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Aug. 11, 2014 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:27:57

2768 Collective Guilt for Fun and Profit - Saturday Call In Show August 9th, 2014

How does the death penalty fit into the non-aggression principle? How should contemporary society handle murders or rapists without warehousing them? I'm married and take my anger towards my mother out on my wife and anything negative that my wife does which reminds me of my mother sets me off on a verbal tirade. How I can separate my feelings for one from the other?

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	Well, good evening, everybody.
	Hope you're doing well.
	It's Stefan Molyneux and the Mike-ness from Free Domain Radio.
	Hope you're having a magnificent weekend.
	It's Saturday night, this lovely August of the year.
	I'm very happy to see 2014.
	And Mike, do we have anything to chat about before we chat about?
	Just to note to everyone that we're going to be doing an extra show.
	This Tuesday night at 10 p.m.
	Eastern Time.
	Just an extra call-in show.
	Pop by.
	Stop in the chat room.
	Experience the show live on YouTube.
	We've had so many requests for call-in shows lately that we're experimenting doing an extra one, which we'll probably do from time to time.
	But yeah, Tuesday night, 10 p.m., be there.
	Other than that, it's the usual schedule.
	Alright, and who do we have on first?
	Alright, CJ is up first today, and CJ wrote in and said, How does the death penalty fit into the non-aggression principle when those who commit murder or rape violate the NAP? He also said, How should contemporary society handle murderers or rapists without warehousing them?
	Go ahead, CJ. Alright, appreciate the question.
	Why is this important to you?
	I'm not saying it's not important, I'm just curious why this is, like, Everyone has their coin to spend on this conversation, and this is your coin to spend.
	This is what you're buying, and I'm just curious why.
	I think it's actually an emotional prejudice, to be honest with you.
	I think the position that I take is...
	Why keep prisoners alive?
	I guess it started maybe...
	A couple of months ago when I read an article about Charles Manson getting conjugal visits from his wife and getting a television and getting access to a cell phone and I thought, why is this man still being kept alive after 40 some odd years of heinous crime?
	And really the example I always use whenever I'm arguing for the death penalty is people who hurt children And so I think what it really boils down to is an emotional prejudice I have against, you know,
	child rapists, child murderers, and I think it has to do more with my own abuse, really, than it does to the sanctity of life, I guess, which, after listening to this podcast, and kind of the concept of, you know, universalism, I can't say If all human life is sacred, then all human life is sacred.
	I can't pick and choose between the two.
	Well, yeah.
	All human life is sacred is not a philosophical proposition.
	Okay.
	I mean, and it certainly fails the UPB test, like universally preferable behavior.
	Because if all human life is sacred, then self-defense becomes impossible, which means human life can't be defended, and therefore all human life can't be sacred.
	Because a murderer will then kill another human being...
	And the human being can't defend himself.
	So anyway, it doesn't really – it's not a philosophical statement.
	That's sort of an emotional or quasi-religious statement.
	It's like a deepity in all human life.
	I guess then it means that I guess in my mind that to utilize the death penalty would be to kind of preemptively – it would be self-defense against people who would – Well, no, no.
	Sorry.
	Hang on, because certainly...
	Well, I mean, first of all, Charles Manson, of course, not a child murderer.
	But Charles Manson is not out committing crimes while he's in jail, right?
	Right.
	I mean, he may be committing crimes in jail.
	I don't know.
	But he's not out committing crimes, right?
	So, warehousing does prevent...
	More crimes from being committed, right?
	Right.
	Now, at the moment, of course, warehousing somebody is offensive to the sensibilities of taxpayers in general, particularly those who are for the death penalty, because they're forced to pay for the prisoner's incarceration, right?
	Yeah, that was part of the article.
	It was something like $7 million has gone into his treatment over the past X amount of years.
	Just from the state.
	I believe he's in California.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, so you can't really make a case.
	Because obviously, even if we accept the philosophical viability of the death penalty, which we can get to, it's not a cost-saving measure in the current system.
	Because obviously, the last thing you'd want to do is to kill someone who later turns out to be innocent.
	So you have to allow them so many appeals and so many ways to try and get out of it and ways to try and Well, what if it was one of those things where you catch a guy on video who—I don't know.
	Would you mind indulging a hypothetical with me, or would you rather not?
	No, I get it.
	So you have a situation wherein somebody is— Absolutely guilty.
	Yeah, like, you know, they're caught on video.
	There's 30 witnesses.
	They pull out the gun and they say, I'm going to kill you, and then they shoot the guy or, you know, whomever.
	Yeah, but I mean, no, but see, we have those kinds of things, and people still get exonerated, right?
	Like the Central Park Five.
	I don't know if you followed any of this kind of stuff.
	Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	I mean, Central Park Five, I mean, they all confessed.
	You know, there was a preponderance of evidence.
	They all confessed.
	The confessions were caught on tape.
	Their parents were present.
	They describe things that only they could know.
	I mean, it's about a solid conviction, to my admittedly amateur understanding, of the law.
	It's about a solid conviction scenario, as you can imagine, and then they just got pardoned.
	I mean, no new evidence had come forward, and now they're getting a whole bunch of money from the taxpayers.
	After what seems to be a pretty open and shut case of, you know, five of them raping This white woman into a near coma death unconsciousness where the doctors did not expect her to make it through the night.
	The beatings and rapes were that brutal.
	So yeah, you can come up with a scenario wherein it's about as certain as certain can be.
	But look, there was another guy who went to the death penalty recently where there were like 17 witnesses who all say...
	Yep.
	He was in a parking lot, pulled out a gun, shot the guy.
	It was a cop, I think an off-duty cop or something, that was being shot, that was the victim.
	And the still thing went through 10 years of back and forth or something like that.
	So you can come up with theoreticals.
	It doesn't hugely matter, I think, because theoreticals aren't particularly good in creating universals, if that makes any sense.
	It does.
	You know, well, I want to build a bridge that doesn't fall down.
	Well, theoretically, if a giant boulder the size of a city smashes into that, it will fall down.
	It's like, that's true.
	And I can't build it in a way that that's not – that it will withstand that.
	Right?
	But I'm still not going to pay a lot for insurance.
	What is your personal stance on it?
	I mean, like, you know, I guess what is your – Thoughts on it?
	I mean, would you – if you had to make one claim one way or another about it?
	Well, no.
	See, this is the beautiful thing about a free society is what the hell does it matter, what I think?
	It's like saying, would you buy an iPod?
	Well, whether I would buy an iPod or not has very little bearing on whether iPods exist, right?
	Right.
	So the real question – I mean sort of the whole point of a free market, particularly in the area of defense and all that, the personal defense or even national defense and crime and punishment and the death penalty and so on is – well, what does it hugely matter, what I think?
	Because I'll just be one of billions of consumers who are all being pitched to – The most efficient and moral and cheapest methodologies for dealing with these kinds of crimes.
	I'll just be one guy buying – one potential guy buying some kind of security, right?
	Oh, I see.
	As in almost as if someone might buy a type of insurance, you would be just kind of – I don't know – subscribing to one kind of ideology as to – Well, no.
	So it's like – yeah.
	So I say, do I think that – Health insurance should include demonic possession, right?
	Yeah.
	Well, I wouldn't buy that.
	But, you know, whether I think it should or shouldn't is not the right question.
	If there's a market for it, then people will buy insurance for demonic possession, right?
	And look, I get that this is annoying and obtuse, and I'll get to my thoughts about it in a sec.
	But before I get to my thoughts, I want to point out why they don't matter that much.
	Right?
	I mean, there are lots of bands out there, I think, like, they sound sort of like a Chinese opera singer strangling a cat in a blender, right?
	Right, and I understand that you enjoy Queen, and so for me to, you know, say, hey man...
	For me to say something like, well, you know, Queen's good, but...
	Look, look, look.
	Saying I enjoy Queen is like saying nuns enjoy Christ.
	Yeah.
	It's as close as I'm willing to come to a secular religion.
	And in fact, it basically is a secular religion.
	And Steph, I think it's pretty clear that you would support the death penalty for anyone that doesn't enjoy Queen, obviously.
	Well, I mean, who wouldn't?
	No, no, it's more than supporting it.
	I think I would enforce it.
	I mean, so...
	So just, you know, obviously be aware of that.
	Mandatory Queen listening for all.
	Yeah.
	I mean, you know, Queen listening will continue until there's no other bands that you want to listen to.
	And that makes perfect sense to me.
	So it doesn't hugely matter.
	So would I buy security, which included a death penalty?
	Well, I don't know.
	I'd have to hear the case because let me tell you how I would sell you both.
	Right.
	As a salesman.
	Right.
	So if I think you're into the death penalty, let's say I think you're not into the death penalty.
	Right.
	So I would come when I'd say, listen, dude, let me tell you how how our security, how staff security works.
	Right.
	First and foremost, we never ever want to get into a situation where there's a violent crime.
	Prevention, right?
	An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
	And so we offer insurance for schools.
	We offer insurance for childhood misdeeds.
	We offer insurance for parenting and all this kind of stuff.
	And so we regularly, you know, we'll meet with parents.
	We'll give them free services.
	Brain scans to make sure their kids' brains are developing properly.
	We'll help them out with empathy training.
	We'll test the kids verbally.
	We'll test their motor reflexes when they see non-empathetic situations on a YouTube video.
	I don't know.
	I'm just making stuff up.
	But all these things could be done, right?
	And we're going to make sure those mirror neurons develop in the right way in the right place.
	And then don't even have to worry about violent crime.
	Because that person would no more stab someone else than you would pull your own tooth out, right?
	Assuming you're not Nick Nolte in some horrible film, which was one of the last films I ever saw with my family.
	So...
	Which film is that?
	Oh, I can't remember if somebody can look it up.
	It's a Nick Nolte film where it was just a completely horrifying film where he ends up pulling out his own tooth.
	Anyway, but...
	So from that standpoint, you know, I'd be like, well, I don't...
	I don't want the death penalty, so we're going to work all about prevention.
	Now, if somebody does slip through our fingers or something does happen, which could happen, right?
	People get brain tumors and just become violent or something like that.
	Well, then what we do is we confine and we work that person, right?
	Because we want them to pay restitution to the victims, right?
	Because right now, like under the current system, in the present, you're victimized during...
	The crime, you're then re-victimized with time, unpaid time, effort, and energy during the court process, and then you're re-victimized a third time when you have to pay for the incarceration costs, right?
	So these are all pretty horrifying.
	The movie is called Affliction, by the way.
	It's the reason why I remember it as being one of the last movies I saw with my family.
	Anyway, so...
	We obviously will confine that person – let's say that they're a first-degree murderer.
	Of course, if it's a brain tumor, then whatever, right?
	But let's just say it happens, right?
	Then we do want restitution to be paid to the victims as much as possible, and therefore we're going to work that person.
	So it's not going to be a net cost to society.
	So that's one way you would sell it.
	And I don't know the degree to which – I don't think that would even really occur.
	Violence in a peaceful society is like demonic possession in an atheist community.
	It just doesn't really happen.
	It doesn't really fit.
	Well, I was thinking about your kind of...
	The idea that I really like, which is that you stop the violence towards children and you have a new society within five years.
	And then I think, well, what about that gap of five years where there are people who are kind of grandfathered out of the program and they...
	They were still subject to violence and let's grow up to be sociopaths.
	Oh, yeah.
	No, listen.
	I get all this transitional stuff, right?
	I mean I fully understand that.
	And of course there is a risk in making your children more empathetic if society is getting more sociopathic and the levels of sociopathy have doubled in the last 15 years.
	Yeah.
	Which is that you are – unless you – if you give your kids empathy and moral strength, you are really saving the world.
	If you give your kids empathy plus compliance, then you're just serving them up as sacrificial lambs to the predators among us, right?
	The intraspecies predators known as sociopaths.
	So there's all this transition and stuff.
	I'm just sort of saying how I would sell it if I was running the no death penalty.
	Now – The death penalty, as far as the moral justification occurs, clearly, I think we would understand that the death penalty in an immediate situation is perfectly valid, right?
	In other words, if you have to kill someone who's, say, beating your head against a sidewalk, then that is justified, right?
	Which is why Zimmerman, George Zimmerman, did not go to jail, right?
	Because he was acting within the legal bounds of Of self-defense, according to all of the available evidence and eyewitness accounts.
	So, in that situation, the death penalty, in other words, killing in an extremity of self-defense, we understand is valid.
	So, the death penalty in the moment is valid.
	Now, the question is the length of time involved.
	Now, let's say that you are a 15-year-old kid.
	And your bike is stolen.
	And it's your treasured bike and it's the only bike you've got and you can't get another one or whatever, right?
	And then two months later, you're walking down some neighborhood and you see your bike lying on someone's lawn.
	No one's around, right?
	And, I mean, let's just say you remember the serial number and you check the serial number or whatever it is.
	You know for sure it's your bike.
	Can you take it back?
	Would I think of it?
	Yes, I would.
	Right.
	So there we have a two-month gap wherein you can perform the same action that you could have performed immediately, right?
	So if some kid grabs your bike, bikes off, falls off your bike and runs away, you can go and get your bike back, right?
	In the moment.
	Now, two months later, you can perform exactly the same action and it would be morally justified, right?
	Yes.
	So that's interesting, which is that if you can kill a man who's about to kill you in the moment, what's the big problem with doing it two months later?
	If you can recover your own property two months later, which is the same thing, you could do in the moment, right?
	Yeah, I guess I must have missed a step, and forgive me, but how would you, like, by, within the metaphor, recovering the property would be Getting restitution for the death of said family member or said...
	Well, if you can kill a man...
	So if you can steal a bike back in the moment that was stolen from you, we can also steal it two months later back.
	And if you can kill a man who's about to kill you in the moment, can you not also kill him two months later?
	Now, you could make the argument that one is preventing a death in the moment, right?
	And in the other one, you're not actually being threatened with death in the moment, right?
	Yes.
	But nonetheless, we do have a situation with the bike where whether it takes place in the moment or two months later is immaterial.
	You can still perform the act of recovering your property in the moment or two months later.
	So again, this doesn't answer everything, but it does mean because everyone says, well, you can shoot the guy in self-defense, but you can't go two months later and shoot him.
	Yeah, and I can see how the end result is the same with the bike scenario.
	So, I mean, it's equally applicable.
	And I'm sure that there are some people that would say, well, there's two months of my time without my bike.
	But, I mean, the desired result is still achieved.
	You've gotten the bike back.
	So, I can see how that...
	Yeah, so basically, you are acting in a manner that's independent of time and still acting in a justified manner, right?
	Right.
	With the bike, right?
	It doesn't matter whether you do it right now or two months from now to recover your property.
	Both are justified morally, right?
	So shooting a guy who's about to kill you in the moment versus shooting a guy – if someone shoots a guy, I can shoot him, right?
	We see this with mall shootings, right?
	So mall shooters or the shooters who – particularly the American phenomenon, you get some guy shooting.
	So if you see a guy shooting someone, you can shoot him, right?
	And you'll be a hero, right?
	Yeah, I would imagine in most cases.
	I mean, there's a recent trend where the guy that does shoot the guy that is shooting people is somehow demonized or villainized.
	Yes, but he's not charged, right?
	I mean, under common law traditions, if I see someone shooting a bunch of people and I shoot that person, in no way, shape, or form will I be charged with murder.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	And the shooters know this, which is why they try to go to places where guns are banned, right?
	School campuses and the Aurora shooter, the movie Batman movie shooter, he went to a movie theater where there was no guns allowed.
	He drove out of his way to go there, right?
	So if you shoot a shooter, you are not charged.
	That is legal and viable under certainly the common law traditions and in the U.S., So if I can shoot a guy who's been shooting a bunch of people in the moment, can I shoot him later?
	Well, you could say, well, in the moment, he's shooting people, right?
	But if I see him later, I don't know if he's – obviously, he's free.
	So I don't know if he's going to be shooting other people in the future, right?
	So – and I don't have – this is not a perfect answer to all of this, and I understand that we're just tossing around a couple of theoreticals.
	But this time slice is always given as to why self-defense is valid in the moment and But, not a month or two later.
	But if getting your own property back is valid in the moment and is also valid two or three months later, then we've already said that the same action is independent of time.
	The morality of the action of recovering property is independent of time.
	It's an interesting juxtaposition.
	It's an interesting kind of, those two kind of parallel storylines almost, how interesting it is.
	Right, so the only point is to take out the time slice because there's very few people who will argue that self-defense in the moment is invalid, right?
	You can't shoot someone who's trying to kill you.
	You can't kill someone who's trying to kill you.
	But then they say, well, but, you know, so that is a death penalty.
	But then they say, well, when time has elapsed, then it's not valid.
	But that's not the case with theft, right?
	So I just want to take in the time equation.
	I'm not saying this solves the whole problem and it's like some, oh, you know, And therefore, whatever, right?
	But I'm just saying, taking the time aspect of the crime and response, you can take the time aspect out with regards to property, so it's not immediately clear to me why you immediately can't take...
	You can't have that time aspect still there for murder, right?
	If you can get your own property back two months later, can you not shoot someone two months later?
	Now, of course...
	You then would be subject to all of the – if you were caught, you would be subject to all of the checks and balances of whatever system was in place to make sure you didn't shoot the wrong guy or whatever it is.
	So I'm just saying that stuff is complicated and challenging.
	And certainly it would be a deterrent to murderers if they knew that anyone who shot them and was right about shooting them months later would not get prosecuted.
	That would make being a murderer a bit more tricky, right?
	Yeah, and I was even thinking in the way of, again, like I said before, this kind of stems from a prejudice about children, you know, towards people that hurt children.
	I think it would be a deterrent towards people who are actively seeking to hurt children that, you know, there is a very strict death policy.
	There is like a zero-tolerance Yeah, I mean, not strictly people who are seeking to hurt children, because then there'd be the death penalty for spanking, right?
	But I know what you mean, right?
	So people who are committing egregiously evil acts, right?
	So in the novel American Psycho, if you've ever read it, the guy in the zoo, right?
	I mean, he's...
	So, okay, okay, right, well, so that would be So you would subscribe.
	You would probably subscribe to a dispute resolution organization that would enforce the death penalty for child murderers, right?
	Yeah, probably.
	Well, I mean, yes, actually, I would.
	I mean, there was that guy, he was a singer for some band in the UK, and he was a...
	I'm never sure.
	I always get the two mixed up.
	He was either a pedophile or a pederist, but he had definitely...
	Oh, Gary Glitter.
	Yeah, no, not Gary Glitter.
	It's some guy from some band from the 2000s.
	I think they were called the Lost Prophets.
	And so he said in his conviction, he said that he was happy that they were going to put him away for 35 years because he was an enthusiastic and dedicated predator.
	And I also heard a sex therapist talk, some guy who's been working with specifically men for the past 35 years, and he says the hardest thing to cure is the man who has already crossed the line, or the woman for that matter, who has already crossed the line into the sexual abuse of children or violence towards children.
	Yeah, look, I mean, I've made this argument for many years that The conscience short-circuits and is no longer available for recovery when you have done an evil for which there is no restitution.
	And there is no restitution.
	There's no restitution possible for the rape of a child.
	Or the murder of a child.
	Right.
	Like there's no parent who would say, well, okay, if you give me $10 million, you can murder my child, right?
	Right.
	If somebody said, listen, Steph...
	If I steal your bike, I'll give you $10 million, right?
	It's like, well, then basically you're just buying my bike for an absurd amount of money, right?
	But for certain ills, there is no restitution that is possible.
	And where restitution is impossible, forgiveness is impossible.
	And where forgiveness is impossible, it seems to me that incarceration, the isolation of the human virus from the community is the right thing to do.
	I don't view humanity as a single species, right?
	I don't view—it's like saying dogs are a single species.
	I mean, they kind of are, but not rabid dogs.
	I mean, they're dogs that are sick and dangerous and all that kind of stuff, right?
	And so I don't view humanity as a single species because we're not all the same.
	There are human predators and there are human victims and there are human heroes and there are human villains and, right, we're a whole ecosystem of ethics.
	And this is very well supported by the science.
	This is not just me with some medieval slice and dice ethical approach.
	Human beings in no way, shape or form are all equal.
	This is part of the endless danger of the concept of the soul, that inside the sociopath is some tender-hearted, God-created essence that can be somehow contacted through some mystical ritual involving a guy with a funny collar, right?
	I mean it doesn't – it's not how the brain works.
	It's not how the brain develops.
	And we segregate human beings from predators.
	I mean there's a reason why the tiger is in the cage because the tiger is a predator and people want to go and visit the predator and so on because it's cool.
	You can take cool pictures.
	But if somebody notices that the cage is open – I mean, everyone gets the fuck out of there as quickly as humanly possible, right?
	And a tiger is a far less dangerous predator than a human being is.
	Far less dangerous.
	I studied anthropology for two years before the relativism just drove me fucking insane.
	All cultures are equal!
	I mean, it's this idea that, I mean, I'll go off on a huge tangent on it, but I mean, I won't go off on a huge tangent about it, but I mean, I just was thinking to myself, I was listening to these professors talk about cultural relativism and this idea that you can't judge one culture against another.
	And I'm like, who, what the...
	So what they're essentially saying is that genital mutilation is acceptable for both men and women as long as it's under the guise of a cultural norm or that the force feeding of children is acceptable or that the forced body mutilation of children into the rite of passage is acceptable.
	Or the beating of women for getting raped is acceptable.
	And having professors say, well, you know, it's important to maintain...
	I had one professor actually have the gall to say objective relativism when looking at Middle Eastern culture...
	And saying, well, there's a lot of precious information there.
	And, I mean, my response, of course, at this point, I didn't want to argue with him.
	I'm sorry, I don't understand that.
	What do you mean there's a lot of precious information there?
	Oh, he was like, he was saying that, meaning that there was a lot of information about what not to do in a culture, what not to do in a society, as far as my opinion.
	Yeah, exactly.
	I mean, these are things, at least in my opinion, in my class, you know, as I dropped from that major, I just found that it was These are culture and these are people who are to learn what not to do.
	These are examples of mistakes, and yet you've still got people saying, you know, oh, look at how one they are with nature, and if it's the cruel first world that's ruining their natural rhythm.
	Wait, wait, wait, cruel first world?
	I thought you couldn't judge cultures.
	Right, exactly, exactly.
	So would these people say that the Holocaust was not wrong because that's just where the German culture was at the time?
	I think that with anthropology, man, the second you begin to go into that kind of challenge, there becomes this interesting shell of, well, anthropology is a soft science and we're only to collect metadata or swaths anthropology is a soft science and we're only to collect metadata or We're not supposed to be quantifying or qualifying.
	Hang on, do they really say that it's a soft science?
	Yes, actually.
	I had for two years.
	I had professors tell me that it was a soft science.
	No, no.
	But saying that something is a soft science is like saying, honey, I have a soft erection.
	It's like, well, wait.
	Which is it?
	If it's an erection, well, then it's something you should be able to sharpen a blade on.
	And if it's not an erection, then please don't call it an erection, right?
	Right.
	If it's a science, then it can't be soft, right?
	You know, it's math.
	Spoken by made-up unicorns where the numbers are my imaginary friends.
	It's like, that's soft math, right?
	It's like the storm clouds gathering guy who was saying, well, I did say it was airborne.
	I did say Ebola had gone airborne, but I was using the term airborne in a layperson sense, in a layman sense, because I'm not an expert.
	It's like, nope.
	Nope.
	Right.
	Layman doesn't mean wrong.
	It does not.
	When I say two and two make five, I'm really speaking about that in the layman sense.
	It's like, nope, that's just wrong.
	Layman means you're not specifically trained in the field.
	It doesn't mean you get to pass off your incorrect statements as somehow, well, I'm using these in the layman terms.
	Like, nope, you're just using them incorrectly.
	Right.
	Right.
	I mean, when I say that there are unicorns in space, I'm obviously using it as a layman physicist.
	It's like, nope.
	It's just wrong all around.
	So anyway, we could sort of spend a lot of time on that nonsense.
	But no, this is all just self-hatred from white Western Europeans, right?
	I mean, we're just raised to hate ourselves, right?
	We're just bad.
	All cultures are fine, except white Western Europeans, well, we're just bad.
	We're just bad.
	We're polluters.
	We're colonialists.
	We're just terrible, terrible people.
	All other cultures live at one with nature and are all kinds of wonderful and soft and fuzzy, even if they hack off the labia of their little girls.
	But, you see, white Western Europeans, well, you know, you're just bad.
	You're just the devil incarnate.
	And, I mean, this is just part of the general...
	You know, that's a whole other topic, which we'll get into another time.
	But this is why you only ever hear these pejoratives applied to, frankly, non-white, non-Western races and cultures.
	We've got this – I mean, again, speaking collectively, sort of white Western Europeans have developed a lot of empathy, which is why we kind of work to end slavery and give women's suffrage.
	We've got a lot of empathy.
	Right?
	And some of the less empathetic cultures around there are like, ooh, whitey got mirror neurons.
	Excellent!
	Now we can harvest them for fun and profit.
	So we'll turn him against himself, we'll make him guilty, and we'll turn all the whites into Catholics and we'll be the priests.
	I had to give a presentation on how...
	Racism is not a two-dimensional idea.
	It's a three-dimensional idea.
	It can apply between blacks and whites, Hispanics and Eskimos.
	It's not simply just only white people can be racist.
	And the response that I got was, you are a racist, and thank you for contributing to the racist agenda.
	I mean, I got torn down for it.
	I mean, I stood my ground, of course, for 15 minutes, but it was just brutal to see how willing people are to just flagellate them.
	I think that's the word.
	Just self-flagellation of just, oh, my whiteness is my...
	It's almost like this.
	It's just odd.
	It's an odd symptom, I guess, of the community college or really any college level.
	Introductory and advanced anthropology classes.
	Oh, yeah.
	No, I mean, look, I mean, that's, you know, the whites are the ones you can hate.
	The whites are the ones you can hate.
	I mean, this is the only group.
	And then people say, well, you see, race, it's just a social construct, right?
	Which is why, which is why aboriginals in, in Australia constantly give birth to blonde, blue-eyed, Norwegian-looking kids.
	It's not a social construct.
	And even if race is a social construct, these people should immediately try and get rid of affirmative action, right?
	Immediately.
	But they never do.
	They never say race is a social construct and therefore we must get rid of affirmative action, we must get rid of the Civil Rights Act, whatever it is that's got quotas and crap like that because it's a fiction, right?
	They never say that.
	Race is...
	It's just a social construct.
	When people start talking about biological differences between the races, suddenly then the big defense is, well, it's all just made-up stuff, you know?
	Like the different races of dogs are all just social constructs.
	It's like, nope, they're really not.
	They're quite different.
	A Dalmatian is different from a poodle.
	It's not just a social construct.
	It's not something we made up out of nothing.
	There's a book called Festival Elephants and the Myth of Global Poverty, and this guy basically goes into it and he says...
	Stop donating, stop giving your money to countries that you think are poorer than you are because you are destroying their infrastructure.
	And if you stopped paying attention to the The pictures of the starving Ecuadorian children and deciding to send you 35 cents a day so that they don't have to...
	Or basically so these funds can go into paying NGOs who basically do nothing other than supply water filters that don't work.
	It's just fascinating the lack of information that people have and the idea that they can put $1.50 inside of an envelope Send it to El Salvador or send it to South Sudan and say, I have done my part.
	My European guilt has been appeased.
	And I can now go to the wine mixer and let everyone know that I'm supporting Ricardo.
	And he's going to second grade for the first time this week.
	And it's all because of me.
	Yeah, well, I mean, it's...
	I don't know what European guilt is supposed to mean about all this kind of stuff.
	That's just kind of collective nonsense, right?
	You know, I mean, I guess, I mean, Africa now has like roads and cars and cell phones and medicine and all this kind of stuff.
	And, you know, when the Europeans first got to sub-Saharan Africa, I'm not talking about Egypt, when Europeans first got to sub-Saharan Africa, they hadn't invented the wheel.
	They had no written language.
	They had never built a two-story structure.
	And now they have some pretty useful stuff.
	You know, they've got antibiotics.
	Kind of helpful, right?
	When you get sick.
	And of course, yeah, obviously there was brutality and all that, of course.
	No question about all of that.
	But it's just something to sort of point out.
	Would you rather live in Africa now or before the Europeans came?
	I mean, of course you'd rather live in Africa now.
	South Africa in particular, which is why even under apartheid, which is the immoral system, it's a status system...
	But why under apartheid?
	The blacks were all swarming to get into South Africa.
	And of course the economic development of nations now is pretty much divided between those that used to be European colonies and those that didn't.
	And those that didn't used to be European colonies are generally doing a lot worse.
	So it's complicated.
	It's not as simple as white bad, right?
	Yeah, well, you see the kind of influx of Islam from the East moving West, and then you see, I mean, I'm getting my directions messed up here, but you're getting the effects of Islam moving in, and then you get the effects of Christianity and Catholicism moving in, and they're meeting in the middle, and you're getting this terrible kind of ideological battle going on.
	And then you have essentially illiterate people fighting over books and resources or ideologies and resources that they don't even know.
	I mean, it's almost as if they don't know their own history.
	They just kind of allow it to repeat itself every 15 years.
	No, no.
	It's because they have a scapegoat.
	The scapegoat is white guys.
	Why is Africa doing badly?
	Why is Africa doing badly?
	It's because of white guys and colonialism.
	Why are the blacks in America doing so badly?
	Well, it's because of whites and slavery.
	And whenever you have a scapegoat, whenever you have a scapegoat, you get paralyzed.
	Whenever you sort of wake up in the morning and say, well, my whole community is doing really badly because of those guys over there, you get to pour All of your rage and hatred and resentment and frustration into that other group.
	And then you don't have to look inward because you have an external source of blame for all of your community's problems.
	And when you have that, all you focus on is being angry, being resentful, and you become manipulative, and you become stuck.
	And this is why acceptance...
	Of white guilt is one of the most racist things, I believe, that can be done to any other group.
	What is that?
	I've not heard of that.
	I've heard of the white man's privilege before, but I've never heard of white guilt before.
	You've never heard of white guilt?
	Weren't you in anthropology?
	We were just talking about all this.
	I mean, I might have heard of it.
	Because it just sounds like white noise to me.
	It just sounds like this kind of very foreign concept.
	No, no, no.
	Look, white guilt is when...
	White guilt is when a white person says that the ills of another community are because of whites.
	Okay.
	Right?
	And that is a terrible and destructive and racist thing to do.
	To me, accepting unearned guilt, when you accept unearned guilt, what you do is you strip other people, other groups, other communities of moral agency.
	I mean, if I were to accept any kind of collective emotion, I would feel pride in the degree to which Europeans ended slavery, and the degree to which Europeans, through the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, created some of the freest societies the world has ever experienced,
	and the degree to which Europeans, white Western Europeans, have created some of the most beautiful music, some of the greatest works of art, some of the greatest works of literature, And contributed to some of the greatest technology to the world, as I've talked about before.
	The scientific method, philosophy, mathematics.
	Mathematics a little bit less because there was a lot going on in the East.
	But modern medicine, the free market, the scientific method and philosophy as a whole largely came out of white Western European culture.
	And these are the greatest benefits and boons that the world has ever known.
	And so if, and I don't, but if I were to take collective pride, I would take pride in all that.
	And mistaking the white race for the masters of the white race is incredibly racist, right?
	So because The Western Europeans generally, and again, I'm speaking very broadly here, came up with the free market.
	We became the most valuable slaves, right?
	We were the most productive tax livestock the world had ever seen, which has a lot to do with why so many wars were fought after the Industrial Revolution.
	Why was the 20th century the century of war?
	Because we were the geese laying the golden eggs.
	So everyone was fighting over control over The Western Europeans.
	I mean, it was horrifying and horrible, and that's what happens when you don't finish the job of becoming free.
	I talked about this in the Israel-Palestine thing recently.
	You have to finish the job of becoming free, which means if you have a free market, get rid of the government.
	Finish the job of becoming free.
	Otherwise, all you're doing is feeding the beasts that rule the species.
	But so, I mean, if I were to take collective pride, which I don't, but if I were, right?
	But I sure as hell, if I'm going to deny myself collective pride, I sure as hell I'm not going to take any collective guilt.
	Me and slavery?
	Are you kidding me?
	Me and colonialism?
	Are you kidding me?
	How fucking racist is it?
	How racist is it to blame current whites for the actions of people who ruled over whites in the past?
	Blaming current whites for slavery is exactly like blaming African slaves for slavery.
	They weren't in charge, and guess what, people?
	We weren't in charge either.
	It was the 1%, it was the 2%, the priests and the psycho kings and the aristocracy who were in charge.
	And it is so destructive.
	To other races and cultures to say, your problems are my fault?
	Give me a break.
	Racism means treating everyone the same.
	Sorry.
	Anti-racism means treating everyone the same.
	And that means I don't take collective guilt.
	I don't take collective pride in being white or Western or European.
	I think there's a great heritage and I think there's a lot to be proud of in that culture.
	Which happens to have been particularly influential on me growing up.
	But no, no, I don't make collective statements.
	I don't make collective statements.
	And the idea that somehow white people in the here and now are to blame for the actions of our feudal overlords a couple of hundred years ago is insane and so destructive to other races.
	Because if you accept guilt...
	You strip other people of their moral agency.
	No!
	The issues in the black cultures and the black communities are the issues in the black cultures and the black communities.
	And if the whites had said, well, it's our rulers and it's our overlords and it's our masters who are to blame for everything, There's nothing we can do about it.
	Well, then there never would have been these free cultures and these free societies.
	There never would have been the struggle to create moral agency in the here and now.
	So anyway, I just sort of want to point that out.
	I consider it incredibly destructive to other cultural groups to accept something as nebulous and ridiculous as white guilt.
	Anyway...
	It's probably a bit of a tangent, but go ahead.
	Actually, you know what, man?
	I think we completely went from death penalty to relativist nonsense through cultural back-to-white guilt.
	I think it's all kind of tangentially related.
	I was actually going to say that this is an awful lot like feminism, this idea that I think it's only like, what, 1% or 2% of men actually – I mean, I'm not sure about the statistics.
	I think you would know better than I would.
	It's about 1 or 2% of men actually commit rape.
	Correct?
	No, it depends on how you define it.
	I've heard estimates as high as 6%.
	Okay.
	But as far as – but some of that is fuzzy drunk stuff.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	So let's say 4 or 5 percent.
	But serial rapists, the rapists who are serial rapists is 1 or 2 percent, if I remember rightly, of men.
	So when I engage in conversations with people, I often hear that this is a men's issue.
	It is just almost ubiquitously or it is just perpetually a men's issue.
	And I think, well, why am I being criminalized?
	Why am I being assaulted for the actions of a deviant few?
	And why is it that...
	Well, no, because you let it happen.
	Yeah, right?
	I mean, not you, but it's because, let's just say, white males let it happen.
	Because we are concerned, and we are guilty, and we are ethical, and we are, you know, whatever, right?
	We have more compassion, maybe more...
	I don't know what the science is, right?
	But, I mean, white...
	Western males were the ones who created free societies, who developed the free market, who built modern civilization, who freed the slaves, who gave votes to women and all this kind of stuff, right?
	So we've done a lot collectively, again, just to use that loose collective stuff.
	We've done a lot of positive stuff.
	And it's true.
	We've been ordered at gunpoint to do a lot of terrible stuff too, right?
	Be drafted or be shot.
	Go over the First World War trench or be shot by you.
	So yes, under compulsion, collectively, we've been told to do a lot of terrible stuff, which people should have sympathy.
	It wasn't like the average white guy was like, yay, World War I. I can't wait.
	I mean, a few of them were, of course.
	But that's just because there hadn't been any wars in Western Europe for over 100 years, almost 100 years.
	Right, or the propaganda machine that says that war is that whole...
	I mean, Edward Bernays was just a propaganda genius.
	So, I mean, getting these guys to really dehumanize their, you know, people in Germany and Japan and then the whole, like, you know, buy war bonds and how great it is and how successful war can be and how profitable war can be.
	I mean, so that, I mean, those are really sold, too, don't you think?
	Well, yeah, but it's not like white males are the only ones that are susceptible to that.
	I mean, I do believe there's tribalism in Africa too.
	I mean, I believe there was quite a lot of slaughters in Rwanda between a bunch of different groups all calling each other cockroaches and stuff, right?
	So, I mean, yes, yeah, terrible stuff happened in the West for sure.
	Absolutely.
	Absolutely terrible stuff happened in the West.
	But it wasn't like this was some collective white male thing.
	There was a whole bunch of people on plantations, but there were the people in charge and there were the people who were the slaves.
	And anyone who has the gun is the guy in charge.
	And the government and the aristocracy were in charge of the raising of the children, right?
	I mean, there's no free market in childhood.
	And there hasn't been in the West for almost 150 years.
	It's all run by the government and all accepted by women.
	If women said no government schools tomorrow, there'd be no government schools tomorrow because women outvote men, right?
	And, of course, all of these rapists were raised by women and saying it's just a purely male issue.
	You know, just...
	We just have to say no to this stuff.
	Like, it's great to have empathy, but you have to have boundaries.
	It's great to have sympathy, but you have to have standards.
	Because if you have sympathy and you wade into, without having your wits really about you, into a bunch of sort of pea soup of manipulative, grabby people who themselves don't seem to have a lot of empathy, you're screwed.
	You're just...
	You're a lamb to slaughter, right?
	Yeah, I mean, that's what frequently happens to me.
	I get...
	I come into groups of people having conversations and I don't like to consider them debates.
	I like to consider them to be constructive conversations.
	But they turn so quickly into battlegrounds and rhetoric and this kind of ideologies and a lot of kind of...
	I don't—it's almost as if people are so unwilling to change hard-line, rigid ideas.
	And I always add the caveat— Oh, no.
	Come on.
	Come on, man.
	You've got to be smarter than that.
	I know you're smarter than that.
	What do you mean?
	Sorry to sound impatient.
	No, no, no, no.
	People cry racist at whites because it gets them stuff.
	Right?
	It's not, oh, they're so hard, you know, rigid ideas.
	It's like bullshit.
	People love to get new cell phones, right?
	Right.
	Right.
	They're very happy to adopt and embrace new things and new ideas, right?
	How many people are like, no, no, no, I still want to write letters by hand because I'm just not into embracing new ideas and new thoughts and new things.
	No, people – there's a huge swath of humanity that has developed verbal abilities to extract resources from guilt-ridden people.
	And they used to be priests and now they're leftists, right?
	No.
	Make someone feel guilty and they will pay you to alleviate that guilt.
	And leftism and the racism of white guilt, it's just the new Catholicism.
	It's just the new original sin.
	Oh, make people feel bad.
	And look, who doesn't feel bad about shitty things that white cultures have done in the past?
	Of course.
	Well, white people the most, right?
	But I also feel shitty about terrible things that white cultures have done in the past as well.
	I feel shitty about the terrible things that Chinese and Japanese cultures have done in the past as well.
	I feel shitty about what Eskimos have done to each other in the past as well.
	The terrible Eskimo wars.
	It's a human issue, right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	But no, people...
	There's a whole...
	There's part of the sort of human ecosystem.
	There are the verbal manipulators who have developed language skills...
	In order to pierce the boundaries of moral confidence and mine any potential guilt they can spread like a virus within the minds of their victims.
	And just say no.
	I mean I can talk about what white Western Europeans did 300 years ago.
	That's terrible stuff.
	Nothing to do with me.
	And people try that crap with me all the time.
	Oh, racist!
	Racism!
	I mean, every time I put anything out, I'm sure I'll get it from this one too.
	And all it is is a confession of impotence.
	Tell me where the facts I have quoted are mistaken.
	Tell me where the moral arguments I have quoted are illogical or contradicted by the evidence.
	But anybody who just cries racism, you know what they're like?
	They're like, have you ever done this?
	I'm sure you have, right?
	So you put money into some vending machine, right?
	No.
	The vending machine doesn't give you your bag of chips or your pop or whatever, right?
	Yes.
	And what do you do?
	Yeah, you usually press the button or shake it or...
	Yeah, I got you.
	Push a bunch of buttons, right?
	Push a bunch of buttons, maybe shake the machine a bit, and then look at that warning about it toppling and killing you.
	And you're like, well, I'm thirsty but not that thirsty, right?
	Right, so they're just people pushing buttons trying to get some free chips.
	Right.
	And by this, I don't mean blacks, just so everyone knows.
	I don't mean that at all.
	I mean, that's part of it.
	A lot of white intellectuals and white liberals and white academics and white researchers and reporters, I mean, it's not a black-white thing or a Hispanic thing or whatever.
	Nothing to do with that.
	It's just that there are people who would rather—and we all know that religion has had a huge impact.
	It's been one of the most central driving forces— For worse and sometimes for better in human history, which means we have a whole host of humanity, a whole group of humanity that has evolved the specific idea to instill guilt, to instill negative emotions in others and then be paid for their alleviation, right?
	Yeah, that's the same idea.
	I'm sorry to cut you off, but that's the same idea of the Catholic Church.
	And I'm totally spacing on it right now, but it was the idea that you could go in and pay to have your...
	Indeligences.
	Yeah.
	In fact, this is what Luther got so mad about, is eventually it got to the point where you could pay ahead of time.
	Like, I'm going to go have a dirty weekend with Queen Guinevere, and so here's my ten bucks.
	I want to be forgiven in advance.
	And they'd be like, yeah, go have fun.
	We'll take your money, right?
	Right.
	So if you can infect people with an imaginary illness, then they'll pay for an imaginary cure.
	They'll pay to just feel better in the moment.
	And so if you can infect whites with racist guilt patterns, then they'll give you Affirmative action.
	They'll give you extra considerations.
	They'll give you funding.
	They'll give you grants.
	Right?
	I mean it's just pushing buttons trying to get your bag of chips.
	Yeah.
	And I don't blame people for trying.
	I blame everyone else for like not going – nope.
	No, we can't blame people in the here and now for what a bunch of white rulers did a couple of hundred years ago.
	Yeah.
	I mean, it doesn't make any sense.
	It makes no sense at all.
	Well, no, and it is interesting that you pointed, because this whole time I've been thinking for many months now that it's just, oh, well, this is just people's ignorance.
	But it's not their ignorance.
	People are completely aware of what they're doing.
	Everyone knows that where their cell phones come from in China, nobody gives a fuck about the muscle atrophy or the coal tan production or whatever.
	They really care about the price of it, how cool it looks.
	And then being able to use that same product that uses Coltan to blog about how awful Coltan production is.
	I don't know what you're talking about.
	Coltan is like, I don't know, maybe one of the people in the chat room can do it.
	It's some mineral that they use to power cell phones, laptops.
	I mean, it's like an intricate mineral, right?
	It's found in Africa.
	And so what I was saying is that people will...
	They'll buy the iPhone, they'll buy the iPad, whatever.
	They'll blog about how awful Coltan is while that product is using Coltan.
	Do you understand?
	Oh, yeah, yeah.
	No, I get it.
	I get it.
	I mean, look, I mean, people can blog about whatever.
	It's just nonsense, right?
	But it's just, I mean, an environmentalist, another one of these two, you're just guilty for breathing, right?
	You're just guilty for being alive and You know, like, Thunderfoot made a comment on the other day that human beings cost $500,000 to raise, which is actually false.
	The highest estimate I could come up with is a quarter of a million.
	And somehow this is a net cost to the planet.
	You know, like, somehow human beings are a net loss to the planet.
	And it's just, you know, and again, it's just original sin.
	It's the same crap.
	Can you make people feel guilty for drawing a breath?
	If you can, then they will pay you lots of money to make them feel better.
	Right?
	Right.
	Well, so back to my original question.
	Anyway, let's finish up because we've got to get to the next caller.
	So as far as the death penalty goes, yeah, I don't know.
	I think that people will focus a lot more on prevention in the future, like in a free society.
	So I think it won't be a huge issue.
	I frankly don't care if a murderer gets killed.
	It's not big on my list of moral issues in the world to deal with.
	It matters now, really, because there's a government and there's a centralized legal system, and it's going to be legal or it's not.
	But if some guy goes and shoots someone, assuming that they're guilty, the fate of that person, whether they're killed or they're put in prison, I think that generally, if they can work and produce some sort of restitution for the victims, that probably is better.
	And certainly the possibility of killing someone by mistake is there.
	It's almost incomprehensible.
	I mean, they just get so many appeals.
	But it certainly is possible that it could happen.
	But I don't have any particularly strong views either way because all of this stuff is so preventable.
	It's sort of like saying, well, how are we going to handle polio?
	Vaccine!
	Yay, we're done, right?
	And so we know what the vaccine is for violence.
	It's peaceful parenting.
	And so I'll work on promoting the vaccine.
	I don't really care what happens in the long run once the vaccine is in place because it's just going to be so rare as to be ridiculous, right?
	I mean you don't worry about polio, right?
	It used to be terrifying for everyone.
	Terrifying.
	Like literally you go to one public pool where there's a polio virus floating around and you could be in an iron lung or dead or paralyzed like FDR for the rest of your life.
	Terrifying.
	You don't worry about it now because we got a vaccine.
	So I just work on promoting the vaccine.
	For violence.
	You know, how we deal with violence now in the future, it's literally like saying, well, how do we deal with smallpox now?
	Well, we had a vaccine, so we don't have to worry about it, right?
	Yeah.
	All right.
	Move on?
	Yeah, sure.
	And thank you for your time.
	If you don't mind, I'd like to plug my band real quick, if I can do that, take up some shameless self-promotion.
	Yeah.
	The band's called El Camino Sutra.
	Anybody that's interested in looking into it?
	And Stefan, thank you for your time.
	I appreciate it.
	Wait, wait, spell that.
	Oh, it's E-L-C-A-M-I-N-O-S-U-T-R-A. El Camino Sutra.
	And we have a new EP coming.
	What kind of music is it?
	It's like indie rock.
	It's like, we got a guy who sounds like Neil Young.
	Our new EP is coming out in like two weeks.
	So, it should be pretty good.
	I'm pretty excited about it.
	Great.
	Well, I hope people will look you up.
	Thanks for your call.
	Yeah, thanks, Stefan.
	All right.
	Up next is James and Julia.
	James wrote in and said, I'm married and feel like I take my anger towards my mother out of my wife.
	Anything negative that my wife does which reminds me of my mother sets me off on a verbal tirade.
	How can I separate my feelings for one from the other?
	My wife is a wonderful person who deserves better than this, and I have to stop doing this or it will end our marriage.
	Hmm.
	How long has this been going on for?
	Probably since we've been there.
	Can you hear me?
	Are you calling from a beach radio?
	I don't get the reference.
	Oh, it just sounds kind of denny.
	Anyway, all right, we'll survive.
	Okay, so how long have you been doing this, taking this stuff out on your wife?
	God, probably since we, you know, probably soon after we first met, which was about three years ago.
	And she knew all of this before you got married?
	No, I think she just kind of discovered it slowly over time, the issues that I have with my mom.
	No, no, no.
	I'm not talking about issues with your mom.
	I'm talking about you blowing up at your – I guess originally she was like on a date and then girlfriend and then fiancé, right?
	So before you got married, I assume that you're saying that you blew up at her beforehand, right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	So why would she put up with this?
	Why wouldn't she just say, nope, sorry – I'm into a non-blowing-up kind of guy, right?
	Well, she's actually here, if you want to ask her.
	Oh, great.
	Yeah, if you don't mind, put her on.
	Julia.
	She can hear you.
	So, what's the question?
	I'm sorry, Julia.
	Can you hear her?
	Has she got headphones on?
	No, we're on a tablet.
	Oh, okay, okay.
	Got it.
	I think, given the sound quality, this is actually an ancient Babylonian stone tablet, but all right.
	Oh, my God.
	So, Julia, was it Julia?
	Is that right?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	So, Julia, when did he first, as he calls it, blow up at you?
	When we were dating, it happened once or twice.
	So, I really didn't, you know, it was not important back then because it was like something, you know, that happened just twice.
	Yeah.
	Okay, but hang on.
	So it happened twice while you were dating, and I'm sorry to interrupt you.
	I just really want to get a clear picture of a few things.
	What did the blowing up look like?
	We just start talking about something that makes him very uncomfortable, or I just say something that makes him very uncomfortable, and then he starts being a bit, you know...
	I don't know, nervous or something.
	Aggressive in a way, you know, not verbal, not like he's not hitting me or anything, but aggressive in a way, you know, it's just like not like a normal behavior, let's say.
	This seems not, you see, he called it blowing up, and I'm not sure what you're talking about.
	Some mild verbal tension or aggression?
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Which is it?
	You know, I mean, we start getting to an argument, you know, a very silly, stupid argument.
	But things, you know, he, Tends to take...
	Things get out of proportion.
	That's the way I feel.
	Okay, does he yell?
	He used to, yeah.
	Not anymore, but he used to.
	So before you got married, he yelled?
	Yeah, that happened like twice.
	No, I get it, I get it.
	And does he use names to call you stupid or whatever?
	Yeah, that already happened.
	Okay, so what are the names that he's used?
	What are the names that he's used?
	Oh, like stupid or idiot or cunt.
	You name it.
	I just don't keep track of all of them.
	So that's more than just a little verbal aggression, right?
	Yes, but that's the thing that it's very hard for me because when we were dating, that never happened.
	We had arguments, silly arguments, nothing like a too serious, nothing like a beyond, you know, regular young couples' arguments.
	But since we got married, things are kind of, you know, got out of proportion, I think.
	And then it's very difficult for me because I didn't grow up with this, you know?
	You didn't grow up with sort of that kind of verbal aggression?
	Yeah, yeah.
	And you have to understand, my parents got divorced when I was six, but they do respect each other very, very much.
	I had them present in my life.
	There was no arguments in front of me and my sister.
	So I didn't grow up watching that.
	So for me it's a bit scary because I'm from Brazil and it's not me, it's not my family.
	I'm not used to that at all.
	Okay, so he called you stupid, idiot, and I hate to use the word, but cunt, and was there anything else that he said that has, I guess, wounded your heart in this way?
	Yeah, that's pretty much all I can remember right now.
	And you're saying no physical aggression?
	No, no, not at all.
	And in what context did he call you a cunt?
	It's usually because I think that it's better if we talk, you know, and he tries to just run away, just leave the house or just...
	Just go somewhere, you know, and I'm just I'm just worried because he seems so kind of out of control or, you know, so irritated, so nervous that, you know, it makes me wonder what is he going to do?
	And I just want to talk about the problem, you know, and just I want to understand what he's coming from.
	And but it's very hard to talk to him when he's, you know, Upset or, you know, mad or angry.
	And how often does this, I'm sorry to interrupt, but how often does this happen?
	The upset.
	I don't mean necessarily the names, but the upset.
	In the beginning it was very difficult.
	So it was happening pretty much kind of every month, every other week or something like this.
	Now...
	In the beginning of what?
	The marriage.
	In the beginning of, you know...
	A year ago.
	Because we have been married for two years.
	And you knew each other for a year before you got married, right?
	Yes, yes.
	So now things are much better.
	We are willing to talk about problems.
	The arguments don't happen very often.
	So he's much calmer right now.
	But I think there is an issue, you know, a problem between my husband and his mother.
	And...
	I've come to find out that he takes a lot of things that I say or the way I behave or if my behavior reminds him his mother, that's when he feels like he needs to be more angry or that's what makes him upset and I just...
	You know, I just don't know what to do.
	It's very...
	What do you think of his mother?
	I like her very much.
	I think she...
	Now that I'm part of the family, I know some of the problems, you know.
	Nobody tells you that before you get married, unfortunately.
	No, they do.
	Nope, nope.
	I did.
	Yeah, they do.
	What is it?
	Well, no, people do talk about, you know, family issues or problems before they get married, right?
	No, no, no, the family, the family issues, you know, you don't really know, you don't, you know, you start learning little by little.
	Maybe because they feel embarrassed, maybe because, you know what I mean?
	It's just like, it takes, it took them a while to feel comfortable with me to let me know about some problems.
	Which I completely understand, but we get along very well.
	Me and, you know, his family.
	We love each other very much.
	But I think she made some mistakes in the past.
	And she has some trouble kind of facing, you know, the mistakes she made.
	And, um, they never, my husband and, you know, his mother never had a chance to establish a, some, I don't know, some sort of bond or communication, you know, they are not allowed to talk about emotions and feelings, so, um...
	Wait, sorry, sorry, I'm just trying to understand.
	Weren't allowed?
	I mean, the mother was in charge of the relationship, right?
	Yes, yes.
	So it's all her responsibility, right?
	Yeah, I believe so.
	No, because the way you're portraying it is like they somehow never developed this or they're not allowed or something.
	But what you mean is the mother never developed it and the mother does not allow him to talk about X, Y, or Z, right?
	Yeah, yes.
	I believe that that's right.
	Okay.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	Sorry.
	So I think that that's completely different from my family because we were allowed to talk to our parents and grandparents about pretty much anything you can imagine.
	Do you think that's better?
	That's better for you, right?
	Yeah, it was better, especially because I usually think that kids that grew up with a family without a mom and dad living together, they usually tend to get a lot of problems.
	But my parents were very close.
	Although they are not married.
	But our family, his family and my mother's family, they managed everything.
	We were always close.
	So I didn't have to choose between loving my dad or loving my mom or stay with my mom and stay with my dad.
	So...
	So, you know, I mean, we were allowed to say things to our parents to discuss...
	Okay, so, sorry.
	So, just, I think we're repeating ourselves now, or rather you are.
	So, what you mean to say, if I understand it correctly, is that you had a good family life, and his family life wasn't so good, but you can still love his mother, right?
	Yes.
	Mm-hmm.
	Okay.
	Now, I'm just going to go through his Adverse Childhood Experience score, and I just want to make sure that you know about this stuff.
	So...
	So, James, you scored five, and I'm very sorry about that, of course.
	So one you said yes to was verbal abuse and threats.
	What was that, if you don't mind saying?
	If you can think of it, you can name it.
	Just, I guess, threats of violence.
	Got those pretty regularly.
	Be specific.
	Like what?
	All right, well, I wasn't doing something.
	It was usually my mom.
	Particularly when I was younger, just goofing off, not coming to the dinner table, I guess, or not doing my homework, not doing good in school.
	That was grounds for usually, when I was younger, it was like a bare bottom smack.
	I had to lay down, pull down my pants, lay down over a knee, and she'd smack me on the ass.
	So bare ass, right?
	Oh yeah.
	And hard, like red welts, that kind of stuff?
	Hard enough to where, you know, 25 years later, I remember every bit of it.
	And how often did that happen?
	You know, I'm really not sure.
	I don't know if I blacked out.
	Just roughly.
	Again, everyone expects these exact answers.
	But once a year is not the same as daily, right?
	So, just roughly.
	Yeah, probably not daily.
	Probably, you know, every other week or so.
	The bare-bottom smacks were by far the worst, and those were more infrequent, if I could take a guess, I would say maybe every three months.
	Alright, okay.
	And threats of these would occur even when they weren't happening, right?
	Yes, and I would say that was a lot more common, just the threats of...
	And you don't know, and just for those, and this is for your sake...
	As well.
	But this is important to understand, Julia, that as you know, if the mafia says, pay us protection money or we're going to burn down your store, and they've already burnt down the store next to you, you pay them the money.
	You don't actually have to burn down your store.
	So if you have been assaulted by your mother in this violent kind of way, the threats are almost as bad as the assault because you don't know if the threats are going to lead to the assault and all this.
	So this is It's extremely violent and dangerous stuff for a child to be threatened with and to experience many, many times throughout his childhood.
	So I just want to point that out because everyone thinks, well, you know, the threats aren't as bad as the violence.
	Well, no, actually, most people pay taxes not because people say we're going to come up and throw you to jail, but because they're afraid of the threat, right?
	So it's – all right.
	So, okay.
	So that's – was there more you wanted to talk about with the verbal abuse and threats?
	Yeah.
	I mean, that was basically it.
	And it continued, I'll say, it continued up until I was about 14, I want to say.
	And, you know, kind of magically, the threats and the actual violence stopped one day.
	I pushed my dad up.
	Oh, you got big, right?
	Yeah, I was bigger than my dad.
	I was almost six feet tall, and he's like 5'10", and I told him...
	It's amazing how quickly parents discover reason when you're looking down on them, right?
	Yeah.
	I pushed him against the wall and I told him, don't ever fucking touch me again.
	Right.
	And that stopped after that.
	You also scored yes for physical abuse non-spanking.
	I wonder if you could mention a bit about that.
	Um...
	Okay.
	I may have misread that.
	It doesn't matter.
	We can move on to the next one.
	So you said no family love or support?
	Uh, not a lot.
	I, uh...
	I never really felt I could go to either one of my parents when I was a kid if I had some kind of problem.
	It was pretty much me and my brother.
	He and I don't have the best relationship, which I'm desperately trying to fix right now.
	So is he.
	So it was pretty much kind of us by ourselves for the majority of our childhood.
	So you were one of the, like, the third of kids basically say, I don't go to my parents with problems because my parents just make it worse.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Basically, I'm in trouble if there's a problem.
	I mean, I would get in fights.
	I got in a fight on the bus once.
	I broke a kid's nose, and I went home, and my brother, of course, as a year younger, he just let the cat out of the bag immediately.
	He's like, oh my god, there's blood!
	There's blood everywhere!
	And I was in trouble.
	And the reason the fight started was because this kid was hitting me in the back of the head.
	He was punching me in the back of the head.
	Yeah.
	Okay, so no real love or support in this situation.
	For which, again, I'm really sorry for.
	Lived with alcoholic or drug user?
	Yeah, my mom's...
	I guess she's in recovery.
	She's had kind of a string of addictions, I would say.
	It started with...
	Religion, actually.
	She was raised in a very Catholic household, and kind of at the same time she dumped the religion, she picked up the bottle.
	Yikes.
	Do you know why she dumped the religion?
	Sure.
	She's just transferring addictions, right?
	No, I know, but do you know why she dumped religion?
	Oh, I don't.
	I'm just curious.
	Okay, it doesn't matter hugely.
	Okay.
	Alright, so how often was she abusing alcohol or for what period of time when you were a kid?
	I don't know when it started.
	It may have been before I was born.
	It stopped after I left home.
	I left home at 17, so I know by like 22 or 23 she'd quit.
	So throughout your entire childhood she was abusing alcohol?
	Yeah, pretty much.
	And was she driving with you?
	Was she driving cars and driving with you in the car while she was abusing alcohol?
	You know, I'm usually pretty oblivious to a lot of things, so I don't know.
	It's certainly possible.
	I know at least one time she got behind the wheel of my dad's car, and it was obvious to me at that point.
	I was probably 16, and I knew she'd been drinking, and I just took the key from her and threw it in the woods.
	Good for you, man.
	Good for you.
	Good for you.
	Okay, so she's like, if she did this kind of stuff, which I'm sure she did, she's just like an accidental non-murderer, right?
	Because she just happened to not kill anyone while she was driving drunk.
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	And last but not least, it's the household member depressed, mentally ill, or suicidal?
	I was depressed when I was in high school for a while.
	Sure.
	It was...
	Problems at home and problems at school.
	Right.
	Right, okay.
	Alright.
	So, Julia, did you know all of this?
	Yes, I know this, but not when I got married.
	I didn't know about all of this.
	So, Julia, do you know what I'm going to ask you next?
	No.
	You claim to love this woman who regularly beat your husband when he was a helpless, independent child who was a drunk or an alcoholic throughout his childhood.
	Mm-hmm.
	And you have a great relationship with her.
	Mm-hmm.
	What are you saying?
	I'm saying...
	I don't understand that.
	Mm-hmm.
	And the only thing you told me about was that, well, they had some problems communicating.
	Mm-hmm.
	Look, if you're not going to tell me the truth, I can't have a conversation with you.
	What he's describing is being beaten, being physically assaulted by both parents, her being a drunk, which means she's emotionally unavailable, not having love or support in his family.
	And the only thing that you told me that was negative about his mom was that, well, they just have these communications issues and sometimes the mom doesn't let him speak freely.
	So, what's going on?
	Well, the relationship she established with me was a completely different relationship.
	No, no, no, no.
	No, no, no.
	Don't blame her.
	Because you knew all of this stuff.
	I just asked you if you knew this stuff, right?
	Yeah, this stuff...
	And you said yes.
	Yeah, I just found out about...
	But then when you described your relationship with her, you said it was loving and it was great, but that they had a few communications issues.
	Yes.
	Yes.
	Okay, let me sort of lay it out for you in a way because I can get that this is going to be a little tricky for you to get, right?
	Let's say, I don't know, have you ever been married before?
	No.
	Okay, let's say you had an ex-husband, right?
	And that ex-husband had been drunk for the 17 years of your marriage and had beaten you, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	Once every week, once every two weeks, and a couple of times a year, had really beaten you, right?
	To the point where you can remember every blow years later.
	And this had happened maybe a hundred times over the course of your marriage.
	And then you had told all of this to James, right?
	And James said to me, I love her ex-husband.
	He is a wonderful man.
	We get along wonderfully.
	He's great.
	I love him.
	Now it's true that they had some communications problems in their marriage.
	Right?
	What would you think?
	I think it's messed up.
	It's horrible.
	Do you understand where I'm coming from now?
	You're not connecting with any of this emotionally.
	So if you're not willing to have an emotional discussion at all, I'm happy to go back to talk to James.
	With some greater understanding as to why he's pretty pissed off.
	So I don't know if you're willing to just give me these empty mm-hmms or whether you actually want to do any work in the conversation.
	Oh, I do.
	I do.
	What I… No, you don't.
	You don't because you just keep giving me these mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
	No, it's just to show that I'm… You're not connecting with how outrageous it is what you're saying.
	No, I am… You're saying you love the woman who abused your husband and she's great and you love her.
	But what I was...
	I got exactly what you were saying.
	But that's why...
	Does it affect you at all?
	Does it impact your heart at all?
	Because you're not changing your tone at all.
	Yes, because I'm just trying to say that that's why it's just so confusing for me.
	You know, what you point out right now, it makes a lot of sense.
	But when I first noticed the problem, there was a problem.
	No, no, no, no.
	I don't want to get back into your first noticing of this and that and the other.
	I know, I know.
	I want to get back to what you just told me.
	And I'm not trying to beat you up here.
	I'm really not.
	I'm just trying to get these wires connected for you, Julia.
	I really am.
	Because I really want you guys to have a better marriage.
	Mm-hmm.
	Okay.
	You said you knew all of these abuses that your husband had suffered while an innocent and helpless child at the hands of his parents.
	You knew all of those abuses.
	Yes.
	But I didn't know since the beginning.
	That's what I'm trying to say.
	I just found out recently.
	So that's why I'm just so confused.
	What do you mean you just found out recently?
	Because I didn't know.
	My relationship with his parents were established way, you know, a long time ago.
	But this situation between, you know, his mom and him, that's new to me.
	How new?
	How new?
	I don't know what that means, new to me.
	A year, two years, six months, six minutes?
	What does that mean?
	Months, like a few months, you know, that was not...
	Because we all went to therapy because I could not understand the friction between his mom and...
	Who's we all?
	Yeah, yeah.
	Because she was not telling me anything.
	She was not telling me this.
	And that's the problem because she was not admitting anything to the point that I was asking him.
	And James, what really happened?
	Because nobody was telling me.
	I was not aware of the real problem.
	Oh, so hang on.
	Sorry, James.
	You kept all of this from your wife while you were dating, when you got engaged, when you got married.
	Is that right?
	You didn't tell her any of this stuff?
	Well, in the beginning, I told her, you know, I don't have the best relationship with my mom.
	And I only discovered you 11 months ago.
	No, listen, I'm not trying to corner you or give you a sentence here.
	I just want the facts, right?
	So did you keep this stuff from...
	I mean, I'm not saying you knew it all.
	Maybe this show has helped you sort of get in touch with that, which I'm obviously happy about.
	But did she know any of this stuff until a couple of months ago?
	No, because I didn't even know it.
	Before I discovered your show last year, I was completely convinced by what my mom usually said, and that's, oh, you had a great childhood.
	We were great parents, and I totally bought into that.
	You stock home syndrome, the whole thing, right?
	Of course.
	Because that's convenient for them, and you're used to obeying the abusers, right?
	Next thing you know, I'm Patty Hearst in a bank with a submissive.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Got it.
	So...
	Yeah, like six months ago, it kind of just connected for me.
	And then as I slowly realized all this stuff, I told Julia about it.
	And I mean, she's still dealing.
	She's heard the whole story.
	She's heard.
	I don't think she has.
	No, I don't think she has.
	I mean, she may have heard it, but she's not got it.
	Right.
	I agree.
	Right.
	Because, I mean, you guys have to listen back to how she introduced her relationship with your mother.
	I agree.
	And my mom does the worst thing ever.
	Everybody, all my friends that have met her, they're like, oh, she's the sweetest, nicest person.
	And I just kind of mumble under my breath, yeah, you don't fucking really know her.
	Okay, so James, how did you feel deep, deep down?
	Somewhere north of the gonads and south of the bowels.
	How did you feel deep, deep down when she was talking about how much she loved your mom and what a great relationship they had?
	You know, I've gotten so used to just everybody saying...
	No, no, don't give me the so used to.
	How did you feel deep down?
	When she was saying how much she loved your mother and what a wonderful woman your mother was and that the only problems were that there were just mysterious communications issues in your relationship.
	Shitty.
	Yeah.
	It is shitty, right?
	And Julia, I'm not trying to blame you.
	I'm just...
	If you want to understand how to not have as much conflict with your husband, you have to stand for the moral reality that he's not allowed to have.
	Like you said that there's things they can't Discuss somehow James and his mother?
	But holy shit, you can't even discuss them in an anonymous forum like this.
	You tried to give a complete snow job and whitewash everything that happened to him as a child, even though you've known for months what actually happened.
	Yeah.
	You're the one who actually has the communications issue and is unable to stand up for and reinforce the moral reality of what your husband experienced as a child at the hands of his abusers.
	But that's what happened a few months ago when he felt comfortable and he really talked to me about what really happened.
	Right.
	And that's when I said – I told his dad, you know, we have – No, no, no, no, no.
	We have to have – Oh, my God.
	Oh, my God.
	Will you stop talking about months ago?
	In this very conversation, months after you knew your husband had been abused by his parents and neglected – And that his mother was an alcoholic, which is incredibly abusive as a parent.
	Drunk driving is not a whole lot better than drunk parenting.
	Right?
	In this conversation, you claimed she was a lovely woman.
	You loved her.
	She was great.
	That is a betrayal of your husband.
	Yeah, it's just like what he said.
	That's how she comes across.
	Until you go deep down and you find out what...
	Don't blame her because you know the truth.
	Yeah, now I know.
	You don't have first impressions.
	You've known this woman for years and you've known the truth for six months.
	Yes.
	So don't tell me how convincing she is at first impressions.
	You don't have that excuse anymore.
	You understand?
	So why can't you stand up when I say, how do you get along with his mother?
	Why don't you say, she was an abusive and horrible parent to him.
	It breaks my heart to think of what he went through as a child.
	Why do you tell me about how wonderful and lovely she is?
	I don't know.
	Maybe because I'm just so confused.
	I'm really shocked to me.
	No, you're not confused.
	Do you think he's lying?
	No, I don't.
	Okay, so he's telling the truth.
	So you have to take a moral stand here if you love your husband.
	Anyone who hurts my wife is not my friend.
	You understand?
	Anyone who hurts my daughter is not my friend.
	They are in fact my enemies.
	Okay.
	And if this woman, and I'm not doubting you for a second James here, but this woman regularly beat on and assaulted your husband when he was helpless and dependent.
	Uh huh.
	Imagine if your husband was laid up in hospital and you came to visit him and some nurse was beating him.
	Uh huh.
	Would you say, well I'm sure that nurse is a lovely woman.
	No.
	Of course you wouldn't.
	He's frustrated and angry, and I'm not forgiving.
	We'll get back to that, right?
	I'm not sort of snapping that away, right?
	He's got moral agency here too.
	But let me tell you, if you claim to have not gone through an abusive childhood, which given your lack of moral courage in this conversation seems a bit confusing to me, but if you say that you've gone through a happy childhood and you've got all the moral strength that comes from that, okay, fine.
	Let's just believe that for the moment.
	Okay.
	But what you need to understand is that nobody stands up for him.
	At the beginning of this podcast, I talked about how nobody stands up for the male victims of abuse, particularly if the perpetrator of that abuse is a female.
	How many times do you ever hear about women beating up husbands?
	It happens about equal, but you never hear about it.
	How often do you hear about men being raped by women?
	It happens extremely often, and you never hear about it.
	Yeah, that's true.
	I'm sorry?
	That's true.
	Nobody stands up.
	And I get it, right?
	I mean, you and I race in the same crappy culture where men are just disposable assholes to fix eaves troughs and make babies, right?
	But you've got to change that.
	He's in this conversation now.
	He's in self-knowledge, which means you have to grow a spine and you have to recognize that what that woman did to your husband was unconscionable, was evil, right?
	You cannot be a drunk parent.
	You cannot be a parent who bare-eye spanks a child to the point where he remembers it vividly decades later.
	On a regular basis, she did that and neglected him and did not make him feel loved and did not play with him and did not connect with him and did not love him.
	I see.
	But beat and drunk and ignored him.
	You have to stand up for that.
	He is programmed to not see it.
	You are not because it's not your family.
	But the degree to which you don't stand with his inner child against this hellacious abuser of his is the degree to which he's going to be angry at you for betraying his pain and denying his pain and bonding and praising his abuser.
	Do you know how horrible that is for the victim of child abuse?
	Imagine if you'd been raped and he was best friend with your rapist.
	How would you feel?
	Yeah, I would feel horrible.
	You're pretty...
	And that's why he wanted to have this call because you're putting things in a different perspective and that's what I really needed to hear and I'm very glad that I'm having the chance to talk to you because it's just like a wake-up call.
	You know what I mean?
	I mean, I hate to put it this way and I'm sorry to interrupt you and I hate to put it this way because it doesn't sound like I'm giving him moral agency but we'll get to him in a second.
	But listen, I'm going to give you the basic equation here, Julia, for the success of your marriage.
	Okay.
	Either you call his mother a cunt or he's going to call you a cunt.
	Okay.
	James, am I anywhere close?
	Yeah.
	I'm willing to call the mother a cunt.
	I am.
	She's a horrible human being.
	Absolutely horrible, vicious...
	Irresponsible, abusive, violent, destructive, hideous human being.
	Yep.
	Your dad too.
	My dad's a different story.
	Not really.
	He married her.
	Oh, that's true.
	But, I mean, that's enough for an entire podcast by itself.
	My dad cannot apologize enough.
	For what he did.
	Is he still married to her?
	Yeah.
	Well then, well, okay.
	So what the fuck does the apology mean?
	I mean, he's apologized to me.
	I know, he's a weak man, and he's still married to her.
	No, no, no, no.
	Do not strip his moral agency, James.
	Otherwise, you're just going to get angrier and angrier.
	Do not give the false forgiveness.
	Do not call someone weak because...
	They're acting in a weak manner.
	That is an excuse.
	Yeah, you're right.
	That's like saying some guy who overeats like crazy, well, he's just fat.
	It's like, no, he's fat now because of all the decisions he made in the past.
	Don't call him a weak man.
	He is a moral agent.
	Unless he actually has brain damage and has diminished capacity that's been verified neurologically, he is not a weak man.
	He is a cunning man, and he may be a coward, but But all of those are the results of decisions he made in the past.
	Yeah, you're right.
	I mean, if you smoke for 30 years and you get lung cancer, it's not a mystery, right?
	Yeah.
	Well, he's just sick.
	Nope.
	He was a smoker.
	Now he's sick.
	Now, I really dislike...
	And all the shit that was most destructive to you happened when he had much more agency, even if he's weaker now, when you were, like, 20, 30 years ago, when you were young, right?
	Well, I've got to tell you about my dad.
	Okay.
	Tell me about your dad.
	So my dad traveled a lot.
	He was gone.
	I mean, shit.
	From before I can remember up until, you know, when I was in my late 20s even, until he retired, he traveled two to three weeks out of the month, every month, the whole year.
	And he would fly around the world and Go have business meetings.
	Why did he choose to do that?
	He had children.
	Exactly.
	Well, I mean, he made a ton of money, and I guess that was kind of more important.
	So what, he liked the money more than time with his children?
	I guess he did.
	Do you think I could be making a little bit more money if I wasn't parenting full-time?
	Oh, no doubt.
	Yeah, no doubt.
	I've had lots of business offers, lots of offers to get involved in various projects, and I've been offered shares in companies.
	I've been offered all this kind of ownership.
	Oh, yeah, I could be making a shit ton more money if I wasn't parenting full-time.
	But what the fuck is my money going to do for me if I don't have a good relationship with my daughter?
	You can buy a lot of things.
	You can't buy love, right?
	Yep, I agree.
	All money does with an empty heart is allow you to be miserable in style.
	And that's my dad.
	He is miserable in style.
	Yeah, so he chose the money and, you know, like somebody who chooses the money and then basically abandons you to a child abuser...
	You know, you take what you want and then pay for it.
	You take your cigarette smoking and you pay for it with your lung cancer.
	You take your alcoholism and you pay for it with your cirrhosis.
	And you take your junky, shitty food and you pay for it with diabetes.
	You take what you want and then you pay for it.
	I mean, all these guys who travel so much, yeah, we get it.
	You hate your wife.
	Yeah, I got it, right?
	I want to sail around the world.
	I want to sail around the world on a boat.
	Okay, we get it.
	You hate your wife.
	I understand.
	Maybe go deal with your marriage.
	No, Julia just said, that's what you want to do.
	No, it's not what I want to do.
	I've seen what that brings and what you end up with at the end.
	My dad has a ton of guilt, but I get what you're saying.
	It doesn't...
	But so, I mean, yeah, well, you take what you want and you pay for it.
	If you...
	If you don't spend much time around your kids and you let your wife abuse them, well, that can't be fixed.
	Can't be fixed.
	You will never, ever, ever have the childhood that you needed and deserved.
	Neither will I, neither will anybody else who was abused.
	You will never, ever have that childhood.
	Nobody can give it back to you.
	All those developmental milestones, all that trust, all that affection, all that love.
	I will never, ever...
	Have a childhood where I learned how to be fluent in Japanese.
	Right?
	Now, I can go learn Japanese now, but sure as shit, I will never ever be fluent in the way that I could have been if I'd been raised speaking Japanese.
	And you weren't raised with peace and love and virtue and connection and affection and joy.
	And there's no restitution that's possible for that.
	Is there any amount of money that would make you be happy with the childhood you had?
	No.
	No, no, no.
	No.
	Absolutely.
	Absolutely not.
	If people had showed me my childhood up to age 15 before I was born, I'd have said, pass.
	No, thank you.
	You know, I wonder if my childhood is...
	I'm very money-hungry.
	I'm very oriented towards making as much money as I can in my career.
	And I'm wondering what you think.
	Is that...
	Something that's kind of, I need, you know, resource.
	I'm thinking, do I need to collect as many resources as possible to survive?
	Well, let me ask you this, if you don't mind me getting all kinds of base of the balls blunt.
	Let's hear it.
	How pretty was your mom?
	Not at all.
	Not at all, really?
	I knew you were going to ask this.
	No, she, that's why I said my dad is a weak man.
	My mom was never pretty, even when she was like 25.
	But wait, did your dad have a lot of money when she was 25?
	No, he was broke.
	Okay, so he got, again, in the base biological sense, I'm not saying all marriages are this way, but in the base biological sense, he got the number he could afford.
	I would say so, yeah.
	Because his relationship with his mother was completely screwed up.
	Both his parents, terrible relationship.
	They grew up in Actually, my family's from England.
	My dad's family's from Sheffield.
	My grandfather was a steel worker and he worked himself to death.
	My grandmother was a breadwinner.
	They...
	I guess, you know, they claimed to love each other, but they had...
	It was rough.
	It was a rough marriage and my dad had a rough upbringing in that they were completely uneducated and it pushed him to, you know, Make as much money as he possibly could, and educate himself.
	He's the first one in our family to go to college, and he's got two degrees.
	Alright, and are you in your 30s at the moment?
	31.
	31, alright.
	And how pretty is Julia?
	Like out of 10?
	12.
	12, did you say?
	Yeah, maybe 13, I don't know.
	Okay, so very pretty.
	Alright.
	And...
	What does she do?
	She does marketing.
	She's quite successful.
	Ah, fantastic.
	And you're making some fairly good coin?
	I did a few years ago, and I got out of the industry I was in, and I've got a little...
	It's not a startup anymore.
	I've got a small company, and it's really taken off.
	Fantastic.
	Good for you.
	And are you guys planning on having kids?
	Yeah.
	And what's your window?
	We're trying right now, actually.
	Right.
	Okay.
	And who's going to stay home?
	Me.
	Oh, really?
	How are you going to do the breastfeeding thing?
	I'm willing to learn.
	No, no, come on.
	You're all tabs and no plumbing, brother, right?
	I know.
	Well, we're fortunate enough where we've got a ton of flexibility and we haven't, I guess, Julia may be quitting her current job to kind of start her own part-time work where she could, I think, work from home.
	Fantastic.
	Well, that sounds like a good arrangement.
	Good for you guys.
	Now, was your mother materialistic?
	Oh, yeah.
	She had a spending problem for a while as well.
	Okay, so this may be one reason why your dad felt the urge, right?
	She goes to splurge, he feels the urge to work, right?
	Yeah.
	She's got the whip and he's the workhorse, right?
	Yep.
	Alright.
	I should also say my mom is like a huge Marxist.
	She doesn't actually self-identify.
	Wait, wait.
	Did she have a job?
	Uh, no.
	Wait, wait, so she's a Marxist in that she hates the exploitation of the working class and she made your father work for her her whole life?
	Yeah, pretty much.
	Oh my god.
	Believe me, since I've been on the show, I've become so unpopular with her because I take everything I learn from you that's applicable and I let her know about it and she does not like it.
	She would hate you.
	Oh, I hope so.
	Oh, I would consider it a vast insult if she didn't.
	I would drink deep of that hatred like the fine nectar of the sweaty gods of virtue.
	I would drink deep of that lovely...
	You know, any Marxist who likes me is just not a Marxist.
	And any child abuser who likes me, who's not repentant, well, they just don't understand what's in store.
	All right.
	Yeah, so that's probably why he works, right?
	Yeah, she's always kind of had him wrapped around her finger.
	Nope.
	No?
	No, you're taking away his agency again, man.
	It's hard to do.
	I'm really trying to work on my relationship with my dad.
	You know, I just didn't have one when I was a kid, and I really want one with him.
	Look, okay, so, man, what are you trying to get out of your relationship with these people?
	Like, help me understand that.
	They can't undo the damage they've done, right?
	It's impossible to undo the damage.
	You left home when you were 17, right?
	That's 14 years ago.
	And I assume you left home because it sucked, right?
	Yeah, guess where I went?
	Into the army!
	Oh, yeah!
	There we go.
	Yeah, because you were well-trained for all of that, right?
	Yeah, yep, yep.
	And it's not like the army.
	The army exploits male victimhood, which is why it can't ever have sympathy for it, which is why female abusers and male drill sergeants are basically dick and pussy, two sides of the same coin.
	Yep.
	All right.
	So tell me, what are you trying to get out of your relationship with these people?
	I mean, that sounds like you shouldn't or whatever.
	I'm just really trying to understand that.
	Okay.
	Yeah, I don't...
	Is your mom...
	Sorry to interrupt.
	I just asked you a question, and I'm just about to ask another one.
	Sorry to interrupt.
	Your mom is unrepentant, is that right?
	Yeah, she doubles down on everything.
	Right, so if there's a problem, it was you who was the problem, right?
	So she blames the victim, right?
	Yep.
	So if you were a rape victim, it was because of what you were wearing.
	Oh, yeah.
	Okay.
	So what the fuck do you think is going to happen, guys, when you have a child?
	Are they going to be around?
	What am I trying to get out of the relationship?
	Yeah.
	I don't care for a relationship with my mom, to be honest.
	I admit, she's at times very convenient when she's being good, but it's such a superficial relationship, and I would just...
	I defood a couple times, and it worked wonders.
	Wait, before you listened to this show?
	Like, just when I was starting to...
	I didn't talk to her for like six months.
	I banned her from my business.
	I didn't go to their house.
	I banned her from our house.
	And, you know, I was kind of like, oh, I want some kind of concession out of her.
	I want her to admit.
	And what happened?
	You know, she was a lot better after it.
	Wait, wait.
	What do you mean a lot better?
	Did you get the concessions you wanted?
	Yeah, I got them.
	And what were they?
	She had to admit she'd done something wrong.
	I kind of started...
	Wait, no, no, no.
	I thought you said she doubled down.
	And did she...
	Okay, she doubled down.
	And if it's so...
	If I really just penetrate to the core with her, and I really make her realize that she did something wrong, then it just turns into complete psychosis.
	She'll go on a 30-minute rant.
	Over the phone or in person, doesn't matter.
	She'll just rant on about...
	It's called narcissistic rage, but as far as I understand it, just using these terms as an amateur.
	So she's unrepentant.
	Yeah, and again, you know, she's...
	So you didn't get your concessions.
	You may have forced her to say some stuff, but it's a confession under duress, which is inadmissible, right?
	Yeah, I guess so.
	No, because look...
	You know when someone is repentant, right?
	How would you know if she was truly repentant?
	I wouldn't.
	She's giving me a bunch of bullshit apologies before I see right through those.
	How would you know if she was truly repentant?
	I listen to the show and I hear people who are truly repentant.
	Okay, so what would she do practically if she were truly repentant?
	She'd cry.
	She would break down in tears.
	She would be falling over, self-apologizing, saying, oh my god, I was a terrible mother.
	I'm sorry.
	I haven't been able to admit it.
	I never get that out of her.
	It's just, I'm sorry.
	I'm sorry you were upset.
	Yeah, I'm sorry you were upset, not I'm sorry for what I did.
	Yeah, bullshit, non-apology.
	Yes.
	Manipulation.
	Yep.
	And is your father in these conversations that you have with your mom?
	Is he around at all?
	Typically not.
	My dad is very sensitive to any kind of debate or argument.
	We could be just discussing anything, not even a heated debate, and he's like, this is bullshit, I'm getting out of here, and he'll storm off.
	Oh yeah, that sounds very sensitive.
	Gosh.
	I mean, almost like a hibiscus in a Hailstorm, so sensitive.
	Actually, that sounds pretty fucking aggressive to me.
	Yeah.
	So in any conflict between you and your mother, between the victim and the abuser, he takes a side of the abuser at the expense of the victim.
	Yes.
	And he's told me many times, he's like, you know what?
	Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	It doesn't matter what you say.
	I want her.
	This is destroying my marriage, this feud, when I defood.
	Okay, so he really, like your mother, he really only cares about his own needs, and fuck you, right?
	Pretty much.
	Fuck the victim.
	Screw the victim.
	I want this woman.
	I desperately want the woman who abused you.
	Yeah.
	Exactly it.
	Right, so this is why it's hard for you when your wife does this to you, because it's what your dad's doing, right?
	I love her.
	I love your abuser.
	I love the drunk who didn't raise you, except to hit you.
	You're saying Julia is abusing me?
	No, no, no, no, no.
	I'm saying that your father claims to love your mother, I assume, right?
	Right.
	And that is at your expense, at the expense of your emotional reality.
	Because if he got your emotional reality, he would take a stand with his wife and hopefully do something proactive to heal the insanity, the moral insanity and evil in the family, right?
	Yeah.
	So when your wife says, when Julia says, I love your mother, and there are just these vague problems that you're both responsible for, but she glosses over them, which I'm not saying she's going to do now, but she did...
	Earlier in the conversation.
	That's what your father does.
	Yeah, I don't think Julia understands at all the relationship I have with my mom.
	Yes, she does.
	Unless she's functionally retarded, she does.
	Because she understands, this is why I wasn't cutting her a break, right?
	And you shouldn't either.
	And Julia, you shouldn't with yourself either.
	Doesn't mean you beat up on yourself.
	But you can't wave the I'm so confused flag and expect to be taken seriously by anyone with an IQ over 90, right?
	Because somebody with an IQ of 100 or above, when they hear the adverse childhood experience score that James pointed out, and you've known about this for six months, is not going to be confused, right?
	I mean, it's a bad relationship.
	It's an abusive relationship.
	She's an unrepentant child abuser who made your childhood a living hell.
	Again, am I off base here?
	Not at all.
	Okay.
	So that is a shitty relationship.
	That's not even a relationship.
	Right?
	Relationships have to be two people.
	Where the fuck are your needs?
	Where are your preferences?
	Where's your emotional reality?
	Where's your experience?
	Where's the openness to who you are and what your experience has been as a human being?
	It's nothing.
	If it's inconvenient, it's screamed away, right?
	Yep.
	So it's not a relationship.
	That's exploitation.
	Which is why she has these Marxistic rages when this is...
	When your emotional reality...
	I'll tell you what happens in my opinion, right, deep down in her evil little empty furnace of a heart, is that when your emotional reality begins to become real to her, her abuses begin to become real to her.
	She's not screaming away your emotional reality fundamentally.
	She's screaming away the approaching knowledge of her own abuses.
	Her own evil.
	Yeah.
	And you can't fix that.
	You can't change that.
	Because every time she does that, she's doubling down on the evil.
	The victim cannot fix the abuser.
	We don't expect the rape victim to fix the rapist.
	We don't expect the victim of child rape to fix the pedophile.
	The victim cannot fix the abuser.
	The abuser can choose to fix himself or herself, but it takes a huge amount of work.
	It takes many years.
	It takes thousands and thousands of dollars, most likely, of therapy.
	It takes a massive commitment.
	Many, many more people lose weight and keep it off than turn around being a child abuser.
	That's a small percentage of people that Keep the weight off.
	Yeah.
	Even smaller percent.
	I mean, I've been doing this for years and years now.
	And I've heard, you know, you've listened to a bunch, right?
	I've heard it all, pretty much.
	And the number of parents who've actually taken ownership for child abuse, gotten therapy, paid for their kids' therapy, worked to really heal their families, taken responsibility for what they did as they inflicted Moral responsibility on their five-year-olds?
	Well, fingers of one hand?
	It is a very, very low percentage.
	And you can't miss it.
	And those people are heroic.
	I have little greater admiration than for people who are able and willing to do that.
	Well, everyone's able.
	They're just willing to do it.
	But you can't fix that.
	And if you think that your mom and your dad are somehow separate or in different moral categories, I believe, and I will make the case, that you are incredibly and tragically mistaken.
	They are a system.
	Your mother can't do what she does without your father, and your father can't do what he does without your mother.
	They are a system, right?
	Every family, there's one overt abuser and one covert abuser, and the overt abuser gets blamed, and the covert abuser gets a get-out-of-jail-free card.
	I mean, you get he was paying her To abuse you, right?
	Yes.
	She couldn't have done it without him paying the bills.
	I'm not saying that he sort of woke up and said, here's 50 bucks, go hit the kid, right?
	No, I completely get it.
	I get it.
	Right.
	For a while, though, I will say it was kind of me and my brother and my mom against my dad.
	My dad would come home from these business trips, and she's told me stories about how he would come home and call her a cunt and all this stuff.
	She broke her leg once.
	A riding lawnmower rolled over her knee.
	She ended up in hospital for a couple of months.
	And whatever reason, the first time he saw her after the accident, it wasn't all...
	Your brother, you mean?
	What's that?
	Sorry, you're talking about your brother here?
	No, I'm talking about my dad when he came and saw my mom in the hospital for the first time after the accident.
	He just came in and I don't know if she said something to set him off or what exactly happened, but basically he came in and fucking called her lazy and like, oh, you stupid bitch, you stupid cunt.
	And just called her a bunch of nasty names.
	And you know those are two of the names you called your wife, right?
	Yep.
	Yep.
	Probably three.
	Lazy, right?
	No, I never called Julia lazy, I don't think.
	Thank God.
	Okay, so two out of three is bad, right?
	Yeah, it's pretty bad.
	So your dad is also a verbal abuser?
	Yes.
	Both my parents, actually.
	Okay.
	And has he changed his ways as far as that goes?
	Has he taken responsibility for exposing you to that kind of language, for verbally abusing you?
	He and I have not discussed that specific incident.
	Oh my God, man.
	Oh my God.
	I just found out from my mom recently and they went out on the couch.
	No, but you knew he'd been a verbal abuser when you were a kid, right?
	Towards me, I can't recall.
	I can't think of a specific incident where he was verbally abusive towards her, though.
	Definitely to me and my brother.
	Wait.
	But he was verbally abusive towards you?
	Which is worse than him being verbally abusive towards your mother because your mother was there by choice and could have left at any time and you guys weren't.
	Either of those things, right?
	She would have never left because he had money.
	And she had a degree.
	Oh, and she wasn't pretty.
	Right, right.
	Yeah, okay.
	All right.
	Alright, so he's been verbally abusive to your mom, according to her.
	He was certainly verbally abusive towards you.
	He was absent.
	He paid for your victimizer.
	He left you in the company of your victimizer.
	He married your victimizer.
	And you haven't been able to discuss much of this with him at all.
	I've gotten into quite a bit of it.
	I just found out about the hospital incident right before, like a two-day...
	No, no, but he was verbally abusive towards you.
	Yes, but it was usually...
	Accompanied with threats of violence.
	I'll take my slipper off.
	Oh, so he beat you as well, right?
	Oh, yeah.
	He's usually with a leather slipper, like a smack across the legs.
	I've heard a couple of incidents that I do not remember.
	My mom had to tell me about them.
	Right.
	So you have basically two unrepentant child abusers?
	Pretty much, yeah.
	Right.
	So, are you going to let them hang with your kids?
	No.
	No, no, no.
	That's not going to happen.
	Do they know that?
	I don't care.
	They're going to find out.
	I don't give a shit what they think about that.
	So, what do you want from these people, then?
	That you can reasonably expect to get, right?
	I want some kind of a relationship.
	I want...
	You know, I don't.
	I don't.
	I'm not saying why, like, you shouldn't, right?
	Because everyone mistakes this, right?
	Right.
	Right?
	Like, I'm not saying you shouldn't, but the question is, why?
	They're unrepentant child abusers.
	And maybe there's a good reason, like, there's the private conversation, I won't talk about that.
	Maybe there's a good reason, but I don't know what it is, so that's why I'm asking why.
	Like, if you said to me, I want to go to Australia, I'd be like, why?
	I'm not saying you shouldn't go to Australia.
	I'm just saying, why do you want to go to Australia, right?
	I have no support network other than Julia.
	Are they a support network?
	Julia?
	No, no.
	Are your parents a support network?
	No.
	I mean, they paid for shit.
	They, you know, fed me.
	Ah, shit.
	That happens in prison.
	That doesn't get anyone any points.
	Yeah, I know, but I didn't have anybody I can count on.
	I'll tell you this.
	When I met my mother-in-law, which was 2012, that was the first time I ever saw what a mom was supposed to be like.
	I saw Julia and her mom together.
	I said, holy fucking shit.
	Where was this when I was a kid?
	Because I don't have that kind of relationship with either one of my parents.
	It was...
	It was alien to me.
	Right.
	That's a beautiful confusion.
	Except that she was raised very nicely, and so she doesn't know how to deal with bad people, I'm guessing.
	I'm trying to give her as much of a break here as I can, right?
	But she needs to know that these were abusive people.
	They're unrepentant abusers.
	They're dangerous.
	They're dangerous for your psychological well-being.
	They're toxic, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	And, I mean, if you can figure out something that you want from them that you can reasonably expect to get or you reasonably want to work towards, fantastic.
	You know, go for it.
	Have them over for Sunday brunch every day of the week if you want.
	But you've got to know—let me phrase this more clearly.
	If you're raised by incredibly selfish people, and I'm going to go out on a limb here and put these people in that category, at least within my own mind— If you're raised by incredibly selfish people, you don't know how to have your own needs around them because having your own needs around them is very dangerous because it results in what you call this psychotic stuff that happens from your mom if you really push her to the core, right?
	Yeah.
	She assumes it's me attacking her.
	She can't take criticism.
	Right.
	This is true of abusers, right?
	Because there's so much to be criticized for, right?
	And because she knows that what she's done is unrecoverable, and so she just can't go down that road because she knows where it's going to lead.
	So you don't know how to have your needs around these people because all you're programmed to do by these selfish people is to do what they want, what's best for them, no matter at your fucking expense.
	Who cares, right?
	They're like starving kids and you're like a guy with too much food.
	They just grab and run.
	So the reality is that when you are around them, you say, well, I want a relationship and this and that.
	How do you know?
	How do you know?
	How do you know it's not them who want you around?
	That's why I keep asking why.
	And if you can give me a good reason, I mean, you don't have to give me anything, right?
	But I'm saying I'll be satisfied if you can give me a good reason wherein there's a selfish pleasure of yours in this.
	Sure.
	But if you say, well, I want them around, I want a relationship, but it turns out you actually have no interest, selfish interest in that, then you're doing it because they want you around, and that's a continuation of the abuse.
	They do, definitely.
	They're the ones that initiate everyone getting together, and they're the ones that kind of tie me and Julia to my brother and his wife.
	They have been in the past.
	What do you mean, Ty?
	They keep us up on the news.
	Me and my brother for 10 years didn't talk.
	I was pretty rough on him.
	I remember one caller you talked to who was beating up younger kids and he beat up his younger brother.
	I didn't physically beat up my brother, but I was rough on him.
	And, you know, I'm definitely not proud of how I treated him when we were younger, and I'm working really hard to build a relationship with him.
	So you know what restitution looks like, attempted restitution looks like from the inside, right?
	Like genuine restitution?
	Or, I mean, like what my mom does?
	Yeah, I mean...
	No, you're taking responsibility for the abuses that you put on your brother.
	Yeah.
	You're trying to fix it up, right?
	I drove all the way to Chicago, and I told him to his face.
	I mean, that's the only reason I went there.
	I drove six hours to get there, and I'm sorry.
	I'm sorry for how I treated you when we were young, and I'm so ashamed of it.
	And then I've seen him a time after that, and we hugged each other.
	And did that come out of the show, or was that some other influence?
	No, it came out of the show.
	Oh, good for you, man.
	I appreciate it.
	I mean, I'm good for you either way, but it's nice to hear that.
	It really is.
	Yeah, you're doing good.
	You're helping a lot of people, especially me.
	That's great.
	Well, yeah, obviously keep it up with your brother, I'm sure you will, but that's what restitution looks like, right?
	No excuses.
	This is what I did.
	I feel terrible about it, and tell me what it's been like for you.
	And then it's a whole lot of listening.
	Restitution is a whole lot of listening.
	Yeah.
	And circling back and revisiting the topic until the other person gets closure, no matter what it takes.
	But, you know, all of that.
	So, this is my suggestion, right?
	Look, I really appreciate you guys' conversation in this.
	I mean, I hope that this was useful to you.
	I'm sorry that we didn't get to sort of the emotional connectivity stuff, but I get that there's a lot of stuff to to get through but I really appreciate you guys calling in.
	How was the conversation for you both?
	You blew my mind.
	I think it was very helpful because you opened my eyes to a lot of things that I just couldn't face before and it comes to The bottom line question, what do you want?
	I don't know what my husband wants from them.
	And I have to face them as the abusers, you know, and I have to stand up for my husband and help him.
	And your children to come.
	And your children to come.
	Yeah.
	You know, if they're unrepentant child abusers, how comfortable do you feel having them around children?
	Yeah, I don't feel comfortable at all.
	And it's not just the relationship between the grandparents and the grandchildren.
	It's the relationship between the grandparents and your husband and the grandparents and you.
	How effective is he going to be as a father if he's in a room with unrepentant child abusers who scarred his youth?
	Is he going to yell at your kids because he's angry at his parents, right?
	Yeah.
	I don't think there's any place where you get to where...
	You get such closure that you can still be around unrepentant abusers and not be upset.
	I think that's like saying that the purpose of treating PTSD is to put people back into war.
	That's not the point, right?
	Yeah.
	The point is so, like, don't go to war, right?
	I mean, that's sort of the point, right?
	Yeah, you're preaching on that one.
	Okay, so I'm sorry to interrupt it.
	You were still talking about it, and I just asked you a question that interrupted, so I apologize for that.
	Julia, please go on.
	No, don't worry.
	So that's it, but I think it's very important for James to find out what he really wants.
	I'm here to support him or family, but I also have to know what he wants, and that's up to him.
	No, that's too passive, and that's why I wanted to get you back in, right?
	No, you don't have to know and facilitate what he wants.
	He's the victim, which means his judgment is impaired, right?
	Uh-huh.
	Right?
	Do you remember what he did with his mother when she was getting into the car drunk when he was 16?
	Yeah, I just found out this right now.
	I didn't know about that.
	Yeah, he threw her keys.
	He threw her keys into the woods, right?
	Because her judgment was impaired.
	Uh-huh, uh-huh.
	Right?
	You have to, with all the strength that comes from your good upbringing and the healthy relationship you have with your parents, you have to stand firm and stand tall for what is best for him, and he's going to be confused about it because they're his parents and they raised him, right?
	So don't be passive and say, well, I'll facilitate what he wants, right?
	I mean, it could be like a two-year-old with a cookie jar.
	You don't just keep handing them cookies until they throw up, right?
	Right.
	You know better because you're on the outside and you have a good relationship with your parents.
	And you have the facts now, the moral facts, and he is going to automatically want to do what they want at his own expense.
	That's how he was raised.
	That's what it's like to grow up with narcissistic parents.
	You do what they want and you self-erase and you conform to what they want at your own expense.
	Because that's how you survive people who don't have empathy and who only know their own needs and who basically hit you like a broken TV if you don't do what they want.
	So, don't be passive and say, I want to facilitate what he wants, because he was raised by selfish parents, so he is used to conforming to their needs at his own expense, and that will be at your expense, and I believe, Julia, it has been at your expense.
	So, basically, he does what he was taught to do.
	What he was forced to do.
	Yeah.
	What he was forced to do.
	What he had to do to survive.
	in order to survive.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, I understand.
	Let me put it to you even more vividly, all right?
	Let's say that he was in a cult, right?
	He was raised in a cult and there was some all-powerful cult leader who beat the kids whenever they disobeyed, right?
	Would you say, well, it's up to him whether he wants to see that cult leader or not?
	No, you definitely have to step up and establish the limits.
	You'd say, well, yeah, tell me what do we hope to gain out of this?
	What's the point of this?
	Well, I'm going to facilitate whatever you want.
	That's not standing firm in your family for your interests of yourself and your husband and your children.
	If they're toxic and the toxicity goes into him and then through to you, it's defending your love for him to keep him safe, right?
	Right, right.
	Yeah, that's basically what I really have to do.
	Yeah, keep on him and say, well, what are we trying to get out of this?
	Well, what is the value of this out of you?
	Keep reminding him that he's got his own needs, and he can't get his needs met from unrepentant child abusers.
	I mean, by definition, right?
	Unrepentant child abusers have historically put their own needs at the expense of the child, and if they're unrepentant, then they're still going to keep doing that.
	He can't get his needs met from unrepentant child abusers.
	It's not possible.
	So either they have to repent or he's got to figure out something else.
	And you need to stand tall in that, right?
	That's the power that you bring, particularly because you have a healthy relationship with your parents.
	That is the strength that you bring.
	And I'm not saying he doesn't have to do anything.
	I'll talk to him about that in a sec.
	But the goal here is going to want to be to be passive.
	But if they are as dangerous and toxic as he says, and they're around your family, Then they are going to toxicify your family.
	Yeah.
	Which is pretty sad.
	It is.
	Listen, I get it.
	It's desperately sad.
	It's desperately sad.
	And this is not what you signed up for or what you thought we were walking into, right?
	Yeah, because once again, you know, I didn't know about all of this, you know.
	From the surface, it looks fantastic.
	Oh, I get you guys.
	You guys pose well.
	I bet you it's a Hallmark card from a distance, right?
	Yep.
	And this, look, I mean, this is what's instructive about this is to other listeners, ask this stuff.
	Right?
	Drill deep.
	That sounds like early dating advice in general, but drill deep into each other's childhoods.
	Find out what it was like for the other person.
	Keep asking questions.
	Really figure this stuff out.
	Don't accept surface answers.
	If something seems inconsistent, keep asking until it completely makes sense to you.
	But really, really understand other people's childhoods before you get married.
	And it doesn't mean that your marriage is doomed or anything like that because you guys are making a fantastic work of working through this stuff now.
	But it is obviously – it's better to know this stuff beforehand.
	It doesn't mean you don't get married, but it means you go in without – Ending up in these kinds of messes, right?
	Yeah.
	Not everybody's into free domain radio like I am.
	I know, but I'm telling people who are, listen and ask people about their childhoods.
	You should have heard my second date with my wife.
	I'm like, God, she had a Gestapo flashlight and a rubber hose.
	Oh, no, that was the third date.
	Sorry, I'm plowing through Fifty Shades of Grey at the moment, so I'm very confused about a lot of things.
	Sorry, James, you were going to say?
	Yeah, I definitely asked Julia when we were dating about her childhood.
	I asked about, like, what was the other thing?
	I asked about, like, do you have any tattoos or other things?
	You know, like, do you have a tramp stamp?
	Any other red flags for me?
	And I definitely asked about the childhood.
	Yeah, now, you didn't know at the time, right?
	But you were kind of responsible for knowing, right?
	Because you were 28 when they met, right?
	And, you know, self-help books are all over the place.
	Dr.
	Phil's like the biggest show on daytime TV. Before that was Oprah.
	Before that was Donahue.
	I mean, it's been going on forever, right?
	This childhood matters.
	So, anyway, water under the bridge, but there's ownership for that.
	Now, the last thing that I want to say, James, is to you.
	All right?
	Okay.
	Have I been pretty sympathetic?
	Very.
	Good.
	Okay.
	So I say this with respect and with affection.
	You cannot be calling your wife these names.
	I agree.
	You absolutely cannot.
	This will shred your marriage irrevocably if it keeps up.
	It will wound her in places that can't be fixed if you keep this up.
	It is unbearable to be called those kinds of names In an intimate relationship.
	You know, when you are married to someone, it's like your lips are right next to her ear.
	What happens if you scream?
	She's going to get hurt.
	She's going to get hurt.
	She's going to recoil and at some point she's just going to get deaf.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	You guys are so close.
	And your template for closeness is escalation.
	But I'm telling you, when you are close with someone...
	And marriage is close.
	Obviously, it's the closest.
	You need the lightest touch possible.
	She is a sensitive woman.
	She is a courageous woman, right?
	I mean, I called her out pretty hard, would you say?
	Oh, yeah.
	I thought she was going to walk away.
	No, Julia, congratulations.
	Fantastic.
	I mean, that wasn't the easiest thing you've done today, right?
	No, it was not easy at all.
	No, and you stuck with it, I hope.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	I mean, good for you.
	I mean, fantastic.
	I mean, I was doing all kinds of risky stuff there and really pushing hard, and I appreciate you listening, and I appreciate that it was helpful, but that's a woman who's got some guts, right?
	That's a woman who's got a spine, and that's a woman who can listen, right?
	I was being assertive.
	I was not being aggressive.
	I was not being abusive, and she, I thought, responded magnificently.
	I just wanted to mention that because, yay, good job, right?
	Yeah.
	But, Julia, am I wrong that if these words keep coming, isn't it going to shut your heart down at some point?
	Yeah, they're very hurtful, you know.
	Yeah, they stick, right?
	They stick like burrs, right?
	They stick in your heart.
	And it takes a long time for that to wear away.
	You know, a crater hits a plane, it takes a long time for that plane to get flat again, right?
	Yeah.
	So I'm just saying, James, you can't do it.
	I know you're going to have the urge, but you know, and you of all people know what it's like to be on the receiving end of that stuff, right?
	You know how hurtful it is.
	You can't do it.
	If it means you've got to hold your fist in your mouth, if it means you've got to put your head underwater, if it means you've got to bite a towel or go for a four-hour walk, You cannot say those words to your wife.
	Yeah, right.
	And I know it.
	Okay, and I know you know it, but I just...
	I really gotta put that...
	Right?
	Yeah, and you know you cannot do it, right?
	Yeah.
	It's not like you get possessed.
	It's not epilepsy, right?
	It's not like some giant Satan hand goes up your ass and flaps your talking hole, right?
	Right?
	But you can't.
	That will destroy your marriage.
	I think...
	Her not supporting you with your parents in a very proactive way and drawing all the strength of her good relationship with her parents and standing up for you, I think that will destroy your marriage.
	And if you keep using this language with your wife and if you keep being aggressive with your wife, that will destroy your marriage.
	So she's got to stand up for you with your parents and you have to stand down with your mouth, right?
	Yeah.
	There's no place for those grenades in love, right?
	I agree.
	Okay, so that's the last thing that I wanted to say about that.
	Will you guys let us know how it goes?
	You want us to call back in a few months?
	You can just send an email or call back.
	I always just like to know how it works out.
	I mean, I think you guys are great listeners.
	And you really do care about each other.
	You're willing to stand for all of that.
	I hope it works out for you guys.
	I think if you follow this...
	I think you've got a great shot if you follow the advice.
	If you can, do it.
	And if you can, create a safe environment.
	Great parents.
	It sounds like you've got some coin.
	You've got some flexibility.
	You can work part-time.
	You can be at home.
	You can be there for your kids in a way that obviously was the case for you, Julia, but not the case for you, James, which is, of course, I'm really sorry for.
	But what a great environment.
	You could be the kind of parents that every kid is, like, begging to get born into, right?
	I hope so.
	That's very, very optimistic.
	I'm definitely reading up on the peaceful parenting and UPB. I'm definitely planning to implement those things and not make the same mistakes that my parents and their parents have been making for generations.
	I'm really trying to break the cycle, and I know Julia is as well.
	Fantastic.
	And there's no reason why you can't.
	There's no reason why you can't.
	This is how we break the cycle.
	This is how we make the world the better place.
	This is the greatest revolution that our species is capable of.
	And I admire you guys intensely for taking it on.
	I think it will pay off in ways that will be blinding to your current eyesight.
	And I do thank you guys so much for calling in.
	Thank you for your advice and everything that you and Mike do.
	Thank you very much.
	We really appreciate it.
	You're very welcome.
	Thank you.
	Keep us posted.
	Very best wishes to you both, and certainly let us know if you all get pregnant.
	Mike, is there anything you wanted to add to that?
	Thanks again, guys, for calling in.
	That was wonderful.
	Thanks, Mike.
	Thank you, Mike.
	All right.
	Well, I guess here we get to the point in the show where we're reminded as to why we're doing an extra call-in show next week, because we're getting through two calls a night.
	FDRURL.com slash donate if you'd really like to help get this conversation out to more and more and more people.
	Mike, did we get our bill yet?
	We did not get our bill yet for our CDN service, but I was informed that we were supposed, in addition to the $7,000 that we were quoted originally, apparently now we're going to have to pay a storage fee as well per gig, which is going to be sizable.
	So it's actually more than...
	So you say sizable, Mike, given that this is the first I'm hearing of it.
	What are we talking here?
	I still got to figure it out and we got to get the quote, but it...
	A couple of grand?
	No, it might be a couple hundred a month.
	It might be a couple hundred a month extra, so...
	Excellent.
	All right.
	Well, I can't breathe.
	Okay, let's do some more calls.
	All right.
	So, yeah.
	Sorry about that, everyone.
	I guess we'll...
	Yeah.
	So...
	If you want to help out with all of these costs, you know, we're doing, well, we did 100,000 video views the other day, right?
	I think we're regularly cruising around that level, which is pretty cool.
	And I know we do sometimes about the same, sometimes slightly more for audio podcasts.
	That's like a quarter million shows a day.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	That is some seriously impressive monkey magic mojo going down.
	I mean, a quarter million scatter shots of fireflies up the nose, straight into the neofrontal cortex.
	Just for fun, so people know, we got 25 million minutes of stuff watched on YouTube in the last 28 days.
	25 million minutes?
	Right, right.
	Not just me.
	Peter Joseph, Peter Schiff, Stormcloud's gathering.
	I mean, lots of other people as well.
	And, of course, all the experts who've been on the show.
	So...
	Yeah, 25 million minutes, a quarter of a million shows a day.
	Now, wait a minute.
	Actually, hang on a sec, Mike.
	Let's do this, Matt.
	So we ask for 50 cents a show, right?
	We do.
	So 250,000 shows a day.
	Oh, my God.
	Are we absolutely getting $125,000 a day?
	Can you imagine what we would do with that?
	Oh.
	I'm sure it's slightly less than that.
	Of course, it's been a while since I've looked at PayPal, but I'm sure it's slightly less than that.
	It may, in fact, be considerably less than that, which is why we're whining about $10,000 for server costs.
	But anyway, yeah, we do ask for 50 cents a show.
	Oh, actually, I have to correct something because I did say I had not referred to Freedom Aid Radio as a charity.
	It turns out that in something I wrote seven or eight years ago, I did say that I was running a charity.
	That's back when I was working full-time And this was more of a hobby.
	So, because I really either wasn't taking donations or had just started taking donations.
	So, yes, it is true.
	Thank you to the nitpickers that I did, in fact, say at one point in the dawn of the show that I referred to it as charity.
	But it's certainly not the case anymore.
	And I'd completely forgotten about that.
	So, anyway, fdrurail.com to help out the show.
	It's massively appreciated.
	I mean, people who want their political parties to succeed, donate.
	People who want their religions to succeed, donate.
	And if you want philosophy to succeed, well, you know what you need to do.
	It is a show that runs on the honor system.
	So do the honorable thing and donate for what you consume.
	So thanks, everyone.
	Have yourselves a wonderful, wonderful night.
	Thank you again to all the callers who've called in.

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