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Aug. 20, 2012 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
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2198 The Freedomain Radio Compilation - Stefan Molyneux Speaks!
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Today my guest is Stefan.
I don't want to mispronounce your last name.
Go ahead and say it.
Well, it's spelt Molyneux, but you actually pronounce it Master of Time, Space and Dimension.
It's got a couple of silent letters in there, but you can just go with Molyneux.
What is it you do in your own words?
Well, describing myself, sexy, bald MF, is usually the phrase that comes to my mind.
It doesn't necessarily leap to everyone else's mind, but to my mind, I am a backup dancer in a Prince video.
And to me, Stefan Molyneux represents the epitome of the modern, evolved human mind.
There are four people who have made me the man I am today.
I'd like to thank my mother, my father, Ron Paul, and Stefan Molyneux.
Yes!
If I could make a recommendation at the end here, there's a man on YouTube called Stefan Molyneux who speaks very succinctly and philosophically about issues of personal freedom in an unfree world.
And I didn't figure this out myself.
I just learned this from listening to Stefan Molyneux on YouTube.
Like a kid sucking up a piece of spaghetti is it sucks your hair back in and uses that to feed the thinking.
Stefan Molyneux is a blogger, essayist, author, and host of Free Domain Radio.
As promised, I wanted to get him back.
These elites are pathetic.
They can be defeated.
They can be defeated, and to me, the fundamental argument is just waking people up to the violence in the system, to the fact that fiat currency is based on violence.
It is based upon a legal attack upon any competing currencies.
We have lost in our heritage and our culture even the concept to be able to be free.
And no one better does that than I've seen and get to the root of this than Stefan Molyneux.
We have fed the cancer of the state with the fuel of our productivity to the point where it towers over us with a size and strength that is unimaginable in the past.
His intellectual rigor is something that's going to resonate and echo for hundreds of years.
I'm almost positive 100 years from now people say, Ah, but Molyneux said, and so without further ado, I would like to introduce Stefan Molyneux.
This whole hookup globally is coming about because Stefan's insight into what's going on here when we talk about volunteerism and sovereignty and individual liberty and all that just strikes at the heart of what needs to be done and how it needs to be done and how our thinking and how our mind has to be changed.
With no further ado, I present to you, Stefan Molyneux.
How would you-- do you think that everybody should be homeschooled?
Because how do we avoid any kind of private company that's educating people?
But you see, you're still thinking of this paradigm.
Do I think should?
No.
I don't know how people should live.
I don't know what the solution is.
I know that force is never going to work.
I believe very strongly that violations of property rights are never going to work.
I don't know whether people should be homeschooled.
I don't know if they should be plugged into...
I have no idea because I don't know how to run people's lives.
I don't have the arrogance or the insanity to say I know how the future should work.
I don't know who should have sex with whom, but I know that rape is wrong.
And people should not get raped.
But I don't know who should hook up with whom.
That's for everyone else to decide.
So once we get rid of force and we continue to respect property rights, how children get educated would be a fascinating thing to see.
If Ron Paul's message of conservative libertarianism is the gateway, many consider Molyneux's message to be what is on the other side.
Stefan, why is government immoral?
Government is immoral because it violates two fundamental moral axioms that every civilized human being takes for granted.
Number one, the non-aggression principle.
You do not initiate the use of force against your fellow man, woman, child, or hermaphrodite.
Number two, property rights.
We own ourselves.
We own the effects of our actions.
And government violates the non-aggression principle by creating a monopoly of force.
A small group of people with all the guns on the planet who get to order everyone else around them.
People are always shocked.
That this concentrated, unlimited application of violence to the solution of complex social problems always goes wrong.
And they steal, and they lie, and they are essentially a criminal organization and attempting to manage and control and minimize a criminal organization doesn't work.
Minarchism, or the goal, The real challenge of activism is not to get the state to expand its power, but to get the state to contract its power.
So, if you really want to help Africa, a couple of things you can do.
Stop foreign aid.
Foreign aid goes to the governments.
The governments use the money from foreign aid to buy weapons from governments, largely the US, the English, and the Russian governments.
So let's stop giving people money in order to have them buy weapons from our governments in order to repress their own people.
Free subsidization of totalitarian evil does not help the people of Africa.
So how about we stop with foreign aid and how about we stop with arms sales to dictators?
That would be something that I think would do a heck of a lot more good than having a hundred guys standing around in the jungle picking their noses.
Second, well, I guess third if you count those two.
A third, I would strongly suggest that if you want to help people in third world countries, how about you stop agricultural subsidies in the West?
Because that produces a massive amount of goods that are dumped on third world markets, thus rendering the local farmers pretty damn useless in terms of providing food for their local population.
So, that's not very good.
Number four!
How about telling the government to stop the war on drugs?
The war on drugs combined with agricultural subsidies and the dumping of agricultural produce on third world countries means that these farmers turn from the production of goods which are healthy for people towards the production of goods that are healthy for people's delusions.
Hard drugs and so on.
So these are things that would be a much more, I think, intelligent and productive thing to do if you wanted to help.
See, people in the third world, they don't need our charity.
They don't need our help.
What they need is for us to stop arming their dictatorships, stop dumping food on their markets, stop killing their local economies.
Oh, here's number five.
How about open up trade barriers?
Pretty basic one in the US. Drop sugar subsidies and trade barriers on sugar.
That would be a great way to help people in the third world.
It's like we've got, you know, one boot on the neck of Africa and the Africans, and we're sort of staring down at their twisted, pitiful, horrified faces and saying, how can we help you?
To which the only response is, maybe get your boot off our fucking necks and we'll be fine.
The people in prison are working for 16 cents an hour, but the prison builders and operators are making fabulous wealth on the stock exchange, so they're saying, you see, the economy is growing.
Yeah, because, you know, slave labor is such a positive aspect of capitalist economic growth.
Of course you'd want to count that.
I mean, the statistics are completely meaningless.
We're living in this sort of profter house of cards, you know, like the Soviet statistics, the five-year production plans that are going beautifully.
I mean, this is all complete nonsense.
We're living in a propaganda delusion, and it's not going to take long for this to come crushing down and for people to wake up.
The only danger, Max, and it is a significant danger, which is, I think, why it's so important that we take to the airwaves and yell the truth as much as humanly possible, the great danger, is that people are going to think that freedom...
It's the problem.
The problem is coercion.
The problem is monopoly.
The problem is the violent counterfeiting of currency, the selling off of people's future through the coercive power of the state.
It is violence that is causing all of these problems.
It is not peace.
It is not trade.
It is not property rights.
It is not freedom.
And it certainly is not the free market.
All right, now, talking about counterfeiting.
The Fed had a little audit, thanks to Bernie Sanders, and they revealed $16 trillion in loans.
I think America as a whole is pretty clueless about the Fed.
It's really complicated, it's pretty abstract, and of course, it's the last thing they're going to teach you in government schools.
In government schools, they're going to teach you How the government ended slavery and the government saved us from Nazism and the Great Depression and the government helps the poor and the sick and the old.
You're going to get all that propaganda.
You're not going to get the actual basis of government power, which is counterfeiting and theft.
The Fed outsourced almost all of its operations for these emergency lending programs to private contractors.
JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, the usual suspects.
These guys all got trillions of dollars in Fed loans at near zero interest rates.
And two-thirds of these contracts...
We're no-bid contracts.
Morgan Stanley got over $100 billion to help manage the Fed bailout of AIG. This is complete pig feeding, shark attack, trough feeding at the taxpayers' expense.
And it just shows you that the government doesn't have rules.
The government is an exemption from rules.
It is an exemption from the rule of theft through taxation.
It is an exemption.
Of the rule of counterfeiting through the Federal Reserve, and it is an exemption of any reasonable rules of conflict of interest by just handing out, hey, get a waiver, get a waiver, you're fine.
It's madness.
All right, one last question.
Finally, the latest polls show that Ron Paul could possibly beat Barack Obama in 2012.
Is it too late for Ron Paul and his promise to end the Fed, IRS, CIA, foreign military bases, etc.?
Yes.
Let me give you a short answer and then a very slightly longer one.
No, I don't think we have time for the longer one.
No, no, it's very quick.
Don't go anywhere near the government.
You don't want to be promoted to captain of the Titanic after the ship is just about to go down, because then all anyone will remember is the libertarian was in power when everything went down, and it will discredit freedom for another thousand years.
So I say, steer clear of the mess, stand back, speak the truth, don't get involved.
All right, Stephen Mellon, thanks so much again for being back on the Kaiser Report.
Thanks.
This is not the end of Rome.
This is not the end of the British Empire.
This is not the end of the Ottoman Empire.
This is very different.
This is a very different environment that we have.
The possibility of mass surveillance and mass information gathering, chip IDs and RFIDs and everything.
The possibility of controlling the human livestock has become so powerful and so extraordinary that I fear I fear that this may be freedom's last stand and its greatest stand.
We have the greatest opportunity.
The same technology that might cast it into darkness forever might rise us to the light in perpetuity.
And I think it's that essential a crossroad.
But the possibilities are extraordinary.
It's a race.
It is a race.
And we are in incredibly fast vehicles.
There is the vehicle of the bad guys over to our right.
And they are hitting the gas with everything they can.
They are passing as many laws as they can.
They're using as much indoctrination as they can.
They're controlling as much media as they can.
They are opposing as much as they can.
And there's this fucked up, endless tentacle of brain-crossing technology called the internet which is racing them to the finish line.
And we better hit the fucking gas because if we lose, I don't think anyone's going to win again in the future.
But if we win, we win for good in every sense of the word.
And I think that We have a damn good shot.
But it is all about the efficacy, the focus, the intensity, the passion, and the conviction that we bring to bear on these essential questions of voluntarism versus violence.
It's the only two, right?
Those are the two massive motorcycle, car, spaceships we're driving at Mach 12 million.
It's violence versus voluntarism.
They edge ahead sometimes.
We edge ahead sometimes.
We've got to hit the gas because they're not going to pull back.
They're not going to hold off.
This is an ancient race.
Of rulers and their dependents who wish to rule and command the human soul and the human spirit.
And we've got to hit the fucking gas.
They're not going to slow down.
They're not going to turn aside.
And either they hit the wall or we do, metaphorically.
And so all I say is...
Fuck where we end up.
We don't control that.
Fuck where the people listen to us.
We don't control that.
The only thing that we control is the power and the intensity and the focus and the reason and the evidence and the passion that we bring to this calling.
That's all we can control.
The vulnerability of wanting the world to get better is a terrifying place to be at times.
The vulnerability of having children and needing the world to get better.
I am so embarrassed to introduce this planet to my daughter.
This planet better shape the fuck up before I have to introduce it to my daughter because I don't want to describe the shit that goes down in this world to my daughter.
It's an embarrassment.
It is an embarrassment to have to describe war.
It is an embarrassment to have to describe the prison industrial complex.
It is an embarrassment to describe why she's not going to the public school down the corner.
It is an embarrassment to describe national debt, what has been done to her before she was even born.
This world better shape the fuck up so I can introduce it properly to my daughter and I'm going to do everything that I can To help that along with the full knowledge that there's absolutely nothing I can do to affect it.
And this is Peter Schiff.
We are back here at SchiffRadio.com with Stefan Molyneux.
So I'm in the uncomfortable position of being the guy who wants government, and you're trying to convince me why I'm wrong.
And so you, I guess, you're an anarcho-anarchist, is that how you describe, or anarcho-capitalist?
How do you describe your philosophy here?
Well, I think I would like to go out on a limb and describe my philosophy as correct.
I'd like not to give it a label, but just simply say that it's right.
Look, the non-initiation of force is a basic moral axiom.
There's ways that you can prove it philosophically, but the non-initiation of force and a respect for property rights are both universal moral standards that we all accept in our daily lives.
And yet we get this weird reversal.
We go up to the sort of stratosphere of the state and suddenly we say, well, the initiation of force through taxation and debt and fiat currency and monopoly and tariffs and regulations, the initiation of force against peaceful citizens has now become the moral good.
We need the state to initiate violence against its citizens in order to protect them from anyone who might initiate violence against them.
Hi, everybody.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
When you're comfortable with something morally, you don't use weird weasel words for it, right?
So, let's take an example, like you're out here in the woods and some very enterprising and dexterous bear comes at you with a chainsaw.
I'm from the city.
I think this happens.
And let's say that, like most people here, you're heavily armed.
Well, what you do is you shoot the bear, right?
And hopefully you shoot it so you just wounded it or so it could still make a nice rug or something, but you would shoot the bear And if somebody said, well, what did you do later?
You'd say, well, a bear came out with a chainsaw, so I shot it.
You wouldn't say, I nationalized it, I arrested it.
You'd say, I shot it.
Why?
Because you'd be comfortable with the ethics of what you were doing, self-defense.
Similarly, if somebody stole your bike and you saw it and they weren't around, you would take it back, right?
And somebody said, well, what did you do?
Well, I stole the bike back.
I took the bike back.
You wouldn't say, well I redistributed the bike back to the more needy or something like that.
You would say, I took the bike back.
Because you'd be comfortable with the restoration of your property.
So when we're comfortable with something morally, we call it by its proper name.
And I think that's really, really important because whenever you hear about the government, all you hear are these weird, weaselly, foggy, nonsense terms that...
Don't describe anything real.
I asked some of the listeners to my show, and I'll ask you now too, what are your favorite government euphemisms?
My favorite so far is when you print a lot of, well, you print more fiat currency.
They call it quantitative easing.
Which to my mind sounds exactly like a laxative.
And not even one that you take orally, I think.
So, what are your favorite government euphemisms?
And I'll tell you why I'm bringing this up in just a sec.
Quantitative easing is mine.
I like No Child Left Behind, because if you argue against that, people think that you want to just throw children out of your car or something like that.
Leave them behind.
You know, they're slow.
They're needy.
So, what are your favorite government euphemisms out there?
What have we got?
National security.
National security, as if there's a nation and as if it can be made secure through the initiation of force.
What else have we got?
What?
What?
Public education.
What is that?
Forced indoctrination would be the real term.
There's a public education.
What else have we got?
Internal revenue service.
Internal revenue service.
That's right.
That's right.
Because it's a service.
Which you...
Which you tip.
Thank you.
I love my creme brulee.
Here's half my income.
What else?
What?
What?
Military intelligence.
We weren't looking for oxymorons, we were looking for euphemisms, but thank you for trying.
Yeah, I got a whole list of these here.
Now, I think the reason, I think it's really important to understand why these terms are used.
Why do people say military intelligence?
Why do they say national defense rather than what it really is?
Well, I would say that it's because they're really not very comfortable.
with what they're describing because when we are comfortable with what we're describing we call it by its proper name.
So when it comes to helping people to escape the matrix of government language because I think it's really important to understand that language is just another government program that is inflicted upon children through state schools that is created by the government in its description of its own activities.
So the government owns the language that is used to describe the government's activities.
That's a real challenge.
But the reason that people are drawn to that language is because they don't like what the government is doing and so they need to cover it up with a whole bunch of nonsense syllables so that they can avoid looking at the thing itself.
You know, it's like how the body falls and they cover it with a sheet.
Well, the body is our freedom and the sheet is the language.
We don't actually fight evil Because you can't fight evil.
What we fight is evil that people think is good, right?
That's the real challenge that we face.
Because if everybody said, well, the initiation of the use of force is evil, statism is evil, we would have to lay down our arms because we'd be done.
So the challenge is to get people to understand that what they think is virtuous It's, in fact, evil.
Have you all seen movies where there's some invisible guy, some guy you can't see?
And all you see is something moving around because he's picking something up or whatever.
And then something always happens in the movie.
There's some dust or some talcum powder or something, and you see the outline of the guy.
And what we're trying to do is to get people to see the gun that's in the room that nobody talks about, which is the initiation of the use of force that is at the core Of the statist philosophy.
And it's really hard to get people to see that gun in the room.
It's like going to a bunch of fish and saying, you're swimming in water.
And they say, what water?
We don't know, because it's all we know.
It's our entire environment.
People can't see it.
And the against me argument is really designed to show the violence that is in people's advocation of status solutions to social problems.
Violence is incredibly effective as a tool of ruling, but it's only effective to the degree to which people don't look at it.
Because the moment people see the coercion that is at the root of statism, they see that it's immoral.
And statism as a philosophy falls.
Let's say that you and I were debating slavery in 1840 or something, right?
And I said, you know, slavery is a moral abomination.
It's evil and blah, blah, blah, right?
And you said, well, but if we get rid of slavery, how will they get jobs?
What will they do?
You know, I got 500 slaves on my plantation.
You tell me, what jobs will they have after we get rid of slavery?
Clearly, nobody knows, right?
And it's completely immaterial.
So how things happen when a gun isn't being used doesn't really matter.
If we had a system of forced marriage, and I said, "You know, we really shouldn't.
That's just institutionalized rape.
We shouldn't really have a system of forced marriage." And people said, "Well, how would my sister get married then?" "I'm sorry she looks like a troll, but it doesn't mean that everyone should..." It doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter what happens when we stop using violence.
The important thing is that we stop using violence to solve problems, right?
Thinking is not an automatic thing.
It's like language.
You have to be taught it.
Now, we have an affinity for it, like we have an affinity for language, but people are to reason as kids raised by wolves are to language.
You can kind of get them to learn a few halting phrases later in life, but it's never going to be fluent.
To me, it's all about making the case to parents to teach their children reason when they're younger and to deal with their children in a non-violent way.
My goal, what I argue for, is to say to parents and to others who are interested around kids, is to say, look, if you raise your children in a non-coercive way without using aggression as a parent, using negotiation from the very beginning, what that means is that children will then grow up Where coercion and aggression from authority will be as familiar to them as that Amazon giant stone chicken is to us.
Like it would be ridiculous.
So they'll first encounter the state and say, what the hell?
This makes no sense at all because I'm not familiar with this kind of authority.
I don't speak that language called hierarchical coercion and aggression.
I don't speak that language called control.
To me, it's a generational process where we simply convince people to use non-aggression with their children.
Those children would then grow up and they'll look at the state and say, this has no meaning for me.
Whereas if you bring children up in an authoritarian and aggressive fashion, they'll look at the state and say, well, that makes sense.
That has resonance to me.
Hi, everybody.
It's Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Aid Radio.
Hope you're doing well.
This is a scaled-down true news.
And I was gonna...
I was really torn.
I was gonna do a big presentation with graphics and charts about how, when you vote for Republicans, spending increases, and when you vote for Democrats, war doesn't decrease, and all of that sort of stuff.
And all of that is available if you want to look for it.
But...
I ended up not doing that, and I wanted to speak to you just soul to soul, so to speak, to hopefully get you out of this mad delusion and self-abuse called voting.
And the reason is that You don't want to vote.
I'm going to tell you, you don't want to vote because of the facts.
The facts are that voting means nothing.
It's worse than meaning nothing.
It encourages participation in a coercive and destructive system.
It gives sanction to evil.
People have been voting for a smaller government for decades.
Reagan is still called a fiscal conservative, though federal spending went two-thirds, increased two-thirds under his rule.
The federal government has grown by leaps and bounds under the Democrats.
Bill Clinton kept the bombing going in Serbia and Iraq.
So you don't vote because you think that voting will set you free or restrain government in any kind of way, because you're not an idiot.
I mean, I'm going to speak to you as an intelligent, aware, brilliant human being, which is, if you weren't, you wouldn't be watching this.
And so I'm not going to give you facts because facts would be insulting to you.
Facts would be to indicate that you were unable to process the basic reality of the world that you live in and the historical evidence of the futility of trying to restrain an agency of violence like the state by begging for crumbs from the table or favors.
So you know that the government is fundamentally coercive.
It is a coercive institution that's That's what it does.
That's all it is.
And you know that voting is a pitiful plea.
It is a beg.
Please, master, give me back a little bit of what you have stolen.
And I'm not going to insult you by pretending that that is an argument that is anything other than an emotional panic and a fear of increased predation and a begging for favors.
The reality of the state is that they'll take whatever they want from you because they have the guns and the jails and the military, and that they will attempt to bribe you to get you to participate and give them moral sanction for their theft by getting you to participate in a system that allows you to choose this, that and the other.
Of course, you can only choose your master.
You can't choose not to be a slave, which of course is why the whole thing is so patently ridiculous.
They take your money to reward their enemies, sorry, to reward their friends and to punish their enemies, and they will dangle.
You can look at this in any of the campaigns.
Ooh, we'll give you a little tax credit.
Ooh, we'll give you a little bit of control over your retirement.
Ooh, we'll give you a little bit of money for your medical expenses.
Ooh, we'll do this.
It's all ridiculous.
It's all bribery.
It's embarrassing.
You're not allowed to bribe them, but the whole point of the system is to bribe you with the leftovers of what they have stolen from you in the first place.
So I'm not going to insult you.
By giving you facts that you already have.
So I'm just going to make an appeal.
This is a blatant emotional appeal.
I think that there are very good arguments in it, but I'm not going to insult your intelligence with facts that you can easily get a hold of yourself.
We're going to talk about what is going on in the realm of emotion, in the realm of self-esteem, in the realm of pride when it comes to thinking about voting.
Do you know what voting is, fundamentally?
Have you ever seen this scene?
Maybe this happened to you.
You go to school, you're a kid, little kid, maybe it's your first day, maybe it's whatever.
You're early on.
And the older kids grab some candy or some whatever, right?
And what they do is they then stand on either side of you and they toss this candy back and forth and you run, you know, back and forth.
Hey, give me my candy back!
I want my candy, guys!
Well, that's voting.
They take from you and then you take the runaround trying to beg for a little bit of the scraps back.
So, what I'm going to try and do in this video is appeal to your base human pride.
I mean, God, what a pitiful spectacle to beg your political masters for a few scraps back from the riches they have stolen from you at gunpoint.
How pitiful and ridiculous is that?
And what a self-shaming, self-abusing action it is to run around in the playground begging for what was rightfully yours to be returned to you in little scraps.
Whatever we feel will delude you into giving us your sanction and your support.
When they take your candy and they're throwing it back and forth in the playground, what do you do?
Well, you can't get the candy back, you can't get your tax money back from the state, you can't get control of your life back from the state, because they have the guns.
They run the show.
They have the guns.
Well, you simply don't participate.
You say, that candy is not worth my pride.
The spectacle of me running around and begging for people to give me back what they have stolen from me when they're never gonna do it anyway is too shameful, it is too embarrassing, it is too pitiful for me to engage in that behavior.
I am gonna walk away.
Keep the fucking candy.
Keep my money.
I'm not going to beg you to give it back.
I'm not going to plead with you.
I'm not going to get on my knees.
I'm not going to engage in the fantasy that this is at all about me or about virtue or about control or about getting good things done in the world.
I am not going to give you that sanction.
I am not going to participate in this violent institution.
And really, the presidency, I mean, come on, people.
You don't have to be brain surgeons.
And I'm not telling you anything you don't know, emotionally.
You don't have to be brain surgeons to understand that changing the president changes nothing about the system!
It's like you're trading in an old ladder for a BMW and all you get is the old ladder back with a BMW hood ornament on the top and they say, hey, we upgraded you.
You're changing the hood ornament on the car!
It's nothing.
It's a ridiculous illusion.
What are your choices?
Cranky old fascist versus creepy hands-in-your-pocket socialist?
These are your choices and you're going to participate in this?
Have some pride for God's sakes!
Walk away.
There is no virtue to be gained from attempting to grab control of the gun and give it to the people you like so that virtue can be accomplished.
You cannot achieve virtue by pointing guns at people.
I mean, look, I can...
I can understand selling your soul, compromising your values, getting involved in this sickening, disgusting empire situation called voting for the US government.
I can understand selling out if you got at least a reasonable price.
If you're gonna sell your soul, hold out for something little more than a futile series of fucking hanging chads that change nothing!
Nothing!
You're selling your soul for nothing!
It's not going to change based on voting!
You know this!
Wake up to what you already know!
You're not being paid a million dollars to participate in this brutal system, in this empire with hundreds of military bases, in this system that slaughters.
Iraqis, they're not leaving Iraq until the empire comes down.
They're still in Japan, for God's sakes!
Sixty-plus years after the end of the Second World War, they built permanent military bases.
It's a fantasy that they're leaving because you're going to vote!
You're livestock to them.
They milk you for money to bribe their friends.
And you, on occasion, when the mood strikes, Do you know what it is?
Your relationship with the state, and we'll talk about America collectively here.
Again, this is stuff that you all know.
What you are, as a voter, is you are inheriting a 300-year abusive relationship.
It's like you've had a 300-year marriage to a guy who beats the shit out of you every day.
Now, yeah, in the beginning he was weaker, he was smaller, he didn't beat you up, but he's been working out.
He's now about ten times your size, and he beats the shit out of you every day.
And after 300 years of this marriage, what are you doing?
Well, you're running around saying, oh no, you see, this time he's gonna change.
He's gonna be better.
He's gonna be nice to me.
He's gonna give me what I want.
He's gonna bring me flowers.
There's going to be romance and ponies.
It's crap!
It's bullshit!
They take with guns!
And throw millions in jail.
This is an abusive relationship and after 300 fucking years, wake up to the reality of what it is.
It is brutality with rhetoric.
It is a fist in the glove of kindly speeches.
And what do you do after a 300-year abusive relationship where you get beaten up more and more every day?
You get a divorce!
You walk away!
you take your pride and leave.
You don't legitimize a violent, coercive, brutal, hierarchical, hegemonic system by pretending it's voluntary, by pretending that you have a say, hegemonic system by pretending it's voluntary, by pretending that you have a say, by pretending that the brutality of war and empire and violence and enslavement and
the rape rooms of prisons have millions of people in them, the vast majority of whom ended up there because they carried the wrong kind of vegetation in their fucking pockets.
This is a fascist, brutal dictatorship.
And if you participate, you are saying it is voluntary.
You are trying to work with the illusion that if you vote, the gun will be pointed at someone else than you.
But it won't.
Obama, McCain, it doesn't matter.
No matter who you vote for, the government stays in power.
And no one's talking about the real issues anyway.
The fact that your income taxes goes to pay interest on a debt that you never incurred.
That's not being talked about.
Nobody ever says, we're going to stop taking money from you in the first place rather than give you little breaks back.
We're going to cancel these debts that you had nothing to do with.
No, your livestock to pay off this debt.
And voting is the fence.
Voting is the chain-link fence.
voting is the electrified fence.
There are choices that you can make.
Instead of...
And I linked a video I did on freeing yourself from politics.
You can check it out to the right.
But there are things that you can do.
Instead of...
Watching politics and, ooh, who said what at which rally, and is he a Muslim?
This is a soap opera that sinks you into the blood of humiliating subjugation.
Again, it's just a matter of pride.
Don't beg for your freedom.
Don't beg for scraps.
Don't pray and hope and wish that scratching from shit in a little booth is going to change freedom in your life.
It's not!
It never has.
It never will.
You can vote in Rome as well, in the past.
And Athens, as Socrates found out.
So, fuck politics.
Forget spending your time following this bullshit, distracting soap opera of whether the socialist or the fascist ends up in the White House.
If they can do a whole lot, you're already in a dictatorship.
And if they can't, and so don't participate.
And if they can't, forget it.
What can you do with your time?
Everything is a zero-sum game.
Every minute you spend on politics is the minute you're not spending doing something productive to actually make the world free, including raising your self-esteem.
We have to outgrow slavery.
We have to be greater and bigger and more confident than tax-fucking livestock slaves.
You build up your pride.
You build up your self-esteem.
You build up your knowledge.
You build up your virtue.
You build up your strength, and we outgrow.
We outgrow being beasts of burden for our rulers.
So we educate ourselves.
We talk to people about virtue.
We talk to people about pride.
We talk to people about the nature of violence inherent in the system.
We talk to people about a better life.
We talk to people about opportunities for real freedom in your life, for virtue, for voluntarism in your life, where you can do it, where it is possible, where you have effect, where you have control.
Let the other fucking livestock run down and go, eh, eh, eh, we're gonna vote, everything's gonna change.
But you and I know better.
you and I have the pride to not subjugate ourselves to this pathetic, enslaving ritual.
So when it comes time to vote, read a book.
On freedom, or read one of my books, if you like.
They're all free.
Talk to your friends.
Talk to your family.
Talk to strangers about virtue and pride and voluntarism and the evils of the state.
Do not set foot in this abattoir of empire and slavery and subjugation and imprisonment and kidnapping and extraordinary rendition and torture.
Do not participate in this institution founded on crimes, which executes war crimes, genocide, wars, murder, kidnapping, imprisonment, on a daily basis.
Don't participate.
Don't beg.
Don't beg.
But stand with pride and say, I do not participate with violence.
I do not yell at rain clouds.
I do not wrestle for control of the gun, but simply and forevermore point out that violence is evil.
I will not participate in it.
I will not subjugate myself to this fetid ritual, this ridiculous, magical bullshit called voting.
They will not get my sanction for what they are doing.
I will not vote in protest.
I will not vote with the illusion that I will become free by begging for freedom.
But instead I will step back and I will not engage and I will withdraw and I will speak with pride and virtue and confidence about what real freedom is in this world which is not running after your political masters hoping to suck up some of the blood that falls from the corpses they carry!
But love and pride and virtue in our private lives will spread the strength we need to outgrow our slavery.
So I'm going to put forward to you that the state manifests as hierarchical, but the state is in fact horizontal.
The state is in fact horizontal.
How many people here have gone to jail for their beliefs?
Very few.
Very few.
How many people here have experienced social attack, condemnation, rejection, scorn, hostility, Everybody who's not raising their hands is either not putting their ideas forward or lives in a place that I want to move to.
So look, I'm an empiricist, an empiricist, an empiricist.
I'm constantly trying to get rid of theory, get rid of theory and work from the evidence.
The evidence is that the enforcement of statism does not come from the state.
The enforcement of statism does not come from the state.
Where does the enforcement for statism come from?
Our fellow slaves.
That's the genius, evil genius, of the state.
Guess if I were a little shorter.
Anyway.
But that's the brilliance of it, is that the fences, the jail cells, the prisons, The keep us in the state is each other.
It's horizontal.
Now, that's the genius of the state, but that's also the incredible potential of anarchism, because once you have tried to change society, you recognize how amazingly society self-reinforces.
If we could just move that self-reinforcement to a free situation, it will last forever.
I genuinely believe that.
Because anyone who thinks that anarchy can't work has never tried opposing the general culture and seeing just how amazingly it closes ranks and just how amazingly consistent it is in rejecting and attacking anything that might threaten its basic premises.
So because the slaves attack each other horizontally, The state can grow vertically.
If we can free ourselves from the horizontal state, there is no vertical state.
If we can stop attacking each other horizontally, the whole spire collapses.
But it's really hard to do because it requires taking a stand and putting your feet down in the ground so hard, so far, and so deep that the world, it seems, almost has to revolve around you.
That's how deep we have to plant our convictions to change the world.
You know, it is always amazing to me that people say, well, if you do what I suggest you do, you're putting ideology above people.
Well, that's mad.
That is mad.
Somebody who's for the war on drugs is putting ideology above people because they're putting people in jail for a dislike of herbs.
I can live with oregano.
I can live with what was passed around.
I'm fine.
Basil, my middle name, I'm happy with that too.
But putting people in jail for not supporting your social programs, that is putting ideology above people.
Saying we should not use violence to solve social programs, that is not putting ideology above people.
That is putting virtue above everything.
When we tell people the truth of the nature of the state, we are saying to them, That these crimes have been committed because of your support?
We are saying that your continued support of this immorality is the only reason this immorality is possible and continues.
That is a harsh, harsh truth for people to hear.
Is that fair to say?
How many people have had that conversation with people?
How'd it go?
I'm not talking about any particular action.
What I'm simply talking about is the withdrawal of the emotional support for the state.
I don't care what people do, fundamentally, because you can't control what people do.
You can't even control what they think.
When the truth is revealed, and taxation is forced, you're not asking people to parse the theory of relativity in Sanskrit.
You're just asking, do you pay your taxes because you're afraid to go into jail?
Of course, a bunch of do-goers are saying, I'd love to pay it anyway.
Then you go ahead, right?
But in my experience, and tell me if this is different for you, in my experience, it tends to be pretty quick.
It tends to be like, people are like, you know, or, you know, they just dig in, you know, like my daughter, no pushing, they just dig in, right?
If the initiation of force is immoral, and if support for the initiation of force is this, the only thing that makes it possible, Then people who support the state are complicit in the crimes of the state.
I'm not saying this is a clinched argument.
I'm just saying this is the perspective I've been putting forward.
I'm perfectly happy to hear objections to it.
I believe that it's right.
That doesn't mean it's right.
It just means I believe that it's right.
So we're rolling this E-bomb around everywhere, right?
But how much do we live by it in our relationships?
If you have a friend who supports the state, to use an extreme metaphor which isn't actually that extreme, is this not the same as being a black guy who's got a friend in the KKK? Is this not the same as a Jew being friends with a Nazi?
With the exception that the Nazis in the KKK caused far fewer deaths than statists.
Is this not the moral reality of our relationship horizontally?
Because if it is the support of the state, morally, emotionally, intellectually, artistically, if it is the support of the state that creates the state, then people in our lives who support the state are supporting these actions.
And, last but not least, and I'll stop to give time for questions, last but not least, if I'm against the Iraq war, as I am, And I'm debating with somebody who's for the Iraq war.
I've done this on my show.
I'm perfectly happy to have them before the Iraq war.
Before the Iraq war.
Send them a check.
Go fight.
Privately.
Do whatever you want.
Think it's wrong?
I think you're a murderer.
But I'm not going to shoot you to stop you.
All I ask in return from the statist It's the same respect for plurality of opinion that I'm willing to grant, the statist.
In other words, if I'm against the Iraq war, will you support, do you support me being thrown in jail?
Tortured, possibly raped, because I'm pretty.
Do you support me being thrown in jail for disagreeing with you?
Because that's what statism comes down to.
Statism comes down to, I support you being kidnapped and thrown in jail and tortured For disagreeing with me.
A statist supports the use of violence against me, not in the abstract, not in the impersonal, not in the social contract, not in the collective, not in the national, not in the theoretical, not in the ideological.
But the statist supports the use of violence against you.
Against you.
You would not be friends with a man who in an argument pulled out a gun and pointed it at you and said, this debate is over, you obey.
But it doesn't matter whether it's him or a friend of his in a nice suit or a blue costume or a green costume who does the gun pointing.
The principle is the same.
So I said that we need to stand so firm on our...
Beliefs on our virtues, on our principles, that the world begins to revolve around us.
I also said that you cannot change language with language, that to oppose the dominant paradigm, it matters not what you'd say, it matters only what you do.
So the question is, and I'm not saying this is a clinched answer.
This is just put out as an argument.
I've applied it in my life.
It's brutal emotionally.
It is hard.
You get a lot of attacks.
You get a lot of resistance.
You ever want to see the ferocity of your fellow slaves point out to them the complicity that they have in the crimes of the state?
Smiles turn to snarls so fast it's astounding.
It is astounding when you pull people out of that treacly womb of pro-status delusion and you point out the blood on the hands of those who clap the state.
That's how you know.
If you've not experienced this, you need to.
Because that really is our opposition.
We cannot pull down the spire of the state.
All we can do...
Is unravel its base.
But that takes a ferocious conversation with our fellow slaves.
Because it is only in the undoing of that base that it topples.
And that's something we can do without going to jail.
That's something we can do without getting elected to office.
That's something we can do at any dinner table, at any conversation, at any time.
That is available to us at all times, that conversation.
I don't have status in my life.
I don't.
Oh, my dentist.
But private sector dentist, at least.
No, I don't.
Look, I'm not going to break bread with people who support criminality.
I'm not.
I'm not going to break bread with people who support the use of violence against me.
Because this stuff, as we all know, is literally deadly serious.
It is deadly serious.
People are dying by the millions.
And people are supporting that.
And the moral cowardice of the average slave to attack us for speaking the truth rather than those who throw others in jail for non-crimes, who start wars, who indoctrinate children, who brutalize the old, who steal their money and give them cat food to live on in their old age, who sell off the unborn to others for the sake of political expediency in the here and now.
They get off scot-free and we get attacked?
Come on.
We have to stand firm enough on our principles that we do not associate with people who support crimes.
That is not the highest moral standard in the world, is it?
I'm not saying go out and get crucified for the sake of the state, tie yourself to a policeman with a video camera.
I'm not talking about any of that.
I'm just talking about doing what we know is going to work in a free society.
A free society enforces through ostracism.
Doesn't it?
Isn't the dominant social paradigm supported through ostracism and maintained through ostracism?
Ostracism is the most powerful weapon in the human arsenal.
It's staggeringly powerful.
I was a waiter.
Imagine you had a business plan that said, well, I'm not going to pay my employees too much, but don't worry, my customers will just throw money down on the table and pay them for me.
What?
Or I'll hand out all my podcasts and books for free.
People will send me some money, right?
Ostracism is the most powerful weapon in any social arsenal.
It's what keeps paradigms alive.
It's what keeps culture running.
It's what keeps the state alive.
It's ostracism of those who disagree with the immorality of the state, who expose the immorality of the state.
So if that's the most powerful weapon that there is, why aren't we using it?
Because that is what it means to take your values and your virtues seriously.
Which is to not break bed with people who want you thrown in jail for disagreeing with them.
To not associate with people who support war and genocide and theft and torture.
That's the stand that I've taken and that is called living free.
How many people self-censor in social situations?
Come on, everybody does.
I do.
I got a kid.
Oh, you're a public school teacher.
Evil!
I can't do it.
My kid's got to have someone to play with.
I mean, we all do it, right?
That's not government censorship, is it?
That's the censorship that comes from ostracism.
Let's not let the bad people have the best weapon, the only weapon, the only weapon that requires no initiation of force, no risk to your personal property.
All you have to live with is disapproval and bad names.
If we can't pay that price, there will be no freedom.
Thank you.
Want to connect with others who value truth, virtue, and freedom as much as you do?
Introducing the Freedomain Radio Philositur 2012.
The world can be beautiful.
The world can be a paradise.
The world can be utopia.
We don't need the f***ing guns to make the world a better place.
The guns will make it worse always!
Join Stefan Molyneux at the following events while tickets are still available.
June 9th in Dallas, Texas at the Libertarian Party of Texas Convention.
June 11th in Sao Paulo, Brazil at an exciting new libertarian conference, Moving Ideas.
June 21st to 24th in Lancaster, New Hampshire at the Porcupine Freedom Festival.
From July 11th to 14th in Las Vegas, Nevada at Freedom Fest.
July 28th in Vancouver, BC at the Capitalism and Morality Conference.
October 11th to 14th in San Diego, California, at Libertopia.
October 15th and 19th, Stefan will be philosophizing on a boat at the second annual Liberty Cruise.
Finally, on November 3rd in Toronto, Ontario, at the Toronto Liberty Festival.
A revolution in personal freedom is happening right now.
The Freedomain Radio Philosopher 2012.
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