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Sept. 12, 2016 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

17:26

3409 9/11: My Untold Story

Stefan Molyneux discusses his personal experience of the September 11th terrorist attacks and the fallout of fifteen years of the war on terrorism. Freedomain Radio is 100% funded by viewers like you. Please support the show by signing up for a monthly subscription or making a one time donation at: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate

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	So it's 15 years now, since 9-11.
	15 years.
	Everybody has their where-were-they stories, if you're old enough.
	I don't know if I've ever told mine.
	I co-founded a software company, and I was the chief technical officer in charge of the R&D team and the production team.
	And I was working away on some coding, and a friend of mine I worked with came in and said, an airplane.
	Just flew into the World Trade Center.
	Now I thought, I guess like most people, that this was like the way back in the day an airplane flew into the Empire State Building.
	A Cessna.
	I mean, I thought it was a Cessna, something like that.
	And then, of course, he came in and said, a second plane has flown in to the World Trade Center.
	And this is very early in the days of the internet.
	We were very lucky to find one of the last feeds of a television station.
	We didn't have any TVs at work, of course.
	You couldn't get TV on your computers the way you can now.
	And we watched.
	It was a mind-dislocating experience, and I really, really understood, and still to this day understand, the horse-charging bloodlust that arises from those kinds of visions, where it seems like hell itself has made itself manifest in your world, in your landmarks, among your people.
	And when the buildings fell, I had this odd illusion that it was not the buildings falling, but all the other buildings rising.
	It seemed so cartoony, and I could see in my mind's eye all of the breaking masonry and clouds of dust and shattering glass and collapsing stories.
	Collapsing stories, it's a good phrase, of being inside those buildings.
	When they were reduced to dust by violence and blindness.
	I was in therapy at the time, and my therapist said about this incident, what an amazingly powerful conversation is occurring at the moment.
	That bothered me, because I was young and harder in blood.
	And I thought, Lucifer's Hammer shall smash those who did this.
	And of course, because I didn't know much about American foreign policy at the time.
	I've been out of school for some years and I've been an entrepreneur.
	Wasn't really following the news that much.
	Seemed to come out of nowhere.
	The planes seemed to come crashing down in America like lightning out of the clear blue sky they flew through.
	Where could this come from?
	What could this all be about?
	Where does the hatred arise from?
	And it's very good I did not have any kind of public voice in those days.
	I would have done myself, and reason and evidence, if not virtue, a great disservice that morning and in the days that would have followed.
	When a violation of that sort occurs, the urge is to strike back so hard that it will never happen again.
	It's a form of terror management, anxiety management.
	And I was so young, I think, that the common humanity of, I wish to strike back for violations, therefore isn't it possible?
	Isn't it possible that these are attacks that result from violations overseas?
	I knew some shreds and bits of American imperialism.
	I knew, or I thought to some degree it was like a cliché of the left, but I also knew there was some truth to it.
	You know, whenever I'd hear Noam Chomsky talking about the peasant communities of Nicaragua, I just thought it was kind of a leftist cliché, but I did know as well some of the pretty unholy stuff the American government has gotten into overseas.
	And as I've gotten older, and now I think in this decade and a half since that date, I have a perspective that almost feels too big, it's too tragic, it's too heartbreaking.
	And the perspective is just to take the last hundred odd years.
	That the stated goals of all of these attacks and interventions and controls and invasions and blockades, it's all for peace, for security, for stability.
	Goddammit, it is not happening.
	It is not happening.
	And this unwillingness Almost it feels like an inability for people as a whole, for the population as a whole, to circle back and say, war and terror, 15 years in, how are we doing?
	The answer is, terribly.
	Terribly.
	You know the old saying that those who would trade liberty for security will end up with neither liberty nor security?
	Well, think of all the rights that have been given up and surrendered and vanished.
	All the freedoms evaporated.
	Over the past 15 years.
	And for what?
	What has been gained?
	So, well, there hasn't been a giant attack on American soil since 9-11, and that is certainly true.
	But Al-Qaeda was decimated in the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and other maneuvers around the world.
	But ISIS doesn't seem to be as interested in these big giant attacks, therefore sort of more localized, low-level, easy-to-achieve attacks.
	And the goal, of course, has never been to attack America.
	The goal is to bankrupt America.
	And that seems to be going, well, let's just say pretty much according to plan.
	Terrorists around the world are far more numerous than they were 15 years ago.
	The number of attacks are far more numerous than they were 15 years ago.
	The numbers of deaths are far more numerous than they were 15 years ago.
	And that is the result of the grand promises that are always offered.
	Just give us so much money, so much blood, so much treasure, so many of your last Will-O-The-Wisp Gossamer style freedoms.
	And we will bring you and deliver to you a peaceful, orderly world.
	And people believe it.
	And I've been prey to it myself.
	We believe it, don't we?
	We say, I'm scared.
	Take my money.
	Take my blood.
	Take my freedoms.
	Just deliver me from fear.
	And that's the deal that is always offered.
	In the First World War, the goal was to make the world safe for democracy, you see.
	And as a direct result of the American entry into World War I in 1917, so much American machinery and manpower was thrown into the Western Front that Germany had to begin withdrawing its troops from the Eastern Front where it was fighting with Russia, as it would again in the World War II. And so they had to take Russia out of the war.
	And so they shipped Lenin and armaments and money through Finland to Russia where he fomented a revolution which strangled and enslaved Russia for 70 years and caused the deaths of tens of millions of people.
	And that's what they call making the world safe for democracy.
	It's delivering Russia and then, through the Second World War, the entire Eastern Bloc into a communist tyranny.
	Federal Reserve to make the economy run smoothly.
	Yeah, hasn't it been so smooth?
	Since 1913, the US dollar has lost 98% of its value.
	Gonna get you out of the Great Depression.
	Chicken in every pot?
	Jobs for every person?
	Oh wait, sorry, we miscalculated.
	Let's have a giant goddamn war instead which is gonna cause the deaths of 40 million people and shortly thereafter deliver the entirety of China into the same communist virulent despotism.
	That's swallowed up Russia, Cambodia, Cuba, the Eastern Bloc countries, other countries as well.
	We're going to keep you safe.
	We're going to have a League of Nations that is going to prevent war.
	Oh, sorry.
	Well, didn't do much to stop the Second World War.
	In fact, it may have helped accelerate it by giving people a false sense of security.
	And once you start trusting in a central body, you stop trusting in your own diplomats and your own negotiations and your own armaments and your own policies.
	And you rely on that external EU, UN, League of Nations.
	They'll keep us safe.
	We don't have to worry about it as much.
	We're going to outsource our security to anonymous bureaucrats running their own agendas.
	And now, America teeters on the edge of bankruptcy.
	Staggeringly massive unfunded liabilities, crumbling infrastructure, a terrible school system, barely any kind of education at all.
	And a demoralized military.
	The squandering of treasure and blood in the Middle East has been, without a doubt, one of the most disastrous decisions any Western country has ever embarked upon.
	Europe was relatively secure.
	The Middle East was relatively stable before the giant war hammer of the military-industrial complex rained down living hell.
	upon the largely helpless inhabitants of the Middle East causing regime changes funding the Arab Spring invading Iraq Afghanistan and now the Middle East is in flames in decay and starvation in turmoil in civil war massive tides of refugees fleeing economic migrants flooding into Europe Europe was stable.
	The Middle East was relatively stable.
	The promise was to bring peace and democracy to the Middle East.
	And now it feels like half the planet has been disassembled and set fire to.
	Europe is destabilizing.
	The Middle East is a mess.
	North Korea just launched more nuclear weapons and tested them.
	The deal with Iran is a joke.
	America has sent 1.7 billion dollars to Iran, one of the leading sponsors of state terrorism.
	And the freedoms and the rights of Americans drain away.
	And the character and history of America drains away.
	And Europe consumes itself in vanity and sentimentality and mad hope.
	And all because we so desperately want to believe that they are telling us the truth, the rulers, the leaders, they're telling us the truth, they have our best interests at heart, they have a big plan, they have a grand scheme, they have a way to make all of the jigsaw pieces fall together, the tetris of foreign policy, all is going to fall into alignment and be perfect.
	And we believe that they're circling back and monitoring their progress and seeing if things are working out and adjusting and tweaking and moving in the right direction.
	And the media is covering it skeptically and forcefully and legitimately.
	And we believe all of these things because the alternative is very, very scary.
	The alternative, which appears to be unfolding across the Western world, that these professional politicians...
	I don't put Trump into this category.
	He's very much an outsider.
	But these professional politicians...
	What do they tell us?
	They tell us what we want to hear.
	They appeal to the worst aspects of our nature, to our desire for conformity and security, and our shrugging off of liberty as inconsequential to the anxiety management of facing a dangerous world that wants to get us for mysterious reasons that no one can understand.
	The incomprehensible hatred of the other, unprovoked, uncaused.
	That is what they appeal to, that is what they want to evoke in us, is the fear and the drive to be embraced by the bricky, steely arms of a strangling security.
	But what security is showing up?
	What peace is being achieved?
	What progress is being reliably and sustainably attained?
	Where do you see it?
	Below us is opening up a cavernous Florida-style sinkhole of debt and unfunded liabilities and impossible to meet obligations.
	And all around us, ancient entrenched stabilities are giving way, collapsing, crumbling, falling against each other like dominoes, people scattering across the world, cultures clashing with no philosophical medium to reconcile their oppositions.
	All because we have been trained by the state to believe in the state.
	It's the only thing that can work.
	It's the only agency that can secure society.
	It's the only agency that can bring peace and stability.
	But we must circle back and see the promises and see the results.
	It is worse than a lie.
	It is a con.
	The war on poverty will bring an end to poverty.
	Nope.
	The war on drugs will eliminate drugs.
	Nope.
	Any more than the war on alcohol eliminated alcoholism or alcohol.
	The war on illiteracy, government education, the security of the world.
	All these things are promised us.
	And we swallow it every time.
	Because the alternative to swallowing it is to spit it out and see it for what it is.
	Lies told to control us.
	Lies told to appease us.
	Lies told to lull us into a foggy, walking dead zombie style.
	Shuffling in a line.
	Shuffling in a line.
	So, it's the 15th year.
	After 9-11.
	September the 11th, 2016.
	The war on terror is worse than a failure.
	Just as all of these programs and plans and grand schemes Turn to ashes and dust in the hands of coercive power.
	Because we so yearn for what is offered, for peace, for stability, for security, for taking care of the poor, for educating the ignorant, for treating the sick.
	We yearn for that so much that we're just constant suckers every time it's offered.
	Oh, this time it's going to be different.
	This time it's going to work.
	This time it's going to be great.
	Obamacare.
	Big giant government program.
	Government takes over one-sixth of the U.S. economy.
	The exchange is going bankrupt left, right, and center.
	People's bills going up like crazy deductibles through the roof.
	Oh, but we were promised, you see.
	Promised.
	Healthy young people will be happy to pay massive amounts of increases in order to subsidize the sick.
	Yeah.
	Hmm.
	It's not going to work, people.
	It's not going to work.
	And it's these times where we have these rhythms, this decade and a half of reflection, where we can look back and say, what has the government offered that it has followed through on?
	It's number one.
	Number two, when it fails to follow through or provides the opposite of what it says it's going to provide, Who was ever held accountable?
	Who was ever held accountable?
	I think we both know the answer to that.
	We had this decade or so of somewhat peace between the fall of the Soviet Empire and 9-11.
	Ah, it was supposed to be the end of history.
	All the great battles were done.
	Western liberal, semi-capitalist democracies had won.
	We're going to inevitably spread.
	Ah, it's always easy to forget the blowback, isn't it?
	And I do sometimes think of the dead, as I said at the beginning of this, in their hellish collapsing concrete accordion of the falling buildings, that if there was an afterlife and they could look down and see what use has been made of their deaths, Would they be happy and satisfied with how their deaths have been used?
	Would they look and say, well, thousands of us died, but on the other hand, at least hundreds of thousands of people in the Middle East have been killed as well.
	So, what do you think they would think of the uses to which their deaths have been put?
	Or would they look back from their perch on the moral objectivity of the heavens and look down On 9-11 and the 15 years that followed, and say, it was not just the buildings that fell.

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