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April 27, 2016 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
02:57:53
3274 NEVER TRUMP - Call In Show - April 26th, 2016
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Hello, hello everybody.
Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Main Radio.
Hope you're doing well.
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By popular demand, we added a third call-in show.
Hope it's going to last because we were so backlogged with people who have emergency philosophical questions and are stuck in this anti-chamber waiting room to talk for months at a time.
So we've decided to speed up the process and we appreciate everybody's interest.
We had some great callers tonight.
The first was a caller who was heartbroken by the senseless murder that happened in New Orleans recently.
A very famous athlete was shot seven times.
His wife was shot twice after a series of events that Don't seem to comprehensively lead to such bloodshed.
And now a man is facing, of course, murder charges.
And we talk about what happened and why it's so important and why it made this listener so passionate about what can be fixed in the world.
So I hope you'll check that out.
Second caller, well...
I was just wondering where my rabid pro-Trump support comes from.
That was his characterization.
I asked him to define what he meant.
We had an exciting time from there, and it got even more exciting after that.
And so we went back and forth about some of the media stuff that's been put out about Trump and why I've done an untruth about Donald Trump, but not an untruth about other candidates, either on the Republican or Democrat side.
And it was a spirited debate, let's put it that way, and I think it'll be helpful for you if you find people who swallow the media narrative wholesale, how to push back against it in a way that...
I guess you could say it has some nice elements to it, but it's not always particularly nice.
But that's alright.
And the third?
Well, a Christian pastor called in and has been really annoyed about my past treatment of Christianity.
That's alright.
I understand and I appreciate and I apologize for some of that.
And we had a very good conversation.
About the relationship between faith and reason in Western history and the tensions that have produced a lot of great things in Western culture, and if there's any way to defend it without religion.
It's a fascinating question, something that is so pressing throughout the Western world at the moment, so I hope that you'll listen to that.
It was a very pleasant conversation, but very, very important.
So once again, freedomainradio.com slash donate to help us out.
Alright, well up first today is Frank.
Frank wrote in and said, I'd like to share with you my journal entry from that morning.
Would you like to read your journal entry, Frank?
Sure.
Sorry to interrupt.
Just a sec, Frank.
Do you mind if I just do a quick recap of what happened?
Because most people don't know.
Oh, please do.
Okay, and then because that'll put what you're saying in context.
And so this is just stuff I pulled from the web.
So Hayes driving down in his Hummer.
He's got someone in the passenger seat.
He comes to a quick stop and apparently, at least according to video footage, is lightly rear-ended by a Mercedes piloted by Smith.
Right?
Smith is the ball player, right?
Okay, so video footage shows Hayes pulling over to the right and Smith accelerating past the Hummer to the left, right?
So there's a little bump and grind in the back, and then the football player accelerates, and then Hayes starts following Smith, the football player.
Now, both parties agree.
Hayes then rear-ended Smith several blocks down the road at a stoplight, and this is where, I guess, Rashomon-style people's narratives diverge.
So, one guy says, oh, well, it's an accident on the part of Hayes as he tries to get the SUV's license plate for the police.
That's what the defense lawyer says.
The other lawyer says, intentionally rammed the car, right?
The ballplayer, Smith, intentionally rammed the car.
So, Smith, the ballplayer, gets out of the car.
Words fly back and forth between the two of them.
And at some point, Smith's wife, Rocky, tries to get between the two men.
And then Smith, according to, again, defense lawyer Smith, returns to his vehicle, and then Hayes opens fire on the couple.
Rocky, the ballplayer's wife, is shot in the legs, I think twice, and she goes into hospital with five-hour operations and stuff like that.
And in Smith's car, in the ballplayer's car, there's a loaded nine-millimeter handgun.
Mm-hmm.
And so, of course, the defense, I assume, since Louisiana, this is New Orleans, of course, since Louisiana has very strong castle doctrines, that if the ballplayer, if Smith said, I'm going to get my gun, right, then I guess the other guy, Hayes, would feel that he was in imminent danger.
And so that is a big problem.
And there is no...
There's no clear answer to any of this.
It's obviously still going on.
And so this, is that a fairly, oh, sorry, I guess the last and most important point is that Hayes shoots Smith seven times.
And I think his body was sort of found half in the car, which indicates that he was heading back to the car.
The fact that there was a loaded gun in the car may be an indication that he was going to go and get the gun or threatening to get the gun.
There's some rumors of a second gun, but you know, this is sort of grassy null stuff and there's a lot of conjecture.
But basically, a tiny tap or a reasonably small rear end tap Turns into a bloody death scene with two people shot.
People shot nine times and one person dead.
And I don't know what's happened to the wife's legs, but I can't imagine that she's up and about yet.
And the ball player has, what, three kids?
Yeah, three.
Three young kids.
Right.
And according to some of these statistics that I've read, New Orleans is...
The fourth deadliest place to live in the U.S. behind St.
Louis, Baltimore, and Detroit.
And about half of the 32 murders so far in 2016, or at least up until relatively recently, have occurred in the 7th, 8th, and 9th wards around the Treme neighborhood.
And yeah, homicide rate.
And these are the logged homicide rates, not even the ones that aren't counted.
41 per 100,000 people.
So it's a bit of a crazy town that way.
Yeah, absolutely.
I think you did a really good job summarizing a lot of the details.
And I think really regardless of who is right or wrong, this is just not what's supposed to happen as a result of a fender bender.
You know, in any kind of civilized world anyway.
But would you like me to...
To read my journal entry from that morning?
Yes, please.
Okay.
Very sad this morning to learn about the senseless death of one of the great Saints players that I grew up watching, Will Smith.
His wife was also shot twice, but fortunately survived.
He was shot several times after being involved in a fender bender near my parents' house.
So unnecessary, so evil.
I just can't cope with this.
I'm remarkably shaken, but this is not just because he played for my favorite football team.
It's the madness of people out there.
What the fuck, New Orleans?
What the fuck, world?
Shape the fuck up.
Now, three children have to grow up without a father because of a fender bender?
It just makes no sense.
By all accounts, Will Smith was a good and decent man.
He was a leader.
He was well-spoken.
He stayed out of trouble.
He loved being a father and a husband.
He was charitable.
He worked his ass off.
He was exactly the type of role model that young people need, especially young black men.
And then this sick animal takes his life over nothing.
I hate the people who make me ashamed of where I'm from.
When will the violence end?
When will enough blood be spilt?
When will enough limbs and body parts be blown to pieces?
When will enough lives be senselessly destroyed over nothing?
I can't stop crying.
If anything good can come of this, perhaps it'll be to bring awareness to this problem.
Maybe this can be the wake-up call that the city needs.
Maybe people will pay attention and change.
Yeah, so that's what I sent in to you guys.
And you can probably hear some of the emotion in my voice.
It's been almost two weeks.
I wrote that on April 10th.
So a little over two weeks.
And...
It's still affecting me pretty strongly.
And Will Smith seems to have been a pretty good guy.
Yeah.
Did a lot of charity work.
He would give, you know, he and his wife would hand out presents and food to 20 at-need families around Christmas time.
As far as I understand it, he just finished his MBA, so a smart guy, too.
Everything to live for, you know, beautiful family, and he had a fairly decent career, and he had a future ahead of him.
He was being scouted for coaching positions and so on.
He was a businessman.
And then, boom.
Just like a flyswatter out of the sky, it's over.
Absolutely.
He was very young, 34 years old.
I watched this guy play for 10 years.
I think I was probably 12 or 13 when he was drafted by the Saints, so I was still young enough at that time.
To have a real, you know, sort of childlike attachment to football players.
And also, he was a member of some significant...
I know this isn't a sports show.
I'm not trying to make this about sports.
But there's a real psychological connection between the Saints and the people in New Orleans.
And he was a member of some pretty important teams.
One being the team that played through Hurricane Katrina...
And then the team that played the following year coming back from Katrina and almost making it to the Super Bowl.
And then he was a member of the team who actually won the first Super Bowl for the Saints, which was supposed to be an event that caused hell to freeze over.
And it's just insane that this sort of thing happens a lot.
I actually...
I put together a couple of recent headlines from the local newspaper.
I'll just read out a couple of them for you.
One of them is, A woman admits to beating her mother to death in Tarrytown.
Next headline, Woman found in Whiskey Bay strangled bludgeoned to death.
The next line...
Nine months after convicted murderer freed, he kills again.
Man dead, woman injured in a shooting car crash.
These are just headlines from yesterday.
This isn't over the course of a couple of weeks or months.
This is just the stories that came out yesterday.
Yeah, that's like a decade in Canada.
Yeah, it's ridiculous.
And you get so desensitized to this stuff.
And you think, well, it only happens, you know, it's usually black on black.
It happens in the Ninth Ward.
But this happened in a really nice part of town.
I mean, you know, I have a lot of family that lives in this part of town.
And where he was shot, like, I... Been in that area many times, you know, and it's just you would never expect it would happen there or to him.
You know, somebody who is so well known and beloved by the city and by all accounts, I don't know him, but, you know, supposed to be a good guy.
It's just like, man, this can happen to anybody.
Well, okay, but did it just happen?
I don't know.
I mean the details...
I haven't...
Like drive-by shootings?
Drive-by shootings?
They just happen.
And of course, nobody knows exactly what happened, but it wasn't quite as random as that.
It wasn't a bolt of lightning out of a clear blue sky, right?
There was a bump, the guy tries to take off, the other guy follows him, rear-ends him again, both guys get out of the car, words are exchanged, and like there was an escalation.
It shouldn't have happened, of course, but it didn't just happen.
Does that make any sense?
Well, I don't know.
Could you maybe go into that a little bit more?
Because to me, it's just like, this doesn't need to be the result of a fender bender.
I mean, like, fender benders will happen anywhere, but...
No, no, no.
I get that.
I get that.
But the fender bender didn't cause it, because you're taking the moral agency out of the people involved, right?
Right.
Like just a series of dominoes happening?
And so, you know, somebody bumps your car and then takes off.
Well, you can, of course, if you want, follow them and try and get the license plate.
You can just say, eh, you know, whatever, right?
Maybe the guy's got no license.
Maybe, like, maybe, you know, he's broke.
Well, like, who knows, right?
And you can just let it go.
I'm not saying it should or shouldn't.
These are other choices that you have.
Now, if Will did drive hard into this other guy's car...
Sorry, if this other guy drove hard in Will's car, then that's a problem too, right?
And so if there is this kind of escalation, right?
If it's like bump, try to escape, drive after, bump back, right?
Smith going into this guy's car.
This guy gets out.
Smith gets out.
They start yelling.
The wife gets out.
These are things that escalate, right?
Sure, yeah.
And if Smith did go into the car to get his gun, if he's like, well, I'm going to show you or whatever it is, right?
I'm going to end this right here, right now, and the other guy has a gun, well, you really are rolling the dice at that point, right?
Absolutely, yeah.
Now, I couldn't find out much about Will Smith's childhood, but the only thing I could find is that there doesn't seem to be a father.
Right.
From what I know, his mom died when he was very young, like four years old.
Yeah, she died of breast cancer, which of course would have meant that given that it doesn't kill you in 10 seconds, you know, there was a lot of...
Probably chemo and a lot of unpleasantness and I mean to put it mildly right I mean it's not it's not an overnight death it's kind of a long painful death so the likelihood in you know if his father wasn't around he was raised by his grandmother which is all too tragically common in these kinds of environments right?
Right and I thought he was raised by his aunt but you know either way it was he was raised by a single woman no man was mentioned of course And we don't, I don't think people understand the degree to which father absence is effectively an environmental toxin.
You know, talk about, well, lead in the gasoline, lead in the paint, you know, one of the things that probably didn't do Freddie Gray any good.
But father absence is an environmental toxin.
So I just wanted to mention a couple of things here because this is a study that just came out.
So oxytocin, sort of the bonding process, Chemical in the brain.
Fathers experience rises in oxytocin equal to mothers as a result of interacting with their infants.
But fathers and mothers get...
Increase oxytocin levels in different ways.
So for moms, it's like gentle caresses and eye contact that raises her.
Oxytocin for fathers, playful touch behavior, moving their baby around or presenting objects.
And this is entirely my experience.
I taught my daughter to scooch and I would take her around the house showing her artwork and stuff like that and talking about what was on it.
The more the time a father spends with his child, the stronger their bond will become.
And there's no difference in the oxytocin between fathers and mothers.
And so, now fathers who fail to bond with their sons in the first three months of life could cause them lifelong behavioral problems.
Loving contact with baby boys in their earliest days can help to produce a calmer, happier child at the age of one.
Although important for all children, it seems to be particularly important for boys to benefit from a strong paternal influence at a very early age, according to researchers.
And at the other end of the scale, there are children who tend to have greater behavioral problems when their fathers were more remote and lost in their own thoughts or when their fathers interacted less with them.
The study found that three months old with less engaged fathers were more likely to be in the 10% of children who displayed the beginnings of behavioral problems at one year old.
And the last thing I'll mention, and this is General, but can you imagine how much it is worse in the black community?
Research from Princeton University has shown the number of babies born into families that are poorly equipped to give them a fair chance at having a successful life is alarmingly high.
A study from the University of Rochester showed that nearly one-third of US parents don't know what to expect from their newborns or how to help them grow and learn and get along with others.
40% of infants in the U.S., quote, live in fear or distrust of their parents.
That will translate into aggressiveness, defiance, and hyperactivity as they grow into adults.
Of that number, 25% don't bond with their parents because their parents aren't responding to their needs.
Some 15% of infants find their parents so distressing that they will avoid them whenever possible.
And, you know, because we hear a lot about, you know, the maternal bond and so on.
But of course, historically, or sort of in our evolution, It was often quite likely that a man would end up raising his children without the mom, right?
For the simple reason that the mom would die in childbirth.
So men are very well equipped to take care of babies.
And father absence is incredibly destructive to the psychological and sort of mental health development Of children.
And we've got this whole couple of generation experiment, particularly in the black community, of, hey, let's try raising kids without fathers.
And, you know, 20% of black births were illegitimate as late as the 1950s, early 1960s.
Now it's up to sort of 73%.
And my guess is that that may have been a contributing factor in this kind of disaster.
I totally agree.
I tried to find out the rate of children that grow up in a single mother household in New Orleans.
And I wanted to find it for further sliced up by race, but I couldn't find that data.
So the national average is 24% of children grow up in a single mother household.
And in New Orleans, it's 48%.
And that's including everybody, blacks and whites.
Which, New Orleans is about 60% black and 33% white with Hispanic and Asian making up kind of the rest.
But, yeah, it's an epidemic and people only want to talk about, you know, guns when this sort of thing happens.
And that was part of the other, you know, The reason why I wrote into you guys, because this story has so much of these storylines in it.
The single motherhood, talking about guns, the black culture, all these things.
Another thing I found out as I was looking up stuff for the show was...
You know, these, like, cities that have high crime rates, you've pointed this out, tend to be dominated by democratic politics.
Do you know when the last time New Orleans elected a Republican as a mayor was?
Last century?
It was in 1870.
1870, wow.
Century and a half.
Yeah, the great Benjamin Flanders, for all those who, uh...
I've forgotten by now.
And also, for a long time, basically my entire life up until recently, from 1978 to 2010, New Orleans had a black mare as well.
So this is happening in a very democratic, political environment.
It's an environment dominated by black politicians.
If anybody wants to do something about it, it just comes down to doing something about guns or even blaming it on racism or something.
I'm almost afraid to say this, but part of me was very relieved that Will Smith was not shot by a white guy.
Could you imagine just like the amount of how all white people are racist narratives that would come out of this if that had been the case?
Yes, apparently we all hate to see a black man succeed and we're willing to go to prison forever to make that not happen.
Yeah, it's...
It's very, very frustrating.
Sorry, I just wanted to mention a little bit about, you mentioned Baltimore.
Baltimore, in particular, the police force seems to be pretty much out of control in Baltimore.
Police Commissioner Ed Norris sent to prison on corruption charges in 2004.
Two detectives sentenced to 454 years in prison for dealing drugs in 2005.
An officer was dismissed after being videotaped verbally abusing a 14-year-old and then failing to file a report on his use of force against the same teenager.
An officer has been fired for sexually abusing a minor.
The city paid a quarter million dollar settlement to a man police illegally arrested for the non-crime of recording them at work with his mobile phone.
And of course, in Baltimore, white oppression and racism and so on, but that's all nonsense.
They've never, I mean, so it's a little bit less than 1870, but in Baltimore, they've not had a Republican as mayor since 1963.
That's before LBJ's war on poverty began.
They've had a Democrat in control for 64 of the last 68 years and sole control for the last 48 years straight.
The mayor is black.
The previous mayor was black.
She was convicted of embezzlement in 2010, couldn't finish her term.
They had a white mayor then who was the presidential hopeful Martin O'Malley for eight years.
The mayor before him was black.
City council, 15 members.
All 15 are Democrats.
The council president is black.
They've had control of legislation, the Democrats in Baltimore for 50 years.
Everything.
The police commissioner is black.
50% of the police force is black.
The school superintendent is black along with the school board.
And they are crazy.
They're second among the nation's hundred largest school districts in how much they spend per pupil.
$15,700 per student.
Second only to New York City.
Only two-thirds of students graduate high school despite the high level of spending and I would imagine some score manipulation.
The average SAT scores of Baltimore City Public School students is 379 in reading, 376 in math, 381.
In writing.
And students with these scores, they only have about a 15% chance of graduating college.
And 623,000 in Baltimore, 63% are black.
And 24% below the poverty line.
I could go on and on, but it is, and that's down from 1950, 950,000, followed by 35%.
The population was 24% black in 1950.
And now, of course, decades of these Democrat policies, white flights, you know, Baltimore's violent crime rate, 370% higher than the U.S. rate.
200 murders, 300 rapes, 3,600 robberies, 4,600 assaults, 7,800 burglaries, and 22,000 thefts per year.
35% of Baltimore residents get food stamps.
85% of the kids get free breakfasts and lunches at school.
More than 60% of Baltimore residents are receiving some form of government assistance.
They have, of course, outrageously High taxes and the percentage of out-of-wedlock births to black women in Baltimore exceeds 72%.
Of course, the unemployment rate for young black men between 20 and 24 is calculated as north of 60%.
There were 475,000 employees now down to 365,000.
So anyway, just this idea that it's all just white racism.
I really, really hope that that narrative is drawing to a close and people can actually start to talk about and deal with some real issues that are occurring.
Do you think it is drawing to a close?
I mean, it seems to me like it's coming to a fever pitch and it's just getting worse.
Well, it's coming to a fever pitch because it's an election year, right?
I mean, the race baiting always goes crazy during election years because they want to, you know, gin up the black base of the Democrat Party to vote Democrat because those evil white racist Republicans might get in power.
And so I view that as more of a...
Political cycle than any sort of organic social movement.
But if Trump gets in, then I think some of these pressures will start to ease.
If he can do, you know, what he says, and we'll talk about it, Trump critic, later on in the show.
But if he can do what he says around sort of bringing manufacturing jobs back and reviving some of the more abundant economies and so on.
You know, it's my genuine belief that most poor people would rather have a job than have handouts.
And so, of course, it is the goal that there can be some revitalization of the U.S. economy because, yeah, this is just, I mean, this is unbelievable.
It is, if these policies had been imposed by white people, it would be considered an act of race war.
Oh, no doubt about it.
You just would not hear the end of it.
And, yeah, just because it popped in my head, I just wanted to say I really enjoyed the interview that you guys posted yesterday with Diamond and Silk.
That was amazing.
Yeah, they're great.
I think they're fantastic.
I love that really meaty enthusiasm.
And, you know, people are like, well, they're loud.
It's like, hello, I can get loud from time to time, too.
You know, passion, an extremity of passion in the defense of virtue is in no way a vice.
But I did like some of the comments like, RIP headphone users.
You were describing Baltimore and you had mentioned some of the other cities that are very dangerous.
I don't remember which were exactly on the list, but I think Detroit, Chicago, St.
Louis, Baltimore, New Orleans.
Yeah, the former fourth deadliest places, St.
Louis, Baltimore, Detroit, and New Orleans.
Yes.
And then other places like, I know Stockton, California is always kind of in the top ten.
But you go around and look at these places, and they all share these similar characteristics with population demographics, IQ distributions.
political administrations and yet somehow you know the problem is supposed to be guns while this kind of thing just doesn't happen in places with high gun ownership like you know Dallas or you know...
Or Switzerland.
Right, yeah.
Well but the answer to that I would say Frank is that society almost invariably trends towards blaming men rather than holding women accountable.
So if the problem is single motherhood, well, whenever you bring up single motherhood, the response is always, well, it's deadbeat dads.
The dad just ran away.
It's the men's fault.
But the reality is that in almost all, in almost all species, particularly mammals, women are the gatekeepers of sex.
Men are sort of, you know, will have sex with just about anything, and women have to say yes or no.
You know, there's this, um, there's the bower bird.
The male bird constructs these incredible multi-level disco-based elaborate nests.
And then the female, who only mates once a year, Flies around and chooses the guy with the funkiest crib, so to speak, and will sort of have sex with him.
So the men all put on the mating display and the women choose.
And so if we go to women and say, you have to start choosing better men, yes, we can blame the men, but you guys are the ones in charge.
Like in other words, if an employee turns out to be a bad employee, yeah, of course the employee should have worked better, but who hired him?
And if the dead turns out to be a deadbeat dad, well, who chose to have a child with him?
And you know, you can hear me.
It's funny because I've been talking about this for years and now that it's sort of finally beginning to penetrate general consciousness, we have this giant lineup of single moms wanting to call in because I'm actually willing to have an honest conversation.
In the same way that we have a lot of people who are non-white wanting to call in because we're willing to have an honest conversation without guilt, without collectivism, with facts, with data.
So it is easy.
Gun ownership is a man thing.
Whereas choosing who to have as the father of your child, well, that's a woman thing.
And so in any choice between holding women accountable and blaming men, society will almost always go towards blaming men, which is why there's a gun debate rather than a close-your-legs debate.
Yeah.
It's amazing the looks I get when people want to ask me about what would you do about crime.
Since I've been listening to your show, I accept your arguments.
That this is, you know, largely problems that stem from childhood, you know, the lack of peaceful parenting and parents not staying together.
And people just look at me like I'm insane.
The cycle of violence is considered exclusively a male phenomenon.
Women are just helpless, fainting count victims in this cycle of muscular, bicep-driven male violence.
The idea that women are part of the cycle of violence is so far out the matrix for people that you can see the cross-eyed short circuitry occurring when the topic comes up.
Yeah.
Which is good.
That's fantastic news.
I mean, it's fantastic news because if the actual solution was something that people had already done, we'd really be screwed, right?
So the fact that people can't even comprehend that this is the solution is fantastic because it means it hasn't been tried.
I guess that's probably one way to look at it.
To me, it's just like, oh man, like when...
I understand because it took me a long time to figure these things out.
And if it hadn't been for you, I'd still probably be searching for answers.
But it's just like, man, this is how you do it.
Just learn about it.
Do it.
There's just something that's stopping the world from realizing this.
and it's probably going to be another 200 years or whatever before people actually, you know, stop hitting their kids.
And it's, it's like, huh.
Well, I, I hope, I hope not that long.
Cause I don't know if we have that kind of time, but we'll, We'll continue to work as much as possible to get the information out there because this is stuff that's actually actionable.
And, you know, the thing is, too, is that welfare is the most disastrous for the most disadvantaged in society.
This is the great tragedy.
Well, one of the many great tragedies of the welfare state is the welfare state has negative impacts on smarter and wealthier people insofar as they have to pay endless amounts of taxes to support it.
But among less intelligent, more disenfranchised, less mainstream cultures, it is really disastrous.
Because the less smart you are, the more you need to take your cues from the immediacy of the environment.
Because you're not that smart, you're not thinking long-term and planning things.
Consistently and so you need more short-term cues with regards to the right action and welfare takes away all of those short-term cues and all groups that are less intelligent, doesn't matter what the race is, they then get the wrong cues and because they're less intelligent, all they can do is deal with immediate cues for the most part and they get worse and worse cues which causes them to make worse and worse decisions which tends to entrench them in that cycle of poverty.
Yeah.
And speaking of intelligence, that was one of the other things I wanted to mention.
So Louisiana is ranked second to last in intelligence in the United States with the average IQ of 95.3.
And I couldn't find...
I don't know what the average IQ is in New Orleans, but according to one blog that I found, I don't know how credible the source is, but the average IQ of New Orleans blacks is between 75 and 80.
I knew that there would be information that free-domain listeners would find relevant.
Yeah.
And that doesn't see, that's the funny thing, is that that doesn't mean disaster.
No.
Inevitably, right?
I mean, Muhammad Ali had an IQ of 74.
Right.
And, you know, had a, obviously not traditionally executive-style successful life, but was incredibly motivating, was a fantastic speaker, had, I thought, very original and powerfully expressed ideas.
And so it doesn't mean disaster, but what it means is that When the welfare state comes marching in and sets up camp, it sends all the wrong cues to the most susceptible people and that combined, you know, so then of course you have father absence, which I think also is negative towards IQ development, and then we have spanking, we have a lack of negotiation, because of course negotiation skills are generally learned in the workforce if they're not learned at home.
So if you have welfare keeping people out of the workforce, well then they're not going to learn those negotiation skills.
They're not going to pass those skills along to their kids.
The kids grow up without seeing a culture of work, you know, and so it is, you know, one of these unbelievably destructive things, but the idea of adjusting it, I mean, it's funny, you know, because everybody has this disaster chasm, you know, like it's Evel Knievel attempting to cross the Grand Canyon on a children's tricycle, but when welfare changes in particular, like there was, I think it was in Maine, they said, look, if you're able-bodied, if you're not on...
Disability, you don't get food stamps, I think it was, and food stamp consumption went down enormously, and there was no disaster.
Up here in Canada, they cut welfare considerably in the 90s.
There was no disaster, and the same thing happened under Clinton, because he was basically pushed into it by the Republicans, and then took credit for it.
There is no disaster on the other side of things.
I mean, this Pascal's wager of infinite disaster, I mean, you can see this stuff happening in Europe at the moment.
Wow, if England...
If England leaves the EU, it's going to be disaster.
And, you know, formally it was, if England didn't join the EU, it's going to be disaster.
And you always hear this, you know, this was in the 07-08 financial crash.
If we don't get $700 billion in bailouts, it's going to be a disaster.
And you just always hear this kind of stuff.
But people are very, very adaptable.
And they find better ways to get things done.
You know, people are like water going down a mountainside.
And if there's a big boulder in the way, they just go around it.
And so generally, it would be far better for everyone involved in the transition.
Of course, and people who really care about this stuff, oh my goodness, welfare is slowing or shrinking or ending.
You know, churches are going to go in, philanthropic organizations, the great atheist charities are going to move in and help out people.
So it would be much to the benefit of everyone.
But it's one of these things that it's easy to portray it as a giant Arizona-style smoking crater of disaster and that's what scares people off.
I absolutely agree.
Well, there's one person who doesn't benefit and that is a politician who's trying to get votes.
And that's just one of the systemic flaws of democracy, where nobody's going to get elected promising to end welfare.
It's just not going to happen right now.
Somebody might get in, and then circumstances present themselves where it's advantageous to end welfare, but it's...
There's just, like for me, a little hope that it'll come to an end anytime soon.
Well, I mean, it will come to an end because mathematically it can't continue.
I mean, it's either going to be a wheels down landing or an into the mountainside landing.
Quote landing, right?
The plane's going to hit the ground one way or the other.
We hope it's a controlled descent, not a nosedive, but it mathematically cannot continue.
I mean, they said this, well, the Roman Empire, wow, a lot of welfare, a lot of dependence.
Well, it'll just keep trungling along.
Well, until it doesn't, right?
And then it ends.
And that's going to be a lot more brutal because that's going to be in a time of significant economic dislocation.
Of course, what you want is for jobs to be growing at the same time that welfare is declining.
That's what you want, right?
So that you have this displacement that doesn't have people drop off a cliff.
But if welfare ends because the government runs out of money, there won't be a whole lot of jobs waiting in the wings, and that's when you're going to see destabilizing events like riots in a society that's going to be hard to sustain.
Do you think that that's what's going to happen?
Do you think...
I don't think anything's going to happen.
I think what's going to happen is what I tell the world is going to happen.
That's my megalomania.
And so I'm putting the information out there because I don't think anything is inevitable.
If I did, I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing.
And I'm, you know, obviously the world is barely listening to me at the moment, but as I'm continuing to prove being proved...
More and more right as things go forward, then the world will start listening.
You know, the crazy prophet looks crazy until his prophecies come true, and then he's all kinds of Nostradamus for certain people, right?
So, you keep shouting the truth into the wilderness and people think you're nuts, but as Nietzsche said, those who danced were thought crazy by those who could not hear the music.
Oh, man.
Well, But you're right to be angry.
And it's incredibly frustrating.
It is incredibly frustrating.
And I think another thing which I'll leave you to talk about, Frank, is the degree to which this idea that poverty is the cause.
I mean, this guy was rich, right?
Right.
He's got a Hummer.
Well, apparently he got his money recently from a lawsuit where he sued the NOPD Apparently, they killed his father during Hurricane Katrina.
And I don't know the whole story there, but yeah, he was awarded a big lawsuit.
And so I think he recently came into whatever money he had.
Yeah, so sorry, let me just...
I did get a little bit about this.
So...
Let's see here.
Perhaps the most, this is from an article, perhaps the most perplexing aspect of the case, which seems to yield new public details every few hours, is the connection between Hayes and Ceravolo, a close friend of Smith's.
Ceravolo was one of six police officers involved in the shooting death of Hayes' father, Anthony, outside a drugstore in 2005, not far from the scene of Smith's killing.
On December 26, 2005, Anthony Hayes...
Was seen carrying a four-inch knife while walking down a sidewalk after arguing with a drugstore clerk.
When confronted by police, Hayes refused to drop the blade and could not be incapacitated by pepper spray.
None of the officers carried tasers.
Police say Anthony Hayes then lunged at an officer, and the group returned fire, striking him nine times.
And, yeah, so that is one of the interesting...
I don't think they got a huge amount of money, but I could be wrong.
And, you know, I'd hope that...
In 2008, the Saints agreed to terms with Smith on a six-year, $70 million contract with $26 million guaranteed.
The deal made him the third highest paid defensive end in the NFL. My earlier contention that he had a fairly good career was entirely wrong.
He had a financially staggeringly great career.
This guy had it all.
He had it all.
He was a good-looking guy, smart guy, pretty wife, stable family, all the money that you could possibly imagine.
What happened?
The cycle of history came full circle in that he grew up without his father, it seems, and now the same will be happening to his children.
I know.
That, to me, is so sad.
And, like, as the story was breaking out, I just couldn't help think to myself, like...
If there was a guy, I would be really screaming at him and saying, what the hell did the Smith family do to deserve this nonsense forever and ever?
To comment on your earlier point about poverty, if poverty was the source of crime or violence, I mean, wouldn't Buddhist monasteries be very violent places.
I mean, I don't know.
It's not poverty.
No, I mean, sorry, but the big rebuttal to that in general is that during the Great Depression, U.S. household income dropped catastrophically and crime went down.
Ah, that's good.
And of course, most things that people steal are not the necessities of life.
It's not like some kids in the ghetto need a shinier pair of Air Jordan kickers in order to eat, right?
Right, it's people stealing to support a drug habit often.
I know you've mentioned that if they have to buy $3,000 worth of cocaine, then they have to steal $30,000 worth of stuff.
It's not poverty, because if it were poverty, then poorer white children would have higher crime rates than richer black children or black youths, and they don't.
They have lower crime rates.
It's not poverty.
I think there are cultural elements there, maybe genetic elements, but it's not poverty alone.
Yeah.
Can you maybe talk about some of the cultural stuff?
I just would like to hear your opinion.
You mean the toxic culture within the black community especially?
Well, I mean, I'm certainly no expert on it, but from what I've read and the people that I've talked to, there is such a degree of foundational, and this is not all black culture, this is not all blacks, but this is just some threads that I've sort of seen running through this,
but there is such a vehement hatred Of the mainstream white community, which is perceived to be the only thing that stands between blacks and equality in terms of income and stability and lack of criminality and so on with whites.
And that level of foundational hostility, you know, like a minor example is someone posted on a YouTube video of mine the other day.
And they said, well, I've just got my first job.
How do you recommend I end up being successful as a wage slave?
And I wrote back and said, maybe don't call yourself a wage slave.
That would be my first thing to work on because, you know, if you're like, man, I shouldn't have to be here.
Robot cities should be giving me everything.
It's part of this sucky system that I have to get up and work for a living and exploitation and capitalists are evil.
And it's like...
What, I'm fired?
It's going to translate.
You know, you're not going to want to be there.
You think, you know, you're going to, your shitty attitude is going to, I mean, why?
There's someone else who's going to be happy to be there and you're not happy to be there, so guess what's going to happen over time?
And I think that aspect of things where the society is seen as white and therefore oppressive and therefore all conformities with those expectations are considered to be sellouts by some, right?
And, you know, it's called, you know, we had a call with a guy a couple of weeks ago about this, a black fellow, but it's called Acting White, and it's this nihilism, and it's cool, and you can't make it anyway.
You can't make it anyway.
Like, if I said I've got this big, giant program where I'm going to learn how to flap my hands and fly unassisted, people would view me as a fool.
And deluded.
And so they say, well, we're going to succeed, and it's, you know, I'm going to internalize not really white racism, it's a whole bunch of other things.
And...
It is, I would view it as delusional, and for a lot of the black community, the idea that you're just going to roll up your sleeves, work hard, read books, do extra math homework, educate yourself, go to the Khan Academy or whatever it is, and really, really work hard, that's considered to be foolish.
That is considered to be delusional, like me flapping my eyes, don't you know white racism runs everything and you can never get anywhere and blah-de-blah-de-blah.
And that has a huge problem.
I mean, if I went to Japan and just thought that the Japanese were the most horrible people in the world, how well would I succeed in Japan?
Well, it would come across, I guess I could say, in spades, right?
It would come across blindingly to everyone else, and they would try to avoid.
And there's, you know, I watched when I was working on The Prince video that I did recently, which I think was really good, particularly.
I enjoyed it as well.
Very good.
Thanks.
So, somebody linked me to an interview that Prince gave, where he was talking about Dick Gregory, who was a civil rights activist in the black community, of course.
It was a state of black Africa, some speech, and Dick Gregory was saying that, because there is this, I mean, in the black community, there is this horrible problem of violence, of danger, of fear.
And Man, it is, um, his, his, Dick Gregory's, I can't remember the exact explanation, but it was something like the corporations put some chemical in malt liquor, which they sell to blacks that makes blacks violent.
And there's some, some village in Australia where there's this manganese or whatever the hell it was.
And there they have the highest.
So now it's like, it's something injected into the liquor that blacks consume that makes them violent.
But how, you know, how do, how do they grapple with this?
Because It's one thing to say, you know, this other group dislikes us, despite the fact that we act really well.
Yeah.
But when the blacks, when there are significant dysfunctions in the black community, a single motherhood and crime, of course, being very high in that, then it's hard to say, well, you know, whites have a problem with us for no reason.
If you act the same as everyone else and then someone has a problem with you, you have a case for prejudice.
But when you don't act the same as everyone else and people have a problem with you, it's just tougher to maintain that case.
And it also becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Like the guy who said, well, how do I be successful being a wage slave?
Well, you can't.
As long as you call yourself a wage slave.
And what's going to happen is you're going to go in.
You're going to have a bad attitude.
People are going to react negatively to you.
You're probably going to get fired.
No decent boss is going to want to work with you.
And then you're going to say, man, I knew this system sucked.
That's why I didn't want to join it in the first place.
I was very enthusiastic when I got my first job.
I got my first job at the age of 11.
I had to get up at 6 o'clock in the morning on a Sunday to go take two buses and a subway to get down to a bookstore on the other end of town so that I could work in a bookstore.
I wasn't like, oh man, I'm a wage slave.
It's like, wow, food money.
I'm thrilled.
And so that, you know, that's some of it.
There's this general nihilism that has occurred.
And it is really feeding the worst aspects of these particular tendencies.
And all of those who feed this narrative...
Are just doing an incredible disservice to all these communities, which is why I'm constantly reminding, you know, at the beginning of this call, Frank, I was like, well, you know, it didn't just happen.
There are some moral choices.
There is some moral agency.
And the degree to which everyone talks about systemic racism or systemic violence or systemic sexism and so on, it's like, you are crippling people.
I mean, I don't know if people know that.
I'm not talking about you here, but...
You are crippling people.
Because, you know, it's there even if you can't see it.
That's called paranoia, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, and if you bring up any of the, you know, like you said, if people...
Blacks and whites were acting exactly the same and then there was these discrepancies and you could make the case.
But then if you try and point out any of the differences, you're just screamed down as being a racist.
Yeah, or it's, you know, blacks are acting badly because of white racism.
And then you say, well, whites sometimes have a negative view of blacks because blacks are behaving badly.
And it just becomes this vicious cycle and who the hell can break out of it?
Yeah.
It's a no-win trying to speak to people about this.
I mean, it's great that your show exists because it's like this little oasis of just rationality and being able to speak the truth.
Well, it's called actually wanting to help people.
Yeah.
I mean, this is why black people call in and we have great conversations because I actually want to help people.
Actually, and we cannot help people unless we talk about the facts and the challenges and the realities of the situation.
I mean, listen, I could be the scapegoat.
I could be the bald internet white guilt Jesus and take all the sins and all the problems and say, yes, it's terrible.
You're surrounded by so much bigotry and racism.
You've got no chance.
I mean, I could do that just as people have been doing this for decades.
I actually want to help people.
And you cannot help people by participating in delusions.
We have to start with the facts.
Once we have the facts, we can actually help people.
But I cannot help people if I don't talk about what is.
And I have to refuse to go with the mainstream narrative.
For the basic simple reason that this mainstream narrative...
That whites are the cause of all failures in minority communities, except somehow not responsible for all the successes in East Asian communities.
But remember, East Asians are ghosts in the racial narrative because they don't fit the narrative and blah, blah, blah.
And so if I participate in that narrative, I'm harming people.
And there is, of course, you know, there's the Hippocratic Oath for doctors.
I think that's not bad for people.
Do no harm, right?
Do no harm, which means not participating in dilutions and actually trying to help people.
And There are, of course, people in all communities who are as frustrated by the delusions of the mainstream media as a whole as I am.
And this is another reason why I have very positive conversations with, you know, groups that I've criticized.
Single moms, you know, certain aspects of certain minority communities and so on.
We have good conversations because a lot of people of goodwill, intelligence, compassion and empathy in all communities are as frustrated as I am that the facts aren't getting out.
And it really, really, really pisses me off the degree to which the mainstream media feeds this race-baiting narrative at the expense of the black community.
There are blacks growing up in that community who face livid terror every single day.
There are drive-by shootings, there are shitty environments, there's dangers, there's a lot of child abuse and some molestation in the black community.
It is a terrible environment.
For these kids to grow up in.
And there's some things that can be done.
But the degree to which we rip agency out of the black community and place it at the hands of rather bewildered whites who kind of get their own, trying to get their own thing done, is the degree to which we simply condemning that group to a repetition and a repetition and a repetition and a repetition.
If you want to help people, you have to break the cycle.
And there's no way to break the cycle by telling people, you're not responsible in any way, shape or form for that cycle.
You can't help people.
If you tell them they have no moral agency.
Now, nobody likes to have moral agency sometimes because it makes you feel crappy.
And it also makes you feel angry if you have been lied to about the fact that you don't have a lot of moral agency beforehand.
But if you truly hate a community, if you truly are bigoted and racist towards any community, then you strip them of moral agency and say, well, there are terrible things, but hey, it's really not your fault.
And if you are truly, truly sexist, if you truly, truly hate women in your heart, Then you do the same thing with women, and you say, well, you know, things happen to you.
The guy, you just got pregnant, whoops, and then the guy just didn't stick around, so poor you, and it's just like, take the moral agency out.
Oh, well, you know, there's this weird cycle of violence.
It has nothing to do with the fact that the majority of children are hitting, the majority of women are hitting their children.
Eh, you know, you're just frustrated.
You're a single mom.
It's difficult.
You're a victim.
That is the true Sexism is stripping women of moral agency and the true racism is stripping any ethnic group of moral responsibility.
And that is where you can see the most, to me, the most vile and disgusting racism and sexism that is occurring.
Because that is roping people in to be dependent upon you for your own political gain.
And this is what Diamond and Silk referred to as the Democrat plantation, which is a very powerful phrase and I think describes a lot of what is going on in American politics.
And you can see this with Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton.
What are they doing?
Well, you know, it's terrible.
There's all this racism.
It's not your fault and all that kind of stuff.
And it's like, oh, God.
If it's not black people's fault, but it's white people's fault, then guess what, people?
You're given moral agency to white people and not to black people.
And that's about as racist as I can conceivably imagine a person to be.
Yeah, and I think, I don't want to make any excuses, but I don't think these social justice warriors really understand that Yeah, they don't get that point at all.
Wait, why would I care what they do or don't understand?
Well, I think...
No, listen, listen, man.
Sorry to interrupt.
Go ahead.
Did anyone say to the Germans, well, you didn't really know what the Nazis were up to, so no harm, no foul.
It wasn't your fault.
No, very valid, yeah.
Well, again, you're going back to stripping moral agency.
You see what a compulsion is?
Well, the social justice warriors, maybe they just don't really understand it.
It's not really their fault.
Right?
I don't care.
I don't care.
Because the degree to which white males are given moral agency is the degree to which I, as a white male, because I'm not sexist or racist, will give other groups and genders moral responsibility.
Because if I take on 100% moral responsibility, and then I say, well, social justice warriors are just confused...
Then I'm displaying my hatred and contempt for them far more than if I say, well, no, if they say I'm 100% morally responsible, then they're 100% morally responsible.
If the Germans who didn't know much about what the Nazis were going on, if the Germans currently, young German men of 20, young German women of 20 who have a problem with the migrant issue are called Nazis.
That seems like quite a lot of moral responsibility given that they weren't even alive until, what, 40, 50 years after the end of Nazism?
So I don't care.
This idea, well, you know, they're doing the best they can with the knowledge they have so we should forgive them or we should give them, cut them some slack and so on.
When the hell has that ever been applied to me?
I don't know your race, but if you're a white male, when the hell has that ever been applied to you?
Where they say, well, you know, even if we say that sort of white racism exists, do people say, well, you know, whites have a history of racism and they're doing the best they can with the knowledge they have.
We have to be patient.
It's going to take time.
No, it's just like, well, no, racism is bad.
Racism is evil.
White people should disavow it and immediately change their ways.
And this idea that there exist these two groups of people, one of whom has moral agency, and the other of whom are like Dandenheim fluffs being blown around by the breeze, is literally slaying the world.
I'm not trying to put too heavy a burden on you, Frank.
But you will have, as most people have, this tendency to look at dysfunction and immediately try to absolve the people exhibiting that dysfunction of moral responsibility.
And that is an incredibly, but very subtly, Bigoted thing to do because you're creating two glasses of mix.
You say, oh well, Steph has moral responsibility.
People don't say that to me.
Well, Steph said this.
He's morally responsible for this.
He changed his mind on this.
He's morally responsible for that.
Fine.
I do have moral responsibility.
And so does everyone else.
So when you have this tendency, which you've exhibited a couple of times now, and this is not a criticism, I'm just sort of pointing it out because I have it in myself as well.
When there's dysfunction, you say, well, somehow they're less responsible.
That's not good.
Now, of course, most people want all of the benefits of equality, except when it comes to moral responsibility, right?
There's this old idea that a lot of the feminists say, well, we want all of the equalities, and we, in fact, want super equality.
We want more than equality.
But then, if there are problems, well, we want to be absolved of responsibility for that.
And that's the problem with philosophy.
Well, that's the solution of philosophy.
Things be universal, yo.
And so you can't have two groups of human beings, one who has moral responsibility, and the other have a big pile of spine-removing excuses.
I appreciate that you point that out.
I'm very much on the self-knowledge train where I can't observe myself.
I'm glad to have people like you point that out.
I certainly don't want to take any more responsibility away from these people.
I want to try and figure out how to get them to realize their responsibility.
So I guess that's kind of why I'm probing the...
I think it is true that they don't view themselves as racist.
They think that they're doing the ultimate good.
And clearly they should know better.
And maybe it's just not even worth trying to get them to see the errors of their ways.
Sorry, but how do you know their ways are even in error?
Like the social justice warriors?
Yeah, I mean, what makes you think they care about black people or gay people?
Look, if social justice warriors cared about gay people, they'd be protesting Islamic countries where sometimes gay people are killed in the public square or thrown from buildings.
If they really cared about gay people, they'd be protesting about the Islamic countries.
And they'd be protesting certain aspects of Islam, which is...
You could argue having a more negative effect on gay people than whether they can go to one bathroom or the other in an apartment store.
But they're not interested in that.
They're not interested in that at all.
If feminists were really interested in women's rights, would they be creating imaginary rape crises on American...
No, they'd be going to talk about the Third World, they'd be going to talk about Africa, talk about Islamic countries, where women are treated like crap.
The social justice warriors One, two things.
Number one, they want to slander the free market by putting forward the narrative that all discrepancies in outcome are not the result of rational and objective economic forces, but the result of prejudice.
Right?
So if women don't make as much money as men over the long run, there's no other answer than rampant sexism.
If blacks are making less money than East Asians who don't exist, then it can only be caused by white racism.
And this is the way that you slander freedom.
Is you say freedom leads to unjust, unequal, bigoted, racist, sexist outcomes.
Therefore, big daddy governments are going to come in and fix it all for you, right?
Because they want to work for the government.
They don't want to work for the free market.
Because, you know, free market, you've got to be responsible to your customers and you can get fired and you've got to provide value and all that.
So this is the basic, and this has been a plan from the communists from the 1920s onwards, which is to say that all unequal outcomes, all disparate outcomes in a free market must be the result of prejudice.
And of course, you know, the wage gap between men and women has been debunked so many times, not least of all on this channel, that it's ridiculous.
But you know, they still go back to it because what they want to do is they want to say freedom is sexist.
Freedom is racist.
Freedom is bigoted.
That's why we need this big giant government.
That's number one.
Number two is they just want unjust advantages.
They want money.
You know, why do feminists not nag people in Islamic countries?
Because people in Islamic countries won't give them any money for nagging.
King Abdullah von Sheikyhead is not going to give a million dollars to some feminist organization to stop nagging him.
So guess what?
They don't nag him.
It's almost like there's a lesson to be learned there about how we respond to nagging.
So why do people focus on white males?
Well, two reasons.
White males have resources and white males feel guilt.
I mean, that's a simple, it's really not that much.
It's just about the money.
It's got nothing to do.
So this idea that they really care about blacks or they really care about women or they really care about gay people, I mean, that's ridiculous.
If people really cared about blacks, they'd be going back to South Africa and saying, how's it going now that evil whitey is no longer in charge?
And, you know, we got this whole presentation, the truth about South Africa.
And if you haven't gone back, well, you'd be kind of surprised.
They don't They don't care that the outcomes for a lot of people in the black community keep getting worse.
They don't care that the fact that blacks were doing much better before the welfare state and are now doing worse in many ways since the welfare state.
They don't care.
They want free stuff And they, of course, want the moral posturing, and they want to defame freedom.
And that's an old pattern of leftism and of communism, and it has nothing to do with actual care or concern for the groups they claim to represent.
Because the first thing you do, if you say, well, I really want to help black people, is you say, okay, well, when were they doing the best?
And how are they doing now?
And what has changed?
And you would work at that objectively.
But they're not interested in that, right?
So this is another reason why race and IQ can't be talked about on the left.
Because race and IQ, as Murray and Herrnstein pointed out in 1994 on the bell curve, race and IQ explains the income discrepancy.
You see?
They can't talk about it.
Because all income discrepancies must be the result of racism or bigotry.
Mm-hmm.
And so if race and IQ explain the income disparity between Asians and whites and Asians and Ashkenazi Jews and whites and Hispanics and Hispanics and blacks, if that's all explained by average IQ, well then, the market is fair.
Now nature may be unfair, but there's not much we can do about that, but the market is fair.
And if wage disparities between men and women are due to women making different choices, women working less hard, and women having children, Well, then the market is fair and they've got nothing to complain about and they can't have a big giant government supposed to redress all these problems.
So, you know, it's like that old bank robber.
Why do you rob banks?
It's where the money is.
And so the idea that social justice warriors or people on the left as a whole, that it's anything other than a woefully divisive shakedown scheme.
Again, I'm happy to hear evidence of it.
But, you know, if you really cared about these groups, then you would work as objectively as possible to try and help improve their situation.
And how you can improve situations by stripping them of moral responsibility, I'll never understand.
Now, stripping people of moral responsibility serves the narrative that freedom produces bigoted inequalities.
So that's fine.
I mean, the fact that moral responsibility for these communities is an innocent bystander of the leftist grab for state power, well, that fits in with the narrative, right?
Yeah.
I mean, do you think it's even...
Is it even worth trying to convert any of these people?
Should we just resolve to their tactics and start calling them racist?
Or just forget about them and focus on them?
You're trying to be strategic, right?
I guess so.
You speak the truth.
And the great thing about the internet is you don't have to convert people.
You don't have to convert anyone.
I'm not sitting there in a diner shaking people by the collar.
And yelling the unpleasant facts into their faces.
I put the information out there and people find and share it as they see fit.
Now, what you're talking about, what you're talking about, Frank, is the people in your life, right?
Right.
Perhaps.
I mean, I've kind of, uh, surrounded myself with as many like-minded people as possible, but, uh, They're very few and far between the atheist anarchists.
I'm the only one I know here in town.
But I have some friends who are at least in the anarcho camp.
And I don't really have any people that I associate with who I would consider social justice warriors.
I don't meet too many decent people of that ilk.
So I tend not to keep them in my life.
But yeah, it's a small group of people that I can confide in.
And everybody else basically thinks I'm some kind of Lex Luthor, mad genius person.
just insane with a high IQ or something.
I would love to be able to reach these people, or at least just have a rational discussion.
But it's something that I've kind of given up on a long time ago.
Yeah, never assume someone is motivated by benevolence when they're benefiting from falsehood.
Yeah.
Right.
Because of course the people will say, well, we want to help this community or we want to help or we want to redress this imbalance.
Okay, but you've got to look for conflicts of interest.
If somebody is benefiting from a falsehood, never assume that anything they do is benevolent.
Doesn't mean that it can't be, but that's not the first.
Never assume objectivity from the advertising company that makes most of its money from one particular company.
They're not going to be objective about that company.
But you have, you do have a sense of sort of a weighted helplessness.
And I find that interesting because Your journal entry was very passionate and powerful.
But then as we're talking, I get this sense of, heavy burden, can't move.
Can't lift hands to disconnect from Skype call.
Yeah, I guess the passion's not really coming out.
I, you know, I'm Working on that.
I've been going to a therapist and trying to really become more comfortable with my emotions.
I think part of it is because emotional responses for me were not received very well growing up.
You use the analogy of Simon the Boxer.
I think that kind of happened to me with my emotional state and just not wanting to express myself because of how people are going to respond.
The more passionate you are in the defense of virtue, the more you're going to draw fire.
This is true with a lot of academics as well.
If you drone about Virtue?
Nobody cares because there's no show.
But if you're entertaining and engaging about the truth and about virtue, then you're going to get targeted, right?
Yeah.
I watched some guy, I can't remember, Water's World or something.
I watched something the other day.
He's, I think, a Bill O'Reilly correspondent.
And he was out talking to young people about, do you want free stuff?
And he went through all this...
All these young, I don't know what to call them, voters tragically.
Oh yeah, they want free stuff.
Oh, free massages would be great for certain problems.
Do you want free this?
Do you want free that?
And then of course he asked, well, how will people pay for it?
How will this be paid for?
They had no idea.
So when he was talking to Bill O'Reilly, he said, I interviewed about 10 people and there was only one guy Who said, well, we can't afford this free stuff.
It's not free.
But he was so boring, I couldn't put him in the segment.
He was just droning on like a robot.
So he's learned his lesson.
You can speak the truth only if you do it in such a boring way that nobody cares.
You know, when something really important is going on on TV, there are those ticket tapes still going along the bottom.
Okay, if people are distracted, you can drone it a little bit.
You can have the truth, but just keep it dull.
Keep it dull so that you can satisfy your conscience that you got the truth out there.
But don't worry, because nobody's going to, you know, be engaged with it.
This old mad cartoon I've mentioned before, the comic book, where this 50s dad goes into his 60s layabout hippie son and says, why don't you just go get a job, right?
And the guy goes, the hippie son goes in, you know, full rainbow gear with an unkempt beard and a bandana and goes up to some store and says, you don't, like, need any help, man, do you?
I mean, you need anyone to work here in any way?
And, you know, then, of course, he doesn't get the job.
And his father says, why didn't you go get a job?
He says, man, you can't tell me I didn't try.
And it's the same thing with truth.
If you've got the truth out there, letting the truth out in a way that is not passionate is a way of satisfying your conscience rather than actually achieving good in the world.
I mean, people listen to this show because I really care.
I put it out there.
I refuse to be cowed by fear because facts are too important to be buried under fear.
Fear is the mind killer, according to some writer I can't remember, who people will tell me in the comments below.
Herbert?
Anyway.
So if you are interested in the truth, the question is how do you serve the truth?
How do you serve the truth?
Having the truth is not nearly enough.
Because you must communicate and implant the truth into others for the truth to have any power.
There's an old story about the guy who developed the standard for Ethernet.
Which is a data communications, usually hardwired, for computers.
And the guy made a fortune because he licensed out the Ethernet standard.
And then he became a teacher, a professor, and he had a bunch of students over to his big giant house.
And one of his students said to him, man, this house is incredible.
You've got a pool in here, there's a waterfall, there's a pool table, you've got a squash court.
This is an incredible...
Man, I wish I had invented Ethernet.
And the guy said, what, you think I got this house because I invented Ethernet?
Good Lord, no.
I got this house because I spent 10 years getting up at 4 o'clock in the morning to drive to conference after conference after conference to tell people about Ethernet.
There were other people who developed other stuff.
Some of it was even better than mine.
But what they didn't do was get up early in the morning for 10 years and drive from conference to conference to conference to tell people about Ethernet and encourage them to license it.
And that story always stuck with me.
I've told it on the show before, just so everybody knows.
I know.
But that story is really, really important.
Having the truth is one thing.
Don't we all know people who have a great business idea?
I got this business idea the other day.
Let me tell you.
I had this business idea the other day about tracking calories.
You know, a lot of people, wouldn't it be cool if you could take a photo of your food with your cell phone camera?
Here's what I'm eating.
Click, right?
I'm eating this.
Or, you know, maybe you take the photo of the ISBN number or whatever if you're eating something.
And it would just start tracking your calories.
Take a picture.
It tries to identify what food, you know, gives you a list of possibilities if it can't figure it out.
And you just choose it and it tracks your calories.
An average portion size, it can measure it, whatever, right?
Am I ever going to do anything with that idea?
No.
I already have a business.
Thank you very much.
Cold philosophy is a little bit more important.
But, you know, everybody has these ideas all the time.
Now, if that was my big idea, let's say, I don't know if anyone's done it before, but let's say that was my big idea.
And listen, if anybody wants to do it, just let me know.
But if that was my big idea, and let's say nobody had done it before, and I spent all the time and energy and money to get the venture capital and to start up the business and to develop the database of food and all that kind of stuff and work on all the privacy issues because you don't want other people to know what you're eating and all that.
And, you know, then people would say, let's say I made a lot of money doing it.
People say, wow, that idea made you the money.
Nope.
No idea necessary but not nearly sufficient to actually have the money.
So you are somebody interested in talking about the truth, right Frank?
Absolutely.
But at the same time you're defending yourself from negative repercussions by putting the truth out with a thin veneer of hopefully saving yourself from feedback, hopelessness, right?
You're coating the truth with hopelessness so that you get yourself the emotional relief of having the truth out there But not any of the danger of actually changing people's minds.
Yeah, it's a lot to take in.
I haven't really given that the thought that I'm basically just silencing myself.
By holding the passion back, I will definitely keep that in mind as I continue.
Just learn from the Christians, right?
Yeah.
Do they put the dullest people in the pulpit?
No.
I mean, hell, learn from the black preachers.
My God, those guys are fantastic.
Or from Diamond and Silk.
Or from Diamond and Silk?
Yeah, I mean, put it out there, you know?
I mean, you'd be surprised.
Because you think you're going to get a lot of negative feedback, but that's in the middle ground, right?
So you won't get any negative feedback if you drone on about the truth and people don't even listen because you're too boring or you're too...
Or people don't want to be around you because you are negative or hopeless, right?
So people, like we get these people calling in from Europe all the time.
Well, I still have hope.
No, kill hope in the crib.
Hope is what you use to dismember yourself from action.
But...
And so if you're in the middle ground where you're putting stuff out tentatively, then you're saying, I'm vulnerable, come attack me.
But if you go full tilt boogie out there, damn the torpedoes, I'm gonna push it to the max.
You know, there's that old road run, oh no, it's an old Bugs Bunny cartoon, Ludicrous Speed.
If you just go out Ludicrous Speed, you know, people, if they want to stop you, they don't need to jump in your car, they don't need to jump in front of your car if your car isn't moving, because your car's already stopped.
Now, if your car is going five miles an hour, they'll jump in front of your car.
But if your car is going 100 miles an hour, they won't.
So anyway, I got to move on to the next caller, but I just wanted to give you some model I'm speaking to the Frank who wrote that journal entry, not necessarily the Frank who's on the call, because I think that Frank...
It's like that old thing...
If you're auditioning people for plays and movies, and I've done that, somebody's giving a really boring reading, but their leg is jumping up and down.
Like their heel is hopping up and down.
It's like, I don't know about you.
I'd love to audition that leg.
I don't know about you as a whole.
No, but that leg.
So that's the Frank that I'm trying to talk to.
So hopefully that will help.
Yeah.
Thank you so much for the advice and for Speaking with me, it's so cool to get to talk to you for a little bit.
If I could just say one more thing, another note of gratitude, just the impact that you've had in my life is just tremendous.
I've started going to therapy.
I've I've taken on a sponsored child in Guatemala.
I spend my Fridays down at the Boys and Girls Club.
All these things are because of you.
Thank you so much.
Well, Frank, that's a lovely thing to hear.
I'm going to bounce it right back at you, brother, saying that, let's say I wrote a diet book, you're the guy who has to put down the cheesecake.
I may have been causal, but you're the guy who's making it happen, and you should definitely take pride for that.
I really, really appreciate the call.
Yep.
Have a good day, Seth.
Thanks, man.
Alright, well up next is Chad.
Chad wrote in and said, Stefan's support of Trump, which is evident by his mocking of every other candidate in his two untruth videos for Trump that he has not produced for any other candidate, and Trump's newfound position on abortion.
How can you support Trump as he is in favor of full-term abortions?
How do you prioritize supporting a candidate when he has conflicting morals?
That's from Chad.
Hi, Stefan.
I could unmute, I guess.
Hey, Chad, how are you doing?
Wonderful.
How are you doing?
Good.
I was so offended I just left the room.
No, I'm kidding.
That's awesome.
Great.
Thanks for calling in.
I appreciate that.
You're the first person who thinks that I have a soft spot for Trump, so I'm glad to find that.
I'm just kidding.
I've watched other videos.
That's right.
Tell me.
Hang on a sec.
Just so we're on the same page.
I don't mean to be confrontational, but I just want to make sure that we're on the same page.
Tell me what you mean by the word support.
Exactly.
I understood that that might be a little strong, but here's the angle that I'm coming from.
I enjoy everything you do.
I enjoy your logic.
I enjoy you pointing out all these facts for different cases and different scenarios going on.
I think where I say you're supporting Trump is your lack of truth about videos for other candidates and And I pointed out in an email to you guys that, you know, you've got to admit that you use some, you know, mocking voices when you talk about Trump.
And I agree he's got a high voice and probably should be mocked.
But it's your disdain for the other candidates.
And it shows through.
And you're allowed to have that disdain for other candidates.
But it seems like your support of Trump has not been consistent with your other videos, with your other logic.
And You know, as we kind of go down through lots of his things, his abortions, his businesses, you know, we can talk about each one of those items, but it just seems like, and I guess, I just want you to admit that, yep, you'd prefer, you know, like, Trump does look like the best candidate.
If you just kind of said that without hiding behind the, I guess, journalistic integrity of, oh, you know, I try to be neutral, then that might be one thing, but it's...
It's burdensome to those who like to think that you're using logic, and for a lot of us, it looks like you're being illogical when it comes to Trump.
Right.
I think we're going to have to take another run at the question, because my question is, what do you mean by the word support?
Okay, so support is just...
I see support as you're being anti-other candidate.
So to me, that's your support for Trump by saying...
These guys are idiots.
I'll mock these guys because they're not good candidates.
And then you're pushing aside his bankruptcies, his being a male chauvinist, and just lots of his ugly banter.
Being, you know, narcissist, racist, misogynist.
I mean, he's just been down by...
Okay, okay, okay.
Now, if you're going to start firing the cannons, we have to catch a few of these cannonballs before they all fly past.
Okay.
So, let's just go with, you said that his bankruptcies?
Right.
You said I just, like, bypassed the bankruptcies or something?
Yeah, I think you...
I've tended to argue, and you can correct me because they're your arguments, that it's just for bankruptcies.
He's a big businessman.
He's got 500 businesses, and these don't amount to much.
Well, no, there was a couple of slides on that in the first untruth about Donald Trump, where I went through the business scenarios.
I went through the business logic and had quotes from experts on what he did, and that it's...
Perfectly common and perfectly legitimate.
And tons of other business people have done much more.
And that's a failure rate, so to speak, of less than 1% of the businesses.
So, you know, there are arguments saying that I've just sort of blew past it or bypassed it, I think is a bit, uh, um, sophistic on your part because they spent quite a bit of time on it in one of the presentations.
Well, with the correspondence that I've sent to you guys, I actually outlined over 50 businesses that have failed.
And the way, when you say 1%, The way he can kind of get away with this only four bankruptcies is because he's bundled, you know, 30 or 40 bankruptcies into just one.
And I haven't even looked into other three previous bankruptcies, but what they do is I looked into it in Heaven's Bankruptcy Records.
I don't know if you looked at them, but they are 40 bankruptcy file numbers.
So they were legitimate bankruptcies, and there's 40-plus of these just in one.
They bundle them all up and put them under one bankruptcy number.
And so my problem is that a lot of the supporters just go, yeah, yeah, he's just had four bankruptcies, no big deal.
But when you start talking 40 and 50-plus, I just want the general public to know it's not just four.
I mean, that's a real burden for me.
Like, I want the truths about Trump to come out, and these are some of the truths that you could put in your videos that, you know, I've given you the information.
You could run down the list like you do on your PowerPoint or however you do your videos.
So that's my one thing about his failed business is that it's always, by everybody, not just you, by a lot of his supporters, Just, you know, they stick with the four bankruptcies.
And I want the general public to know, no, it's not just four, it's 50 plus.
All right.
Well, so let's say that you're entirely correct.
I mean, again, I haven't reviewed this stuff in detail, but let's say that you're entirely correct.
And eight or nine percent of Donald Trump's businesses have failed.
Right?
Right.
40 out of 500?
Yep.
Yep.
How many businesses as a whole, how many entrepreneurial businesses fail within the first 18 months?
What percentage?
Oh, I would say, let me just guess.
I've been an entrepreneur, so let me just guess 50%, 50%.
80%.
According to Bloomberg, 8 out of 10 entrepreneurs who start businesses fail within the first 18 months.
A whopping 80% of businesses crash and burn.
So if we've got 89% for Donald Trump, he's still 10 times better than the average.
Being 10 times better than the average?
It's pretty good.
You know, in baseball, the difference between the major leagues and the minor leagues is like one percentage point more hits or two percentage point more hits.
So even if we accept everything that you're saying, he's about 10 times better than the average business person.
So if we talk through that, though, and I understand that.
I understand.
I've been an entrepreneur most of my life.
I've had a few businesses that never went bankrupt, ever.
I've had a few close calls.
But what I would argue is that if you look at a lot of Trump's businesses, they're all developments, they're all properties.
That would be like Walmart having each one of their stores as an individual business.
And then if one business fails, that's just one business that fails.
It's not within their entire company.
My problem with Donald Trump is that, you know, I have several, but he hides behind these multiple companies that own shares in the other companies.
Like, if you take a long list of these 40 companies, you know, one company owned 10% in the other, the other owned 20% in the other, one owned 5% in the other, and it's almost like a big shell game.
I really and truly, it's smart business, I have to give you that, that he's smart by separating each one of them, but You know, you have to question why...
Yeah, look, I don't.
I'm not going to engage at this level.
You know, the why Donald Trump has overlapping corporate entities in a highly litigious society like America, I mean, good lord.
I'm not even going to bother with this, like his whole bunch of...
I don't mean what you're saying is nonsense.
I just mean the reasons why, like the idea.
So basically your issue is that Donald Trump has had some bankruptcies because he started a whole number of businesses and some small percentage of them have not succeeded.
Do you feel that that's better than someone like Marco Rubio or John Kasich or Ted Cruz who've not started any businesses and therefore have zero bankruptcies to their name?
In other words, do you think that it's better to try and fail than to not try at all?
In other words, the small amount of failures from people who've tried a lot of stuff is much worse than people who've never tried to do any of that stuff.
I agree.
I agree.
What do you agree with?
I was asking you a question.
You can't agree if I'm saying, is this the case?
You can't agree.
You've got to tell me which it is.
I agree that I would rather someone have started a business and failed than never had a business and be the president of the United States.
I fully understand and agree with that.
So you're bringing this up as a negative about Donald Trump, but you're pointing out that relative to the other candidates, it's a huge positive.
Well, tell me this.
I'm not...
A little confused.
A little confused.
Okay, well, I look at this one part as an example of the rest of the parts of his character.
Like, this is just one example, and we can go down each...
No, but it's a positive.
You're pointing out now that relative to the other candidates, it's a positive.
No, I said...
Because he's tried, but the other guys haven't.
Right, but not to this extreme.
That's kind of my point is if you're a business guy and he talks out of both sides of his mouth with the bankruptcy saying, "Oh, it's only affected the big evil banks." Screw them.
Who cares?
He's in bed with the banks.
They own some of these companies.
They still loan him money after 40 bankruptcies.
And I know this is a big business deal.
And that's my problem with big business and having a billionaire president would be, They should live by the same consequences as you and I. If you and I have a bankruptcy, the banks aren't willing to loan its money for seven years for another loan.
And so I think even the big businesses...
What?
No, no.
No, that's personal bankruptcy.
If you personally declare bankruptcy, you're going to have a tough time getting a credit card for seven years.
But this is a corporate bankruptcy with lots of players and all that.
This is not the same thing.
I feel like when you talk about business, I've been a business guy, I've been a builder, I've been a developer.
When the bubble burst, nobody pulled me out.
Nobody gave me enough loan for more properties.
So even though I'm not a corporate structure and a corporate entity, I'm an individual small business guy.
And that's my gripe, is that if all these Trump supporters are against big government and big business and all this stuff, I think I would like to see their reform so that even the GMs and the GEs and the Trumps couldn't just keep getting all I think I would like to see their reform so that even the GMs and the GEs and the Trumps couldn't just keep getting all these billions of dollars from But hang on.
If your business failed, and that's your only business, you don't have any assets.
In fact, you probably have liabilities, which is why you'd be declaring bankruptcy.
But if...
One out of every 10 over a sort of 40-year career, if one out of every 10 of, let's take your estimate, sort of 8% or 9%, if Trump's businesses fail, he still has substantial assets that he can use as collateral.
So it's not the same as if your only business goes down.
Well, no, it doesn't matter whether you agree with it or not.
The banks chose to loan to the guy.
What's the problem with that?
No, no.
No, that's not...
I'm saying I disagree that he's got a lot of assets.
If you look at his financial...
No, but it doesn't matter.
The banks loaned to him and nobody put a gun to their head to loan to him.
So they thought he was a good person to loan to.
Now, that's their choice, right?
Whether you agree with it or not, if you disagree with it, start your own bank and make a killing by not lending to people like Donald Trump.
Well, I understand that, but if you...
I'll give you another small example similar to this.
I knew a builder in my own town who was going bankrupt.
And the bank actually gave him the contract to build another bank, to bail him out.
Well, I was going out of business.
They didn't bail me out.
So it's this kind of elitist, who you know.
Maybe it's because you don't like banks that they didn't want to bail you out.
Maybe it's because you've got a problem with lenders and you don't have a positive view of them that they didn't want to help you out.
Maybe your friend who got loans from the bank is not griping about what banks do and therefore they want to help them more.
Yeah, I don't know.
It's just a possibility.
Well, I mean, this was a decade ago.
I didn't have the hate for the banks until I see everyone getting bailed out.
I never got bailed out.
You know, it's just frustrating to...
Look, and if you're the only...
Like, everyone gets bailed out except you, then it scarcely seems to be a systemic problem, right?
Oh, no.
If everyone gets a date but me, I don't think I get to blame all women.
Sure, sure.
But if you see what I'm saying, it's the upper one percentile that get these loans from the banks.
They don't bail out the guy that, you know, they haven't been...
They haven't gone to the same private schools with and all the rest of it.
So that's my gripe.
It's just there's no policies in place to make it fair.
I just want things to be fair.
And I know that's a high...
Wait, but you just said that everyone got bailed out.
Did everyone go to the same private schools in your scenario?
I didn't say everyone got bailed out.
I said there was one banker in our town, one builder in our town that did.
No one else did.
There was lots of builders that went out of business.
Lots of my friends had lost their houses, lost everything they had.
And so, you know, I look at this as kind of these small examples, like I said, the character of Trump, you know, he talks about...
Wait, so, sorry, do you think that Trump should have not used the legal structures in place, but instead should have failed as a businessman?
Like, that would make you respect him more or like him more?
Yeah.
I'm not sure I follow.
Yeah, let's talk through that.
Yes, it would.
So, if he'd have failed, then you would have liked for him to become president.
Yeah.
Sure.
Yeah, if he didn't use the system to advance himself, yes.
But then he wouldn't have any money to fund his own campaign and therefore would be dependent upon special interest groups and therefore would be a candidate just like everyone else.
So you'd like him to be a candidate like everyone else by having failed in his business career and then being dependent upon donations from special interest groups.
That's a pretty slippery slope.
I would say he can...
We run as a write-in candidate where it costs zero dollars.
All you have to do is get support in each state and there's no requirements from...
I've called most of the states and there are no fees for actually being a write-in candidate.
And when you're a write-in candidate, you actually get your name on the ballot.
You have to meet with some requirements, no money involved.
So he could have gone that route, been a third party candidate and said, screw the Republicans, screw the Democrats.
And I would have actually had more respect for him Well, okay.
So you have a problem with Trump's bankruptcies.
One of the largest creditors in one of Trump's bankruptcies was a financier by the name of Karl Arkan, held over $400 million in bonds.
And ICANN has not only endorsed Donald Trump, but agreed to be his treasury secretary if elected.
So you've got no skin in the game.
This guy had $400 million in the game, and he's still pro-Trump.
Well, because he's going to get paid back.
Isn't that how you're scratching his back by letting him be this secretary?
I mean, that totally makes sense to me.
That's not a...
Do you think he's going to get $400 million as pay as a Treasury Secretary?
Oh, not as pay.
But you know what's going to go on behind the scenes.
There are going to be things that happen.
He's going to make more than his $400 million back, no doubt, if he supports Trump.
Well, that's pretty speculative.
So you would have been more happy if he'd failed in his business career and had become a third-party write-in candidate, that you feel that would have been a better approach?
Not his total career.
I'd just say that in some of these examples...
When he talks about buying the vote when he pays these politicians to get things done in New York City, it's just crooked.
And I just see it as a character flaw.
There are multiple examples of character flaw.
And as a builder, I was building some houses, and I noticed that the city was coming down hard on me.
The electrical inspector was not passing my...
My house for inspection.
He was just nitpicking me to death.
And I'm a good, honest guy.
I said, okay.
But I talked to my electrician.
I said, what is going on with this inspector?
He's just pounding us.
And he said, well, you know, the builder next door just rides him around in his truck.
And when he gets out of the truck, he's got his final permit.
And so I said, oh.
So he said, we don't even wire the house.
He said, all we do is put a couple lights on outside the doorbell, and the inspector drives by and gives us a permit.
And so I'm an honest contractor.
I'm an honest guy.
So I call the building code enforcement people, speak to the manager, and I say, hey, you know, you might want to know one of your guys has taken some money to get these permits passed.
And lo and behold, the boss says, you know, I don't blame them.
We don't make much money.
So immediately, here I am, the guy.
I'm the whistleblower.
Really...
Ended my career in that county.
And those are the kind of things.
I've just been an honest guy all my life.
So when I see other people taking advantage of the system or doing kind of these backdoor deals, I just don't appreciate it.
And that's how I feel Donald Trump is.
He's always kind of played these games and...
I don't want that in a candidate.
So, you know, this is one of the first times in my life...
Okay, so hang on a second.
You've got to give me a chance to talk a little.
It's supposed to be my show, right?
Law professor Adam Levitin said, and I quote, the mere fact these filings It's somehow imputed to be a personal failing of Donald Trump.
I've never heard anyone suggest that the filings were because of Trump's bad management.
Bankruptcy is a background term to every contract.
It's an embedded option.
Lenders price for it.
This is old news to bankruptcy scholars, even if it still shocks some people.
No one should weep for his lenders having lost money.
They were sophisticated parties who presumably priced for Trump's bankruptcy risk and had diversified portfolios.
Frankly, Trump would be a fool if he hadn't.
Filed for bankruptcy.
Now, I'm really sorry about what happened to your building code and the inspection and so on, but it seems to me you kind of got this thing out of it, which is that since you couldn't succeed in the face of corruption, everyone who succeeds must be corrupt.
I'm not sure that's a very logical result, although I can certainly see how it would be compelling emotionally.
Not everybody, but it's the people that I've seen that have been corrupt that have succeeded.
So who is the candidate that you approve of the most?
None.
Right now, none.
I was going to say, this is the first time in my life where I may actually just sit at home.
Okay.
If you had to rank the candidates in terms of people you feel best to worst?
I would say Rubio, Cruz, Kasich.
Kasich's a good guy.
So you put Rubio at the top, you put Cruz second, Kasich third, and then Donald Trump obviously a distant third.
Distant.
Yeah.
Okay.
But I'm just going to let you know where I come from.
I'm kind of a – I'm a Rudy Giuliani, who's the Speaker of the House, gray hair, historians always run – Oh my goodness, his name is escaping me.
He's from Georgia.
Oh, Newt Gingrich?
Oh, Newt Gingrich.
Rudy Giuliani kind of guy.
And so, I don't know.
Just a little different.
We don't have those candidates this time.
Now, didn't Rudy Giuliani go from being a prosecutor to going into politics?
Yes.
So, not really much experience in the free market, to put it mildly, right?
Oh, maybe not.
Maybe not.
No, no, that's not a maybe.
That's not a maybe.
He's a government worker his whole life.
Now, Rudy Giuliani, of course, has very enthusiastically endorsed Donald Trump.
Once again, big business.
Rudy Giuliani.
I'm sorry, go ahead.
I said once again, kind of scratching his back.
Oh, so you support Rudy Giuliani, but you think that he's corrupt because he's endorsed Trump.
I didn't know that he had endorsed Trump, and now that I know that, I kind of lose respect for him.
How about that?
Alright, okay.
So, the question around why have I done the untruth about Donald Trump, but I haven't done the untruth about some of the other candidates?
My answer to that is very simple, is that there are far more lies about Trump, and there are far more obfuscations about the other candidates.
In other words, the media says things about Trump which aren't true, and they fail to say things about the other candidates which are true and important and relevant.
I'm sort of responding to what the media is doing.
If the media is putting out a lot of untruths about Donald Trump, then I'm going to address them.
If they're obscuring a lot of things in Cruz and Rubio and so on, then I'm going to address those.
So that's the explanation as to why that is the case.
If they were putting out a lot of lies about some other candidate...
Then I would address that, you know, as I did with Bernie Sanders and other people that I've talked about.
If they're obscuring other things, say, for instance, with Hillary Clinton, then I'll put out videos about that.
So I'm always trying to get to the truth.
And if the media is lying about someone, I'll talk about the truth.
And if they're covering up for someone else, I'll try and expose that.
Great explanation.
I appreciate that.
Because just looking at it from the outside, I'd I didn't really understand that.
I understood that you were, in essence, defending those negative reports, and so that is why I think people like myself say, oh, well, he's taking Trump's side.
But I understand you're just trying to make it clear.
I get that.
I just want people to make decisions based on facts, right?
Which is why we did a whole video on how the game is tilted against Bernie Sanders as well as Donald Trump.
And of course I did.
I hammered Trump pretty hard on the Apple thing and even mocked his speaking style because he was, in my opinion, completely in the wrong with regards to the Apple encryption.
You know, didn't understand the technology business.
And, you know, he's got a little bit of his sort of pro-law enforcement bias, which I think led him astray in that area.
But, you know, he didn't stick on that too long and moved on.
And so, yeah, I mean, I'm just trying to give the facts to people.
And, you know, if something hidden, if something hidden that's important, you look for it.
And if something is put up there as a distraction for something else, you try and point out that's something else.
You know, and I'm just, as an American, as a voter, I'm just frustrated.
That the Trump antics, while somewhat his fault, are the center of the discussion when we've got the national debt and most people don't understand, know or understand that if you take all of our unfunded liabilities, you can't take every penny from every American, every business, every small business.
You can't take every asset from everybody in our country and every business in our country And pay off our national debt today.
No, I understand.
But people don't.
And I don't understand why these...
I know you do, but I don't understand why...
Well, I do understand.
It's politics and they don't want to talk about it.
But for us to...
The people that I correspond with, friends that want to...
Trump supporters, they just don't have a clue.
And I think we are in this society...
Oh, no, no, no, no.
Hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on.
Do you not think that dealing with illegal immigration is a pretty substantial issue when it comes to unfunded liabilities and the national debt?
It is.
If you want to talk about it, then I'll respond.
Well, I mean, it's not much to talk about.
I mean, illegal immigrants go on welfare and consume resources at a far higher rate than the domestic population.
So if you want to deal with government spending and you want to deal with unfunded liabilities, then you have to deal with the problem of illegal immigration, as it currently stands.
And he's the only candidate talking about that.
He is.
I'll be interested to see, if he does become president, what he'll actually do.
But hang on, sorry.
But Rubio was for amnesty.
But you said Rubio was on the top.
I'm just trying to square these circles and maybe it's my own mind not playing catch-up or trying to play catch-up.
But you said that you have to deal with illegal immigration in order to be able to deal with the debt, which is high priority.
But Rubio was for amnesty, which would have done the opposite of that.
Okay.
I'm not real familiar with all the details of his amnesty.
I know he has wavered and waffled like every other politician about what to do other than Trump.
I say, just build a wall.
That's his one answer.
But I come from the construction business, so I don't have a problem with the Hispanic workers.
And I'll just give you two examples.
We I think we need to do better...
No, no, no, no.
We're not having...
We're sorry, man.
We're not having a conversation about your personal experience with Hispanics because we're trying to talk about American politics, not people who put up your walls.
This is an example.
This is an example of...
No, no, no.
It's a personal anecdote.
We're not talking about, you know, I know a tall Chinese guy.
We're not talking about personal anecdotes.
We're talking about big terms to justice.
This is the scenario.
I think that...
I know you're right that a lot of Hispanics and a lot of immigrants from everywhere in the world...
Come here and they get on our welfare.
But in my experience, these guys that I know that have been in the construction business, they would actually like to go back and forth across the border in order to work.
And I think as long as you tax them and we have a better work permit system and they don't become a citizen, they just contribute to our They don't get any social security benefits.
I've talked to guys that have been in the States for five years that would rather just be here for six months, go home for six months, come back for six months, go home for six months.
They'd rather see their family.
They've been away from their family for six years because we forced them to not go through the proper channels.
And so they just stay here illegally.
And, you know, we make, in essence, criminals out of them because we haven't fully developed a good work permit system.
So I'm for a border wall.
I'm for, you know, not necessarily giving everybody amnesty because not all of these guys want to be American.
I've spoken to them.
They don't want to be American.
They're Hispanic.
They're from Guatemala or wherever.
And they're not interested in becoming a citizen.
They just want to work.
So I think we take advantage of them working and tax them.
And that's a pretty simple system.
But hang on.
The logic that America is forcing people to come illegally By having barriers to entry, isn't that like saying some guy is forcing me to rob his house by having locked windows?
I'm not saying they're not illegal.
I don't argue that one bit.
I'm on the team that says if you find them, you send them back.
But I'm disappointed in the politicians in our government for not making a more fluid system.
That's where I stand.
I don't know what you mean by a more fluid system.
I mean, is that just magic where all of the productive members of Mexico come in and none of the unproductive members come in?
So they could get a three-month work permit, a six-month, a nine-month, a one-year work permit, with almost, you know, a better visa system with keeping track of them and taxing them.
No, but everyone overstays their visas.
I mean, the idea that, oh, well, you know, it's nine months, I'd better get back.
I mean, how are you going to enforce that?
No, no, it's because there's not a better visa system.
Like, say, okay, after six months, you've got to go back home for a month or two.
We just have a different system that says you will be allowed back in.
And I think as long as they...
Are insured, because their fear is they'll never be able to get back in America and work again.
And these visas are only stamped one time.
But if you said, okay, you're going to be on a six-month rotation, every six months you can come work for six months and you've got to go back home, we might have a better fluid system.
There are better scenarios.
And I'm just disappointed in our government for not coming up with a better type worker system without amnesty and making everybody a U.S. citizen.
And I know the Democrats want to do it because it's They come over, they have babies, and the babies are automatically American citizens, which is virtually unprecedented in the entire planet.
So they come over, they have babies, the baby is now an American citizen, and what do you do?
Do you send the parents home and keep the baby?
I mean, what happens then?
The baby can still be an American citizen.
If that's our current protocol, which it is, They can still be an American citizen, and you can still send all of them back home.
Just because they're an American citizen doesn't mean they get to stay in the United States and have every benefit.
I mean, there are Americans living all over the world, and if they're not living in the U.S., they're not paying taxes to the U.S. if they stay for a certain amount of time.
And so we have some policies in place.
I'm not an anchor baby supporter.
I would prefer everyone be sent back home.
You know, and we kind of start over with a better work permit system.
But isn't that exactly what Donald Trump is saying, is that we need to send people back to Mexico and then figure out a better system by which good workers can come back, but not, you know, the criminals and the rapists and the drug dealers and the problem groups.
I mean, you've just described exactly what Donald Trump's policy is, so I'm just a little bit confused about why you'd be pro-Rubio, who's amnesty, and anti-Donald Trump, who is proposing exactly what you're talking about.
Well, it's because I'm just like most people that don't trust somebody.
I believe he's saying it.
I'm not so sure what he's going to do.
Okay, so it doesn't matter.
So you don't like him, so it doesn't matter what he says.
You do like Rubio, so it doesn't matter what he says.
So we're just talking about your emotional whims.
We're not talking about anything specific or anything that's policy-based.
You don't like him.
But you trust Rubio for some reason, even though Rubio has flip-flopped on several things.
But you trust and like Rubio, and so you'll be pro-him, but you dislike or distrust Donald Trump.
And so even though Donald Trump says what you want to have happen, and Rubio says the opposite, you're for Rubio.
So we're not talking about anything objective or factual here.
We're just talking about your emotional biases.
And given that this is a show about facts, I'm not really sure that we can go very far with your likes and dislikes.
We can't call this show, I like pistachio ice cream, and I'm going to call it philosophy.
You know, I hide behind.
I just think, I believe that Trump's character is flawed, and I don't want that.
So I don't trust what he's saying.
Now, how is he racist?
You said he was racist and misogynist.
Well, okay.
We know all of his comments about women, and then all this, you know, when you take a race with people, the Mexicans, I'm sorry, your argument, Chad, is that he said that all Mexicans are rapists and drug dealers?
Is that what you perceived that he said?
Have you ever looked it up?
Yeah, I saw the quote.
I mean, I actually saw him on the video of him saying it.
Okay, and what did he say, Chad?
What did he say?
Well, you've got to...
Give me a little bit of a break here because I can't...
I don't know verbatim, but from what I recall, it was his sliding the Mexicans or the Hispanics coming across the border as being drug dealers and I think he alluded to other criminals.
And just, you know, just having that blanket statement, if we did that about any other group of people, that's considered racist.
Okay, well, first of all, Mexico is not a race.
Hispanic is not a race.
It's not.
There are Hispanics in Spain.
There are Hispanics in Mexico.
It's not a race.
You could say Mestito, but anyway.
So Donald Trump, what he said was, he said, when Mexico sends its people, they're not sending the best.
They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems.
They're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime, they're rapists, and some, I assume, are good people.
But I speak to border guards, and they're telling me what we're getting.
So...
Some are good people, and some are rapists, and some are criminals.
Now, how is that not a factual statement?
Of course some people coming across the border are rapists and criminals, and we know that for the simple fact that 80% of the women who are crossing the border get raped along the way, and the people who come across the border with them are rapists by definition, at least a huge proportion of them, right?
And of course, the drug trade across the porous US-Mexican border is enormous.
There are these giant tunnels, for God's sakes, going under these places.
The amount of crime that is occurring among this population is very high.
And so, you know, how this is somehow a bigoted statement when it is borne out by statistics, I leave it to you to explain to me.
I think it's...
We've got...
We don't even know how many people, how many Hispanics we have in America, 15 to 30 million.
I understand we have some statistics about this crossing the border, but I don't think the majority of those 15 to 30 million are criminals.
I mean, as far as doing criminal activity today, I... So I think you know what I'm saying.
You know and understand that Donald Trump is playing to that bigotry, I guess he called it.
Well, okay, so you're just not responding with any facts.
So he's talking about people coming across the border.
And the clue is that is he says, I speak to border guards, and they're telling us what we're getting.
When Mexico sends its people, they're sending people, right?
So he's talking about people crossing the border.
Now, people crossing the border from Mexico into the United States who are doing so illegally are all criminals.
You understand that, right?
I totally agree.
So they're all criminals.
And he says, some of them I assume are good people.
Okay, of course, right?
So he doesn't say what proportion.
Some is not a specific proportion.
It's not 10%, it's not 90%, it's not 50%.
It's some proportion, right?
Right.
So I got a bunch of potatoes, some of them are rotten.
Okay, I got 10 potatoes, some of them are rotten.
What number is that?
I don't know.
Nobody knows, right?
So whatever people are saying about, well, he's saying all this, or what I mean, the majority, no, he's not saying any of that.
I got you.
So he's actually being quite kind because he's referring to a group of which 100% are criminals.
100% are criminals.
And he's saying, some I assume are good people.
Right.
So if he's saying, but he's certainly not saying that all Mexicans are rapists.
I mean, that's not...
he's talking about the people bringing people across the border where 80% of the women get raped en route.
So I, you know, call me crazy, but if there's a group of people who are raping 80% of the women they're bringing across the border, I don't have any problem with saying that, yeah, some of them are rapists.
I mean, statistically that would be the case, but then people go kind of crazy and say, well, he's saying, oh, Mexicans are rapists.
And it's like, well, that's not even close to true.
Yeah.
I just took the sum.
And when you gave the potatoes example, when you said some are rotten and where he said some are good, when you said some are rotten, I, when that is said, I go for the lower end.
I And I know that's an open interpretation for everybody, but if someone said they had a second phase and some were rotten, I would think the sum was a smaller proportion than 50%.
And that's just me.
And so when he said some are good people, you know, I've leapt to the, you know, I look to the potato example of, oh, he's just talking 10-20%.
You know, so that's my fault for interjecting that.
And do you know why?
Hang on.
So, it's actually quite kind if there's a group of people, 100% of them have been convicted of theft, of burglary.
100% of them are self-confessed, and they've confessed, right?
Like it's 100%.
Right.
And I say, well, some of those are good people.
It's actually quite a kind thing to say about a group 100% of whom are which are criminals.
And why is it theft to come into the United States illegally?
I wish there was no government and all this, right?
But just basically, it's because you were going to come in and you were going to start drawing public benefits and using public amenities.
I get you.
Roads, government, schools, healthcare, and you've not paid anything into it.
The whole issue is that you're coming in and you're going to start consuming the massive amount of human and fixed capital that has been built up by generations of taxpayers.
You're going to come in and start consuming that while paying very little into the contribution.
So that's the challenge with the system that we have at the moment.
So if he's looking at 100% of people who are criminals and saying some I assume are good people, How is that...
That's a very positive statement because he doesn't have to say any of them are good people because they're all criminals, but he's saying some are good people.
That seems kind of nice.
Nicer than a lot of people would be about a group 100% of whom of which are criminals.
Gotcha.
It's a great argument.
I like it.
Sexist.
Oh, it's just...
His...
You know...
Commenting about Carly Fiorino's face, you know, the Fox News anchor, what's her name?
Research is bleeding from forever.
Megyn Kelly.
You know, just those kind of things.
I mean, I just want a president that's not going to do and say the things that Trump is saying.
So hang on a sec.
So making negative comments about a woman's appearance is sexist, no matter what, right?
Let's see.
I'm trying to think of this.
No, but it goes back to his multiple occurrences as kind of a character set up for me.
So not just one time.
So does anybody who makes negative comments about Trump and his appearance, are they also sexist?
Or is this just for women?
Good point.
I don't know.
I haven't talked to them yet.
Well, this is important things.
If you're going to start calling somebody sexist and impuming their character, we would hope that you're coming from some sort of rational and objective basis.
Carly Fiorina herself has made negative comments about other women's appearances, which I guess would make her sexist.
Just about everybody and their dog has made fun of Donald Trump's hair, of his, whatever, his skin color.
I mean, and so there's been a huge amount of of negative comments made about Donald Trump but I've not actually noticed anybody calling those who make fun of Donald Trump's appearance sexist and that is actually a sexist standard saying that if Donald Trump makes one potentially negative comment about a woman and he said he was talking about her persona not her physical features but you know so if Donald Trump makes one potentially negative comment about a woman's appearance he's a rampant sexist but
all of the men and women who have made negative comments about Donald Trump's appearance are not sexist well that's a sexist standard because you have one standard for men a very high standard and another standard for women which is a very low standard and that's not a very effective standard I like your argument You know,
does the, his comment about the girl on his show, you know, about her getting on her knees, does that kind of degrading, you know, like she would look better on her knees kind of comment?
Does that, does that go to that same standard?
And I'm genuinely interested.
Why are you taking, why are you taking offense?
About something that the woman herself took no offense to.
I mean, that's very white-nighty.
In fact, that's even more white-nighty because there's not even a dragon around.
You're just, you know, stabbing a windmill.
Because the woman who was involved in that altercation didn't have any problem with it, thought it was funny, said that Donald Trump had treated her with nothing but respect during the entire taping, and it was just a joke.
It was directed at Brandy Roderick, and then she responded, Like him, I didn't even remember him saying that.
I've always had a positive experience around Donald.
He's always been encouraging.
He's never been disrespectful to me.
I don't contone men being derogatory, but I think he's just on television.
He's trying to be funny.
He didn't mean anything horrible by it.
That's from the person the comment was directed to.
Got you.
Okay.
Interesting.
I just thought...
I don't know.
It's...
Are you proud that he said those things?
Would that make you appreciate him because he...
I don't care.
Look, somebody who's been in the public life 42 years...
Who's had a camera on him, sometimes it seems like 24-7 for 42 years?
Is he never, I mean, seriously, think of your own life, Chad.
Think of if so many parts of your life and your comments and your, quote, private conversations had been recorded.
Do you not think that over the course of your whole life, That certain comments or snippets or jokes that may have failed or fallen flat or maybe even been mildly offensive, can you honestly look at your own life and say nothing that you've said could ever be taken out of context and presented in a way to make you look bad?
Certainly.
Good point.
I certainly, I couldn't say that with any confidence at all.
That's right.
And listen, I'm somebody who's been in the public sphere and have seen words twisted completely out of context and so on.
So it just, you know, boy, I mean, what is it?
What does it matter?
You know, I mean, the Carly Fiorini quote where he said, look at that face, can you imagine that face or whatever?
I mean, that was a private conversation.
This is not a speech.
And come on, we've all said things in private that if brought out into the public sphere and taken out of context can make us look bad.
I mean, everybody's like that.
And we can't all live like we're on TV 24-7.
It's just this gotcha game.
Ah, I found something while digging through archival footage with blah-de-blah and you said this and this and suddenly it's blown up and it's whole thing.
And so, you know, I don't care that he made a joke about a woman on her knees that the woman herself doesn't even remember and when it's brought up and she's shown it, she doesn't find it at all offensive and it's nothing but praise for the guy and how he treats women.
I mean, I just, I don't care.
And I think the degree to which we do care is why the media does this stupid shit.
Like, it's the fact that you care about this stuff and you take it as a hook by which to start denigrating someone's character, you're playing exactly the game that they want you to play.
Oh, look, we took something here.
It wasn't offensive to someone else.
It was a private conversation.
We're blowing it up into this big misogyny thing.
You're exactly the target, Chad, that they're trying to play.
And I must say, they're playing you most excellently because you left.
I'm disappointed about that, for sure.
I thought I was smarter than that.
I watched 10 seasons of The Apprentice and outtakes, and I found one on your knees comment.
Listen, I mean, when someone can only come up with one example...
It's bullshit.
Like if Trump had a genuine misogynistic hatred of women, After 42 years, do you think they'd just be able to find one outtake from The Apprentice or one comment over 10?
Come on.
Come on.
I mean, it would be a little, like, if you want to find Hitler's anti-Semitism, you don't have to look on the cutting room floor.
You know, it's kind of everywhere.
It's not, it's not, they're not, he's not shy about it, says it a lot, it's right out there.
But the fact that they got a dig up, well, one tweet, it's seven years, whatever, right?
I mean, it's, it's, I don't know.
You've got to stop.
This is why I'm pushing back on this stuff, Chad.
You've got to stop playing the media's game of swallowing all the bullshit they feed you and turning you against someone not based on facts.
If you disagree with Donald Trump's policies, I think that's fantastic.
I mean, great.
You know, go for it.
But don't swallow this media bullshit and think you're contributing anything to the intellectual life of the planet.
Well, I just, for some reason, I look at those...
Two or three examples of Carly Spirona and the other one that I don't like.
Have you never made a derogatory comment about a woman's looks?
Are you a misogynist?
No.
But wouldn't you agree that...
Oh, dude, dude, dude.
It's right there.
We move on.
We move on.
It's right there.
It's right...
No, come on.
I'm not going any further down this road.
You have made negative comments about women's appearance, and you are not a misogynist.
Done.
Done and done.
So we've done the racism, we've done the misogynism, we've done the bankruptcy, we've done this, we've done the immigration.
Okay, so you don't have much of a leg to stand on, and this is exactly why I'm doing these presentations.
If you want to disagree with Donald Trump, don't do it because you're being played like a cheap violin by the media.
And I was going to say, I looked at those few examples, and I may have said, oh, there seems to be a pattern, because there's multiple times.
It's not the one time with the girl on her knees.
It's not the one time with Megyn Kelly.
Okay.
How many times in your life, Chad, have you made a negative comment about a woman's appearance?
Once.
I'm kidding, kidding.
Many, probably.
I don't know.
You know as well as I do that it is not an uncommon appearance.
And let's say you didn't even say it.
How many times in your life, Chad, have you looked at a woman And thought a negative comment in your mind about her appearance.
Oh, yeah.
I understand it.
Daily?
Every second day.
Every third day.
It happens involuntarily.
Like, you know, if you're at the mall and you look at a woman who looks fantastic, you think that that woman looks fantastic.
If you are at the mall and you see, you know, these women who just like cram their giant butts into these really tight little threadbare...
Oh God, I can't even go there.
Like these little track pants that are just trying to hang on to that giant butt and so on.
You look at it and you think, wow, that's not attractive, right?
That's not pretty.
Like doesn't someone say to her, listen, you can't dress, like please don't use the tight t-shirt when you got your arm fat hanging down there.
Right?
Like a baker just dropped half his pizza.
So we all have these – they're involuntary.
We all judge appearance and there's nothing we can do about that.
Men judge female appearances.
Females judge male appearances.
So if I'm going to look at you and say, well, you've done this thousands of times over the course of your life, therefore you are a misogynist who is unworthy of anybody's trust and respect – Good lord.
I mean, don't you think it's a little hypocritical to judge Trump for something that you do all the time and call him a misogynist while excusing yourself from the same label?
Possibly.
But here's what's funny.
You talked about me being in construction and, you know, the cat-calling scenario.
I actually build sorority houses for a living.
No, no.
I never said cat-calling.
No, no.
I said the cat-calling.
I was just saying, have you made comments about women?
But you said something about me being in construction, which alludes to, you know, We all in construction are masculine, I guess.
But I have, at times, had to fire guys that were on rooftops, the roofers, for catcalling at girls on campus.
I actually got a call from the president of the university.
I'm glad, because I think that's pretty boorish behavior.
So, as a society, you just...
So, that's kind of my...
With Trump, while you think it, let's not say it.
Let's have some self-control and try to be...
No, no.
Chad, you told me you'd said it, too.
Sure.
Okay.
So maybe if you want to get all moralistic, you can deal with the beam in your own eye rather than the moat in somebody else's, right?
If you feel that it's just terrible to say negative comments about a woman's behavior, then you need to start working on yourself more so than Trump.
I do.
I pride myself on trying to be the best person I can and Then maybe a little less moral judgment towards other people who've done less of a negative thing than you have.
Maybe that's an area for improvement, just potentially.
Yeah, I think so.
And that's why I'm doing it.
I really dislike the degree to which substantive debate is squelched by the media putting out a bunch of bullshit.
That has people prejudge someone without regard to their positions.
You know, do you realize we've been talking for 45 minutes or something, and we've not actually talked about any policies.
And you get that that's exactly what the media wants.
What the media wants is for you to focus on bullshit that they sling together to make Trump look bad so that you don't end up talking about policies with people, but you start talking about what he said about Mexicans, whether he's racist, whether he's sexist, whether he's misogynistic, whether he's got bankruptcies and how many, rather than talk about any of the policies, substantive debates.
And then people say, well, but he's never going to enact those policies and politics.
Okay, then don't bother with anything, right?
If you don't believe anything's gonna happen politically, don't bother with anything.
And listen, man, we covered all of this stuff.
We covered all of this stuff in our videos.
Did you not actually watch them?
No, I did.
But like I said, there were some things that I thought were factual, like the 40-plus, maybe 50-plus business failures that the general public doesn't know about.
There are things like his becoming the Good Samaritan for saving the...
The carousel and the ice skating rink in New York City, and he gets all kinds of praise for that because he did it for free or at cost.
But last year he made $8.6 million on the ice rink.
I don't know how much, like, nobody's ever talked about the profits he's made off of these projects he said he did for free that he wasn't going to make any profit off of.
And so those are the true...
Wait, wait, wait.
Hang on, hang on, hang on.
Are you saying that Donald Trump said he was never going to make any profit off the ice skating rink and then he made profit off the ice skating rink?
He said he was doing it for free, at cost, so he said he did it at cost, and he was going to give the, like for the next year, whatever, the proceeds, everything was going to go for donations, like to some charity, go to charity.
But since then, I mean, he has made, over the last 10, 20, 30 years, millions upon millions, tens of millions of dollars on these prices.
Wait, so he did it at cost, he donated the first year's profits, and then he's keeping stuff?
You said he's keeping stuff, keeping money?
I don't know this story, but what you're saying is that he said he was going to do it at cost, which I assume he did.
Right.
And then he donated the first year's profits, and now he's keeping more profits?
Yeah, for the last however long, 20, 30 years.
So what's wrong with that?
He's a businessman who makes money.
Yeah, I don't mind making money.
But it's what the general public doesn't know.
I've never heard that he makes money every year off of these rides, these public-operated facilities.
They're in Central Park.
But that doesn't cost the taxpayer a dime.
Right?
What was going on before...
Was costing the taxpayer a huge amount of money, right?
Because the government was just spending forever not building this thing, right?
Right.
I understand.
The city had spent six years and $12 million trying to produce this rink, right?
Yep.
He stepped in and did it.
I did.
He stepped in and did it, and I guess he donated.
It spent a million dollars to operate the skating rink since November.
We'll put the links to all of this below.
Already set aside $200,000 for three charities in New York City.
And he's making some money off it.
I mean, how is this possibly a bad thing?
A businessman comes in and makes money at no cost to taxpayers and produces money for charity when the city had spent six years and huge amounts of taxpayers' money to not produce anything.
How is that not someone you want in office?
It wasn't for free.
The taxpayers did pay him to do the job.
He went out to other vendors to get their stuff for free, like the engineers for the ice skating rink.
That's great.
I'm glad he saved this public ice rink.
But what's not being reported is the profits made up.
And I'm a capitalist.
I love people making profits.
But so what?
Dude, you're going back to 1987.
He made 8.6 last year.
I don't care.
I'm glad.
Good.
Good.
He knows how to run things so they make money.
Do you not think he's going to need to know how to run government to make money to pay off any of the national debt?
He makes a profit.
By God, how is that bad?
What are you, a communist?
No, I told you I love capitalism.
It's just not being reported.
I just want it to be not open.
But who cares?
So he made some little amount of money off his huge business empire.
Who fucking cares?
Can you look at a slightly bigger picture here?
1987, he reported a profit from this rink.
Can we move on?
It's decades ago.
Wow.
Who cares that he made money as a businessman doing something that the government failed at?
Yeah.
Would you rather he lost money?
Oh no!
Then he declared bankruptcy.
So that's bad too.
So great.
We're in no-win Chad land.
If you make money, that's bad.
If you lose money, that's bad.
Maybe there's some in the middle where he makes neither-nothing and loses neither-nothing.
He doesn't make a profit but doesn't declare bankruptcy.
Maybe if he threads that needle, he'll satisfy your requirements.
But man, you must be a tough person to please.
No, but once again, this is off the public entity, a public scenario.
And it just burdens me.
I just wish you'd give it back.
Okay, well listen, you go ahead and be burdened, but I'm going to move on to the next caller because I think I've sort of made my point as far as that goes.
I appreciate the call, but let's move on.
Alright, well up next is Carl.
Carl wrote in and said, I've been listening to your show for a couple years now.
I find myself agreeing with nearly every opinion you put forth.
As a Christian pastor, I have, in the past, bristled a bit when you spoke on religion.
That said, your arguments have always been well-reasoned.
Faith is necessarily unreasonable, so I've accepted your arguments objectively, while knowing that subjectively, I disagree, but cannot present a reasonable rebuttal, so I don't worry about it.
Anyway, it seems lately, most profoundly with your podcast Why I Was Wrong About Atheism, that your stance has at least softened.
If this is so, what role would you see faith and religion playing in our current global-slash-Western-civilization setting?
As a pastor of a liberal Protestant denomination, I'm not hopeful that we can contribute much.
At least those of us in the mainline Protestant denominations.
Generally, like the body politic and academia, I fear we are too far gone.
If you want to see out-of-control feminism and multiculturalism run amok, attend one of our seminaries, that is, before the last one closes its doors.
That's from Carl.
Well, hello, Carl.
How are you doing?
Good.
How are you, Stefan?
I'm well, thank you.
Good.
Do you want to add anything more to your question?
No, I've enjoyed the previous callers an awful lot, but no, that's about it for the moment anyway.
Well, let me tell you where I stand with regards to Christianity.
I'm not going to say religion because that's way too wide a net.
And this is, it's a moving target, which I apologize for saying in advance because it sounds like a weasel word for non-consistent, but I'm just telling you my thoughts are in flux.
But it kind of goes like this.
Let's say you and I are playing tennis.
And it's a tough game, you know, we both want to win when we're sweating and muscles are aching, but we're really enjoying the competition.
And let's say that we hear off the radio that someone wants to call in an airstrike on our game.
What do you think we'd do?
Run for cover.
Yeah, we'd run for cover, but would we then go from opponents to allies?
Absolutely.
Because we both want to keep playing this game, and if there's an airstrike, we can't.
So now we have a common foe that unites us.
I understand.
And what I want in the West is for the conversation between reason and faith to continue.
And among certain other ideologies, it won't continue.
It didn't continue under communism, and it sure as hell doesn't continue under Sharia law.
So, reason and faith, having the debate, yeah, I play hard.
I've hit hard.
But now, there's an airstrike coming in that's going to end the game.
And the game is very important.
I know the game is the wrong way of putting it, but the conversation is very important.
And I would rather join with the Christians to be able to continue the conversation about reason and faith than surrender it to the leftists and surrender it to Sharia law and surrender it to Other ideologies which won't allow that conversation to continue because everything that is civilized in this world comes out of conversation.
And now sometimes that conversation needs to be defended vigorously, but without that conversation, I don't have a role in society outside of, you know, family and all of that.
But I am a public thinker, which means I need to have scope and room to have a conversation with reason and evidence.
And so all those who wish to use secular power to suppress the conversation with regards to reason and evidence cannot be my friends.
And all of those who are willing to have that conversation continue are my allies.
Happy to be an ally.
Yeah, me too.
And yeah, sorry for the hard shots that went off your forehead.
Oh, well, I'm There was something you said in passing.
In addition to being a pastor, I'm also a little bit of an entrepreneur myself with a pottery business, and I have you on podcast as I'm slinging mud most days.
And you said something in passing to somebody one time, and I don't, at the risk of paraphrasing you incorrectly, but it was with a Christian, and you were very...
You said something like, as you age or as things progress, you see Christians in large part pursuing virtue and ideals.
And you are less concerned as time goes on with the means by which those things are pursued.
And I appreciated that very much.
Yeah.
At least that's what I wanted to hear.
Yeah, I mean, the idea is that if I go to a doctor, let's say he uses the wrong methodology but gives me the right medicine, I would rather that than somebody who was using the, quote, right methodology but giving me the wrong medicine.
Right.
And when I look at, you know, when you're a public intellectual, the view that you get is very interesting.
And...
The view that I've had over the years is that the people on the left, and to some degree the atheists, a little aggressive, a little hysterical at times, and some are downright nasty.
But from the Christians, I have, I would say, even when I have not directly deserved it, received a fair amount of positivity.
And I know that's part of the plan.
Smother them with kindness, turn them around by being just so nice.
I know that's part of the plan, but that doesn't make it any less compelling.
Well, I have to tell you, you have, in recent days at least, influenced sort of the focus I have chosen to take on a few of my conversations with my congregation,
in that I think the Church, historically, not lately, But historically has been a big proponent of civility and virtue.
And you can almost approach issues of faith from that angle alone.
At the risk of being hung on a tree in my front yard of my church, you could almost remove God from the conversation.
And still, our faith speaks to that and those things.
And the church historically has as well.
And as regards Western culture, I think, you know, well, for the first, what, 1700 years, 1600 years, something like that, it was the cradle of it, of education and music and art.
And sadly, that's...
Under great attack as well, but that's probably it.
And it is, I mean, the faith that I was raised in had more emphasis on good deeds than good thoughts.
And of course, the deeds spring from the thoughts, and it was not, of course, a complete disconnect.
And just thinking about it now, Maybe this had a lot to do with why I became such an empiricist, because virtue, when I was growing up, was something that you could empirically see, not something that was a mere state of mind.
And because of that, when I look around the world, and I look at people's reactions to me, and I have a pretty unique view, at least throughout most of human history, you didn't get this kind of feedback from such a wide variety of groups.
And I look at it and say, okay, well, who would I rather discuss virtue with?
Atheists or Christians?
And who am I getting a more positive response from?
And I don't mean that agreement or anything like that.
I just mean an invitation to continue a conversation.
And in general, I mean, I did this video, Why I Was Wrong About Atheism.
And if you have a strong stomach, you can scroll down through the comments from my lovely atheist friends.
And yeah, it was awful.
I did do that.
Yeah, that's instructive.
You know, I'm an empiricist.
I just want to see the information that's coming back from the world.
But sorry, go ahead.
Well, I was just, you had mentioned that.
You said something like, you want to hear something nasty, scroll through the comments, I'll get on this.
And of course, you'd put it up a day or two before I got around to watching it.
And I scrolled down through the comments and I was just going, dang, I couldn't do this.
Yeah.
I could not.
If I got criticized at For some of the sermons I've preached in the manner in which you were criticized for offering that opinion, I'd slink out of there crying about every son.
Well, no, but listen, it wasn't about me at all, because I don't mind.
Look, if I make a bad argument, it's not like I've never done it before.
If I make a bad argument because of some, you know, whatever irrationality or prejudice in mind, great, you know, tell me how I've made a bad argument.
And I will attempt to revisit it.
Of course, right?
I mean, it's a polish.
It's never quite done.
Well, brother, you're tougher than me.
But the amount of willful This willful misinterpretation of everything that I was saying, Carl, was just something that, wow, you know you've stepped on an emotional landmine when you say, atheists have a tendency to lean to the left, and here's the data that supports it.
And people are like, well, I'm an atheist, I don't lean to the left, so you're wrong.
And it's like, what?
Aren't you all supposed to be like...
Rational and empirical and you can't even handle this math?
Not all atheists are leftists.
It's like, yes, yes, I understand.
The number 70 is not the same as the number 100.
I get that there's a gap of 30.
You may very well fit in that gap in 30.
And given that you're on an anarchist channel, it's likely you're not a giant atheist statist, right?
And not a statheist.
I get that.
But this idea that if I speak the facts...
That I'm suddenly now, it's one or the other.
Like, that's called splitting.
Psychologically, it comes from very immature personalities that can't handle, um, Christopher Hitchens used to call it irony or ambiguity or complexity.
It's just, it's gotta be, it's black and white thinking.
It's black and white thinking.
And the people who said, well, atheism has absolutely nothing to do with political opinions.
It's like, well, then you explain to me why there is this tendency.
Because if atheism has nothing to do with political opinions, then atheists should be evenly distributed across the spectrum.
And I found another report Where atheists were 70 times more likely to be on the left than on the right.
70 times.
Now you tell me, atheism has nothing to do with political opinions except 70 times?
Come on now.
People may say that my cause and effect, like my hypothesis as to the cause and effect is incorrect.
Of course.
And it's put forward as a hypothesis.
I never said this is ironclad proof of everything.
It would be a ridiculous statement to make.
But the fact is that they would just scream correlation doesn't equal causation.
Well, first of all, there is no correlation.
And secondly, even if there is correlation doesn't equal causation, it's fine.
Okay, but you can't just ignore the fact that I've made an argument.
I mean, saying correlation isn't causation, yeah, I understand that.
But if you put an argument as to why it is the case or might be the case, you have to address that argument.
So just seeing the degree of irrationality, it was kind of an experiment.
I mean, I was putting out a provocative thesis.
And I wanted to see...
How people would say, well, that is interesting.
I didn't know that about atheists because, of course, if you're on this channel, most of your atheist friends are probably small governments or libertarians or anarchists.
I didn't know that.
That's interesting.
Here's some data that may counteract it or here's how your hypothesis may be weak or here's an alternate hypothesis You know, here's the day to let us reason together, saith the Lord, right?
Let us reason together, saith the Lord.
And I thought that if Christians can have their come to Jesus moment, maybe atheists can come to their reason and evidence moment and we can have a rational discussion and we get interesting calls and try and tease out this problem.
And maybe there's some other cause that I don't know about or haven't even conceived of or anything like that.
Let's just let, let's look at this tendency.
Let us reason together, saith the Lord.
And boy, how many people actually rose to that challenge in an even remotely decent way.
I don't know.
I'm trying to think of any.
Mike, you had to look at some of those comments, too.
Did you notice anyone who was bringing good, decent rebuttals and better evidence and so on?
I'm not going to say there's not any, but I didn't see any.
And of the emails of people that want to call in, it's been a lot of nasty emails.
Not saying, oh, this is an interesting thesis.
Let's discuss it more.
You're wrong.
I can't believe you'd say this, and I'm mad at you.
Let's talk about it.
So...
And sorry, Carl, I'll shut up in a second, but just from my perspective, this is sort of an emotional perspective, but it's very important.
Oh, you Christians are good.
So good.
Because, you know, I've put out very critical videos on Christians, and Christians have been pretty nice to me.
I put out one potentially mildly critical video on atheists, and...
You know, they're like a bunch of piranhas on a cow.
I mean, so I just found that very interesting because atheists are very hostile sometimes towards religion.
And one of the big things for me when I was growing up, which was very important, and I don't know, this is probably the case with you as well.
It's the case with most guys.
I don't know about women as much because I was in a male segregated school for some time in my youth.
It's the thing that, have you ever seen this guy, like some guy is like a real, teases other kids and makes fun of them, but the moment somebody teases them back, they just get really upset.
It's the old, don't dish it out if you can't take it.
Yeah, of course.
And seeing how very aggressive, I'm in that camp too, at least I was, how very aggressive atheists can be in their attacks upon religion.
But then one mild potential criticism comes up against atheism, and everybody loses their minds.
And it's just like, well, don't dish it out if you can't take it.
Well, I just have to say, I didn't read those comments looking for an argument really against you.
And to be honest, I couldn't get past the meanness of it all.
I lost interest pretty quick.
It seemed emotional attacks on what I thought was a very reasonable thing you said.
And...
When I said in the introduction you read that I bristled a bit, it was just an emotional bristling.
I fully accept that my faith is not rationally defendable.
I mean, except for personally, of course.
And I don't see a problem with that.
As it relates to Christianity, after all, it was Paul, the apostle himself, who said something similar.
You know, what we profess is foolishness to the Greeks, meaning, of course, the philosophers of his day, who most of them, or many of them at least, believed in God.
But there is a foolish, you know, intellect will only take you so far.
And I fully accept that.
And that's okay.
I don't have any problems.
Sorry, go ahead.
I was just going to say, I don't really have any problems with rational arguments against religion.
That's not my arena of discourse with religion.
No, and...
My sort of growing understanding is something like this, that there was a home that people lived in called religion, and it gave them shelter, and it gave them good decisions in a lot of ways.
Like, Christianity's focus on No sex before marriage.
Christianity's focus on keeping the family together.
Christianity's focus on the perils of single motherhood and the dangers of sexual licentiousness and so on.
Well, these have all, over the last 50 years, been proven to be disastrously deviated from.
So I looked at the sort of metaphysical, epistemological basis for belief in God and found it wanting, I think, as you're saying, too.
It's not rational.
You know, it's that old thing about the baby and the...
Don't throw the bathwater and the baby out.
Keep the baby, throw out the bathwater.
And I don't know the degree to which atheists are pushing back against the single mom phenomenon.
In fact, I've not really seen any of it.
Now, I do know a lot of Christians.
Ann Coulter, of course, has a big chapter on single moms, and she's very Christian.
And Christians are concerned about the dissolution of the family.
They are concerned about the hostilities between men and women.
They are concerned about single motherhood.
And the Christians were right.
And the atheist's lack of focus on this has been a huge issue.
Deficiency in the worldview.
So when atheists looked at religion and said, well, you know, we've got philosophical problems with the basis of it, okay, but could religion have been a vehicle for the transmission of civilization-saving ethical positions?
And in throwing out Do we then also throw out the virtues that are hard-won and hard-developed and painfully achieved and maintained in society?
In other words, that atheists say, okay, well, let's say that we don't believe in God, but let's look at all the things that the Christians have developed and figure out whether they're of some value.
Because if they weren't of any value, then how could they have been developed and sustained and maintained over so many generations?
And the very marriage vow itself...
What God has joined together, let no man tear asunder, to be with each other for better and for worse, in sickness and in health, till death do us part.
That is the optimum environment for children.
And atheists, if they're trending leftward, which they do seem to be, they are substituting vows, right?
They displace vows and they put in the power of the state.
And the power of the state is an external very expensive and very destructive pretend solution to a loss of internal adherence to moral values.
And because the Christians focus on an internal adherence to moral values, a lot of those moral values I completely agree with, if not most.
Well, I've never heard you put forth a moral value that I find repugnant.
Or even disagreeable.
And I don't know what that's worth.
But if I could share one little personal story, I don't know if it borders on a reasonable argument for it.
It really doesn't.
But would you care if I told you a conversation from my Marxist days as a teenager?
Yeah.
Wow, you've had quite a journey there, Carl.
Well, I mean, it was...
I mean, you went further than Hitchens, who started out as a Marxist.
Well, I was a 13-year-old Marxist, right?
Right.
So I don't know if I ever was, really.
But my mother was a big influence on me.
She was a wonderful Christian woman, very thoughtful woman.
And I came with the old Marx quote that...
You know, religion is when she was wanting me to get up and get dressed, go to church, probably.
And I said, you know, it's just the opium of the masses.
And for some reason, this stuck with me.
It didn't change my not wanting to go to church that particular Sunday.
But she said, opium is a good drug when properly used.
And everyone needs a good drug from time to time.
So get dressed.
Get your ass in the car.
Well, or the idea that Marxism is the opiate of the intellectuals, which has also been, I think, very much the case as well.
I think so, too.
But, I mean, I have thought about that often when my leftist friends, the one or two that I have, come with that.
And they're atheists as well.
Well, it's just a drug.
And I'm like, well, you know, if you're going to self-medicate with something...
Maybe better that than government.
And also, how is the welfare state not a drug?
Well, right.
Because everyone's concerned about the poor, but it takes work and commitment to roll up your sleeves and go down to a soup kitchen and talk to people and listen to people and help it out.
But a lot of people on the left, they love the welfare state because it's like, whoop, problem taken care of.
I don't have to think about it.
I don't have to do anything about it.
I don't have to look at it.
I don't have to worry about it.
I don't have to fix it.
Because I just got this magic government gun money to make it all go away.
How is that also not a kind of opiate towards actually being in contact with the poor?
It is.
I think that was her point, is that we all seek an opiate at some point.
Or many of us do.
And hey, as your opiates go, this one isn't bad.
I mean, it can be, of course, but typically, you're right.
I don't know a church of any size, and I'm sure they're out there, but all are actively involved in firsthand relief to the poor.
Sometimes at their own peril, really.
We get taken advantage of All the time.
But that's okay.
That's on them, not on us.
Anyway, I see the liberal Protestant church, and I could further define that if you wanted, but those are sort of church-speak terms.
It, without question, is going away.
The tradition of which I'm part and the tradition in which I was raised, it will cease to exist unless something radically happens within, well, within, probably within my lifetime.
And it's a good tradition.
It's a reasonable approach to faith.
And...
And I just don't see it hanging on.
Yeah, I mean, the idea that Richard Dawkins sits down with the Archbishop of Canterbury and has discussions about faith and science and reason and evidence and evolution and so on, that's the tennis.
That's the tennis.
And there are agencies moving within Western society that want to nuke the whole Court.
Yes.
And that is desperately bad.
You know, the tension between faith and reason has produced some significantly positive sparks in Western civilization and strong arguments to say that sort of Middle Eastern religion of Christianity combined with the tensions between that mysticism to some degree and the rational empiricism of the Greeks and Romans was one of the things that gave rise to the Enlightenment.
And that wrestling between reason and faith is just a conversation I desperately want to continue, and I hear a high whistling sound, and I think that to continue to play the game when there may be an incoming is not wise.
I agree.
And anyone who has been to seminary, and I would include my Roman Catholic brothers and sisters in this as well, I would expect they had a similar experience to mine that pretty much day one in Theology-first course that you take.
They tell you up front, the pursuit of theology is the task of linking faith to reason.
And they stress again and again that...
A reasonable faith is what we're after, but they will also say, in the end, it all breaks down, that you can't reason your way to faith.
But it is a reasonable pursuit.
It's a very academic pursuit, and sometimes it strips the joy out of it, really.
But I find it beneficial and continue to.
But I find your show to be Oh gosh, I wish I could get my Christian brothers and sisters to listen to it, particularly those of my ilk, of my tradition, because we're committing suicide.
And over all these same leftist issues, that combined with a low birth rate among our people, but It's just, our voice is getting, at least in the United States, ever and ever smaller within the...
And it is, sorry to interrupt, but it is one of these great tragedies that, I've heard a lot of arguments that said, if Christianity was still the dominant belief system in Europe, then these issues of the Middle Eastern people coming in by the millions would not have occurred.
But...
Of course, we do have to look at the fact that the Pope is entirely behind this migration slash invasion slash God knows what the hell's going to happen there.
You know, he's washing their feet, he's inviting them in, he's saying it's a Christian virtue to...
Now, I get the love your enemy stuff.
I do.
I do.
And it's, you know, certainly working with me, but I think you also have to evaluate your capacity of your enemy's To be loved, to process love, to understand love.
Otherwise, they're just going to view it as weakness.
Well, and not to oversimplify Luther, but of course, he was the first anti-Pope.
But he would very much have disagreed with laying down and letting your enemies run over you.
That, you know, there are two kingdoms, one of this world and one of And right now, we're all consigned to living here in this one, and sometimes we have to sacrifice the ideals of the kingdom of heaven.
I'm very much oversimplifying this, but yeah, if you're going to be overrun, then you won't be able to preach that gospel you believe in, right?
Right, right.
And what has the increasing secularization of the West done to keep the West safe from the dangers it's currently courting?
Because I would argue that on the left, there is a new religion called multiculturalism, which cannot be questioned, which no amount of reason and evidence can overthrow, but which has self-destructive elements in it not to be contained in all but the most extreme forms of Christianity.
Because...
Christianity, okay, well, okay, so there are ethics which, you know, I believe, as Tertullian said, I believe because it is absurd and there are irrational or anti-rational elements to the belief system, but at least the belief system evolved into a life-affirming.
And the fact that not only do European secularists generally not have children, but I don't think that they have the kind of values, even if they do have children, that they're willing to really confront social disapproval to maintain.
Because all war arises from people's fear of social disapproval.
When people start talking about war, becoming pro-war, if they're not stopped by words, they eventually will end up being poured into trenches and poured into graves.
Oh, absolutely.
And so my concern is that the degree to which Europeans are not willing to wage a war of words and to confront the multicultural religion of the left is the degree to which they're setting the ground for some potentially continent drowning bloodshed.
Oh, absolutely.
I 100% agree with that.
And also, just on a less, oh gosh.
Apocalyptic?
Apocalyptic thing.
I just, when you look at what, and I'm going to be maybe branded a bigot or something, but Western culture.
I just, this past I sing with a professional choir here where I live.
And we just did one of Bach's double motets.
We did a piece by Mendelssohn and Schutz and heavy on the German stuff.
Actually, it was all German this time.
And, oh my God, I was singing it.
And, you know, of course, it aligns with my...
Faith and theology view, but it transcended that.
I was thinking, my God, the culture we have been given, and we're just allowing—and I wasn't even thinking of the church at this point.
I was thinking about— Just the beauty of it.
The beauty of this stuff that has endured, and we're allowing it This multicultural, well, it's all the same, and it's, you know, a tossed salad, not a melting pot, that whole thing.
I was thinking, you know, I'm going to keep doing this.
I'm going to keep...
This choir I sing with, it's very demanding.
It's a professional group.
We meet for just eight weeks.
You show up, you learn the notes, the director will just...
It's constant pressure.
About six, seven weeks into it, every time I'm thinking, I'm not going to do this again.
This is the last time around for me on this.
And by the time we get to the concert and we put that music out there, I'm thinking, no, I've got to do this.
I've got to keep doing this because somebody's got to keep doing it.
This stuff has to be, you know, the The hundred people that pay to come see it in this large city in which I live, they need it.
The whole city needs it.
This stuff can't be allowed to die.
And it may die anyway, but it's not...
No, no, no.
It's not going to die.
It's not going to die if we act.
If we act.
Everything dies without tending, right?
All gardens run to weeds without tending, and we just...
We've let it run a little wild in the West, and we just, we have to go tend our gardens, right?
As Voltaire said in Candide, we have to tend our gardens.
And it's going to be, the longer things are left unsaid, the harder it is to hear them, because the absence of truth makes lies appear wrong.
Real.
And so we just have to speak uncomfortable truths to people about all of the challenging topics that I talk about, that you talk about, Karl.
We just have to toughen people up by reminding them of difficult truths to hear, and we have to take the inevitable social disapproval and attacks and all that that comes with it, just as we have inherited all these great things from people who are willing to be disapproved of, like Luther, in the past and who faced much greater sanctions than I ever will, probably.
So it's not going to die.
I don't believe in these cycles of history.
I don't believe that there are these movements like El Nino or some solar cycle or anything like them, Ice Age cycles.
No.
Human societies move according to the will of the most prominent.
And most people are followers and most people will simply align themselves with whoever seems the most passionate.
The most consistent and the most dedicated.
They don't know where they're going, but they'll follow the confident person.
That's where things are.
Hopefully in the future it will be different.
But society will go where you and I demand and cajole and instruct it to go.
And there are people instructing it to go the opposite way we want them to go.
And we just have to be bigger and louder and more passionate and more charismatic and funnier and stronger and braver.
And then we will inevitably pull those people after us to the point where they can start thinking for themselves.
So yeah, it's a battle of good and evil in the world at the moment.
I view no inevitability in any of these things.
The vast majority of human history has been decided by about a thousand people.
This is a fact that has been well documented.
The vast majority of human history has been decided by pretty much about a thousand people who have, with their singular contributions and energy and dedications, shifted the needle against all prior inertia.
And I'm certainly aiming to be 1001.
Maybe you could join me up there too.
But it's going to go where we tell it to go.
And that's the responsibility when you have a gift for language and you have a gift for convincing people.
You have to align yourself with what is necessary for the long-term survival and flourishing of civilization.
You have to grit your teeth and you have to just pull like a son of a bitch.
And people will groan and they'll complain.
And then they'll thank you, but probably long after you're dead.
Exactly.
You have to look up and see that.
You know what it's like?
It's like the beginning of Star Wars, you know, episode four, and you hope.
That's your tombstone.
You're in the ground, you're looking up, and people are like, wow, he was right all along.
Wow, he really helped us.
Wow, he really did a great thing.
Wow, we hated him when he was around, but boy, later, he was fantastic.
And that's what you see when you're lying in your eternity dirt nap, looking up at your headstone.
You're seeing that text scroll up.
And that's what you have to live for.
Well, you give me courage to continue going to Bach Choir and to pursuing virtue in my own vocations.
And I appreciate that a lot.
It's a voice that, sadly, I can't even remember how I stumbled upon you, but I'm certainly happy that I did.
Nobody told me about it directly.
I'm very glad I found a kindred spirit to stand shoulder to shoulder with and play tennis with.
I'll continue to go to Bach Choir and try to Lead folks as best I can.
All right.
Well, thank you very much for calling in.
You're welcome anytime.
If you've got any of your music online, please send it in.
I'd love to hear it.
And I've changed my mind about Trump now.
I mean, because I just read that Lena Dunham has said she's going to move to Canada if he wins.
I'm not sure who that is.
Yeah, well, count yourself lucky.
Lena Dunham.
Anyway, it's a...
Because you know Bach and Mendelssohn, you don't know Lena Dunham, and I'm not sure I want you to cross that divide anyway.
All right.
Well, thanks everyone so much for listening and for calling in.
It's always a great, great pleasure to speak to you about what's in your hearts and minds, and have courage.
Have courage.
The enemies are smaller than you think, and the future you want is closer than you can imagine.
It is one of these things that when you cross what you think is a giant chasm, it turns out to be a crack in the sidewalk.
And you can survive that which you fear and you can flourish in the face of those who despise you and they can actually become fuel to make sure that you're pointed in the right direction.
You want the love of good people and the hatred of bad people and that's how we navigate and that's how you know you're heading in the right direction.
And just you don't have to convince everyone.
You just have to lead them and that's something we can all work towards.
So thank you so much for listening.
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