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July 23, 2012 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:50:20

2174 Satan Rules This World! Freedomain Radio Sunday Show, 8 July 2012

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	Alright, thanks everybody.
	Sorry for the late start.
	Thought I'd start with a wee story.
	Forgot to mention this before.
	So, there was a roast of Christopher Lawless at a pork fest recently.
	And I was told, unfortunately, that it was cancelled by the organizer who had some trouble with the management.
	And so I show up.
	I'm just expecting an evening of chatting and so on, and then I find out, hey, the roast is back on, and you're going up for 10 to 15 minutes to try and make jokes about a guy you don't really know that well in front of a sadly sober crowd.
	It was a dry pork fest.
	I say sadly sober only for the point of view of trying to make people laugh, not from the fact that it's sad to be sober.
	So, you know, isn't this, you know, every sort of person's nightmare?
	Go up and be funny in front of a crowd of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people with no preparation and very little warning time.
	And so I was running around asking people, hey, do you know Christopher Lawless?
	Do you know Christopher Lawless?
	And nobody did.
	And so my first joke was going to be that he really is just a collective figment of our imagination.
	But he's too big for that.
	So I went up and I literally had nothing.
	I had nothing!
	And I watched a couple of other people.
	And this is the closest I've really come to being religious, is to pray to the gods of comedy to favor me with a kind joke or two.
	And anyway, I got a little bit of an inspiration, and there it was.
	I was able to come up with a few good jokes, but that was interesting.
	That's a sort of real test of confidence, you know, like, oh, Miko system, please come up with something funny.
	No pressure.
	I'm sorry that we're not better prepared.
	But it was quite funny to come up with stuff more on the spot, which was...
	Really exciting.
	I haven't had any dreams about it before or since.
	I'm sure it wasn't too stressful, but that was an interesting moment in public speaking.
	I just wanted to mention that.
	Anyway, let's move on with the listenership.
	Again, I'm sorry for the late start, but I'm all ears if we have a call or a question or if you have questions in the chat.
	Please.
	Please, too.
	Oh, yes.
	In Indian accent.
	Hello, Steph, please drive.
	First, I'm plugging a router for one minute, then plugging it back in.
	Yes, that's what we should be doing.
	Exactly.
	I'm sorry that you can't find the any key.
	Have you tried putting in your password?
	What is it back in the day?
	Oh, this is way back in the day.
	The stories were going the rounds of help desks then.
	Somebody kept complaining that their 5.25-inch boot floppy disk just kept not working, and it turned out that they kept it pinned to the metal cabinet by the computer with a large magnet, and they just had a problem that it just didn't work.
	These things can happen, my friends.
	It's like when the coffee holder breaks.
	Alright.
	So, do we have any callers at the moment, or is it time for Randall Chattyfest?
	No, we do have some people on the line.
	If you would like to start, come on up, ST. What, me?
	I have to ask some questions now?
	You don't have to, my friend.
	It's really, really up to you.
	Okay.
	Well, I guess I wanted to ask you what, I mean, because I heard some stuff that you have said on feminism and democracy, and I was wondering what your view is on the fact that the feminist movement got,
	like, females the vote, and that together with the acknowledgement that democracy It's pretty much the system that restricts the power of government the least, because people will always vote for the government to do more things, but voting will never work to restrict the government.
	So if you have more people voting, doesn't that mean that the government will do more?
	And isn't that a bad thing?
	What are your views on that?
	Yeah, I mean, I certainly agree.
	There's a Hoppian argument that says that in many ways, aristocracy is better than democracy because with aristocracy, you're planning to hand the kingdom to your children.
	So you're going to have more of an interest in its long term, the maintenance of its long term value, as opposed to if you are, you know, a one or two term president or whatever, you don't really care about the long term health of the system.
	And of course, it is to your interest to pay as many people off as possible.
	in order to maintain your power.
	I think, you know, one of the challenges that I think is really significant around state money in intellectual endeavors is that the purpose of a movement, the purpose of an intellectual movement is to make itself obsolete in many ways, right?
	So, I mean, the purpose of abolitionism, the purpose of getting rid of slavery was to disband itself, right?
	The purpose of trying to gain equal rights For minorities and for women, the purpose of that is to end itself, right?
	And I think that's really, really important.
	The problem with state money, I mean one of the many problems with state money for intellectual exercises or intellectual movements like anti-racism, like feminism and so on, is that there's no terminus.
	There's no end point.
	It doesn't commit its own beneficial harikari because it has achieved its goals.
	So when you have state money, you set up a continual flow of resources towards particular intellectual groups.
	And those intellectual groups may very well have incredibly just and righteous things to achieve, like equality for women and minorities.
	The problem is when those things have to a large degree been achieved, and it was in the early 60s that it became illegal to discriminate on the basis of gender for employment or for education or other things.
	Well, when you have achieved those things but the money is still flowing, what happens?
	The movement doesn't end once it's achieved its goals.
	It then starts to go further and starts to look for things like positive discrimination, affirmative action for women and affirmative action for blacks or other minorities.
	This is hugely problematic, of course, because it's collective innocence and collective guilt.
	Saying that we should have affirmative action for women because in the past they were denied opportunities It's exactly the same as arguing that women should have two votes now because women in 1910 didn't have any vote.
	But this is ascribing morality to a concept called women or blacks or whatever.
	And it's – I mean it's not good.
	It's not good.
	So my concern – you can see this tipping point.
	There's a lot that – is right and just and fair about the drive for equality under the law.
	And where inequality under the law exists, it is something that needs to be opposed, which is why I'm very much for, for want of a better phrase, equality under the law for children, right?
	You can't hit your boss, you can't hit your employees, you can't hit your wife, you can't hit your husband or your aunt or your uncle or your politician.
	You can only hit your children, right?
	So we're just looking for equality under the law for the most helpless and dependent in society.
	And that's great.
	That's wonderful.
	But if there is no private source of funding for intellectual movements, they tend to go too far and become corrupted because there is no natural terminus, right?
	So once women have achieved legal equality, then we would expect the funding for the groups driving for legal equality to go down, of course, right?
	In the same way you and I don't donate a lot to anti-slavery movements anymore.
	And that is essential because what it does is it releases the passionate, the moral, and the intellectual, and the great communicators.
	It releases them to do other great good in society and to look for other great deeds and other great wrongs to right and so on.
	But because the government money keeps flowing into a sphere where equality has already been achieved, it then starts to demand more.
	It has to...
	Invent new problems and create new issues and so on and this is how things get corrupted.
	I would love for the funding for Free Domain Radio to dry up tomorrow.
	I think that would be fantastic because that would mean that I could go back to being a novelist and a poet and a business person and work in those fields because the world had become sane and rational and philosophical.
	But I certainly do look forward to the day where a philosophy show does not need to be funded or doesn't need to be supported in a way.
	But that's not about to happen.
	So I hope that helps.
	Does that answer any of your questions?
	Yeah, and that was mainly where I was coming from.
	I don't think that there will ever come a day where you don't need intellectual discussions going on to remind people of What sort of things they should be supporting and stuff.
	But I wanted to say that, like, a very important thing is that equality under the law is very different from, like, general equality.
	Because if you strive for general equality, then you have to sacrifice equality under the law to get it, and then you'll get no enough to go.
	And, like, for example, like, share no discrimination for hiring.
	I think I've heard you talk about this, but...
	I don't know, but when an employer discriminates and he doesn't want to hire women for example, It's because he doesn't think that women will be as productive in that sort of show.
	So if you make it illegal for him to discriminate, then that's going to create a lot of trouble because then maybe he won't pay his male employees as much or maybe he just won't interview a woman because he knows that if he has one and then pass her Then he's gonna get a lawsuit or something.
	So a lot of these policies end up achieving, all of these policies end up achieving the exact opposite of their intended goals.
	So yeah, I think that's interesting.
	Yeah, like my question was mainly coming from the Hopian perspective.
	I read Democracy, they got that favorite book that Hopi wrote that is very interesting.
	In the end he argues that Because democracy is a force of de-civilization, the more people who vote, the worse is.
	And so, while it was bad that males were voting and females were not, like, the solution wasn't to get females to vote, but to remove the votes from males and eventually remove the state, right?
	But that's not what happened.
	Yeah, and so we move from the correction of historical injustices through the extension of, I would argue, UPB or common law, To then the concept of restitution, which, you know, I think comes dangerously close to bribery, right?
	So this is sort of what happened to some aspects of mainstream feminism with some great success, which was that they began to argue for pay equity laws.
	And so they no longer wanted the market to set the rates for male or female or individual employment, but they wanted to set up laws and rules to ensure this and basically...
	I think we're good to go.
	There are challenges to hiring.
	I mean, if we have a traditional family structure, which a lot of people are still aiming towards, there are challenges with hiring women.
	And anyone who doesn't understand that is missing some basic biology.
	Most women want to have kids.
	And most women will take some interruptions in time to have their kids.
	And after they have their kids, They will have restrictions on the amount that they can work because, you know, we've got this ridiculous system which is, you know, if feminists, I think, and I consider myself a feminist and I love to advance the economic equality and opportunities for women and I especially,
	I mean, it's always been the case but in particular now that I'm a dad, I really oppose gender stereotypes and so on and really think that it's a lot of nonsense that gets piled on kids about You know, cute and pink and all that kind of stuff.
	But one of the things that feminists could really fight for if they really wanted to help women in the workplace, the most important thing that they could do is fight to get the school day to match the work day.
	I mean, isn't it completely ridiculous that you have a school day that back when I was going to school, it was 9 o'clock until 3.15.
	I think it may be a little bit earlier now, whatever.
	But, I mean, can you imagine trying to set up a private school when people work nine to five?
	Saying, oh yeah, no, we turf your kids out on the street two hours before you can come and get them.
	I mean, that school would be out of business in about eight seconds.
	In fact, it would never even get any funding because it would just be such a ridiculous business model.
	You know, it'd be like, it's a car rental place, you know, you rent your car from Los Angeles and you have to return it by a hard-to-find cactus somewhere in the Nevada desert.
	That would just be Bad comedy.
	And so if women really wanted to, if feminists or people interested in women's rights, if they really wanted to help women, then they would find a way to get the school day extended.
	But of course, nobody wants to try any of that sort of stuff because the moment that you try that kind of stuff, you really do run into the aggression and the violence and the entitlement of the status system.
	And people don't want to get close to that because it's pretty humiliating to see the gun in the room.
	So...
	Right, right.
	I totally agree with that.
	And while we are on the subject of schooling, I guess I wanted to ask, what do you think about compulsory schooling?
	I'm guessing you're not for that.
	But I think that beyond the fact that kids can be legally assaulted by their families in most countries, there's also the fact that They are forced to attend these indoctrination camps set up by the state.
	And whether they're public or private doesn't really make that much of a difference because the private ones have to teach the stuff that the state says.
	The teachers are almost always part of the union and they have to teach the same crap curriculum.
	Well, I mean, when you put compulsion into a voluntary relationship, it's no longer voluntary, right?
	So we put compulsion into borrowing and it becomes theft, right?
	We put compulsion into labor and it becomes slavery.
	We put compulsion into sex and it becomes rape.
	So it is a kind of slave mind-rape theft of childhood to force children into schools.
	And nobody's interested in the education of the children.
	I mean, they're interested in the indoctrination of the children, of course.
	The state is very interested in that.
	But what the children are is crops, right?
	They are livestock.
	They are crops.
	They are resources to be held hostage in return for money.
	That's really all it comes down to.
	And we see that, of course, in public schools.
	We see that with national debts.
	We always see that in wartime, of course.
	Children are resources to be domesticated, to be shaped, to be molded, to fit into the existing society, and any children who don't are ostracized, attacked, mocked.
	Drugged, expelled, humiliated to the point where they have to fit into society.
	In any relationship between strong powers, there always has to be a lubricant.
	There always has to be something that's going to give way.
	And usually it's the youngest kid in a family or whatever.
	It may not be the youngest kid, but If there's a lot of fighting in families, a lot of conflict between, say, the mom and an elder sibling, then usually the younger sibling is the one who gives up their needs and just becomes the peacemaker and the social lubricant, so to speak.
	And in our society, if children were respected as full human beings, as full human beings, then our society could not function even close to the way that it is currently pretending to function.
	And that is...
	I mean, if you look at when women in sort of the 16th century or the 15th century were, you know, cattle breeding sows, that's how they were treated.
	They had very few legal rights.
	And, you know, they were there basically to make children and to make dinner and to keep house.
	And if you look at how society has changed once we have recognized that women are full human beings...
	Society has changed immeasurably.
	And if we can conceive of or begin to think about the argument that children are the fullest of full human beings in society, they are the ones who have the first rights, the most rights, the most necessary rights, the deepest rights.
	They need the most consistent rights.
	They need the greatest protection.
	They must be afforded the greatest opportunities for choice.
	Right now, we've got it completely backwards.
	Right now, children have the least choice and adults have the most choice.
	It should be the complete opposite.
	We should be encouraging as much choice as humanly possible and extend as many rights of morality and protection and respect to children first and foremost.
	But right now, the exact opposite is true.
	Our children's needs are not Even consulted in society.
	I mean, they're not even viewed as entities whose needs could even remotely be consulted.
	I mean, how many times did you ever go to school and get a form about what you would like or how well things would go?
	The amount of aggression that goes on in the home compared to that which goes on outside the home is completely disproportionate.
	Children are not allowed to vote.
	But they are sold off to bribe existing voters and are responsible for the principal plus interest that accrues when they grow up.
	Our children did not have anything to do with the existing systems that have killed their economic opportunities and put them a trillion dollars in student debt and robbed them of job opportunities and advancement and growth and have them stuck living at home until they're in their 20s and so on.
	So the idea that we would look at our society and say, aha, we have children.
	Now, whatever moral rules we have, whatever moral rules we have, whatever good we think we can or should achieve as a society, let's focus it on children first.
	Forget everyone else.
	To hell with everyone else right now.
	If there's a right called freedom from violence.
	Okay.
	Children first.
	Children first.
	If there's a right to freedom of association, children first, as much as it can be achieved.
	If there is a right to self-determination, children first.
	If there is a right to equality, children first.
	If there is a right to freedom from beatings or verbal abuse, children first.
	And we don't do that at all.
	All of the corruption that goes on in society can only survive because we refuse to extend basic humanity to children.
	That it can even be a debate about whether children can be hit or not is beyond shocking at a very fundamental human level.
	The fact that there are so many vociferous defenders of hitting children It's astonishing.
	Absolutely astonishing.
	And the future will look back upon us as lower than trogulite, orc-based Lord of the Flies barbarians for even having such a debate, especially with so many people on the pro-hitting side.
	But just imagine...
	Just imagine what it would be if any kind of ethic we thought of, any kind of virtue we thought of, any kind of human dignity and respect that we thought of, we thought of how to maximize it for children first and foremost.
	What if we designed a society by saying to kids, hey, what do you guys want?
	What would make you happy?
	What would make you happy?
	That doesn't mean, of course, we're adults, right?
	When children, you know, they're still learning a lot about consequences and so on.
	So I'm not saying that they then become the new dictators.
	But what if freedom from violence, which we all understand, husband hits his wife, just slaps her.
	Bam!
	She calls the cops.
	He goes to jail.
	One time.
	Even though she's an adult, she chose the relationship and she can leave at any time.
	Parent hits child.
	Well, that's good.
	That's discipline.
	That's good parenting.
	That's making sure they're not spoiled.
	Most people aren't even that ambivalent about this.
	So, this is really all my show ever comes down to.
	UPB is about kids.
	The gun in the room is about kids.
	It's the hand on the ass.
	We can't see the gun in the room in the state because we can't see the aggression in the room in the family.
	We have enormous trouble extending UPB, which is a very obvious concept, extending UPB because people are very guilty about UPB violations with their kids, whether those UPB violations are hitting them.
	Or circumcising them or yelling at them or abandoning them by throwing them in daycare all week.
	This is why people get so reactionary about UPB because if UPB is true, the first place we need to think about it, the first place we need to apply it, and I would argue really the only place we need to apply it because it all flows from there, is to children.
	But when you have 80-90% of parents still hitting their children, well, UPB is going to be a pretty tough nut to swallow because the conscience is UPB fueled and UPB reaches into the mind through the heart, up the ventricles, through the spine, and grabs the conscience and drags it from the muck and throws it spinning with fire into the sky.
	And people do not like the sore and eyed glared of their UPB-based conscience.
	So UPB is a very emotionally difficult thing for people to process.
	The people I know who process it best are the people who have either never used or have abandoned the use of aggression in their own lives.
	I'm sorry, you were saying...
	Yeah, I was saying that I couldn't agree with all of that more and that I definitely agree that in order to have what we would call a completely healthy society, we need to have respect for children and parents treating them in the same way that they would treat their friends or their spouses or whatever.
	And that's not the way it is and it's not the way it's ever been done, really.
	But I think something interesting to consider is that right now a lot of the freedoms that are taken away from children are not taken away by the family, and a lot of those are, but a lot of those are taken away by the state.
	And this wasn't always the case.
	The things that now the state claims to be helping children when they force them into their indeclination camps They claim to be helping children when, for example, if a child leaves an abusive family, then the state will find the child and bring him back to the family, right?
	And only afterwards they will conduct some sort of investigation to decide whether the amount of abuse that they were imparted was But this is a really tough situation.
	It's a very tough situation.
	And look, I'm, God knows, six million light years away from any kind of legal expertise.
	But it's really tough, right?
	So if a kid is, let's say, some eight-year-old kid says to a teacher, I'm being abused at home.
	What happens?
	Well, I guess the teacher is going to call the Child Protective Services or whatever who are going to come in and do an investigation and so on.
	But it's really tough because if the child is being abused at home, then they are in an environment where that abuse is sustainable.
	In other words, they are in an extended family who is not intervening.
	They are in a neighborhood or a community or a church or a cultural group where that abuse is not being opposed.
	In fact, it's probably being either explicitly or implicitly supported and praised.
	And so, what are you going to do with a kid when the parents are abusing and the extended family He knows of the abuse, I'm sure, or at least sees the effects and doesn't do anything about it.
	Are you going to take the child from the abusive parents and give it to the abusive aunt and uncle?
	I mean, I'm not for sure abusive, but likely.
	I mean, it's likely because they're so desperate.
	The kid is so desperate, he's not going to the aunt and uncle, he's going to some teacher.
	So where do you, okay, do you take that kid out and then you assign that to some other family who's willing to take it in?
	That's all very difficult.
	Very tough.
	Very tough stuff.
	I mean, I get emails about people saying, you know, you've got to do more to show how terrible Child Protective Services is and so on.
	And maybe they are.
	I don't know.
	I have none of the research, so I don't really have any strong opinions about it.
	But I will say it's a really, really tough thing.
	It's a really, really tough situation to deal with.
	Somebody asked in the chatroom, well, how would emotional abuse be prevented?
	Well, you would get brain scans, of course, because you can see the effects of emotional abuse on brain scans.
	You can see the effects of deprivation, of isolation, of physical abuse.
	I'm not saying you can track it down to, well, this word is imprinted upon this part of the brain.
	In the same way you can, you know, when we take my daughter to the doctor, she weighs and makes sure that my doctor is doing well.
	And of course, if my daughter was undernourished, then there would be some significant intervention that would be necessary.
	But we don't scan the brains of children, which is what we should be doing.
	We should be scanning the brains of children to look for signs of abuse.
	You can't hide the effects of abuse on the mind of a child.
	It's not a perfect smoking gun.
	I'm sure that the technology could be improved.
	But you see, this is not where we are as a society.
	Where we are as a society is we reserve brain scans for older people.
	We don't look and say, okay, well, we know the prevalence of child abuse in society is distressingly high, so we are going to roll out an educational campaign and say, look, we're going to look for these signs in the brain.
	And I could be completely wrong about this.
	This is my understanding of the science, so don't take anything I say as any kind of gospel.
	But you would just run the kids through a brain scan, and if you found the signs, right, shrunken near frontal cortex, enlarged amygdala, whatever was going on, that would be signs of abuse, then you would go and investigate further.
	Because the physical properties are there.
	And this would be the case, of course, with children who have this, quote, ADHD or ODD, oppositional defiant default disorder, all this nonsense that's made up, you would do a brain scan and see, well, is there a brain problem here?
	And if there is a brain problem, then the first place you would look is the way that the children have been parented or taken care of.
	That would be an intelligent way.
	If we focused on children as the most important recipients of our moral concern and care and consideration, then that would be the case.
	Yeah, I agree with that.
	It will definitely have to be taken care of by some entity.
	And what I was saying is that in the way the state deals with these things right now, let's say some 10 or 11 or 12-year-old child runs away from their family and finds some way to either sustain themselves or find someone who is willing to take care of them.
	When the state prevents that, it makes that illegal, it charges the person who either gives the child a job or takes care of them with kidnapping.
	And takes the child back and gives them back to their parents.
	And this is something that didn't always exist.
	It's something that is being done because the state claims to be helping children.
	When really all they're doing is giving...
	Look, the state has no interest in helping children.
	If the state was interested in helping children, then they would privatize schools immediately, or at least get rid of the teachers' union and make sure that...
	I mean, the government has no interest.
	I mean, I remember when I was a teenager, this is sort of what just popped into my mind, reading some of the comments in the chat room, I think I've mentioned this before.
	When I was, I think, 13 or so, I was having some awful fight with my mom, and my mom called the cops, and the cops came and cornered me in my room, and Give their mouth-breathing, heavy-lipped lectures on the fact that there's a generation gap and I need to listen to my mom and she's trying to do the best for me and so on.
	They didn't ask my mom anything.
	They certainly didn't ask me about whether I was experiencing mental torture, physical abuse, hunger, abandonment.
	Yeah, well, they didn't ask any questions.
	They just lectured me about how great my mom was and how I really needed to listen to her and all that.
	And of course, I mean, what else would they do?
	That's the easiest way to deal with the situation, is to lecture the child who is straining under 10 elephants' weight of dysfunction and abuse.
	And just throw one more elephant in there.
	But, I mean, how else could it be?
	I mean, everyone in my social circle knew that things were seriously bad in my house.
	I came to school with holes in my clothes and unwashed and hungry all the time.
	Never did any homework.
	And it was very clear to anyone with any eyes to see that I was very intelligent and was not applying myself in any way, shape or form.
	And in three different countries, three different continents, not one person ever asked me how I was doing.
	Or what was wrong?
	I don't think that's changed.
	I mean, this is 35 years ago.
	I don't think it's changed.
	And so this is what we need to change.
	This is what we need to change.
	I was told when I was a kid, you see bad things, you've got to intervene.
	You've got to ask.
	You've got to do things.
	You've got to give some support to the victims.
	And I really took that to heart.
	And I also remember, since I believe that morality is basically memory, I remember what it's like to live in a world where you can be abused and no one will say anything.
	And people will in fact blame you for the consequences of that abuse.
	Right, so the kids who go home to healthy, happy, peaceful homes, they do their homework, and they come to school.
	They're fed, they're rested, they're calm, and they do quite well on tests, and so they get an A. And I struggle to get a B or a C because I'm trying to be in a swimming race with a goddamn anvil tied to my neck and sharks biting.
	And yet we're all judged equally.
	There's no consideration called, well, this kid is sleep deprived, this kid is malnourished, this kid is not even getting basic hygiene or self-care.
	This is obviously a very dysfunctional household and so on.
	Well...
	Anyway, I want to sort of get into it, but even when things got explicit when it came to my mom's mental illness, there was no intervention from doctors, from professionals, from psychiatrists, or anything like that.
	So this is where we are.
	We step around child abuse.
	Nobody asks about child abuse.
	Nobody asks the children how they're doing.
	And look, I can understand why.
	People who will abuse children will make your life difficult if you help.
	If you help stand up for the kids.
	Well, that's too bad.
	You know, I'm sorry, but it's still time.
	It still needs to be done.
	Because the world will not progress morally.
	It will not progress benevolently.
	It will not progress charitably.
	It will not progress towards freedom until we start taking care of the children in our midst.
	And the state stands in because Neighbors and extended family, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, are not stepping in.
	And the reason for that is, well, probably quite obvious, but that's what needs to happen as a society.
	And that's what I've been encouraging for many years.
	It's all about how the children are treated.
	And we can ignore our child abuse.
	We can bypass child abuse.
	We can turn up the stereo if we hear someone yelling at a kid or some kid being hit.
	But that is the society which we then forge in our future and which our children will then have to live in.
	All right.
	Well, I think we've had a good old chat about that.
	Thank you.
	Thank you so much.
	But if you could – great questions, great comments, but I think we should move on to the next caller if you don't mind.
	Okay.
	If you hear some rumbling in the background, that's my bulldog snoring, okay?
	Because you're guaranteed three things with a bulldog is they snore, snort, and fart.
	And I can't share the parting with you, so you're going to get to snoring.
	Anyway, Steph, my first question for you is...
	There was this rather handsome fellow, really tall forehead, that posted a video online and he was really, really adamantly trying to get people out to vote in favor of one specific political candidate down in the US. And lately,
	this very same, like I said, handsome fellow, really tall forehead, has been saying of the same political candidate that he's kind of glad that he didn't get elected because he thinks he's kind of dangerous.
	Wait, wait, you're talking about me, aren't you?
	I can tell.
	The forehead thing gave it away.
	And I'm just wondering, what has changed to change your opinion of Ron Paul?
	Well, nothing has changed, I don't think.
	Do you mean the How to Elect Ron Paul video?
	Well, there was one time where you were online and almost going to tears, pleading with people to show up at something where you were trying to get Ron Paul elected.
	And then...
	I saw something just recently where you were saying that you thought Ron Paul, while one of the better candidates, was not the right person to be elected to president now, and that he was actually kind of a dangerous person.
	Well, sorry, let me be clear.
	I want to say that Ron Paul is a dangerous person.
	No, I don't think he's a dangerous person.
	I mean, I think he's a very smart guy, very well-educated, has achieved more than a variety of spheres.
	But no, I mean, I think that having a libertarian in power for the next cycle would be a complete disaster, a complete and total disaster.
	But no, I did receive a lot of questions about that video.
	I'm happy to pull the curtain back and tell you my purpose in it if that helps.
	Go ahead.
	Well, my stance as far as political action has always been, I think it's a bad idea.
	I think it's a way of distracting people from what they really need to do in their lives, which is to bring peace.
	There's so many people we know in our lives who are spanking their children, who are yelling at their children, who are not spending time with their children.
	We can spend the rest of our lives just sorting out that stuff and making the case for Peaceful parenting in our own personal lives.
	And that I think is – that's a tortoise.
	That's a tortoise that's going to win the race.
	Political action is the hope or the belief that somehow society can be fixed from the top down by some magical internet constitution, Jesus coming in and solving everything for us.
	And this, I believe, is a delusion.
	Not just you.
	Oh, there he is.
	Sorry.
	Sorry, Steph.
	You cut off for a bit there.
	So I think it's a big problem, and I think it is a way of distracting us from the real meaty moral work that we need to do in our lives, which is to deal with wherever we see aggression in our own personal lives.
	But that having been said, I don't claim that I've got any kind of magical crystal ball.
	I don't have a Palantir to the future.
	But what I really want is for people to be committed.
	I think that commitment is key.
	If you are doing the right thing, being committed will really help.
	If you're doing the wrong thing, then being committed will also really help because it will help free you from it.
	So my goal with that video was to say to people, look, you have to really be committed to this, which means put things on the line.
	Put things on the line because this stuff is very important.
	This is war and peace.
	This is taxation and slavery.
	This is debt and serfdom for children.
	This is very important stuff.
	And I was trying to give people some of the tools that they could use if they were really committed to political action to put it on the line.
	And to really push their relationships.
	People a lot of times will just kind of drop a few idea nuggets into the mix in their relationships and so on.
	I think it's too late for that.
	I think we've really got to push our relationships to say, look, this stuff is serious.
	It's really important.
	This is the future of the world.
	This is the freedom of humanity we're talking about.
	And so my goal was to give people what I thought were the best tools to help them convince other people.
	Now, if these tools had been instrumental, I'm not saying that they were about to be, but if the advice that I had given had been...
	Oh, Steph, your connection is burbling off.
	No, yours is too.
	I don't know if...
	I'm sorry, I'll just have to keep going.
	Maybe this has just come out in the recording.
	But if my...
	According to my theories, political beliefs are formed in early childhood.
	And these are not just my theories.
	There's a huge amount of science to verify this.
	Political beliefs are formed early?
	Political beliefs are formed in early childhood through your relationships with your authority figures.
	And if this is the case...
	Then politics is an effect of childhood.
	And politics, if it is an effect of childhood, cannot be solved without self-knowledge, without self-examination, without therapy, which I'm a huge fan of, without journaling, without dream analysis, without introspection, without sentence completions from John Bradshaw and Nathaniel Brandon, without reading Alice Miller, without reading Jung, without, you know, really, right?
	And so, if I'm wrong about that, Then giving people really powerful arguments to change their political beliefs will work.
	If I'm right about that and if the science that I subscribe to is right about that, then if you attempt to change people's political beliefs without encouraging them to pursue self-knowledge, you will fail.
	And so this was an experiment or a suggestion to, you know, I'm perfectly willing to accept that I may be wrong.
	The science may be wrong in this formulation.
	It was a way of saying, look, go and put everything, all the moral energy, all the moral focus you have on the line in your relationships.
	If those relationships change and people accept what you're saying, then I'm wrong.
	Fantastic.
	Then I think political action could work.
	But this is not what happened.
	What happened was people didn't Pursue that advice.
	Or if they did pursue that advice, they ran into a brick wall in their relationships and quickly dropped the argument.
	And so this supports what seems to be certainly philosophically true and very strongly supported empirically that people's political beliefs are an effect of their early childhood relationships or lack thereof with authority figures and therefore you cannot change people's political beliefs through political argument.
	You cannot Change people's political beliefs through political arguments.
	It's like trying to argue someone into being taller or shorter.
	Or like trying to argue someone into voluntarily changing their hair color.
	And so it is through self-knowledge that we change our beliefs.
	Because most of our beliefs, at least according, again, to the science that I've read, most of our beliefs are just ex post facto justifications for Trauma or difficulties that we experience very early in life.
	So I was very keen to put those arguments out there.
	I was not of the opinion that they would work, but I'm always willing to be proven wrong.
	And if people had put stuff on the line and said, wow, you know, I changed 10 people's minds with that passionate speech.
	I sent this speech to 20 people and 15 of them came back and said, oh my god, right?
	Then I would have been like, well, I guess the science is not that great.
	but if people can be given a very clear and powerful moral message but don't change their minds it's because they're immune to empiricism and immunity to empiricism arises from early childhood trauma And so this is why my argument has been self-knowledge, self-knowledge, self-knowledge is the key.
	This is why politics will not save us.
	This is why economics will not save us.
	This is why philosophy alone will not save us.
	The better argument does not reach the irrational mind.
	And the irrational mind can only be healed through self-knowledge.
	It cannot be healed through abstract rationality.
	So I hope that makes some kind of sense.
	Well, I agree with you about self-knowledge, and that's one of those things that you've got to find for yourself.
	Nobody can give it to you.
	But I was wondering, if your political views are established in early childhood, how does the rebellion that Manifest itself in just about everybody when they hit adolescence fit into that because everybody when they hit adolescence generally turns 180 to what they believed for the years prior and suddenly rebel
	against everything.
	Their parents, every authority figure that they have thrust at them and so on and so forth.
	Do you think that's true?
	I mean, I don't know.
	Statistically, how many people who are raised fundamentalist Christian go through an atheist phase when they're teenagers?
	Or how many people who are raised atheists go through a fundamentalist Christian phase when they're teenagers?
	I don't think too many.
	Have you ever noticed how many people have been raised, again, like you said, fundamentalist Christian and all that kind of thing, that instantly turn goth occultist once they hit high school?
	Well, I don't think it's that many, because otherwise the schools would be entirely full in certain sections of goth people, and the goth people remain a significant minority.
	Well, that's only because a lot of them are afraid to just do it in public, because, oh my god, if my folks ever found out, they'd kill me!
	Right.
	I mean, I think that there's a lot of anger.
	That occurs in teenagers, and I think a lot of it is fair because I think there's a transition that goes on, and I'm not speaking about all parents.
	I'm just speaking about the typical template for parenting around the world.
	Parenting around the world relies on punishment, and the punishment is either personal or it's jail or government or whatever.
	I mean, there are still parents out there I've had conversations with people about this who, when they were five or six, if they were disobeying their mom, their mom would say, I'm going to call the cops and they're going to come and take you away and throw you in jail.
	Yeah, I heard that one myself.
	Yeah, that is beyond ugly.
	That is absolutely vicious.
	And that is a deliberate hack of the parent-child bond.
	Well, Steph, you and I have actually had a conversation before.
	I was an adopted child at X number of weeks long before I ever became self-aware and all that kind of thing.
	And my father has never hit me with an open hand in his life.
	But I got smacked around a whole lot.
	And, you know, there's a whole bunch of other nonsense, including a motorcycle crash and a whole bunch of other...
	Stuff that was thrust at me.
	And I'm actually surprised.
	I've managed to remain as level-headed as I am.
	Well, I think that's great.
	So parents will punish either with the threat of police, or they will punish with the threat of hell, or they will punish with the threat of spanking, or they will punish with the threat of being sent to your room without dinner, or they will punish with the threat of time out, or they will take away your toys.
	I mean, this is...
	Wait till your father gets home.
	Wait till your father gets home.
	And to be fair, I hate saying that because it makes it sound like I'm not being fair other times, but...
	But to be fair, because I misunderstood about this a lot of times, I can understand why parents do that, because they're not being given the right tools by philosophers and by psychologists to help them to deal better.
	So they have some options other than punishment.
	But punishment is the way that parenting works.
	And punishment when you're a child relies on the fact that you are smaller than your parents and dependent upon them.
	And then when you get to be a teenager, your parents can no longer physically intimidate you because you're bigger, younger, stronger, leaner.
	You are the six million dollar man to their half-loved up Terminator robots.
	And then when you're a teenager, well...
	Things have to change.
	Physical intimidation, size and dependence are no longer enough.
	And so what happens is, what generally happens is then a heavy weight is switched to like a really heavy moralizing that goes on.
	Endless lectures about responsibility and adulthood and maturity and empathy and blah blah blah blah blah.
	I mean I remember these.
	When I got into my teenage years, oh my god, the moralizing.
	Oh, my God, I would have given my IT to have only been a Catholic when it came to the moralizing in my government run.
	I mean, a friend of mine, I mentioned this before on the show, a friend of mine, he's very visually gifted and he just did a couple of little cartoons in the corner of his book.
	Why?
	Because he was so goddamn bored in school.
	And the teacher found out about this and literally tore him apart verbally in front of the class for like 10 or 15 minutes straight about respect for property.
	And respect for books and respect for the public school education and respect like, are you fucking kidding me?
	You're talking about respect and you're verbally humiliating this kid for a couple of pictures?
	I mean, how the hell does the book get more respect than a flesh and blood child?
	And I also knew that his home life was completely wretched.
	His father was quite mad and his mother was dying of cancer.
	Of course, nobody ever asks these kinds of questions.
	You're like, why is the child bored?
	What's wrong with our system that the child is more interested in doodling than he is in listening to or participating in the acquisition of knowledge?
	Or what's wrong with this?
	Child's household that he is this way.
	But no, you get this moralizing.
	And I remember the same moralizing coming from the principal who sat us down, you know, and he gave us a thesaurus and he talked literally for 20 minutes.
	So I just watched the clock because, you know, I knew that this story was going to get him helpful one day and I didn't want to, you know, kid time seems forever.
	But this is, I guess, I just went to grade seven.
	So I was 12, I think, or 12 or 12 and a half.
	And he gave us this massive lecture about respect for this gift, this present, like he was being so magnanimous.
	Of course, he didn't pay for the fucking thing.
	It was taken from our parents' hides at gunpoint.
	But it was all this lecture and words and language and respect for words, respect for the books, and he expects these to be pristine, to be kept in great quality, no doodling, no this.
	And I just remember thinking even at the time, You guys are so fucking interested in the quality and pristineness of these books.
	How about our brains?
	How about our souls?
	How about our lives?
	You got us for six or seven hours a day.
	Where is the respect for our minds, for our choices, for our preference, for our desires, for our wants, for what excites us to learn?
	No.
	It's all about the books.
	And don't spill things on the cafeteria floor.
	And don't come to school With a hole in your clothes.
	I remember I had a Disco Sucks t-shirt.
	I had to wear it inside out.
	Because that was a big problem.
	The moralizing that went on.
	And when you begin to really turn the emotional screws when it comes to moralizing teenagers, they get resentful.
	So that was the end of that.
	I think that this moralizing, and I'm sure it's still going on.
	This switching from physical intimidation to just You know, roll you up in a heavy, wet tar carpet of moral condemnation.
	That seems to be very much the pattern of societies.
	In other words, they have to go from the physical intimidation of size and power to the verbal abuse of hypocritical moralizing.
	And there is an implicit humiliation, I think, for the kids.
	Where, you know, books and school property and all of this, everything, every piece of Adam and every consciousness of an adult is infinitely more important and deserving of respect than children themselves.
	And that, I think, is really, really tough.
	And so I think that there's a fair amount of resentment.
	I don't know that it then immediately translates into...
	Some sort of philosophical issue.
	It's just emotionally vile.
	I mean, to be moralized by people that you do not respect is a catastrophically bad situation.
	I'm not a big favor of government bans.
	But I'd be in quite a bit of favor of banning people from moralizing who were hypocrites because to have hypocrites moralize children is a very, very, very dangerous situation because it whittles away and erodes the respect that children have for the general ethics of society and then they grow up to be Wall Street bankers and so on.
	Public school teachers talking about respect for property when they're actually stealing from the very children that they're teaching to get their benefits and their pensions, none of which has been paid for.
	Medicare.
	What is the one for the old?
	I think it's the one that's for the old.
	Is that Medicare or Medicaid?
	I think it's Medicaid.
	Let me just see.
	Medicaid.
	I should know this.
	I should know this.
	It's one of these things I never got it right to begin with.
	And therefore, no, it's Medicare.
	So people say, well, I paid into Medicare and therefore I should get those benefits.
	But the average person has paid $30,000 or $40,000 into Medicare and is going to get hundreds of thousands of dollars of benefits out of it.
	And so, yeah, it's just funny to me that the same teachers who were lecturing us about respect for property are now hoovering up our money at the gunpoint.
	Because they've retired, and they want all this free stuff.
	And again, this is just the kind of hypocrisy.
	And this is where a chilling amount of youth nihilism comes from, which is, I've been morally lectured to by people who are unbelievable, stone-deep, ass-clown hypocrites.
	And therefore, I'm going to throw the baby out with the bathwater and assume that all morality is hypocritical manipulation, and it's a shame.
	Alright, do we get the other person on the line?
	I am here.
	Alright.
	Hi Stefan, so I have a question regarding anarchy.
	Can you hear me by the way?
	Yeah.
	Okay, so my question is, so anarchy is basically the recognition that force and coercion shouldn't be used to rob our lives basically, right?
	And currently that the state is the main institution by which Basically coercion and force is being inflicted into others.
	Is that correct?
	Well, again, there's this association historically that anarchy is about the state.
	Anarchy is not about the state.
	Anarchy means without rulers.
	And without rulers applies more so in the home than it does in the state.
	So it is violations of the non-aggression principle that anarchy opposes.
	The universalization of the non-aggression principle and a respect for property rights is what a certain enactment of philosophy called anarchy opposes.
	When you give up spanking you are becoming an anarchist in the home because you are no longer intimidating and ruling over your children.
	When you give up punishment as a parent you are becoming an anarchist.
	When you no longer submit your children to public schools you are becoming An anarchist.
	Because you are rejecting the initiation of force.
	You're universalizing the non-aggression principle.
	And this is why I've always focused on anarchy in the home.
	I know this sounds like, I'm going to bring anarchy into your home.
	It sounds like I'm lobbing Molotov cocktails in to your civilized dinner parties.
	But no, I mean, anarchy is...
	I mean, who cares about anarchy in the state?
	Can't do anything about it.
	And the state is only an effect to the family anyway.
	So let's bring the non-aggression principle into where we live and reject it.
	And reject those who support it.
	And that, to me, is what real anarchy is.
	But, yeah, go ahead.
	Yeah, I see.
	That's actually where my question was going to, basically, because...
	So, right now, I mean, it's easy to see the violence.
	It's easy to...
	Well, maybe not so easy, but for people who are aware of it, it's not hard to say, okay, yes, the state is the main way of inflicting violence.
	I'm sorry, I can't agree with you there.
	The state is the largest way that adults are threatened with force.
	But the state is not the largest enactor of force within society.
	You would say it's parents.
	Well, I mean, it's people who hit their children, are the ones violating the initiation of force the most in society.
	I mean, 90% of people, or 80 to 90% of people in many districts are hit by their parents, but not 80 to 90% of people go to jail.
	Well, yeah, I didn't think of it that way, because where my question was going, but I guess maybe it doesn't make sense anymore, is, you know, once we get rid of the state, then how do we know, or how do we see coercion in our society?
	Because it's not going to go away.
	I mean, and I guess what you're saying is, I mean, the first place that we have to look at is parenting.
	Even before we look at the state.
	Yeah, of course.
	Of course.
	Yeah, I mean, yeah, we have to look at parenting and see once we have peaceful parenting, there will be no need for the state and the state will be entirely obvious.
	Right?
	Because the state is there, it claims, to protect us against violent people.
	Well, with peaceful parenting, you will have almost no violent people.
	Which is why, you know, we don't really buy insurance against being kidnapped by Bigfoot.
	Right.
	Could it happen?
	Yeah, Bigfoot could exist.
	Space aliens could exist and they could be abducting us, but I don't think you'd get a lot of people to buy insurance.
	I mean, sure, there is some people who will buy insurance for it, but it's not a big problem in society.
	So there will be a small number of violent people, people who've got brain tumors or other kinds of issues.
	And they, you know, are going to be violent, but this is going to be unheard of.
	You know, like a murder a month in the world, I would imagine, would be reported in these situations.
	Yeah, I mean, I wasn't looking so much into, like, cases like murder and rape, because, like, everybody knows that that's coercion, right?
	No, but that's what we think, sorry, but that's what people think the state is going to protect us from.
	And with peaceful parenting, right, I've done a video called How to Make a Monster, I could do another hundred videos on We're good to go.
	To make a violent person is harder than making a diamond.
	The heat and pressure that's required to make a violent person is extreme.
	And so, will you really feel the need for police if no one has ever stolen from you and there's no violence in your neighborhood?
	You'll just say, well, you know, I don't really think we need this thing anymore.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah, I see.
	Yeah, I was going more into the direction of other things that may not seem as coercion, but they actually are.
	I don't know, maybe prostitution.
	You might not say it's not coercion, maybe it's voluntary, but you have a girl to be used to selling her services.
	But she's doing that because, like you pointed out in one of your podcasts, is that because she herself was She was inflicted force or she was probably raped or went through some horrible...
	Yeah, I mean, sorry to interrupt, but Gabor Maté in the realm of Hungry Ghosts reports, I mean, it's not scientific, but it's not unimportant, he reports that, of course, prostitution is heavily associated with drug use and drug use is heavily associated with child abuse, so he didn't find any drug addicts in the downtown east side of Vancouver where he practices.
	He said all of the female drug addicts, all, Of the female drug addicts were raped as children.
	All of them.
	In his multi-decade career.
	Every single one of them.
	So, if we do not have the initiation of force against children, it seems inconceivable that we would have drug addiction, prostitution, these kinds of things.
	Right, right, right.
	I didn't think of it that way, you know?
	Because, you know, to me it was like, yes, okay, we get rid of the state, but then it doesn't mean that people are still going to try to use coercion, right?
	And now, if people are aware that everybody is in tune with the mantra of, like, the state is evil, then they will not use a state mechanism.
	They will use something else, you know?
	Yeah, look, I can share with you just for a minute or two, I want to make sure we get to the other callers, and these are great questions, of course, and I'm sorry to be interrupting, I really do apologize, but you know, where I think the greatest danger Right.
	Right.
	enslave.
	Morality was invented to enslave.
	I really, really believe that.
	I'm not saying I can prove it, but I think there would be ways of establishing it.
	And I'll make the case in a podcast series coming up.
	But language was invented to control and enslave, and particularly morality.
	Morality was invented to reduce competition from the ruling class by teaching the slave classes that violations of property were wrong, which of course is a ridiculous thing to teach someone who's your slave.
	But when the criminals win, they quickly found that they could invent morality to reduce the competition against them.
	And And this is particularly true when people get older, right?
	So if you live in a brute force society, when you get old, you're toast, right?
	Because you can't compete with the young people because they're younger and stronger, right?
	And so you have to invent, obviously, a God who's going to punish the young people and you have to become very verbally skilled and adept.
	So people who are very verbally skilled and adept...
	I was listening to a comment by, I think, Walter Block some time ago where he was saying that He was almost saying that slavery is not necessarily immoral.
	And through the circumstances, it's okay for people to sell themselves.
	That's kind of weird to me.
	It still seems to be coercion on the part of somebody who is selling themselves into slavery.
	Yeah, I think it's a fine abstract debate, but in a free society, no one's going to sell themselves into slavery.
	I mean, that's just not going to happen.
	Because you're going to be so much less productive as a slave than if you're a free person.
	Right?
	So nobody's going to want to buy someone who then has no motive.
	Like, if I sell myself to be your slave, then you have to take care of me for the rest of my life.
	You've got to provide me Food, shelter, healthcare, clothing, you name it, right?
	And if I want to get married, then you have to make sure you pay for my marriage and you pay for my kids and, I mean, all of that, right?
	If I'm going to sell myself in this, you've got to take care of me.
	That's the contract for the rest of my life.
	Why the hell would anybody want that contract?
	I mean, it would be crazy.
	Well, because they don't have – because, like, for instance, if you go to a third world country, they don't have anything.
	So selling themselves into slavery might be appealing to them.
	No, but that's why I said in a free society, right?
	In a free society, you would – I mean, nobody's going to want to take on a 40 or 50 or 60 or 70-year obligation to take care of someone because – No one's going to sell themselves into slavery and say, you now have the right to beat me if I don't work, right?
	That's just not going to happen.
	But, so, you know, you'd have to not beat the person and you'd have to pay all their bills until the end of time.
	Why wouldn't you just go hire someone?
	Pay them an hourly wage and be done with it at the end of the day.
	No one's going to take on 50 or 60 year moral obligations to take care of slaves.
	Because what if you buy a slave and then tomorrow he develops cancer?
	Well, you've then got massive medical bills and no work.
	Or what if you buy a slave and he's like, oh great, now I've got all my stuff paid for for the rest of my life so I'm just going to relax and pretend to work or whatever.
	You've got no recourse.
	There's no way that people are going to get into slave contracts in a free society.
	It's just not going to happen.
	It's a fine theoretical blah, blah, blah, right?
	But I think we've got more important things to deal with.
	People are just not going to get involved in slave contracts.
	Nobody's going to want to take on that kind of liability.
	Plus, if you own the person, what if your slave goes and rapes someone?
	Well, you're liable for that.
	Nobody's going to want to take on that kind of risk when you can just hire someone for $10 an hour.
	Yeah, I think the examples that I've heard are things like Not necessarily within most of that society, but people in that society, like, you can go into Africa, let's say, and then, you know, there's somebody there, some warlord or some local thug who is telling you, you know, people into just, I don't know, whatever, mining some minerals or whatever.
	I mean, you know, I understand what you're going to say.
	You're going to say yes, but, you know, Africa is not a free society, so...
	Yeah, that's why, I mean, I'm talking about in a free society.
	I don't care what contracts people get into in a slave society because the issue there is the state.
	The issues there are not the contracts that people are coming up with to survive the state.
	The issue is the state.
	So, I just, you know, I've heard these arguments before.
	I think it's, you know, fine to chat about over dinner or whatever, but I just, you know, it's really not important and certainly is not going to occur in a free society.
	Did you have another question?
	I think we've got another caller to get to you.
	I have lots of questions, but maybe for all the time.
	All right.
	Well, thank you very much.
	You're always welcome to call back.
	These are excellent, excellent points to raise.
	But thank you so much.
	We have actually two more people online, if we are able to get to them.
	Let's have them talk simultaneously, one into each ear, and I will answer out of two orifices to be chosen by them.
	Sorry.
	Go ahead.
	Left and right nostril.
	All right.
	Oh, that's very kind of you.
	Next up.
	If you can do it, I'll be impressed.
	Next up is John.
	John.
	Hey, Stefan.
	How we doing?
	Great.
	How you doing?
	I'm doing well.
	I'm going to make this quick, just like last week, then we've got other callers.
	Right.
	You know, I remember my first introduction, formerly into political philosophy, was this book...
	Hey, pardon?
	Go ahead.
	You know, my first introduction to political philosophy was this book that I picked up.
	And in that book was an idea of political philosophy I found very intriguing.
	It was John Rawls' social contract.
	And this social contract pretty much stated That, you know, people stand behind this veil of ignorance, and that's how we create a just society.
	So, for example, people behind this veil of ignorance wouldn't create a law that, say, panders to the aristocracy when they could very much end up impoverished.
	And I thought it was a very interesting concept, you know, all these people coming together and really developing this equal society solely based on America.
	They don't know where they're going to end up.
	And, of course, John Rawls is a well-known egalitarian.
	And I just wanted your thoughts on that political tool and if that would kind of be...
	Somewhat of an ideal model to go against the state, because we know a big conversation here on this podcast regularly is statism and how the state is just too big and too oppressive, and we talk about certain ideals to combat the state.
	And really just reading that political ideal when I was younger, it just seemed too utopian to me, and I just wanted your take on it, if it's at all plausible.
	Yeah.
	I've got a whole podcast on this in the series.
	You can just go to freedomainradio.com.
	Go to podcast, do a search.
	So his theory of justice is saying, look, if we were floating and we didn't know before we were born, we were floating in some platonic new aminal realm before we were born.
	We didn't know whether we were going to be smart or dumb or rich or poor or whatever, privileged or underprivileged or whatever.
	We had no idea.
	Then what we would want is we'd want to hedge our bets.
	So we wouldn't want a system of pure egalitarianism in case we were born really smart and ambitious and wanted to do big things in the world and be Bill Gates or whatever.
	So we'd want a lot of opportunity.
	But at the same time, if we were born, I don't know, with spina bifida or… I think we're good to go.
	And so this is why we have a sort of mixed economy and that's why we have opportunity for people to make money and be ambitious and be whatever, right?
	But we also have a safety net for people who fall through the cracks and so on.
	And so, I mean, I think it's an interesting argument.
	I think it has nothing to do with reality whatsoever.
	As a thought experiment, I have no problem with thought experiments.
	I think they're fun.
	But if you actually start talking about the real world, then you are in a different situation.
	So the real world argument for John Rawls comes from quite a famous book called The Theory of Justice that I actually read as an undergraduate.
	His argument would be, okay, so let's say before we're born we're floating in some platonic realm and we don't know where we're going to be born.
	So would it be great, would it be the best possible system to give a small minority of people all the capacity to initiate force in the world?
	And to print, type whatever they wanted into their own bank accounts, to declare war at will, to throw people in jail, and is that the system that we want?
	See, everyone talks about, you know, this is a preview of a speech I'm going to give later this summer, but I'll keep it really brief.
	Everyone talks about the products of the state.
	Nobody talks about the machinery of the state.
	Right?
	So, everybody talks about stuff which is supposed to come rolling out of the conveyor belt called the state.
	You know, justice, equality, fairness, healthcare, charity, welfare, education, all of these boxes are supposed to come out of the state in this conveyor belt.
	And all people do is say, well, we got roads coming out in a box, we got healthcare, we got special ed programs, we've got disability pensions, we've got social security, all of these things are coming out in boxes.
	Don't you want these things?
	And so he says, well, you've got the welfare, but you've also got protection of property rights for opportunity.
	These are boxes coming out of the state.
	And everyone talks about these boxes coming out of the state.
	And nobody talks about what's actually inside the machine.
	And if all you do is focus on the boxes coming out of the state and you don't focus on how they're actually produced, well, that's fine.
	But that's not how I was taught when I was growing up.
	What I was taught when I was growing up is it kind of matters whether your shoes are made by goddamn slave labor or not.
	That kind of matters.
	And I was really taught to be aware of the social or moral costs of the production of goods and services.
	Is it environmentally friendly?
	Is it slave labor?
	Is it a tyrannical regime?
	Are they blood diamonds?
	It matters where your stuff comes from.
	It matters how it is produced.
	And all these little boxes coming out of the state are coming out of a system Of universal violence.
	I don't really care what comes out.
	I don't care the quality of the cotton that is grabbed from the slaves bloody and calloused hands.
	I don't care how nice the shirt is.
	I don't care what color it is.
	I don't care how many buttons it is.
	I don't care if it's got those Seinfeld puffy pirate shoulders.
	I only care that there's somebody standing with a whip over the slaves.
	And so with John Walls, he's just looking at a couple of things coming out of this bloody machinery and saying, well, those things are good, aren't they?
	Isn't it good to help the poor?
	Isn't it good to have opportunity for the ambitious?
	Who gives a shit?
	It doesn't matter because it's nothing to do with how the system works.
	First of all, those things aren't actually produced.
	And secondly, if you're not willing to address the violence that is at the heart of statism, then you are attempting to be a geographer of fairy tales.
	You're attempting to be a physicist in a video game.
	You're entirely in a made-up landscape that has nothing to do with reality.
	And you may make it internally consistent, and it may be compelling for you, and it may be lots of fun to make up a language that they spoke in the northeastern corner of Middle Earth, but just don't claim it has anything to do with reality.
	And that's kind of my thing.
	When I read the idea, it was very fascinating to me at the time, again, still being very naive to political philosophy and actually being introduced to the world of philosophy in general.
	That's when I really started to grow more intimate with it.
	And reading it, it's something I discussed with friends, and I think you said it perfectly.
	It's a damn fine book.
	Thought experiment.
	But I think that's really where it's confined, because really just thinking about it, for me, I don't really see any real-world applications, and if it did, I don't really see those applications bringing any higher returns to the people.
	Because again, the veil of ignorance, it's a nice idea, but that's really all I think it's going to stay as an idea, because I just don't see You know, the circumstances arising where that veil is even remotely plausible.
	But I just wanted to shoot that idea to you.
	Sorry, but also, it's no support for statism at all.
	I mean, it's interpreted as a support for statism because you only get to be prominent in the media if you support the predations of the existing system.
	I did an interview last week.
	I haven't released it yet.
	where I basically talk about philosophers are famous because they support the state, and that's about it.
	Which is why you've heard of Thomas Hobbes, but not Lisander Spooner.
	Why you've heard of Socrates, but not Kropotkin, or you've never heard that Tolkien was an anarchist, or you've never heard of Murray Rothbard, at least for most people.
	But even if we accept that, okay, we have a veil of ignorance, fantastic.
	Then what we want is for some support if we're down on our luck and we want some opportunity if we are up on our luck.
	Fantastic.
	Then what we want is an anarchistic system with DROs that can help us and charities for those who are not covered by DROs.
	Fantastic.
	That takes care of if we're on the down low.
	And then if we want the upside, well, the sky's the limit because we live in a free society.
	People just assume that even if we accept that argument that that means we then have to have a mixed economy, democracy, welfare state.
	But that doesn't follow at all.
	That doesn't follow at all.
	I mean, that follows as much as saying, well, some being may have created the universe and therefore I have to go to church on Sundays and eat wafers.
	I mean, it just doesn't follow.
	At all.
	But people just assume that it follows because they like justifications for that which is so they don't have to spend any moral courage opposing the immorality in their society.
	All right.
	Sorry.
	We've got to move on because we have more questions.
	Absolutely, Stefan.
	Thank you again so much for your time.
	Thank you.
	Great stuff.
	Alright, next up we have Winston Smith.
	Hello, sir.
	Hello, this is before the rats or after the rats.
	Which Winston am I talking to?
	Pre-rodent or post-rodent?
	Well, I'm just from the Netherlands and my real name is Kars, but I use Winston Smith as a small token to the work of George Orwell and his character out of 1984, of course.
	I had two simple questions.
	I don't know if they really are simple or not, but I see the world is rather violent and the rulers are really violent.
	And it's all about a game of control, to obtain control and to exercise control and to rule the world basically.
	And my question is, this is natural.
	In other words, do you see this also in nature with ants or lions or other creatures?
	And is it not just a natural part of humankind to have this ambition to rule everything?
	Yeah, well, I mean, I don't think so.
	If you look at the primates, you can very easily make a violent, aggressive, dominant-seeking monkey.
	It's very easy to make.
	You separate the monkey from the mother and you traumatize it.
	And then, bingo, bango, bongo, you have a little furry Hitler on your hands.
	It's very easy to make.
	It is very easy to make a peaceful and cooperative monkey as well, at least among its own kinds, as you keep the monkey with the mother and you do not traumatize it.
	It's very easy.
	Sadly, the boot-up system of primates is easy to program.
	It's shockingly easy.
	To program.
	And this doesn't eradicate free will, I believe, except in perhaps the most extreme cases.
	But there's no such thing as monkey nature.
	The monkeys will adapt to the social cues and the economic cues of the environment.
	So in a system of violence, we assume that there's no social cooperation and that resources are incredibly scarce and everything is win-lose.
	in which case you better come out of the womb with your teeth bared, ready to claw, and have indiscriminate sex with as many female monkeys willingly or not as possible.
	Spread your seed as widely as possible because you have no way of guaranteeing that any particular investment in a child is going to pay off.
	On the other hand, if your mother is peaceful and stress-free and getting enough to eat, then you grow up programmed to come out not with bared teeth but with open arms and to cooperate and to invest in your own children significantly and so on.
	So it's, you know, there's no such thing as human nature.
	Human nature is something that we invent to excuse bad parenting, right?
	So we say, oh, well, I know a bunch of violent people and that's human nature.
	No.
	No, that is bad parenting.
	But we like to think of human nature because it gets parents off the hook for what they've done.
	Yeah, I find your research into peaceful parenting very encouraging and very useful as well.
	In my job, I am a swim teacher and the approach I have is rather different than of my colleagues in this commercial swim school.
	And it's a commercial school so parents can choose any other school if they want to, you know.
	But I ask this question mainly because if I look back into history, then I see the groups of people in their ratios.
	Like you have, for instance, 1% controlling the dominant minority, as they call themselves.
	And then you've got a huge, huge legion of followers, basically.
	And they are order-takers, they are being abused by the system and by their peers, of course, like you said.
	And then there's a very small minority of, if you will, thinkers, people that are able to give responses instead of reactions.
	And these ratios appear in history, don't appear to shift much, you know?
	The ratio between these three types of peoples doesn't really appear to change much.
	And I wonder, I think it's really noble, and I'm working on this myself as well, but I don't see any, how do you say this, I don't see any major shift coming, you know?
	Well, but look, I mean, sorry to interrupt, but there's no particular mystery to this.
	I mean, we have state schools, right?
	I mean, and so with massive amounts of indoctrination, it's like saying, well, you know, a lot of communists seem to come out of Russia in the 1950s.
	Well, yeah.
	Yeah, of course they did because you were indoctrinated in that for 12 hours a day and you were punished if you didn't spout it off.
	So yeah, of course.
	But if you want to look at proportions that have changed, right?
	So how many black entrepreneurs were there in North America or in America in 1800?
	Well, maybe a dozen.
	A couple of slaves who'd invented stuff who were able to do a little bit of entrepreneurial work at the permission of their masters.
	How many black entrepreneurs do you have in the 1950s, 1960s?
	Well, a huge number.
	Still a significant number now.
	How many female doctors were there in 1800?
	Well, not a whole lot.
	How many female doctors are there now?
	Well, my understanding is the majority.
	The majority of students in college now are women, significant amounts of female doctors and so on.
	So these proportions are not based upon freedom.
	Now, if in a perfectly free society, you ended up, after a couple of generations, with this kind of stuff, well, how many atheists were there in Norway in 1750?
	Well, one guy keeping his mouth shut, right?
	And now it's 70% to 80% atheist or agnostic because it's no longer punished, right?
	So you don't want to mistake the prison for the field, right?
	You don't want to mistake the prison for the field.
	You always want to look at where compulsion is in human society before drawing any conclusions about what is called human nature.
	Yeah, that also gets right into my other question, which was about Why do people, some people choose to rather pursue the truth or, you know, to find some...
	Yeah, to find out about reality, true reality, instead of choosing delusions.
	And why do other people don't have the courage to do this?
	And what does a person with courage...
	What does give people passion about something?
	There are so many people around that are sort of like, well, you know, it's okay as long as I have some food in my mouth and I have very small needs and I'm happy as long as my simple needs of limited freedom and limited possibilities are met.
	And other people seem to have a rather big ambition and a big need for freedom, for instance.
	I could not live, you know, in a small, confined place like Jill.
	I would really, you know, like, feel like, you know, but other people are rather complex.
	Well, I would, sorry, yeah.
	This is, I mean, it's a big, complicated question, and I'll just touch on it very briefly, so we can have one more caller.
	I'll go a bit over it, because I started late.
	But, to me, moral ambition is all about memory, right?
	I remember Deeply and viscerally, almost everything to do with my childhood, starting from about...
	I mean, certainly from before I could walk.
	So, probably at about 10 months or a year, I remember almost everything about my childhood and my teenage years.
	I have a very strong memory that way.
	And because I can remember what it was like to not have anyone in the world stand up for the victims of child abuse, I want to do that.
	Because I remember how horrible it was.
	You know, if you really remember how hungry you were one day...
	Then it's kind of hard to deny food to other people, if that makes any sense.
	So if you were homeless and you really remember how bad it was to be homeless and so on, some homeless guy asks you for some money, you're going to give him some money.
	Because you remember because you self-empathize.
	And trauma destroys memory.
	Now, as to why it didn't destroy mine is sort of another question, another issue.
	I think it had mostly to do with the fact that I was writing and journaling and keeping a diary, which kept all of this stuff alive for me for many, many years.
	Because I have such a strong...
	It might have destroyed your hair.
	Yeah, it might have destroyed my hair, yeah.
	So I think that for the majority of people, they either didn't go through any particular trauma, which is certainly possible within the family.
	It's a little tougher to believe that within public schools.
	Or they...
	Don't believe that other people went through trauma, which means that they lack empathy, right?
	So people who went through healthy families, they should be the ones who have the most sympathy for trauma, right?
	In the same way that I have a huge amount of sympathy for people in the third world because I just happened to be lucky enough to be born here.
	It was no virtue of mine that I was born in the West.
	And so people who were brought up in healthy families should have the most empathy for Those who were traumatized, but that doesn't really seem to be the case.
	In fact, they often seem to take quite a bit of personal irrational pride in their own healthy functioning and just ascribe a lack of willpower or maturity to other people who were traumatized.
	So that's kind of a tough thing.
	But for people who were traumatized, if you remember it, then you're going to reach out.
	You're going to reach out.
	You're going to help other people.
	If you don't remember it, if you've got it blocked away, then you actually have to stay away from the entire topic and you have to shrink In your soul to the point where you're just standing in the middle of a minefield afraid to move a toe.
	That's my thought about it.
	I mean, it's certainly not a conclusive or perhaps even that wide-ranging an answer.
	But that is my particular perspective.
	Somebody says, you know, I'm just happy with my own little things.
	My first question would be, well, how was your childhood?
	How was your childhood is the most essential question when it comes to philosophy as a whole.
	Mm-hmm.
	Well, actually, your reply gave me a very nice idea about, you know, instructing, of helping children to grow, in other words, and, you know, providing with a manageable challenge.
	So, maybe, for instance, you could say to a child, you know, there are children in the world that face this and this and this.
	And you can say, well, if you feel you're up to it, you know, we can try this for, you know, for instance, two days without food.
	And, you know, if you agree to that, we can try to do that.
	And you can feel how it feels, how to be without food.
	And you're sort of like offering them a challenge.
	And they can choose to do the challenge or not.
	But this challenge will teach them, you know, how it is to be hungry, for instance.
	Yeah, there's something that Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote about in the Gulag Apikalago when a guard who'd been beating prisoners ended up being arrested and being beaten by other guards.
	And he, you know, literally sobbed and he said he had absolutely no idea how much it hurt to be beaten.
	Like he always thought that the prisoners he was beating when they screamed and begged him to stop, that they were just Play acting that they were just trying to appeal to his sympathy.
	He said he had no idea.
	No, I had no idea it hurt this much.
	I can't believe it, how agonizing that is.
	Well, will he be able to beat someone again?
	Probably not.
	Because now he knows.
	He feels it.
	And that is – right.
	So, I mean, empathy for others does at least to some degree depend upon empathy for the self.
	And so – There's lots of examples of this, wherein Until people have experienced some sort of catastrophe, they really don't empathize that much with others.
	I think that it's sad that it needs to get to that point.
	And unfortunately, it won't stop.
	I mean, it won't stop.
	And people will listen to libertarians and voluntarists and anarchists when the system is just really, really terrible.
	Hopefully by then it won't be too late.
	But if you don't learn by reason, you have to learn by better experience.
	So I think that...
	Most people have gone through difficult childhoods of one sort or another, whether it's church or parents or school or something like that.
	And we know that.
	We know that because the degree to which people are resistant to basic logical arguments like taxation is theft is the degree to which they've been traumatized.
	To me at least, that is a simple test.
	Can you understand a concept as simple as taxation is theft?
	And if you can't, if you reject, if you get upset, if you get angry, if you avoid it, then you're simply showing trauma.
	And the number of people who can rationally process Taxation is theft is tiny.
	It's not the only test.
	There could be lots of other tests as well.
	That, to me, I think is a fairly good one because it has to do with violence and authority, which is going to be particularly troublesome for people who've grown up with punitive authorities.
	But that, I think, is where society is.
	So the fact that a lot of people just want to lay low and get through their lives, you know, as they say in the song, easy live and quiet die from Room with a View, well, I can understand that.
	I mean, I'm fine with that.
	I mean, I think it's kind of tragic.
	And I think it's kind of being a free rider.
	Like, I've never wanted to be a free rider in any way, shape, or form.
	I've certainly never wanted to be a free rider on all the people I admire in the past who did great things morally, who stood up, who did the right thing.
	You know, the people who stood up to the British, the people who stood up to the aristocracy, the people who stood up to various brutes, thugs, and warlords and warlocks throughout history have bequeathed upon me some significant liberties to have these kinds of conversations.
	I... I've never wanted to be a free rider.
	And I've always wanted to contribute to that which I have benefited from.
	And that pay it forward thing I think is essential.
	If people don't want to participate in that, I can understand why.
	I mean it can be tough, it can be difficult and it can be unpleasant.
	But then you're just taking from the buffet without cooking any souffles.
	I think that's a shame.
	Well, Stefan, I thank you very much for your very kind and lengthy replies.
	Sorry, simple question, ridiculously complicated answer as usual.
	Yeah, you gave me a really nice idea and it helps me to help children to learn in their swimming lessons.
	Though the discipline may be a little bit difficult to maintain in the swimming classes with a different style, of course, than the shouting and the verbal threatening other teachers do.
	With me, the children don't know how to respond to my other approach.
	I don't shout, I don't raise my voice too much.
	And so they have a difficult time to estimate, you know, if you really mean it or not, you know, and if you're just tolerating them, you know.
	So I feel I can talk to you for hours.
	So I want to give other people also the chance to have a little chat with you.
	So I thank you very much and I wish you very well.
	Thank you, Vincent.
	I appreciate that.
	And somebody just asked for a documentary update.
	I just met with the project manager.
	Last week, and we are going to, well, I'm going to spend some money on it.
	Unfortunately, because we live in, well, we're in an economy with people who do video and animation.
	They gotta eat, and volunteering is, you know, eats into their paycheck, because most of them are eat what you kill.
	Kind of paid by the hour or paid by the job.
	So I'm going to have to throw some money at it.
	I mean, we've got some progress.
	We've got some work done.
	But it's not progressing at the speed that I need.
	So I'm going to spend.
	And if you'd like to help me spend, freedomainradio.com forward slash donate.
	It would be greatly appreciated.
	All right.
	We've got the last caller.
	How are you doing, my friend?
	That's you, Mark.
	Oh, sorry.
	Yeah.
	Hello.
	All right, Stefan.
	Thank you for your time.
	How's it going?
	I'm happy.
	Yeah, try and be as brief as possible.
	I want to talk a little bit about government, if that's alright.
	Yeah, I think that falls within the parameters of the show.
	Yeah.
	Well, basically, government and the political system is all set up so that Satan can rule this world.
	That's why it's so oppressive and why it's been allowed and been given the sword or the force.
	So you're saying so that Satan can rule this world?
	Yes, that's right.
	So that Satan can rule the world, yeah.
	Alright, so let's hear the case.
	Yeah, God has allowed Satan rulership of this world because of the universal issue of sovereignty, that Satan has challenged God and in reply God has allowed a short amount of time for Satan to try to prove his case.
	And therefore, he's been given the reins of the political system, the religious system, and the commercial system to try to prove his case.
	Okay, and so God is letting Satan rule over the minds of children, is that right?
	Through school?
	Yeah, you could say that.
	No, you're the one who's saying it.
	Okay, do you think that's, is that fair to children?
	No, the whole system is not fair, no.
	Well, why would God put a not fair system in?
	God put a very fair system whereby humans would live forever on a paradise earth.
	That was what God wanted in the past, and that's what he wants for the future, for his will to be done enough.
	Right, but obviously I didn't disobey God by eating an apple or whatever, and neither do the children now, so how are they morally responsible for what Adam and Eve did?
	Yeah, that's right.
	They're not morally responsible, and nor are you.
	You and they and me and all humans are victims.
	We are the casualties in this war.
	Well, wait a sec.
	But God, he's all-powerful, so he could prevent Satan from indoctrinating children, right?
	Yeah, that's right.
	And indoctrinating children with evil is not good.
	So God, although he could, without any effort whatsoever, prevent this evil, is allowing this evil to continue.
	How is that moral?
	Yeah, that's right.
	The reason I say this is, in the Bible, God gives a commandment to the people, the Good Samaritans, right?
	So there's the guy in the ditch bleeding, and they all pass by, and it's morally good to intervene when you can to prevent an evil from occurring, and this was just an accidental evil.
	So if it's moral to intervene and prevent evil, and God is not, is not only not intervening to prevent evil, but is actively allowing it to happen, how is God obeying his own moral rules?
	Yeah, God does obey his own moral rules.
	No, no, sorry, sorry, sorry to interrupt, sorry to interrupt.
	That is not a true statement.
	I mean, I hate to be pedantic, but, you know, God says thou shalt not kill, but during the flood, God killed everyone except Noah and of half a zoo.
	Including fetuses in the womb, newborn babies, they all were murdered by God causing this flood, right?
	So this is complete planetary genocide from a being who says, thou shalt not kill.
	No, you misunderstand.
	God said there's humans not to kill, but he has the right to kill.
	Right, so he does not obey the moral laws that he proposes.
	Isn't that just called hypocrisy?
	No, because it's a loving thing.
	It causes us more harm.
	I'm sorry, sorry.
	Can you just back up for a sec?
	So, killing newborn babies by the millions, killing humanity by the hundreds of millions, I guess, whatever the population was back then, this genocide is a loving act.
	That's the thesis?
	Yeah, that's right.
	Do you not have any problem with that thesis?
	Do you feel that's easy to understand and perfectly reasonable?
	Yeah, it's perfectly...
	It's easy to understand, yeah.
	Okay.
	So you...
	Sorry, sorry.
	So telling human beings not to kill while murdering hundreds of millions of innocent...
	Innocent, right?
	The babies obviously are innocent.
	The fetuses are innocent.
	So there's no question that this is the mass slaughter of innocent children and babies.
	And you feel that there's no problem calling that a loving act.
	And a moral act.
	Well...
	Yeah, that was a consequence of their parent.
	Yes, but that's not, right, you understand, it's not moral to kill a baby for the actions of the parents, right?
	No, that's right.
	So the justice is that those children will be given the opportunity to live again.
	I'm sorry, be given the opportunity of reincarnation?
	No, reincarnation is a Buddhist idea to come back as an animal.
	It's actually a resurrection, coming back to life as the original human being that you was, using different atoms.
	Well, atomically, we're changing every year anyway.
	So it's loving to murder children because the children can be resurrected?
	We're all in a dying condition.
	So in actual fact, the children were killed via their parents' actions.
	They have the opportunity.
	No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
	The children were killed by God's actions, not by their parents' actions.
	Their parents did not kill them.
	God killed them.
	Yeah, their lives were cut short.
	That's right.
	No, no, no.
	God murdered innocent children.
	You've got to at least be honest about what actually happened.
	It can't be reincarnation and their parents.
	God initiated floods which drowned, murdered of his own free will where he could have chosen differently against the very moral commandments he provides to mankind.
	God slaughtered millions and millions of entirely innocent children.
	Yeah, okay, yeah, that's right.
	Okay, good.
	And if you have no moral problem with that, Then I don't really think that we can have a conversation because I'm dropping a rock out of my hand and you're saying, well, it's going upwards.
	And philosophy can't bridge that gap.
	If you have absolutely no moral issues or no moral hesitations about the mass slaughter of millions of innocent children, against the moral commandment that God hands out as virtuous, I don't really know what else to say.
	Yeah, there are reasons behind this and everything will be put back right afterwards.
	So the reason why God's cut their lives short is because it's a demonstration of what God is about to do very soon.
	God is also going to kill lots of human beings very soon as well.
	So it was a precedent that was set.
	No, I understand.
	And you say that Satan rules the world and you worship a deity that slaughters millions of innocent people.
	I think you might have your deities backwards.
	I think that who you call God may actually be the Satan that you're imagining because I can't imagine anything more evil than slaughtering millions of innocent children.
	And so I can't imagine that that's so stone evil that there's nothing to be said for it.
	This is a very nasty and immoral story.
	And, you know, I'm sorry that you were raised in such a way that you view this with the moral confusion to think that even this as a story can contain any kind of virtue.
	I think it is a very unfortunate thesis to maintain, to put it as mildly as possible.
	And look, I mean, I understand.
	This is how you were raised.
	This is the belief system that you were brought up with.
	And, of course, the biggest predictor of religious belief is geography and where you were born and, in particular, the family that you were born into.
	But the fact that there's not even a hesitation.
	Like, I've worked out a whole system of ethics that I think is pretty good, and I still hesitate, and I'm still like, oh, is it right?
	You know, let me see if I can fix it up.
	I mean, I believe stuff that is very much in the mainstream.
	The initiation of force, respect for property rights, and the initiation of force is wrong, respect for property rights is good, and, you know, rape and murder and...
	Theft and assault, these are all evil, and I've got a system of ethics that really supports all of this, and I'm still backtracking and still trying to figure that out.
	So I think that humility to say something may not be quite right in this whole situation, I think is an important thing to remember and to work with.
	If you have no capacity for doubt, even in the face of a possible moral question about the murder of millions of innocent children, Then this can't be a conversation, I understand, because you're not open to any possible other perspective.
	This is going to be a monologue with you interrupting and then – sorry, a monologue with me interrupting and then you continuing.
	So I don't think it's a very good – this is not a good venue for that kind of monologue.
	Yeah, I understand.
	You're saying all of this, but you haven't allowed me an opportunity to explain the whole situation.
	You're just getting part of the picture.
	Sorry, sorry.
	I'm sorry to interrupt.
	But if you have no moral problems with the murder thousands of years ago of millions and millions of innocent children, I don't know that there is no explanation that's further than that.
	Right?
	There's no explanation that can go from that.
	Right.
	You're using the word murder, but actually this is consequences.
	The death of the innocent children was the consequence of their actions, of their parents.
	No, you see, this is why it's a monologue, because I've already explained to you, as you've already admitted, that the death of the children resulted from the choice and power of God.
	The parents did not kill the children.
	God killed the children.
	So this is why it can't be a dialogue because you're not using the correct terms even by your own definition.
	God killed the children.
	And it's certainly – even if God says, well, it's the parents' fault.
	The parents did bad things and therefore I'm going to kill the children.
	That's not moral.
	That's not moral.
	We don't put the child of a murderer in jail.
	There is going to be a resurrection of the righteous and the unrighteous.
	So even these ones that have died, we're all in a dying condition anyway.
	So yes, you're right, they did die at possibly two days old or whatever the age.
	But they were going to die at 70 or whatever age they would have got to.
	They were in a dying condition.
	Now this is all as a result of Satan's attack on God's sovereignty.
	So God has allowed suffering and he has allowed injustice because of this attack.
	The best illustration that I can think of is that of a classroom situation whereby Satan's A rebellious student says to the teacher, who says that you're number one?
	I think that I could do a better job and in fact I think you're a dictator.
	So the teacher could act like a dictator and throw the rebellious student out of the classroom.
	If he had done that, not only would he be acting like an unloving dictator and a hypocrite, but he would also – there were other students in the classroom who saw what he'd just done, and they could, in effect, accuse the teacher of saying – and say to them, you're just trying to nip it in the bud.
	Okay, I understand the metaphor.
	Sorry to interrupt.
	Let me ask a question or two.
	Did God know when he created Lucifer that Lucifer was going to rebel?
	No.
	He didn't know that?
	No, he didn't.
	No.
	So he's not all-knowing?
	He is all-knowing.
	Yes, he is all-knowing, but he chose not to know that.
	He chooses not to use that ability on the majority of occasion.
	Wait, sorry.
	So he's all-knowing, so he knows everything.
	So how can he know everything and then not know something?
	Yeah, well, he chooses not to use that ability of foreknowledge.
	He has the ability of foreknowledge.
	It's a bit like listening to, we're being hit by radio waves, but we have the ability with the use of a radio to receive that information, but at the moment we're choosing not to use that ability.
	Okay, so, if it was possible for God to know what Lucifer was going to do ahead of time, then Lucifer obviously didn't have free will.
	Because if God just tuned in the radio and, you know, five years from now, Lucifer's going to rebel, going to cast him down to hell, he's going to be called Satan, and blah blah blah, right?
	Then, obviously, I mean, it's not very sane, right?
	Well, you're talking about a couple of things here.
	You're talking about fate and determinism, but God gives us free will by not looking into the future to see actions in the future.
	So that's what I'm saying.
	On most occasions, he has no cause to look into the future, and that is the gift of free will.
	I'm sorry, but just philosophically, if I choose not to look up where the carta is located, that doesn't change where it is located, right?
	So if I avoid knowledge, that doesn't change reality.
	It doesn't change the future, right?
	So if I have a box which says what the stock price of Apple is going to be in three days from now, and I don't open it, right?
	That doesn't change.
	I mean, the knowledge is still there.
	So it doesn't say that we get free will because God doesn't process knowledge that is available to him.
	That doesn't change anything because the knowledge is still valid.
	It's there.
	Like if I don't tune into a radio station, that doesn't change what people are saying on the radio station, right?
	No, that's right.
	You're absolutely right in all that you're saying.
	It's absolutely 100% correct.
	But God chooses not to look into that.
	He deliberately chooses not to use that ability.
	He can.
	He can find out what we're going to do tomorrow.
	But he chooses not to.
	That is the gift of free will.
	It's a bit like a landlord's It might have a key to a property, but it gives you privacy by not using that key.
	Yeah, well, a key is access to a location, not certain knowledge.
	I mean, look, I appreciate the sophistry of your responses.
	I'm afraid I will have to cut this a little short because this really is a philosophy show, not a show about...
	Whatever it is you're talking about.
	But I certainly do appreciate the call-in.
	I must appreciate the equanimity with which you put forward this information.
	It really is quite impressive.
	I think you're quite a force of nature in your own way.
	I must say, to be perfect, I almost envy this level of confidence and security in what it is that you're saying.
	For me, philosophy is a lot about doubts and questions and uncertainty and continuing to look.
	The fact that you can square these circles with such Equanimity within your own mind.
	I mean, it's actually both scary and impressive, if that makes any sense.
	Yeah, fair enough.
	But they're not actually squares and circles.
	It's the truth.
	The reason why you're viewing it as squares and circles is because you don't understand.
	So if you allow me time, I could make it understandable for you.
	No, you absolutely couldn't make it understandable because you're saying that I can't see it because I'm not on the inside.
	I would say that you can't see how contradictory all of this stuff is.
	Because it's a high-wire act, right?
	I mean, to pick any part of this sweater apart is going to make the whole thing fall apart.
	But listen, I appreciate the call-in.
	It's always enjoyable to discuss these particular topics.
	And I just want to thank the listeners for a great show, a really fascinating and enjoyable show, as always.
	I love the spread of topics that we have access to in this show.
	I think it's just wonderful.
	And I look forward to meeting more listeners down at Freedom Fest next week.
	I'll be in Vegas next week.
	And looking forward to everyone.
	I will be speaking in late July in Vancouver.
	And then I may be speaking in the States in September.
	We're just working that out.
	I'm going to be on another show in July.
	And then, of course, please do not forget Libertopia.org, where I will be Master of Ceremonies.
	Master of Bashan was a title, unfortunately, that I could not get past the rabid Stalinist censors.
	But that is libertopia.org.
	That's in October.
	And I'm posting more information, I guess, about the private Free Domain Radio Island Venture, which should be very cool.
	Thanks again, everyone, so much.
	Freedomainradio.com forward slash donate if you would like to help out and have yourselves a perfectly wonderful, wonderful week.
	I will talk to you guys soon.

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