of vanilla versus chocolate ice cream.
	Right?
	This is life and death.
	Right?
	This is inserting yourself into a hierarchy which gets people killed.
	And funds itself through guns pointed at taxpayers or at the unborn through debt and deficit financing.
	This is not, should I work for Wendy's or McDonald's, right?
	Yeah.
	And so to give him the true moral nature of the institution when you're still in it would be pretty tough.
	So you would either have to downplay The moral nature of the institution, which if, I mean, you may not agree with me about this judgment.
	This would sort of be, I think, this is not what is propagandized, but this is, I think, what would be a good, you know, is morally more factual.
	You'd either have to downplay that in order to make it comprehensible to him as to why you were still in it.
	You know, like, well, it's kind of dysfunctional, but, you know, that's okay.
	I mean, it's a good pension and whatever, right?
	You'd have to downplay the moral nature, which would make it harder for him to understand why you would not want him to go in so strongly.
	Okay, yeah.
	Or you'd have to say, well, no, this is the bold moral truth about this hierarchy.
	I mean, you end up being ordered around by people who are usually less intelligent than you, who are usually not moral, and, you know, if they tell you to do the wrong thing, you're toast.
	Your ass is grass, right?
	So, in which case, then, you have to sort of figure out—he would then have to figure out why you're doing it, right?
	When you could have left, right?
	I mean, look, if you're three days from retirement, right?
	You know, like that cliched cop movie, three days from retirement, it's always the guy who gets his jugular shot out, right?
	But if you're three days from retirement, I don't think any sane human being would say, leave and take no money or whatever.
	I mean, but if, you know, because he would say, well, when did you figure this out?
	And you'd say, I don't know, like 10 years ago or whatever, when you were four.
	Then how would you reasonably be able to suggest to him or to model to him or to ask him to do that which is right over that which is familiar?
	I mean, that's just truth, plain and simple right there.
	That's just what it would be.
	And, you know, I'm only 27, so I'm kind of younger enough that I can really do...
	Maybe I already know the answer to what I need to do.
	It is getting up enough balls or courage to do it.
	Well, this is a lengthy decision, too, right?
	I mean, this is a big, big-ass decision.
	This is a big, lengthy, complicated decision.
	I mean, you've got a wife, you've got two kids, you have family, you have maybe a family history in the police or the military.
	I mean, this is a big deal, right?
	So this is obviously nothing to rush.
	This is, in my opinion, like, when I have these kinds of decisions to make, You simmer.
	You think about it.
	You simmer on it.
	You know, it's like one of these slow-cookin' southern dishes, you know?
	These slow-cookin' southern deep-dish decision-making pot or something, right?
	You've got to—and it's nothing—you can't make the decision in isolation.
	But I try to preserve the rational right to give good advice, if that makes sense.
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	And the way to give good advice is to try it, right?
	Try it on yourself.
	Try it yourself first, right?
	Yeah.
	You can't review a car you've never driven, and so...
	And you...
	I mean, like all parents, you want your son not to bow to the...
	Pragmatism of the moment or to peer pressure or to, you know, whatever seems why we put our good deeds aside, why we put our ethics and integrity aside.
	You don't want him to do that because you know, deep down, I think you know, that, you know, the high road is the hard road is the right road.
	You know, it's hell.
	It feels like a never-ending conveyor belt of shit sandwiches sometimes.
	But, you know, it leads to a good place.
	I mean, look what happened to the conversation you had with your son and your commitment to not aggress.
	I mean, that's fantastic.
	And look where your son was heading.
	He's getting into fights and all that, right?
	So, you know it's hell.
	But there's heaven on the other side, you know, to put it in a completely cliched way.
	But it's not something that, I mean, in my opinion, you're in a family, you're a father, you're a husband, and you've got, you know, the timing, even if you decide you want to go, the timing is very important.
	And, you know, you've got a plan to have a, you know, you don't just, I want out of this plane and jump in, you know, get a parachute, get a, you know, get a map.
	Get a compass.
	Get some rations.
	Figure out where you're going to go.
	Figure out how you're going to transition.
	Maybe there's some education you can take in the army that's really going to help you where you want to go.
	Again, this would be my way of approaching it.
	I must have thought for like, I don't know, six or ten months before leaving my software career and doing this crazy stuff full-time.
	It takes a line.
	This was in deep conversation with friends and family and all that.
	So, it's a big, big decision.
	I think that you want to keep that glow of respect in your son's eyes as long as humanly possible and maybe forever.
	And you know that the only way to really do that is to do what What the right thing is by the values that you're going to teach him.
	And then you will have the annoying right to tell him to take the high road forever.
	And he will roll his eyes and he will hate you for it sometimes.
	But you will have the credibility of experience.
	But if you tell him to do something that you're...
	If you tell him not to do something that you're still doing, I think it kind of short circuits.
	And I think it would be kind of heartbreaking from there on.
	Okay.
	All right, well...
	Thank you very much.
	I appreciate it.
	You're welcome.
	Like I said, thank you for all that you do, and I've listened to a lot of people talk on your show, and it's quite amazing.
	There's a lot of other people, and not surprisingly, there's a lot of people in my same situation, not exactly the same, but the same occupation, that are doing a lot of the same thing.
	Oh, I think you guys, I mean, you guys in the Army are a lot more than civilians in many ways.
	I mean, You guys are up against it.
	You're deep in it.
	The power of the state is not subtle where you guys are, both inside and outside the barracks, facing out, facing in.
	You've got a hierarchy and you're trickling down and you've got bombs dropping down.
	It's very real to you guys in a way that I think is pretty abstract to the reality TV, dead, addicted, overeating majority of people.
	I think that you guys are very much the cutting edge Thank you for that.
	And I will end with a statement that most people who call me from the Army never want to hear, but I will say it anyway.
	I will say the statement, you know what I'm going to say.
	I'm going to say the statement that nobody from the Army ever wants to hear, but hopefully you'll understand what I mean when I say I truly do thank you for your service.
	I appreciate that.
	Thank you.
	All right.
	Take care, man.
	Okay.
	Bye.
	All right.
	Well, thank you everybody so much.
	Great, great calls as always.
	You guys blow my mind and I feel incredibly humbled.
	I mean, this is like standing before a supernova of human curiosity, intelligence, wisdom, and integrity.
	And I, you know, if I could use the word blessed, I would use it.
	I feel incredibly honored.
	I'm privileged to be in these conversations and for everyone who supports what is going on, I thank you.
	I hope that the people in Brazil thank you.
	I think that we had great conversations down there with a wide variety of people and I felt very energized by the enthusiasm, intelligence and professionalism of the Brazilian libertarians.
	they are truly astounding and I tried to scrape as many skin cells and the massive cloning experiment will of course be underway and so yeah if you want to support of course you can drop past the website sign up for subscriptions or donations and I will continue plowing on we are home for a couple of days and we plow on to the porcupine freedom festival if you want to check it out at porkfest p-r-c-f-e-s-t dot com I hope that you will and also go to libertopia.org to see where I'll be speaking later and Vancouver
	I was speaking in June I think it is so check that out I just go to the homepage of freedom radio.com you can scroll down and there's a whole list of sort of the summer stuff that's going on I hope to meet you I I spend hours chatting with people at these events.
	It is a real pleasure.
	I bought nachos and coffee for a whole bunch of people who wanted to chat.
	In Texas, I really enjoyed the debates with the people.
	It was very stimulating, very enjoyable.
	Everything from economics to parenting to philosophy to family, it was a real pleasure.
	I had a number of dinners and spent a whole day with a bunch of people who were interested in the show in Sao Paulo.
	And it's just a real pleasure.
	So if you come out, you know, I mean, I'm not just a fly-by, bungee-talking guy who then jumps on a plane.
	You know, I'm there for the duration.
	I'm there for the conversation.
	And it is a real pleasure and privilege to meet you if you can make it.
	So thanks, everyone, so much.
	Have yourselves a wonderful week.
	And it's great to be back.

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