Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

All Episodes

Previous Next

May 19, 2013 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:19:44

2387 Freedomain Radio Call In Show, 19 May 2013

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	Good morning, everybody.
	Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio.
	Oh, Lord, did I take my glasses off?
	That's a tiny screen.
	19th of April, 2013.
	Hope you're doing well.
	So, these scandals.
	It's interesting to watch this stuff play out, the scandals that are recurring, that Obama is perhaps embroiled in, perhaps not.
	You know, the big three, the seizure of the phone records from Associated Press, Benghazi, And the four deaths of Americans.
	Which really shows up on the radar of people in a way that, say, the million-plus deaths of Iraqis doesn't.
	But that's natural.
	You know, we count.
	They are but dust of the wind.
	But it's interesting because a lot of this stuff is pretty inconsequential relative to the kind of scandals that presidents generally should be really called on the carpet for.
	So...
	For instance, Obama's broken the law many, many times before, directly, right?
	About important stuff.
	So, despite clearly stating, this is from The Atlantic, despite clearly stating in a 2008 questionnaire that the Commander-in-Chief is not lawfully empowered to ignore treaties duly ratified by the Senate, Obama has willfully failed to enforce the torture treaty signed by Ronald Reagan and duly ratified by the Senate that compels him to investigate and prosecute torture.
	So that, what Obama and Holder have done, or rather not done, is actually illegal.
	And this is about torture, so a little bit more important than whether conservative groups get to evade taxes.
	Obama also violated the War Powers Resolution, a law he specifically proclaimed to be constitutionally valid when he committed U.S. troops to Libya without congressional approval.
	The war in Libya becomes illegal from now on, and the imperial presidency grows even more powerful.
	And this is, again, a little bit more important than whether the government accessed phone records from journalists, but again, that's other people over there.
	And as the old saying goes, the rich do what they want, the powerful do what they want, the poor suffer what they must.
	Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder have decided to remain in breach of the Geneva Conventions and be complicit themselves in covering up the war crimes of their predecessors, which means of course that those of us who fought for Obama's election precisely because we wanted to return to the rule of law were calmed.
	Obama is a clear and knowing accessory to war crimes and should at some point face prosecution as well if the Geneva Convention means anything anymore.
	Obama has not traded arms for hostages with Iran or started a war with no planning for the inevitable occupation that would follow.
	But there are different questions that could be asked about Obama that would perhaps be more relevant to his behavior.
	Has he ordered the assassination of any American citizens in secret without due process?
	Did he kill any of their teenage kids without ever explaining how or why that happened?
	And this is a guy who makes jokes about drone strikes, right?
	So he's doing some speech and apparently his daughter's like the Jonas Brothers, who I believe are characters in Moby Dick.
	And he said that they better stay away from his daughter or he would call, he said, you'll never see it coming, air strikes.
	Air drone strikes or drone strikes, that's what I'm going to give you.
	So ha ha ha, you know, he's a father protecting his daughters from some pop stars and he's joking about the drone strikes, which have in fact murdered hundreds of innocent civilians around the world.
	Because, you know, that fucking shit is really funny, right?
	Has he refused to reveal even the legal reasoning he used to conclude that his targeted killing program was lawful?
	Has he waged an unprecedented war on whistleblowers?
	Has he spied on millions of Americans without a warrant or probable cause?
	Does he automatically count dead military-aged males killed by U.S. drones as militants?
	Did he sign a bill that enshrines in law the previously merely alleged executive power of indefinite detention without trial of terrorist suspects?
	And this is a little bit more important than the other stuff that's being talked about.
	But this is...
	In the big picture view, I mean, because I'm a little bit older, in the big picture view, this stuff is really quite remarkable.
	I mean, calling targeted assassinations, drone strikes, ignoring torture, starting illegal wars.
	This is all really quite amazing.
	And what it does as well, you know, there's this idea that somehow if we educate people that we're going to become free.
	I mean, this guy was allegedly, I mean, he is a man With almost no pass.
	You can't get any records about anything he did in the past.
	They've all been sealed off because he basically is a Madame Tussauds wax hand puppet for the elites, but this is a guy who was supposed to be some sort of constitutional professor, some sort of constitutional expert.
	Does it stop him?
	No.
	I mean, this guy's teaching the Constitution to other people at a university level, and does it stop him from willfully broaching the Constitution?
	No.
	People who are Well-versed in the Constitution, I think often just become well-versed in it so they know how to bypass it.
	You know, like how a hacker becomes well-versed in a computer security system.
	Oh, well, he knows security, so he must be our friend.
	He must be really good at security.
	No, he's only studying it in order to bypass it.
	But those kinds of...
	I mean, we live in a very concrete-based society.
	Like...
	If it doesn't affect you, it doesn't have any reality.
	This is the kind of narcissism of the modern West.
	People don't really respond to anything on principle.
	They only respond to things that they can picture happening to themselves in a very direct way.
	And this is why things like the IRS scandal, which is the typical response of the Democrat and the media is to blame the Republicans.
	Well, you see, the IRS commissioner was appointed by a Republican.
	Who cares about that?
	Who was in charge when all this stuff went down?
	Well, Obama is in charge of the IRS. And everybody's saying, of course, that you need to go down the chain and fire everyone.
	I mean, the stuff is illegal.
	I mean, it was specifically illegal.
	You cannot target people if you're the IRS. Of course, that's half of what the IRS is for, which is why the government resists things like a flat tax or a sales tax, because you can't use those things to harass political enemies.
	And therefore, the government doesn't want to give up the power.
	I mean, the power of taxation is only half the story.
	They could get the power of taxation in a way that would be much more economically productive.
	And governments do care about those things because it's more milk from the tax kettle.
	The government could get the taxes that it craves without the Byzantine complicated regulations that people have to go through.
	They could easily get that stuff.
	You know, just put in a flat tax or a sales tax or something like that.
	But the reality is then they wouldn't have the power of harassment.
	And FDR and Nixon and Clinton, they've all used it, this power to harass enemies.
	So people who've been critical of the Obama administration can pretty much count down the minutes until they get audited.
	And this is the power that they want.
	This is the power that they need.
	It's only partly about money.
	Again, they could probably get more money.
	With a flat tax or sales tax, but they want the power of harassment.
	That's really key to the government.
	So people, you know, already don't like the IRS. And so they can sort of picture this happening and they can get all outraged.
	And again, the view from outside the empire is, you know, finally, finally, the American citizenry is, you 10, 20, 25 million murders by US foreign policy since the Second World War, according to many estimates, the American population is finally roused.
	And they've been roused by two major events.
	The first, of course, is that Clinton got a blowjob, and the second is that the IRS-targeted conservative groups didn't prevent them from doing what they wanted to do, but rather...
	Didn't give them expedited tax breaks that they wanted.
	I mean, just look at the view from outside the empire.
	Imagine the view from outside.
	Imagine how this makes Americans look.
	I mean, if I was outside the empire, finally Americans finding their moral outrage over taxes and phone records would be something I think that would stoke my fires of indignation Significantly, to say the least.
	But this is the world that we live in.
	We are deficient in the only resource that really counts, which is empathy.
	Empathy is the great unspoken resource.
	Talk about peak oil.
	I'm not sure we've ever had peak empathy.
	It would be nice if we even have that.
	I think if you get peak empathy, it just keeps going up and on.
	So, thank you for that.
	For those who are interested, quick health update.
	I was chuckling to myself the other day.
	I guess I've done, I was in my third week of chemo.
	It's mild stuff, I'll tell you.
	It's truly mild stuff.
	Other than an occasional slowdown in energy by about 5% or 10%.
	I've really not noticed anything.
	Anything!
	And that's been really quite interesting.
	So, I guess they've tweaked it considerably.
	And I had a good talk with my hematologist about it.
	You know, the fact that chemo has become much less rough of late, particularly when it can target things well.
	And so I was chuckling to myself the other day about how, you know, my facial and head hair, like my head hair can survive chemo fine, just couldn't survive my 20s.
	So I thought that was kind of funny.
	But then, as it turned out just over the last day or two, ah, yes, here I am getting the gentle tuberculosis.
	Tuberculosis-style patches on my head, so I think I'm just going to have to buzz it right down because the hair is...
	I had to shave my beard off because it was getting pretty patchy, and the same thing is true.
	I've got these sort of reverse sideburns, the hair going out just above my ears and all that.
	But again, I mean, that shows the medicine is working, and it also shows that, or it also gives me great relief to know that the medicine is working, and so are my bowels or other things that were supposed to be problematic.
	I mean, the list of side effects from chemo basically just...
	You want to put yourself in an Iron Maiden because you're waiting for your body to generally explode.
	But other than one bad sore throat, which is all better, I don't think I've really experienced anything from it.
	So my thanks to everybody who works in the industry who's made this stuff a little bit less like evil dragons charging through your system and a little bit more like every now and then you need a nap.
	So that's nice.
	So I still remain very positive.
	I still remain Very happy.
	I still remain very peaceful, and that's been very positive for me.
	Strange but true.
	There is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
	That's a line a bit too relativistic for my taste from Hamlet.
	But certainly when it comes to illness, and I do have the blessings of a very positive prognosis, but when it comes to illness, there's a good deal of truth in that as well.
	So if you do get struck with something serious, don't necessarily jump to the conclusion that it's a bad thing.
	Be open to the opportunity that it may be a positive thing.
	And that certainly has been my experience so far.
	So thanks.
	I mean, gosh, everybody's letters of support are people's donations to help with medical treatment.
	Bills and costs, I mean, hugely helpful.
	I just give you guys a huge giant teddy bear kiss from the sky.
	So thank you so much.
	I hugely appreciate it.
	And with that having been said, let us move on to the brains of the outfit.
	Somebody said the other day, somebody posted a question, who runs Free Domain Radio on Facebook?
	It's like, well, that would be the listeners.
	So let's get on to you guys.
	And thank you so much for your patience during my intro.
	James, let's kick him up.
	Alright, the first is a phone caller named Jeff, so we're going to give him a buzz right now.
	Oh, just waiting for that, too.
	I mean, while we're waiting for him to come in.
	I've also been deluged with comments about everything I should do and everything I shouldn't do.
	I would be cautious, my friends, just in general, about providing medical advice to people.
	It's...
	It's a tricky business.
	I mean, I get, you know, there's a health industrial complex and this and that.
	I mean, I get all of that.
	I really do understand that.
	I'm not naive to the ways of the medical system, but, you know, we do really have to hold fast at the double-blind experiment and not anecdotes and not I heard that or my cousin did this or I tried that and all that.
	So we really do have to blindfold ourselves and go into the double-blind experiments with long-term results and prognosis and so on.
	I think jumping to giving people medical advice is a very presumptive and arrogant thing to do.
	I mean, unless you have stackfuls of peer-reviewed double-blind experiments in your hand, which have not been sent for the most part, it's a big deal to give someone medical advice.
	And if your medical advice is wrong and they listen to you, That's, well, that could get someone killed.
	So I would just really, really caution people.
	It's not fine.
	You know, send me a website, sure.
	But, you know, saying do this, don't do that, whatever you do, don't take chemo, do take apricot seeds or whatever it is or hemp oil or whatever it is.
	It's a big deal to give someone medical advice.
	And if somebody is not holding fast to science, then they may listen to you and it might get them killed.
	And I just think that's something quite serious to think about when you're tossing out emails with commandments to people on how to manage their health.
	I don't know.
	That's a pretty big deal.
	It's a pretty big and important set of instructions to give to people.
	And You know, if you're not qualified, or at least if you don't have access to some significant, you know, so much can happen in health that seems better, you know?
	Like, I mean, there is spontaneous remissions, right?
	Cancers can truly just, you know, wake up one day and they're smaller, wake up the next day and they're gone.
	This can happen.
	And the whole point of the double-blind experiment and reproducibility and the science behind it and so on is to ensure that people don't Chase anecdotes off the cliff of death.
	It's really hard to get the right information about healthcare.
	I just really want to caution people that there's lots of things that you can give bad advice on that doesn't hugely, hugely matter.
	Diet, of course, is a little less important because usually people can track their own weight and energy and they can also track their own blood work if they want to know how the diet is helping or not helping them.
	But I don't know.
	I think that something like how you should treat cancer, you should not be telling people what to do, again, unless you have some level of training or at least some level of Stacks and stacks of peer-reviewed literature or at least double-blind experiments.
	And those things are very expensive, so they don't usually come around a lot.
	But, you know, a bunch of anecdotes.
	It's very dangerous to provide people medical advice, particularly when we're talking about a potentially fatal illness where, if you don't treat it the right way, you can't exactly go back in time and fix it.
	So, I really would caution people, and I guess because I mostly get emails from the libertarian community, I would really caution people to...
	Do not do that.
	I think that's a very dangerous thing to be doing.
	But anyway, so if we can move on to the caller, that would be great.
	Calling him now.
	Hello?
	Hello, hello.
	How you doing?
	I'm fine.
	How you doing?
	Good.
	I met you at Anarchy in NYC. I think I mentioned skeptical youth to you.
	Yes, I think I remember that.
	What's on your mind, my friend?
	I just started doing, it's basically kind of like a podcast.
	It's a blog and a vlog.
	And I just want to get the kind of the 12 herbs and spices of, you know, podcasting philosophy.
	Right.
	And what's your web address?
	Actually, I don't have a website.
	I use Facebook, Tumblr, and YouTube.
	All right.
	Name of the show?
	SkepticalU.com.
	Skeptical youth.
	All right.
	Well, my first advice is anytime you talk about it, try and get some sort of URL, even if it's a tiny URL or some sort of shortcut.
	And anytime you talk about it publicly, make sure that you mention the website or someplace that people can find it.
	But of course, skeptical youth is fine.
	So is your question about sort of how to make the show good kind of thing?
	Well, yeah.
	And just kind of the extra, I guess, obstacles and talking about really kind of personal stuff.
	I mean, some people, the childhood trauma that they've received, it's like how to talk about that in a very public online arena.
	Well, I think what you want to do is never think about the consequences and just ramble about it and then deal with whatever crap falls out.
	No, I'm kidding.
	That was my approach.
	Well...
	I mean, I think there are two kinds of traumas, I think, that are important.
	And one kind is interesting, but it may not be relevant to as many people, and another kind is much more relevant, right?
	So there are traumas which even our existing society would recognize as traumas, right?
	So neglect abuse, verbal, physical, sexual, emotional abuse, and so on.
	These are, you know, chaos or addiction in the family or prison time for family members and so on.
	Like, these are things that even our contemporary society would recognize as destructive and traumatic towards children.
	And so these are things, you know, again, if you've experienced a memory, sorry, you can talk about those.
	And I think those are of value to people.
	I think it's, you know, there are people out there who've experienced these things and can be very helpful for them.
	But there's the other kind of abuse or problems within childhood that is invisible to society as a whole.
	And I think that's something that's also really important to talk about.
	Because in the first case, everybody recognizes that this is abusive, that these terrible actions are abusive.
	And the law generally recognizes them as criminal.
	It struck me the other day when I was mulling it over that Between my mother and myself, only one of us broke one of the Ten Commandments, which is me.
	Thou shalt honor thy mother and thy father.
	So there's the abuse which everyone recognizes, which I think is important to talk about, because everyone recognizes it, but it's still kind of taboo to talk about these things in society.
	So I think opening up the discussion about abusive childhoods if you've had them is an important and positive thing to do because shame and isolation is one of the ways in which abusers will fence you off from society as a whole for the rest of your life.
	So I think having honest discussions and open discussions about abuse in childhood is important.
	It just breaks down those taboos and allows people to discuss things which they've kept secret.
	Secrets are prisons, right?
	I mean, the things that you can't talk about with people, especially the things that are important to you.
	This is why I've always really counseled.
	Be honest with people.
	Be open with people.
	Censorship is prison, and self-censorship is a prison that you never get out of, right?
	Unless you really make that commitment to speak openly.
	But the other kind of problems within childhood, I think, are important to talk about because there is...
	The stuff that's recognized as problematic, but it's taboo to talk about, break those barriers for sure.
	But there's stuff that is not even recognized as problematic, right?
	So I genuinely believe in the future, you know, we would recognize that something like public school is very destructive to children.
	Very destructive to children.
	And there's some evidence of this, right?
	So measures of creativity decline significantly.
	For about 85% of kids who are highly creative, I'm sure that university finished off those last few digits completely, or at least ejects those who retain them.
	So something like public school, I think, is important to talk about.
	Something like religious instruction, you know, where you're As Christopher Hitchens used to talk about it as a spiritual North Korea where you're always being watched and judged and evaluated and you can't do this and you have to do that.
	The thought police, the mind police are always in your head and if you put one foot wrong, you might fall down the endless track door into hell itself forever.
	Anything which distorts or decays a child's relationship to reason and evidence I think is important and anything which, you know, public schools, they're just huge child silencing machines.
	It's just like casting cone of silence on children for, you know, a decade plus.
	Because the vast majority of time you're in public school, you're simply not allowed to talk.
	You have to raise your hand and wait for the teacher to ask you and so on.
	And, my God, I mean, how...
	How horrifying is that?
	You didn't choose to be there, you don't choose the subjects, and you're not allowed to talk.
	I mean, there's just no better way to create emotional dissociation, you know, daydreaminess, tics, aggression, and all that kind of stuff, is to put people in a situation, don't choose to be there, and they don't choose what they're being taught, they don't care about what they're being taught, and they're not allowed to speak.
	I mean, that's just...
	I mean, it's horrendous, right?
	So these are just two, but these are things that people don't think of as problematic or abusive towards children.
	So I would say in those general areas, you can do a lot of good, bringing the taboos that everyone recognizes as problematic out into the open, and also helping people to understand other things that are incredibly destructive towards children, but people think are still virtuous.
	That's the greatest danger.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, I actually just got out of public school like two years ago.
	Being unschooled is a totally different thing.
	But also, I was thinking about how you've been able to have such a steady growth and I would say enormous falling for a very, I guess, taboo subject.
	And I was just thinking about, do you have any tips or tricks about that?
	Well, I mean, I think the most important thing is to listen to the audience.
	One of the greatest benefits I had, and I know that this is not transferable because you can't transfer experience, but you can transfer the lessons of experience.
	So the really, really key thing is to track the audience.
	And the fact that this needs to be said in the libertarian community.
	The libertarian community has two ways of bypassing the audience.
	One is to talk about politics and the other is to talk about academics, formal education, degrees and so on.
	And both of those things are not audience-based.
	I mean there's a need for them for sure, but they're not audience-based because you're already – like in politics, you're already presupposing the solution.
	And you're presupposing that it's the only solution.
	So it's a vote for X and this is the only thing that you can really do that's going to achieve any freedom.
	This is true to some degree with civil disobedience as well.
	But of course the problem with civil disobedience is that it's not teaching anyone anything that they don't know.
	Everybody knows that you get arrested if you break the law.
	This is not a shock.
	That's why people pay their taxes.
	That's why people obey the law.
	Because they know.
	This is why people say yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir.
	When they get pulled over, they hand over their license, they hand over...
	Because they know what happens if you just hit the gas.
	I mean, you go all O.J. Simpson on people and they will go, you know, thermonuclear on you.
	And so when people break the law and get arrested, they're not really...
	They're not telling anyone anything that they don't already know.
	Whereas I think to delve into and deal with the moral basis of the society is starting to educate people on things that they don't as yet know.
	So with politics, there's a presupposed solution, which means that you are automatically limiting your audience to those who accept this solution or who are interested in politics.
	And with academics, you never know if you're teaching someone academics if they're interested in the subject or interested in getting the cushy life of an academic where you work a couple of hours a week for six figures plus.
	You get your sabbaticals, you get your summers off, and so on.
	Well, no real way to know.
	So, nobody knows if people are interested in knowledge for the thing itself or knowledge as a means to the end of getting the cushy life of an academic.
	Can't be fired.
	It's not easy to get in, but once you're in, man, it's pretty smooth sailing.
	So, one thing I've really focused on is, and this is partly what the Sunday shows are, and about the listener combos and all that kind of stuff, and the emails and the YouTube comments, which I try to read, At least some portion of them and all that.
	The whole point of FDR is, what are you interested?
	What do you want to talk about?
	What do you want to talk about?
	That's why I try not to have themed shows.
	Here, you can talk about your toenails and how much you love them or dislike them.
	Body image shows.
	I try not to have themes.
	It's like it's an open-ended show.
	So what is it that you want to talk about?
	Because that to me is really listening to the audience without a presupposed thing of, well, you have to talk about this or you have to talk about that or this way or that way.
	And so I think being receptive to what your audience wants to talk about without imposing an agenda, I think, is the best way to grow.
	Because people, they kind of get if you have an axe to grind or if you have, you know, the solution has to be this way or the only thing that's important to talk about are these three topics or whatever.
	And that's why with listener conversations and with Sunday shows, I don't say to people, I don't try to guide them towards a particular solution.
	I mean, obviously, there are questions that I'll ask that I think are important, but I will try not to guide people, and I certainly don't guide the questions, as you know.
	So, really, really listen to your audience.
	That's the best way to, I mean, if you listen to your audience and act on what they're interested in, you cannot help but gain relevance.
	I mean, you can't miss that, right?
	Because if you say to people what's important to you, and then you provide that to the best of your ability, you can't help but grow.
	I mean, if you go into the market, you say to kids, hey, kids, there's no candy store for 30 miles around.
	Okay, and there are hundreds and hundreds of kids around here, so I'm going to open a candy store.
	I mean, that's not brain surgery when it comes to...
	Market-based services.
	Find out what people want and provide it to them to the best of your ability.
	And if your ability is good and you keep working hard to be responsive, you can't help but grow.
	Growing the show has not been that hard from that standpoint.
	Okay.
	And the last question I have is, I noticed your show, production-wise, doesn't have that much quality.
	It's more just a lot of shows.
	But What you say and I guess the content you provide is of high quality.
	So I was just wondering Why, I mean, kind of fixing that ratio?
	Because especially when you've not had such a strong childhood and you're not made into a, you don't really have a really strong self-esteem, sometimes you try to, at least I've noticed, I've been drawing to this, try to get a really high production value and that will kind of make up for the low self-esteem I have about what I'm saying.
	Well, first of all, yeah, I mean, the first thing I would say is I wouldn't necessarily associate a low self-esteem with a bad childhood.
	Because one of the things that you get out of a bad childhood that you've successfully navigated is the high self-esteem of having successfully navigated a bad childhood.
	So I don't want to point that out, that it's not necessary to associate those two things.
	Anyway, I think that sort of makes sense.
	So, yeah, as far as production value goes, I mean, gosh, when this thing started six or seven years ago, I mean, a couple of reasons why.
	Yeah.
	You couldn't have high quality, really, because bandwidth was so expensive back then.
	I mean, that's why some of the earlier shows, like, 32K was just too rough, but 64K, there was just so much.
	I would just go and broke on bandwidth back in the day.
	And so, I went to 40K, and it's like, that was sort of my compromise and all that.
	And because I was producing two shows a day when I was driving, you know, all the inevitable background noise of driving, I tried to minimize that, but...
	I couldn't, I didn't really go through, I certainly didn't go through and edit the shows in particular, which, you know, I thought gave them a kind of spontaneous quality, which was kind of nice.
	But I certainly try to aim for a better quality now, but back in the day, but yeah, I mean, it doesn't matter as much really.
	I mean, if quality was all that was important, nobody would be into 50s music, right?
	Because 50s music was, you know, it's all mono beach radio stuff for the most part.
	And nobody would be into Enrico Caruso, right, who was recording long before there was high-quality stuff.
	And nobody would ever be into live recordings where the quality is often pretty dodgy.
	So the quality of the recording, I think it's important.
	I certainly do prefer a richer, better sound.
	I'm a bit of an audiophile that way.
	But...
	The quality of content can certainly more than make up for the quality of production.
	And it's not that expensive to get a decent setup these days.
	Again, back in the day, it was a bit more specialized.
	It was a little harder.
	Well, it's more expensive to do.
	But it's certainly a lot easier now, I think.
	Oh, okay.
	Thank you.
	Yeah, I was trying to find a...
	Well, I guess still trying to find a good...
	Bounds between those two.
	Well, I'll tell you what.
	Listen, send me an email.
	And if you don't have a good microphone, that would be my donation to you, is to send you a good microphone.
	So just send an email to operations at freedomadradio.com.
	If you don't have a good microphone already, we'll make sure we set you up with one.
	So, I mean, that's the most important thing.
	It's just a good microphone.
	There's not much you can do with a A bad source, but once you have a good source, so let's at least make that happen if you don't have access to that and get you at least a good recording.
	Thank you so much, but right now I'm actually interning at Adam vs.
	The Man, and so I kind of have access to… Oh, you've got access to his stuff, right?
	Yeah, but the only thing is that I will actually take you up on that offer because when I do leave here, I'm actually going to do a Kickstarter because the laptop that I have right now is actually 10 years old and it starts freezing after you open up two tabs.
	So I need to get a better laptop and also a camera.
	But thank you so much for that.
	Just let me know what the Kickstarter is and I'll make sure I kick something in to help you out.
	Okay, awesome.
	Have you talked to him at all since I think he was arrested by the Federal Park Police?
	Was it yesterday?
	Yeah, it was yesterday.
	And have you heard anything?
	I said he was taken to a federal detention center, but I don't know what's happened after that.
	Yeah, actually, we haven't.
	All they said that he was being arrested for resisting arrest, and we really haven't heard anything else.
	He's going to see a judge on Monday.
	Wait, he was arrested for resisting arrest?
	Boy, talk about a Mobius strip of self-referential logic.
	I mean, you have to get arrested for something in order to resist arrest.
	I mean, you can't get arrested for resisting arrest, right?
	I mean, I know that the government doesn't work on any kind of logic, but...
	Because he was at illegalized marijuana, he was giving a speech there, but as far as I understand it, he wasn't smoking any marijuana, he wasn't carrying any marijuana, but he's...
	So he's been arrested for resisting arrest.
	Wow, that's...
	Yeah.
	That's an impressive feat of illogic even for a government.
	Yeah.
	And so we really haven't heard basically anything from him.
	The reasons they gave him why they took him to the federal detention center is because they couldn't ID him because he didn't have his ID on him.
	Right.
	The fact that everyone was chanting his name doesn't...
	Anyway, okay.
	Yeah, I know.
	I don't quite get that either.
	That would require them to think for themselves.
	Well, I'm certainly sorry to hear what's happened.
	It may be a targeted thing prior to his March on Washington goal, which was for...
	Was it next month or the month after?
	It was in July 4th.
	July 4th, right.
	Right, so it may be something preemptive there.
	Who knows, but it's...
	It's a shame.
	It's a real shame what's happening.
	It's not my preferred approach to solving these problems.
	I'm concerned that, you know, I mean, those who understand the status force, which is just about everyone, as I said, are not going to be swayed by seeing that happen.
	And, you know, the concern is that...
	I mean, we do have to be concerned with optics, unfortunately.
	You know, the world is not rational yet, and therefore it relies on appearance.
	Yeah.
	And so that is...
	That is a great challenge.
	There's nothing sometimes slower than a shortcut.
	It's certainly not my preferred approach to how to deal with the state, but I certainly do recognize whatever courage is there to be able to take the stuff on.
	Again, I think focusing on childhood and parenting is the way to go.
	It's really impossible to spin that negatively.
	I mean, some people do.
	But it's really, really hard to spin, be nice to your kids negatively.
	But, you know, chanting and screaming and arrests and so on do give people a chill of disorder.
	So, anyway, I just want to point that out.
	Yeah, and, like, if, you know, Obama drone striking children is not going to wake people up I don't think you get arrested for smoking weed is going to.
	Right, right, right.
	Right, yeah, and I mean, you know, as far as things...
	Again, I certainly respect the right of people to put whatever they want into their own bodies, but things which distort people's sense of reality is not necessarily the biggest philosophical bonus goody in the known universe.
	So, as far as all the fights to...
	As far as all the fights in the world, I think the marijuana one is one of the ones that I have a little less patience for.
	Not because I have any moral problem with it, but just because it's not really what philosophy is aiming to do, which is to get people to live consistently in reality.
	So anyway, I just wanted to point that out.
	Yeah, I don't think that he got targeted because of his armed march.
	July 4th, because the organizer, N.A. Poe, got arrested too, and he actually got charges, he actually, I'm pretty sure he got some more serious charges than Adam.
	And, you know, I think it was just because last month, the last one they did got national, was in the national news.
	And so all the police got, I mean, probably the police chief was like, oh, we're looking like idiots now, so we gotta stop this shit.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Yeah, I'm sorry.
	Again, so it's just resisting arrest, which is not to say just like it's unimportant, but that's as far as you know what he's been charged with.
	Yeah, I think he's going to be able to at least get out on bail Monday.
	Not sure, though.
	Well, at least that's a ridiculous enough charge that hopefully he'll have some leverage to resist it.
	I'll fight it back.
	Yeah, I heard someone talking about the ACLU. Right.
	Well, that's good to hear.
	And I certainly wish him the best, and I hope he gets out soon.
	Yeah, me too.
	All right.
	So if there's nothing else, if we move on to the next caller, that would be great.
	And thanks so much for calling in.
	All right.
	Thank you.
	Next up we have Michael H.
	Hello, hello.
	Be sure to unmute your mic.
	Oh, do we lose him?
	Just checking.
	No, I don't know if we lost him or not, but...
	Oh, he is there.
	Can we now?
	Yes, go ahead.
	Morning, Stefan.
	How are you doing?
	Good, how are you doing?
	I'm well, thank you.
	Good, I love your work and I wish you a speedy recovery.
	Thank you.
	Me too.
	Me too.
	My question is, what do you think it is about the American mindset or mentality that just it doesn't seem like people think that anything catastrophic could happen to this country, economic wise or anything.
	We just don't get that we're part of this bigger system and How do you think that happened?
	What happened to our country that we just became so unable to process anything?
	What do you think about that?
	Can you tell me a little bit?
	I'm going to make sure I sort of answer the question.
	I'm going to answer the question like there's only one answer.
	Sure.
	Do you mean sort of part of the bigger global economic system, or what is it that you mean?
	Well, I mean, I watched your hour-long presentation about the end of our economy, essentially the end of the West, as we know it, comic-wise.
	Oh, the one that there will be no economic recovery for yourself accordingly?
	Yeah, and I've been following that type of information for a long time, but the way you put it together really struck home in a unique way, and I guess what I'm asking is, When you hear people talk on the street, or you hear people in general, they don't seem to...
	It seems like they think we're in a bubble.
	That what's happening economically, that we're not connected to what other countries do, what might happen to us competition-wise, and the things you laid out in those charts are just incredible because you're not presenting an opinion there.
	You're telling us, look, here's what's happening, and you can do what you want with it, but we're in big, big trouble.
	And people can't process that.
	They can't process that, hey, maybe...
	Maybe this is going to happen to us and this is going to be a lot worse than we thought.
	So my question for you is where did the American mindset just go with not being able to look at facts and rational thought and instead replace it with this fantasy?
	I don't understand.
	Do you meet people like that and have any insight as to how that took place or why it took place?
	Do you think, just to ask another question, do you think that it's particular to America?
	No.
	Or is it just that these are the people you're surrounded by, so it seems more kind of in your face?
	Yeah, I mean, I think it's worse in America.
	I think the entire industrialized world might be a better way to put it, but I think in America it's particularly bad because we just, well, we think we're the center of the universe, first of all.
	The arrogance here is overwhelming.
	That's the first problem.
	But I guess from your perspective, because obviously you're so open-minded about this and you just lay out the facts as they are, I mean, do you think that there's any hope that the American mindset can change?
	Because people are waking up to a degree.
	I just don't see many waking up is what I'm saying.
	Do you think there's hope for that?
	I do, I do.
	I mean, I think that there is hope for it.
	You know, one of the things that I sort of recognized since getting ill is that it is a great strain to see disaster approaching.
	Mm-hmm.
	And to not be listened to.
	Right.
	Nietzsche wrote about this quite a bit.
	In many ways, he was prescient about the most disastrous century in human history, which is the 20th, at least in modern history.
	He saw where the nihilism was going and that philosophers weren't working to replace a system of supernatural virtues with secular virtues, but really only wanted to replace it with secular authority, which, as he saw, was very dangerous.
	So I think that when you see disaster approaching, and the disaster is not approaching others, it's approaching all of us.
	Living with status is like being the Siamese twin of someone who's got epilepsy Tourette's and is really into Fight Club while you're sleeping.
	So it's all of us.
	We're all in the same boat.
	And it is very stressful to see the disaster that is approaching all of us, to know that if you cannot rouse your fellow citizens, the disaster is going to strike you, your family, your future, everything.
	And to have people, you know, mock and attack and all that kind of stuff.
	And to willfully act in ways that mathematically, with mathematical certainty, is going to be self-destructive.
	It's really hard.
	But I do believe that people do wake up.
	Because human beings, there's two ways to learn, right?
	You learn through concepts or you learn through experience.
	And we are not going to be able to teach people by concepts before whatever happens is going to happen.
	It's just not going to happen.
	But I mean for the reason being basically that human beings invent – and again, this is not my theory.
	This is fairly well-established scientifically.
	Human beings invent ex post facto justifications for whatever shit they want to do in the moment.
	Right?
	Like the rapist says, oh, she wanted it.
	And the thief says, well, if you're stupid enough to leave your wallet there, of course I'm going to – it's your fault, right?
	Right.
	And you do the same to me if the situations were reversed.
	It's a dog-eat-dog world.
	Everybody makes up justifications.
	Right.
	For what they do.
	And unfortunately, way too many people have been rendered – It's biologically unsustainable, like literally biologically unsustainable through their addiction to the state.
	Wow, yeah.
	Right?
	I mean, think of the massively obese public sector workers.
	What are they going to do if they have to start paying their own healthcare bills, even if those healthcare bills drop?
	Sure.
	What about people who've got six kids and can't work, and they have no skills, and they've developed really bad emotional habits through self-indulgence?
	I mean, they are...
	I mean, without, I think, a word of exaggeration.
	They have rendered themselves biologically unsustainable through their addiction to state and its resources.
	Absolutely.
	How many public sector workers would be hireable in the free market?
	You know, you've got 30 years of pushing pieces of paper back and forth on your desk, and you have been rendered unfit.
	So people have adapted to a government environment, you know, physically, psychologically, biologically, morally, and They have rendered themselves, and this is why it has to be a multi-generational change.
	Seriously, if you push the button and change it tomorrow, there would be a huge amount of adaptation, and some people would certainly make it.
	But...
	I mean, it would be carnage for a lot of people.
	I love the way you described in your economic presentation as it being a hard bounce.
	I think that's exactly what we're going to experience because a hard bounce generally means it's going to happen whether we want it to or not.
	It will happen.
	It's just that how people react and respond and survive it, the hard bounce will be, as you said, Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	A calculated, prepared response.
	It's just going to happen to us.
	And I think my awareness, I hope my awareness of it will make me emotionally ready to some degree.
	Financially, I'm not in the best of shape, but emotionally.
	So I really like the way you described that as a hard bounce.
	Very, very, very vivid.
	Right.
	So, well, thank you.
	So, I mean, I think it fundamentally comes down to This is a word I'm sure you've heard before, a phrase you've heard before, American exceptionalism.
	You've probably heard that.
	Yes.
	So, of course, you know, the idea is that – and a lot of people who are, you know, atheists and objectivists really focus on this.
	So, although the imagery comes from the Bible, right, the shining city on the hill, this comes from the Bible.
	I mean, Ayn Rand was a huge fan of it.
	And, of course, she was comparing America in the 1920s.
	30s and 40s and 50s with Russia in the 1920s, so it's easy to understand what a Nirvana it was to her at that time.
	But the American exceptionalism, of course, as you know, is the idea that America was designed philosophically and morally, and therefore it is not like any other country.
	It is – it has a mission to civilize.
	It has a mission to promote peace among the world.
	And it is a big blind axe-swinging knight in a very crowded room thinking he's doing all kinds of wonderful good and only hitting bad people despite the fact that he walks out with kids' heads dripping on the floor.
	Sure.
	So the idea of American exceptionalism is that America, by definition, is exempt from the corruption of politics because it is an idealist, an idealistic nation.
	And yes, sure, sometimes it makes mistakes, but those mistakes are always with the best intentions, and Americans somehow have the power corruption shield around them, no matter how much power they get, no matter how big their military gets, no matter how much the imperial presidency grows, no matter how many resources the Congress gets control of, no matter how much they can counterfeit, no matter how much they can control everyone's lives, no matter how much power they have to shape Or to distort the minds of children to adhere to their dominant ideology.
	None of any of that power is corrupting because we have American exceptionalism, which is the magic wand that is used to wave away criticisms of the corruption of power.
	And so because of that, you do not judge America.
	Or the government.
	You do not judge it by its effects.
	You judge it only by its intentions, by its stated goals.
	And of course, it's a whole lot easier to say you want to do good than to actually do good, right?
	I mean, otherwise the best doctor in the world would be some kid reading from a script called...
	I have a magic wand, you're healed.
	It's like, well, people didn't actually get better, and they actually stopped looking for treatment after you waved your magic wand, so you're actually getting people killed.
	No, no, no, but I have the best of intentions.
	I really want people to get well.
	Well, who gives a shit about your intentions?
	What do your intentions mean about anything?
	Intentions are so often just a mask for the real agenda of the inevitable agenda.
	March of power that, I mean, the most dangerous people in the world are those who say that they only wish to do good and that their intentions are nothing but noble and then do not ever track back their follow-through or certainly don't have any moral justifications at any basic level for what it is that they're doing.
	So exceptionalism is the magic, I want to fly while everyone else is bound by gravity, and it is one of the most dangerous corruptions around because it means that You don't actually circle back and look for the evidence of the implementation of the virtues that you're claiming to achieve.
	I mean, that is really, I think, the essence of what is so dangerous about it.
	And so, because America has this idea that we are virtuous because we are virtuous.
	Everybody in this geographical area, with the exception of illegal aliens, is virtuous by definition, and certainly everything our government does is virtuous.
	And America's incredible susceptibility and thirst for moral justifications, the more evil gets done in your name, the more you thirst for rhetoric, which is why Obama, who's a master rhetorician, is in charge.
	The greater the evil, the more the thirst for justification, because Rhetoric and moral justifications are the sort of temporary solve for the agony of being bound up in evil, right?
	Which is a citizen who praises his state is bound up in evil.
	So they have this thirst for rhetoric and they have this hostility and hatred towards mere evidence, right?
	All they want is the words that dream them up to the sky clouds of perfect moral justification and they shy away from evidence, which is why everybody says support the troops and nobody wants to look at the victims.
	Nobody wants to look at the victims.
	Nobody wants to look at the casualties.
	Nobody wants to look at the history and then those who do actually dare to bring evidence to bear on the discussion.
	Are called conspiracy theorists.
	Because reality is just a conspiracy when you are locked in delusion.
	So I think that this sense of exceptionalism and the story of America and its foundings and its ideals and this and that and the other.
	And of course the reality is that even if we were to accept that America was founded on all of these ideals, which I would certainly disagree with.
	But let's say if we only – let's say America was founded on all of these ideals.
	It certainly has got nothing to do with that now.
	I mean America has turned into just another imperial power.
	I mean there's nothing different.
	I mean it's torturing.
	It's killing.
	It's invading.
	It's – I mean it's suppressing its own population.
	It's got the highest prison population in the world, 1.5 to 3 million dollars of unfunded liabilities per family, counterfeiting, corruption, drug running, selling arms to corrupt dictatorships.
	I mean, it has become...
	I think we're good to go.
	That would be my sort of very brief off-the-cuff assessment.
	I hope that helps a little bit.
	Yeah, that's fantastic.
	And you remind me, that reminded me of a quote from a Michael Parente speech he gave about imperialism where he said, be very wary of those who are willing to or want to uplift you.
	Be wary of those who want to help you, uplift you.
	Because they're the ones that are going to take over your resources and lands.
	But yourself and people like him and Michael Parenti and others, you guys are the ones that are awake.
	And thank God for that because without you being there to present these things, there'd be nothing.
	You give us direction and you give people that are awake a lot of hope.
	You give me a lot of hope.
	You really do so.
	Well, thanks.
	And I just want to sort of point out, because I tried to talk about uplifting, so I want to hopefully put a few differentials in there.
	So I think the important thing is beware of anyone who wishes to take the burden of improvement away from you.
	There it is.
	This is, to me, the great danger.
	Anybody who will give you the moral label of virtue through non-confrontational actions is very dangerous, right?
	So what I mean by that is anyone who says, you know, love Jesus and you're good...
	Well, sorry, virtue is a little bit more tough than kneeling and praying and giving some money.
	Anyone who tells you, pound these lawn signs and send money to me, this political campaign, and that's the greatest virtue you can, or the biggest thing you can do for freedom and virtue.
	No, sorry, it's a little tougher than that.
	Nobody can outsource or offload from you the moral challenges of achieving virtue in an increasingly corrupt world.
	Anyone who says to you, oh, put this flag out in front of your house and march in this July 4th parade and put this goddamn bumper sticker on your car or vote for this person and suddenly you're a good person has offloaded the challenge.
	It really is like saying to someone, buy my poster, put it at the foot of your bed, and you will lose three pounds a week.
	Right.
	No, sorry.
	Losing weight is a little bit more tough than that.
	It's a little bit more challenging than that.
	And losing weight is a hell of a lot easier than becoming virtuous.
	So, beware anyone who offloads the challenge of virtue.
	And this is why, I mean, I've always, always...
	Try to tell people that, you know, I may be able to provide a rough road map of the path to virtue, but every step you take has to be yours.
	That's right.
	I mean, the honesty that you bring to bear in your relationships, the integrity with which you stand by rational moral ideals, all of the things that are heart-droppingly horrifying and terrifying when it comes to living a virtuous life, these are all things that you have to do.
	You know, I cannot grant anyone the label of virtue.
	Right.
	I cannot grant anyone the label of integrity.
	I can't.
	This is something I can provide a rough roadmap that I hope is helpful, but it's everybody's step to achieve.
	And this is one reason why the show remains off the radar for most people, because most people are desperate for someone else to write virtuous on their forehead so that they can look in the mirror and feel good about themselves.
	But that's backwards in every sense.
	Yeah, so true, so true.
	Well, Stefan, thank you so much.
	I love your work, and I'm going to leave a donation on your site today, and I wish you all the best in your future endeavors.
	Well, thank you so much.
	I appreciate that, and let's hope for the long-term future endeavors as well.
	I appreciate your question.
	It's a great question.
	All right, great.
	Thanks, Stefan.
	Thank you.
	Yeah.
	All right, next up we have Erwin.
	Hello.
	Hello.
	Hi, how are you doing?
	Getting yourself?
	Yeah.
	I'm well, thank you.
	What can I do for you, my friend?
	It was me who was emailing you back a few weeks ago about my venture to psychology.
	Yes, yes.
	I'm not sure if you remember, but...
	Yep.
	Yeah, if you could convince me why I should take psychology and why not, or why I shouldn't.
	I mean, it's my...
	Sorry, but psychology is a bit of a...
	It's a broad profession.
	What is it that you...
	Can you remind me what you were specifically thinking of focusing on in psychology?
	You can be a researcher, you can be a therapist, you can write lots of different things you can do.
	First thing that came to my mind is being a researcher because that includes data and facts, right?
	And a therapist, just in case a researcher, I didn't...
	Make it to a researcher kind of thing.
	Okay.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	Maybe I should tell you about how I came into that conclusion, why I want to pursue psychology.
	Go ahead.
	I'm a Filipino, as you can hear about my accent, I guess.
	It'll be my fourth year here in Canada.
	I did have a degree back in the Philippines.
	Oh yeah, but suddenly reality has changed, right?
	Human nature has changed.
	As soon as you cross the border, you've got to start all over.
	I'm sorry about that.
	I know.
	I came into the age of reason two years ago, about two years ago, when I first heard about George Carlin.
	Then I heard about you.
	Then I became an atheist.
	Sorry, who was the first guy?
	Can you just spell that out in case anybody wants to pursue that?
	George Carlin.
	Oh, George Carlin!
	Okay, sorry, sorry.
	I thought you missed it.
	Okay, go ahead.
	Yeah, and a few things I noticed from a lot of stuff you said.
	It's like similar to a short phrase that George Carlin said, and when you say it, it's kind of like an expanded version of it with more reason and philosophy, and that just boggles my mind.
	It's inspired me through a lot of angles and my fascination about human psychology, it boggles my mind and I want to learn a lot about it and at the same time get a job related to it because I don't really think I'll be getting any job related to business here in Victoria.
	Oh, yeah.
	Where were we?
	Sorry.
	Only you can tell me that.
	But go on, I'm still listening.
	Yeah.
	Sorry, it's just too early for me for this conversation.
	I didn't expect that it'll be like 7 o'clock in the morning.
	And I was awake at like 6 o'clock.
	Yeah.
	And this is my first time calling to any show at all.
	Well, I think you're doing just fine.
	Is there anything else you wanted to add?
	Yeah.
	I think I mentioned one time that...
	I was raised in a very very religious family because it's in the Philippines, right?
	It's a country drawn in religion and Religion is kind of like a business in that country and Just bugs my mind why people are still believing in this stuff.
	It's like an in-your-face bullshit plus the politics and the government and the ridiculous laws And they just insult people.
	They lack philosophy and human behavior about it.
	And I think I consider myself as an individual without any culture, but still has some sort of scratch for me.
	Did you get what I was trying to say?
	There's still some cultural stuff left in me, but I try to chug away all those inflicted behaviors upon me.
	When I hear about pride and stuff, I think you made an episode about the accident of birth and that just blew my mind.
	Not just me, but I'm pretty sure a lot of people have been blown away by our shows, I guess.
	It's sad how the obvious is still surprising to us.
	To me too, but it's tragic how some basic obvious stuff, like Countries Don't Exist, still has the power to shock us.
	It just shows how deep into mythology we are, right?
	Yeah.
	And...
	I wasn't really spanked, but I wasn't really abused.
	I can remember a lot of stuff ever since I was...
	I mean, important stuff, like when I was a kid, when I was around three or four, when I had this toy gun and my father told me that you don't own anything at all kind of thing.
	I mean, I was three or four, right?
	Right.
	Yeah, I mean, I think that shows also the degree to which children are viewed as property, right?
	You know, you're soulless clay to be molded on your culture for the sake of your parents' social acceptance and vanity, right?
	I mean, you have to go to church because otherwise people are going to be upset with mommy or daddy that you don't go to church.
	We're going to get disapproved of, right?
	And so to manage your parents' social anxieties...
	Or to keep them far away from any kind of reality, you have to be broken and remolded according to the dominant ideology.
	And this can be multiplicitous, right?
	It can be leftist and secular, it can be rightist and religious, it can be any number of things, but whatever the dominant ideology is in the tribe, that's what the children have to be broken into.
	As I said, I remember a long time ago meeting parents of a young boy.
	Oh, gosh, this is 15, maybe 17 years ago.
	And his name was Wiley.
	And they were explaining to him how commercials are, you know, just, you know, the capitalists wanting to sell you stuff.
	I think the kid was sort of six or seven years old.
	And the commercials are just really bad.
	The capitalists want to just sell you stuff and this and that.
	And as I pointed out, I said, have you given them similar or more significant warnings about public school, which is scarcely immune from this same propagandistic element, but, you know, the way that they're forced to go for six hours a day, it's a little bit different than seeing a 30-second commercial, but in a TV, they don't have to turn on.
	And again, they just looked at me like, what are you talking like?
	I'd suddenly broken into fluent Esperanto, and my head was slowly spinning around.
	Because it's like, you know, this is their, right?
	Like, I was listening to the show the other day on the CBC about, it's called Rethinking Depression, and it was critical of SSRIs.
	And, I mean, you almost did this gravity well, because, like, they're public sector, right?
	So, who do they blame for the prevalence of SSRIs?
	Is it the government's No.
	Is it the government schools that are triggering the responses?
	No.
	Is it the psychiatric profession that is managed and licensed and run by the government?
	No.
	Is it the FDA or Canada's equivalent which has approved these drugs for use in children despite no long-term studies?
	No.
	Is it the social policies which have promoted single-parent families which has contributed to sleeplessness and sleeplessness mimics ADHD in children and so on or lack of sleep?
	No.
	Again, you could sort of go on and on, right?
	Is it any of these government things?
	Why no?
	You see, it's the free market that is to blame for this, because apparently there's a lot of competition in capitalism, and competition breeds anxiety, and anxiety means you have to take meds.
	So, wow!
	Talk about being able to overleap the obvious and go to the scurrilous.
	It's just amazing how they're able to do that, but that's what ideology does for people.
	It just allows them a constant scapegoat.
	And, you know, the scapegoat in the past was, you know, whoever, you know, the demons or the witches or Satan.
	And now it's just, you know, multinational corporations.
	You can hear Noam Chomsky doing this kind of stuff as well all the time, that the corporations run the government and things like that.
	Because remember, corporations have the armies and the police and the prisons and all that.
	And so, yeah, it's just most people, ideology is a big, deep, Chasm or channel in the side of a mountain and 90% of the rainwater goes down that way.
	In fact, it's pretty much close to 100%.
	But to jump the chasm is really hard because it means that people have to focus on principles rather than intellectual habits.
	The fact that Chomsky is a leftist Jew, has come up with a lot of anti-capitalist, pro-union stuff is not shocking.
	I mean, it's just one cliché after another.
	Anyway, that's what most people is, just walking cliché zombies.
	But anyway, sorry if that was a bit of a tangent.
	Cliché zombies.
	That's a good one.
	It made me remember about a line George Collins said.
	It's like, the government is there to give you the illusion that you are free, that you have a choice, but you don't, kind of thing.
	Yeah, for sure.
	Which master do you want to choose?
	It's like, can I get another question, please?
	If there are none of the above.
	About the psychology thing.
	Sorry, let's get back to your thing.
	It'll be my fourth degree here in Canada, and English isn't mine.
	First language, obviously.
	And I'm thinking twice about it.
	Right now I'm in school.
	I have three jobs.
	Yeah, it's just killing me.
	And I'm not too sure if it'll be wise if I take psychology because that requires a deep skill in the English language, right?
	Because I'm pursuing psychology because I have a passion for curiosity about the human behavior, not really for the job per se, but that comes in second.
	Right.
	Yeah, I mean, look, I mean, if Ayn Rand can write one of the most popular novels in English despite growing up in Russia, You can certainly become a therapist if you...
	I mean, your English seems very good to me.
	And certainly if you can follow a show like this, that's English 12 million, you know, because it's a pretty complicated language and concept.
	So I wouldn't...
	Personally, I wouldn't let the English, like the barrier, trouble you.
	And so, of course, you can always move to some place where there's a significant Filipino community and deal with that community as well, for which I'm sure that's quite...
	I do live in Victoria and...
	Not Filipino Central, right?
	Not really.
	Yeah, but I mean you could move to a place where there's more Filipinos.
	But, you know, you could do a lot of good as a psychologist.
	It certainly would never be a profession that I would particularly choose.
	But not for any reason that it's dishonorable or anything, but just because...
	Psychology is a much more delicate kind of operation than I sort of choose to.
	I sort of choose to put the principles out there and just see, you know, run up the flag and see who salutes kind of thing.
	But with psychology, you have to work within people's existing illusions about their society, about their relationships, about the values of family and culture and history, and all of that stuff.
	I would not be a good...
	I'd be too impatient with all of that, you know, because I just want to dismantle it all in one go, and that's not particularly what people come to...
	I mean, if people knew that about psychologists ahead of time, if psychologists were philosophers, then they'd know what they were getting into.
	But the reputation of psychology is, you know, that sort of patient listening and slow dismantling, and I'm sure that's really great.
	There's a really great purpose for that, but it seems to me that a lot of modern psychology is attempting to return people to what is called normal, right?
	As Freud said, even though what is called normal in society will be called psychotic from the future, or certainly even the principle of...
	From the standpoint of philosophy.
	And so I think a lot of psychology is, you know, as Freud said to somebody who was deeply unhappy, he said, well, the best that can be hoped for is we return you to an ordinary state of unhappiness, you know, get you to fit into your culture.
	And that's the best that can be hoped for.
	And that's certainly not, I think, what philosophy is about.
	But nonetheless, I think you can do a lot of good with people in psychology.
	Particularly, of course, with parents, right?
	I mean, if you show the kind of empathy to parents and give them the sort of gentle nudges towards being more peaceful with their children or whatever, I think then there's some real positives in that.
	With other drugs.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Of course, with a psychologist in Canada, you can't prescribe, right?
	So I think they're trying to get that power.
	God help them.
	So, I mean, I think there's a lot of good you can do in the world through being a psychologist.
	It's, you know, not my particular flavor.
	But, you know, what does that mean?
	It just means I'm not well-suited for it.
	I'm not well-suited to be a figure skater either.
	It doesn't mean that figure skating is bad.
	So, I think if it's a passion that you have, you can do some research, which I think a lot of very interesting psychology research is coming out.
	Do you mind if I share you one, sort of very briefly?
	Sure.
	It's a bit of an older experiment, but if you want to know what the world is, it's a pretty good way of looking at it.
	So, So, a bunch of researchers got four monkeys in a room, and they put a ladder, and at the top of the ladder was a couple of bunches of lovely, juicy, smiley yellow Pac-Man bananas, right?
	And so, naturally, what is the first thing that the monkeys wanted to do?
	They would fight over two guys.
	To go to the top and see who gets first and get most of them.
	Well, typically, that's normally what's going to happen, right?
	Yeah, exactly.
	So they want to climb the ladder and they want to get the bananas.
	Now, what happened was every time a monkey would try to climb the ladder, they would spray the monkey with cold water, which they hate, right?
	I mean, I think it's worse than cats for cold water, right?
	Yeah.
	And so they jump off the ladder, right?
	And they only did this a couple of times, and they would spray all the monkeys, right?
	That's the key, right?
	Spray all the monkeys with cold water, right?
	The moment one of them tried to climb the ladder, right?
	They only did this a couple of times, and what happened next?
	When any monkey tried to climb the ladder?
	I think they figured out that climbing the ladder isn't really a good idea.
	So I would think...
	What would the other monkeys do?
	If one of them tried to climb the ladder, after they'd all been sprayed?
	But let's say one of the four monkeys tried to climb up.
	I think the other three would like pull that monkey out.
	Yeah, they would attack him and they would pull him off the ladder, right?
	Because they didn't want to get sprayed again, right?
	Yeah.
	And so this happened.
	Yeah, and this happened.
	So days and days afterwards, you know, they'd only been sprayed a couple of times, but days and days afterwards, every time one monkey tried to climb the ladder, the other monkeys would attack him.
	And pull him off the ladder and beat him up or whatever, right?
	And so then, of course, nobody wanted to climb the ladder, not because they were afraid of getting water sprayed on them, which hadn't happened for days, but because they were afraid of getting attacked by the other monkeys who didn't want him.
	So what was interesting was they began to cycle monkeys out and cycle monkeys into this room, right?
	So they'd take a monkey out who had actually had water sprayed on him at one point and cycle a new monkey in who'd never had any water sprayed on him.
	And I think we all know what happened was...
	The new monkey would be like, hey, bananas, let's go get them!
	And the other monkeys would attack that and then the new monkey would avoid...
	He had no idea.
	Yeah, he'd never been sprayed, right?
	And so what happened was eventually they cycled out all of the monkeys and now there were four monkeys in the room who had never, ever been sprayed on.
	And they still continued to attack anyone who touched the ladder because that's what they'd learned socially and this had now become a permanent fixture.
	And if you kept those monkeys and they bred, 10 generations, they'd still be.
	Okay, those are great bananas at the top of the ladder, but you can't get them.
	And that is society.
	Except that...
	Society is run by stuff.
	There was never any water.
	There was only the story of water, right?
	Like hell or disobedience to the secular rule or whatever.
	There was never any water, but this is what society is.
	It's just the reflexive horizontal attack that enforces a standard, and nobody knows why the standard is there, and nobody can give you any good reasons, and nobody has any memory of the standard ever being there.
	It's just that.
	This is what you do.
	You attack anyone who tries to climb.
	Yeah, and you see, they have hierarchy, they have attack, they have punishment, they have violations of the non-aggression principle, and they have no government, right?
	It's a horizontal government, which is really all that government is.
	All that government is, is monkey-on-monkey violence.
	Oh, you want to climb up?
	You want to get the reward?
	You want to learn about identity?
	You want to learn about the self?
	You want to surmount attack, attack, attack, right?
	Nobody's ever experienced the water, but the water and the horizontal attacks run society.
	And they have a dictatorship of equals.
	And that's what society is.
	It's a dictatorship of equals.
	Because everybody fears attack from those around them, from their equals, for the truth.
	And the government merely profits from our desire to attack each other for trying to climb, for trying to get the reward of truth.
	So anyway, there's an experiment that I think has a great deal of value in helping people to understand what society is.
	Maybe I'll respond to that one.
	And if you point out that that's an illusion, it's something that's just been passed on, they wouldn't believe you.
	They would prefer to believe that story back then instead of testing it on your own.
	And that's just kind of insane.
	Sorry, I think you may be...
	I mean, I wouldn't use the word belief in that.
	I mean, they're afraid of getting attacked, right?
	But as I said earlier, everybody just makes up justifications...
	After the fact, for whatever is going on in their life.
	So everyone's afraid of being attacked, and their fear of being attacked, they call religion, or they call patriotism, or whatever it is, right?
	They're afraid of being criticized, in particular by their elders, by their own parents, and therefore they will spank their children, or therefore they will send their kids to public school, or therefore they will take their kids to get religious indoctrination.
	But it's fear of attack, and they just call this faith, or patriotism, or whatever.
	But it's all it is.
	It's just fear of attack.
	Conformity.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Well, but even conformity, again, it's just another word for fear of attack.
	And I mean, biologically, this makes sense.
	If you were attacked by a tribe, you usually didn't have much of a chance of making it, at least certainly through to reproduction.
	Because, you know, women are vulnerable after they have kids, right?
	I mean, they're physically weak, they have to breastfeed and all that.
	So the tribe controls reproduction because the tribe has to provide resources to the...
	To the moms, right?
	And this is why the government, the welfare state is basically a single mom conveyor belt, right?
	It's a conveyor belt providing resources to single moms.
	And so, yeah, the tribe controls reproduction, controls resources towards the lactating women.
	And therefore, anybody who sort of evokes the displeasure of the tribe had a much harder time reproducing because the tribe withholds resources and support.
	And so, People chose conformity because without conformity, the genes that promoted conformity to the tribe's delusions were the genes that replicated.
	And we're still just dealing with the after-effects of all of this.
	And because, again, because we're not willing to learn philosophically, we are a slave to stupid-ass Stone Age biological imperatives.
	But anyway.
	So, yeah, I would say, look, I mean, if you can handle it through, it's a lot of work to become a psychologist in Canada.
	You have to be a PhD.
	You have to have a PhD.
	You have to intern and all that kind of stuff.
	Yeah, but you can't.
	Well, sorry, in some provinces.
	I think in Alberta, you can become a psychologist if you only have a master's.
	So that might be something worth looking into, I think, in Newfoundland as well.
	Anyway, so it probably is worth looking into that.
	But if you become a master's-level psychologist, I think you're called a psychological associate or something like that.
	The key thing is to be able to get the insurance, right?
	If you can get people who have insurance to come and see you, it's a lot easier to find clients and so on.
	So anyway, those would be my suggestions.
	If you like it, I would definitely keep plugging away.
	There's nothing wrong with the profession.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	I said I never thought about those stuff because I'm usually in Canada, right?
	And there's regulations and stuff and PhDs.
	So I'm looking like a bunch of years in order for me to actually acquire that degree.
	Well, yes.
	But again, what you want to do is call up the local...
	I don't know what psychological associations, psychologists of, I guess this would be BC, you know, call them up and say, this is where I'm at.
	What do I have to do to become a psychologist?
	And other places in Canada, you know, call each provincial one.
	You know, it's well worth your time.
	You know, well worth your time.
	This is your future, right?
	Call up to various properties and say, you know, what are the requirements to become a psychologist?
	And then, you know, let's say that in Alberta, you can become a psychologist with a master's.
	It's well worth transferring.
	If you want the title, it's well worth transferring to do your master's in Alberta so that you become a psychologist without having to do an extra five or seven years of the PhD.
	Again, these things I think would be very, very helpful and very important to work on.
	Yeah, thank you.
	Oh, one last thing before I let you go.
	Oh, before you let me go.
	You mentioned about biological and that kind of thing, about conformity and stuff, fear.
	What if you broke that chain of thinking?
	Would you consider yourself as someone who evolved into something?
	I might not be using the right term, evolve, but that's the best word I could describe it.
	Well, I mean, if you sort of look at the Dawkins idea of the memes, the only reason that my memes are reproducing is because of the internet.
	I mean, I would not have had much luck in academia or getting books published or anything like that.
	And so my memes are reproducing because of the internet, right?
	The internet is what allows us to find each other.
	And there are enough, sort of enough communications capacities to have an effect on other people without going through the gatekeepers, right?
	This is Jeff Tucker's great thesis that there are these gatekeepers that have prevented the truth from getting out before.
	And now because of the internet, we can have these direct conversations without having to go through the gatekeepers, right?
	There used to be a central hub of publishing or academia or journalism or media of any kind.
	And you would have to jump those gatekeepers to get your message out to people.
	You're not going to see Noam Chomsky on Fox.
	You're not going to see Noam Chomsky anywhere on mainstream TV, right?
	Because he is at least somewhat skeptical of the dominant narrative, to say the least.
	So you'll see him on the Ali G show, which is actually kind of funny.
	But you won't see him on any mainstream TV. I see him showing.
	And me, again, I'll sort of really surface the white whale, really surface on TV and then go back away again.
	But there's no gatekeepers.
	You and I can have this conversation directly and people can just choose to listen to philosophy directly, which is unprecedented.
	I'm just one of hundreds or thousands of philosophers.
	I just happen to be sort of right place, right time.
	The right skill set to be able to get a word out.
	Because I can get the word out, I can be more honest.
	To bypass the gatekeepers or to get through the gatekeepers, you always had to suppress certain parts of your message before.
	Because I can speak directly to an audience, I don't have to suppress Any parts of my message.
	I can take the non-aggression principle all the way to the state and all the way to parenting and all the way to relationships and all that kind of stuff.
	Self-ownership properly, right?
	Because it's universal.
	Yeah, because it's universal and I don't have to please anyone to get hurt, right?
	Because all these compromises, right, where you say, okay, well, if I go on TV, well, I can't talk about this, I can't talk about this, but I can talk a little bit about this.
	And I can't talk about it the whole way, but at least I can go out and plant some seeds.
	So you compromise your message in order to get access To the airwaves.
	That's what people do.
	And that's because there's a market, right?
	And the market is, in the modern world, as it is throughout most of history, the market is prejudice.
	Ignorance.
	Very much prejudice.
	A desire for, like the dittos, right?
	The Rush Limbaugh people say, oh, whatever you say, ditto, right?
	Well, that's why they're listening to him.
	It's the reinforcement that people need.
	And you generally only need reinforcement for things that are not true.
	I don't need to listen to a radio host every day who says, you know, two and two, still four.
	Gravity, still working.
	Sun, still up there in the sky somewhere.
	But you need reinforcement for things that fall apart.
	So reality hits beliefs, beliefs crumble, and then people run back to get confirmation bias, to positively reinforce that which reality is constantly crumbling.
	And that's what the vast majority of media is all just about, reinforcing people's biases that are continually crumbling.
	It's like insulin.
	You still have diabetes, you need insulin tomorrow.
	Still have false beliefs, you need propaganda tomorrow.
	Still have false beliefs, you need propaganda tomorrow.
	This is what drives people and this is what drives the media.
	The media is all about reinforcing prejudice at all times.
	Because reality is constantly eroding it, right?
	Every day, you've got to go rebuild that sandcastle because the fucking tide came in, right?
	And that's what the media does.
	Rebuild the sandcastle, tide came in.
	Tide of reality came in, rebuild the sandcastle.
	That's why it's an addiction, right?
	An addiction is something that almost works, right?
	And, you know, prejudice and ideology and remaining within a circle of people who reinforce your bullshit, it almost works.
	But something that almost works is the most addictive stuff.
	And so...
	So people who get access to the media have to appeal to the prejudices of the audience, right?
	And the prejudice of the audience is very solid.
	If you violate that prejudice, then the advertisers who want to sell more bullshit to people who already believe some bullshit are not going to...
	Advertise with you if you're not feeding up the right bullshit on the buffet of media.
	If you're not feeding up the right flavored bullshit to people, then the advertisers are saying, well, he's not giving us people who believe bullshit, so they're not going to believe us.
	Which is why I've steadfastly refused any kind of...
	advertising on the show even the stuff that's nominally free on YouTube and so on I just I am not a bullshit delivery mechanism and I am not a server-upper of ideologues for people to sell to and so I don't have to conform my statements to the bullshit beliefs of the audience I just don't because it's a direct conversation and there are no gatekeepers and there's also no defined market right when I started this There was no audience.
	What possible business plan could you have?
	What show is this like?
	It's not like any show.
	What's your audience?
	I don't have a freaking clue.
	What evidence is there that there's any kind of audience?
	What evidence is there that anybody would ever pay you or give you donations for this kind of stuff?
	Business plans are always kind of backwards looking.
	And that's because there's always been a gatekeeper.
	And the gatekeeper means I need to get the right bullshit through to the right audience who wants that bullshit.
	And so if I say, well, I have a no bullshit show, people would say, well, then if you have a no bullshit show, who's your audience going to be?
	Because that's what people want.
	It's the right kind of bullshit.
	The square bullshit for the square people and the round bullshit for the round people.
	It's a bullshit pie.
	It depends on the shape you want.
	Bullshit pie, that's a good one.
	Yeah, you know, what flavor bullshit pie do you want?
	I mean, it's always going to be bullshit, but you can have a different shape and maybe we can put, you know, some chicken in one and some tofu in the other.
	I don't know.
	Left and right.
	So, but so the reality is that there's no gatekeeper.
	And so for me, I can actually just speak the truth and I don't have to.
	And it's the first time in human history, at least, I mean, look, people have done it before me, but this is the first time I think in this sort of comprehensive way that the truth can be presented and honest conversations can be have.
	And I'm not worried about anybody pulling And I'm not worried about anybody saying, well, you can't say that.
	I'm an advertiser and my wife is Christian so you can't say that.
	I'm going to pull and then no matter what you say, if your income is dependent, you know, if you have to buy the balls, the hearts of mine will fall and if you have to buy the wallets, their integrity and ethics will crumble.
	And so the chilling effect which comes from the gatekeepers and from the advertisers is just something I never wanted to have as part of this show which is why I want the listeners to pay for it because that way I know that I'm providing value to the listeners and not just providing listeners to advertisers.
	Isn't that a good idea, profiling off from peace?
	Yeah, well, I think, you know, you put the truth out there, and those who like it will come, and those who don't like it will not.
	And those who really don't like it will do all that stuff.
	So, yeah, I mean, that's just been my goal from the beginning.
	And, you know, fortunately, there is enough fantastic people out there who love the truth and love talking about things that are important.
	You know, there'll be lots of people out there cheering the capture of the Boston pseudo-bombers or whatever, but, you know, there's enough people cheering This kind of stuff, that it can survive and flourish.
	And for that, I'm incredibly grateful.
	Yeah, you just need a hard drive.
	A big hard drive, just in case an apocalypse happens.
	All your data and stuff.
	Fortunately, the show is scattered, right?
	It could never die.
	All right, sorry.
	I've got to move on to the next caller, if you don't mind.
	But great question.
	Thank you so much for getting early.
	Sorry to be your pseudo-church.
	Thank you very much.
	I really appreciate it.
	Very welcome.
	Thanks.
	Thanks.
	All right, next up we have another phone caller, so bear with me.
	Okay, thanks a lot, Steph.
	Good to be with you.
	You're welcome.
	So my question today is kind of a broad question.
	I could probably do a whole show on it.
	It has to do with applying anarchy on a societal level.
	How this is a difficulty in relying this idea to people.
	I think people are very willing to accept that voluntary interaction between smaller groups of people are very desirable, but struggle to accept that it works well on a larger level.
	And I think this is something that I haven't really seen a lot in your broadcast, your podcast, sorry.
	We tend to go for the smaller example, so I was hoping that you might elaborate a little bit on this.
	So people say, okay, well, yeah, I'm married and my friends are all voluntary and so on, and maybe my job, but society as a whole needs some sort of organizing principle.
	Right, and I think people, I mean, they see the government and to them it seems to work.
	I think a lot of people just inherently know that people are kind of tribal beings and that they tend to accumulate in these clusters.
	Sorry, I kind of lost track of my train of thought.
	I think I understand.
	People say it doesn't scale.
	Tribalism doesn't scale to a national level or to a global level.
	So the fact that we know sort of 30 or 50 people and we voluntarily transact with them means that it's not going to scale to millions or hundreds of millions or billions of people, right?
	That can't work, so we need some other way of organizing things.
	That's right.
	Well, again, I try to take people's arguments and use it against themselves, if at all possible.
	So if people say, well, voluntarism works at a local level, but it can't work at a national level, Because people can only really process 30 or 50 or 70 relationships?
	Something like that, right?
	Well, I would say then who the hell is supposed to be in charge of 100 or 200 or 300 million people?
	Because if people can only process 30 or 50 or 70 relationships, and if people don't have a lot of empathy for people outside their own social circle, then who the hell is going to be manning this government?
	People who can only manage 30 or 50 or 70 relationships and who have no real empathy for those outside those relationships.
	So if localism, if tribalism at the local level is what works and if that's what human beings are like, then government can't work because those people at the top are only going to be interested in a couple of relationships around them, which, you know, lobbyists or whatever people they want to work with, and they're not really going to give much of a crap about the hundreds of millions of people that they're supposed to be managing, whereas if people can't actually deal with hundreds of millions of relationships, then we don't need a government, but if people can't, then we can't have a government.
	Does that sort of make any sense?
	That makes a great deal of sense.
	But this still doesn't answer the question for most people.
	I mean, you're pointing out a very big problem with the current structure that we have now, but it doesn't necessarily replace it with anything.
	I know this is a very hard question to answer because it's such a big and complex and intertwining system that you can't really say Well, okay, so let's say, what do we replace wife-beating with?
	Well, I mean, just nothing.
	You just don't beat your wife, right?
	I mean, you beat your husband.
	You know, what do you replace locking your children under cupboards with?
	Well, it doesn't really matter.
	Just don't lock your children under cupboards, right?
	So what do we replace the state with is kind of one of these same sort of questions, you know?
	Well, once we convince people not to rape each other, what should we replace the rape with?
	Well, I don't know.
	Going to the movies, masturbation, making the bed, I don't know, dusting the mantle, it doesn't matter.
	You don't replace rape with anything.
	You just don't rape.
	So what do you replace the state with?
	It doesn't matter.
	Painting watercolors, going for hikes, mowing your grass.
	There's no answer to that question.
	What do you replace evil with?
	Well, you know, we've cured...
	I go to my hematologist.
	We've cured your cancer.
	What do you want us to replace it with?
	Nothing.
	No cancer is good with me.
	I'll replace it with not having cancer.
	That's fine with me.
	So, you know, what do we replace evil with is kind of a...
	It's a non-question once you put it in perspective, if that makes any sense.
	Like, what do you replace slavery with?
	We're setting the slaves free.
	What do we replace slavery with?
	Well, you don't replace it with anything.
	That's the whole point.
	Yeah, I totally understand.
	It seems to be just a small mental block on that one question for me, I guess.
	Oh no, it's big.
	And it's common to everyone, right?
	And I still get sucked into it, right?
	Like with stone clouds gathering.
	Yeah.
	How is rape going to be prosecuted in a free society?
	It's like, well, you know, I think a more intelligent answer to the question would be like, I don't know.
	know what a computer is going to look like in 150 years and he's going to say i don't know was i don't know either but the point is that you know what we're doing right now is is terrible it's evil and it's it's non-functional you know people in the in detroit or or chicago waiting five or six years for a murder prosecution to get to trial by which point you know of course given that these are inner cities half the witnesses are dead or fled or whatever it's So, I mean, I think, and this is sort of something I have to remind myself, I think it's interesting to talk about how it could work.
	But basically, we're saying how is justice going to work in 100-150 years?
	Well, I don't know.
	We don't even know what the price of gold is going to be tomorrow.
	What's the price of gold going to be in 150 years?
	Well, you can't answer that.
	Okay, gold doesn't exist.
	Right?
	I mean, it's fun to think about.
	It's fun to theorize.
	There's some examples which I think are fun, but I sort of have to gird my loins to steadfastly refuse to answer that kind of question because… It is – well, I think for those in the know, it's fun to theorize, but for those who aren't in the know, they can start shooting holes.
	I think the price of gold in 150 years is going to be $3.
	Oh, come on.
	It's never been $3.
	Don't be ridiculous.
	Okay, it's going to be $1 million an ounce.
	Oh, come on.
	It's never been $1 million.
	Okay, it's going to be $2,000.
	Oh, so you're saying it's really not going to change that much?
	Right?
	So – It's, you know, trying to guess the price of gold in 150 years is obviously ridiculous and trying to guess how society is going to deal with conflicts 150 years from now when children are raised peacefully and there's no aggression and there's, you know, no public schools and all that.
	Well, first, they really won't have much to worry about in terms of conflict because the fact that children are raised well means that there won't be a lot of crime at all.
	Few people will get hit by lightning or get brain tumors and will be criminals, but it's not something you really worry about a huge amount in society as a whole.
	But, um...
	Well, so while it's interesting to theorize, you know, you can ask people, you know, what is the internet going to look like in a hundred years?
	Well, people aren't, you know, it's like going to someone in 1850 and saying, how a human being is going to communicate in 150 years?
	And then he's going to write some shit down, which is probably going to be completely wrong.
	And then you're going to say, okay, well, then there's no internet because he got that wrong.
	Well...
	You can't answer the question, how are things going to look in the future?
	It doesn't matter.
	What we do know is that, you know, if you've got a society based on rape, and you say, well, we should stop rape.
	How are people going to get together 150 years from now?
	It's like, who cares?
	The point is that rape is wrong.
	And who cares how things are going to be dealt with 100, 150 years from now?
	What matters is that the state violates moral rules.
	I mean, the state is evil.
	The state is a Stone Age hangover of infinite momentum idiot history.
	And so that's why we oppose it.
	Again, I've made this argument before how the hell...
	Is cotton going to be picked 150 years after slavery?
	Who knows?
	Who cares?
	The problem is you didn't have to answer that question to be against slavery, because you can't answer that question.
	It's a trap.
	Exactly.
	I agree.
	Well, there's one more caller behind me, so I want to thank you for helping me with this little difficulty, and let them ask their question.
	Yeah.
	And yeah, just look, as somebody pointed out in the chat window, just look at old science fiction and see what they got right and what they got wrong.
	Except for Dick Tracy's wristwatch communicator, which I don't think even exists now because it's all little phones, right?
	They're just way off base, right?
	I don't see a lot of skyscrapers that look like rocket ships around at the moment.
	And there certainly aren't enough singing frogs stuck in the cornerstones of old buildings.
	But anyway, so we have another caller?
	Yeah.
	Bye-bye.
	Thanks.
	Well, I'm trying to add them.
	Around at the moment.
	There certainly aren't enough.
	Hey, Rich, could you please stop the streamer and you're on the show?
	Okay.
	Oh, yeah, and if anybody would like to be queued up to be a caller on next week's show, send an email to operations at freedomainradio.com with a nude picture and your Skype or phone number, and we'll make sure that you get on next week's show.
	All right.
	Am I on?
	No, nude picture may not be necessary.
	Yeah, I don't know, Mike.
	Nude picture, necessary, not...
	He'll let me know.
	Alright, so listener, caller, genius, brains of the outfit, what can I do for you?
	Is this me, Rich?
	Oh, Mike, sorry, just Mike says he needs a raise.
	I think that means in his groin, so yes, we're back to the nude pictures.
	So, go ahead.
	I'm sorry, is it me that's talking?
	No, go ahead, Mike, sorry.
	This is Rich.
	Rich, okay.
	Sorry, yeah, this is Rich.
	Um...
	Well, great to talk to you, Steph.
	We've talked to your email a couple times.
	I sent you my band's album a couple months ago.
	That was some pretty funky stuff.
	Okay.
	I'm calling because I am a recovering political activist.
	In fact, yesterday was the I was in Georgia.
	Yesterday was our state convention.
	And so I went to that.
	And the thing is, of course, I got into Ron Paul back in 2007.
	And so I campaigned for him in a rural county in Georgia.
	And then between the elections, I moved to Atlanta.
	And then I started campaigning for Ron Paul in 2008 again.
	I was quite successful actually in politics.
	I became a delegate to the National Convention.
	Voted for Ron Paul at the National Convention.
	Sorry, I just want to interrupt you for a second and point out that to be successful in politics in libertarian circles means that you got a job in politics, not that you actually impacted the state in any way, shape, or form in terms of making it smaller.
	But anyway, I just want to point out that.
	To me, success in politics is we're making the state smaller, we got rid of income tax and all that kind of stuff, but in libertarian circles, success in politics means you got a paid gig.
	Anyway, I just want to point out that, but go ahead.
	Well, it was not a paying gig, but...
	Oh, okay, so medium success.
	But yeah, basically, long story short, is that a lot of people know me.
	A lot of Ron Paul fans know me.
	I was one of three people that went to Tampa for Ron Paul from my state.
	And by success, you're right.
	There is a sliding scale for success, obviously.
	And I know I've listened to you.
	A lot of your stuff, and I know that you gauge the success of libertarianism as, you know, quite low over the past 30 years.
	In fact, abysmal.
	Sorry, just not I gauge.
	I mean, I'm willing to hear arguments of the contrary, but, you know, who would care about my opinion?
	I don't.
	I think libertarians should have a different logo, right?
	I mean, that would be sort of an opinion thing.
	But if there are successes in shrinking the state that I'm not aware of, I'm certainly happy to hear them.
	Right, right, right, right.
	Okay.
	But that is the position you put forward, and that is a position that you, you know, by facts have, you know, I agree with you.
	Let me mention one other thing, which is that when you read the predictions from the libertarian campaign managers over the past 40 years, I don't know if you've ever – it's pretty esoteric, right?
	But I think it's an important thing to do if you're into politics and think that politics is going to do something.
	Just go back and read the predictions from Harry Brown's campaign, from Gary Johnson's campaign, from – you name it, right?
	And they all say, you know, we got a good chance to win this thing.
	They don't say, well, we haven't got a hope in hell.
	I mean, good lord, we've only once cracked 1% of the vote.
	And that was during the Vietnam War exhaustion and so on.
	It's a little bit after that.
	But during the Reagan, I think it was 80 or whatever.
	So historically, we have no chance of winning this thing, right?
	That would be a sort of empirical, realistic way.
	We'll say, you know, well, you know, this happens and this happens.
	We could totally win this thing.
	And I remember seeing lots of things about that, right?
	Now, either these people are liars or fools, right?
	Because, you know, if you've got 40 years of evidence that you get, you know, half a percentage of your vote, quarter of a percentage of your vote, maybe 1% of the vote, thinking that you're just going to somehow win is you're either lying, Thank you.
	Or you're a fool because you're just not dealing with the realities of the situation.
	Now, I get why they have to say that because they say, well, if we say we're not going to win, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
	We've got to put our best foot forward.
	We've got to pretend like we're going to win and so on.
	But, you know, it looks like William Hung from the first, you know, if you've ever seen that guy sing during his audition, he's a bit pitchy.
	You know, if William Hung says, I've got a total chance to win this thing, he's either lying or he's delusional, right?
	He's just never heard himself sing or something like that.
	And so the other thing, too, is that Again, this comes from evaluating people's business proposals and being in the investment world.
	Not that I was any kind of big investor or anything like that, but being in that world, you learn to have skeptical eyes on things in a way that politics and religion, but I repeat myself, don't have, right?
	So, you know, which is it?
	Are you delusional or are you a liar?
	Neither of these things bode well for people who want to be in charge of other people, right?
	They're either compulsive liars saying they have a chance, statistically have no chance at all, Or they genuinely believe that they have a chance despite 40 years of evidence, in which case they're completely delusional, neither of which qualifies them to run anybody else's life since they're completely incapable of running their own lives with any sense of reality or integrity.
	But anyway, just want to sort of point that out.
	Right.
	Well, you just laid out that position quite well.
	And, you know, as a side note, actually, Gary Johnson made his campaign stop in our town.
	And so I just went pretty early on in his campaign.
	And it was funny because, I don't know if you remember, but he had been in two Republican debates.
	And then he got denied in all the rest.
	But his main argument for his campaign was that they were going to get – and he even talked about how the polls were gerrymandered to keep him out.
	Sure.
	The American people were ready for a change and that they were going to get the 15% poll they needed to get into debates and make a difference.
	And it was just a total...
	I was like, wow.
	It really is delusional.
	But my politics has mainly been inside the Republican Party and my experience going to, I guess, the biggest party for the Republican Country Club, which is the Republican National Convention, It definitely made me much more open to your arguments because you kind of see how it all works.
	But here's my problem and that is I know a lot of very very good people who I've met during this process and because of my past activism and because for years Like you, I've known it's going to be a long-term process.
	I never thought we were going to take over the system in one election cycle or whatever.
	Of course, I know you don't think we're going to take over any system, or empirically.
	Sorry, I used that term again.
	It's unlikely that will happen.
	I've always told everybody, stay the course.
	I know it's looking bad, but we're gaining ground, etc., etc.
	Sorry, stay which course?
	The course in the Republican Party.
	Oh, stay course politically.
	Yeah, they beat you down, they beat you down.
	But we do gain ground every time, a little bit.
	And the convention yesterday, actually, we lost, our candidates lost.
	Sorry, what do you mean by we gain ground?
	I'm just trying to understand where you're coming from.
	The people who are involved are swiftly becoming, in the view of the party as a whole, at least in Georgia, they're not crazy Ron Paul supporters or whatever.
	We are at least starting to listen to them.
	I would view the Ron Paul supporters as the sanest among politics, but I understand how a lot of people would view them as the craziest, but go on.
	Oh yeah, believe me.
	Yeah, you know, right?
	You're a supporter too, right?
	Right, right.
	So, for example, we had about 30% of the vote at the state convention last year.
	This year, our candidates gained, our chairman candidate It got 40%, despite the actual Ron Paul numbers going down.
	So there's kind of a little bit of cross-pollination going on.
	But it's long and slow progress.
	But I'm with you.
	I see the state for what it is.
	I see the party definitely for what it is, which is just a...
	An influence, brokering, money, you know, organization, clearing house, cash.
	And the Tea Party candidates already went to Washington, right?
	A couple of years ago?
	Right, right, right.
	And what happened?
	Yeah, exactly.
	I mean, they just went nosedive straight into the trough like everyone else.
	And it's the nature of the beast.
	I mean, even amongst our own...
	People who are friendly with each other basically is approximately the same.
	Politics has created schisms and hatreds for other people or dislikes rather.
	I think it's just the nature of the beast because there's no win-win.
	There's always a win-lose.
	Somebody wins and somebody loses.
	I just had a son.
	Oh, congratulations!
	Yeah, he was two months premature, which he's completely fine.
	Everything's great.
	Wow, that's fantastic.
	Good for you.
	How scary, though.
	It's three pounds, 13 ounces.
	Oh, my God!
	So, during this whole convention cycle, I've really distanced myself from everything.
	But it's just like you said it before, and I said it before I heard you say it, so I was like, dang, he got to me before it.
	But it's like the Godfather quote, right?
	Actually, I think it's Carlito's way, because I keep getting corrected.
	No, I think it's the Godfather.
	Yeah, they keep pulling me back in, right?
	Yeah, every time I try to get out, they pull me back in.
	I've distanced myself, and honestly, I've been hiding behind my son.
	You know, everybody in the movement has kind of stopped bothering me because they're like, oh, well, he had a premature son.
	He's really busy.
	And, of course, I was, obviously.
	I was at the hospital every day for five hours a day, you know, just kind of hanging out, feeding him, whatever.
	So, I mean, that is true.
	But it's kind of beyond that point.
	I'm still kind of distant and vacant.
	And, you know, essentially, I have a moral conflict with People's expectations of me through what I've said in the past and encouraging people, you know, to always be patient, stay the course, whatever.
	And then my newfound rational beliefs, which I've come by mostly thanks to you and my experiences.
	And it's...
	I don't know how to...
	And in fact, last night, somebody who's A very good friend of mine involved in this.
	We had like an after party at a restaurant.
	And two were saying, what can we do to try and, you know, make things better, right?
	To have better outcomes for us at these conventions.
	And he said, you know, one thing we could do is, you know, there are less of us, but we know people who used to come and they don't anymore.
	We need to call them and encourage them to come and And he even said, you know, the defeatists, you know, who are poisoning the well, right, by saying that, you know, oh, it's pointless and give up and whatever, you know, we need to have private conversations with them and tell them, you know.
	So I was like, oh, man, that's me.
	I mean, I haven't gone and poisoned the well, so to speak.
	I haven't really spread my full answer.
	Sorry, just to interrupt for a sec, right?
	Because, I mean, the language there is very important, right?
	Right, yeah, of course it is.
	So people who say defeatists, right?
	Right, so it's like – and then let's say somebody comes along and says, you know, circumcising our children and doing a rain dance isn't doing a damn thing because there is no volcano god.
	People say, you're a defeatist.
	You're sabotaging.
	You're a naysayer.
	You're a denier.
	Well, you just want us all to get burned up.
	It's like, no.
	The whole point is that if what we're doing isn't helping, then we need to stop doing it and look for alternatives.
	People get heavily invested.
	It's the fallacy of sunk costs.
	I've spent an hour walking north.
	And it turns out I'm walking in the exact wrong direction and people don't want to turn around, right?
	Let's keep plugging on, right?
	If you're waiting for a bus that never comes, if they're waiting for a bus that never comes, there's not much point sitting at the bus stop anymore, right?
	Because the bus ain't going to come.
	So then people say, well, you just don't want us to get anywhere.
	It's like, no, I do want us to get somewhere, which is why I'm pointing out that the bus is never going to come.
	And just sitting here is getting us nowhere, right?
	So the language is really, really important.
	And I think that the onus is upon the people who believe that political action works.
	You know, after you have, say, a couple of thousand or at least a couple of hundred or at least a couple of decades worth of years of data, it is incumbent upon people to make the case, right?
	If the government is still growing and growing ever faster, despite thousands or hundreds or decades of years of political action, the proof is upon people The burden of proof now rests upon the politicals.
	Sorry, I hate to say it, but it's just a reality.
	If something hasn't worked for many, many, many, many years, and it's worked the exact opposite of what was claimed, right?
	And government is now five to seven times bigger, not even counting unfunded liabilities, than when libertarianism started as a political party.
	It was supposed to shrink it from when it was 10% to 15% its current size, and now it's still claiming that it's going to shrink it.
	I mean, it's becoming ludicrous when you look at the facts, right?
	and so the burden of proof is now upon the politicos and if the politicos are going to do more of the same then they are in fact working against freedom because they're continuing to do something that doesn't work out of a selfish desire for money or power or confirmation but the reality is we owe it to the world to look at the facts I do not like the anti-fact people in the liberty movement because the liberty movement should be based upon reason and evidence so all the people who are against say Chemo without providing evidence.
	All the people who have all these conspiracy things, all these people who claim things without evidence are doing a massive disservice to the movement.
	We need to be strict on reason and evidence.
	We can't reject reason and evidence in our own belief systems and then demand that other people live according to reason and evidence.
	That's just a great way of discrediting anything that you're trying to do.
	It's self-indulgent, it's petty, it's childish, it's immature and it's so destructive that there aren't even enough words to describe how destructive it is.
	So the political people, look, maybe you're right, but doing more of the same is self-indulgent, destructive bullshit.
	When you claim to liberate mankind and you continue to pursue the same actions that are further and certainly not impeding the increasing enslavement of mankind, then you've got to stop being selfish and you've got to look at the benefit of the community as whole.
	You've got to look at the benefit of the planet.
	And of mankind as a whole and be willing to reevaluate every position that you have.
	The creative destruction that we all worship in the free market should also apply to political thinking as well.
	You cannot assume that yesterday's solution is tomorrow's solution.
	You can't do that in the free market and you certainly shouldn't do that in something far more important which is the liberation of the entire goddamn species.
	So look at the facts, look at the reason, look at what's happened, and be willing to re-examine the possibilities.
	Or just recognize that you're a political hack who's in it for his own money, power, or emotional gratification, and recognize that you are actually impeding the progress of mankind through your own selfishness.
	Or prove how it's going to be done differently and better.
	But to continue to do the same old, same old, it just becomes destructive and exploitive at this point.
	Right.
	Well, you know, I had lunch with a A friend of mine yesterday, well, he's actually my boss.
	He was at the convention as well.
	I told him basically, I was like, man, we're talking about the scumbaggery that goes on and whatnot.
	I was like, I think I'm just going to be getting out.
	He was like, really?
	You're getting out?
	What do you mean by that?
	Are you quitting?
	That's what he said.
	Are you quitting?
	I was like, well, I feel like it's more like moving on.
	I've done that.
	I've seen how it works.
	I've been in the middle.
	I've been all the way around it, up, down, sides, seen what there is to see, and it just, like you say, maybe seeing is believing for some.
	I'm not going to be smoking anymore.
	Quitter!
	Yes!
	Yes, exactly!
	Quitter!
	That's the point.
	I'm quitting something that is destructive and pointless, and now that I'm a dad, blah, blah, blah, right?
	Right.
	I mean...
	It's going to be hard for me to disappear quietly.
	People are going to notice that I'm gone, and they're going to say, hey, where's Rich gone?
	What happened to that guy?
	It doesn't serve my vanity at all.
	I don't need that positive reinforcement, at least I don't think I do.
	It feels good to walk in a room and everybody's like, hey, how you doing?
	Hey, it's Rich.
	That's nice and all, but I don't feel like I need that, you know, for my livelihood or my self-esteem or whatever.
	And I know some people might, or they might like it.
	Of course, everybody likes to be appreciated, but how do I keep...
	In my conversations with people, I mean, I've had a few anarchist, I guess you'd say, conversations with people, and, you know...
	I agree with you, but at the same time, it takes a while to get people there, especially, like you said, when they're invested.
	I mean, I've literally spent years doing this, you know?
	And I'm just uncertain how to move forward.
	I can't hide behind my son forever.
	Although, I mean, maybe I can.
	I've told people that several times yesterday, people were like, Rich, you need to run for something.
	Rich, you need to...
	And, um, in fact, even though I already had listened to thousands of hours probably of you earlier in the year, people had me convinced to run for chairman of my party.
	I got it.
	I finally, I was like, I can't do that.
	You know, I was writing when my son was born prematurely.
	I was like, you know, perfect timing.
	And, uh, um, basically I've told them, I'm like, look, uh, I'm going to spend this time raising my son.
	I don't want to be driving all over the state to meetings, and that's what I'm going to do.
	I work from home, so I'm going to be a stay-at-home dad.
	And so maybe I will just hide behind him.
	No, but see, and again, I think you're looking at it still, and I completely understand why, and I appreciate your ambivalence about this.
	I really do, and I think I really get it.
	Everybody who has a solution wants to claim a monopoly.
	It's funny because libertarians see this very clearly with the government.
	Only the government can help old people who have no money.
	Only the government can help sick people who have no money.
	Only the government can protect us by arming foreign dictatorships.
	Only the government can keep peace and order.
	Only the government can build the roads.
	Everybody who has a solution or who claims a solution Wants a monopoly.
	Because then it's like, well, do you want the government to build the roads or do you want no roads?
	Well, of course we can't have no roads.
	It limits people's thinking to the point where thinking becomes a kind of physics, like you let go of a ball that falls down.
	If you have a monopoly on the provision of a solution, then you will always get resources.
	Does that make sense?
	Right, yeah.
	But you see, libertarians see that very clearly.
	In the government.
	But they fail to recognize, political libertarians I would argue, they fail to recognize that libertarianism is caught in the same trap.
	In other words, the libertarians say, if you're not working for politics, you're not working for freedom.
	In other words, they want a monopoly on how we become free called political activism.
	And this is the false dichotomy.
	So they say, well of course it's ridiculous to say, That if you don't want the government, you don't want roads.
	But then they say, well if you don't want political activism, you don't want freedom.
	But that's exactly the same principle.
	How on earth could political activism claim any kind of monopoly on how we free the world?
	Especially when it's had such a series of catastrophic failures.
	Where its percentage points are going down as – even after 15 years of the internet, its percentage points of votes are going down while the government gets bigger.
	And they can't claim that the message isn't out because there's the internet, right?
	So it's this false dichotomy.
	It's just like you say, well, I'm going to hide behind my son.
	And I would argue if you were to do politics, you would be hiding in politics from the real work of freeing the world, which is being a good father.
	Right?
	You raise a child who is going to be intelligent and articulate and not indoctrinated and peaceful and know how to negotiate and be skeptical of authority and require proof, reason and evidence for all positions put forward, that is driving a stake into the heart of the vampire.
	Whereas chasing around politics, that's hiding from the real work, which is to raise children peacefully.
	There's nothing else.
	Nothing else that is going to work that has ever been proven with any kind of scientific or statistical reliability.
	There's nothing else that has been proven to work.
	And again, Psychohistory has got a lot of actual quite detailed information.
	Read Robin Grille's Parenting for a Peaceful World.
	He goes into quite a bit of detail about how good parenting creates a better society.
	So you'd be hiding in politics from the real work of being a good dad if that was your choice.
	But you're not hiding behind your kid.
	That's where the real work is.
	Maybe another good metaphor would be just because you're good at playing a certain game doesn't mean you have to be playing it all the time.
	Because, you know, politics is a game.
	I mean, we realize that.
	One of my cohorts, who I work with a lot on it, he's a brilliant guy.
	He's a former chess champion.
	And so, I mean, strategically, the guy's brilliant.
	And he has this way of just making things happen.
	He's one of these people.
	And we both talk about it like it's just a game.
	Because it is just a game, really.
	It's a political game.
	I mean, of course, in the grand scheme of things, the game steals from people and kills people.
	But on the local level, it's just moving chess pieces around and making things happen.
	Yeah, it's that great line from Harold and Kumar go to White Castle.
	Just because you have a big dick doesn't mean you have to do porn.
	Right, exactly.
	I mean...
	Just because you're good at playing the political game doesn't mean you should be.
	I'm obviously at a crossroads there.
	Like I said, I'm heavily invested in it.
	Time, effort, reputation, etc.
	And so divesting is just going to be an interesting path, I suppose.
	I had several people yesterday saying that they missed me Being around and whatever, because, you know, I've been kind of absent lately, and they're like, you know, look forward to seeing you some more, glad you're here, blah, blah, blah.
	It's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, well...
	There's a sense that I'm letting them all down, right?
	Sure.
	Does that make sense?
	Oh, totally, yeah, because, I mean, you're needed on the front lines, you know, praise the Lord, pass the ammunition, if you break ranks with us, how are we going to hold back the horde of the state?
	I mean, I get it.
	I mean, this is...
	This is the kind of polarized thinking that occurs when you get involved with win-lose situations.
	And this, you're either with us or you're against us, is...
	Well, it's not with us or against us.
	Oh, you're sorry, you're either with us or you're not helping.
	Right, yeah, yeah.
	Or you said you'd be with us, but you're not with us, right?
	Right.
	I mean, you've gone back on positions before.
	At least I've heard you mention that you have.
	And so it's a hard thing to...
	It's not the easiest thing to do.
	No, it's not the easiest thing to do, of course, but it is.
	I mean, obviously, we're asking the world to revise its assumption that we need a state.
	So we have to be willing to revise our assumptions.
	Like we're saying to people, listen, I'm giving you better information and better arguments.
	You should really revise your opinion on the existence of a deity, on the necessity of spanking, on the value of the state.
	And the best way to make sure that people never listen to you is to not obey your own rules, right?
	So I love how you lie to the government, you go to jail.
	The government lies to you, and if it's really cornered, it might say, I'm sorry, and that's it, right?
	I mean, this is a good thing about the IRS controversy is it helps people to understand just with a little bit more vividity just what nonsense the moral rules imposed by the state are.
	Obama fires the head of the IRS, who was going to quit anyway, you know?
	Blake still gets pensions, still gets separate packages.
	I mean, come on.
	This is ridiculous.
	It's just laughable.
	Well, I've been trying to think of ways to...
	I mean, I've been racking my brain with ways to...
	Because it's also a big part of my identity.
	Several years ago, I was like, well...
	I was just a 20-something standard kind of lost in the world in this guy.
	Ron Paul came along.
	And I was like, this could make some sense when it comes to politics.
	Politically, it was just total...
	whatever.
	You know, I was an idiot.
	And then he came along.
	I started looking into the stuff he was talking about.
	And I was like, wow.
	And of course, then, you know, the rabbit hole goes deep.
	And basically, I was like, whoa, you know, I think this might be kind of part of my life's work is to restore...
	sort of sanity to uh to government at the time so I thought right to to restore the republic or however you want to say it and uh and now I mean I guess the the overall mission state hasn't changed you know I still want the government out of my life and out of my friends lives and all that but um you know that kind of political action to find a lot of uh It's just a big kind of,
	okay, well, I'm getting out of this, so now I'm racking my brain.
	Okay, what can I do now to You can still chat with all the political people.
	I mean, it's not like they're evildoers or something like that.
	I mean, chat with all the political people, but I would say, you know, if I were in your shoes, and nobody can tell you what to say, but if I were in your shoes, I'd say, well, I'm really interested in exploring the non-aggression principle in my personal life.
	Like, I have a lot more control over my personal life than I do over the Fed.
	And, you know, I mean, Ron Paul's out of the race.
	Rand Paul is...
	I mean, pro-war, he's just affirmed to a bunch of evangelical Christians his extreme enthusiasm for the war on drugs.
	To be fair, he wants some less harsh sentences, maybe more treatment and so on.
	But I mean, Rand Paul is, boy, you know...
	I mean, how on earth is Ron Paul supposed to educate the average muggle when he can't even get his own son on board with principles?
	But his son, of course, much like Greenspan coming out of the objectivist collective—I say collectivist, this sort of joking self-referential name that they had for themselves—he's about ambition, and he's been drawn in by the lie of having an effect.
	And, of course, if you want to have an effect in American politics, then you have to take your marching orders from some seriously deranged people, right?
	Like— The socialists, like the welfare state people, like the welfare state, like the evangelicals and so on.
	I mean, you just have to.
	I mean, this is why, to me, politics has no appeal whatsoever.
	I'd just be a slave to fools.
	So where's it going to go?
	Sorry, go ahead.
	Well, you made the analogy before that the very ambition that you need to have to be successful in politics is, I can't remember the exact word, ambition that will completely do you in.
	Yeah, I mean, it's the same.
	The two-party candidates got elected because they're very good at making people like them.
	And then the fact that they then start playing the game with all the powerful elders at the party who will withhold approval if they don't and will give them approval if they do, right?
	People are good at...
	Being liked because they want to be liked, right?
	Like, people are good at chess because they want to play chess, generally, right?
	People are good at being liked because they really want to be liked, and then the idea that they're going to act against everyone's interest in favor of people who aren't even born yet, who can't give them any praise at all, is asking...
	The impossible.
	It's like asking a man to give birth.
	It is asking the impossible.
	People who desperately want to be liked are the only people who make really good politicians because they're really good at being liked.
	They've got lots of practice.
	They've been working at it their whole lives.
	People who really want to be liked cannot act with integrity because the moment you start acting with integrity, particularly the more abstract forms of integrity, The people who dislike you are in the here and now, and the people who like you are in the long away future when you might not even be alive, right?
	So, I mean, some people really dislike me now.
	Fine, that comes with having integrity.
	The people who really like me are the people who are going to grow up, and when they're 20 or 25 or 30, they recognize just how great it was to not be yelled at, hit, or abused as children.
	And they're going to say, wow, that's deaf guy who was able to convince my children to drop spanking and to negotiate with me.
	That guy is really great.
	And so in 20 or 25 years, I might get a whole bunch of love mail from people, whereas right now, not so much, right?
	But that's because I'm not in it to be liked.
	I'm not in it to be liked.
	I'm in it to do good.
	And doing good, the more good you do, the more you're disliked in the here and now by people who are profiting from immorality.
	And politicians are just those who want to be liked in the here and now.
	I mean, because the unborn don't vote.
	The people who benefit, like let's say someone stops getting welfare and ends up getting a job, and they've got a couple of years of hell and annoyance and irritation and problems.
	And then maybe in five or ten years, they're like, wow, that was a really good thing.
	But it's like an addictions counselor is going to be somebody you don't like in the moment.
	You're going to hate that person in the moment.
	But five or ten years later, you might be like, wow, that person was really pivotal in changing my life.
	And so the people who are doing real good in the world are the people who don't give a shit about being liked in the here and now.
	And in fact, welcome not being liked by bad people as a sure sign that you're doing good.
	Asking politicians to do that, I mean, it's just like asking a man to give birth, or like asking a woman to pee standing out without significant artificial aids.
	Right.
	Well, I know it's past 12 now, but my one last question is, you know, the one kind of I think you've given your thoughts on it before, but I can't recall.
	Had Ron Paul not done what he did, which was play the game, climb the ladder, become a politician, get in the national debates, Granted, I guess there's no excuse for me not to have the information, but having the information, like you said, watered down earlier in the call, watered down and made palatable enough to where he could get on national TV and then kind of change the narrative.
	Had that not happened, I don't know where I would be at.
	Yes, for sure.
	There's no doubt that some people have found philosophy or me or their own self-knowledge or whatever through the Ron Paul.
	It's a bit of a circuitous route, and as you can see, the exit strategy is not always the most comfortable.
	But the two things, of course, I mean, I've talked about the Ron Paul campaign, and it's not particular to Ron Paul, who I'm sure is a very nice guy, but the two things this has done is one is, of course, it has associated libertarianism with things like a rejection of evolution.
	That's not good.
	I mean, that's just not good.
	I mean, if you're going to start promoting the truth, you can't have some little pocket or area where you can just be blindly irrational for the sake of popularity or for the sake of your own ideology, because that poisons the whole thing.
	Because then people look at Ron Paul and say, okay, well, he's kind of a Christian, heavy Christian.
	He rejects evolution, and he's for the free market.
	So, in areas where I have some expertise, as in most people accept evolution, And Dawkins' book is, I think, The Greatest Show on Earth does a really great job.
	I didn't realize there was quite so much proof for evolution.
	So most people, particularly those who are interested in science and so on, they accept evolution, right?
	So what they do is they say, they look at Ron Paul, they say, okay, well, I mean, the racism thing, I think, was kind of nonsense.
	But anyway, let's just drop all of that and say the stuff that he's admitted to, that he rejects evolution, people say, well...
	Okay, I don't know anything about the free market as he talks about it, but I sure do know something about evolution.
	So he rejects evolution, and he is for the free market.
	So I'm not going to look much into the free market stuff because there's some expertise in it that he doesn't accept.
	Well, it's not just optics.
	I mean, it's not just optics because that's perception.
	I mean, this is statements that he's made, right?
	So he's irrational enough to reject evolution.
	He's superstitious enough to reject evolution and to accept some Judeo-Christian deity.
	And he's for the free market.
	It's like, oh man...
	So, I already know he's not rational in areas I have some expertise and competence in, and so why would I look into other things?
	To take an extreme example, maybe the 19th thing that the crazy guy in the corner screams is true, but who sits around waiting and checks the other 18, right?
	Because it doesn't make any sense, right?
	And the other thing, but even if we reject all of that, what Ron Paul's campaign has done is draw people into libertarian politics, right?
	And if libertarian politics is like a flytrap, if it's like a sticky paper, a flypaper trap, Then it has actually deactivated people from doing work that's necessary to reject the non-aggression principle in their own lives.
	It has deactivated people interested in the non-aggression principle by drawing them into politics and away from an area where they can actually have some effect and make real change happen.
	So it's not positive from either of those standpoints.
	Now, to the degree to which a few people have made it through to the non-aggression principle, that's great.
	That's fantastic.
	That's wonderful.
	But it's the unseen that we need to focus on, not just the visible.
	Right.
	Well, fantastic.
	I continue to appreciate your perspectives.
	My work from home involves somewhat some amount of monotony, so I have a lot of time to listen to podcasts.
	Good.
	I'm sorry for the monotony, but I'm glad to help break it up a little bit.
	And...
	I appreciate everything you're doing.
	Are you speaking at Libertopia this year?
	I'm hoping to.
	It really depends.
	I go for my next round of chemo next week and I do know that there's going to be a progressive deterioration but so far the deterioration has been quite minor so it is certainly my hope and goal too but it really depends where my Where my white blood cell count is at.
	If I have no immune system, then it probably is not a great idea for me to get on a plane and go meet and greet hundreds of people.
	But we'll see.
	We'll see where things are at.
	Porkfest, I'm afraid, is a no-few.
	When I saw your personal message, you often talk about emotional reactions.
	And man, I had a visceral one.
	I was like, no, I am instantly texting the people that I knew that are Well, I appreciate that.
	I have to confess, I did send you at least a YouTube comment about apricot seeds, but to qualify that, I did say that at least the evidence I've seen for the apricot seed thing is it may be a preventative But for advanced cancers, it's not anything viable.
	That's what the research is.
	Right, and to be fair, I'm not in the advanced cancer category.
	Look, and I don't mind if people say, listen, you might want to take this supplement or that.
	I've got no problem with that.
	That's fine.
	You know, it's just the people who say, whatever you do, never do chemo and just stick coffee grinds up your butt and stuff.
	Like, that's just, wow.
	I mean, people are just, that's seriously irresponsible advice to be giving to people.
	So, no, I don't put you in.
	The people who are sending me good wishes and, you know, check out this, that's great.
	I have no problem with that whatsoever.
	I think that's fine.
	But the people who are telling me how I should direct my treatment in a life-threatening illness with no evidence being provided, that's some seriously destructive and irresponsible stuff.
	And I don't put you in that category at all.
	I mean, I appreciate people's positive...
	Thoughts and experiences and well wishes on that.
	And, you know, as I said, a bunch of listeners who are doctors and, you know, I assume they don't want me dead.
	So I think their advice has been, you know, do what you're doing.
	And so I haven't just been listening to the medical establishment, right?
	I mean, I have contacts with listeners who are doctors as well, who've been giving me some very useful stuff.
	I consume some amount of apricot seeds every couple days just in smoothies and stuff.
	My logic is, if it works, great.
	I don't have cancer.
	I'll really never know if it worked or not.
	If it doesn't work, I get cancer.
	I'm out, what, $10 a year?
	Oh, yeah, absolutely.
	And plus, you know, I mean, you get apricots growing out your fingernails, which is great for snacking.
	So, you know, it's really no lose.
	You get your fruit no matter what happens.
	That's wonderful.
	So, again, I'm no scientist.
	But thank you so much.
	And listen, I certainly appreciate everyone's donations.
	I know that there was a big bulge earlier in the month, and I appreciate that.
	It's been pretty dry over the last week or so.
	And again, that just could be the after effect of more donations at the beginning of the month.
	But I would appreciate it.
	If you haven't donated for a while, if you want to help out, nothing to do with the illness in particular, but if you wanted to donate and help out, Costs are going up.
	We're going to start running some advertising campaigns.
	Of course, Michael, who is currently working his job in a small air duct bank in a Singaporean Nike factory, of course, is somehow annoyed that he's being paid less than the Singaporean workers.
	And so if you'd like to help out with some of the costs of the show as we grow, That would be great.
	I also wanted to mention that Jeff Tucker, Steph Kinsella, and myself, mostly Steph Kinsella, we're aiming to do a great conference in September or October.
	I think that the goal is to have it in Houston, which is going to be living libertarianism.
	I don't know what the exact name is going to be, but it's all going to be about how to implement our values in our lives in very practical and positive ways.
	So I hope that you'll keep that on your radar, and I will give you more information as we move forward.
	And thanks so much to Stef Kinsella for setting that up.
	And that's going to be just a blast.
	And I'm hoping to push it more to October, and I'm sure I'll be able to make it then.
	I think my red blood cells do a 90-day cycle.
	So by the time I'm done, I should be sort of back more or less back to normal by then.
	So thanks, everyone, so much.
	FDRURL.com forward slash donate if you would like to help out.
	I would really appreciate it.
	And just did a – thanks again to Brady for all the great research.
	Just did a presentation on the decline and fall of Canada, which I hope that people will check out and then stop nagging me about all my U.S. content.
	Just try to listen to the listeners as always.
	Have yourselves a great week, everyone.
	Thanks to James.
	Thanks to Mike.
	Thanks to Brady.

▲