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Aug. 5, 2014 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
51:02
2765 Defending Adam Carolla: The Young Turks Rebutted!

Ana Kasparian from The Young Turks recently went after comedian and radio host Adam Carolla for saying that "liberals have taken over the word "conservative" and turned it into a pejorative." Stefan Molyneux looks at Kasparian's non-arguments and dismantles a video which was nothing more than an embarrassing liberal smear job.

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Hi everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Main Radio.
Hope you're doing well.
Yes, we're going to take a dive into the grand canyon of critical thinking known as the Young Turks today for an object lesson, a masterclass in brain-addled sophistry.
Juan A. Kasparian was talking about a comedian who's recently come out as political and a conservative whose name is Adam Carolla, who I suggest you check out if you get a chance.
And here is what Ms.
Kasparian had to say about Adam Carolla.
Adam Carolla was speaking with Dr.
Drew on the Adam and Dr.
Drew Show.
I think I've become more conservative as I've gotten older, as I've had a family, you know, as people do when they get older and they have a family and they pay more in taxes and they start looking for school systems for their kids that are usable and things like that.
There's a move toward a more conservative life In general, as you get older.
But as far as my talking points go, you know, stop shitting out kids you can't afford.
You pay for their school breakfast, not because I want you to pay for their school breakfast, but because the kid should know that mom and or dad are paying for breakfast.
Making the effort.
It's a psychological thing.
It's not a matter of...
I don't want to pay 39 cents a day for your kid.
I don't give a fuck about that.
The fucking government takes half my money and does whatever the fuck they want with it anyway.
Okay, so let's just recognize that this point is going to be lost on Anna.
Let's just recognize that Adam is saying he doesn't care about the money involved in school lunches, but there's a principle at work here, which is you should not have children that you cannot afford to feed.
Is this a shocking revelation?
Is this something that makes people scream in Victorian fainting smells, get my Epsom salts hysteria?
No.
Don't have children you can't afford.
You know, it's a little bit more important than say, don't buy a car or a house that you cannot afford.
This is a human life.
You should be able to afford the children that you are having.
So he says clearly it's not about the money.
The school lunch system where taxpayers who can't afford to pay for their own children are forced to pay for those who can't.
Or who won't.
He's saying that the school lunch system is not the issue.
It's a symptom of a much larger and deeper issue.
The deeper issue being that he wants a work ethic to be demonstrated to these children.
If children are born into a household where the mother is unable to provide food, the children are going to feel insecurity.
And if they're born into an environment where nobody's working, they're going to not have as easy an access to the workforce as a whole.
But let's continue with what Adam is saying.
I mean, your kid's breakfast is the least of my worries.
I worry about your kid and the message that's being sent to your kid by mama not making him breakfast.
That's what I worry about.
But my talking points have not changed.
Get your shit together.
Get to work.
Stop shitting out kids.
So on and so forth.
Okay, so as we've said, his basic message is he doesn't care about school lunches.
He cares about the fundamental decision-making ability of people who are having lots of kids that they can't.
And this is all single moms for the most part.
Single moms having kids that they cannot afford to feed is not a good thing for society as a whole.
So let's see how Anna breaks this down with her surgical scalper brain.
I love that video because for someone who doesn't give a shit about breakfast, he talks about breakfast throughout the entire clip.
No, he doesn't.
No, he really doesn't.
He's talking about it as a symptom of a deeper problem, right?
So, if I go to the doctor, and I think I have a pimple, and he says it's skin cancer, and here's all the things we need to do, but he said pimples aren't important, skin cancer is, and then I come out saying, well, he seemed to spend a whole lot of time talking about pimples.
That's not correct.
He's saying he doesn't care about school lunches.
It's a symptom of a deeper social ill and issue.
So...
This idea is like, well, you know, for someone who doesn't claim to care about X, he sure talks about X a whole lot, means that you actually have not even remotely listened to what the man is saying.
Let's continue.
He's like, make your kids breakfast!
What I love about that is it's always the go-to argument by some conservatives, and usually the least informed conservatives, right?
They're really angry about free lunches.
Okay, so Anna has a problem with...
Conservatives who are uninformed.
Let's see how this plays out during this conversation.
And of all the issues, of all the different things that we waste our tax dollars on, to go to the issue of school lunches just befuddles me.
I just don't understand it, right?
Okay, well, one way to understand it is to remember, given that you just played the man's clip, to remember, Anna, that he says he doesn't care about school lunches, but it is a symptom of a deeper social issue.
So the fact that it's confusing to you is because you're using your mouth hole a lot more than your ear holes.
But he gets a little more specific, I should say, in the next clip.
Let's take a quick look at that.
It's the left turning conservatism into a pejorative, number one.
Being conservative didn't used to be a pejorative in any...
Stretch and imagination.
Being conservative with your money was being prudent.
Being conservative as it pertained to work or investments or even at the poker table.
It was sort of prudent.
Conservative meant prudent.
It was not a pejorative.
Has taken over the word conservative and turned it into pejorative.
So it's like, oh, you're conservative.
They've done a wonderful smear campaign of, are you conservative?
Yes, I'm conservative.
Oh, okay, great.
You hate women.
You hate blacks.
You hate all cultures.
You love people with money.
You hate poor people.
No, no.
I just want to focus on education.
I want to focus on hard work.
I want to focus on being motivated and getting ahead in a country that's made for that ethic.
This country was put here for that attitude.
And the way you want to flourish in this country?
Get up.
Go to work.
Get educated.
Get your kids educated.
Stay together.
Focus on the family.
There you go.
Okay, so again, he's saying that America is the land of opportunity, which to a large degree, of course, it still is, with the remnants of the free market still in semi-operation.
So let's see how she is able to not apply pejoratives, because he's saying, look, liberals are people on the left that just simply throw pejoratives at conservatives.
So let's see how she actually avoids doing that and not fulfilling his prophecy.
Go, Anna!
So this is a standard argument that you usually hear from conservatives, right?
Like, pick yourself up from the bootstraps, it's super easy.
Ah, did you hear that?
Did Adam, I mean, you and I and Anna just listened to Adam talking about, did he ever say, it's super easy, did he ever use the phrase, just pick yourself up by your own bootstraps?
He, in fact, did not.
So she is constructing an elaborate straw man, which she actually fails to slay, which is pretty embarrassing when you're conducting a straw man.
But let's continue.
Anna, enlighten us!
I'm just a supporter of hard work, and these dirty liberals don't believe in hard work.
They just want to sit around and collect government cheese and just chill.
But obviously that's not the case, right?
Oh.
Oh, isn't that delightful.
Let's...
Let's smell the odor of thought slowly dying on the vine.
Oh, it smells like really old chicken.
So, first of all, so now all people who collect welfare are liberals.
That's not an argument that he made.
Because he's saying we should encourage hard work and family staying together and so on, right?
And getting an education.
Good.
Fine.
And now she's saying, well, he's saying no liberals believe in that?
Well, he's talking about people who aren't working and not all people who aren't working are liberals.
So that's important.
But what I find particularly delightful is when she says, well, obviously that's not true, right?
What a wonderful airstrike of intellectual incompetence to bring to bear on your opponent.
Well, obviously his brain thoughts are like grody to the max.
So, right?
How can you possibly imagine that that's any kind of rebuttal?
Well, obviously that's not the case, right?
Well, how is that possibly a rebuttal of anything?
I mean, why bother?
She has a political science degree.
Why bother even going to that if you can just say, well, obviously that's not correct, right?
So, let's continue.
So I want to explain to him, first of all, why it is that certain individuals think that conservatism is a dirty word.
Ah, you see, now she gets to talk about what people think rather than any of the facts.
Fact one!
People who live poor in America, where there's two adults in a household, the two adults work an average of 15 hours a week.
Let's say that again, shall we?
So, for people who are poor in America, poor people where there are two parents or two adults in the household, the two adults work 15 hours a week between them.
That's basically about one work day per adult per week.
So he's not talking super hard work.
You know, maybe two or three days of work a week might not be the end of the world.
So he's not talking about, well, let's send him down the coal mines for 16 hours a day.
Well, if you choose to only work one day a week and you're not some champagne socialist trustafarian, you're going to be kind of broke.
Right?
I mean, so he's saying a little more work will not kill anyone and will actually be better for the kids.
Now, rather than refute any of that or study any of the facts or learn any of the information, well, she's just going to say, well, here's why I think people don't like conservatives.
Oh, man.
Imagine that at a physics conference.
Someone puts forward an argument, and you're going to say, well, here's why I think people have emotional problems with that argument.
You do not understand the scientific method, rational thought, evidence, reasoning, or any of that.
But let's hear just how much people don't like conservatives, because, boy, that's a lot easier than rebutting any kind of argument, right?
And by the way, I should note that Adam Carolla lives in a very liberal bubble here in Los Angeles.
So I'm guessing that he's had a few conversations with a few individuals who are like, oh dude, you're conservative.
But if you go to other places in the country, it's not a dirty word.
In fact, Cenk did a great report on how Netroots got practically It's practically zero coverage compared to CPAC. And part of the reason why is because people don't want to be identified as liberals, right?
There's this weird negative connotation that comes along with that word.
Ah, you see, so first of all, I don't know what she's saying.
So he says, she says that Adam lives in a liberal bubble and so he may have had a few conversations with a few people.
Now, if you're living in the liberal bubble, i.e.
you're in the entertainment industry, then you can read a whole bunch of books about this liberal bias in the media.
It's very clear and very extensive.
So he's not just had a few conversations with a few people.
And so now she's going to explain why conservatism is a bad word.
But liberals, it's weird that liberalism is ever considered a bad word, right?
See, for conservatives, it's justified to think of them negatively.
But for liberals, it's just kind of weird.
I mean, why?
So, anyway, this is just weird prejudicial anti-thinking.
Let's continue!
And so, look, there are liberals on one side saying liberal is a dirty word.
It's unfair.
You have conservatives on one side saying conservative is a bad word.
It's unfair.
But the reality is, if you really want to focus on why conservative has become a pejorative, as he mentioned in that clip, all right, let's talk about all the different issues that he discussed, right?
So the issue of education.
He really gives a shit about education.
Do you think conservatives care about education?
Let's just look at one example.
In May of 2013, House Republicans failed to compromise on a student loan interest bill, and that led to the doubling of the student loans that people were getting.
So, for instance, the Stafford loan, which is a federal student loan, had an interest rate of 3.4%.
Because of Republicans, it went up to 6.8%, right?
Okay, so what she's basically arguing, and this is very, very typical liberal speak, what she's basically arguing is that If you lower the price of something and make it, quote, more available to the poor, the poor will automatically do better.
In other words, if we can get more people into college, then it's going to be a lot better because poor people will get educated and get smart and then will do a lot better.
Well, this is bizarre cause and effect reversal.
So it's true, let's say, in the past.
So in the past, before World War II, about 10% of Americans went to higher education, particularly to college.
And so they were the top 10% of people, and you got scholarships, so it wasn't just about rich and poor and so on.
So...
This, due to the GI Bill in the Second World War, which got a whole bunch of servicemen who were returning from fighting socialism to get indoctrinated into socialism by the socialist professors who had fled the European socialist hells they'd created over the previous couple of decades, you get lots more people going into college.
In the 1960s, a lot of kids went into college so they didn't have to go to Vietnam because indoctrination is still better than shrapnel.
And so...
You've had this massive increase.
In the 70s, 70% of kids after high school went into some sort of higher education.
So this is just automatically considered a better thing.
But this is ridiculous.
And it doesn't take more than a moment's thought to realize this.
So IQ is pretty set very early on in life and tends to be one of the great constants in a person's life.
So saying that if we get more people into college, they'll be smarter is like saying if we get more short people to play basketball, they'll be taller.
Why?
Because you see, tall people play basketball.
So clearly, if we get more short people to play basketball, they'll be taller.
This is actually what Elliot Rodger wrote in his insane, crazed, violent manifesto before he went on a shooting spree.
This doesn't make any sense at all.
College is for smart people.
Putting dumber people into college does not make them smarter.
It makes them fail.
And it puts them heavily in debt.
So let's look at some facts.
Student loans for college are largely a creature of federal intervention.
I'll put the sources for all of this below.
So...
The problem is called credit inflation or credential inflation.
I guess both.
Credit inflation in terms of giving people loans, credential inflation.
So when more and more people get, quote, free loans or subsidized loans to go into college, then employers expect more people To have a college degree.
Now, I was an employer.
I worked as a software entrepreneur for 10 or 15 years, hired hundreds of people, and I'm telling you, I didn't care whether somebody had a degree or not at all.
I cared whether they were passionate about the subject, and I also was more impressed by people who educated themselves.
Also, as an employer, I liked Hiring people who weren't burdened by the average US $20,000 plus of college debt.
Because I could pay them less.
You see?
And they could end up making more take-home money because they weren't paying these huge debts.
What we did was we'd give people some tests and we would let people in.
I didn't care whether they'd gone to college or not.
I mean, I did not take computer science in college and I was the chief technical officer and head research and development coder for the entire business.
So what did I care?
You know, whether people have gone to college or not.
So...
In a free market, there are some disciplines where college is valuable, but there are lots of disciplines where it's a handicap, because you have to pay people more to cover their student loans, and you are not guaranteed an associated rise in their productivity.
Now, if you are, then fantastic.
In other words, if you have to pay someone $1,000 more a month to pay off their college loans, but they provide you $5,000 or $6,000 or $4,000 worth of benefit, fantastic, right?
But if the college degree only gives you $500 more of benefit as an employer, but the applicant is demanding $1,000 more because they have to pay off their college loans, well, this is a net negative.
So, to get people into technical positions or higher-paying positions, college is not necessary.
Now, one of the reasons that I'm able to do this, but in America you can't, is because in 1971 the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling.
You can look it up.
It's Griggs, G-R-I-G-G-S, versus Duke Power.
Saying that if companies use aptitude testing to screen potential employees, they must be prepared to show that their tests are precisely calibrated to the needs of the job.
Otherwise, they will be guilty of employment discrimination if their tests screen out minority workers who might have been able to do the work.
Now, the moment you start talking about discrimination suits, everybody just stampedes out of that particular area.
So, rather than face discrimination suits by the federal government, most employers started using a less precise but legally safe method of screening applicants, college degrees.
So, the government basically banned one of the most advantageous tools employers have to hire poor people, which is to not require a college degree, but instead to look for aptitude testing.
Governments basically banned that with the threat of omnipresent lawsuits.
And so, this has been absolutely catastrophic for the poor.
As, you know, again, basic supply and demand.
I can't believe people study political science and don't have any clue about economics, but I guess we have the evidence of that.
So, when huge numbers of people, Anna, start wanting to get into college, the price of college goes up.
Supply and demand.
Increased supply, relatively fixed costs.
Increased demand, relatively fixed supply, means a rise in prices.
So when all this money starts pouring into colleges, colleges start raising tuitions.
And, of course, politicians cannot resist the urge to buy votes from families with college students and kids who might be heading to college by increasing the size of federal grants and loans to make college, quote, more affordable.
And then they go, wow, lots of demand, lots of money, so let's just start cranking up tuition.
And then after a few years, if tuition increase is entirely predictable as a result of increased subsidies, politicians say, Oh my goodness!
College is getting more expensive!
You need more of government help with college!
And you basically get this mess.
There's a huge amount of corruption in the college loan industry.
In 2007, New York's Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, who was investigating allegations of corruption in the student lending industry, said that there was a massive favoritism and underhanded dealing.
For example, many of the lenders to colleges had established pretty cozy relationships with college officials.
The lenders bribed them to refer students To the lenders for financial aid, right?
So, kickbacks were very common.
Some top financial aid officials at major universities had profited through their stock ownership in firms they put on their school's preferred lender list.
And this was a huge mess.
So what happens when someone of only average or slightly above average intelligence goes to a college?
Well, they generally fail.
So while unemployment among college graduates is only slightly higher than the overall rate, a study of college graduates found that almost 40% of recent graduates are working in jobs that do not require a college degree.
And this, of course, means that for those jobs, wages are depressed, because there's massive amounts of people coming off whose degrees are irrelevant to whatever job they end up with, and so that drives wages down.
So, if you study for four years, it's going to cost you maybe $200,000.
You've got tuition, you've got living expenses, of course, you have books, and you have the income you would have made over those jobs.
A couple of years, right?
Let's say you got a job for $25,000 to $30,000 over four years.
Well, that's $100,000 to $120,000 that you didn't make.
And skills in the workplace that you did not acquire because you were in school.
And that curve is going to follow you throughout your entire working career.
So it costs a huge amount for someone to go to college.
If you end up in a job which does not require a college degree, you have massively failed as an economic actor.
About half of people who enter college don't finish.
Well, of course.
Of course they don't finish.
Because it's a push economy, not a pull economy.
So my father got his PhD in geology because he didn't have a lot of money, but the company who sponsored his PhD said, we'll pay for your PhD, just come work for us for a while after you graduate and we'll consider it a square deal.
That's a pull economy.
So, there are some organizations, some companies that need highly educated people.
They will be happy to pay in return for work commitments for those people who can't afford to pay for themselves.
When you have a push economy, you're basically just trying to jam as many people into the college system as humanly possible.
And then there's no particular place for them to land on the other side.
Now, the more people who enter college doesn't make them smarter.
IQ, certainly by the time you're in your late teens, IQ is pretty much fixed.
And so going to college isn't going to make you smarter.
And so you can put a whole bunch of short people on your basketball team, ain't going to make them taller, just going to make your team lose as a whole and make the tall people really frustrated.
Because when a lot of people of below superior intelligence go into college, the whole curriculum has to change and adapt to those less intelligent people, which is incredibly frustrating for the smarter people.
And a college degree used to mean you were super smart.
And had real cachet.
Now, because a lot of people are jammed into college who have no intellectual particular ability or right to be there, the smarter people get lost in the mix.
And then smarter people often opt out of college because it's just jammed up with the flotsam and jetsam of intellectual mediocrity.
Almost half of people who enter college don't finish it.
Again, massive catastrophe from an economic standpoint.
It's a year or two or three years.
That you could have been working, gaining skills, having an income, but instead you have been usually drinking yourself senseless, sleeping in, not developing work habits, and ending up in debt.
Catastrophic.
Underemployment is even worse for graduate degree holders than it is for undergraduate degree holders.
So, according to an analysis of more than 2,300 undergraduates of 24 institutions, almost half of students demonstrate no significant improvement in a range of skills, including critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing, during their first two years of college.
So, 45% of students show no particular improvement in exactly what college is supposed to teach them, which kind of makes sense when you remember the college used to be for the super smart, and now it's become for everyone who can sign their name and get some government.
Cheese.
So again, sources for all these will be below.
So it's really catastrophic to provide a lot of subsidized loans to people to go to college, particularly when you don't have to go to college to learn a huge amount.
Anna herself.
Look, if you want to do any kind of thinking, the first place you need to do is look in the mirror.
Can I reasonably put out a video saying, guys, neither go bald nor can grow beards when I'm mostly bald and have a beard?
It makes no sense.
Look in the mirror first.
So Anna is putting out videos which claim to provide thinking.
And she puts them out for free and people consume them.
Now if she is in fact providing thinking videos, which in her own mind I'm sure she is, then the idea that you have to go to college to get educated is false.
If she's not putting out critical videos or critical videos that involve thinking, then she should maybe rethink her career.
See, I don't wear a lot of makeup here.
I don't wear a lot of makeup.
In fact, I wear no makeup.
Why?
Because I actually do some research, right, before I create a video.
You know, it may not be the end of the world to do a little less foundation on the skin and a little bit more foundation in critical thinking.
So, also, of course, most college courses are available online for free.
So, the whole point, if you really want to help the poor...
You get rid of all restrictions to aptitude testing for potential employers and you get rid of subsidies for higher education because it removes the temptation to think that you're achieving something positive by going getting a four-year degree in a college when...
A significant number of people are going to end up in jobs which don't require that at all, but with debt that may chase them forever.
College debt you can't even get rid of through bankruptcy, so basically it's a zombie that has no natural economic enemies.
Just to jump back to the first point for a second, it's something I forgot to mention.
One in five American households has no one working.
No one working at all.
And that is pretty catastrophic.
That's a huge decay.
In the skill sets that are passed from generation to generation.
You know, here's how to get ready for a job.
Here's how to have a job interview.
Here's how to win at that job interview.
Here's how to present yourself at work.
Here's how to deal with workplace conflicts.
Here's how to ask for a raise.
All these things are transmitted usually from parent to child.
If you have generations of people not working, it is catastrophic for the poor.
And I think, again, I want to speak for Adam.
He's a smart guy.
Doesn't need me to do it.
But I just wanted to point out that simply saying, well, you have to be against education if you don't want government subsidizing it, is one of the most boring, eye-rolling, repetitive, dull arguments that you ever hear from people on the left.
So people who are more free market oriented say, well, we should do X. And then we say, well, the government's doing it.
They say, well, they're doing it badly.
It's counterproductive.
It's destructive.
This mirage of higher education leading to a great life for everyone is completely false and is incredibly harmful.
to the poor and to those of lower intellectual ability.
It's just really really harmful.
So the idea that you're against education if you don't want the government doing something is so boring and anybody who makes that argument has simply never ever read anything that contradicts their original ideas or their original prejudices.
It's the same thing over and over again.
Well, I don't like the government forced redistribution and the resulting welfare state that is destructive to families, destructive to children, destructive to the economy, destructive for incentives to work.
And then people say, well, then you don't care about the poor.
It's like, no, I do care about the poor.
I dislike unproductive, destructive, propagandizing-based government-run education.
Ah!
Then you hate education!
It's like, no, I really don't.
In fact, I love education, which is why we have to get the government out of these areas as much as possible.
Now, people will...
I mean, just saying, well, you hate X if you don't want the government to do it is literally ridiculous.
It is because the government is the initiation of force.
We all understand that, right?
And saying that you must be against something if you don't want the government to do it is literally like saying...
Literally!
Not even metaphorically.
It is literally like saying, you must be against lovemaking if you oppose rape.
And it's such a boring argument to hear.
And anyone who makes it...
Just has never read an opposing opinion that they've been able to process.
Anyway, let's continue.
So if they gave a shit about education, they would want to ensure that federal loans have the lowest interest rates possible.
They would be in support of what Senator Warren wants.
And what Senator Warren asked for is an interest rate capped at 0.75%, the same rate that banks get when they get a loan from the federal government.
All right.
Well, that is a pretty daring statement.
So she's saying that if you provide massively subsidized loans, that there will never be any negative economic consequences.
And she actually cites banks in this instance.
In other words, banks getting low-interest loans, people getting low-interest loans, artificially low-interest loans as a result of cheap money policies from the Federal Reserve.
People who get artificially low-interest rate loans...
Never have any problems.
There's never any housing crashes.
There's never any derivatives crashes.
There's never any stock crashes.
Because people who just get low interest, highly subsidized loans, like banks, never cause any problems.
Look, the student loan bubble is over a trillion dollars.
Over a trillion dollars is owed by students.
That's going to have to be paid somehow, unless there's going to be some eat-your-cat economic collapse, which we all hope there isn't.
So this idea that, well, look, if you're for education, then the government must be making it free, or you hate learning!
I think there is someone in this conversation, Anna, who really has an aversion to learning and is only parroting leftist idiot talking points.
But let's hear a few more before we finish.
Republicans aren't in favor of that.
If you want to look at the privatization of our education system, who's pushing for that?
Is it liberals or is it conservatives?
Look at Louisiana as a specific example.
They're taking taxpayer money out of their public education system and they're funneling it to vouchers for private education.
Why are they doing that?
Okay, so the question is, why are they doing that?
Well, what's driving that?
Well, the poor are desperate to get out of the government educational system, right?
Because it's just terrible.
Standards have been declining for years.
Tenure means you can't get fired and so on.
And so, of course, they're doing that.
They're doing that largely driven by the needs and desperate desires of the poor who have to end up in these lottery systems with some trying to control over their kids' education.
Now, of course, people on the left, the left is largely artificial.
It's sustained by government control and subsidization of higher education.
It's sustained by, particularly politically, by donations from public sector unions, which is basically forced association for the members who may not support leftist parties.
And immigrants, of course, vastly and overwhelmingly vote for the left, particularly immigrants from non-European countries.
So, yes, you get this completely artificial thing.
Why do they want to privatize education?
Well, for the same reason that feminists don't like arranged marriages, which is that wherever you can expand human choice, the better off people will be.
We wouldn't want women to be forced into marriages, and we don't want people to be forced into government schools.
We want to give them as much choice as possible.
They can still take their vouchers and go to the government schools.
And for government schools to say, we're terrified...
Of voucher programs where we will have to compete with private schools is a confession of how terrible the government school system is.
So if you really care about the poor, a couple of things you want to do.
You want to make sure that moms don't have kids out of wedlock, that you don't get single moms, because the outcomes for the children of single moms are terrible, on average.
Not for everyone, but on average.
It's a greater statistical predictor of negative outcomes in the long run than socioeconomic status, intelligence, class, you name it.
It is the single worst predictive factor for the outcome of children than to be from a single parent household.
Single mom household, basically.
The welfare state is basically a single mom massive transfer of rate, transfer state for more responsible people to less responsible people, which of course, whatever you subsidize, you increase.
You subsidize irresponsibility, you get more irresponsibility.
Whatever you tax, you decrease.
You tax responsibility and hard work.
You get less of that.
I mean, this is basic economics.
This is not even Econ 101.
This is, I know how to run a lemonade stand 101.
Yeah, there's lots of good reasons as to why you really want to privatize.
And what that means is choice.
Right?
So women are very much pro-choice.
Pro-choice!
But of course, a lot of women work in the school system.
And so when choice expands to the school system, a lot of people suddenly become very anti-choice.
Right?
Do they ever talk about the privatization of abortion?
In other words, allowing people to choose or not choose whether to have abortions?
Privatization only occurs when there are choices that people on the left don't like.
Let's continue.
Because they want to ensure that people who can afford education, quality education, get their hands on it.
But for everyone else, if you're poor, screw you.
So if you want to pick yourself up from the bootstraps, how are you going to do so when you don't have access to education because Republicans are trying to privatize that?
Right.
First of all, it's pick yourself up.
Buy the bootstraps.
Anyway, not from your bootstraps.
At least get your bad cliches right.
So, yeah, the idea that if the government isn't paying for it, you wish to deny that to people is just ridiculous.
You hear this from the sort of contraception debate about Hobby Lobby.
If the government isn't subsidizing or paying for women's birth control, somehow you're denying women access to birth control.
And that's just a matter of choice.
People have the right to say no to that which they find objectionable.
If I go up to a woman and say, would you like to go out for dinner?
And she says no, is that wrong of her to deny me access to a dinner date?
Well, it's just through choice.
If I go to an employer and say, I want to work for you, and he says no, is he denying me access to an income?
No, he's just exercising his free choice.
Women claim the right to deny a fetus access to, say, living.
And that's considered to be perfectly viable.
Freedom of association is freedom of association.
Forced association is a violation of freedom of association.
And if you don't want to patronize government schools, you should absolutely have the right not to.
Of course you should.
Let's continue.
I mean, that's a very nuanced issue, isn't it?
Alright, so let's go to the issue of women.
So from 2011 to 2013, Republicans went after women very, very aggressively.
In 2013 alone, 22 states enacted 70 anti-abortion measures, including pre-viability abortion bans, unwarranted doctor and clinic regulations, limits on the provision of medication abortion, I'm sorry, medication abortion, and bans on insurance coverage of abortion.
In 2011, we saw 92 enacted, and then there were 43 abortion restrictions that were enacted by states in 2012.
Okay, so there's no argument here.
She's simply saying that restrictions on abortion are bad, because they restrict a woman's freedom to choose.
So, a woman's freedom to choose to kill a fetus must be vigorously defended.
A woman's ability to choose where her children go to school is an absolute moral outrage.
I mean, this is completely mad.
I'm not here to discuss abortion in particular.
I've done that in other shows.
But the hypocrisy of the left on this issue is absolutely shocking and astounding to anyone with half a moral fiber rolling around in their ethical bowels, right?
Anyway, I think I understand that.
So let's move on to her issues or questions around rape.
And then, of course, you had the whole issue of Republicans and conservatives trying to define rape.
Is a rape legitimate?
Is it forcible?
Why are we having this discussion?
If they genuinely care about women and their safety, they wouldn't try to differentiate between legitimate rape and whatever illegitimate rape is.
I mean, they can't even freaking explain it themselves.
Okay, so let's ask about legitimate versus illegitimate rape.
Let's look at a study.
Now, this is not a definitive study, but it's worth having a look at anyway.
You can't get definitive studies in this area.
So, a researcher named Kanin, again, the links for this will be below, investigated the incidences of false rape allegations made to the police in one small urban community between 1978 and 1987.
He states that unlike...
Police in larger jurisdictions, this department had the resources to, quote, She is the sole agent who can say that the rape charge is false.
So he studied in great detail...
109 total complaints of rape in that period.
And he found that the number of false rape allegations out of 109 was 45.
41% of the total complainants were false rape allegations.
The researchers even verified, wherever possible, for all the complainants who recanted their allegations, that their new version of the events matched the accuser's version of events, right?
Which is a way of really, as definitively as humanly possible, finding out that the rape allegation is false.
And there's many statistics to make the argument that men are just as likely to be falsely accused of rape as women are to be actually raped.
Which is worse?
Well, if you get convicted of rape, you go to prison, where you get raped repeatedly rather than just once.
So, I know which one I would choose.
I leave that to your sleepless 3am moral question-turning.
So, this is sort of significant.
I'm not saying that 40% of all rape allegations are false, but in this case, this is what was discovered.
There was an Air Force study which discovered a similar amount.
There are some studies which put the figure far lower.
There are a few that put it higher.
So, it is actually kind of important to figure out which are true and which are false rape allegations.
It's important because We care about justice.
And it is actually important when women make false claims of rape, they are doing a huge amount of harm to women who've been legitimately and horrifyingly and brutally raped, which is a monstrous, terrible, horrifying crime.
Because they're diverting resources which could be used to prosecute real rape allegations, diverting police resources away from those to chase their own lies about having been raped.
So it hugely matters.
To protect women, we need to be clear about what is forcible rape and what is false rape allegations.
And one of the ways you know the difference is because there has been a force involved.
So, yes, it really does matter, because we want to apply as many resources as humanly possible to the prosecution of real rape, right?
Not rape, which is a false accusation.
And again, this is caring about women.
Also, focusing on the family is really, really important.
The safest place for a woman is in a long-term committed marital relationship.
With a man.
Those are the statistics.
You can't argue with numbers.
Numbers can't be sexist.
They can't be racist.
This is just nonsense.
By far the safest place for women and children is in a monogamous long-term committed marital relationship.
Promoting long-term marital relationships is actually acting in the interests of women in the long run.
Certainly for children.
Let's just take an example.
If a child is being raised by a non-biological step-parent, Particularly if that parent is not married to the mother, that child is 35 times more likely to be abused than a child being raised by his or her biological father.
So, yeah, if you care about the safety of women and children, you will actually try to promote pair bonding and long-term monogamous relationships.
Let's move on.
Alright, let's go to the issue of poor people.
I mean, there are so many different types of policies that have been proposed by Republicans, and conservatives specifically, that go against poor people.
But the best and most recent example that I can give to you now is that Republicans successfully pushed to cut $8.7 billion in food stamp benefits over the next 10 years.
Who do you think that impacts?
It impacts poor people, right?
And I know he'll make the example that, hey, you know what?
If we continue to give them access to food stamps, they're going to be reliant on government money.
They're going to want to be on these government programs.
And they're not going to have any type of motivation to do better for themselves.
You know, because, I don't know, $34 a week for food to feed your entire family is more than enough.
And if you're making that kind of money, you will have no motivation to move on.
Okay, so she's basically repeating an argument that she's aware of, which is to say that when you give people a lot of subsidies, or when you give people subsidies, and food stamps is only one of the, what, 80 means-tested programs available from the federal government for poor people, one, of course, of which is...
School.
School is a massive subsidy for people in the country, particularly the poor.
So she's repeating these arguments.
She's not actually rebutting them.
She's just repeating them in a snarky tone.
Yeah, like, they just want, they think that poor people are going to be like totally dependent on government.
And that's, I mean, ah, ah, right?
I mean, this is not actually making an argument.
This is, eye-rolling is not exactly the pinnacle of Socratic investigation.
But let's go on.
Look, conservatism is a dirty word and conservative is a dirty word because they do go after specific groups of people.
Okay, so she made an argument that a conservative might make and she has completely failed to rebut it.
Like, if you're going to set up a straw man, in other words, you're going to repeat an argument that has some merit while just rolling your eyes, at least rebut it.
Don't imagine that your eye rolling is going to be somehow rebutting the actual argument.
Crazy stuff.
They've done so on multiple occasions.
They don't care about health care for the poor.
They don't care about education.
They want to ensure that we continue with these corporate tax loopholes.
So the wealthiest people in the country continue to be wealthy.
They don't create jobs.
I mean, I can go on and on and on.
Alright.
So again, here you see the same argument.
If people on the right, if conservatives don't want the government to do something, then whatever that government is doing, they must be against that too.
They must be against that too.
If I don't want the local priest forcing people to marry with the help of the police, then clearly I must just be against love.
I must just be completely against marriage and sexual reproduction and parenting and childhood and families.
No, I'm against coercion.
And I think that's pretty close to the Republican position.
I'm not a Republican, but it's pretty close to the Republican position.
They're against coercion.
And they would rather voluntary, local, charitable methods of solving complex social problems than the massive vote-buying bribe-and-hammer machinery of the fascistic federal government.
So, yeah, they would rather have voluntary solutions than coercive solutions.
Also, of course, the fact that the current system is completely unsustainable mathematically is kind of important, right?
So you can buy a whole bunch of votes.
The same thing happened in the late Roman Empire.
You could buy a whole bunch of votes with debased currency, which is really what's happening, but that's going to be harmful to the poor in the long run.
When the government runs out of money, that is going to be incredibly harmful to the poor.
Yeah, it's true.
A heroin addict really wants more heroin, but if you keep giving it to him, you're not helping him in the long run.
So when a non-political dude tries to have a conversation about, oh, woe is me, people don't like me because I'm conservative, why don't you read up on the issues?
Because the reality is, conservatives go after the people who are not wealthy, the people who can't take care of themselves, the people who are in the least or the lowest position of power.
And so, yeah, it's a dirty word.
It's a dirty word because they don't give a shit about anyone who's not wealthy.
And that's interesting because basically the left has been winning since the 1960s, right?
I mean, you've got Lyndon Johnson's Great Society.
You've got going off the gold standard, which allows government free and easy Keynesian economics stimulus packages that they can create.
So you've had a massive amount of multi, multi, multi-trillion dollar transfers of wealth from the rich and the middle classes to the poor, right?
So the left, and this was all supposed to end poverty.
The Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs were all supposed to end poverty in the 1970s, and they were supposed to close the gap between rich and poor.
How's that been working out?
Has that actually been achieved?
Well, of course not.
Well, of course not.
Anybody who looks with a sense of history and a sense of economics and also looks at the promises made by the social programs of the left and sees the results understands that it's not working.
In fact, poverty in many ways is worse now than it was before.
The opportunities to get out of poverty are fewer, which has something to do with government subsidies of higher education.
And more and more people are being trapped in a semi-permanent underclass of dependence through the welfare state, through terrible education, through government schools, through lack of economic opportunities, through hyper-regulation.
You know, if regulation had stayed in America at the same level that it was in 1945, then the economic output of the U.S., Would be more than four times higher than it is now.
It would be 52 or 53 trillion dollars a year rather than the 14 or 15, depending on how you measure it that is currently going on.
So, if the only thing that happened is massive, huge regulation had not gone through, and the Federal Registry now is in the hundreds of thousands of pages, we'd be four times wealthier.
Would that actually have helped the poor if we'd had a little bit less government interference in the economy?
Of course that would have helped the poor.
So, saying that if you're against increasing government control of the economy, that you're somehow against the poor, shows a staggering ignorance of history.
It shows a staggering ignorance of economics, and that which actually creates wealth in society.
I mean, it troubles me because, I mean, these are people who have a pretty popular show, and this must go through a whole bunch of people before it gets out on the internet.
And not one person in this whole chain of custody between getting these thoughts together and putting the show together and publishing it, not one single person seems to have put the brakes on and said, well, let's try and understand this opposing position a little bit better.
Let's try and understand where this person is coming from rather than roll their eyes and make snarky comments and, you know, empty-headed comments.
Spray tan crap all over the screen.
Let's try and actually figure out what's going on.
Let's maybe invite Adam on to debate the position.
Maybe they did.
Maybe they didn't.
I don't know.
But just this, well, if you want to cut funding to the poor, you just hate the poor and want them to be poor, well...
Again, you know, study a little history.
And the funny thing is that this woman talking about higher education as the prerequisite for success, she got her political science master's in 2010.
She'd been broadcasting for some time before that, so she didn't interrupt her work schedule.
She did work school part-time, which meant that she was making money doing stuff which she was later trained to do, if you assume that the political...
She didn't have a degree in journalism.
She's out here being an internet news personality.
Doesn't have a degree in journalism, but she's doing it.
And she actually studied.
She didn't take two years off or a year off to take her master's.
She continued to work.
So she got a job and then she pursued her education on the side.
Wasn't that great?
Good for you.
Fantastic.
That's hard work.
I'm impressed.
So why the hell can other people?
Why do they have to take four years off and get into huge debt?
That's not how you did it!
Anyway, I think we're almost done.
So that's what the real issue is.
And if you care about people picking themselves up from the bootstraps, and if you care about education, I would do a little bit of research into what conservatives are doing to our education system in the United States.
With that said, final clip.
Let's take a look.
Now, it's weird that I can be conservative and never talk about religion.
Because conservatives are a bunch of Bible-thumping, brainwashed, they believe the earth is a thousand years old.
How come I'm an atheist?
See, they just pick and choose whatever they want.
But because I say feed your own kids, because I say don't have kids if you can't afford to have kids, well then that makes me...
That.
Why don't we...
We need a new party, I swear to God.
But listen, I know you think they're onto something here, but let's call it the liberty party.
You people can try to convince me of what I am.
All day long, it's never going to work.
I know exactly who the fuck I am.
One really great way to ensure that people don't have kids when they can't afford kids is to give them access to birth control, something that conservatives are not in favor of.
So again, this is this argument that you have to give women subsidized or free or taxpayer-funded birth control in order to provide them access to birth control.
You have to use force to redistribute income because women just somehow can't earn that by themselves.
My argument would be pretty much if you think that coercive redistribution is somehow giving people choice, then you are confusing rape with lovemaking.
You are confusing theft with charity.
And that is pretty incredibly, disastrously irresponsible to put things across.
Women can earn their own birth control.
It's ten bucks a month for the pill.
I'm pretty sure that women can afford that.
Now, if women can't afford that...
Well, then they certainly shouldn't be having kids, and they won't have kids if they can't make a living out of it through the coercive redistribution of other people's money.
So, I don't think I'll be zooming back to the Young Turks channel for a little while, because clearly this is where their...
I don't know, what could I... I guess I could loosely say where their heads are at, which seems to be rather dark and looking up their own esophagus, but I guess it is an indication of just how great government education is that people listen to this stuff with a straight face.
So thanks, Adam, for putting the ideas out there.
I really, really appreciate it.
Have yourself a great day.
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