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Dec. 27, 2014 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:51:03

2872 Racist Until Proven Innocent - Wednesday Call In Show December 24th, 2014

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everybody! In your the ‘Truth About Eric Garner’ video - why did you spend so much time arguing that the police were not responsible for Eric Garner's death, given your conclusion at the end of the video? Was this not a great opportunity to reach out to those who are concerned about police violence and point out the violent nature of the state and the futility of government reform?

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	Good evening, everybody.
	I hope you're doing well.
	Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Aid Radio.
	Merry Christmas Eve to you.
	It's December 24th, and we just republished a Christmas truce, which was a section from my video, The Truth About World War I, regarding the Christmas truce, which I think is really worth watching.
	If you get a chance, of course, it's in the I hope you're having a wonderful, wonderful Christmas.
	And of course you are, if you're listening to this live.
	But I mean, even if you're not, I hope you have a really wonderful Christmas and that your heart is full of love and kindness and charity.
	Remember, of course, there's a lot of people in the world, I assume, less fortunate than you, and it's usually worth it.
	Spending a little bit of time and energy to help make those people's Christmases a little better this year.
	So, whether it's a soup kitchen or a donation or something like that, I think that would be a nice thing to do.
	So, I hope you're going to have a wonderful break, whether you're off between now and New Year's.
	Relax, kick back, enjoy your life, and enjoy philosophy.
	A quick shout-out, of course, we have the newest member, I like to call them the Free Domain radio family, but that clearly is not even remotely biologically accurate.
	So we just wanted to take a moment to congratulate a listener named Asher and his wife.
	They are new parents of approximately 17 and a half minutes ago.
	So I can only assume they're back to listening to the show.
	I don't mind interruptions during the actual birth moment because it can be difficult to concentrate and I don't like to take breaks.
	But then, of course, you must get right back onto listening.
	So, Asher and your wife, you are new parents and you have welcomed a beautiful baby girl into the world and you are on board, as you say, with peaceful parenting, with non-intimidation, with non-power, non-authority, with negotiation and egalitarianism for all.
	So, I'm fantastically thrilled to hear all about that and looking forward to hearing how it goes.
	And so, with that having been said, Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Happy Hanukkah, and let's move on with the callers.
	All right.
	Well, up first today is Nick.
	He wrote in and he had a question regarding the Eric Gardner video we just put out.
	He said, why did you spend so much time arguing that the police were not responsible for Eric Gardner's death, given your point at the end of the video?
	Was this not a great opportunity to reach out to those who are concerned about police violence and point out the violent nature of the state and the futility of government, quote-unquote, reform?
	All right.
	Would you like to mention to those who haven't watched the video, Nick, what the point was at the end?
	Yeah, absolutely, Steph.
	Yeah, so at the end, you did a very eloquent bit about how every time somebody asks for a law, this is what you're going to get.
	No matter what law you're talking about, the police are there.
	They've got the legal authority and obligation, even, as you pointed out and other people have pointed out, to initiate violence against us.
	And that's just one of those times that it was captured on camera.
	And I think that that point was very well made.
	I just found it to be a bit...
	Like I said, almost kind of confusing based on the first sort of larger portion of the video or the episode.
	So at the beginning, of course, I'm talking about making the argument that the police were not – like they didn't shoot him in the head.
	They didn't directly cause his death.
	For those who haven't watched the video, the general argument seems to be that this was not a can't-breathe chokehold.
	And there was, according to the coroner's report, no damage to his neck – sorry, no damage to his throat or his windpipe or anything that might indicate breathing problems.
	But it appears that there was, you know, whether it was a stressor, he had heart disease, I think, and really bad asthma and so on.
	And that the death did not occur at the hands of the police.
	And the death occurred about an hour later, I think, in the ambulance on the way to the hospital where he had a cardiac arrest.
	And died.
	So I'm really talking two issues in the video.
	One is the causal effect within the current system.
	The cause and effect within the current system.
	And again, I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding is that the reason that there was no charges, or at least the grand jury did not recommend charges be laid, was because the police could not have known ahead of time That this big, meaty-looking fellow was basically halfway to death's door before they even showed up and that you have to show that someone's actions have to have purposefully and with knowledge, not necessarily with malice.
	That's the difference, I think, between negligence and homicide and murder.
	But the person must have known ahead of time that his actions were likely to cause someone's death.
	Again, as far as I understand it, even now, there has not been a release of the testimony that the grand jury saw, which is different from the Michael Brown case, where there was a huge amount of material that was released.
	And so we can only guess from the outside, and I can guess, at least, well, again, not being a lawyer, but my guess is that there was no way for the police to know ahead of time That the actions they were going to take would cause his death.
	Now, that seems to me a fairly empirical argument and my standard is what would be the case in a free society.
	Now, in a free society, would he even end up in this situation?
	I mean it's not just the smuggling cigarettes or the selling of the onesies or whatever it is that he's doing.
	I mean that obviously would not be a big issue in a free society.
	But let's say that he was a guy in a free society.
	The sidewalks would be owned by the store owners.
	And if he was in front – let's say he was in front of the store and he was begging for money from people going in and out of the store.
	And maybe he was harassing them a little or maybe he was intimidating them a little.
	Again, I'm not saying he was doing any of this.
	I'm just talking about how things might work in a free society.
	Now, in a free society, the store owner – May not want this person on his property as he would perceive it bothering his customers.
	And so he would call his dispute resolution organization or his local police company and the police would be obligated to remove this person from private property.
	Now, would they do this kind of takedown?
	I have no idea.
	I have no idea whatsoever because I'm an expert in such a small amount of Information that – is there a more peaceful way to take down this massive guy who looks pretty strong?
	I don't know.
	But the police would have the right in a free society to remove him from someone's private property if he was bothering them or bothering their customers.
	And is it possible in a free society that they would initiate measures if he resisted arrest, that they would have to initiate measures to – To physically remove him and could those measures and the stress of the interaction result in somebody with a heart disease and asthma and so on?
	Could that person then have a heart attack?
	Well, yeah.
	And so in a free society, this situation could arise.
	And again, in a free society, I mean, all deaths, of course, are a tragedy.
	But the question would be, did the person who was attempting to restrain and remove him The other person, in this case Eric Garner, would he have reasonably known ahead of time that his actions would have caused death?
	Now, I mean if they push him in front of a speeding locomotive, well then of course they know that the actions are likely to cause massive injuries or death.
	This kind of takedown, I think it was about a quarter of a million of these kinds of arrests were made in New York.
	I assume that this wasn't wildly outside.
	The norm for how small guys can subdue a huge guy.
	And in, I think, none of the other arrests was death the result.
	And so, if they did not use things wildly outside of the norm for taking down a big guy, and if they, of course, they can't be expected to know his entire medical history and fragility and so on.
	And of course, they may have been aware, I don't know, but they may have been aware that he had resisted arrest beforehand.
	And given that he was a pretty...
	Big guy, that may have been somewhat damaging to the officer.
	For me, the argument is forget about the state at the beginning.
	Let's just look at the facts of the situation because a lot of these laws come out of common law which is to some degree voluntaristic and free market and that kind of stuff.
	What is the standard for murder?
	Or negligence?
	Well, it has to be either action or carelessness where ahead of time you had some reason to believe might lead to someone's death.
	And I think it's hard to make that case and clearly the prosecutors were unable to make that case to the grand jury.
	So that is a sort of fact-based situation.
	Now, as to the whole mess, well, yeah, that's where the state comes in and This is where selling these cigarettes is a result of taxes and I don't know whether the guy was on the welfare state or – I mean whether he had I think six kids or whatever and I don't think you can support six kids by selling single cigarettes to people.
	And so as far as the whole mess goes, yeah, the state is bound up in it.
	But as far as the actual interaction between the offices and that person, which could of course occur in a free society and I'm sure would, then – What do you do with a huge guy who resists the rest?
	Well, obviously, you don't shoot him.
	And as far as I remember from Rodney King, tasers are of uncertain efficiency.
	And of course, tasers can also cause problems with people's health, to put it mildly, as well.
	And so, yeah, I mean, it's gruesome.
	It's horrible.
	It's tragic.
	Nobody, I'm sure, wanted the situation to go down that way.
	But to look at things from a sort of abstract logical standpoint and an empirical standpoint...
	Was there enough—like, did the police have enough information to reasonably believe their actions would kill the guy?
	And according to the grand jury, no, they didn't.
	And so, again, not having had a chance to review, as nobody has, the grand jury—the testament the grand jury received, I think we can only go with—they can't have been doing anything wildly outside the norm.
	And if the guy's doing what he was taught to do in the academy, and if it was the underlying— health issues that were the fundamental cause of Eric Garner's tragic demise, then you're really asking cops to be MRI scanners and doctors and take a full medical history before they try to arrest someone, which I think is obviously an unreasonable standard.
	The whole thing, why this interaction occurred had a lot to do with the state, but still within the context of the interaction, it seems that It's obviously too hard to make the case that the police could reasonably have assumed that their actions would lead to his death.
	Does that help at all?
	I'm not saying I'm right.
	I'm just saying that's sort of my explanation of it.
	I appreciate your explanation.
	I don't think that helps kind of in terms of what I was thinking about though.
	So from my point of view, I was thinking about that this would be – like I'm calling – and by the way, I want to mention that Mike encouraged me to continue with this call because at first I kind of thought, well, I think I'm going to back away from it because I'm basically just giving stuff advice.
	No, do it.
	Do it.
	You know, like about how to run a podcast, you know what I mean?
	And I'm like, I've never done that before.
	I don't have any experience with podcasting.
	The only thing that I really thought about was like my own experience, you know, in terms of like my own evolution from being like a leftist and then, you know, gradually becoming a libertarian.
	And then after a few years of that, like getting into anarchism and then even after that, finding you and And evolving further with my thinking.
	And I was just thinking that, okay, so this is a video, this is an episode of the show, where there might be a lot of people watching the show for the first time, I think, because obviously a lot of people are interested in this topic.
	It seems to be...
	I mean, like, swelling to, you know, like, we don't even know where this is going.
	There was, like, another one that just happened also in St.
	Louis, I think, yesterday or today.
	Well, okay, but, I mean, I think that one has been caught on some grainy video, and in that one, again, I don't know if there's anything conclusive, but it does seem like the 18-year-old guy pulled a gun and pointed it at a cop.
	Yeah, and I'm sorry, I don't really know the details.
	I just know that, like, anything that's going to happen like that, whether it's, yeah, like, whether somebody's got, like, a more clear-cut case of, you know, threatening a police officer or whatever, like, the interest in this issue is growing.
	And, as you know, it doesn't even have to be said almost that...
	The exposure that we've had to access of police violence, which maybe is all police violence, but over the last few years, you know, with social media and so on, has been pretty overwhelming.
	So, like, the way I look at this issue is that, like, well, one, yeah, like, there's going to be some new people checking out FDR when this comes around.
	And I'm, you know, just for my part, like, I'm a monthly donator and I care about the show.
	And I think that when somebody hears you talking about...
	Maybe you'll agree with me on this point.
	Maybe not.
	But whenever we hear someone speak, especially for the first time, but maybe even after many times, we're scanning for motives.
	We're scanning for what is this person going for?
	What matters to them?
	Do their values align with mine?
	Not just...
	You know, hard, empirical, you know, rationalism of, like, you know, analysis and so on.
	That's important, hopefully, to most of us that's important, but...
	We're also scanning for motives, at least I know I do.
	And so, like, because, like, somebody can say a lot of things that I might agree with, but if they say something that throws me, like, off a bit, then I might say, well, wait a minute, you know, where are they coming from?
	And maybe I'm not so sure about this person in terms of, like, what, like, their ultimate, like, principles are and so on.
	Yeah, I mean, I get that.
	It's like somebody says, you know, two and two make four, four and four make eight, eight and eight make 16, and unicorns.
	And you're like, wait, wait, what was that last one again?
	Yeah.
	I'm sorry.
	I was with you until the unicorn thing, right?
	So, no, I get that.
	Of course, you want to know that people have trustworthy intentions and are not surrendering to bias.
	At least, yeah, we all have it, of course, but, you know, you work to oppose it and to be clear, so.
	But, yeah, go ahead.
	So, I was thinking about this issue, and it's like, for me, like, I know that...
	That you and many people in our community, in FDR and the libertarian world too, have a pretty great hate on for the mainstream media.
	And so, like, I kind of thought, well, I wonder if Steph is kind of coming at this, you know, because, of course, they've captured it for their own purposes, which is sensationalize everything and politicize everything and let's see, you know, where we can go with this, not just to make money, but to, you know, fit it into our own narratives and so on.
	And so, like, the racism component has really, you know, been swept up into it or it's been...
	Which, with Eric Garner, it's hard to understand because...
	It was a lot of black store owners who called to complain about him.
	It was – there was a black female sergeant who was in charge of the whole takedown who was observing the whole thing and who wasn't like, hey, what are you doing, right?
	So yeah, the idea that it's all racism is – it's just a bit of a hard case to make.
	But go ahead.
	Yeah, that may be.
	But although I think that people would look to the police, you know, about that one.
	Sorry, I don't know what that means.
	Well, if they were going to say, like, oh, you know, was racism involved with this?
	Sure, maybe the store owners were calling, you know, the white store owners, even though that's not the case, I guess, from what you're saying.
	I don't know.
	You know, calling out on Eric Garner and trying to get him in trouble with the police or whatever, but more like, who are the police there that, you know, are they racist when they're singling him out or, you know, using, you know...
	But then the black woman in charge of the scene and another black officer who was there would also have to be racist because she was, as far as I understand it, she was, again, this is off memory, but...
	She was a sergeant and she's not heard saying, hey, what are you doing?
	Or, you know, that's too much or anything like that.
	Yeah, no, and I'm not necessarily making the case that it is racist.
	You know what I mean?
	Like, it was racism on part of the police.
	I don't think it really even has to be.
	And that's what my thought is about this is that like so many people are going to see this for the first time.
	And that is the sort of larger narrative that's out there that the media kind of captured this and make it about race.
	And I think it's good to be open to that possibility.
	And I know that you are.
	But But what's more important about it for me, and I think for most people who are skeptical about the state, even just in a kind of loose way or whatever, whether they're on the left or the right, is it's just the state violence issue.
	There's somebody selling cigarettes, maybe.
	We don't even know if he was doing that.
	We know that in the past he had been.
	But in this particular case, he may not have been, and he's just there selling cigarettes.
	In other words, there's no victim from him, but he's going to get tackled, and then, just like with any other law, you can be thrown in a cage or killed if you resist.
	Well, but hang on a sec, hang on a sec.
	So, no victim?
	No, for him selling cigarettes?
	Absolutely, there is.
	Okay, well, I've missed that one.
	What would you say?
	Who's the victim there?
	Well, the victim is the people who are obeying the law.
	So, okay, now that's interesting.
	I'm surprised that you make that connection there, Steph, just because, for me, because they are victimized by the state.
	By, you know, I guess like vendor licensing laws there?
	No, no, no.
	There is that, obviously.
	There's property taxes and there's the expense of having a shop.
	But Eric Garner isn't imposing that on him.
	No, but it's the cigarette taxes, right?
	Well, that's another one.
	Yeah, but so there's cigarette taxes and as far as I understand it, I'm pretty sure about this, that store owners are not allowed to sell single cigarettes.
	Right.
	And so he's able to – But that wouldn't be – but they wouldn't be the victim of him because he's selling cigarettes loosely.
	It's just that he's playing outside the rules.
	The victimization is from the state to the store owners there, wouldn't you say?
	Yeah, yeah, I get that.
	But they can't do anything about that, right?
	I mean they can't do anything about cigarette taxes.
	guy who's undercutting them and taking away their business off the sidewalk that their taxes pay for.
	I was talking about this within the context of the situation, but just saying, oh, well, he was selling cigarettes.
	There was no victim.
	Well, there was, because if there was no victim, why was anyone calling about this?
	If I go for a stroll in the woods, there's no victim, right?
	And so nobody's, oh my god, cops, call a guy in the woods, right?
	I mean, so somebody was bothered by what he was doing and somebody felt – or I guess a number of people felt that his presence was negatively impacting their lives in some manner, in a significant enough manner to call the police.
	And so whether he was bothering their customers and the customers weren't going in, whether he was selling cigarettes, whether he was intimidating people, I don't know because there's no footage from before the incident.
	But clearly there was enough of an incident and a repetitive enough of an incident that was harming people's perceived self-interest to the point where they were willing to call the cops.
	Well, then there is.
	There are victims within the context of the situation and they can't change the cigarette tax law, but they can get a guy – who, because he's not obeying the law, is able to undercut them off the street.
	Okay, so would we say then that if – so let's say it's illegal for me to sell – I don't know.
	Well, it's illegal for me to sell something like pseudephedrine, like a drug people take for clearing out their sinuses, that kind of thing.
	If I sell it, if I somehow acquire it voluntarily through, I don't know, whoever, and then I try to sell it to friends of mine and people in my neighborhood and so on.
	Does that mean that drugstores that sell it legally are victimized by me?
	Well, to a small degree they are, but it's irrelevant because they don't know what you're doing and therefore they can't do anything about it.
	But if you're standing right in front of a drugstore, And, you know, telling customers to buy your stuff instead of going in and getting ripped off by the...
	I'm not saying he was doing that, but just a theoretical example, right?
	Well, yeah.
	Then the guy who has, you know, saved up his money, who's invested in a business, who pays his taxes, who's gone to school, who gets up at five o'clock in the morning to open his store, who probably washes it, washes the floor himself at night.
	that guy is losing out to a guy who doesn't do any of that stuff or doesn't do much of it, right?
	Yeah, but the overwhelming precipitating cause of that is the state and the laws that are enacted around Yeah, but dude, that was exactly my point at the end of the video, which is why the video has done like 70,000 rather than 200,000 views, because it's much tougher to share.
	I fully accept and understand that, but we need to be precise in our language.
	Yeah, of course, everybody's a victim of these state laws.
	But your issue, I think, is that if I'm talking to libertarians, then they're going to be confused and frustrated, right?
	And annoyed, right?
	Potentially, yeah.
	No, I think it's more than potentially.
	Yeah, but not just them, but anybody.
	I was thinking particularly people coming from also a liberal or leftish kind of point of view.
	Oh, yeah, okay.
	I mean, the liberal point of view is that You know, the best thing we can have is a race war and what can I do to add kindling to the fire, right?
	No, no, no.
	I don't agree with that stuff.
	And the reason why I say that is because I'm somebody who came from the left, okay?
	Are you still there?
	Yeah, go ahead.
	Oh, sorry.
	The screen changed.
	I thought I hung up.
	I was like, no.
	So, anyway.
	I'm not that fragile.
	No, no.
	It's been like just an error with the software.
	I came from the left, but all along the way, I'm not saying that everybody on the left is curious.
	And open to other ideas.
	But I was always open to other ideas, other persuasion, like, hey, put me wrong, that kind of stuff.
	And even with that mentality, it still took a long time.
	But there are people who are looking at this stuff, who are open to new ideas, who might just listen to the show, and they're going to listen to the first few minutes, maybe even the first half of something like this, and I think they're going to read into the motives of that.
	And it's just like, Like, your motives of that.
	Oh, like, I'm a racist cop lover kind of thing?
	Well, I don't know about that extreme, but, like...
	But along that continuum, right?
	Something, yeah, like, you're kind of, like, in, like, Republican land or whatever, like, because it's, like, the analogy, and maybe you can help me with this, maybe, like, maybe this analogy is off a little bit, but I was thinking, like, well, like I was talking about with my wife last night, like, if somebody was talking about the Iraq War, And they wanted to condemn it, let's say.
	And so they spent the last few minutes of a video condemning the Iraq War because of all the casualties and all the horrors and so on.
	But let's just say that in that particular case, Congress declared war.
	And for the first 15 minutes of that video or so, that person said, okay, so we're going to look at the legality of the Iraq War.
	Now, they did go through the congressional...
	of declaring war.
	The Senate did this and so on and so on.
	We kind of looked at it in detail and maybe there were some controversies thrown in there and that kind of stuff.
	But ultimately we decided that the war was legal, it was declared properly and so on.
	But then in the last few minutes we're going to say, yeah, but this is evil, it's wrong, and here's why, and then goodbye.
	And that was kind of the like, whoa, kind of feeling or whatever that I had after listening to it.
	But, Nick, hang on a sec.
	I gotta tell you, I mean, my response to that will be that that's a wildly inaccurate analogy to what I did in the video.
	Wildly inaccurate?
	Okay.
	Wildly inaccurate.
	Because I was talking about facts presented to a grand jury.
	And I was also talking about reasonable standards of justice, not just what happens to be legal.
	If I was focused on what happens to be legal, then I would say, well, of course, you know, he should be arrested because he was selling cigarettes, right?
	But hang on.
	But what I was doing was I was saying there's a reasonable standard of justice, which is that if you do something and someone has an underlying medical condition that causes their death, which you have no advanced knowledge of, that cannot be considered murder.
	And I think that's philosophically – I think that's a reasonable standard of justice.
	It also happens to be the law with regards to this situation, but it's not because it's the law that I was talking about it, because if I was only talking about what was legal or illegal, then I would have just talked about, well, he was selling cigarettes illegally and deserved to be arrested, which was not my argument.
	But for me, the philosophical question is, can someone be held criminally liable to For actions where they had no way to know ahead of time that what they were doing was going to cause someone's death.
	Well, and I think that that would be a very tough case to make morally, philosophically, and so on.
	The fact is it also happens to be the law in these situations in general.
	Whereas what you're talking about with the Iraq war is the technical legalities.
	My argument, as you know, with regards to the Iraq war is that We look at the violence of the Iraq War and I think any reasonable, decent, sensitive human being says, well, that's pretty horrifying.
	But that's only the effect of the initiation of force against citizens through taxation and through the control of the Fed and all of that sort of stuff so that you can have free war.
	So I wouldn't be saying, well, there's a technical rubber stamp approval of status laws, which I think would be your analogy with regards to the Iraq War.
	But – because I would be talking more about the principle of self-defense, which clearly doesn't apply in the Iraq war.
	So I don't think that those two are particularly analogous, but I'm happy to hear if I'm talking out of my armpit.
	Well, yeah.
	I mean, it's kind of a half-hypothetical because they didn't even declare war in that.
	Yeah.
	I find it strange, though, that the major purpose of the video, or even just a major purpose of the video...
	Was to, like, kind of point out that, like, if we were in a free society, this could happen.
	Here's some, like, common law principles that were at work here, that kind of stuff, because that's not what's going on.
	what's going on is that here's like this extremely i mean if you want to talk about like legally distorted or whatever everything is distorted in terms of like i mean the police don't own this the don't like morally like legally or sorry morally defensively own the street you know what i mean they own the street the government owns the street and the side in the sidewalks but they really don't own it you know what i mean um and so therefore like that it almost it's kind of immaterial to me it's like
	well we could we could talk about that in any situation um i I don't feel like...
	Sorry, that's a bad choice of words.
	I don't recall you really discussing that so much in the video.
	And correct me if I'm wrong.
	Discussing whether the police owned the sidewalk?
	Sorry, Nick.
	We dropped you for a second or two, but you can just pick up from a minute back.
	Yeah, sorry.
	You look like you were having some really good points.
	So we had to drop you for a moment.
	Sorry, just kidding.
	Go ahead.
	That's fine.
	So, yeah, and I was going to make a joke earlier.
	It's not really that good, but I'm kind of like the elf on the shelf for you tonight, just kind of watching and trying to be creepy as far as best I can on Christmas Eve.
	Stop picking your nose, Steph.
	Hey, how do you know?
	Anyway, go on.
	So what I was saying, though, is that it didn't seem, from what I recall, it wasn't clearly discussed.
	Sorry, but what wasn't clearly discussed?
	Whether the police are on the sidewalk?
	No, no.
	The purpose of the video was to point out, like, hey, this could happen in a free society.
	Because it's not happening in a free society.
	You know what I mean?
	It's an incident that happened now.
	And I thought that you were, you know, and you worked very hard, and I'm sure Mike did too, and like, you know, figuring out as many facts as you guys can unearth, you know, about the situation and so on, and just to kind of say, hey, do the facts point to whether the police directly were responsible for killing this guy or not?
	That seemed to be the kind of major purpose of it.
	And so I guess the other thing I wanted to say about that, which I guess a lot of people are thinking, is that, like, well, okay, yeah, this guy is obviously medically fragile in some ways.
	He's pretty significantly obese, and there's, you know, some, like, heart condition kind of going on and so on.
	You know, he's not living a very healthy life, to say the least.
	But at the same time, though, like, there's no way that...
	I can't accept that the police...
	Like, pulling him down, and I'm not saying they have to be responsible for this in a way, but dragging him to the ground and choking this guy for whatever, standing there soliciting people and so on.
	Like, that wasn't an impetus.
	No, no, no, no.
	Come on, come on.
	You left this thing here.
	I mean, he was not choked for selling cigarettes.
	Wasn't that the, like...
	I thought that was the major...
	No!
	That's the same thing as people saying, well, you know, Michael Brown was shot because he was a shoplifting.
	No.
	Eric Garner was not put in a chokehold because he was selling cigarettes.
	Eric Garner was put in a chokehold for one simple reason, that he resisted arrest.
	Yes.
	No, I agree with that.
	No, but that's...
	Your narrative is...
	Wrong.
	And is, I think, irresponsible.
	Because it's inflammatory.
	It's inflammatory to say, this guy was killed for...
	I'm not saying, but this guy, it happened because he was selling cigarettes.
	No.
	But if that wasn't the law, they wouldn't be able to arrest him for that, right?
	No, I understand that.
	But if he had said, okay, I'll come with you, then they would not have swarmed him.
	They would not have tried to take him down.
	If he was not resisting arrest and also whether the cops knew beforehand or not, he had a, what was this, his 32nd time being arrested going back to the 1980s and he'd been violent with cops in the past and writes, I don't know how many of them or if any of them, we don't know because there's no grand jury testimony available.
	But if they knew that, then he's dangerous.
	And, you know, as one of the officers said, like basically a giant plate glass window.
	I don't want to go through that, right?
	You've So he was not choked for selling cigarettes.
	He was choked for resisting arrest.
	That's important.
	Look, I don't agree with the selling cigarettes law, of course, right?
	I mean, don't get me wrong.
	It's monstrous.
	And this is the reality of the state.
	I get that.
	But in terms of the cause and effect, he had been arrested before.
	He knew the drill.
	This was not a guy pulled over for speeding the first time.
	He knew the drill.
	He also knows, as all habitual criminals know, what happens if you resist the police.
	They will escalate until you are subdued.
	He knew that.
	He was a career criminal.
	That's like saying, I'm a big game hunter, but I had no idea that lions were dangerous.
	So what other crimes had he committed?
	Off the top of my head, I think he had definitely sold these cigarettes before.
	Eric Gardner was known to have had a criminal record including 31 arrests dating back to 1980 when he was 16 on charges such as assault, resisting arrest, and grand larceny.
	Several of those arrests were due to the sale of unlicensed cigarettes.
	That's all we have detail-wise that's been released.
	I just want to make sure, because we're talking about inflammatory language.
	I don't know, Mike, if you said those were convictions or those were arrests.
	I don't think arrests make someone a lifetime criminal or whatever term you use.
	You know what I mean?
	Well, I said habitual criminal, and there is some indication that he'd had a job.
	You said lifelong criminal.
	Okay, so he was first arrested when he was 16.
	I don't know...
	I don't think we know whether the conviction stuck or what his jail time was, if any, or anything like that, which, again, is also a pretty terrible system as a whole.
	But the reality is...
	Let's be fair, though.
	If you're going to say inflammatory statements, I would definitely claim that that's an inflammatory statement to call somebody a lifelong criminal based on just arrests or even just...
	Oh, come on.
	Look, I get that.
	Come on.
	31 arrests?
	So, yeah.
	So, somebody can be arrested many times.
	If they didn't have evidence, then they didn't convict him.
	But, I mean, to call someone a lifelong criminal, I mean, that's an inflammatory thing to say.
	I would say so.
	Not if it's spaced up with some facts.
	I mean, if I said, well, you know, the guy was arrested for shoplifting once when he was 18 and then got into this.
	If I said he was a lifelong criminal.
	So, Mike, if you could just have a quick look up and see if any of those arrests stuck or not, that might be helpful.
	I don't know whether that information is available or not.
	Last time I looked, it wasn't, but I will do a double check now.
	I mean, I would agree that he had a lifelong flirtation with the law.
	You know what I mean?
	Like a lifelong or a habitual tendency to skirt the law or whatever at minimum.
	I'll definitely go with you on that one.
	Okay.
	So, my point being that since this was not his first encounter with the police… since it was his 32nd encounter with the police and being arrested, this was not – I mean, he would know this, right?
	Absolutely.
	I mean, that's a very unwise thing to do.
	I mean, I don't think anybody with any – With any sense or whatever, it's going to say that that's a wise thing to resist the police.
	I mean, maybe you can make a point out of it or whatever.
	I don't think you're going to make much of a point, but it's a very unwise thing to do, to say the least.
	I mean, it cost him his life.
	Yeah, and I think like everyone, it would be great if it hadn't gone the way that it went.
	Obviously, as in a quarter million times where people are arrested for what I assume is nonsense in New York every year, that it went the way that everyone else did.
	I think it's awful the way it went down.
	I mean, for me, the heartbreaking thing was hearing in his voice, you know, leave me alone, I'm minding my own business.
	You know, this ends today.
	You know, like he was, you could, at least for me, hear this bottomless frustration and hopelessness and anger.
	Yeah, I think he felt like he was being harassed.
	Of course, yeah, absolutely.
	Absolutely he did.
	Absolutely he did.
	And I think that's tragic.
	I think that's horrible.
	But they're lions, right?
	And he was a lion tamer.
	He can't claim that he didn't know they were dangerous, and he certainly can't claim, not that he would now, sadly he's dead, but he can't claim that this was unforeseen.
	Let's put it this way.
	Did Eric Garner know more about the nature of the police, or did the police know more about the nature of Eric Garner's health problems?
	Oh, definitely the former.
	Right.
	And if you resist, they escalate.
	I mean, they can't walk away, right?
	They can't back down.
	I mean, if they say, we're going to arrest you, and you say, I don't think so, they're like, oh, okay.
	Sorry, we didn't realize you didn't want to be arrested.
	We'll go back about our business, right?
	True.
	Of course, at the same time, I don't think it'd be fair to say that he actually believed he was going to die.
	You know what I mean?
	No, and otherwise it would be suicide by cop.
	Right?
	I mean, if I take a gun out and point it at a policeman, I'm going to get shot.
	Or even if you don't have a gun.
	I mean, like that guy who was, you know, he was definitely, I guess, verbally threatening the police.
	This was in St.
	Louis after the Michael Brown incident.
	The guy who stole the muffin.
	Yeah, like an energy drink or something like that?
	Yeah, yeah.
	He basically wanted the cops to come and shoot him, it would seem.
	Yeah, I mean, he was just kind of like...
	I mean, the guy seemed pretty emotionally disturbed.
	He was shouting and kind of taunting people in the street, just kind of randomly, and then the police show up, and he just took it to another level or whatever.
	Yeah, I mean, the police...
	I think, as far as I understand it, the police simply have to be in reasonable fear of their life, and they don't actually have to see a weapon.
	They just have to believe that you're...
	You might have a weapon on you or you're capable of something like that.
	Mike says that there's no info on the convictions of Eric Garner.
	And so, you know, I think your point is a fair one, and I apologize and retract the statement, lifelong criminal, but let's just say repeated exposure to arrest.
	31 arrests.
	31 arrests.
	This is 32.
	He still can't claim that...
	He doesn't know what's going down if he resists.
	Plus, he'd already been arrested for resisting arrest.
	Or he'd already been charged with the resisting arrest.
	Which means that he certainly knows what happens if you resist, which is they're going to escalate.
	And don't get me wrong, I think the whole thing is terrible.
	The whole thing is tragic.
	The whole thing is monstrous.
	But saying that he was taken down for selling cigarettes is...
	Is incorrect.
	And that views him as entirely passive in the encounter, but he wasn't.
	Right.
	Well, okay.
	And I could retract that.
	I mean, I could probably qualify that a little bit better.
	I mean, that was the original...
	That's definitely one of the laws being enforced in that incident, would you not say?
	Yeah, and I mean, this arises out of a whole philosophy of the broken window policing, right?
	Which is that if you, you know...
	You get rid of vandals and you get rid of like petty vandals and you get rid of people who spray graffiti and you get rid of people who break windows and you get rid of people selling single cigarettes that lo and behold, the neighborhood just gets better.
	And I mean, I view that as errant nonsense.
	I think it's highly dangerous nonsense, but it's completely understandable.
	I mean, it's completely understandable.
	Look, policemen want to go home at the end of the day.
	They don't want to go home in a bag or a box.
	And so for them, they're like, oh, yeah, we get to focus on people who are graffiti artists?
	That sounds great.
	Because, you know, those drug kingpings sure have a lot of guns.
	So you want me to focus on petty criminals and get home with you because they're way less dangerous?
	You know, oh, yeah, I can do that.
	I think that, yeah, that sounds great to me, which is why they drag a lot of people off the street for selling drugs.
	But they don't as often, as far as I understand it, climb the hierarchy and I mean, they don't.
	You know, this untouchable shootout scenario, I can imagine, is every cop's worst nightmare.
	And so, when there's a philosophy of policing that lets you deal with far less dangerous people, yeah, I can see that.
	So to kind of get back to my original question, it's like, given all that we just said there, I still don't get, and help me out, I don't get why examining that stuff, what I was about to say, examining...
	I'm sorry, I didn't want you to go on and miss that point.
	Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you, but...
	That's okay.
	Examining all the stuff about whether or not the police were directly responsible for killing him...
	Sure, you can do that, but why?
	Why was that as important to you when there's so many other things to focus on?
	I think about reaching to people on the left and saying, look, think about this.
	Some people are not going to be open to this.
	That's fine.
	There's always going to be some people that won't listen and self-examine a bit.
	People on the left are always going to be in favor of Like, oh, we should regulate the sale of cigarettes.
	We should license vendors to sell this stuff in order to protect consumers or some nonsense.
	And so what they're doing, and I don't think that they're thinking about this, I really don't, at least I know I didn't when I used to be one, is that like, yeah, but what that means, though, is that if somebody resists that, this is what happens to them.
	This is what you want to do to them if you want that law.
	And that to me is far more powerful and less likely to get people pissed off or feeling squirmy in their chair kind of thing like I did.
	You know what I mean?
	The purpose of the examination of all that stuff is, sorry, of whether the police were responsible or not.
	It's cloudy to me.
	I don't get it.
	So you don't understand the motivation as to why I would want to talk about whether the police caused his death.
	I just want to make sure I understand your perspective.
	That's the part that's not clear to you?
	Yes, absolutely.
	Well, would you question the motives of a black man who resisted the narrative that blacks have extreme criminal tendencies as a whole?
	I question the motives...
	In other words, let's say that I put out an argument.
	This is not my argument.
	But let's say I put out an argument that said, Blacks, boy, mostly violent and criminal.
	And a black person resisted that racist characterization.
	Would you say to the black person, I'm not sure why you would focus on that?
	Well, no, but I think I would, even if I didn't initially, depending upon where they took that...
	No, come on, you wouldn't.
	If a black person was opposing racism, and rightly so...
	You wouldn't say, I don't understand why you're doing that, right?
	No, not at the beginning, but depending upon what they said...
	I get that.
	But you're saying, like, why would I want to focus on whether the cops were responsible for his death and all that?
	Well, because there are facts involved, and I try to focus on the facts and go where the facts lead me, and of course I did include in the presentation all of the negative incidents that had occurred or been committed by the policemen in question beforehand, so I wasn't trying to quote whitewash anything.
	But...
	Have you ever heard the argument that America is in general or in general has a big problem with racism?
	I think I may have heard that once or twice.
	You may have come across that once or twice.
	Have you ever come across the argument that a big component of America's racism is black racism?
	Only from, you know, the kind of rare sort of like...
	People on the extreme right, I guess, maybe.
	Yeah, okay.
	So it's discounted as an extremist position, right?
	Oh yeah, typically, sure.
	Okay.
	Have you ever heard that in America the big problem is Asian racism?
	You mean like Asian people being racist against others?
	Indians and Japanese and I don't know what the definition of the Asian race is in general, but just Asiatic.
	Let's just say it's Chinese racism, that that's the big problem in America.
	You mean like them being the recipient of racism?
	No, no, no.
	So we could go through this process for a while, but when people say America is racist, what are they really saying?
	Well, that's a good question.
	I don't know.
	No, it's a very simple question, and you know the answer as well as I do.
	You just don't want to say it.
	Because we've just eliminated a whole bunch of racists.
	What's left?
	I see what you mean.
	Well, yeah, that white people are racist.
	White people are racist.
	When people talk about racism, they're talking about white people and only white people.
	In fact, white people are so racist that other races risk death to get into white countries.
	That's how racist and horrible white people are or white founded countries are.
	You know, the West.
	You know, white people are so racist that people will try and cross oceans on tiny rafts just to get to white founded countries.
	Mexicans will risk death at the hands of these coyotes, people who lead them across.
	I don't know if the other kind are there too.
	To try and get into white-founded countries.
	That is how unbelievably racist white people are.
	Everyone is desperate to get into white-founded countries.
	Because white people are so terrible, apparently we're just not worth watching at a distance.
	You've got to be up close to see how terrible white people are.
	So I despise The initiation of force in all of its forms, whether it's spanking or the state power or religious terrorism of children and so on.
	I despise, because I'm principled, and please understand, I'm not saying you're not.
	I'm just talking from my own perspective.
	As a philosopher, I must work in the greatest and widest possible abstractions.
	Right?
	And I despise...
	Bigotry in all of its forms.
	I am not allowed to exclude certain groups from bigotry because that would be bigoted, right?
	You know, there's that old Stephen Colbert joke, you know, I don't see race.
	People tell me I'm white and I believe them.
	I mean, but the first part of that statement is I look at the world.
	I don't want to see race.
	I don't care.
	I don't like, don't care, don't want it.
	And when I see one group consistently maligned as the source of all the world's problems, that's fucking bigoted as shit.
	That is bigoted as shit.
	People say America a racist, that's just a code word.
	For whites, a racist.
	When I see a racist narrative...
	And the Mike Brown and the Eric Garner narratives were racist because people weren't talking about the facts.
	They were bringing in the race.
	And they specifically excluded inconvenient facts in order to push a racist narrative.
	Race baiters are racist.
	Look, if I'm a giant white guy and I try and grab...
	A white cop's gun, punch him in the head, wrestle for the gun, the gun goes off, and then I charge him, all 300 pounds of me, I'm going to get shot.
	And I am tired of everyone talking about racism.
	And I will also make the case...
	That whites in general, in some ways, in many ways, are the least racist group.
	I don't see a lot of affirmative action in Middle Eastern countries trying to make sure that enough Christians get into positions of power.
	I don't see a lot of blacks in the NBA saying, we don't have enough white people in here.
	I think that the race guilt of white people is a tragedy.
	Of course there are racist white people, there are racist black people, there are racist Chinese people.
	But I also genuinely believe that there are very few people in the world who wake up every morning and say, which order of skin color can I most oppress today?
	I think most people wake up and they deal with their problems and they go to work and they Have fun with their kids, and they don't want and are not driven by some fundamental need to oppress other people.
	And so...
	I must...
	I'm bound to, on principle, resist racism in all its forms.
	And this narrative...
	Let me give you a tiny example, then I'll shut up, because I'm certainly sending out a lot of info.
	Let me give you a tiny example of just how unbalanced that is, right?
	So...
	I'm sure you remember 9-11, right?
	And after 9-11, what were we constantly told to remember?
	Well, we were constantly told to remember that the Muslim Saudi hijackers are not representative of Islam, right?
	Right?
	That's what some people were saying.
	I felt like the thing that I was told or I caught was don't forget about the heroic people who went into these buildings and saved them and the people that are on the front lines and the first responders.
	I felt like that was the like...
	No, I get that.
	I get that.
	I think there was a lot of back and forth about Islam and, you know, that kind of thing.
	But we certainly weren't...
	No reasonable person was expected to believe that Islamists were terrorists, right?
	You mean like as an entire group?
	As a group, right?
	That's certainly what most, I think most people were making that case.
	I think there was, man, it seemed like there were a lot of people saying, no, like, there's the people on Fox News kind of stuff, like Sean Hannity, like, oh, but they all want the One World Caliphate and this kind of stuff, and they want to bring Sharia law, like, that it's all built into the Koran, it's built into the religion itself.
	So there were criticisms of the religious texts, but there was no one reasonable person who said all Muslims are terrorists, right?
	I don't think so.
	Not universally.
	I think in the beginning of Season 3 of The West Wing, because it's important to go to the source for your general soupy lefty stuff.
	But Aaron, he has trouble getting around L.A. because he can never make a right turn.
	But that's perhaps a story for another time.
	9-11 happened, I think, if I remember rightly, between the second and third seasons.
	And they opened up the third season with...
	Josh Lyman, played by a very charismatic actor, Bradley Whitford, I think his name is.
	Great actor, very charismatic.
	And he said, like, Muslim terrorists are to Islam as the KKK is to Christianity.
	Right?
	So here we have an incident where a bunch of Islamic crazies fly planes and Into, you know, causing over 3,000 deaths and so on.
	And we are constantly exhorted not to judge the actions of hundreds of millions of people by the actions of few crazy extremists, right?
	Sure.
	Now, that's not what happens with white people and racism, right?
	You know, let's say that there were some genuine bona fide I don't know.
	Maybe when you say racist, I mean because that's – I guess that's a loaded word sometimes.
	Do you mean somebody who's like sort of white supremacist racist or just like – Let's say so horribly racist that let's say they hijack a plane and fly it into a black college killing 3,000 people.
	3,000 blacks.
	All the while shouting white power forever over the radio.
	Let's say that happened.
	Never has, but let's say it did.
	Now, how many Al Sharptons and how many Jesse Jackson's, do you think would be out there saying, these crazy guys absolutely do not represent white people.
	These guys ought to white people as the KKK is to Christianity.
	I don't know.
	Honestly, I don't think that...
	I don't know about pundits, you know what I mean?
	Because who...
	I mean, God knows what they would say about that, something like that.
	I don't think that most people would say, oh yeah, this is representative of white America, that they want to indiscriminately murder innocent black people in their university or something like that.
	Have you not been reading any of the media reports on...
	Of course I have.
	I think, like...
	I agree with part of what you're saying, that like...
	The narrative out there or whatever is pretty one-sided in terms of who's racist.
	No, it's not one-sided.
	It is racist.
	Whites are racist.
	It's like the patriarchy.
	Automatically, by being a male, well, in fact, just a white male, you are sexist.
	And automatically, by being a white person, you are considered a racist.
	And that is incredibly bigoted.
	It's absolutely wrong.
	And there's no other group that I know of.
	Look, there are radical feminists out there, right?
	And there's not a sane person alive who thinks that these feminists who cheer on the death of men are representative of women as a whole, right?
	And I can't find for the life of me a white racist...
	Anywhere who's got any public power, any public capacity to do harm, that compares to the outspoken proclamations of people like Marxists, of people like radical feminists, of people like black power advocates and so on, those people say some crazy stuff and some pretty nasty stuff, some downright murderous stuff.
	And I would never say that these people are representative of their gender or racial group or whatever as a whole.
	So even though this, quote, supposed demon of white racism, which people really can't find very well or very easily, even though it's far less public, far less egregious, far less outspoken and far less dangerous and damaging – Than other radical groups, even just in America, most people who are fair-minded take great pains to separate the radicals from the group and not tar and feather the whole group with the reactions of the extremists.
	However, even though the supposed horde of white supremacists that are everywhere are causing all of these problems for every other group, even though I can't find them anywhere that I look, whites are somehow...
	To be tarred not just with the extremists, but with the extremists that nobody can ever seem to produce.
	So why is it that people can confidently come up to people, to a whole society and say, yeah, white people are fundamentally racist?
	That's wrong.
	That's unjust.
	That's unfair.
	That is bigoted.
	Okay, so it sounds like you're saying, so correct me if I'm wrong, that for you, a part of your motivation for this video was to maybe redress that a bit.
	No, that's...
	I mean, we were talking about something other than the video when this topic came up because you said you couldn't understand...
	Well, I was.
	I was talking about the video.
	You said that you couldn't understand why I would want to deal with the facts.
	No, you're right.
	You're right.
	Sorry.
	But we drifted a little bit if my memory serves me right.
	You said, why would you want to deal with the facts of the case?
	Sorry.
	That's not what I said exactly.
	Go ahead.
	Sorry.
	Yeah.
	No, what I was asking for is that, like, What would be your motivation?
	What was your purpose?
	And focusing on whether or not the police were directly responsible or responsible for Eric Garner's death.
	Those kinds of facts.
	Rather than focusing on, hey, here's another example of why it's fucking evil to want to enact a law using the state.
	Well, okay, but that was the last 10-15 minutes of the video, right?
	Well, I don't know about the time.
	My memory, for whatever that's worth, I think was like five.
	It was a pretty bitching segment.
	I don't know the exact time either, but it was not.
	It wasn't a throwaway line or two.
	I mean, it was a pretty focused argument.
	It was a good full rights hook at the end.
	I agree with that.
	But it was also, I think, dwarfed in terms of time and coverage part.
	In other words, like...
	When my own motive radar, if you will, scanning for that, yeah, I was confused by it.
	I didn't get it.
	I didn't understand.
	But do you understand that this story...
	It came front and center because it fits a narrative of generalized white racism.
	Absolutely.
	And so, like, for me, like, I would, from my point of view, again, I'm not a podcaster.
	I don't have the experience.
	It was just, this is my own kind of feeling about it, is that, like, why not try to...
	Sort of pull that out and say something different about it and not deal with the racism part so much.
	Because in a lot of ways, whether these cops or some of those cops were racist, it's almost impossible to really verify something like that, isn't it?
	You know what I mean?
	Like, try to actually, like, measure somebody's beliefs.
	I mean, we can see, you know, what they do outwardly, like their outward behavior, but their thoughts...
	Yeah, and these cops were under the command of a black woman.
	You know, one of the things I would assume that a racist would not do is submit to the orders of a race he considered to be inferior or negative or whatever it is, right?
	Well, yeah, but...
	Sorry, Mike, just checked.
	The closing segment was ten minutes.
	Okay, 10 minutes.
	And how long was the video?
	Was it like 25?
	38 minutes.
	38 minutes.
	So a little over a quarter of the video.
	Okay, thank you.
	So I was a little off in my memory with that.
	But it was definitely less.
	But anyway, I lost my train of thought there.
	Oh, you're talking about whether racism can be measurable or not?
	Yes, thank you, thank you.
	Well, yeah, I was just going to say very quickly, I think just because somebody's racist, and I have a few experiences I could maybe add into there with that, I think so often the racism that I've seen in my life coming from white people, and when I think about that, I think of people in my family.
	What's your race?
	I'm white, I'm Caucasian.
	Okay.
	These are not people in positions of power.
	It's more like everyday kind of stuff that would be where it would come out.
	Somebody doesn't have to be – yes, these cops were under the direction or under the – their captain or whatever was black and they're white.
	But you know what I mean?
	Well, you don't have to be so white supremacist or whatever to be, I think, somewhere in the middle of the road racist about stuff like that.
	I understand that.
	But where's the evidence, right?
	Well, this is – we're talking about a hypothetical situation.
	No, no, but we're not.
	We're talking about a bunch of – Cops under the direction of a black cop with another black cop present who are taking down a guy who's resisting arrest who I think mostly black shop owners called the police on.
	Well, and that's why I was saying it's hard for I think anybody with some really rigorous level of evidence to say this person was racist, this person was not racist without them making some kind of racist statement.
	Oh no, no, you can.
	Because if you say whites are racist, which is what people are always saying, When they're saying America is racist, that is a very, very clear statement of unbelievable racism.
	Yeah, okay.
	I don't need to read anyone's mind to understand that.
	That's a very clear statement because they're painting all white people with just about the most negative brush in the leftist palette, right?
	It is, but that would be the same thing as somebody making a racist statement on the other end.
	That's all I was saying.
	Okay.
	Have you seen a lot of statements in the mainstream media about, you know, well, blacks are just wildly criminal?
	I'm not saying they are.
	I'm just saying have you seen those statements?
	Have you seen statements in the mainstream media that categorize other races in even remotely as negative terms as whites are generally characterized or white societies?
	Statements, no.
	Usually the complaint or whatever is that's how they're painted in terms of coverage.
	Sorry, I'm not sure what you mean.
	I wasn't really trying to bring this up to debate the level of racism in American society or anything like that.
	There's huge racism in American society.
	That's what I'm saying.
	It's just not the mainstream narrative.
	But you know what, Steph?
	I mean, I agree with that.
	There's certainly bigotry on that level, and even coming towards white people, just like you're saying.
	No, no.
	I'm not saying even coming towards white people.
	There is huge racism in American society, and it's almost exclusively directed against white people.
	But my experiences are different, though.
	I've known many white people who say and espouse racist stuff.
	Can you give me an example of who?
	Oh my god, absolutely.
	Yeah, please tell me.
	Okay, so growing up, people, particularly on my mom's side of the family, they would say things to me, you know, like 8, 9, 10 years old, somewhere in there.
	When they were 8, 9, or 10, or when you were 8, 9, or 10?
	Of course, when I was 8, 9, or 10 years old.
	I wouldn't have been alive, but they were 8, 9, or 10.
	Sorry, they were adults, and you were a kid.
	Yeah, like I'm thinking about my grandfather on my mom's side.
	I'm thinking about my mother, my uncle on my mom's side.
	They would often say things, you know, not like every day, but when the subject would kind of come up, You know, like, oh, well, there's two types of black people.
	There's black people and then there's niggers.
	There's, you know, black people...
	Oh, like that just rock bit, right?
	Yeah, except not for humor, right?
	So, like, there's...
	Like, basically, there's two types of people and, you know...
	Like, some are scum and some are not scum, basically.
	And what's that?
	Like, if you were to say to them, you know, there's white trash and then there's hardworking white people?
	Would that also be, like, would they say, oh no, all white people are the same?
	I don't know what they would say about that, but they didn't say that regularly.
	Like, I don't recall them saying that or even, like, you know, like saying, well, of course there are white trash people.
	It wasn't, like, balanced in that way.
	At least how it was presented to me.
	And also, like, just the N-word itself was thrown out.
	Like, oh, look at that nigger over there.
	Like, that kind of stuff.
	That was thrown out.
	I'm assuming this wasn't At a Sidney Poitier or Morgan Freeman movie, right?
	No, no, dude.
	This is like driving around, pulling up to a supermarket, just everyday kinds of experiences, that kind of stuff.
	I can recall people that I went to school with in high school.
	This is when I started to get into...
	Philosophy and just kind of thinking about politics and getting to that, I started to challenge this stuff more and question this kind of stuff.
	Things that my family had said and beliefs that my family held.
	People in my high school, other white people in my high school is prominently white.
	The same kind of stuff.
	Like, oh, they're all like that.
	Or just...
	Really?
	I mean, I tell you, I've lived in three different continents.
	I've never heard this kind of talk.
	Have you ever lived in the United States?
	No, I've never lived.
	I mean, I've stayed like a month at a time, but I've never lived for long periods in the United States.
	Right.
	Now, granted, I'm talking about periods of time that I'm 37 years old.
	I'm talking about when I was a kid, like the 1980s, and when I was in high school, the 1990s.
	So there's a decent chance that people might have changed their views about this.
	We've had some time to reconsider and have some other points of view put in there.
	Technically, it's not racism if they're saying there are good blacks and bad blacks.
	Seriously, no.
	Racism is, they're all bad.
	Right?
	Are there good whites and bad whites?
	Well, yeah.
	Right?
	For sure.
	Yeah, but why even evaluate it on that basis?
	No, no.
	I mean, but it's not – No, no.
	Well, that's a question.
	That's a question.
	Racism is to judge the group by...
	Sorry, go ahead.
	No, no, I disagree.
	Because what I would say is that if somebody is different from you, you place them in this sort of other category of belief.
	That's why you're examining them on that basis.
	You're saying, oh, they're different from us.
	Let's look at how they're different from us.
	Yeah, some of them are like us.
	Some of them work regular jobs or hold...
	You know, like they respect their own property or something.
	I don't know, whatever.
	They're not criminals.
	But look at how many there are criminals.
	Look at how many that do behave this way, that are worthless, that kind of stuff.
	And again, it's not like, oh, but there are also good Asians and bad Asians.
	It wasn't presented that way.
	I don't accept that that's not racist.
	I mean, I know what you're saying.
	But hang on.
	I just did a presentation comparing crime rates of African Americans versus Asians.
	I don't know if you've ever looked up those statistics, but they're kind of different, right?
	Yeah.
	Yes, but we know that there's proximal and distal causes for that kind of stuff, and it's not genetic.
	It's not like if you're born with more melanin in your skin that you're going to be more likely to be a thief, right?
	I don't know the answer.
	I don't.
	I'd be thrilled if it wasn't genetic, and I hope to heck that it's not, but I don't know that anyone has any conclusive answers.
	Okay, so I mean, that would be strange to me, especially coming from someone who knows so much about early development, brain development, how that enormously impacts personality formation.
	Absolutely, and I act on the assumption, I act completely on the assumption that there's no genetics involved.
	But because I can't state conclusions prematurely, that would be irresponsible.
	And counterfactual and anti-philosophical, I can't say I know for 100% certainty that there's zero genetic influences in, say, aggression or capacity to defer gratification.
	I can't say that.
	I act on the 100% assumption, which is why in the George Zimmerman video, I took great pains to promote peaceful parenting.
	Right?
	In black culture.
	Because I act on the 100% assumption that there's zero genetics involved.
	But if somebody corners me and says, can you state with 100% scientific certainty that there's zero genetic influences involved?
	I can't.
	And there's no one who can.
	Okay, so, okay, well then, yeah, I would revise that to say most or a great majority of the evidence points to no.
	Right?
	I've heard different arguments, and I'm not an expert.
	So, I mean, I can't – some people say – I think Charles Murray is of the 50-50 perspective and there's other arguments to put it at different ratios.
	And I mean I'm so far from my field of expertise that I can answer.
	Because we could also kind of like level the same sort of charge against white people or Europeans – Look at all the – in fact, this is done quite – I'm sure you know.
	This is done a lot on the extreme end of – People on the left, they'll say, oh, the problem was white people.
	Look at all the colonialism and imperialism of the last few centuries.
	White people have this propensity for violence on a national or international scale.
	Sure.
	And they're going to say, is that child raising or is that just bad white genetics?
	I don't know.
	I like to focus on the things that we can change and I want to push the peaceful parenting and the calm interaction with your children and raising children without aggression.
	However far that moves everyone, I'm thrilled.
	I think that's scientifically and statistically the very best option that we have.
	In this area.
	Because, you know, I can't start tinkering with people's genetics.
	People already think I'm enough of a mad scientist as it is.
	So I want to keep pushing the voluntarism and the peaceful parenting and see how far that goes.
	If that solves white aggression, if it solves black aggression, great, fantastic.
	You know, I would love it if everybody ended up peaceful.
	I mean, I think that's what we're all sort of aiming for.
	But, yeah, and I'm sure there are people who say, you know, the whites, and I know that because they've left comments on the videos, you know, whites are a cancer on the planet and, you know, this world would be paradise if only there weren't white people around and so on.
	Yeah, I mean, I don't think those are representative of any race or group in particular.
	I think they're just kind of lone nutjobs.
	Right, and I think we would, at least I would say, I think most people would agree, I believe, or I suspect, that charge or whatever against white people, you know, Europeans, Americans, and so on, that we are, like, we're predisposed to be violent on that kind of scale, you know, based on colonialism and racism.
	In imperialism and wars and so on, it's unlikely to have a basis in genetics in terms of just being specific to people with a relative lack of melanin in their skin, like you and I. Well, I mean, again, I'm no geneticist, but it's not just the melanin, right?
	I mean, that's just one of many differences that could have something to do with things, right?
	It's not just...
	I mean, the degree of melanin is not the only...
	Biological differences between the races.
	It's a very small percentage.
	As I'm sure you know, our genome compared to something like a chimpanzee is off by just a few percentage points in terms of similarities.
	If we're going from inter-homo sapiens genomes, then there's relatively little variation.
	It's a pretty small percentage.
	Oh, absolutely.
	I mean, there's a very small genetic differentiation between men and women, but the crying game still made me scream.
	So, you know, small genetic differences can produce some pretty large effects like, you know, tits and… Working tits versus all taps and no plumbing.
	So, yeah, again, but I mean, I don't have the data.
	Nobody has the data.
	And I act as if, and my particular perspective is, yeah, let's just focus on everything that we can do to change and make the world more peaceful.
	If it shakes out that there's some genetic differences between the race that have effects on behavior...
	We'll figure it out as we get there, but we've got so much work to do before that even becomes a factor that, to me, it's not particularly consequential.
	Well, and kind of going along with that, that was kind of like my original point.
	If there are things that we can focus on that can make a difference, why focus on...
	I don't get the focus on countering the racism against white people.
	Because all of the examples of racism that you're quoting are private.
	And all of the examples of racism that I'm quoting are public.
	Yours are private and usually not accepted in the larger society, and I sure as hell guarantee you these people are very unlikely to be talking like that now, particularly the younger people.
	But the people can openly state why it's so racist, and that's a mainstream position in many circles.
	America's a racist society.
	Whites are racist.
	So the difference is that you're talking about, which I know, God, I mean, I'm not approving of it in any way, shape or form, but you're talking about private comments of racism that would never, ever, ever show up and shouldn't, right, in editorials in the New York Times, right?
	No, however, if we talk about how that would affect their behavior, if someone holds those beliefs, that's affecting their behavior, whether they're explicitly saying it out in public or not.
	I get that.
	I'm not saying it doesn't affect their behavior.
	What I'm saying is that there's racism that dare not speak its name, right, which is the racism you're talking about, which affects people's behavior.
	Of course, absolutely.
	I said, well, white racists, I'm not backing down from that.
	Okay.
	But that is the racism that dare not speak its name, right?
	The racism that is trumpeted from the rooftops are, okay, there were a quarter million peaceful arrests in New York, one guy got killed, white racism.
	That is the racism that we don't see, because it's omnipresent, and it's against whites, and it's not even, like, people would never say blacks are inferior and shouldn't.
	In mainstream media circles.
	But people will regularly say America is a racist country by which they mean whites are racists.
	And that's a fundamental foundational narrative in academia, in the media, in movies, in entertainment, in so on, right?
	I mean, I think it was...
	Mike, you can check on this, me.
	When they made the movie Django Unchained, was it Jamie Foxx who said...
	Oh man, best movie role ever.
	I get to shoot around killing, I get to ride around killing white people.
	What could be better than that?
	Now that, he's still got a career.
	He's still got a career.
	Imagine Mark Wahlberg saying about some movie, oh, best thing ever.
	I get to ride around in this movie shooting black people.
	Best thing ever.
	I mean, this is the double standard.
	Yeah, sure, no.
	I get it.
	And so what I'm talking about is that we have massive work to do on racism, and we have been working on white racism for, I don't know, when did abolitionism first start?
	200 or more years.
	And great, you know, good.
	But I think it's time to spread the love around a little bit.
	I think it's time to recognize that there is systemic, public, open racism against white people.
	That's not good.
	And I don't say this because I'm white.
	I just say this because I'm a philosopher, and principles are principles.
	But sorry, go ahead.
	So I was just going to say, okay, so that's kind of a big part of your thinking behind the presentation?
	No.
	No, I wouldn't say it's a big part of my thinking behind the presentation.
	I also care a lot about black people.
	And, boy, I mean, if every time a black person gets shot by a white cop, there's an unbelievable crap storm, and what's going to happen?
	How many smart people, let's just say since it's generally the white cops who are targeted, how many smart cops...
	I'm going to want to join the force.
	Anybody with any brains is going to look at that and say, ooh, really?
	You know, even if it turns out that I'm entirely innocent, my life could be completely destroyed.
	And the reality is that statistically black people call on cops more than white people, even when normalized for a wide variety of factors.
	And there are, you know, great, wonderful, hardworking, fantastic black people who are The victims of not so great, wonderful, and hardworking black people, just as there are of any races, because, you know, racists tend to congregate in many ways.
	And if we have this white cops of racists, and every time there's an incident, it's just going to be a howling mob demanding someone's head.
	And now this crazy guy in New York, Recently just shot, you know, one Hispanic and one Asian cop because apparently he thought they were white.
	I don't know.
	And then shot himself after launching his day of violence by shooting his girlfriend in the stomach and saying that he's Twittering or posting somewhere that he's going to put wings on pigs and for every one of ours, you know, take down two of theirs.
	How many people, how many smart white people I mean, obviously, white communities need cops too, but just in terms of the proportionality of calls, even if we normalize for everything else.
	It's about really thinking of the interests of minority communities in the long term.
	This race-baiting stuff is going to end in disaster.
	I'm telling everyone here and now, this race-baiting stuff, and this includes the baiting of the white race and the black race, which is of course in America really where it shakes down to, this race-baiting stuff, it's really going to end in disaster.
	And the disaster is, I think, disproportionately going to strike the black community.
	And I think that's incredibly tragic because we need strong peace.
	We need an excess of peace in the black community.
	I mean, of course, partly to heal the historical traumas and partly to give blacks the room to begin to explore how to parent more peacefully in general.
	Right now again.
	There are great black parents and there are terrible white parents and everything in between.
	But again, just looking at the very broadest of pictures, there does seem to be higher levels of corporate punishment and so on in black communities and so on.
	And I think that this constant race baiting is going to be bad.
	It's going to be bad for everyone.
	But I think it's going to disproportionately hit the black communities and I think that's really tragic.
	Because to me, this is just a continuation of, you know, I mean, not to equate everybody on the left with being Democrats, but Democrats have a terrible history of race relations.
	Terrible history of race relations.
	I mean, it's the Republicans who were really trying to normalize a lot of race relations, and it was the Democrats who, I'm not a Republican, but it was, historically, it was the Democrats.
	The KKK was an offshoot of the Democrat Party.
	Bull Connor and all those guys down there are all Democrats.
	They have this inability to just deal with blacks as regular old folk, as just human beings.
	And now there's strong cases to be made that the Democrats are using this race baiting just to gin up support for their electoral base and so on.
	I mean, I think it's...
	I'm just telling you my opinion.
	I don't have any proof of this.
	But I think that it's...
	You know, this constant race-baiting, this provoking of the seething hatred against white people from black people and whatever response that brings out in white people who don't wake up in the morning thinking, my God, before I have my tea and trumpets, I must find some way to oppress others.
	I mean, it is this constant provocation, this balkanization of the races, this constant injection of this seething hatred into these interactions.
	It is going to continue to escalate until people push back on principle.
	And that's what I try to do.
	I mean, I want the best for everyone.
	I mean, that's a cheesy, hallmark sentiment, but it's really true.
	And I just...
	This is why I push back against...
	Look, the facts are in the videos.
	People watch the videos because these are current topics.
	And I try to explore issues within the current topics that are not generally discussed.
	But I think are valid and important.
	But I also do have a motive for pushing back against this race-baiting.
	Because there's lots of people I really care about who live in the States.
	And, you know, maybe I obviously grew up in a different...
	The most popular guy in my high school was a black guy.
	A really great guy.
	And, you know, I mean, just a great guy all around.
	And I would...
	I would say that I try to push back against bigotry wherever I see it.
	And if I saw massive evidence of public white racism, then I would really focus on that.
	And of course there are racist whites, no question.
	But when I look sort of objectively, or as objectively as I can, and I'm trying to be objective here too, and of course correct me where I've gone astray.
	But when I look at the general narrative, when I look at something like when Jamie Foxx was on Saturday Night Live.
	Mike got me the recording.
	Oh, not the recording.
	He got me the quotes.
	So here's the full quote.
	Jamie Foxx says, and I've got a movie coming out, Django.
	Check it out.
	Leonardo DiCaprio, Samuel L. Jackson, Django.
	Unchained.
	I play a slave.
	How black is that?
	And in the movie, I had to wear chains.
	How whack is that?
	But don't worry.
	Don't be worried about it because I get out of the chains, I get free, I save my wife, and I kill all the white people in the movie.
	How great is that?
	And how black is that?
	That is offensive.
	And that is played for laughs in the biggest comedy show in America.
	That's a problem.
	And it is racist to only focus on the racism of whites.
	It's just wrong.
	It's just wrong.
	Because the white people's racism, where it still exists, is pretty underground and it's pretty private.
	Which doesn't mean it doesn't need to be talked about.
	It doesn't mean that it doesn't affect people's behavior.
	It's still an issue in the world.
	But there's a much more public form of racism that is unquestioned.
	And nobody would look at some black kid who kills a white guy as being somehow systemic of black, the black culture and black people as a whole in America.
	But one or two white cops shoot a black guy and suddenly all whites are racist.
	I mean, God.
	You get that we can't let that stand unchallenged.
	Yeah, I mean, there's a pretty decent history of going back, certainly back to the civil rights era and before that, of course, of black people being treated differently by the legal system in the United States.
	Absolutely.
	So, you know what I mean?
	It's not like what you said a second ago, like, oh, a couple of white cops kill one black guy or a couple of black guys, and now white cops are racist or whatever.
	I mean, that's not accurate in the sense that there's been a...
	No, no, but this is the point of what I'm trying to say, is that give me another society that has worked as hard for a formerly enslaved minority...
	Worked as hard to make them equal.
	I mean, that's not how they dealt with things in Rwanda, right?
	Rwanda, I mean, the two opposing clans or the two opposing groups just hacked each other to bits with machetes.
	Right?
	So, yeah, I fully recognize, yeah, there was injustices, absolutely.
	But my point is that This is the society that has worked the hardest to address those injustices.
	And compared to other societies around the world where there are minorities, I think that America has worked really hard.
	That doesn't mean that those injustices weren't there.
	It doesn't mean that they never had any effect.
	But the injustices also affected minorities.
	The whites, right?
	As I pointed out in The Truth About Slavery, I mean, whites were enslaved by blacks and Muslims and it was a worldwide practice that had lasted for as long as human history had lasted that was ended by white Western Europeans.
	And whites were impressed or forced to go on slave hunting patrols and really hated slavery because it drove down wages and caused them to have to spend half their nights around beating the bush looking for escaped slaves and there was lots of oppression.
	That went on throughout history.
	But it seems to me that to say whites are racist when white Western society has, I think, again, looking at it from space alien perspective, that white Western society has worked the very hardest out of all the societies ever throughout history to redress and equalize.
	It's treatment of minorities.
	Again, space alien perspective, that's what I would think, and maybe there's tons of examples of differences that I'm not aware of or whatever, but I'm trying to think of other societies where there are affirmative action policies and preferential hiring policies for I mean, you don't see this particularly going on, say, among the Kurds and the Sunnis and the Shiites in Iraq.
	Or in Northern Ireland.
	This stuff doesn't generally happen when there is minorities within a particular country or culture.
	And it has happened in white Western countries.
	And I don't know that it's...
	I'm just saying I think there's a case to be made that, yeah, historical injustices, but heavens, you know, I mean, look around the world.
	Where are minorities receiving better or more preferential, even, you could argue, unjustly preferential treatment?
	It's hard to find a place.
	Again, you may have studied this a lot more than I have, and I'm certainly happy to hear the case.
	But, you know, minorities in Saudi Arabia or I mean, how are the white Rhodesian farmers being treated in the black countries?
	Well, pretty badly.
	Yeah, I guess, I mean, just one thing that I just thought of there is that...
	When we look at the way...
	I'm not saying this is a perfect analogy, but when we look at the way children are treated in the United States or in England, for example, there's a lot that we could find to criticize and to really just rail against.
	And you have more eloquently than anyone I really know.
	But if we were to compare that to how children are treated in, I don't know, say in Saudi Arabia or Indonesia or in Japan maybe even or in China and so on, I would go out on a limb and say it's even worse.
	That's That's not a great basis of comparison to say, well, then it's pretty good here for kids.
	It's better, but there's still so much that's wrong with it, so much that's abhorrent, there's so much that's worth going after.
	Well, no.
	Look, I mean, again, comparing blacks to children.
	I'm not saying that you're trying to do that intellectually.
	But no, no, no.
	But comparing blacks to children, I mean, blacks have had equal rights for many, many years.
	Children are still legally, you can hit them.
	Right?
	I mean, if you were to compare the two accurately, you'd say, well, you know, if we had a society where whites could hit blacks with impunity, in fact, it was considered virtuous.
	And if you didn't hit a black, you were, right?
	Whatever, right?
	I'm just saying the point about comparing it to other countries, other societies, other cultures.
	I don't know.
	I mean, that's one way to look at it.
	I don't know how useful that is.
	No, it is useful.
	No, no, no.
	It is useful because still in a lot of Western countries, you can still hit children, but you can't hit blacks.
	So, you know, when I say, well, we could really improve the lot of children, they're still in a vastly different legal category for the most part than any other minorities.
	Right.
	Right, but would you say that white Western countries have done a great deal for children?
	Like, you know what I mean?
	Like, they've done so much for children.
	That's a good reason for us to say that childism is over with.
	No, no, no.
	But again, children are far further back than blacks in America because you can't legally hit blacks.
	That sounds terrible.
	Like, boy, I would like to change that.
	You can't legally hit blacks.
	Right, but you can legally hit children.
	Sure.
	Children are disenfranchised more than anybody else.
	Exactly.
	And as you'll notice, I don't have a lot of videos nagging the Swedes to be better parents.
	And look, I mean, sure, the Swedes still have a long way to go, but if I remember rightly, in places like Sweden, spanking has been banned for quite a long time.
	That's a step, right?
	And in places like England, Canada, America, other places, the legal hitting of children is still obviously a foundation of the law.
	So, yeah, I just want to sort of point that out.
	But I would just really like to...
	I'd really like to cool the racist rhetoric as a whole.
	Let's not judge groups.
	And let's assume no racism until proved otherwise.
	I mean innocent until proven guilty is kind of foundational to Western law.
	And I certainly would never chat with a black guy and assume he's an anti-white racist.
	I just wouldn't.
	I mean that would be inconceivable.
	Yeah.
	To me, like any more than I'd sort of, ah, there's a woman on the subway.
	She must be a radical feminist who wants to cut men's balls off and, you know, farm them for sperm, right?
	I mean, I just would never, you know, because for me, you know, you're not these things until proven otherwise.
	And that doesn't seem to be the standard with white people.
	You're not racist until you say something horribly racist, in which case, okay, let's go there.
	That innocent until proven guilty thing doesn't seem to be the case.
	You know what's funny about that stuff?
	I agree with you in terms of the idea that you get from...
	Media from the mainstream press and so on.
	Just anecdotally, my experience, I've worked with many black people in terms of being colleagues and, you know, other people at my job and other jobs that I've had in the past.
	They, just from what I can tell, they really seem to operate on that principle of sort of not racist until proven racist.
	Good, good.
	You know what I mean?
	Well, then we have to figure out who's buying all these newspapers.
	Well, I think you can buy a newspaper without buying into everything they say.
	Yeah, look, the newspapers are not idiots at the business of selling newspapers, right?
	You know, sometimes I tune in to Bill O'Reilly every now and then to see what he's saying.
	You can rest assured that I don't agree with him on pretty much anything.
	No, but because you tune in occasionally...
	You're not part of its core audience, right?
	I mean, there's enough people buying this media crap that they're selling it to someone.
	And it's not people like you who are tuning in occasionally.
	I mean, yeah, there's a wide variety of websites I visit that I disagree with enormous amounts on it.
	I just find different perspectives fascinating in general.
	But there are, you know, the fact that you drop into Bill O'Reilly is not...
	But, you know, people are buying enough of this stuff that...
	It's just something I want to be more aware of.
	I certainly would not judge a group by its worst members, and I would expect the same courtesy as a whole in return.
	And where it's not supplied, I have to call it like it is.
	Well, let me just say that I really appreciate you talking about this and taking this question.
	Obviously, I definitely had a reaction to the video.
	And I think it was worthwhile to discuss it.
	I definitely have a little bit better of an idea of where you're coming from.
	I think yours and my experiences are a little bit different in terms of the experience of race, the experience of charges against white people and that kind of stuff.
	I'm sorry, the experience of what against white people?
	The charges of racism against white people, that kind of stuff.
	I don't know.
	Maybe I'm wrong about that.
	I think where we differentiated our experiences was that I didn't really grow up with any racists.
	Right, right.
	Whereas it sounds like you did, right?
	Not that that's the only thing and that may not even be a huge part of their character, but as you said, it would come up occasionally, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	At different times, it came up more often than others.
	Right.
	And unfortunately, those people aren't around anymore.
	Most of my family are deceased.
	And we should oppose that.
	Obviously, we should oppose that where it comes up, where we can, and so on.
	And I would never listen to a white person say something like, you know, there's black people and then there are niggers without saying, I'm sorry, what now?
	Yeah.
	What?
	I mean, you may be painting with a bit of a broad brush there, my friend, and get into a more in-depth conversation about it.
	And I would never let that stand with anyone that I knew.
	But at the same time, if I hear whites are racist, then it would be racist for me not to stand up against that as well, right?
	I agree.
	I agree.
	Yeah.
	It sounds like that was definitely part of your motivation in making the video, was to say, hey, you're going to hear a lot about the racism of white people and white police.
	Here are the facts, as far as we can see them, about this particular incident.
	Yeah, and...
	I just, you know, and if they can dig up that these guys have had horribly racist posts and, you know, I can't wait to strangle my first black guy or whatever, absolutely, you know, bring out the pitchforks and I'll be with you, right?
	But...
	I find that these cries of racism prior to proof very problematic and are going to lead society in a bad light.
	I can't imagine any reasonably intelligent white guy who's like, cop, especially cop near a black neighborhood, that sounds great.
	And what's it going to be like a generation from now if you've had the least intelligent white people who still make up the majority of the police force for a The most challenging neighborhoods, not of course all of which are black, but I mean, what's that going to be like?
	Well, it's not going to be good.
	You know, I'd rather there be smarter people in the police force as a whole in general, because, you know, we're not going to snap our fingers and get rid of it anytime soon.
	And, you know, people have to think about the long-term consequences of satisfying immediate bloodlust versus, you know, what is the best for everyone in the long run.
	And, you know, I can guarantee you there's probably about...
	100,000 smart white people who were looking at the police force saying, oh my god, there's just no way.
	Like, there's no way.
	I'm just going to go in and do that.
	And what's that going to do in a generation, or half a generation for that matter?
	It's not going to be good.
	And I mean, I obviously have my issues with the police, but, you know, generalized people.
	You know, white racism and so on.
	I mean, you can see this.
	People, they just spout these statistics without any context, without any skepticism and so on.
	It's just, you know, we need to be more intelligent and we need to be...
	I'm really, really keen on the innocent until proven guilty stuff.
	And so, anyway, I appreciate the question.
	I appreciate the conversation.
	You know, I hope everyone understands that, you know...
	I truly, truly share Martin Luther King Jr.'s passion for judging people not by the color of their skin but the content of their character.
	That is one of the most moving things that I've heard in my life.
	And I really share that dream.
	And that is for blacks, whites, and all other races and groups.
	I think that's the dream we all have.
	We will judge these cops by the content of their character, not by the color of their skin.
	And the moment someone starts talking about racism before the facts are in, or with disregard to the facts, I'm not putting you in this category, but that to me is judging someone by the color of their skin rather than the content of their character.
	And I remember an English teacher playing that speech to us in the class when I was young.
	Very young, in fact.
	And I just remember goosebumps going up and down my skin.
	And I'm sure my pupils dilated and I got like a horse hoof of endorphins to the brain.
	Because I just, I found that, I mean, obviously it's one of the most thrilling and eloquent and passionate speeches that's ever been recorded.
	And I really was thrilled with that potential.
	And that remains my dream and my goal.
	And I think, I'm sure that we share that.
	And I'm sure that all good people of goodwill share that.
	I will not judge.
	Any one of different melanin...
	Melatonin?
	Why do I always get that wrong?
	I should know that word right now.
	But I will not judge people of different skin color by the content.
	Sorry, by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
	And I sure wish we didn't have skin and we were just these giant, visible human beings.
	I had this encyclopedia when I was a kid where you could turn these clear pages and look through the layers of the body.
	And in a way, I sort of wish that both for...
	Physical beauty and for skin color, I kind of wish we didn't have a skin and we were just these giant chomping masses of muscle and bone so that we could really see each other for our character rather than for our skin color.
	And I think that's the goal.
	And it does get dispiriting when I see a lot of, you know, whites or racist stuff floating around the media.
	And I just want people to wake up to it.
	And of course, not to fall asleep to all other forms of racism that occur also within the white community, but...
	It needs to be something we talk about a bit more, honestly.
	And I don't want the lynch mobs to start swarming the other way.
	That's just not the kind of balance I think that philosophers are looking for.
	So I appreciate the call.
	It was a really, really, really enjoyable chat, and I hope that we can talk again at some point as well.
	Yeah, enjoyable for me too, Steph.
	I appreciate it.
	All right.
	Thank you very much, Nick.
	Melanin?
	Not melatonin.
	Melatonin is a thing that puts you to sleep at night, right?
	It's melanin.
	Melanin.
	Melanin.
	Now I want a melon.
	Thanks, Nick.
	I appreciate it.
	Great chat.
	Merry Christmas.
	Merry Christmas.
	It is, you know, as I've continually said, it is a magnificent mind-expanding privilege to be privy to what people think and feel in the realm of self-knowledge and philosophy.
	It is a wonderful, wonderful privilege.
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	Thank you everybody so much.
	I hope everybody has an absolutely wonderful Christmas.
	If not, in your current environment, in your hope for what is to come.
	There's nothing that we can't do, we who think well and love deeply.
	And the love of wisdom leads to the love of Our virtue and the love of virtue leads to the love of real people who can love you back in a consistent way.
	So never doubt that pursuing wisdom and virtue will lead you to the life that you want, the life that you probably need, and the life that you deserve as the just fruit of your indomitable efforts.
	Thank you everyone so much.

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