Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux - 2446 The Biggest Obstacle to the Liberty Movement.
Aired: 2013-08-07
Duration: 04:19


=== Building a Respectful Community (02:06) ===

[00:00:00]  We need to become a community that people envy.
[00:00:07]  And I don't think we are a community that people envy yet.
[00:00:10]  I don't think that we're very effective at dealing with bullies within our own community.
[00:00:14]  I don't think that we hold ourselves to the highest standards of human interaction in our own community.
[00:00:18]  I think that we can be self-indulgent, petty, vindictive, vicious.
[00:00:22]  I think that our public personas are sometimes entirely out of sorts with our professed goals of nonviolence or at least of the non-aggression principle.
[00:00:30]  I think there's ridiculous infighting.
[00:00:32]  I think there's a lack of willingness to address essential questions like, does the non-aggression principle apply to spanking?
[00:00:40]  I've written articles about it.
[00:00:41]  I've talked about it for years.
[00:00:43]  And I've yet to find many people in the libertarian movement who are even willing to think about engaging on this as a practical topic.
[00:00:50]  But Jesus H. Christ on a stick.
[00:00:52]  Spanking is something we can control.
[00:00:54]  Federal Reserve, we can't do shit all about.
[00:00:56]  We can't control foreign policy.
[00:00:57]  We can't control government policy.
[00:00:59]  But we can control whether we initiate the use of force against our own children.
[00:01:02]  If we were to examine our own behavior rather than focus solely on the people over the hill whose actions we can't even approach, let alone change, I think we could do something truly incredible.
[00:01:13]  If we were to have the highest standards of behavior on the internet, that would be pretty cool.
[00:01:17]  People would say, wow, there's a movement where people actually behave respectfully and intelligently towards each other and they don't indulge in flame wars and they ask questions and they're curious and they're intelligent.
[00:01:26]  I think that's really cool.
[00:01:28]  I kind of maybe want me some of that.
[00:01:30]  Or if we have, as a community, a commitment to nonviolence within the family, my goodness, we would have some pretty smart children.
[00:01:37]  My goodness, we would have some pretty amazing children.
[00:01:39]  We'd have children that people would go like, wow, there's a peaceful family.
[00:01:42]  There's a family where people really enjoy each other's company.
[00:01:45]  I want some of that.
[00:01:47]  I don't know crap all about fiat currency and inflation, but I can see a productive, peaceful and happy community and I can accept and understand that and I can apply that in my own life.
[00:01:56]  There's a community that's really into self-knowledge.
[00:01:59]  This is the oldest commandment of Socrates, know thyself.
[00:02:01]  Here's a community that is really committed to peaceful communication, to negotiation rather than aggression.

=== Show Us A Better Society (02:12) ===

[00:02:07]  Here's a community that supports each other, that encourages each other, that is willing to confront and clash intellectually in pursuit of the truth.
[00:02:15]  But not in insulting, vicious, or denigrative ways.
[00:02:18]  That would be such a departure for most people from particularly societies on the internet or societies that they may have known or whatever that people would just like it would be like, whoa, I think I see a slice of the future.
[00:02:28]  I like it.
[00:02:29]  Because every time we come up to people or we present ourselves as a community, what people perceive is what they receive is.
[00:02:37]  These people want to run my life.
[00:02:39]  And I know that's not what libertarianism or anarchism is about, but this is what they perceive, is that these people are coming to run my life.
[00:02:46]  So when you see a bunch of Nazis walking down the street, you know that they want to run your life.
[00:02:50]  You're like, well, I don't want these people running my life.
[00:02:52]  Pretty scary.
[00:02:53]  Pretty volatile.
[00:02:54]  I want these people running my life.
[00:02:56]  I don't want these people in charge.
[00:02:57]  I don't want these people to organize society.
[00:02:59]  I don't want to live in a society that these people like.
[00:03:02]  Because if they're Nazis or communists, I don't want to live in the society that they like.
[00:03:05]  But the question is, do people want to live in the society that libertarians like?
[00:03:11]  Well, the first thing is that we have to show what that society looks like, which is not blog posts or abstract crap.
[00:03:17]  It's how do we treat each other?
[00:03:18]  How do we treat each other?
[00:03:20]  How do we deal with bullies?
[00:03:22]  Because we say, well, we don't need the state.
[00:03:24]  Well, if we can't even manage our own community and deal with bullies in some way, either through reform or ostracism, then who the hell are we to talk about what works in society?
[00:03:31]  First thing we want to do is show all of these principles at work within our own communities, within our own families, within our own interactions.
[00:03:38]  What if libertarians had by far the lowest divorce rate?
[00:03:41]  Because they really got along.
[00:03:42]  They knew how to negotiate.
[00:03:43]  They didn't use aggression.
[00:03:45]  What if they had the smartest, best behaved, most accomplished kids because they didn't use any aggression against them?
[00:03:50]  They homeschooled them.
[00:03:51]  Whatever it took to raise this crop of healthy human beings for the first goddamn time in human history.
[00:03:55]  What if there was an intelligence and a negotiation and a nonviolent confrontation where necessary about differences of agreement within the community?
[00:04:04]  Wouldn't that be amazing?
[00:04:05]  We've got to show people.
[00:04:06]  We can't argue with them based on reason.
[00:04:08]  People don't even know how to reason.
[00:04:10]  We might as well be shouting at an ant in Mandarin when we bring arguments from Austrian economics to the average person.
[00:04:15]  But they can appreciate what they can see tangibly.