All Episodes
Previous Next
July 6, 2014 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
46:53
2739 Did Martin Luther King Jr. Socialize with KKK Members?

The value of extended family when you have children, friendships post-children, the against me argument, barriers to living with virtue, relationships are viewed as most important than ideology, intolerant ideas, the state only exists because people believe in it, you don't need to commit violence to do evil, the importance of honesty, and libertarianism as a hobby.

| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Hi everybody, it's Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Main Radio.
FDRURL.com slash donate if you would like to help out this show.
It is all yours, ladies and gentlemen.
I am merely the mouthpiece of your generosity.
So, question from a listener.
Steph, you two-faced balding bastard.
Okay, I may be editorializing a little bit, but basically he's saying, Steph, there's two positions that I cannot reconcile in your philosophy.
Now, gosh, if I could get it down to two, wouldn't that be great?
Also, please stop calling it my philosophy.
That's either an insult to me or to philosophy.
I choose to take it personally.
It's not my philosophy.
It's good philosophy or it's bad philosophy, right?
There's no my math.
You know, in Steph, in your math, it's like if it's my math...
It ain't good math.
So, the position is this.
I have said That if you have a kid, if you can find a way to maintain a relationship with the kid and his grandparents, i.e.
your and your spouse's parents, so much the better.
And that is true.
I mean, statistically, if kids have a relationship with grandparents, it's a good thing.
I mean, they get multi-generational stuff, they get a sense of time, and at a very practical level, finding other people To take care of your children who are good and trustworthy and bonded is a pretty important task when it comes to being a parent.
I mean, kids are resource vampires, the little time suckers, and anything which...
Can help you get things done while still having your children cared for by loving caregivers is really important.
You know, what's wrong with single motherhood?
Well, I mean, a lot, but one of the main things that's wrong with single motherhood is the degree to which moms simply don't have time.
They just don't have time.
A lot of stuff needs to get done in life.
A lot of dull stuff needs to get done in life.
A few people were upset that I said if you can get 20% fantastic time in your job, you're doing pretty well.
And this, you know, taxes, laundry, groceries, I mean...
I don't care how zen you are.
It's tough to make that stuff as good as your average run-of-the-mill orgasm.
I guess unless you're a lady sitting on the washing machine.
Anyway, we'll get back to that another time perhaps for an extended...
Well, actually, probably not that extended podcast.
But anyway, there's a lot of stuff that just needs to get down this kind of dial.
I had to take Isabella yesterday.
We just had to run a bunch of errands.
I had to get a pair of glasses fixed and we had to pick up some chicken feed and we had to do this and we had to do that.
We had to get some groceries and You know, sorry.
We can chat and all that, but it's just not as much fun as playing kitty games.
Actually, what was good was we dropped past a pet store where they had kittens to play with, and that was really cool.
But, you know, that's not often the case when you do this kind of stuff.
So, this is...
A lot of dull stuff that needs to get done.
Now, if you can go and get this stuff done, it's much faster without kids around.
And there's sometimes, I mean, there's less conflict.
If kids are not exposed to a whole bunch of fun stuff that they want you to buy for them, then there can be less conflict, although we don't usually have a huge amount of conflict about that stuff.
So if you can leave your kids with their grandparents and then you can go and do the dull, dumb bovine chores that life is composed of in a lot of ways, then kids are better off than if a single mom with no time has to take two or three kids with her to the grocery store and then to the DMV and then to get X, Y, and Z and then to buy something for the house and you need a toilet plunger.
You know, just all this dumb stuff, right?
I mean...
There's nothing wrong with it, and it certainly is a lot better than most of the stuff we had to do throughout history, i.e.
not starve to death during the winter.
So, if you have extra, you know, many hands make light work, and the more kids are exposed to people who love and care about them, the better, right?
I mean, I think that's fairly clear.
And this is one reason why, if you're not willing to help out with parents who have kids, it's not likely that your friendship is going to go very far with them.
One of the reasons that I ran out of patience with some of my friends was after Isabella was born.
Was that they just weren't pitching in.
Just weren't pitching in.
I'm not talking about just being a taker.
You know, these are people that I'd helped before and, you know, but just come over and help, you know?
Don't come over, you know, say hi to my kid and then expect us to have the same relationship that we had before because there's a kid around or kids around and it's just not going to be the same.
But, you know, I had a friend...
He actually had access to a car but didn't bother to get his license and so we'd have to go and pick him up from the subway to come and visit or we'd have to go out to his place which was like an hour and a quarter away with a kid in the car, a baby in the car.
I mean this just really wasn't working.
It's like go get your damn license so that we don't have to drive for Two and a half hours or three hours to come and visit you.
Just stuff like that.
Just do something to help out.
Things change when you become a parent.
You need people to help.
Now, I mean, I'm happy to help other kids with parents.
I'm still happy to help other people, but people who are just like, oh, well, I guess you have a kid, but it's pretty much the same relationship, bracket kid.
No, it's not the same relationship, bracket kid.
It's kid, bracket relationship.
So, anyway, I just sort of lost patience with the people who were like, We would get impatient because we couldn't have big in-depth philosophical conversations with an 18-month-old around.
Anyway, so if you can maintain a good relationship with your parents when you have children, I think that's great.
I think that's fantastic.
Unfortunately, voluntarism, libertarianism, anarchism, even minarchism, interferes with that.
And you can get mad at me if you want, which is ridiculous.
It's like getting mad at the person who says, you have a sunburn.
You burned me!
No.
No.
You exposed yourself to the sun.
I'm merely pointing out that you're red.
I did not burn you by saying, you have a sunburn.
Well, it didn't hurt until shortly after you pointed out that I had a sunburn.
It's like, yes, that's true.
But it was going to hurt either way.
And this way, at least, it will hurt you less.
because after I say you have a sunburn, you can get the hell out of the sun.
So I'm going to tell you facts that you know about the non-aggression principle.
Well, And then you can react emotionally against me rather than accepting the tragic consequences of the logic of coercion.
So let's just say that your parents approve of the welfare state.
They believe the welfare state is good and necessary and It helps people out of poverty and makes sure that children get enough food to eat and all that other kind of stuff, right?
Fairly typical.
I mean, 98% of the population or 97% of the population probably have some positive view of the welfare state.
And by that includes Social Security, old age pensions and stuff like that.
All right.
Well, then, your parents, by believing in the moral validity and necessity of the welfare state, want you thrown in jail for disagreeing with them and following your own conscience with regards to the non-aggression principle.
Because if you're into the non-aggression principle, then it doesn't matter whether the welfare state helps some people.
I mean, the mafia shakedowns help some people who deliver food and wedding cakes to the mafia.
But nonetheless, we don't say therefore the Mafia is justified because some people benefit from it.
The children of Mafia hitmen gain their bread and shelter from the Mafia men killing people, but we don't say that that justifies it.
Bloody, bloody, blah, right?
So if you accept the non-aggression principle, then everything that is...
I mean, even if we just go to sort of anarchism, then forcible redistribution of wealth is a violation of the non-aggression principle and immoral.
And in other words, they want you thrown in jail for acting in a moral manner.
and acting in a manner which they themselves have said is good, right?
I'm sure your parents, when you were little, did not say, oh, you know what you should do is you should use force to get what you want.
And if you can't get what you want voluntarily, then you should just take stuff by force.
And then you point this out about the welfare state, and they just kind of blank out, right?
They neither rescind their earlier thing and say, you know what?
Based upon what you're saying, I'm sorry I ever told you that you shouldn't use force.
Force is a great thing to use if you can't get what you want peacefully, just like voters do, just like I want from my old age pension.
Force is super great, and let's go and cudgel some people and take their wallets because I want an...
iPod Touch or something, right?
So they don't do that.
They say, yes, force is still bad, but I am very keen on the welfare state and old age pensions and free health care and public education and, you know, all that statist garbage.
Well, this has very real consequences.
Very real consequences for your life.
Political beliefs are not some sort of abstract thing.
Well, in the abstract, I'm a big fan of Obamacare.
No, if you don't pay your taxes or you don't sign up, you are at risk of going to jail.
Right?
And that's important.
If you disagree with government education and you don't pay your property taxes, then the government will take your house.
And if you resist them taking your house, they will shoot you.
These political beliefs have very real consequences called guns in the face and penis in the butt.
If you're a guy and happen to go to jail and end up going to jail, that's all pretty bad all around.
So, If you are into, let's just say, libertarianism, and your parents are into the warfare welfare state, then their beliefs are that you should be thrown in jail, you should be stripped of your property, of the right to see your children, of your income, and quite probably raped, because you disagree with them.
This is the very real, tangible, factual consequences of particular political beliefs.
And there's no getting away from it.
There's no getting around it.
This is the reality.
Now, they probably have never thought about it that way, but the real question comes when you point this out to them, right?
It's what I talked about years ago in New Hampshire called the against me argument.
So if you are a statist, you support the use of violence Against me.
It's a very real, very tangible, very measurable, cordite-in-the-air, gun-in-the-face situation.
If people support the state and you do not, then they support you being robbed and shot and probably raped.
Because you want to follow your own conscience and act in a peaceful manner and support peace throughout the world.
And these are very real, very tragic, very measurable, very disastrous consequences to particular political beliefs, right?
Now people get, sort of understandably, upset.
Not at this formulation, not at this argument, not at this ideology.
But of this reality.
I get upset about it.
I can understand that.
It's a horrible, violence-worshipping world that we reasonable people have inherited.
Oh!
It's terrible.
Terrible, terrible, terrible.
And people get upset.
And they get upset with me.
And the reason they get upset with me is they can't answer the argument.
I mean, if the argument is obviously illogical, then you don't even really have to get upset with the person, right?
I don't get upset with the people who claim that the world is flat.
I don't get angry at them.
I don't get angry at the people who say, we've never been to the moon.
Or, there are lizard men.
I just, like, I don't get...
I mean, why?
It's so silly.
Why would you get angry?
People get angry at arguments...
That they cannot rebut.
But rather than get angry at the argument, which would be more honest, they get angry at the argumenter, which allows them to pretend that there's something personal and manipulative going on.
now if you accept this basic reality that people who want state quote solutions to complex social problems want you thrown in jail for being peaceful well then you are on your way to understanding the real challenge of virtue in the world The real challenge of virtue in the world is not defining it.
It's living by it.
And the barriers that are set up in society Against living by virtue are set up very consciously, very understandably.
They're acted out by the general population very instinctually.
But the barriers to acting virtuously are bottomless, endless, insurmountable for obviously a lot of people.
And the barriers are that what are quaintly called relationships are more important than virtue.
And if any virtue gets between you and what is called a relationship, then the ideology is intolerant.
Right?
If any virtue gets between you and a relationship, that ideology must be called intolerant.
If it's not acceptable to the people in power, parents, priests, teachers, politicians, and so on.
So you can have a philosophy that comes out from feminism which says if a man hits you even once, leave him, kick him to the curb, take him for half of everything he's got, and that is not called an intolerant ideology.
Because the man who hits a woman is clearly himself being intolerant.
And therefore it is viewed, I think fairly correctly, as a self-defensive measure, as a measure of rejecting someone who's rejecting you.
If you have a friend who is a racist, then it is generally considered a reasonable, Step to separate from the unrepentant racist friend.
Particularly if you are a member of the minority that that person is racist towards, or married to a member of the minority that the person, or the majority, that the person is racist towards.
If you are a Jew, then hanging with an anti-Semite is not considered to be good.
It's considered to be bad.
Now, these separations, these social punishments, these ostracisms, these removals from toxicity are considered good and fine and virtuous.
And your parents say, you know, don't hang with a bad crowd, right?
Don't hang with a crowd that's going to encourage you to do bad things.
Hang with the nice people, not with the bad.
There's a bad influence, the Eddie Haskells of the encroaching universe.
However, you cannot be anti-state without being anti-statists, because the state is the result because the state is the result of statists.
Adherence, allegiance, worship, acceptance, promotion, praise.
It's like saying, I am anti-God, but I'm not against anyone who believes in a God.
Well, God is only legitimized, only exists, is only valid, only has power to the degree that people believe in God.
The state only has power to the degree that people are willing to ascribe it virtue and necessity.
Your enemy is not the state.
Your enemy is the people who promote the state.
Now, not everyone.
I mean, prior to knowledge, in a state of nature.
I don't call my daughter dumb because she can't do calculus yet.
Just doesn't know it yet.
Prior to knowledge, people are not morally responsible for worshiping the violence of the state, for justifying the violence of the state.
It's not responsible.
Once they know, ah, well then, you are responsible.
This is a very kind formulation, right?
I mean, when I was growing up, ignorance of the law was no excuse, right?
Saying you didn't know it was wrong does not excuse you.
So I'm being a lot kinder to status than status ever were to me as a child.
I'm being kinder to them as an adult than they ever were to me as a child because I am a big-hearted, kind, nice person.
So the coercive nature of the state, the worship and respect for and Honoring of the violence of the state is why there's a state.
That which everyone accepts to be immoral is no longer socially sanctioned, socially acceptable.
There are things which are not illegal, which are socially acceptable, such as racism.
You know, just having bad opinions about the races rather than Doing things that are directly illegal and so on.
So, these things are socially sanctioned, socially opposed, rather than legally opposed.
That's fine.
So your enemy is not the state.
The state is an effect of the acceptance of the state, of the worship of the state, of the praise of the state.
That's all the state is.
The state is a fantasy held aloft by the praise of its slaves.
Now, when you bring this to people's attention, when you point out that the state is force, the taxation is the initiation of force, Then they have the opportunity to become good or evil.
Because you don't have to do violence to enable evil.
Driving a car is not a violent action.
Driving a car away from a bank robbery, carrying the robbers, is complicity in a crime.
You don't have to directly initiate force violence.
In order to participate in a crime.
If your actions create the conditions for the crime, then you are complicit in the crime.
You can shoot a man and have someone else charged with their murder, with his murder.
This is fairly old common law that if you set events in motion that result in the death of someone, you are responsible for their death.
So if I go and rob a convenience store and the clerk tries to shoot me in self-defense, misses me and shoots a customer, I am charged with the murder of the customer, even though I may not even be carrying a gun.
Because the customer only died as a direct result of me coming in to rob the store.
And this is how A just legal system works.
If you set events in motion that result in violence, then you are complicit in a crime.
And if the violence of the state is only set in motion, sustained and maintained by the praise of its subjects, then if you praise the state, if you oppose those who have moral issues with the state, Then you are complicit in the crimes of the state.
If you praise the drug war, then you are complicit in the kidnapping and imprisonment of unjustly incarcerated people.
You are complicit.
You have blood on your hands.
If you praise the welfare state, then you are complicit in the theft from the young.
You are complicit in the social decay of the family.
You are complicit in the inflation that steals from the poor.
If you serve sandwiches to the guy lying in wait for his victim, you are complicit in his crime.
If through your actions a crime is capable of being committed, and if your actions were not there, the crime could not be committed, you are the enabler of that crime.
Bumping into someone is not a crime.
But if you bump into someone so that someone else, your accomplice, can pick his or her pocket, then you are an accomplice in a crime.
So, when we tell people about the reality of the state, we create in them a fork in the road from neutral to good or evil.
Good is, oh my lord of heaven above.
I did not realize.
I had no idea.
It had never struck me.
I was never informed that the state was violence.
Now that I understand the state is violence, I reject it.
That's all they have to do.
They don't have to charge any barricades.
They should never use force.
But all they have to do is say, wow...
The state is immoral.
I reject the state.
And then they have to live that way, right?
Which means that when questions of the state comes up, they pay it forward.
They spread the knowledge and the virtue forward, which means identifying to others the true nature of the state.
That's the good.
The evil is you are a bad person, you hate the poor, you should be thrown in jail for being a peaceful person who wishes to follow his or her conscience.
Well, then that is now evil.
You are participating in evil.
Being pro-state is being accomplice to a crime.
To the worst crimes, to the most widespread crimes.
This is not that hard to understand.
It's hard to emotionally accept.
I understand that.
I get that.
But it's not hard to understand.
If I say, well, the Holocaust against the Jews was necessary...
Then clearly that is an immoral thing.
And if I actively go and pay money to support those who are killing Jews, then I have enabled and am part of that crime.
If I say more blacks should be lynched, you know, we should string more blacks up.
And then I buy the rope that the lynchers need and I drive them to go and find the blacks and then I drive them to the tree.
Well, I'm just buying stuff and driving around.
But clearly we understand that if the crime could not have happened without my participation, I am an accomplice to the crime.
I am the enabler of the crime.
If I lend my knife to a man who says he's going to stab his wife, well, guess what?
I am the one who says he's going to stab his wife.
So this is not hard to understand.
That if you praise, approve, and supply material resources for the commission of a crime, you are an accomplice.
Now, I pay taxes, but I oppose taxation.
It's the willingness, the happiness, the...
Lynching is the price we pay for a civilized society.
Taxation is the price we pay for a civilized society.
It's the praise of it.
And the attack of those who point out that taxation is force.
That is the moral issue.
So you don't have to do any of this.
I've been very clear about this for years.
You don't have to do any of this.
The only requirement that philosophy really has is honesty.
Just be honest.
Say, my parents are statists.
I... I don't like the state.
I think I would like to think about opposing the state at some point in the future, maybe.
But I'm not going to have that conversation with my parents or my brother or my sister or my friends.
That's perfectly fine to me.
You absolutely do not have to have that conversation pointing out that taxation is forced, that the state is financed.
But you just have to be honest with yourself about it.
That's all.
Right?
Honesty is the first virtue, and in many ways is the only virtue.
Right?
So then you can say, you know, accurately so, that your ethics, your libertarianism, whatever you want to call it, it's sort of in the nature of an amoral hobby.
Right?
It's just in the nature of an amoral hobby.
That's all.
You don't actually oppose the state.
You are interested in ideas about opposing the state.
But you don't want to actually oppose the state, right?
So you're interested in studying racism.
You just don't want to be an anti-racist.
Right?
Right?
You are an opposer.
You are a pretender.
You are, as the Texans say, all hat and no cattle.
You're all talk, but no actual action.
You say that you have identified evils.
You say that you understand how those evils should be opposed, but you don't want to take the personal risk of trying to oppose them.
I get that.
You're a historian of the resistance.
You're not actually in the resistance.
You're an anthropologist of anti-statism.
You're not actually an anti-statist.
And then you have to be honest about that.
You have to be honest about that.
And when people say, are you a libertarian?
You say, well, theoretically, I'm in theory a libertarian, but I don't want to take any of the actions.
Those must be really terrifying.
Actions that you would have to take.
Do you have to jump off cliffs?
Do you have to cut off your arm?
No.
No, I have to have conversations with people about virtue.
Right?
That's what I guess you would have to say is your barrier to action.
Your barrier to action is, I don't want to have conversations with people about virtue and have those conversations have any consequences.
I'm very much against racism, but I don't want to take those actions that would end racism.
What would those actions be?
I have to talk to people about the evils of racism.
Okay.
So then you don't really care that much about racism, right?
If the barrier is a conversation with consequences, then you're just not, you know...
Philosophy says, oh, I guess you're just not that into me, right?
And that's fine.
Not everyone has to Do that.
Not everyone has to.
I mean, you probably have heroes, right?
You probably have the founding fathers or Martin Luther King or Gandhi and so on.
You probably have heroes who pretty much went to the wall for their belief systems.
And you are probably living in a society that has some elements of virtue only because people were willing to go to the wall for their belief systems.
And this doesn't mean any kind of revolutionary wall.
It just means having integrity to your values in your life.
And so the honesty is simply saying, I like to study libertarianism.
I like it.
It's interesting.
But I have absolutely no intention of living it, of having it inform my values, my conversations, or my choices whatsoever.
I am very much against racism, or at least I like to talk about being against racism, or I like the idea of being against racism, but I don't want my anti-racism to interfere with my friendships with KKK members.
I'm very much interested in the idea of anti-Semitism, but the last thing that I would ever want is for anti-Semitism to interfere with my Nazi friendships.
And again, I'm not trying to say this facetiously, that's perfectly fine.
Just be honest about that with yourself and with others.
Philosophy is something I'm kind of interested in in the abstract, and particularly moral philosophy, but I have absolutely no intention of living by the values that I'm studying.
See, that's good, right?
Because if I am against racism...
And I have lots of friends who are KKK members.
And of course, in this analogy, I'm also black.
Because statists target you and KKK targets blacks.
But if I say, well, I'm virulently anti-racist and then I hang out with lots of Klan members and go to Klan rallies and Klan cookouts and Klan barbecues and I... whatever, right?
I talk to them about anti-racism, but when they tell me I'm an idiot, I'm like, okay, fine, well, I'll just have another burger, right?
Well, then I'm just...
it's confusing to people, right?
Because then they think, okay, well, wait a minute.
So you are anti-racist, but you go to Klan barbecues, Klan cookouts, and your friends are Klan members.
So what the hell does it mean to be anti-racist?
Well, it means posing and being interested in and reading about, but not actually connecting ideas to actions.
And what you do when you do that is you discredit anti-racism.
Because there are some people who say, hey, you know what, my clan friends, what you're doing is immoral.
It's violence.
It's in violation of the non-aggression principle.
And you shouldn't participate in it because people are getting killed.
Well, if you're not doing any of that stuff, if you're like, well, I'm really anti-racism and you've got an anti-racist blog and you read lots of anti-racist literature and so on, and then you're like, ooh, clan barbecue this weekend.
I better get ready and I better go.
I may bring it up a little bit, but I don't want to cause any problems with the Klan members, so mostly I'll just shut the hell up and eat my pulled pork.
So then, if you're honest about that and say, well, I hang out with Klan members because I don't want my anti-racism to interfere with my relationships with racists.
I just want to have the ideas.
I don't want to actually change anything.
Like, I want to go to anger management classes, I just don't want to stop punching people.
I'm interested in anger management, like, as an abstract idea, but the last thing I'd ever want it to do is to interfere with me punching people.
Now, this is a problem, because you're actually, you're pro-state then.
You're fundamentally an agent of the state.
If you study libertarianism, but don't let it inform your relationship decisions.
Like, if...
On the bus, I saw like 50 fat people all reading the same diet book.
And then six months later, I saw 50 people who were even fatter all reading the same diet book.
I would simply assume that that diet doesn't work.
And that they're reading their diet book for no reason that has to do with losing weight, right?
So if you are a fat person and you keep getting fatter and you keep telling people about this wonderful diet, you're actually discrediting the diet, right?
People are going to be less likely to want to pursue that diet because you're fat, you're enthusiastic about it, you say you're following it, but you keep getting fatter, right?
It's like, okay, well, this diet is terrible, and if I want to lose weight, the last place I'd go to is the diet praised by a fat person who says he's following the diet and keeps getting fatter.
You understand?
If you say, I have read these most amazing essays on anti-racism, I'm fully committed to anti-racism and I'm going to a Klan rally this weekend, then I would assume that either you or the book's author are complete idiots who have no idea what it means to actually learn something and do it.
Now, if I assume that the author is an idiot, then I have to assume that you're an idiot.
If I assume that you're an idiot and are full of praise for this author, I have to also assume that the author is an idiot.
So you are discrediting the freedom movement by talking about it and not acting on it.
You are as surely an agent of the state as if you worked for Stasi or the NSA. These are facts.
This is the reality.
Once you have knowledge, you have moral responsibility.
Once you have knowledge of good and evil, you are responsible for promoting virtue, for promoting goodness, or you are subsidizing and promoting evil.
and you are no longer morally neutral, and you can no longer claim ignorance.
Now, if you are not willing to put your relationships to the test of virtue, if you're not willing to say, either stop being part of the clan or I stop coming to your barbecues, then just be honest about it and tell then just be honest about it and tell your kids, yeah, it's important to study virtue, but you must never let the study of virtue interfere with your actions.
And it is more important to hang with a violent crowd than it is to follow Virtue.
It is more important to have the approval of people who want you thrown in jail than it is to stand up for what you know is right.
The most important thing in this or any other life is pleasing corrupt and immoral people at the expense of the innocent.
Because if good people are firmly in hot pursuit of the good opinions of bad people, well, that's good.
We must make sure that we never incur the displeasure or disapproval of bad people.
In other words, if we pursue virtue and we never ever annoy any bad people, then we are doing just great.
We must reject peaceful people in order to socialize with people who want us shot.
Because to upset people who want you shot is to be intolerant.
See, the fact that statists want us shot is not somehow categorized as intolerant.
The fact that we don't want to be shot for following our peaceful conscience is defined as intolerance.
And in the future, as I've said before and I will say again, they will have no idea how we got out of bed without putting holes in the walls, how we walked without tying our shoelaces together, when we believe such madness.
Yes, I will end a relationship with someone who wants me shot for peacefully pursuing my conscience or thrown in a jail cell and probably raped.
Yes, of course I will end because that person has already signaled their desire to end his relationship with me.
I find the drug war appalling.
Absolutely horrendous, immoral, and destructive of the very fabric of human society and the future of the family.
Now, if someone wants me thrown in jail for approving the drug war and acting on that approval, then they have already signaled their willingness to then they have already signaled their willingness to end their relationship with me.
can't have much of a relationship with someone while I'm in jail now.
can I? So if I am against taxation and my friend thinks I should go to jail for not paying my taxes, he has already signaled his violent willingness to end our relationship based upon his immoral prejudice.
He's the one who's saying, you, Steph, should go to jail for not paying taxes.
Well, then he is saying, Steph, if you follow your peaceful conscience, you should go to jail.
And he is called tolerant.
Now, if I say, I can't be friends with someone who wants me thrown in jail for peacefully following my conscience, somehow I become the intolerant one.
Now, I'm not saying he should go and be thrown in jail.
What I'm saying is he can go anywhere in the world except my house.
Now, if he wants me thrown in jail, I'm only allowed to go in one place, which is a tiny cell with a probably violent cellmate.
That's the only place I'm supposed to go and have to go and must stay if I disagree with him.
Now, he's welcome to disagree with me, and he can go anywhere in the world and do anything he wants except come to my house and break bread with me.
Who is the intolerant one in this situation?
The man who wants you thrown in a cage or the man who says, you know, this relationship is not for me because you want me thrown in a cage?
In this instance, a man who is kidnapped and locked in a basement is intolerant if he breaks out and does not want to come back to socialize with his kidnapper.
He is just plain intolerant.
So if you say, look, I'm just a poser.
I just like studying these beliefs.
I have no intention whatsoever of acting in any way, shape, or form upon them.
That's fine, right?
So if you're a fat person reading the diet book, you can say, listen, I'm just reading this because I like the pictures of the food.
I'm doing the exact opposite of what this diet book says.
Fine!
Then you have not discredited the diet, and other people can still pursue the diet.
It's the people who say, yes, I'm following this diet book.
When they're doing the exact opposite, the diet book says, eat more vegetables, and they're like, great, eat more potato chips.
The diet book says, drink more water, and they're like, great, that means drink more sugary pop, right?
It's just the honesty.
I enjoy studying this diet book, I enjoy looking at the pictures, but I'm doing the exact opposite of what the diet book recommends.
Okay, so then people who see you getting fatter aren't going to blame the diet book, right?
So if you're not judging your relationships based upon people's support of the state, that is perfectly fine.
Absolutely fine.
It is not a crime to read a diet book and do the exact opposite of what the diet book recommends.
It's not a crime to be anti-racist and hang with racists.
Fine.
Just be honest.
Just tell people, I find the diet book interesting.
I sure like looking at the pictures of moral courage.
I sure like reading the stories of moral courage.
But don't you fear my state-sucking compadres?
Don't you fear those of you who worship the violent criminality of the oldest oligopoly?
Don't you fear?
I have absolutely no intention of bringing any of these values to life.
In fact, I'm going to do the exact opposite of what these values state.
Philosophy defines those who knowingly support the evils of the state as immoral accomplices to a crime.
But don't worry.
I won't let the fact that I know that you're immoral accomplices to criminality, I won't let that interfere with my desire to spend time with you at all.
Don't you worry!
▲
Export Selection