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Sept. 12, 2016 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:31:41

3411 WHEN DIVERSITY ATTACKS - Call In Show - September 7th, 2016

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	Hi everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Aid Radio.
	Hope you're doing well.
	So tonight, we had a woman call in.
	She posted something that a few leftists really, really didn't like, and she got to experience a full-on 360-degree attack, which left her, I guess, a little shaken, not stirred.
	And we talked about how that can happen, what's behind it, and what you can do, and some of the advantages of this kind of stuff as well.
	Now, the second caller, hey, have you ever...
	Been at work, and people want to do stuff that is not to your liking or not to your taste.
	Well, he was asked to participate in a die-in for some black victims of police shootings, and he felt a little uncomfortable with it and decided not to, and we talked about the repercussions of that and also some of the economic motivators as to why that stuff comes up in a business environment, which doesn't seem to be particularly relevant to what he was doing.
	The third caller wanted to discuss free will.
	Ooh, one of my favorites.
	And we talked about free will as a muscle and the degree to which you need information and facts and learning in order to be able to make better decisions to really have free will.
	You need to have information.
	Now, the choice is do we pursue information or not?
	That's where our real free will is.
	What comes after that is sort of the icing on the cake.
	Thanks again so much, everyone, for listening and supporting the show, which you can do at freedomainradio.com slash donate.
	Alright, well up for us today we have Bree.
	Bree wrote in and said, I decided to make a YouTube video expressing my opinion that the overall message and theme of a book should be what we value and not a character's skin color or sexuality.
	The liberal mob came after me with a vigor that still has my head spinning.
	I am still receiving threatening emails.
	When does diversity in books silence free speech and when does it actually benefit us?
	Are authors damned if they do or damned if they don't?
	That's from Bree.
	Well, hey Bree, how you doing?
	I've had better days, but I'm much happier now that I'm talking to you.
	Yeah, so you've really got the full-on social justice warrior treatment, right?
	It was a crusade.
	I've never experienced that kind of mob mentality before in my entire life.
	Right.
	Well, and again, I recommend Vox Day's book, SJW's Always Lie.
	It is helpful in understanding that, you know, you're not alone when this happens.
	Although, of course, the point is to sort of make you feel alone, right?
	Precisely.
	I actually watched that video you did with VoxDay last night and it actually gave me a lot of comfort.
	Right, right.
	So, do you want to talk more about your experiences or the question around diversity as a whole?
	I wanted to do both if that's alright.
	It's your choice.
	I wanted to kind of explain what happened first and kind of give you a little bit of context as to why I did this.
	Sure.
	Well, I came to your channel about three or four months ago and just became completely red-pilled by everything that you said and it turned my world upside down.
	I went from being a feminist, vegan, liberal to being a very proud conservative practically overnight.
	And one night, I was lying in bed, and I was just going through my Twitter feed on my phone, and I have this list of favorite fantasy authors.
	And I saw an author that I know of named Victoria Schwab, and someone was pointing the finger at her, asking her why her book Vicious had a cast of all-white characters.
	And I just thought, well, that's kind of mean.
	That's not what we should focus on when it comes to a book.
	And then I saw this continuing with other BookTubers.
	The BookTube community is the community on YouTube that discusses books.
	This other girl had someone ask a question on one of her book review videos saying, why do we have to have diversity in a book?
	Shouldn't the overall message and history of the book be the most important thing?
	And she came back at her Saying, no, the author can't write well if they don't include diversity.
	And came back at her kind of harshly.
	And then she pinned that tweet to the top of her Twitter feed to basically publicly humiliate this girl.
	And I saw this political correctness going on and people bullying each other throughout the BookTube community online that I'm a part of.
	And I couldn't believe this was happening.
	And I felt compelled to say something and to defend people and to say, hey, guys, Let's not look at the ethnic groups or the sexuality of the characters.
	The theme of the story and the moral of the story is what we really need to pay attention to.
	So I filmed it, and I had my family watch it, and they told me it was good.
	I showed it to my friend, and she was like, yep, it's good.
	I decided to go through with it knowing there might be some backlash.
	And the initial response was really positive.
	My subscribers that have been following me for years really loved it.
	And then it all just went to hell.
	This girl called Following2Pages posted on there, you're so wrong, there's no such thing as racism against white people, no such thing as reverse racism, and it's only ever been about white supremacy.
	And she just kept going back and forth, back and forth, calling me a racist.
	And finally, I just got tired of it.
	And I quoted Socrates and I said, when the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser.
	Well, that must have really pissed her off because she took to Twitter and went through my whole Twitter feed and found a tweet that I sent to Victoria Schwab telling her that I supported her.
	And communicated to Victoria Schwab, this girl posted a racist video.
	Do you support this thing?
	And then Victoria Schwab came out saying, no, I find this video offensive.
	It does not represent my beliefs.
	And after that, the shitstorm just fell on me in a way I never knew was possible.
	Right.
	I mean, that's the engaging thing, right?
	That is a challenge, right?
	The moment you start to engage, things can escalate pretty quickly, right?
	Absolutely.
	I've been wanting to engage in this for quite some time because ever since you and Paul Joseph Watson and Steven Crowder and all these great conservative YouTubers kind of red-pilled me, I've been wanting to say things and I felt myself really scared and holding back.
	And I tried talking to a friend of mine about Brexit because I've been following that pretty closely thanks to your videos and I could tell that I was immediately going to get pushback.
	So I felt compelled to say something.
	Right.
	What are your thoughts about it now?
	What you did and what happened?
	I don't regret it.
	I feel as though I did the right thing.
	I mean, maybe I could have presented my argument better, but I don't know if the outcome would have been any different, quite frankly.
	But I'm proud that I did it.
	I am.
	I don't regret it, even though it's turning my world upside down.
	I mean, it passes.
	Yeah.
	There's an old story.
	Of a king who was given a magic ring, and that magic ring makes you happy when you're sad, and makes you sad when you're happy.
	And the ring is not magic.
	Inside is an inscription that says, this too shall pass.
	I've always loved that phrase.
	And the interesting thing as well is that there is a uniformity of opinion that is demanded by people who are pro-diversity, That seems to me just a little bit goes against the idea of diversity.
	I think that's absolutely the case.
	Someone actually pointed this out to me because now they're creating a read-along for the whole Booktube community in protest to my video called I Stand for Diversity.
	And someone pointed out to me that the books that they chose don't really show a diverse outlook of viewpoint.
	They just show diversity as they see it being morally right.
	Right.
	And...
	What's interesting as well is that it's got nothing to do with being, I don't know, I mean, I hate to even use the phrase pro-white or white supremacy, because you would have absolutely no objection to a book set in southwest townships in South Africa being all black, right?
	Absolutely not.
	Because that's the context.
	If there's a book, if you're filming the original Rashomon, well, if I remember rightly, that's a Japanese story.
	I have no problem with Japanese people being in a Japanese story.
	And for them to put in, I don't know, someone from Iceland and an Inuit would just be, I don't know.
	I mean, it would just be...
	Anachronistic in a way.
	Not anachronistic, but it would be just odd.
	It's like sort of Nanook of the North, which is an old film set in Canada or Northern Canada.
	And, you know, in comes a Kenyan runner.
	You know, it's just there are places where I think diversity is perfectly acceptable.
	I mean, if you're doing a story about a group of students in an urban college, then, you know, having them be all one race or all one ethnicity...
	Would seem wrong, because that would not be the case for the environment.
	But if you're doing a historical drama set in 14th century England, I just don't know how diverse the cast should really be.
	And so I think we just want, we want accuracy.
	We don't want a dogma to take the place of basic reality, right?
	Absolutely.
	I've had books that I've written because I'm a self-published author, and when I observed the characters in my head, they are just how I see them.
	And I've had characters that were of color, and I've had characters that were homosexual, and it never really went into my brain to think of it in any terms of identity politics.
	Well, but the purpose is very simple.
	The purpose is paralysis.
	Right.
	Right, so here's the way this game works.
	I'm sure you're aware of this, but for others as well who may be not writers.
	Here's the way this game works.
	Number one, if you are a white author and you do not have enough people of color in your stories, you're racist.
	Yes.
	On the other hand, if you have people of color in your stories, you're appropriating their culture, which is bad.
	I brought that up in the video.
	Right.
	I mean, so, okay, so this is just a stupid game that you can't win.
	Right.
	I kind of came to that conclusion, and I don't know if there's any real way to appease people who have this kind of mindset.
	I think the answer to that is no.
	Yeah.
	The answer to that is no.
	The one thing that I really respect about Christianity is It's the love your enemy thing.
	Like, let's say that you were being culturally insensitive in some manner, right?
	Well, it's sort of like in the movie Zootopia.
	There's a little bunny and someone refers to her as cute.
	And she's like, eh, I hate to tell you this.
	Bunnies can call each other cute, but people who aren't bunnies shouldn't really call us cute.
	I guess it's like the N-word, right?
	But, you know, she does it in a pretty nice way.
	And the guy's like, oh, well, you know, thank you.
	I didn't know or whatever.
	And she doesn't, you know, spam him with hate threats.
	You know what I mean?
	Like, if there is some insensitivity that is occurring, there are ways to put it across that are positive and helpful and enlightening and have you want to pursue whatever agenda the other person has.
	And that comes out of the Christianity, love your enemies approach.
	And it's been very effective with me.
	You know, people say, well, you know, some people are surprised that I have a more positive view of Christians than I did in the past.
	Well, I have Christians to thank for that because they have been very nice and positive and affectionate and sometimes even loving.
	So the approach is not because they wish to educate you, not because they wish to win you over or anything like that.
	The approach is very simply because they want to have a way to discharge their hatred, right?
	Do you think that maybe I was just a scapegoat and they were maybe looking for somebody to kind of help this kind of cause?
	Well, I don't think so.
	Again, I mean, it's...
	They have no interest.
	I mean, people on the left in general have made this case before, but I don't think it can be made too often.
	They have no interest in diversity.
	I mean, if they did, they would sort of go to the New York Times and say, well, wait a minute, you guys are like 95% or 90% Democrats or whatever it is, right?
	That's not very diverse.
	You all need to get some more Republicans in here, right?
	I don't see that happening.
	No, that's never, ever going to happen.
	And so...
	You had an opinion that one would imagine would add to the cultural mosaic of the conversation.
	Is diversity for the sake of diversity a good thing?
	Or is it running a politically correct agenda at the expense of accuracy and authenticity in art, right?
	Absolutely.
	And I noticed you always use the phrase, the initiation of force.
	And I got to thinking, is putting pressure on authors to include characters that might not be in their original creative process, is that kind of the initiation of force?
	Well, it's not for us if they don't use any physical aggression towards you.
	I mean, there's obviously this bullying and this humiliation and these attacks.
	And that's ugly and unpleasant.
	And of course, one could only hope that these people had been raised in a way that gave them a little bit more compassion.
	But you see, there is this great specter of white racism that is apparently the driving machinery of the entire world these days.
	Although, frankly, it seems a little tough to spot.
	It doesn't really come out in the open very much, and it's kind of hard to catch.
	And so, if you believe in a God, and you believe in miracles, and you believe in prayer, and you believe in divine intervention, well, you're probably going to see it in a lot of places where it isn't, right?
	Yes.
	And so, if there is this big, driving white racism...
	That is motivating everything and is driving all these agendas in the world and is oppressing everyone.
	You'd think it would be a little bit more visible.
	And so when they catch sight of someone who they can interpret as having said something racist, then there's this great relief.
	Like, oh, we have finally found this This specter, right?
	This ghost that is haunting the world that we say is everywhere.
	We finally found one and it's kind of like a relief.
	Because I don't know what the theory is.
	The theory is that, you know, white people are all racist and we're just really, really good at hiding.
	I don't know what it is, right?
	I don't know what the theory is.
	But when it comes out, when people see something that they can in some method interpret as racist, well, There's this huge relief, there's this dogpile, because they have been given permission to vent.
	What is the point of setting up enemies?
	The purpose of setting up enemies is to discharge your venom, your misery, your hatreds.
	And so if you've got yourself an authentic, trademarked, rubber-stamped enemy in your sights, boom!
	Right?
	You can all get your mob going, right?
	Absolutely.
	I experienced the full brunt of that.
	Right.
	And it will erupt and it will pass.
	I'll tell you that.
	Somebody new eventually.
	Well, no.
	It will pass because they'll go on to the next thing.
	Right.
	Now, would you like to hear some positives?
	Absolutely.
	Bring it.
	I'm sure that would be helpful.
	I need some positives right now.
	You need some positives.
	Sure.
	Well, did you find out who your real friends were?
	Yes, I absolutely did.
	That was one of the biggest things that I realized about it.
	It wasn't even the fact that people were calling me racist, because I know myself, I know I'm not a racist, so that doesn't really bother me so much as the people who I had supported for years in the Booktube community instantaneously turned their back on me.
	And one of the things that was so interesting is that my analytics tell me only 14% of people who came to the video even watched it to the end.
	So they heard about it, they got this concept of what it was about, and at a minute and they made up their mind.
	And I think a lot of the people I consider to be my friends were among that 14%.
	Right.
	Now this of course is the plan of ATT&CK, right?
	The plan of ATT&CK is to separate you from your friends, right?
	Right.
	And so what they're doing is they're saying, okay, well this is happening to Brittany.
	If I stand with Brittany, it's going to happen to me too.
	Oh, yeah.
	I had friends actually telling me, girl, I want to defend you in there, but I don't want to leave a comment right now.
	And I was like, yeah, no, I can see why.
	Right.
	Although, of course, it's one of these things that if people did actually stand to support you, then it would be much more effective, right?
	Absolutely.
	I actually...
	I actually took the video down briefly and deactivated my Twitter very briefly because the people were starting to attack those who had agreed with me because the initial response was positive.
	And I thought, well, if you want to come after me, okay, but don't go after my friends and my loyal subscribers.
	That's not okay.
	So I disabled my Twitter account and my YouTube very briefly to protect them and then when they started this hashtag I stand for diversity nonsense the conservatives saw it like Steven Crowder and Paul Jessica Watson saw it and got on board and and started fighting back and my friend Stacy who Really was one of my champions throughout this whole thing and has been on Facebook Messenger with me this entire time, told me, Brie, Brie, get back on your Twitter.
	You need to see this.
	Because there were some people who were actually voicing for me and emailing me consistently, asking me if I was okay.
	I found out who my real friends were.
	Yeah, it's that old saying that says, real friends are the ones walking in the door when everyone else is walking out.
	Yeah, that's so true.
	Stacey was one of my champions.
	She's been on Facebook Messenger with me every 20 minutes for the last five days.
	Right.
	Now, so sorry, so you will get some benefits out of this, and you will have seen an ugly side, of course, of the world that, you know, we've heard about a lot of times, but if you don't sort of experience it directly, it's a little tough to get.
	I definitely get it better now because I'd always heard about these social justice warriors through you and through various clips I've seen online.
	I watched this one clip that I actually took a lot of inspiration from for this video by Ben Shapiro when he spoke at YAF and the people were having to be snuck inside because the social justice warriors outside were being so violent.
	Right.
	And all of this is going to end quite soon.
	The reason being that, can you imagine these people at a McDonald's behind the counter or as waiters?
	Not really.
	Right.
	Can you imagine them being in any voluntary, market-facing position where they had to provide a positive experience to their customers?
	No.
	Right.
	So the question is, when you see people who have this level of hostility and aggression and all that kind of stuff, the question is, what are they living on?
	I would guess hatred by the look of it.
	No, but I mean materially.
	I'm not sure.
	How are they paying the bills?
	Mommy and Daddy?
	I'm not sure.
	I don't know.
	I don't know, but I'll tell you this.
	I think a lot of it is student loans.
	Yeah.
	I think a lot of it is maybe they've got jobs in academia or some non-market-facing, and I put the mainstream media kind of in this category, but some non-market-facing scenario is where they're getting their cheddar from.
	Right.
	Now, until that changes, like while the government is continuing to fund...
	All of this ridiculous student loans and all of that, then this stuff is just going to continue because when you get free money, you don't have to be nice.
	That makes sense.
	You don't have to be nice.
	And so, you know, one of the things that Trump is talking about is that he's saying, hey, let's cut back on some of this student loan craziness, right?
	And...
	That is going to diminish the amount of money flowing into academia and these people are going to have to find some way of paying their debts or getting money.
	And they'll find that this kind of stuff really doesn't work in the free market.
	You can't be the director of a play standing out front of the theater and screaming at everyone that they're asshole racists for not coming to see your play.
	Right.
	That doesn't get you one ass in a seat, right?
	No, it does not.
	You know, you can't be a coffee shop owner and scream at people that they're vile misogynists because they're not ordering very expensive lattes but only regular cup of joes, right?
	Right.
	People don't want to be around people like that.
	That's the whole point.
	Yeah.
	So what's the market?
	What the hell is going on?
	Where are they getting their money from?
	Well, maybe there's foundations, maybe there's grants, maybe there's student loans, but I can guarantee you it ain't a customer in a voluntary free market environment.
	And the end of these kinds of subsidies will do a lot, Brittany, to end this kind of rampant incivility.
	I've never thought about it that way, but it definitely makes sense.
	This is why I want the government to stop spending so much money.
	Because government money is the fertilizer that grows very tall and very toxic assholes.
	I did experience when I worked in retail and in the service industry that it does make you kinder.
	It kind of forces a different mindset.
	Yeah, especially if you work on tips.
	I've been a waiter for many years and you really can't humiliate your customers for money.
	It's not that kind of dungeon.
	No, you judge your customers at face value, you're going to lose customers.
	Yeah, so this kind of incivility and irresponsibility and selfishness and meanness and bad decisions, this is all consequence-free stuff.
	Yeah, you can say whatever you want when you have a monitor in front of you, right?
	Yeah, and the reality is as well that there is a culture wherein being attacked, you feel, I guess, upset, humiliated, and angry, but the people who are doing the attacking don't seem to have the same sense of, well, this will be around forever, and people will see it forever, you know what I mean?
	Yeah, they loved the whole thing, I could just tell.
	Right, right.
	So, I don't think...
	You know, welfare money promotes single motherhood.
	You know, military money promotes warfare and it seems like significant misplaced funds in the military.
	And all of this government money just It erodes voluntary relationships.
	And voluntary relationships are the only quality relationships there are.
	So we are being sort of turned against.
	I'm not saying have sympathy necessarily.
	But we are kind of being turned against each other.
	And this incivility which is rampant in modern discourse.
	I just did a video on Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals.
	Which is a bit of a manual on somewhat aggressive incivility.
	It's simply the result, in this case, of people who don't have to please people for a living.
	And once you have to please someone for a living, your entire attitude changes about how you deal with your fellow human beings.
	So it's a mob.
	And mobs generally run out of steam when the government runs out of money.
	I never thought about it that way, but that makes sense.
	It felt like a mob attack when it first started, because it just caught fire so fast.
	And I've never really understood mob mentality, and I actually bought Ann Coulter's book, Demonic, which is all about liberal mob mentality, because I'm very cerebral, and I wanted to better understand how people get to participate in this type of thing.
	But with you explaining it as far as the government money, that definitely puts it in perspective for me.
	Yeah, I mean, you can't necessarily go around certain neighborhoods saying, hey, young ladies, you really shouldn't have babies because it's not really great for them, especially if there's no father around and you're too young and all that.
	I mean, you can, I guess.
	Maybe you'll change a few people's minds.
	But for the most part, the behavior changes when the government runs out of money.
	Do you know the community that has pretty much the lowest divorce rate in the world?
	No, what's that?
	The Amish.
	That makes sense.
	1%.
	Wow.
	I mean, hell, I think in Saudi Arabia it's still 50%, right?
	So 1% divorce rate.
	And do you know why?
	Different values?
	Or I should say like-minded values within that one community.
	Well, you just experienced a community that had like-minded values.
	That's true.
	This is true.
	There's no welfare state.
	Okay, yeah.
	There's no welfare state in the Amish communities.
	I think that they're exempt from the taxes and can't get the benefits, and that's something that they've worked out with the state.
	So there's no welfare state in Amish communities, and there's a 1% divorce rate.
	And how many kids do you think are born out of wedlock?
	Zero.
	I don't know the number, but I'm guessing it's pretty close to that.
	Yeah.
	Seems like they have a peaceful existence.
	Yeah, well, they're certainly not worried about their Twitter feeds.
	Yeah, seriously.
	That is really, really important to understand.
	So you can go to people and you can say, well, you know, divorce is bad and you should hang in there.
	And people who get divorced five years later, they're really, sorry, people who thought, wanted to get divorced and didn't five years later, they're really glad they didn't and you should hang in there and work it out.
	And you might change a few people's minds that way.
	And it's not a bad thing to say.
	I've said it in this show before.
	But, but, if you want to get the divorce rate down from 50% to 50%, It's actually, I think it's less than 1%.
	It's close to zero.
	It's like so rare, it's ridiculous.
	But if you want to get the divorce rate down, one big thing to do is not have a government-run welfare state.
	So, you know, we can say, and of course I think, look, I mean, if someone is, this is just out to social justice warriors or anyone, and I've made mistakes this way, so I'm not Speaking from any sort of mountain of perfection.
	But if someone is saying something that you think is really wrong, and maybe even morally wrong, I don't know.
	I don't know that the end justifies the means in terms of just get a mob of screaming banshee bullies and go and pound that person until they're dust.
	You know, I just don't think that that is...
	I think that's really wrong.
	Really wrong.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	I was going to say, I totally agree.
	I've come across videos in the past that I was like, well, that's messed up.
	But I might give it a thumbs down, but I can count the number of times I've thumbed down a video on one hand.
	I just don't engage with it.
	So when people started firing away, yeah, it still was shocking.
	I just don't do that.
	So it was surprising to me.
	Right.
	And of course, I would imagine...
	It's interesting you refer to me as a conservative.
	I'm not sure I'd take the label.
	Oh, you're not?
	That's fine.
	But it definitely does get...
	People get hit more on the conservative side than on the liberal side, right?
	Yeah, I would definitely say so.
	It seems to me like whenever liberals say something, it's tolerance.
	And when conservatives say it, it's hate speech.
	Yeah.
	I mean, there was...
	Sarah Silverman did a show some years ago.
	Where she, I think in the show, sort of the premise was, is it tougher to be a Jew or to be black in America?
	And so she had the black person dress up as a Jew.
	She gave them like a giant hook nose and a t-shirt that says, I heart money on it or something like that.
	And then she dressed, she had the other character or herself, I can't remember, who sort of put black face on and pretend to be black.
	And she said, oh, I'm having minstrel cramps or something like that.
	I never saw the show.
	I just read about it.
	And because she's on the left, it's comedy, you see.
	Right.
	That's something I noticed when they had that big Donald Trump doll statue thing in New York.
	I don't know if you saw that picture.
	And everybody was laughing at it and taking pictures, and he was naked, and they had all the fat and stuff rolling off, and people were praising it.
	And I'm like, I thought you guys didn't like body shaming.
	So, yeah, I definitely saw hypocrisy there.
	Right.
	I mean, Phyllis Schlafly died this week, and, oh, God.
	Oh, gosh.
	I mean, it's not pretty to see what the left does when a conservative woman dies.
	Suddenly, the pro-women thing just seems to go right out the window, as it did with you, right?
	Absolutely, yeah.
	So one guy wrote, on the one hand, it's a shame Phyllis Schlafly died, but on the other hand, it's always heartwarming when Satan calls one of his own home.
	Oh, God.
	That's horrible.
	Um...
	A guy who, senior writer for Politica.
	R.I.P. Phyllis Schlafly, no woman ever worked so tirelessly, ventured so far on behalf of the belief that other women should do none of that.
	It's a massive assumption.
	Phyllis Schlafly is 2016's apology for taking Prince and Bowie from us.
	Is it anti-woman to say this?
	Well, she was on the right, so...
	Say what you want.
	Therefore, it's okay.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	So, I'm sorry that we took you out of your protected class.
	Oh, no, I'm so glad to be free of them now that I've seen things a different way.
	Right, and it's likely that you would have, I don't think you have that particular personality type, but it seems likely or possible that you might have been tempted to join that mob had you still been more on the liberal side.
	I hope I wouldn't have been.
	I'm not going to say I wouldn't have, because I'd like to think that I wouldn't have, because I've never really had that kind of I'm shaming people kind of personality, but it wouldn't be a stretch to say maybe.
	So I'm very glad that I... Oh, you might be tempted to sort of back off if you saw something like that going on.
	You might be like, whoa, okay, well, I'd like to tell these guys to slow down and stop, but they seem to be in a bit of a feeding frenzy, so maybe I'll...
	Right.
	I'll just take a nap, yeah.
	Yeah, something like that.
	It is near the end of its cycle, I think, this social justice warrior stuff.
	And it will be for the best of the social justice warriors as well.
	I mean, this is not healthy for them.
	I think it's reinforcing bad habits and hostile habits.
	And I don't think that we should really ever have a category of people in society that we feel perfectly comfortable discharging all of our hatred onto.
	Like, okay, maybe, I don't know, someone drives over your cat or something.
	You can hate that.
	You know what I mean?
	Yeah, yeah.
	Like a whole category of people that you can just...
	Snarl and tear apart with impunity and you're perfectly justified in doing it.
	And no matter what happens, I mean, that is not good.
	That is not a good state of mind to be in.
	And that is a sort of venom in a fang looking for some tender skin.
	That is not an argument.
	Yeah, I actually said that to this girl that was the first to comment that white racism doesn't exist.
	I quoted you and I put hashtag not an argument.
	Yeah, and I've really been thinking about the Reverend Jesse Lee Peterson, who I chatted with a couple of weeks ago.
	I've really been thinking about what he said.
	Racism doesn't exist.
	We're just judging behaviors.
	And if behaviors vary, then we should judge that.
	And it's really...
	It's a fascinating thought.
	It's been rolling around in my brain.
	And I'm sorry for the sort of exposure that you had.
	And again, recommend Vox Day's book.
	A lot of people will back away from those kinds of things, which is a shame because...
	If people didn't back away, it wouldn't work.
	But on the other hand, until the funding for this kind of incivility dries up, it is a little bit tilting against windmills, if that makes sense.
	Yeah, of course.
	Now, what was it in particular that got you rethinking some of the liberal stuff?
	You?
	Yes, but I say a lot.
	So was there anything in particular?
	It all started for me when I saw your The Untruth About Donald Trump video.
	I was a Trump hater.
	I told friends of mine who told me they liked Trump, I was like, girl, what are you doing?
	Don't go there.
	And then I saw that video and I realized, holy crap, the amount of lies that are around me is completely surreal.
	And I went on to CNN.com one day and I noticed there were like 10 articles bashing Donald Trump with complete lies.
	And then they had a big banner on the right-hand side of Hillary Clinton looking all presidential saying, I'm with her.
	And the pictures too, right?
	They always look like he just backed into a cactus or something.
	They'll always do those funny, because he's a very animated guy.
	And, you know, I am too.
	And if you freeze frame me, I look angry or stoned.
	I think that's the two.
	When I edit my videos and I freeze frame sometimes, I'm like, yeah, I look stoned there.
	It's always when you're half blinking or something like that.
	It's like, hey man, YouTube's a drag.
	It should be like, I should have like a smoke effect or something on my screen.
	And then just slow the video down by like 40% or something like that.
	Yeah, so if you're animated, people can always get a funny picture of you.
	You know, there's that picture of Hillary Clinton...
	When the balloons come down and she has what appears to me like some sort of bizarre facial spasm or tick.
	Yeah, like a seizure or something.
	Yeah, it was weird.
	Yeah, they don't, you know, they're not using those pictures, right?
	No, of course not.
	So they're not using any of the head bob stuff.
	But, you know, every time with Donald Trump, he's, you know, making a funny face.
	Yeah, they always do the angle of his hair that makes it look like he has a comb over or something.
	Oh, yeah, yeah.
	Just the usual, its usual subtle...
	Not an argument programming your cortex kind of stuff.
	And so, yeah, I think that video has been very helpful for a lot of people.
	And the goal is to just to get people stop being spoon-fed this pablum by the media.
	Of course, right?
	Just, you know, here are some different facts.
	Not so that you're necessarily pro-Donald Trump, but just understand that you're not being told the truth.
	And that's important.
	If they just had some kind of...
	I'm not saying we should, like, tamper down the press in some way.
	I don't know what's appropriate for that or not.
	But if there was just something out there where journalists were required to put that an article was opinionated rather than fact.
	Well, it used to be.
	Because there used to be the news section and there used to be the editorial section.
	But the mainstream media is another one of these, to a large degree, funded by the state situations.
	Not that the government is directly paying their salaries in most cases.
	Of course, that's not the case.
	But...
	They are very pro-Democrat.
	And of course, if Democrats get in, and you're a Democrat, you get unparalleled access, which is meat and drink for a reporter.
	And if...
	I'm sorry?
	I'd say it's a conflict of interest.
	Yeah, and of course, if a Republican gets in, then that's okay.
	If a Republican gets in, that's okay, because then you could just rouse the Democrat base...
	For the next four years or eight years or whatever and that works too, right?
	So if a Republican gets in, Democrats still get lots of funding.
	But the reason why the media is currently completely burning up any credibility it has with the mainstream audience is simply because if Donald Trump gets in and he cuts down on Democrat voting third world immigration and he deports a fairly reliable base of Democrat voters and We're
	six men of working age has no job.
	Yeah.
	So if he's able to do that, then he's going to significantly undercut the voting base for the Democrats.
	He has a good chance to pull significant numbers of minorities over to his side.
	And that will cripple the Democrats, I would imagine, for at least a decade or two.
	And so this is a very, very big deal for the Democrats.
	They are willing to go to the mattresses, as they used to say in mob novels, right?
	They're willing to go, yeah, they're willing to go godfather on it because they get the stakes.
	They get the stakes.
	And Hillary has outspent Donald Trump many, many, many, many, many times and has seen her popularity diminish as a result.
	So money isn't working at the moment.
	Money isn't working.
	And Hillary herself has said she's not a natural politician like her husband.
	So it is a very crucial election, the most crucial election for the Democrats that I can recall.
	And that's why They are willing to stop at almost nothing to keep Trump out of the White House.
	And to some degree, as are the Republicans, although I think they're coming around now.
	But it is a very, very tough situation for the Democrats.
	Because one more election, they would have imported enough immigrants that the Republicans would have become even more of a figurehead party than they are now.
	I learned that.
	I'm sorry?
	I saw that.
	I learned that in Hillary's America.
	Right.
	Right.
	And as Ann Coulter said, then Americans, at least old school Americans, would be homesick forever.
	The country as it was would be lost and gone.
	So it is an absolutely crucial election.
	If Trump gets in, the mainstream media as we know it is done.
	It's done.
	They're already losing money hand over fist.
	And they're willing to sacrifice their credibility, I think, in order to try and keep Hillary or get Hillary to the White House.
	Because without it, alternative media becomes the mainstream media.
	The mainstream media becomes redundant.
	And God forbid, these people then have to go and face a market like I do.
	Yeah.
	I don't think they'd be clever enough to be able to keep up with guys like you.
	I think it would be an adaptation, let's put it that way.
	One of the reasons I appreciated the conservative commentary I found on YouTube so much, it's really helped me to keep informed and break me away from some of this whole liberal thinking that I had.
	Yes, I think that the conservative media And I think mostly the alternative, not the alt-right, but the alternative conservative media, I think those guys, those men and women, they're the strongest swimmers because they're going against the strongest current.
	And I just kind of respect that.
	If everyone's running the same speed, I like the people who are doing it uphill.
	Yeah.
	It's just more impressive, I think.
	People who are leftists, they can have their own kind of integrity, but I'm always suspicious that they're swimming with the current, in a sense, and that they've decided to go into an arena where they're relatively immune to criticism.
	That just seems to me a little...
	I don't know.
	Don't you want to mix it up a little more?
	Yeah, get some different...
	And they're going.
	It just seems a bit too easy.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	So, you know, this will help you.
	I mean, you've now had the battle scars and the street cred to prove it.
	And remember, of course, you know, they only, it's the old saying, they only have a shoot of the planes that are over the target, right?
	Right.
	If you're, you know, if you're bombing something and you're out at sea, they don't care, right?
	But if you're over the target, then they'll I kind of felt like after this happened,
	There's no floor for me to fall below after this.
	The worst has happened.
	I could probably start doing things with my channel that I couldn't have done before and really speak my mind about some stuff.
	And I was going to ask you what would be your thoughts on that because at first I was thinking, God, it's the end.
	I'm never going to be able to write on my brief crochet pin name again.
	Maybe it's ruined forever.
	Maybe my channel's ruined forever.
	Where do I go from this point?
	And I almost felt like maybe this is a mark of freedom that I might be able to really speak my mind now that the worst has happened.
	Yeah, I mean, how you deal with this is much more definitive than what happens.
	Right.
	You know what I mean?
	Absolutely.
	So the fact that it happened doesn't define you.
	How you respond to it, how you react to it, what you do with it, that has much more importance to your future than what happened.
	I've been trying to tell myself that this entire time.
	Right.
	I mean, obviously the controversy may help book sales.
	If you're known as someone that social justice warriors have attacked, then you will gain a certain amount of positive, you know, because you're facing people who are all jeering and throwing spears or whatever.
	You forget that there are all these other people.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	Like, wow, you think it will help me in the future?
	You think it would help with book sales, really?
	Is that like a trend with people who have been attacked by social justice warriors?
	Ann Coulter?
	Okay, yeah, good point.
	Good point.
	Ann Coulter, let's see, who else?
	Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachman, Margaret Thatcher.
	Where should I stop?
	Yes.
	Mike Srinovich.
	I feel better now.
	Charles C. Johnson.
	Me.
	I don't know, where do we go from here?
	I'm glad to hear that, because I hadn't thought of that.
	Just an hour ago, I was thinking my briefly-shaped pen name is probably dead.
	But hearing that, I'm like, yeah, you know, you're right.
	This might be the truth.
	Look, I'll give you my advice for what it's worth, right?
	This is the advice part.
	So, listen.
	Don't let them draw you into this world.
	Do your thing.
	Do what you're passionate about, not in response to what they did, not in defiance, not in avoidance.
	Do what is important to you.
	Do what moves you.
	Do what motivates you.
	Do what makes you passionate and excited.
	Forget them.
	Doesn't mean don't incorporate the experience, but don't have them over your shoulder as you're typing, right?
	Don't let them into your head.
	Except as a cautionary tale, and you know, we want to Be careful in a world where escalations can escalate.
	But don't say, okay, well, now I'm going to fight these guys.
	Or don't say, well, now I'm going to avoid any topic.
	Just keep doing what you're doing.
	And that will give other people strength.
	If you get drawn into endless battles, then people will say, well, I don't want that for my life.
	But if you keep doing what you're doing, that is very important.
	impressive to people and it gives them permission to go through something like this and to continue to be productive and happy and powerful but it will give you a sense of of depth and gravitas and the importance of what it is that you're doing so you know steady the course keep going and as you are doing with this call Reach out to the people who you care about,
	to people who can support you, and use this to help deepen and enrich your contacts with other people.
	Because that's one of the rules for radical things.
	You isolate people, right?
	Yes.
	You have them sit in a darkened room, right?
	Like Jeb Bush repeating over and over, low energy Bush, low energy Jeb.
	They want to keep you separate.
	And fight that, right?
	Use that to deepen your connections with other people so that you have true friends in the future.
	And once you have that, you're less likely to be attacked in the future.
	Thank you.
	I feel like I have the freedom to really go where I want now and keep charging ahead after this.
	So thank you for taking the time with me to...
	Oh, it's my pleasure.
	My pleasure.
	Thanks very much.
	And keep us posted.
	I will.
	Thank you.
	All right.
	All right.
	Up next is Michael.
	Michael wrote in and said, I've been listening to your show for a little over a year now.
	I'm writing in because I want your advice on how to best resist social justice when it's a borderline job requirement.
	I work in a Silicon Valley-based company run by a CEO obsessed.
	With social justice, or more accurately known as cultural Marxism.
	The benefits are amazing and the work environment is really great, but as of late I've been noticing some uncomfortable things.
	After the shootings of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling, a company-wide quote-unquote die-in was held and encouraged by many of the supervisors.
	I refused to participate and was such labeled a racist by some of my peers behind closed doors.
	They now refuse to associate with me at work, and this hive mentality in the workplace is something that has made me consider seeking new employment.
	My question is, as time goes on and social justice infests itself in more and more aspects of everyday life, from academia to the workplace, how or rather what can conservatives slash anarchists slash libertarians do to resist this collectivist movement without becoming completely estranged and rejected?
	How is it possible to remain true to one's principles When having a different opinion can cost you your job.
	That's from Michael.
	Hello, Michael.
	Hey there, Stefan.
	How are you doing?
	Can you hear me loud and clear?
	I'm well.
	How are you doing?
	Good, good.
	Anyways, but yeah, during this past summer, I believe it was in one weekend that both of those stories broke, with Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, and of course the beginning of the Beginning of the media, you know, shark feeding frenzy is, oh, you know, two innocent black men totally gunned down, you know, without, you know, Completely outright against their will.
	And what I noticed about the day before the die-in, so to speak, all of my black co-workers basically kind of disappeared for a good half an hour into one of the big conference rooms and had basically a video conference with other black employees within the company.
	And then the next day, For a good solid two minutes, the die-in happened.
	And I refused to participate because I go to work, mainly to work, and not be grandstanding in any way.
	But after that happened, I noticed a very uncomfortable atmosphere in the workplace.
	Sorry, go on.
	Okay, gotcha.
	I didn't know when you wanted to chime in.
	Don't worry, Al.
	I'll find a way.
	Okay, gotcha.
	But sometime shortly after, I was approached by our trust and security slash HR employee there.
	He basically took me aside into one of the smaller conference rooms and basically said, Hey, you know...
	We noticed that you didn't really participate in what was going on yesterday, and some of your colleagues felt a little uncomfortable about it.
	And we just wanted to know, is everything okay?
	Because they noticed they took this really offensively, to which I basically explained, well, there was no malicious intent behind that refusal.
	But it's just not something that I want to get involved with in the workplace.
	I didn't mean to offend anybody, basically.
	It's just, you know, that was something I didn't agree with, I didn't want to participate in.
	And so I said, okay, okay, and basically, you know, went about the day as if nothing happened.
	So my question is, this has been happening more and more often where some executive, mainly some executive, somebody in a leadership position has been Typically, like, made a pariah or completely, you know, basically fired due to having a difference in opinion.
	And I believe this started when Brandon Aish, he was the CEO of Mozilla Firefox for a short while until people discovered that he donated in favor for Proposition 8 California.
	That basically, oh, you're, you know, an anti-gay bigot.
	You don't deserve to be In charge of a company, but my question is, how can one, when it's basically, if you think differently than what this hive mind mentality is, how is it going to be possible in the future going forward to basically hold down a job without getting fired due to basically political differences?
	Yeah.
	Is the company making money?
	They are, slowly.
	They're not 100% profitable yet, but they are starting to make money.
	Right.
	Well, don't worry.
	That will get fixed soon enough.
	You know, Charles C. Johnson has an investing approach where he shorts companies with social justice warrior stuff going on.
	Because they're not focusing on the market.
	They're not focusing on quality for quality's sake.
	They're doing a lot of number juggling and a lot of politically correct stuff.
	I gotta tell you, it's pretty rough.
	Oh, I definitely agree.
	And I mean, it's just kind of, you know, I don't dare, you know, tell them that, oh, you know, I'm a gun owner or, oh, you know, I believe in a, you know, freer market economy where everything is basically a meritocracy and there aren't any, you know, diversity quotas or standards enforced or anything like that because I'm already in kind of an uncomfortable spot as is.
	You know, it's to the point where, I mean, it's just, I mean, it's everywhere.
	You know, not everywhere yet, but, you know, I mean, academia has been infested with it for, well, let's be honest, decades now.
	And then, you know, more and more workplaces are considering, you know, they're adding more and more to their laundry list of, you know, microaggressions and, you know, basically infractions that'll get you reprimanded by, you know, like the HR department.
	And it's just getting to the point where it's like, you know, how can one...
	How can one basically successfully avoid this or sidestep this, you know?
	What happened in the die-in?
	So basically what happened was...
	It was around, like...
	It was around lunchtime.
	I mean, it was still...
	We were still working, so it's not like, you know, everybody's, you know, off work doing this.
	It was around one in the afternoon.
	And basically everybody...
	All of a sudden, like, stood up, you know, from their desks and then laid themselves down on the floor with their hands up for a solid, like, minute or two.
	And I was basically, you know, still, you know, carrying on my merry way, doing what I was paid to be doing, working and not being a professional activist.
	And it was very, very, you know, I felt very...
	You know how you feel like, I don't know if you've ever been in a car accident where your heart's basically racing and you're terrified to move at all?
	That's what I was feeling like when this was happening.
	But they basically laid themselves on the ground for a minute or two to protest the shootings of those two men over that past weekend.
	And then they got up and went to work and I got some pretty nasty looks.
	And then, yeah, that's what the die-in was.
	It was a company-wide die-in.
	So the offices in different parts of the country did the same thing at the same time.
	Right.
	Right.
	And, I mean, I hate to ask this, but what's wrong with lying on the ground for two minutes?
	I mean, it's just, it's not that.
	I mean, because you do have a right to, you know, protest that.
	But I just had a, it just was really uncomfortable for the fact that it was basically like, You're borderline encouraged by everybody, and if you didn't do it, you're basically made a pariah if you didn't participate, you know?
	Right.
	Now, why do you think the company is doing this stuff?
	Oh, well, for one thing, they're very big on diversity and social justice.
	Yes, but I get that.
	Sorry, that's kind of a synonym, but why are they big on this stuff?
	Oh, well, obviously they want to appear as progressive-minded as possible, I guess, to people working in the company.
	No.
	No.
	No, it's not for the people working in the company.
	You know, the bosses in the company have a fiduciary responsibility to maximize shareholder value, right, and to maximize profits.
	And what happens if they're perceived to be racists?
	Gotcha.
	Then basically, yeah, they go into this panic paranoia mode of potentially losing their job.
	Yeah.
	I mean, this stock market price could crash.
	People could be out of work.
	I mean, it could be a disaster.
	And of course, you know, if you're high up in an organization and you're branded as a racist, how easy is it to go and get your cap in hand to your next bunch of venture capitalists?
	Pretty difficult, I'd imagine.
	If not downright impossible.
	So there is this environment that companies need to work in, right?
	And the environment is that if you put a foot wrong in these issues, well, as you talked about, the guy who was in charge of Firefox had to hit the road, Jack, right?
	You put a foot wrong in these issues and your career is over.
	If your company gets branded as racist or sexist or whatever, you know, or some is thing, Homophobic or, you know, then what happens?
	Well, you get a lot of really bad press.
	Your stock market price goes down.
	Discontented people might sue you, right?
	I mean, this is the environment.
	This is the environment that businesses are operating in, right?
	Precisely.
	The vast majority of businesses, I'd say at least.
	So if they have that choice, Right?
	So let's say some person or some group says we want to have a die-in for these two people who've been shot.
	Let's say you decide to say no.
	Is it going to take more than two minutes of your time potentially in the future?
	Well, it would probably take two years given that I guess the discontented disgruntled employees made, you know, basically discrimination accusations.
	Yeah, who knows, right?
	But there are times when the path of least resistance is just kind of logical, right?
	So, I mean, you probably all had diversity training and it's part of, you know, if you work with the government, as far as I understand it, you have to have these numbers tracked and you have to have programs in place and you have to have policies and procedures and, you know, some of them are to get government money, some of them are because people believe that they work and some of them are to have enough documentation to ward off a lawsuit or whatever it is, right?
	So, if you are in charge of these companies, what is your incentive for not Having a die-in.
	What's the upside to saying now?
	Well, you would obviously get, I mean, there'd be some people who would say, oh, that's great.
	They took a hard stance on something they didn't agree with, but then at the same time, you'd get just as much, if not more, flack for, I guess, not going through with it.
	And, obviously, if you're the head of a company, that's basically your baby.
	And you obviously want to see that company grow and become more profitable.
	And what's nice about it is, obviously, in a market, you're facing...
	Obviously, people are voting for you with their money as opposed to an empty promise like a politician would offer.
	But at the same time, it's, you know, for, you know, I guess individuals such as ourselves, it's a bit disconcerting, you know?
	Yeah, but I mean, it's better to have a job and lie down for two minutes than perhaps have the company go under and not have a job at all, right?
	That is true.
	Here's the thing, here's the thing.
	You can participate in something with the full knowledge that you don't agree with it.
	It's not hypocritical, it's not double-think, it's not gonna mess you up, as long as you're conscious of it, right?
	You can go there, you can lie on the ground, you can get up, you can go back to work.
	It doesn't mean that you agree with it, right?
	That is true, yeah, obviously.
	I mean, I guess the argument you could make is that, well, I actually know that would actually be a pretty bad example, but, you know, obviously having to, like, I guess, I guess, obviously, if—actually, I don't know where I'm going with this, so let's just go ahead and leave that argument to us.
	Well, you know, you feel—I think you feel that your non-participation is going to make some kind of difference in a positive way, and you feel maybe obligated to do it for that reason?
	It was mainly just the fact that I didn't—I mean, I just didn't agree with the fact that—with the premise of it in general, though.
	It's like, oh, we're going to protest these— You know, innocent men that were gunned down by, you know, racist, you know, bigot, you know, police officers.
	When, you know, later, about a week or so later, it turns out one of them has a rap sheet a mile and a half long and the other is also, you know, has a pretty, you know, they were not by any means the angels that they were made out to be.
	And I just, I mean, I know a lot of police officers.
	I have a tremendous amount of respect for a lot of, it's a really tough job, but It's just something that I didn't personally feel comfortable with participating.
	And I guess I could have, but I just, I guess, didn't deem it appropriate to myself.
	Right.
	Well, and you can take that stand.
	I don't think that it will educate people in the way that you want to educate people.
	Because here's the facts, right?
	Let's say you'd gone and lay down for two minutes and you get back up, you go back to work.
	Well, it makes things easier at work, right?
	That's two minutes out of my day.
	That's two minutes out of your day.
	And it wasn't like you were in a relaxed, concentrated state of mind during those two minutes anyway, right?
	Because you're taking a stand, so as you say, your heart is pounding or whatever, right?
	So it wasn't like you were super productive for that time or the time after or waiting for the consequences, right?
	I guess you could say that, yeah.
	Actually, that's what you said.
	I mean, your heart beating and all that, right?
	So, whereas if you go lie down, you get back up again.
	A week later, the facts come out anyway.
	And people can go read the facts.
	You can mention this to people if you want.
	But prior to the facts, I mean, it's not completely crazy to say, huh, I wonder if this latest shooting is going to turn out to have a slightly different fact than the narrative portrays, right?
	Or a slightly different set of facts.
	But...
	In terms of the cost-benefit, and I know that sounds all kinds of empty, pragmatic kind of thing, but in terms of just the basic cost-benefit, I don't see the plus.
	You know whether you agree with something or you don't.
	I mean, if you like the company and you want to stay working there, then Two minutes is not a big problem.
	And if you are looking to leave, and of course, if this stuff escalates and so on, then there's going to be more and more problems in the company.
	Then if you're going to leave, then if you're sort of one foot out the door and your resume in the wind, then you can leave.
	But I don't know.
	Here's the thing, man.
	Don't let them box you into an impossible situation.
	Don't let that happen to you.
	That's really, really important.
	Again, I just did this Rules for Radicals presentation, which you should watch when it goes up.
	But it's about getting you into these impossible situations.
	We talked about this with the first caller.
	If you don't have enough diverse characters, you're racist.
	If you have diverse characters, you're guilty of cultural appropriation.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	Don't let them put you in an impossible situation.
	Well, I don't agree with this, so I must take the stand, but that's really uncomfortable, and it's going to get me in trouble, and I won't be able to concentrate, and people will think, like, just, I don't know, go lie down for two minutes and get on with your day.
	You know what you believe.
	And your stand doesn't educate anyone.
	Well, what it does, though, is if they're blue-pilled, or haven't even noticed that there are pills, Then what happens is your credibility goes down because people perceive you as non-compliant or possibly racist or whatever, right?
	Yep.
	And so if you do want to get information across to people, if this is their first impression of you, I don't think it makes sense.
	Gotcha.
	But I guess moving on just a little bit from that is, I mean, do you foresee this, you know, People call it social justice warriors, which is a term I love.
	But I try to call it cultural Marxism.
	But do you see this eventually subsiding at all?
	In the last call with Bree, you basically said, oh, well, who's paying them?
	How are they going to sustain this?
	How are they going to basically look after themselves?
	But I mean, and how do you see it?
	Like you mentioned, you do see it going away.
	I guess how would you, other than real life when they have to face the market, how else do you see it going away?
	Kind of subsiding or slowly kind of withering?
	Competition undoes inefficiency, right?
	We know that, right?
	Now...
	The media has put this artificial charge of racism or sexism or whatever that can be used to club and beat down the value of a company's stock, right?
	Or the value of a company's products, the boycotts or whatever, right?
	And I sort of talked about the future, hopefully not a lot, not a big future of the mainstream media coming down the pipe.
	And so if the media loses the power to, like, let's say that the word racism loses its charge.
	And by that, of course, I don't mean that there's no such thing as a racist in the world.
	But what I mean is just when someone screams racism at someone and people just sort of roll their eyes and say, well, that's probably not true and, you know, probably just nonsense and all that kind of stuff.
	You know, they genuinely in the past believed that there were witches.
	She's a witch.
	Burn her, right?
	The Salem, witch trials and all, right?
	And some of the inquisitioners, she's a witch.
	When racist goes the way of witch, then I think companies will have more freedom.
	But the other thing too is that you can have a non-meritocracy when you get money from the government, right?
	So if you're going to get a lot of government contracts, then you have to fall in line with this diversity stuff because that's the price of entry for these government contracts.
	So...
	If you're not getting government contracts, then you have to go to the market.
	Now, when was the last time you were at some store and you were looking at a bunch of different goods and you said, well, I really care about the ethnic composition and gender composition of the workforce that produced these?
	Yeah, never.
	No.
	What you care about...
	Yeah, I just care for the best product.
	Features and price.
	Features and price.
	Mm-hmm.
	So, when the government runs out of money, then...
	It won't be able to enforce all of this diversity overhead.
	And that means that where diversity is inefficient, then it will be whittled out of the marketplace.
	And so when the government runs out of money, which it can use to buy diversity compliance by giving contracts to big companies, when those companies have to face the market, what's going to happen?
	Well, what's going to happen is the people in the store aren't going to care about the composition of the workers, about the diversity of the company.
	They're going to care about features and price.
	Now, if diversity, as is often claimed to be, if diversity is a strength, then features and price will work to diversity's advantage, right?
	So if a very diverse company can produce a phone for 10% less than a non-diverse company, well, then diversity is clearly a competitive advantage, in which case you probably don't have to legislate it.
	And if it is a disadvantage, then it will be weeded out by the marketplace.
	So, as long as the government is piling money, and as long as the government is protecting these companies, and as long as there's a media that can seriously harm the reputation of these companies, they're gonna have to comply.
	I mean, they have to, in the same way they have to pay their taxes.
	But, you know, when the government runs out of money, media runs out of the power to destroy, I think things will be quite a bit different.
	But it ain't gonna be because you stand up or sit down for two minutes.
	Yeah.
	Gotcha.
	But yeah, for sure.
	I mean, when people vote with their own money, obviously, as Friedman put it, they take things a lot more seriously.
	And obviously, that's what they vote with because they're actually getting something for what they spend.
	As opposed to somebody who just tells you what you want to hear or makes a bunch of empty promises going into office.
	Just so you know, and for other people you probably know this, there's four categories that he talks about.
	If you're spending your own money on stuff for yourself, you're very careful.
	If you're spending your own money on stuff for other people, you're a little less careful.
	If you're spending other people's money on stuff for yourself, you're even less careful in terms of management.
	And if you're spending other people's money on stuff for other people, pfft, forget it.
	You don't care.
	Forget it.
	You don't care.
	You don't care.
	So, yeah.
	Free market to government.
	Right there in the steps.
	And yeah, that's something that I mean I notice.
	I was talking to one of my co-workers because the benefits of this place are pretty great.
	I'm not going to lie.
	It is very diverse.
	Yeah.
	Maybe it is benefit.
	I don't know.
	Well, I mean, you know, for example, there's basically, you know, months of paid paternity, maternity leave.
	There's open, you know, paid time off, things like, you know, so there's not a limit on sick days or anything like that.
	And I was explaining to one of my co-workers, I'm like, God, well, you know, because, you know, food's basically catered.
	And I was explaining to them, like, oh, and they're like, well, he was basically complaining, oh, they don't pay us enough for, you know, X, Y, and Z. It's like, well, true, but we also get breakfast and lunch every single day here.
	You know?
	So, I mean, like, there's a benefit involved in that.
	But then also, I mean, and he's like, oh, the food isn't that great.
	It's like, oh, well, that's because you're not the one doing, you're not the one spending money on it.
	Right.
	And it took him, like, a second to kind of, like, get that.
	I explained to him, like, well, there's, like, If you're spending your own money on one thing, obviously you're going to be very concerned with the quality, with the quantity, with the price.
	But if I write you a blank check and say, oh, you know, go buy, you know, 100 t-shirts for these people that you don't even know, you're obviously going to be pretty, you're not going to be very concerned with what you're getting.
	And, you know, again, kind of talked about it.
	It's the same way that, like, government approaches, you know, helping people.
	They really don't They're not spending...
	They're spending stolen money to help people that they really don't care about or know.
	And then he kind of, you know, he's like, well, that's not really true because blah, blah, blah.
	But it definitely got him to kind of like, you know, think about it a little bit more in depth.
	Right.
	Right.
	So, yeah, I would say just recognize the economic reality that your bosses are working in and, you know, have some sympathy for what they have to do and You know, don't make things unnecessarily difficult for no good purpose.
	Does that help at all?
	It does.
	It's just, I mean, it's just mainly the fact it's like...
	And I mean, I guess, you know, doing that, refusing to participate was maybe not the brightest idea in the world.
	But at the same time, you know, it's...
	I just feel it's a matter of time until this wave of basically where the lunatics are running the asylum hopefully passes over.
	This too shall pass.
	Hopefully.
	I don't know.
	I'm hoping sooner rather than later.
	But I mean it's at the point where I feel like today I saw California State University or something.
	Offering, like, you know, segregated housing to shield minority students from microaggressions.
	And, you know, so it's a big safe space.
	And it's like, so within, you know, 50 years, where you go from fighting for desegregation, and now we're fighting for segregation by the same, well, not same group of people, but, you know, like, The same, you know, radical college students.
	And it's just mind-boggling how I can't even, you know, sympathize or try to, I mean, I just can't wrap my head around that, you know?
	Well, no, I mean, it's, they've been trying to solve this stuff for centuries, and it has not really worked.
	And I think we all know the reasons, at least some of the main reasons for that, which we've talked about in the show before.
	It's because certain particular information is suppressed.
	No one's allowed to talk about it.
	So people just keep thrashing around trying to get something done.
	And it's not going to work until basically some basic facts are allowed.
	So I'm going to move on to the next caller.
	But thank you very much for your call.
	And I wish you a good mini-nap on your next dining.
	Thanks a lot, Stefan.
	All right.
	Take care.
	Bye-bye.
	Alright, up next is John.
	John wrote in and said, When it comes to free will, are there degrees to which it is present, i.e., cavemen?
	Less knowledge means less opportunity to choose between different possible courses of action and be held responsible for the morality and consequences of decision-making, and greater knowledge allows for better decisions.
	Do things like lower IQ, cognitive bias, and reproductive strategies, R versus K, play into free will?
	It seems like their own brain is almost fighting them in these instances.
	That is from John.
	Well, hey John, how you doing?
	Hey, Stefan.
	I hope you don't mind if I don't drill enormously deeply into the possibility of free will for cavemen.
	I'm trying not to be too abstract in the show these days.
	Yeah, I know this is a topic you love to discuss.
	And it's been discussed many times on the channel.
	Yeah, it's a good topic.
	Yeah.
	Yes, there are degrees to which free will is present.
	Free will is a muscle.
	I don't think it's innate within us, like a heartbeat, but free will is a muscle.
	And for that muscle to work, you need to have knowledge of a choice.
	I mean, if there was some hidden switch in my ass that if I flicked it allowed me to fly, well, First of all, I'd say, thanks for looking.
	And secondly, I would say that I now have a choice to fly rather than to walk.
	But if I didn't know about that switch, I wouldn't know that I had the choice to fly.
	So certain choices, of course, do require the knowledge.
	Now, we have the choice whether or not to pursue knowledge, right?
	I mean, we've all had, I think we've all had, if we're intellectually curious, We've all had that moment, you know, where you come across some piece of information or some argument, and you're like, ooh, ooh, kind of uncomfortable.
	I'm not sure I like it.
	And if it turns out to be true, things are going to change for me quite a lot.
	And so in that moment, you have a choice whether to pursue information that's uncomfortable to you or not.
	And that, I think, is the...
	Is the difference?
	That's where you have the choice, whether you pursue information that's uncomfortable to you or not.
	If you pursue the information that's uncomfortable to you and you validate it and verify it and so on, then you have choices that you wouldn't otherwise have.
	It's like Ayn Rand said, the fundamental choice is to focus or not to focus.
	But sorry, you were going to say?
	I was going to say that's kind of where the question came from.
	And I also didn't mention at the beginning, I just emailed Mike.
	I did see I was just going back over in preparation for this call.
	Your free will series, and I did see in the second video that you did mention it's not a blanket, that there are degrees to it, and that was after, of course, writing in.
	But I really like what you said about the muscle thing.
	I was going to ask, that was part of my elongated question, was that it kind of seemed to me like willpower, where it's something that you, the more you use it, the more power you get, and the more control you have.
	It's not just, you know, everyone has the same amount from birth.
	Yeah, and I think that...
	Free will, to some degree, not sort of morally or in the eyes of the law, but I think free will also has something to do with intelligence.
	Because to exercise, like, I could choose to get a PhD in history.
	I have a master's, I'm sure I could wrangle a PhD.
	I could not choose to do a PhD in physics.
	I am not particularly good at math or that stuff, right?
	Abilities give you choices.
	Intelligence gives you choices.
	It's sort of a bell curve, I think.
	I think one of the things that smart people should do is try and frame information in a way that less intelligent people Can consume that information in a way that is digestible and actionable and so on.
	I'm always trying to break down philosophical ideas into things that people can use, which is sort of the point of these call-in shows as well, to give people ideas, hopefully, that help them in how they can act in the world.
	Right.
	So, yeah, it's a big topic.
	But basically, I certainly accept the sort of free will argument, but it's not binary.
	It's a continuum.
	Well, I guess that that was also one of the main topics, I guess, that gave me quite a bit of pondering is in like what we talked about, or I've heard the other callers talking about that when you have, it just seems to me, I've had quite a few discussions and One big one that always comes up for me where I feel like I hit this brick wall is my mom is very strongly liberal.
	And it just seems to me that whenever I have sent her videos and all these things that I feel like, okay, here's some concrete evidence.
	And like this time she won't be able to deny it and all these things.
	And it just feels like, and that kind of, when I saw the R vs.
	K reproductive series from you, it kind of seemed to explain And also, I remember in the introduction to reality video that you did where you talked about, you said even bringing reason and evidence to people actually makes them worse, you are making them more rational, etc.
	It seems to me like those kind of instances really stumped me on even people that seem very intelligent, they have a high IQ, but they're just stuck and they can't un-choose, for lack of better words, their path and their beliefs.
	What causes that?
	What causes people to reject reason and evidence?
	Yeah, as opposed to some other people, like the first caller even.
	She said she was a feminist, and then she saw your videos and things.
	I think she said liberal, but yeah, I know what you mean.
	And then she changed, whereas other people, like many people in my life even, that I've had these conversations with, liberals in general, I try to present counter-arguments and all these approaches, and it just seems like there's no...
	You know, switch to change.
	It's just they're set in concrete, I guess.
	Well, of course, most people order their lives according to the expediency of the moment.
	And for your mother or whoever, I would assume that...
	She's made a whole series of life decisions, and a whole series of friendship decisions, and a whole series of who to get married to, and all of that, and a whole set of decisions on who to vote for, and what to support, and how to parent, all based upon a particular set of principles, right?
	Now, if it turns out that those principles are flawed, or faulty, or wrong, well, that's difficult for people, right?
	It's very difficult for people.
	And it's uncomfortable.
	Now, some people, I mean, if I have an inconsistency, it bothers me.
	And so I work to try and smooth it out or find a way to get that information or to fix it or whatever it is, to figure out how to make it better.
	Sorry, I'm not putting this very well.
	To fix the inconsistency in some way.
	Not to explain it away, but to change my beliefs, to incorporate the new information.
	And is that necessarily an intellectual process?
	Well, to some degree it is, but it's because it bothers me.
	If it didn't bother me, would I do it?
	I'd like to think I would, but you know, I can't guarantee that.
	So people who don't change, it's...
	Because they're comfortable with not changing, and I would imagine that it's uncomfortable for them to change, very uncomfortable.
	And it's not uncomfortable for them to remain the way they are.
	In fact, they get a lot of positive rewards for remaining the way they are, whereas if they change, you know, it's the old thing that if you are, the woman said, oh, she was, you know, very much against Donald Trump, and then you watched The Untruth About Donald Trump, and so if all of your friends are, like, rolling their eyes at Donald Trump and making fun of Donald Trump and I said, Barbara Streisand opened a concert recently.
	Oh, they do.
	Yeah, so, Barbara Streisand opened a concert recently and she said, I'm shopping here in Canada and the sales clerk says, do you have a loonie?
	And she says, only Donald Trump and the ha ha ha.
	Not an argument, Barbara.
	But, so, if...
	Everyone around you is mocking someone or thinks that that someone is an idiot and you think, well, they might have something important to say or something useful to say.
	Then what happens is if you bring up a difference of opinion with your friends, you find out if they're really your friends, right?
	You find out if they're really your friends.
	If you bring up an opinion that is startling or unusual to your friends, you find out if they care about you or not.
	Because if they care about you, they'll say, oh, I don't know that I've ever...
	I haven't met anyone who has something positive to say about Donald Trump, but, you know, we've been friends for five years or ten years or whatever.
	So, you know, I respect you as a friend, and I'm certainly willing to listen, right?
	Yeah, and I feel like as opposed to that, I mean, for many, I mean, I've seen it happen, they really go to the, they fall to the emotional argument a lot.
	They say, like, I've heard things like, when I bring up those points, like, you know, I'm not a huge Donald Trump supporter, but I like to, you know, the facts are the facts.
	I hear all these facts, or people, sorry, not facts, that people say, oh, Donald Trump is a fascist.
	He wants to round up all the Muslims here and send them out.
	And so I go searching and find out that it's actually, he said something else, and then it got spun.
	And I bring that to them, and they just still...
	I mean I get what you're saying for before the reverse for whatever reason but then it ends up coming down a lot of times I've found to they say well it really like hurts my feelings that you like Donald Trump like I can't believe you're this kind of person they put it on you like I can't believe you're this kind of person rather than you're my you're my friend I respect you you know we can have a discussion hmm right I guess on another point I I was just kind of thinking about was,
	it's a big part of, I guess, being brought up because you brought up the difference of, and I feel the same way, like if I find out I'm wrong about something, you know, it's that mentality of, okay, I'm happy to find out I'm wrong because I was wrong and now I can, you know, be correct in this issue as opposed to just kind of being so attached to things you've heard or things you believed and taking it offensive that you knew something that was incorrect.
	But the purpose of our brains is not to be correct.
	The purpose of our brains is to enhance our chances at survival and reproduction.
	Now, of course, being correct has something to do with that, but it's not going to kill you in this society to be incorrect.
	Right.
	Or if, you know, married women like Donald Trump, because they're already, quote, stronger together with their husbands, but married women are off the dating market for the most part.
	If unmarried women really prefer Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump, then if you prefer Donald Trump to Hillary Clinton, you're really cutting down your dating pool, right?
	If you voice those opinions, yes.
	Right.
	Now, I mean, whether you're lowering the quality or the quantity, it's a topic for another time.
	Yeah, I mean, I've been in even, I remember I was on a first date one time, and I don't remember what the reason was, something brought up, and she just blurted out something about how much she loved Hillary, and I was just like, oh, this isn't gonna,
	you know, this isn't probably gonna pan out, because I could just tell the way she said it, she was very affirmed in it, and I mean, it's not right to judge everyone that they can't change their mind, but from my past experiences, having a political discussion about, I'm not really for Hillary, and, oh, do you know all these things about Hillary that are, you know, bad on a first date?
	It's just, you know, this isn't going to pan out kind of thing.
	Yes.
	Yes.
	And if she's thought through the issues and she likes Hillary, then that's fine, right?
	Then you can have a discussion about the issues.
	But if she just likes Hillary because she's told she's supposed to, then, you know, she's Not going to be someone who's going to be very interesting after the first, I don't know, 8 to 12 seconds or something like that.
	So, yeah, you want people who can process reality, you want people who have integrity, you want people who have intelligence, you want people who have intellectual curiosity, because, well, it can be dangerous dating these days on many levels, right?
	Yeah, luckily I haven't experienced some of the more horrific things I've heard, but yeah.
	Right.
	So I guess another question then is, in terms of, I mean, you'd like to just, in some of those, you know, like you told the previous caller, you know, instead of standing up all the time and making these little uncomfortable situations where you're really not going to persuade to kind of just avoid those situations, but in the more meaningful relationships, obviously, I was just kind of looking for if there's a way to kind of supersede these You know, like you said, the R vs.
	K stuff, it really stuck out just that these are, you're fighting, why it's so hard to fight against, you know, conservative versus liberal is that it's deep set for your gene survival.
	So is it really just a lost cause kind of situation in these situations where it is someone that you care about and you would like to, you know, be able to continue on that relationship?
	Well, look, here's the thing, right?
	I mean, we are empiricists, right?
	And so we have to accept the empirical evidence that reality provides us.
	And how long have you been trying to get your mom to wake up from her beliefs?
	Long enough.
	Multiple years.
	So it's time for acceptance, isn't it?
	Yeah.
	You know, I mean, you can have fun conversations with your mom about things not to do with politics, I assume, right?
	Oh, absolutely.
	I mean, it's all fine and dandy until the politics gets brought up.
	Right.
	So try and avoid that.
	You might even want to say, look, you know, and I hate to say this, but I mean, it may be the reality.
	You might just have to say, look, we're just gonna have to agree to disagree on this stuff.
	I think it's harming our relationship.
	And let's focus on the stuff that we have more fun with.
	Yeah, no, it makes sense.
	I just, I guess I'm, I have a little bit of the optimism bias where I just think like, okay, maybe the next video, oh, this one's really good.
	This one is sure to, you know, spark something where, You know, you can't overlook and deny, kind of mentality I go into it with.
	Oh, come on.
	Look, if it's been years, if it's been years, I think it's not a productive use of your time.
	Right, but years, you know, sparsely here and there.
	I don't constantly hammer it, but yeah, I get it.
	Well, then it's obviously up to you, right?
	I mean, if you want to keep trying, but just...
	Be aware and open to the point in time where you have to accept it's not going to work.
	And also the other thing too is sometimes if you leave people alone, they can have room to sort of think rather than if you...
	I'm not saying you keep hitting them, but if you keep giving them new stuff and new stuff, it can push them back from your position, right?
	Right.
	No, and I see that.
	And it's been a while.
	I haven't...
	It just brought back those thoughts up when I was recently just thinking over free will and how...
	Maybe it has an effect on this because when I was thinking about other degrees, if you will, and the RNK stuff just really made me think it's really not so much always the case that it's someone's open choice to just change their mind or see the other side of it.
	Right.
	Well, she's your mom, so you obviously care and you want to have that connection with her, but I would say you might want to just give it a bit of space, give it a little bit of room.
	Yeah, that makes sense.
	And again, it is a pleasant relationship.
	Otherwise, you know, she's an intelligent, fun person, kind, loving all that stuff.
	It's just the political stuff where we kind of butt heads on.
	Right.
	All right.
	Well, I appreciate your call and wish you the very best.
	Thanks a lot.
	I always do enjoy dipping into the free will stuff.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	Thanks for the time.
	All right.
	Well, thanks, everyone, so much for your calls tonight and for your support of this show, which you can fulfill at freedomainradio.com.
	You can follow me on Twitter at Stefan Molyneux and fdrpodcast.com.
	Last but not least, our affiliate link.
	Please, please help us out at fdrurl.com slash Amazon.
	So thanks again, everyone, so much.
	Have yourself a great, great night.

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