Sept. 23, 2016 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
02:49:27
3426 Black Wives Matter - Call In Show - September 21st, 2016
Question 1: [1:52] - “The founders of the United States claimed that we have natural rights and that they come from God. Atheists reject this logic because they reject God's existence. As you have stated, most atheists lean towards socialist ideologies and against the ‘noble lie.’ However, perhaps it's not a lie.”“You have stated that Rights do not exist. But, aren't rights just those human properties - derived from biology - in which one person claims and exercises in exclusion of every other individual? These properties include vocal cords, thumbs, and brains. Do we not have a just-claim (a.k.a. natural right) to use our properties to communicate, use tools, Collaborate and think? Are not our natural Rights written in our DNA?”Question 2: [34:57] – "Do you believe socialist policies, if pushed for long enough, will always lead the government towards totalitarianism? If so, what do you think the driving force is behind this move towards tyranny and serfdom?”Question 3: [1:00:46] – "I have seen the NATO-Russia tensions play out from both sides. It seems as if most conflicts are created by deliberate public disinformation. How come, that governments and media take their people for naive enough not to question anything and how did we as a people become naive enough to believe it all?"Question 4: [1:24:30] - “What are the characteristics of human nature? Are those characteristics changeable? If so, how can they be changed? You have spoken on this topic a couple times, and I think I've noticed some inconsistency. Take the video ‘Shocking Misogynist Attacks Feminism, Defends Rape Culture,’ for example. At 15:47, you pose a mental exercise to the audience to explore the roots of human violence. At 16:14 you preface the exercise by saying that you don't "buy the human nature argument," and follow with: ‘saying, 'What is human nature?' is like saying 'what is the shape of water?' Well, it depends what you pour it into.’”“But in a later video, ‘Why The Regressive Left Has Already Lost,’ you suggest an alternative description of human nature: At 8:54, you ridicule leftists for viewing human beings as water and implying that human nature is infinitely malleable (specifically, you were criticizing the idea that immigrants can easily adapt to the culture of their new host country). I have wrestled with this issue myself, and I was wondering if you could clarify your thoughts.”Question 5: [1:41:04] - “If I want to be a hero, and help others, I should have heroic traits. What does it take to be in hero in your sphere of influence and what can history tell us about common heroic traits and how to attain them?”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
Z-O-M-G. This is the very last show I'm going to be doing in my 40s.
Do you know the next time I'm going to be doing a show, all you'll hear is me sounding like this.
This is Van Molyneux from Freedom Aid Radio, 22nd of September 2016.
And we had some great calls tonight.
First and foremost, the question of rights has shown up quite a bit here and there in this show.
And I've had my swings at it, and I don't know if I've ever really encapsulated everything that I wanted to talk about with rights in one conversation.
Tonight, we did.
So somebody was calling in talking about human rights, and I took my big intellectual baseball bat to it, Robert De Niro, untouchable style, and hopefully nothing was left standing except clarity.
And the second caller wanted to know why it is that government intervention in the economy or socialist policies inevitably frog-step the population towards totalitarianism, and we went through a whole variety of scenarios that makes that move forward.
So I hope that will be helpful.
The third caller wanted to know, why is it so easy to get propaganda into the minds of people?
He was talking in particular about sort of anti-Russian propaganda coming out of the West, and we went through a lot of the etymology of how people end up being so susceptible to propaganda, and I think that was really, really helpful.
And the fifth caller was a woman who wanted to know How are you heroic in the modern world?
How does one become heroic in the modern world?
And we had a great conversation.
She was a fantastic caller.
I really, really enjoyed the conversation.
I hope it will be inspiring for you.
It certainly was for me.
So, Stefan Molyneux, please, please, please remember to come by and support the show.
Don't consume without reciprocity.
You can go to freedomainradio.com slash donate to help us out.
Alright, well up first today we have Sean.
Sean wrote in and said, The founders of the United States claimed that we have natural rights and that they come from God.
Atheists reject this logic because they reject God's existence.
As you have stated, most atheists lean towards socialist ideologies and against the quote unquote noble lie.
However, perhaps it's not a lie.
You've stated that rights do not exist, but aren't rights just those human properties derived from biology in which one claims and exercises an exclusion of every other individual?
These properties include vocal cords, thumbs, and brains.
Do we not have a just claim, aka natural right, to use our properties to communicate, use tools, collaborate, and think?
Are not our natural rights written in our DNA? That's from Sean.
Well, hey, Sean, how are you doing tonight?
Very good, Steph.
How are you doing?
I'm doing well, thank you.
And hopefully, as I say, doing good.
All right, so do you mind if I just give a brief sort of intro to the new listeners who've come in because of the Brangelina video?
Sure, sure.
Who might know that rights don't exist.
What are you, crazy?
So rights, there's lots of different ways of looking at them, but basically they're considered to be moral claims that are universal.
I have a right...
To free speech.
I have a right to own property.
I have a right to freedom from violence.
I have a right to be unmolested if I'm not aggressing against others and so on, right?
So there are these ideas of rights that, you know, the Declaration of Rights and so on, and there's human rights, there's this all over the place.
And I dislike it all.
I dislike it all.
Because rights are a positive claim upon others, and originally as defined there was sort of a negative claim against others, like do what thou thou harm, no others, right?
I mean, do what you want as long as you don't infringe on other people's persons or property, right?
The basic common law, two rule, boom, boom, bada bing, bada boom, two rule life, which is keep your promises, your contracts, and don't initiate force against others, right?
They were sort of negative rights.
But the concept of rights has been hijacked over the past century or so, maybe a little bit longer.
So now rights are positive claims to the resources of other people.
I have a right to be educated.
I have a right to health care.
I have a right to an old age pension.
I have a right to all of this, right?
So they have turned from shields to And this very malleability of rights, the fact that they could turn from something that's supposed to protect you against other people's aggressions into an excuse for your own aggression, using the state to transfer resources from other people to you, that to me indicates that there's something fundamentally wrong with the entire concept of rights.
Rights be wrong if they can be reversed so significantly.
The concept of science generally does not – scientists don't gather together and say, let us pray for the answer, right?
Science can be corrupted as it so often is, as everything is by the state and so on.
But the concept of science doesn't admit its own reversal.
And the concept of math doesn't admit its own reversal.
But the concept of rights has been used as that which was a universal shield against other people's aggressions and duplicitousness.
Now it has become something that is used to justify, like as it used to be a shield against the government.
I mean, the Constitution was written to keep government small, and rights have been used now to become a giant jetpack on the rising size and power of government.
The government has to deliver all of these rights to people, rights to a house, right to shelter, right, like whatever it is gonna be.
And so if the concept has been reversed without many people even noticing and without violating The original idea of without violating the idea of rights.
Like no one said, no one came along and said, well, we've got this idea of rights, but they're really negative rights, right?
They're like, thou shalt not, right?
Thou shalt not use force or fraud against me.
So what we want to do is we want to switch it.
So instead of it being something which diminishes, We're going to use it as a sword to increase the use of violence in society by creating these positive rights and obligations, you know, for healthcare, education, roof over your head, whatever it's going to be, food.
And so, but they didn't say, well, the problem is that the word rights is so well defined, we have to use a different word, or at least add something to it, right?
So, social justice warriors...
Recognize that the word justice had a kind of hard-edged masculine steely kind of resolution to it.
So they had to introduce the girly word social in front of it so that they could corrupt it.
And like the unholy baby of the feminine social having sex with the masculine justice is like Rosemary's baby but with a flamethrower.
The fact that the word rights could be so perverted to be the opposite of its actual meaning and didn't need to have a new word invented to cover it up or even just another word saying, well, we're changing the concept of rights from defensive to offensive, from shrinking government to expanding government, from giving you a shield to giving you a sword.
The fact that they could do that with the same word to me indicates that the entire concept of rights must have had a giant problem to begin with.
Does that make any sense?
Yeah, and I agree with you.
The term rights is absolutely abused.
It's used incorrectly.
But at the same rate...
and that you know that you could call them negative rights if you like but we have certain actions that we take we have vocal cords and we can use those vocal cords to speak and because those rights have been recognized and they've been written down by philosophers and as well as philosophical politicians Thomas Jefferson that has done a lot of good for our society and they Well, okay, hang on.
Sorry to interrupt, Sean, but people say, like you, they say we have rites.
Where?
Where?
Where do we have them?
Where do they inhabit?
We have a vocal cord.
You can check it.
Under Freddie Mercury's nodules, there was vocal cords of the gods.
So you have vocal cords.
You have eyeballs.
You have skin.
You have these things.
They can be sort of measured and located.
When you say we have rites, Yes.
What does that mean?
Okay, so I hate to use this analogy, but in object-orientated programming, you've got these classes and you have objects, and you have properties that the objects have, and then those objects also have methods.
That's what they can do.
And so, for example, we have the vocal cords and the brains, and when we use them...
Let me just hang on a second.
And I'm really, really sorry to interrupt.
I just want to make sure everyone's up to speed who may not be object-oriented programming.
Sorry.
So you might have a big blob of programming that is an array.
And you might have a property of that object that represents the array.
Array is a series of numbers.
Actually, no, forget that.
Let's do a database.
It's going to be easier, right?
So you have a database where you have records, right?
A record is a string of information, like in the government database, your name, your address, your age, your date of birth, and all that kind of stuff.
And so you want to create a layer of abstraction above that database so that you can do error checking and you only have one place to check.
Because if everybody accesses the database directly, they might make mistakes and not check other people's rules and so on.
So you create this big blob of code that represents your database.
And you can say...
How many records are in this database?
So there'd be blog.recordnum or count.
There would be add new, there would be update, there would be delete, there would be search, there would be index, there would be whatever it's going to be, right?
Right.
And so, just so people know, so there are properties which are read-only in general, and then there are methods which are actionable, which do something usually to change the database or update the database.
Does that make sense?
That's right, that's right.
Okay, just so people know what we're talking about, otherwise everyone's going to glaze out.
Well, maybe they glazed out anyway, but they'll do so slightly less now.
Go ahead, sorry.
And so the definition of a right is that in which we have just claimed...
And we have the ability to act.
We have the ability to communicate.
We have the ability to use tools.
We have the ability to use money.
Lots of different abilities that are very unique to humans as well as abilities that we share with other people like the instinct to defend ourselves and to survive and to live and to have children.
Those are all rights.
No, no, no, no, no.
Oh no, you've just taken a big blob of things and said they're all rights.
That's not a case, right?
It's not an argument.
So you said that a right is a just claim against others, right?
Or to others?
Yeah, in the dictionary I believe it says that a right is that in which we have a just claim.
And I don't think that's a very good definition myself.
So that's, you know, that's just what I got from the dictionary.
No, no, no.
I get that.
I mean, but, you know, if the dictionary was philosophical, we'd be way in the future and I'd be doing something else for a living.
So a just claim against others.
So if you borrow my saucepan, then I can ask for it back.
So I have a just claim.
I have a right to my saucepan back.
I have a just claim against you.
But my problem with rights is that people are either going to honor them or they're not.
So if I lend you my saucepan, Sean, and you don't give it back, and you say, okay, well, I'll give it back to you, Steph, and you recognize, okay, knocked on my door, wants the saucepan back.
So it's either something which sensible people agree on already, or you're not going to give me my saucepan back, you're going to slam the door in my face and make fun of me from the other side of the keyhole.
So this is sort of my problem, is that people either accept these rights, in which case there's not really much of a claim, because people You're going to give me back the saucepan anyway.
Or they don't.
Now, what happens if they don't accept your claim of whatever, return my saucepan?
And that usually is the place where people say, well, then we need a government to force them to, right?
Well, is it okay that we force them?
For example, suppose that I'm trying to speak.
I'm trying to communicate so that I can make money and feed my family.
And somebody comes up and sticks a bag over my head or something.
I punch them in the face.
Is that okay?
Wait, are we jumping from abstract definitions down to specific instances?
Man, you're making me dizzy.
Okay, I'm sorry.
I'm getting the bends here.
We're going so high and then so deep and then so high and then so deep.
Let's try to do one thing at a time, okay?
So if we talk about the pot, And somebody takes my pot.
No, in this example, it's lending.
Okay, so I lend them my pot and they don't return it.
Do I have the right to use force to, you know, maybe I shouldn't use the word right.
Is it okay or morally good for me to sneak in their house and take it?
Okay, so if you say I have a right to do something, most people, when they say that, I have a right to axe.
They're making a claim of a just or legitimate action without making an argument.
And to me, where do just behaviors come from?
Saying, well, we have rights.
It's sort of like saying, well, where did the universe come from?
God made it.
It's not an answer.
Saying, well, I have a right to X, Y, and Z is a giant not an argument.
It's just an assertion.
And it's using the magic word right to pretend that you've answered something, but you haven't.
Well, I can give you a more detailed description of it.
Of what?
Of rights?
Yeah.
Okay.
So, it starts with Descartes, I think, therefore I am.
That shows that we exist.
Right.
Next, if we want to think, we have to have a brain, at least in the objective universe that we know about.
So, we've got brains.
In order to have a brain, we have to have a body that supports that brain.
And in order to have a body that supports the brain, we have to have some kind of evolutionary process in which our bodies develop.
They are able to feed our minds so that we can think and make decisions.
And with human beings, those developments, those evolutionary traits include the ability to communicate, ability to collaborate, use tools, and then there's more basic things, having children, forming families.
If we do not exercise those capabilities in which we have complete control over ourselves, nobody else has any control over, then we're going to die.
And so we could say scientifically that if living and reproducing is a just thing, then we have a just claim to exercise our properties as actions.
Yeah, well, reproduction is a bit challenging, because if you have reproductive rights, then any woman who denies you your reproductive right is violating your human rights.
And therefore, we have the old rape slash human rights opposition.
So I don't think that's particularly valid.
But what if somebody says, look, I just disagree.
I'm bigger, I'm stronger.
I'm just going to take stuff.
Might makes right.
I don't even care about rights.
What I care about is getting the most resources for myself, my family, with the least possible effort.
And because I'm bigger and meaner and stronger and don't give a good goddamn about this highfalutin rights crap that you've got spout, and I'm just going to take stuff while you sit there and write your little constitution or whatever it's going to be.
I'm just going to go and take stuff.
I don't care about your rights.
I don't recognize the concept.
It doesn't matter to me.
It's the will to power, right?
the Nietzschean will to power, that's what matters to me.
The rights are invented in the attempt, this argument would go, rights are invented as an attempt to instill guilt into those who are stronger and more powerful than you are.
Because if you are the strongest and most powerful around, you can just do whatever you want and you don't care about rights.
So rights is something that is kind of like a blow dart to the neck of more powerful people, hoping that you can slow down their predations on you by pretending that they're doing something wrong.
But people who have strength and power and will don't care about it.
They're just Genghis Khan style, they're going to go and do what they want to do and get the maximum resources for their own particular tribe or family or children or whatever.
So if people just completely disagree with you and said, I couldn't, you know, badges, we don't need no stinking badges, right?
I mean, what do you say?
Yeah.
Just because we have rights doesn't mean that our rights do not compete with other people's rights or that our rights compete with other animals or other species for that matter.
No, no, no.
We're not going into other animals.
So are you saying that rights can be in opposition?
Yeah.
So then they can't be universal.
So then how can they be human?
If I have a right to, let's say the doctor has the right to self-determination, but I have the right to healthcare, well then our rights are in opposition because the doctor should have the right to self-determination, shouldn't be forced into doing things.
But if I have a right to healthcare, then I or the government or some agency must compel the doctor to give me the healthcare that is my right.
Are you saying that rights exist in massive opposition like that, where it's win-lose and only one person can get their rights at the violation of other people's?
So there's different situations.
And one of the situations is that we're collaborating, we're working together, we're creating a society voluntarily.
And that, of course, is a situation in which you would want to recognize other people's rights.
But there's also the universal fact that if somebody's trying to kill you, you can kill them back.
And that's what universalizes it.
I don't understand.
You said that rights can be in conflict with each other.
Nobody has a right to kill someone, right?
To murder someone, right?
Okay, well, there might be some situations in which it comes down to competition.
For example, you're in a boat with people, and you only have a certain amount of food, and somebody's got to die.
So who's going to die?
Is it right to kill somebody where you can say, no, it's not right to kill somebody, but maybe in that situation?
No, no, no, no, no.
Listen, you can't use the same word for rights and rights.
Right being a morally good action in a particular situation and rights being universal claims on the behavior of others.
We can't use those two words as if they're interchangeable.
Yeah, I agree.
Okay, so let's not get down into lifeboat scenarios because we don't even have a theory by which we can test lifeboat scenarios.
Let's talk about species, right?
So two species, and you don't want to talk about species.
Let's talk about hominids.
Let's talk about Neanderthals.
No, I don't want to talk about Neanderthals.
Come on, man.
This is not the big moral issue in the world today, is how do we treat Neanderthals.
I mean, come on.
You've got to have bigger things or more immediate things on your plate to deal with, right?
People compete with each other.
They go to war and they kill each other.
This is a fact throughout history.
And we've seen leaders like...
Kubrick, you know, the Khans, and we've seen Charlemagne, and we've seen Edward of England, who have had tons of children, basically at everybody else's expense.
They have taken the government.
Yes, I just gave this whole scenario where people say, sorry to interrupt, but I just gave this whole scenario.
We don't need to do it again.
The scenario where somebody says, I don't give a rat's ass about your rights.
I'm going to take what I can and accumulate as much power as I can.
I don't care.
I mean, your rights are meaningless to me.
It's just a bunch of noise.
So what I'm saying is that sometimes you have the right to kill somebody if they're trying to take away your stuff.
But see here, you're just using the magic word rights.
Sometimes you have the right to kill somebody, but what is a right?
I don't know.
You say we have them, I still don't know where.
And something to do with, well, you need a brain to be alive and have kids.
Well, what the hell does that mean?
I mean, a praying mantis needs to be alive and have some sort of nervous system in order to have offspring.
Do they have rights to?
You know what I mean?
You're not planting a tree in anything that's called the ground.
Well, I'm...
I think that rights have been something that have been very positive for the human species, certainly for America, something that I was taught about in high school, and that's because there's some kind of truth to them.
Oh, come on.
I'm sorry to keep interrupting you, but first of all, the fact that it's positive for some people doesn't make anything a right.
And secondly, the violation of original American rights, the original Bill of Rights, the violation of those rights has been enormously profitable for vast sections of the population.
Thank you.
Right?
I mean, half of Americans don't pay any federal income tax.
60% of Americans get more out of the government than they pay in taxes.
There's a whole military-industrial complex, a whole bunch of giant corporations, multinational corporations that gain an enormous amount.
Out of the existing political system through the violation of the rights of the general population.
Violating the rights of the unborn to not be born into massive debt has been enormously profitable to politicians who wish to borrow from the future in order to give people the illusion that government can somehow create wealth.
And by providing people more in services than they charge in taxes, they provide the illusion of I guess like a cocaine dealer provides the illusion of happiness, they provide the illusion of plenty.
But it's plenty by borrowing from the unborn.
And whenever you try and talk about limiting the government's ability to print or borrow or sell bonds or do all of the six million financial instrument-based thumb-whackery tarot card raping and pillaging of the next generation, whenever you talk about limiting that, people go insane.
So it is enormously profitable and beneficial.
For the majority of a population in a geographical region, at least in the short run, to wildly violate the rights of the unborn, the rights of the taxpayers.
You know, like they always say on the left, oh, we're going to make the rich pay their fair share.
Bullshit!
Bullshit!
The rich pay the vast majority of taxes as it is.
And half of the people don't pay any goddamn taxes, really.
And the majority of people get more out of government than they put in.
That's called being a parasite.
Pay your fair share.
How about the 60% start putting something back in instead of pulling something out all the time?
Pulling everything out all the time.
So, you can't, good for society?
Well, no.
I mean, if it was so obviously good for society, we would never have a problem with rights or universality.
The problem is that it's so incredibly profitable to violate rights that there is a And the more people who obey those rights, the more profitable it is to violate them, right?
So, I've made this argument before, but it's been a while, so we'll count it as new.
That if you're the only thief in the world, you have a fantastic time of it.
Because nobody's locking up their houses.
Everybody thinks they just misplaced something rather than had it stolen because there's only one thief in the world.
You're the only thief in the world.
And therefore, it is incredibly profitable for you To be a thief.
It's so profitable that somebody else is going to say, hey, I think that guy's taking without permission.
And he's totally getting away with it.
And he's incredibly rich and he'll never get caught.
Because there's not even a crime called stealing because there's only one thief in the world and everyone thinks they're just misplacing stuff or it's being beamed up for experiments and UFOs.
So he decides to become a thief and more and more people decide until the profitability, like supply and demand, the profitability of being a thief goes down.
Because people are locking their doors, they have police, they have traceable stuff, they have alarm systems, they have cameras all over their houses.
At some point, it becomes less and less profitable to become a thief, and then you end up in a Gowan song.
Anyway.
Can we talk about that?
Hang on, let me just finish this, and then I'll be quiet.
And the aspect of being a legal thief, right?
Right.
Amateurs rob banks.
The real thieves run the banks, right, in central banking scenarios.
And so if you can become the legal thief, i.e.
the government who can redistribute income as you see fit, it's so enormously profitable that there is such a drive of biological imperative, right?
Get as many resources as you can with As little energy expenditure as possible, and there's nothing like the government for doing that, that the moment you start setting up rights and creating all of this Like Dungeons and Dragons rules of how people should be, you're ignoring the fact that the violation of rights is one of the most profitable enterprises in human history.
So the idea that it's good for society as a whole or, I mean, there is no such thing as society as a whole.
It's like saying something is good for the jungle as a whole.
Well, no, something may be good for a parakeet, something may be good for a toucan, something may be good for a dung beetle or a Yeah, I agree.
We've heard of the state of nature and the state of war.
I think there's a state of collaboration, the state of parasitism.
But as far as the money goes, because we do not know about our rights, that's why we're getting screwed by the bankers.
Each of us, each person has the ability to count and there's parts of our brains that allow us to determine things and because of this, we can use money and we can economize, we can check the prices and look at how much money we have and we can make evaluations.
Without money, we wouldn't have the kind of intricate economy that we have.
And I believe that there is a superorganism that emerges from the use of money where each of us is basically a row in a database and that the monetary system is a information system,
a database, in which each of us physically implements it by holding tokens like coins or bills or numbers And that from this, we get something bigger, society, that comes from that.
And without our right to use money, we're going to be the victims of these parasites.
But if we realize that we have the right to use whatever money that we want to, then we can emerge and we can be free.
But if we don't know that we have the right, we're going to be victimized.
Yeah, I'm not sure what any of that means, but I will say this, that you're using the word right, which we haven't defined.
So what I'm going to do, Sean, is I'm just going to give you sort of my perception of things, and then we'll take it from there.
So we don't have rights.
They're not attached to us.
They're not like an appendix.
They're not like a hair follicle.
They don't exist in the real world.
That doesn't mean that they're subjective.
Numbers, the concepts, they don't exist in the real world.
That doesn't mean that they're subjective, right?
If you've got four coconuts in a row, the number four isn't sort of shimmering around them like some penumbra or some...
Interstellar gas.
So the number four doesn't exist, but that doesn't mean you can assign any number to four coconuts, like pie or, you know, whatever it is, right?
Some negative number.
Science.
The scientific method doesn't exist in the real world, like a tree does, but the scientific method doesn't.
That doesn't mean that the scientific method is subjective.
And this idea that if something doesn't exist in the world, it has to be subjective is not valid, right?
I mean, so logic doesn't exist in the world.
That doesn't mean that logic is subjective.
So we don't have rights in terms of they're not attached to us like a physical property and so on.
And so my solution to this whole question is called universally preferable behavior.
Universally preferable behavior is the basic idea that if you want to make an argument for the behavior of others that is universally preferable, It could be respect for property rights.
It could be not murdering.
It could be not raping, not assaulting, not stealing from and so on.
It could be keeping your promises.
It could be keeping your contracts.
Let's say that you want to make some case for How other people's behaviors should be idealized or should be universally preferable, well then it has to be universal and it has to be preferable, which means that they should choose it, not that they always do choose it, right?
If you say to people, this is a healthy diet, that doesn't mean that they will, it just means they should if they want or not, doesn't mean that they will.
And so, I've got a whole free book on this called Universally Preferable Behavior, A Rational Proof of Secular Ethics.
And if you want to come back and talk about this, you should probably...
I've got that book, and I think that, you know, in order to...
No, no, no.
Still in the middle of an argument.
Just saying that it may be worthwhile getting into in more details.
We can discuss what's in that book, because I kind of take the swing.
And...
Universally preferable behavior, you can try and argue against it, but it'll fail.
Because if you say, well, there's no such thing as universally preferable behavior, then you're saying there's a standard of truth that everyone should follow, and this argument fails that true standard of truth, and therefore I should disbelieve it.
You're affirming universally preferable behavior by arguing against universally preferable behavior.
There's no, and I'll just say UPB from now on, there's no rational way to argue against UPB without using UPB. And so...
When it comes to questions of how should people behave, well, it has to be universal.
So, for instance, let's say we have two men in a room.
One whose name is Bob and one whose name is Doug.
And let's say that you have a UPB, universally preferable behavior, which says, thou shalt steal.
Thou shalt steal.
And let's say one of them has an iPod, the other one has an iPad.
So they both should steal from each other.
But this is impossible.
Because stealing requires that you don't want the other person to take your property, right?
If you're lending someone your iPod, then they're not stealing it from you, they're just borrowing it from you, which is different.
And so it's impossible for both people in the same room to uphold the thou shalt not steal standard.
Because if they say, well, everybody should steal, well, then Bob wants his iPod to be taken by Doug.
But if he wants it, then it's not stealing, right?
So this is just a sort of simple example of how UPB works.
The same thing with murder and rape and all this kind of...
Murder must be, let's say, rape must be you don't want the other person to have sex with you.
And they do it against your will, and that's rape.
So if rape is a universal value, like everybody should rape, then it can't be achieved because everybody should want to be raped.
But if you want to be raped, it's not rape, right?
So it's just logical ways of working with it.
And the book goes into a bunch of examples on this and self-defense and all this kind of stuff.
And so that's a way of approaching it.
How people should behave.
It doesn't use the word rights.
It uses the words universal.
In other words, if you're saying this is true for all people, it has to be universal to all people.
Preferable, which means that there's something that's better than something else, i.e.
respecting property rather than violating property.
And it's behavior.
In other words, it's not thought police, right?
Because the thought is not manifested in action can't be objectively proven one way or another, but an action can be objectively proven in one way or another through physical evidence or videos or whatever, unless you're in North Carolina.
Anyway, so...
This is my sort of approach instead of saying, well, what rights do we have?
Because as soon as you introduce the genie called rights, everyone's going to try and grab it.
Everyone's going to try and grab a hold of it and use it for their own benefit, right?
So women, single moms are going to say, well, my kids have a right to an education and my kids have a right to food and we have a right to healthcare because that's going to get them stuff for free, right?
And so they're going to say, I have a right to this.
And if rights are not really objectively defined, and I don't think they can be, then it's just going to be – like, you know, when you have a state at the center of society, everyone tries to grab the state and use it for their own benefit and screw their enemies and reward their friends and make money and escape consequences and so on.
Everyone's trying to grab this ring of power.
It's the same thing when you introduce the concept of rights, particularly when it's very ill-defined, as it always is.
Whereas if you have something like universally preferable behavior, you can go to the – let's say single mom says, my kids have a right to healthcare or I have a right to healthcare or my family has a right to healthcare or whatever – You say, okay, well, what does that mean?
That means that you have the right to use the state or use some mechanism to take resources from other people.
But you can't just make that rule for yourself because for it to be virtuous, for it to be ethical, It has to be universal.
And so if you say, well, single mom X has the right to use force to get resources from Dr.
Y, well, then Dr.
Y has exactly the same right to take those resources back or defend against, like, she hasn't achieved anything, right?
So you have to create this imbalance where there's separate moral rules for various groups and people, and this is what this balkanization and fragmentation of identity politics on the left is doing to society is all.
It's like Gene Hackman in the original Superman thumping down his cane on the glass over the map of California.
Boom!
Hey, maybe California.
It's the left coast.
It seems to be kind of appropriate.
So, I would really, really be hesitant, Sean.
In fact, I'd strongly advise you, if not downright urge you, to back away from the giant religious mystical supermass called rites.
Because you are introducing a genie that ends up almost always being controlled by your enemies rather than accepted by your friends.
and it's like bringing a knife to a gunfight.
You know, you bring rights and other people bring bigger rights and more rights and it becomes a will to power.
Who can define the word right to the benefit of their own group in particular and society gets significantly fragmented thereby.
But anyway, have a look at the book.
It's at freedomainradio.com slash free.
Appreciate your time, Sean.
A great chat.
Let's move on to the next caller.
Bye.
Alright, up next is Tim.
Tim wrote in and said, Do you believe socialist policies, if pushed for long enough, will always lead the government towards totalitarianism?
If so, what do you think the driving force is behind the move towards tyranny and serfdom?
Tim has a few other questions, but we'll start with that one for now.
Yes.
Alright, what's another question?
Hey Tim.
Hey, how you doing?
I'm well, thanks.
How you doing?
Good.
Great.
Great to be here.
Okay, so let's look at this question.
Socialist policies, if pushed for long enough, will always lead the government towards totalitarianism.
Sure.
Absolutely.
And I think it was Hayek who said this years ago in a book called The Road to Serfdom, which was actually adapted into a comic book, if I remember rightly.
Sure.
Without a doubt, is there sort of any particular mechanism which you'd sort of like me to explain as far as how this occurs or why this occurs?
Yeah, I wanted to get into it.
I feel like there's a few that all kind of go with each other.
Did you want to start?
Do you want me to start?
How would you like to take it forward?
Well, just a few of them would be just by virtue of what the government is.
If we give it Total top-down control, which is what socialism kind of would be, then what we're doing is making ourselves into state-mandated slaves.
And so we already have ourselves in that position.
And then on top of that, there's Mises' price calculation problem, which causes shortages and all that nonsense.
You can go from there if you want.
Yeah, I mean, to me, one of the basics is freedom is competition.
Literally, freedom is competition.
And so, why does the government always want to take over education and healthcare?
Well, because then you're helpless and you're dependent upon the government for the provision of those things.
And in particular where, you know, homeschooling or whatever is not, or in particular if they take money from you for government education, whether you use it or not, or you should get, you should of course get all your taxes back if you go to private school but the government doesn't want that.
So, are you free to choose your children's education if you have to send them to the closest government school?
Well, no.
You have no freedom as far as that goes.
When it comes to healthcare, if the government is in charge of your healthcare, you are helpless.
If they say it's going to take you six months to get this operation and it's illegal for you to go and get it privately in your country or whatever, maybe it's impractical for most people, you are not free to get healthcare.
You are dependent on the state.
Now, in a socialist economy...
Jobs are provided by the state because the government controls the means of production, and there's some limited private ownership like toothbrushes and stuff, but government controls the means of production, the factories and so on.
And so if the government doesn't like you, if you do something that the government doesn't like, they can fire you.
And then where do you go?
Right now, if you have 20 companies who want to work with you, And five of those companies really don't like you, well, you can go to the other 15, right?
Freedom is competition.
People need to be competing to put things in front of you that you can choose from.
And if you don't have that choice, if there's only one big, giant, squatty, toad, jab-of-the-hut state avenue for you to get what you want, you're not free.
You're not free because, first of all, the government is taking the money from you to pay for whatever it is that you're consuming, and therefore you don't have that choice.
You're not free to even Maintain your own property, integrity, and choice about how your resources get spent.
And you don't have anybody else who's coming along to say, you can choose me, you can choose me, you can choose me, all down the line.
So, an arranged marriage is where your parents say, or your elders say, you have to marry Betty.
You cannot marry anyone but Betty.
You can only marry Betty.
And even if you choose not to marry her, you have to live with her and pay her bills anyway.
Would anyone say that that person is free in the realm of romance?
No, they wouldn't.
So monopoly is tyranny.
And the more the government takes over and provides monopoly services, the more tyranny you're subjected to because tyranny means you don't have a choice.
And when the government provides services and elbows out all competition, you're left with one giant monolith.
That's the only place you can go.
It's the only thing.
It's the only way you can get whatever it is you want to get.
You're forced to pay for it either way.
And nobody else is coming along saying, here's my choices.
So socialism makes free will, for instance, largely null and void, at least in an economic and political context.
And the reason why it tends to slide towards totalitarianism, there's lots of reasons why, but here's sort of one that may be understated, is that the moment the government takes over a monopoly, it has to ban The competition.
Right, which is where we get our wealth.
Right.
Right.
It has to ban the competition.
Now, it either does that in a hard way by making it illegal for other people to provide those resources, or in a soft way, by forcing people to pay for the government solution anyway.
Right?
So if you want to send your kids to private school, then you've got to pay for the government schools, and then you've got to pay for the private school, so it's like a double whammy.
Oh, and then of course the private schools have to follow the government curriculum so they're not really that private, not really that alternative and so on, right?
Or they can ban competition just through a soft bunch of, you know, it's really expensive to get a license and you've got to go through a lot of regulations and there's a lot of legal exposure and just make it, it's not illegal but it's functionally impossible.
Because when the government takes something over, it turns it to crap, and anything that's allowed to directly compete with the government is going to cripple and undermine and put out of business the government quote solution, right?
And so it has to continually expand its powers in order to grind away and reduce and destroy competition to its central provision of whatever service is being provided, right?
Yeah, they're monopolizing at their own detriment.
Yeah, so it has to grow through that standpoint.
And people get dissatisfied, and they grumble, right?
And they're negative.
Now, if you grumble about a private business, you know, assuming it's not some libelous, slanderous, godforsaken thing, right?
Some lie.
If you grumble about a private business, okay, well, they'll survive, right?
They'll go to other people, right?
But if you start to grumble about The government business, they usually have much more of a problem with it, because it sucks.
Destroys motivation and creativity and the entrepreneurial spirit.
Yeah, it's terrible.
It's terrible.
Because it's so terrible, the pressure grows to change it, to say, let's have charter schools, let's have voucher systems, let's have something that's not this.
But the government has changed and evolved to rely upon a steady stream of indoctrinated children growing into adulthood, never questioning the foundations of their society, right?
Without control over education, government power It becomes incredibly expensive, right?
I mean, the slave who loves his chains is the slave you don't have to guard, right?
The slave that's constantly trying to get away, well, that's an expensive slave, and all of your slaves are constantly trying to get away.
Slavery doesn't work.
So the government relies fundamentally and needs existentially 12 years of indoctrination of children Otherwise, it doesn't work.
If they're exposed to a wide variety of different viewpoints and oppositional viewpoints, if they're taught how to think, if they're taught how to reason, how to process evidence, then government doesn't work.
It doesn't work because people ask questions that are too tough.
People ask questions that are too upsetting.
The media is critical.
The media digs in.
The media finds problems.
The media exposes immoralities.
And the whole thing becomes way too expensive and difficult and unpleasant to manage.
And so the government has to, like, once the government gets control over education, then the government can grow.
And you really could see that happening in the 19th century.
And so once the government has grown, then it absolutely needs to maintain that control over education, because if it loses control over that education, it no longer has the indoctrinated row of brain-dead kids coming out who, I mean, they don't Forget they don't have the right answers.
They don't even know the right questions, right?
And if they can get you to ask the wrong questions, they don't care about the answers, as the old saying goes.
So it has to control education.
And then it has to control free speech.
Because there will always be people who question and think and so on.
And the entire system relies upon indoctrination.
And...
If that indoctrination is not present, the system collapses.
And therefore, anybody who questions that, the basic fundamental premises of society, which are almost always unconscious, well, it's dangerous.
It's hate speech, whatever it's gonna be, right?
So it's always gonna grow.
And of course, once you have a giant money spigot called the state, right, where you can walk into a room, you can make a speech, and you can walk out a million dollars richer.
I think we all know who we might be talking about.
But once you have that, then people are going to start swarming towards the state because it makes much more sense and it's much more profitable to be in control of the state than it is to be in control of some convenience store or some business or whatever, especially when the government takes over more and more of those businesses.
It's much more fun to be on the regulation giving side than the regulation receiving side.
And so because there'll be a general tilt, right, you sort of think of a table full of marbles and you lift up one end, they're all going to roll down to the other end.
When you raise the incentives to be in government and you reduce the incentives to be outside of government, then more and more of the talented, intelligent people slide in towards the state.
And therefore the state has to grow to accommodate all of the people who now want to live and work in the confines of the state rather than in the remnants of the free market.
And so the state's going to continue to have to grow to find ways to accommodate all of those new people.
Another reason, too, is that the government has to provide the illusion that it is giving you more in services than it takes in taxes, which is mathematically completely impossible.
The government cannot give you more in services than it takes in taxes because it is inefficient and it has massive overhead.
Yeah, the middle man.
Private businesses can give you more in the long run than you invest.
You buy an Apple stock at a buck, you're doing pretty well right now.
But that's because it's a private business with efficiencies and low overhead and all that kind of stuff.
And so the state, though, cannot conceivably provide you more in services than it takes in taxes.
And if it doesn't have the capacity to control currency, then it can't give you the illusion that it's giving you more In services than you're paying in taxes.
There's a couple of ways that governments love to do this.
Number one, they'll say, oh, I'll take some money from you now, but don't worry, in 30 or 40 years, I'll totally give it back, right?
And then they just spend it, right?
So that's giving you the illusion because you think the money's in some social security or old age pension lockbox, and it's not, of course.
So the government will take money from you, pretend it's going to give it back later, and it won't.
Or another thing it does is it sells bonds, right?
And I think somewhere in Canada, there's like 75-year bonds.
It's crazy, right?
So it will sell bonds.
So it raises, I don't know, however many tens or hundreds of millions of dollars by selling bonds.
And it spends all that money lavishly on the population.
And it's 10 or 20 years down the road when these guys have retired that the money comes due.
And then they rolled it over into new bonds.
It's all a shell game, right?
And then they print money, which gives the illusion that the government is creating wealth.
In the same way that I guess I could run a distillery by buying bottles of booze and adding water to them.
Hey, look!
I've made new booze.
I am a master distiller.
And so it goes through all of this garbage to give people the illusion that they're getting more out of the system than they're putting in, and that diminishes people's resistance to it, right?
It's like, wow, it seems to be working very well, as long as you ignore the national debt, the unfunded liabilities, and all that kind of stuff.
And the inflation.
So...
All of that put together is why the government just continually is going to end up growing.
Like the government is either growing or it's shrinking, but it's never staying the same.
Two things that I wanted to run by you.
The first being, you touched on the education system, and I just wanted to mention...
Well, I wanted to ask if you ever read, like, any books by John Taylor Gatto.
He was a New York City Teacher of the Year for, like, three years, and then he stopped.
Saying that he was tired of hurting children.
And then he went on to write a few books, one of them being called An Underground History of American Education.
And in that...
And also Weapons of Mass Distraction.
Yes.
Yeah, and that...
But I've also seen him speak.
I saw him speak 2008, I think it was, at the New Hampshire Liberty Forum.
It was my sort of my first big coming out speech, which people still watch on YouTube.
And it's a great speech.
And people watch it on YouTube and say, hey, Adam Kokesh.
And I talked with educator Peter Gray about him as well.
So yeah, he's...
John Taylor Gatto recommended.
He's got some interesting stuff, too, just about how people sort of need to break free of their history in order to achieve great things.
Danica Patrick comes to mind, the race car driver.
Anyway, yeah, I know him quite well, and I think we tried to get him on the show, but I don't think he really does interviews, at least not anymore.
Unfortunately, he had a stroke and is no longer doing any interviews because of that.
Yeah, okay.
Well, then I'm assuming that you know that our education system was designed this way, like about 100 years ago by a bunch of socialists, right?
Oh, absolutely, yeah.
The educational system was designed explicitly on the Prussian model, which was supposed to produce dumped-down factory workers and idiot shoot-at-will soldiers.
So, yeah, no, that's exactly right.
It's not an accident, what it's for.
And apparently they got that from the Spartan structure.
You know, just everyone serves the state.
Everyone's, like, a servant to the state.
Yeah, I'm actually, I'm working on a rise of Nazism.
Like, at the fall of Rome, let's do rise of Nazism, because it sounds a lot more optimistic, I guess.
But I'm doing, and I have to start with the deep philosophical history of how we got these ideas at all, because they really are quite mental.
And so...
I'm sure you'll enjoy that.
Well, not if and when.
When it eventually comes out.
I'm hoping to finish the rise of Nazism in less time than it took for Nazism to rise.
Lord knows it took quite a while to get the fall of Rome done.
Yeah, that was loaded.
Yeah, thank you.
I'm sure I will enjoy it because I've been following you quite closely now for a few months.
Also, I'm going to run this theory by you.
Back to Mises' price calculation problem.
Seeing as price fixes and top-down control, central planning, it causes shortages and ruins our standard of living or lowers it.
I'm sorry to interrupt.
Let me just, for those who don't know, the calculation problem very briefly is that when you think about selling something in the free market, you have this amazing and free mechanism called price.
So is it worth it for me to open a restaurant in some particular location?
I'm going to know what my actual costs of the restaurant are in a free market because people are going to say, here's how much it's going to cost for your stove system and for your heating and ventilation system and for your chairs and your tables and your cutlery and tablecloths and all that kind of crap and your new robot waiters.
So the market's going to tell you how much things are going to cost and then you're going to figure out what your reasonable profit is and then you're going to figure out the prices of things and You're going to talk to a bunch of people, do a bunch of market research, and eventually you're going to launch your restaurant if you think it's going to work, and then the market will tell you whether it's working or not.
And all of this requires that the free market is setting the prices.
And if the government is setting the prices, you don't have actual information about best use of resources.
So if you're a steel manufacturer, let's say you've just produced a ton of steel, and what do you do with it?
Well, in the free market, you...
Ship it to whoever's willing to sell you the most for it, right?
Because they have the greatest need and they are willing to sell the most for it because they've got their calculations that say this is where...
So the high price bid is a signal that that's the area of greatest need.
And so in a free market with all of this price mechanism, and there's no central planning, it just happens on its own, all of this price mechanism gives an enormous amount of information to people about areas of highest need.
And...
A simple example is Uber, right?
So if there aren't enough Uber drivers out and demand is high, then Uber raises the prices so that it will lure more drivers off the couch and into the car seat to sort of drive around.
And people were upset during the bombings that happened recently in New York that Uber was like very expensive, like it was twice the price.
Oh, Uber's cashing in.
It's price gouging.
It's like, nope.
No.
Because there simply would be no drivers then.
Right?
Because people aren't going to want to drive into a dangerous area where there could be more bombs, where their car could get damaged, where they might get beheaded by some shrapnel.
They're not going to go in there.
So cabbies wouldn't go there.
There would be no cars.
And so you have to have an incentive for people to go in there so that you'll actually have drivers.
And, of course, people...
People are willing to pay for it.
And what it does is it also diminishes because Uber is twice the price.
People who might walk If it's twice the price, we'll walk, thus reducing the demand for Uber.
So it balances that sort of really, really well.
And if it's really busy, right, if there's a huge demand, you know, it starts raining and all the movies get out and there aren't enough drivers, then, you know, everyone sitting on their couch gets, ooh, Uber prices double or 1.5 times or whatever.
And it's a beautifully finely tuned way of figuring out, of letting the market figure out how many drivers should be out there trying to pick up passengers.
So...
The price mechanism is essential for optimum use of resources in society, and when the government starts setting prices, you lose all of that information.
And now it's no longer a pull demand of where society's resources are most needed, it's a push demand, which is political, which is always corrupt.
I hope that's a decent way of summarizing it very quickly, but just so people are up to speed on what we're talking about.
Yeah, you touched on right at the end there, what I was just about to get at.
As services and goods become more scarce through this top-down planning and price-fixing, then the central planners are going to distribute what's left of the resources the only way they know how, which is through politics.
It's not through economics.
And so they're going to distribute it to their buddies and themselves, and this is going to rile up the population, right?
And so they're going to be They're going to dissent more often, and is this where the totalitarian-esque dictatorships come in, where they have to stamp down on the population to protect their own wealth, the ruling class?
I mean, I'm sure that's a part of it.
I mean, I don't sort of get a particularly strong link of the chain here, but certainly there's dissatisfaction.
You know, when there's shortages, Which are caused by central planning.
I mean, 10% of the Venezuelan population right now is subsisting on what they find in garbage cans and garbage dumps, right?
So there's a lot of shortage.
And I think it was Tom Sowell who pointed out that it's great if you have this class of people that the average person can get angry at.
Like if you are doing stupid central planning and central banking inflationary Habits or tactics or policies.
You're pumping up the money supply.
Well, if you've got some store owner who has to raise his prices, people get mad at the store owner, not at the central bank, right?
Because he's the immediate, quote, cause.
Price gouging, the prices are going up, you're ripping me off, right?
And the store owner is, of course, pretty helpless in all of this.
And so this is why true socialism doesn't last quite as long, because in true socialism, it's the government store that is out of bread, right?
It's that old joke, like in Soviet Russia, people wait for bread.
In the capitalist West, bread waits for people, lines of bread waiting for people.
And so you really get that the government is not providing you anything good or useful.
Like you have to line up for four hours just to get some moldy old piece of bread.
And so what happens is the government doesn't have a scapegoat to blame the shitty economy on.
Because the government is the economy.
So then what happens?
Well, the government then has to invent enemies.
Counter-revolutionaries, insurgents, betrayers.
The government has produced a vast amount of bread, but it got stolen on the way to the people's commissary of breadness.
And so we have to go and round up people and throw them in a gulag and shoot them.
Because there has to be some scapegoat as to why the government is failing to provide what it promises.
right?
Because in the central planning model, it's more efficient than the free market, right?
But of course it's not.
And so then the government has to invent all these enemies, either foreign or domestic, that it's sabotage, you see, the evil capitalists are sabotaging our beautiful socialist production line.
And that's why you don't have any bread and it's terrible, but you know, we're going to catch those guys and then there's going to be tons of bread.
And so they have to start this internal cleansing of various elements to who are getting in the way of the bread getting to the people.
And I think that kind of stuff happens on a fairly regular basis in these kinds of economies.
And it happens now.
Even in the West, right?
I mean, you get these groups of, you know, it's white males right now, it can be something else next week, maybe not.
But it's those people who are keeping you, it's racism that's keeping you from all of these great things that the Democrats have been promising, say, the blacks for, you know, the last 50 years.
And that's just, you have to create scapegoats when the cause of the problem is readily identifiable.
You have to distract people with scapegoats.
Of course, that means throwing aside normal standards of jurisprudence, right?
You have to get rid of innocent until proven guilty.
You have to force people to sign confessions.
You have to get rid of the ability to confront your accuser.
You have to get rid of standards of reasonable doubt and all this kind of stuff.
And so it really decays.
Yeah, I think that's a pretty good argument that it's a very strong part of why it becomes more totalitarian.
Right.
Yeah.
Well, we can move on to the next set of questions.
I don't know how much more time we have.
I'm going to keep moving just because we've got a lot of callers tonight.
I like your next set of questions about entrepreneurship and should you do it with friends.
But let's do that another time because I want to make sure I can...
What is it they said about Hillary Clinton?
Everyone had the same thing.
Power through!
I'm going to power through to the end of the show.
I find that because I did another show today...
On the Scott shooting in North Carolina, I just want to make sure I have enough energy for the later caller, so...
Okay.
We'll move on to the next caller, but please feel free to call in.
It was a good set of questions you had on that.
Yeah, thank you.
Thank you, Stefan.
All right, up next we have Andre.
Andre wrote in and said, I've seen the NATO-Russia tensions play out from both sides.
It seems as if most conflicts are created by deliberate public disinformation.
How come the governments and media take their people to be naive enough to not question anything, and how did we as a people become naive enough to believe it all?
That's from Andre.
Oh hey Andre, how are you doing?
Yeah, hey.
The 2am tiredness is slowly scraping away at my sanity, but all fine.
How are you?
I'm well, thanks.
I'm caffeinated.
So we'll try and keep it entertaining for you because it's a great question.
Yeah.
So originally I was born in Belarus and I immigrated with my parents to Germany.
And so I went to elementary school in here and we kept tabs on the Russian media.
Through a satellite dish like many people do who come from other countries.
So there is a very special moment I recall from my time at the elementary school and it was when the Georgia-Russia conflict happened.
So I turned on the news and on the German side It said the Russians put up a line of tanks in the buffer zone between South Ossetia and Georgia.
And then I switched in this very moment because it didn't interest me.
Well, as an elementary school pupil, politics, I didn't care for them.
And then I switched to the Russian news just randomly.
And in that very moment, and it It happened exactly that way.
The news said in Russian, the Russians put up a line of tanks and prevented a conflict.
And on the German side, it literally said 10 seconds ago, the Russians put up a line of tanks and almost escalated it.
So a complete 180 on the same event that happened a couple of hours before.
Even as an elementary school student, it absolutely baffled me how media could report on a fact that didn't even develop fully yet in a complete 180 fashion.
So, during my time at the elementary school, we kind of got taught these values that you're never supposed to use violence, that every person on earth wants to live.
And...
If a conflict happens, it usually is because of a reason.
And so, why people find there is always a reason, like an event that predates a conflict.
And as I kind of watch the news from time to time, I kind of noticed that the way the media report on events is that they Obstruct the reason why the conflict is there in the first place and only report on the facts.
For instance, during the Ukraine conflict, when I was at university, well, a bit later on, a couple of students came up to me and, well, we talked about how evil Putin is and how he invades the country.
And I always stood there and kind of asked, but why do they do that?
But why does this happen?
And later on, I was at a university party, and in a quiet moment, I went out on the balcony.
And there was this girl, and we got into a talk, and she just randomly said, you know, I'm absolutely scared of Putin.
And I was just like, why?
What is it that makes him so evil?
And she went on about kind of what the media told with how Russia got into Ukraine and so on.
But she never actually had a concrete reason why it would be dangerous for me.
And so in this kind of tale and this conflict between Ukraine and Russia, the thing that always never gets told in the German media, for instance, is why did the separatist fight, for instance?
Why was there the actual war?
And it always sounded like that since there was no reason given, it was easy to blame one side or the other.
And for instance, who fights?
It was easy to say, oh, it's this side, or it's Russia who invaded, or it's Russia who tries to do the conflict.
But it was never really explained, why do the people fight?
Because the consensus of the people is, well, everyone wants peace, so why would you fight?
And the reason was never given.
But the reason on the Russian side was very, very clearly stated.
And it was the Odessa massacre on the 2nd of May in 2014, after which the pro-Ukrainian side put a fire on the trade union building in a city in Ukraine, and 40 people died as a result.
And that sparked the bloodlust of the people to take revenge on those fallen souls.
And this was never stated.
It was never clear why do people fight.
And so it always kind of jumped around the facts and that was never clearly stated.
There's a great quote.
Sorry to interrupt, but I'd like to jump into my show from time to time.
There's a great quote from Hermann Göring.
I believe a World War I ace and then head of the Luftwaffe in the Second World War.
This was told to Gustav Gilbert during the Nuremberg trials.
And this is what people should get tattooed on their eyeballs.
This is what Hermann Goering said after the end of the Second World War when he was on trial.
He was hung.
Hanged?
Anyway, he was hanged.
So Hermann Goering said, why of course the people don't want war.
Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece?
Naturally the common people don't want war neither in Russia nor in England nor in America nor for that matter in Germany.
That is understood.
But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy that And it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a parliament or a communist dictatorship.
Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders.
That is easy.
All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.
It works the same way in any country.
Yeah, I think that people from both sides, they don't have to get that tattooed.
I believe people do understand that.
And there is a really, really hardcore ingrained distrust that's slowly coming up through the years that I've been in Germany.
I've noticed that from year to year, less and less people actually trust the medium.
And during the 19th century, there was a time period that was called the Biedermeier time period, where the public became so fed up with how the emperor was selected and how they didn't have any say in it.
They just said, I don't want to become political anymore.
And so they just kind of secluded themselves from politics.
And I believe that we are kind of going that way.
So, for instance, during the NSA scandal, Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA was spying in a very, very Well-crafted program around the world and also tapped into the chancellor's mobile phone.
And this slowly became a bigger and bigger topic.
And when it was revealed that the chancellor's phone was tapped, the minister for Mr.
Friedrich, who was the minister for the inner workings, went to USA to get an explanation out of them.
So that was the official statement.
And he came back the next day and proclaimed, I've been completely told everything.
There is no problem.
Everything's all right.
And when it was proclaimed, everybody went, well, how do you represent the people?
No, it just meant that they had something on them, right?
Yeah.
So I'm going to just again jump into my own show.
And so how do the...
People are naive because the government has controlled, generally, the flow of information to the people.
And this, of course, has changed.
I did a podcast many, many years ago called the Gutenberg Press.
The analogy being that the internet was like the Gutenberg Press, in that it took...
Information out of the hands of elites and put it into the hands of people through direct communication, which is what Martin Luther did, of course, when he translated the Bible into the Vulgate, into the vulgar tongue of the people, and then things got kind of exciting.
So the governments have been in control of information because they license the media outlets.
And so if the media outlets don't do what the government wants, then they find their licensing is being pulled and they can't afford to do that.
So the governments have been in control of information.
And the left, of course, has I mean, it's kind of weird because the left has spent decades and decades and decades building up their fortresses in the media and in academia and in the arts and in the government and in newspapers and all of that movies.
And then suddenly, boom, along comes the Internet and erodes that power that they had spent so much time building up.
And this is why the left is currently going completely mental.
And you've got like Hillary Clinton complaining about Pepe the Frog as a white nationalist symbol, even though Katy Perry tweeted it.
And it's like, it doesn't even take a moment's thought.
You know, let me give you a hint, leftists.
If there was a white nationalistic symbol...
It would not be called Pepe, because that's not a white Anglo-Saxon name.
Anyway, it would be John, Paul, or Ringo.
Anyway, this is why the left is kind of going mental at the moment, and why they're...
I'm hysterical about Skittles and frogs and lions and tigers.
Oh my!
Because they thought they had it in the bag.
They thought, well, we got everything.
We control.
We got the public schools.
We got the universities.
We got the media.
We got everything.
Boom.
Done.
We're in control.
Uh-oh.
Wait a minute.
Gamergate?
What's that?
Right?
They're being pushed back because the alt-right, which is the right with the tactics of the left, are gleefully and joyfully skewering and fighting back in a way that civilized Republicans have been unwilling to do for decades or maybe longer.
And so this is all beginning to unravel now.
Because the people have a chance to communicate without the gatekeepers, without the people who have the licenses, without the people who are controlled by the government in one form or another.
And people are, you know, if you give people one single source of information, what is their choice?
I mean, they can choose to disbelieve it if they want.
But they don't really have any alternative to go through.
I mean, in Russia, there used to be these things called samizdat, which was sort of handwritten or hand-copied or hand-printed books.
The Fountainhead and I think Atlas Shrugged even circulated on that, on the back of a donkey, pulling a whole Slavic forest behind it and consumed trees.
So, if you go against the mainstream narrative as well, you know, one thing that seems to be kind of true is that Being alternative used to be really associated with being childless.
You know, you're a conspiracy theorist and so on.
And there's a huge amount of social cost to being what used to be called a conspiracy theorist.
You know, that you have alternative views on why things happen or how things happen and you have the ungodly alarming idea that rich people sometimes get together behind closed doors to align their interests.
Particularly if they're involved in politics, right?
Shocking, I know.
But what would happen is You would be viewed as crazy and the way that the government would generally control this stuff, and it would generally be controlled through women, through sexual access, is conspiracy theorists would be denigrated.
In sort of various subtle ways, right?
I mean, this happened on The Simpsons.
They had an Ayn Rand school, you know, which made fun of Ayn Rand.
And this is objectivism and so on.
So they'd say, well, objectivists are this.
And therefore, if you were an objectivist, you were viewed in a negative light.
Like, the Tea Partiers are racists.
And all the alt-righters are racist and white nationalists.
All this nonsense, right?
And so what happens is they try to interfere with your capacity to earn money.
And they portray you in a very negative light with the hopes that, A, if you don't make as much money, your sexual market value will go down, and B, if we can convince women that you are crazy, that you are not going to succeed in this society, then women will avoid you.
And since the worst thing that can happen to you genetically is a failure to reproduce, that tends to keep happening.
People quite a bit in line.
Remember, women have to kind of gamble on a man's future success, right?
I mean, a man has to gamble on a woman's youthful fertility.
She might be young but infertile.
But women have to gamble on how much Money the man is going to make in the future, how good a father he's going to be, and so on.
And the father thing is a bit more predictable based on his own family history, as is the mother thing.
But she really has to gamble.
So anything which can negatively impact a young man's future earning potential, his potential success in society, his acceptance by the mainstream, his capacity to get and hold a job, anything which can portray that in a negative light is an incredibly fantastic way of Driving women away from people who think in some sort of alternative manner or just plain think.
And that generally gets men to fall in line.
Because men will follow where the women are going.
Where the women are.
Men will follow where the women are going.
And if the government can convince women that this particular group or this particular belief set or this particular ideology or philosophy or whatever is negative, is going to fail, is going to be rejected, then women are like, eh, you know...
Not for me.
Because women are more risk-averse at the extremes than men.
So I think that has been a very, very popular...
And you see this showing up all the time.
You see this showing up all the time.
Like I remember watching a Bones episode years ago where there were these anti-government zealots.
You know, they believed in the Constitution.
They were anti-government.
And of course, you know, they had a giant compound and they were a cult and they were like crazy.
And it's like, okay, so this is how people are programmed.
And you see this all the time.
When you start to pick up on this stuff, it's everywhere in the media that particular groups are programmed to be, to evoke a negative response in people.
And, you know, they'll put the people they don't like, they'll make the actors unattractive, they'll make them sweaty, they'll put them in uncomfortable situations, they'll make them mean, and they'll make them growly, and they'll have mean voices, you know, they're just bad haircuts, and like whatever it's going to be, right?
And they will give them unattractive spouses, or they'll just, whatever it is, right?
Yeah, but I believe you make it out to be a little bit too simple.
It's not that it's just a tool that the government can use to manipulate people.
I believe it's more to do with the people.
And it goes both ways.
It's not just left.
For instance, I've been on a little business trip to Wuppertal and the city was notorious in the media.
For having the so-called Sharia police, where a couple of Muslim people started policing everybody on values on the street.
And I spoke to the people there.
They told that when this happened, nobody in the city really got that info.
Nobody kind of knew that it happened.
It was not a big deal.
It was just one moment of kind of street preaching.
But they got calls from outside of Germany who called in and said, guys, what's going on in your city?
There's like freaking Sharia police.
It's awful.
Oh, goodness.
And they said, no, it was just a thing of street preaching.
There is no reason to kind of blow it out of proportion.
And I think that conflicts are kind of exactly this kind of I'm sorry, I got to interrupt you.
I apologize for that.
So you said that my analysis had sort of many layers and a wide variety of approaches and so on.
And the sexual market value is original to me as far as I know.
So you kind of pointed out that my analysis was simple and then you responded with some story I didn't quite understand about That they weren't enforcing Sharia law, they were just street preaching?
How is that a deep and rich and complex thing that I didn't cover?
Because you kind of said that it's just the government controlling the narrative.
No, no, that's not what I said.
No, because as I pointed out, the left has gone into more than government, right?
As I mentioned, they've gone into universities, they've gone into movies, television.
I just cited an example from a television show.
Now, of course, the government does control licensing and does control access to the audience through some of that.
So it has an influence.
But no, I didn't say it was just government.
So maybe it wasn't my explanation that was simplistic, but your reception of it.
True, true.
Yeah, so what I think is that for instance, but yeah, that does actually explain it quite well.
So Germany used to be a balancing force between two sides.
And in recent years, the politics has kind of picked one side over the other, me being a bit towards NATO. And after this narrative has been pushed that one side is inherently better than the other,
I believe that This kind of balancing force, this kind of mindset where people always looked towards both sides and kind of tried to find the hooks and what is being told and why.
And I think that's slowly disappearing.
And so people move away from being in politics and becoming secluded because politics in the media kind of just steam ahead and being just the train, kind of the pulling force of where narrative goes and not necessarily the people anymore.
Well, no, I mean, people are, I think, I don't know, in Germany, right?
Angela Merkel is finally beginning to realize that she's admitted that she kind of lost control of the refugee or the migrant situation last year and a little earlier.
And she, I shouldn't laugh because it's a very serious issue, right?
But she's saying, like, I don't know.
I don't know what, I guess I don't know what the voters want.
Maybe they could just tell me.
You know, maybe they could just let me know.
I don't know what they want.
And it's like, because there's no alternative.
If you look at America right now, I mean, dear God, American politics has even drawn me into its spiderweb of intrigue and interest, which I really wasn't that much into it before in...
In Germany, people have abandoned politics because they don't feel like there's any particular choice or options.
Now, maybe with the AFD and other things there is, but until someone comes forward where there is a real choice and people think that there may in fact be a different path, it's not just the same uniparty shadow puppets from the same shadowy people behind the throne, but there is actually a potential real choice, then I think they will get more engaged.
And I know that for Trump...
It's a lot of people who never have voted or rarely have voted before.
And now I think Soros and his henchmen are trying to scour up 8 million foreign US voters of whom only 12% voted in the last election and scour them up and try and get them to vote for Hillary and all of that because, Lord knows, we wouldn't want it decided on policy and history.
So I think that when someone comes along, and maybe there isn't Germany who's just rising, but when someone comes along and people feel there is a real choice, there is a real option, And that it will follow through.
I think that they will get more engaged.
And maybe you could be that person.
But thanks very much for the call.
I appreciate that.
And move on to the next caller.
But it was a great pleasure to listen.
See you.
All right, up next we have Jacob.
Jacob wrote in and said, what are the characteristics of human nature?
Are those characteristics changeable?
If so, how can they be changed?
You've spoken on this topic a couple of times, and I think I've noticed some inconsistency.
Take the video, quote, shocking misogynist attacks feminism, defends rape culture.
For example, at 1547 you pose a mental exercise to the audience to explore the roots of human violence.
At 1614 you preface the exercise by saying that you don't quote-unquote buy the human nature argument and follow with What is human nature?
It's like saying, what is the shape of water?
Well, it depends what you pour it into.
But in a later video, Why the Regressive Left is Already Lost, you suggest an alternative description of human nature.
At 1854, you ridicule leftists for viewing human beings as water and implying that human nature is infinitely malleable.
Specifically, you were criticizing the idea that immigrants can easily adapt to the culture of their new host country.
I've wrestled with this issue myself and I was wondering if you could clarify your thoughts.
That's from Jacob.
Oh, hey Jacob.
That's really good stuff.
Thank you so much for taking the time to, you know, get the, we'll put the links to this below.
But thank you so much for taking the time to write it down, to get the quotes.
That's the kind of criticism I love.
As opposed to people just saying, well, I think you said something here.
Thank you so much for getting the facts and bringing this to the forefront.
This is really good and really important stuff.
Once again, thanks.
Thanks for taking my call, and no problem.
My pleasure.
So, it's a very...
It's a very good objection, and it's not clear in what you've said where I stand.
So let me see if I can clarify it.
So, we would not say that it is human nature to speak Japanese rather than English, right?
Right.
But I think we would say that it is human nature to speak a language, right?
Yeah, I agree.
I think we would also say...
That it is neither human nature to be tall or short, right?
Right.
But I think we would say that it is human nature, or at least a biological response, that if one is malnourished, one will be shorter than otherwise.
Right.
So, the question of what is the shape of water, it depends what you pour it into.
Children who are raised by wolves, but even babies raised by wolves, they know exactly when they've been had.
So babies who are raised by wolves, they get along with wolves, right?
They adapt to that.
Obviously, it's not great.
And if they miss the language window, then they end up not being able to speak language usually very well at all.
It's, I don't know, some age window, like two to five or whatever it is.
If you don't get exposed to language, you kind of miss the boat and never quite get it.
So when it comes to harming our natural natures, that can certainly happen.
Are human beings naturally violent?
Well, no.
Because usually it takes a combination of some genetic susceptibility combined with an abusive environment to make a human being violent.
Is human nature violent?
No.
Now, human nature, when it is traumatized and when it has particular genetic potentialities, right?
There's some study, and we quote this in the bombinthebrain.com, where 100% of children with a particular gene set who were exposed to violence became violent.
Is it their human nature?
No.
They have the potentiality for violence based upon their genetics, but it has to be that they are exposed to Violence in their environment.
They are abused or exposed to violence in their environment, and that means that they will most likely become violent.
What is their nature?
Well, can't really pin it down.
You can't change the genetics, but you certainly can change the environment.
Now, when it comes to socialists or communists, the idea that, you know, they're going to create a new Soviet man.
So you can harm a human being, right?
But as far as I understand it, there's no...
There's no environment that will make someone with an IQ of 80 become a genius.
Now, you can starve and beat and so on, and then somebody who's got an IQ of 150 or a potential IQ of 150 will end up with a lower functional IQ, if that makes sense.
Or you could say you take someone with an IQ of 150 potential, and then you have them raised by wolves, and then you find them when they're 15, and they never really learn how to speak language and speak words and And they can't, you know, how well are they going to do on an IQ test?
How well are they going to survive in society?
So you can pull people back down, you can bring people down, you can harm them, which is why I focus so much on parenting and all this kind of stuff to help people to flourish as best they can.
So that's when I say, what is human nature?
It's like saying, what is the shape of water?
Well, it depends what you pour it into.
That in terms of like You can harm, you can negatively impact people.
And that's why I'm talking about Roots of Human Violence.
However, when I criticize the leftists for saying, we can create some new man who has no self-interest, who will work for the collective no matter what, who will not care if people to the left and right of him aren't working, he will still work equally hard no matter what.
Now, the reason I criticize that is because that's anti-biological in its root.
Right?
So, all animals care how much resource, how many resources they're expending versus how much they're gaining back.
All animals really care about that.
And animals that don't care about that don't survive, don't flourish, their genes don't get passed along.
Animals in a tribe really care about Whether other animals in the tribe are pulling their fair share.
Right?
So if you are a, you're part of a jackal pack, everybody's going to go out and hunt.
Because it's obviously, it's to the advantage of each individual jackal to not go out and hunt, right?
Like each individual male jackal, if everyone who goes out and hunts just brings back and gives food to an adult male jackal just as if it was a baby or a breastfeeding mom or a mom jackal, Well, that wouldn't work because the incentive then to stay back and not hunt would be very high, right?
So, saying that we can change human beings to not care about how well or how hard other human beings are working who are working in a particular production line or something like that, that doesn't make any sense, right?
I mean, you can make a jackal super mean by traumatizing it and beating it and starving it and all that.
You can make a jackal mean.
That doesn't mean the jackals are innately mean.
But can you make a jackal not care whether the other jackals are coming hunting or not?
Well, no.
All the jackals have to come and hunt who are able to.
Because the jackals that don't are going to be getting free stuff, which is going to increase the incentive to not hunt.
And if nobody hunts, they all starve to death.
So there has to be a way of divvying up the work requirements and getting it all to be shared equally.
And so they're actually like when communists say, well, we'll get people who have no selfishness.
They don't care whether they work hard and are not rewarded or don't work hard and are rewarded and they won't care about whether other people work hard or not.
And even though there is this thing, you know, he who does not toil shall not eat and all that is not sort of how it worked out in practice.
So I think they're saying...
Be a non-biological entity.
Be an entity that has not had those biological imperatives for a long, long time in evolution.
And if you didn't have those biological imperatives to make sure the work was fairly shared, to make sure everyone was pulling their weight, then it would not be a pack animal.
You would not be case selected in that way.
Does that help at all?
Yeah, no, that's a really good clarification, and I sort of thought you might touch upon that.
And I know in the videos that I referenced in my question, I know, at least in the second video I referenced, you were talking specifically about immigration.
You actually preempted a follow-up question that I had because the reason this topic is important to me is because I hang around with minarchists pretty often and I explain to them,
or I debate with them and argue the merits of anarchy and voluntarism, and they will often agree with that, but they'll say, well, human nature is an impediment to having a voluntary society.
And I will present them with facts about the bomb in the brain and peaceful parenting and similar arguments.
And they'll say, well, that sounds a lot like the socialist arguments where we can just precondition through upbringing and government education.
We can sort of create this Soviet man that you mentioned.
And I think...
I think you're getting at the reason why that doesn't really work, and that's because it's biologically contradictory.
You don't have creatures that seek the minimum amount of gain with the maximum amount of effort.
It's not something that nature selects for, and I think that's a good point, and I'm glad you brought that up.
Yeah, and with regards to a voluntary or stateless or anarchic society, that is a recognition of human nature, that all animals wish to get the maximum resources with the least effort.
And if you create a state, that's what they're going to do.
And power corrupts, right?
And so it is a recognition of that basic fact, that everyone's lazy and greedy.
And there's nothing wrong with that.
Lazy and greedy is fantastic.
That's why we have remote controls.
Rather, when I was a kid, you had to get up and turn the dial yourself.
So I have nothing wrong with that.
It's fantastic, right?
But you combine the laziness and greediness with state, and you have a huge, huge problem.
And that is going to continue to escalate because, yeah, everybody wants something for nothing.
And there's nothing wrong with pursuing that.
We all want more efficient farming, which is why we have combine harvesters rather than having everyone out there in the field.
So it is a recognition of human nature that power corrupts, violent power corrupts, and having a state at the center of society is always going to cause disasters.
Right.
And on top of that, you could also make the argument, and this is basically the classical liberal argument, and Matt Ridley makes this argument in his book too, but it's really more of an Aristotelian or Darwinian argument, that exchange and peaceful cooperation is a defining characteristic of human nature.
In fact, if you read The Rational Optimist, He points out that the Neanderthals actually had bigger brains.
They had a bigger brain size to body ratio than Homo sapiens did.
But there was some missing ingredients that caused the Neanderthals to die out, and he argues that it was the The emergence of exchange, which was a uniquely homo sapien or human phenomenon that allowed human beings to flourish.
And I think it's just, it's empirically and demonstratively true that human beings are peaceful cooperators.
And John Stuart Mill touches upon this, too, in his book on liberty.
The state of society is not much worse than it could have been, and he credits that with the emergence of rationality and discussion, and that's sort of his justification for free speech and free thought.
But...
But yeah, I think the whole Locke vs.
Hobbes debate about human nature, is it good or bad?
Well, that's sort of maybe missing the mark a little bit.
It is evident that human beings are peaceful cooperators, and it's not really possible to construct or devise a human being that would not operate according to those incentives.
Yeah, now, to me, an interesting question, which I don't have any answers to, but I know is being raised in various areas, is the degree to which culture may be biological.
Right, so when I was a kid, there was sort of a famous statement about the Japanese, inscrutable, right?
I couldn't figure out what they were thinking and so on.
And is that cultural or is it biological?
When it comes to...
Europeans.
Is the European culture merely a set of ideas, or are there biological components to it as well?
And I don't know the answer to any of this, and I know that there's a few people working on it who I'm sort of keeping track on to try and figure this out.
But the fact that Western culture, the positive aspects of Western culture, which I've talked about before, you know, equality for women, separation of church and state, free market, scientific thinking, free speech, all that kind of stuff, It has not really been very transferable to other cultures.
And there is a question, which I hope people are working on, although it would be pretty, it'd be challenging stuff to work on, to put it mildly.
But is there the possibility that culture has biological components to it?
It would certainly explain why multiculturalism doesn't really work very well.
And it would explain why cultures don't tend to transfer from one place to another.
But it is, you know, it's a challenging thesis.
And I know a few people who are working on that, which if I find out more information as they move forward, we'll certainly share it here.
But that is not something I'd ever really thought of before.
But it has been raised in certain circles.
And I think it's an interesting hypothesis.
And I would be interested in seeing how that plays out and What standards of proof would be used for that?
I'm not even sure of either, but that's something to mull over sort of in the back of your head.
And if people know more information about this, please send it in because this interplay between biology and philosophy and ideas and culture and all of that I find to be a very fertile ground because, you know, it's so non-controversial.
It's, you know, naturally draws me like a moth to a flame.
So that is another question that I don't have any particular answer to and certainly was not on my mind.
When I was making the video, that was a recording of a speech I gave in Detroit at a Men's Rights Conference some time back.
That was a really good speech, by the way.
I enjoyed it.
I agree.
Thank you.
I was pleased with it.
All right.
Well, thanks very much for your question.
Move on to the next caller.
But a real pleasure to chat with you.
And feel free to come back anytime.
All right.
Thanks, Stefan.
Thank you.
Alright, up next we have Nicole.
Nicole wrote in and said, If I want to be a hero and help others, I should have heroic traits.
What does it take to be a hero in your own sphere of influence, and what can history tell us about common heroic traits and how to obtain them?
That's from Nicole.
Hello.
Hey Nicole, how you doing?
I'm doing well, thank you.
Alright.
It's a good question.
Can you tell me a little bit more about What you mean by heroic or heroism?
Well, and actually, I was just thinking about that, like how to define it.
Because in my mind, when I think of a hero, I think of, you know, like...
Me!
Well, I definitely admire people who are, you know, honest and spoken out, especially when it's not popular.
I think of Like a George Orwellian 1984 society and that person standing up and saying, everyone, big brother cannot take care of you!
Like the grand hero, but also that there's, oh my goodness, and this quote might escape me, but, you know, it's that idea of, you know, history is also written by the people who win, right?
And so they always paint themselves as Well, sorry, except modern history is written by the people who whine, but that's a different topic.
So, you know, people who might be like pro-Hillary would be like, you know, idolized.
Like, oh, she's our heroine and all that.
And I would argue that she would not be.
But I guess what I'm looking for is our...
Are those who, I guess, are attached to virtue and stand up for truth and virtue in spite of the rest of the world just going in a complete different direction.
Right.
Well, what does it take to be a hero in your sphere of influence?
What can history tell us about common heroic traits?
Well, the problem, of course, is that Heroism often meant violent service to the man in charge.
Right.
You know, I played Macbeth.
Oh boy.
And I couldn't help but notice, and it made the part a little challenging to play at times, but I couldn't help but notice that Macbeth has just, the play opens, he's been out there cutting down all of the peasants and mowing down all of the people and killing for the king and He's a hero and has no problem with that and sleeps just fine, but the moment he acts against the king, ooh, ooh, terrible, now he can't sleep.
Kill the commonlings, no problem.
Kill the king.
So heroic usually generally means somebody who's willing to subjugate their survival instinct for the sake of hopefully coming back in a uniform with functioning balls so that he can make babies.
That's generally what heroism has meant in the past.
Right.
I think that the courage that is required for heroism these days is much more subtle and more elusive for people at times.
And having consistency in the facts, having consistency and honor and integrity in the presentation of information that is really, really important for people to have.
Really, really important for people to have.
The more important the information is that people need to have, the more people will object to you sharing it, right?
So, you know, race and IQ, human biodiversity, male victimization in modern society, hypergamy, I mean, voluntary societies, voluntary families, voluntary relationships, blah, blah, blah.
These are all essential pieces of information and arguments for people to have, which means that you're probably going to get the most flack for bringing them.
As they say, you only shoot at the airplane when it's over the target, right?
Right.
Right.
And so I think that it's just gritting your teeth and saying, I know I'm going to take some flack for putting this information out here, but it's really, really important to do it.
And this is sort of a long chain of people throughout history who have worked hard to get information out at risk of sort of personal ease of mind at times, or personal peace of mind at times.
And...
It's actually, it's not that bad, you know?
I mean, it's not that bad.
You think it's going to be bad.
Maybe occasionally there'd be times where, like, ooh, I don't know about this one.
And it's like, eh, it's fine.
It's fine.
Because I think that if you're coming at the information from a good place, like, I really, really want to help the world.
I really, really want to help people.
I really, really want to make...
I want families better and I want parents and children to get along better and I want people to have more freedom and I want facts and reality and truth and honor and integrity and virtue and rationality and all of that to spread from a good place.
And I think if you're coming from a sort of a good place, like you want the world to be a better place and you care about people, it's really hard, I think, for people to...
Attack you and just not look like douchebags.
Does that make any sense?
It does.
Though I'll add, so this is maybe adding a little bit more personal because, you know, I want to have, you know, those traits.
And so I've been kind of steadily dipping my toe in.
But with everything happening, I'm like, I don't know, I guess I'm just going to have to jump into the pool.
And being, well, I'll get into all of the, maybe the identity politics.
So You can feel my pain.
So I am a, you know, a black woman who's maybe libertarian-leaning-esque, right?
And I remember the first time I just casually mentioned to my family in 2008 that I was gonna switch to Ron Paul.
And it was like a big freakout, right?
It was like, How big?
Give me the volume.
Well, okay, so my family is involved in democratic politics.
And I decided to wear my Ron Paul Revolution t-shirt to a dinner with my dad and some of his friends who are also in democratic politics.
And the first thing they said was, A Republican, you know, and Republicans just means evil, devils, just all that, right?
I'm like, no, but you have to understand his policies and when he talks about, and they're like, well, where's he from?
And I'm like, he's from Texas.
And they're like, a white Republican from Texas?
I think in their head, I don't know.
It was just like a big nuclear explosion.
And I got the lecture of no matter what he says or what he agrees, he must somehow be racist.
And that also...
Sorry, he must just somehow be racist because he's from Texas and he's white and he's a Republican?
Yes.
Right, right.
That's good.
It sounds like they were very curious.
Right.
Tell me more, Nicole.
That's very interesting.
I've not heard this perspective before.
So he just must be racist.
And then...
The other part was that it was so crucial that there was a black man running for president who had a chance and that I would not, that I would look back on history, that I threw this moment away and they channeled the apparitions of Martin Luther King and, you know, Malcolm X and all that condemning me, all that sort of thing.
And then I even had a friend who told me, because she was very surprised by all of this.
Wait, surprised by all of what?
By my position.
But she was willing to have the policy debate.
So we kind of went back and forth with policy.
But she was also somehow convinced that Ron Paul was just racist.
And then she ended up making this one statement that really...
Threw me for a loop, and our relationship really hasn't been the same since, but she said, so this was in 2012, so further along, and so we were talking about Obama and some of the drones and the foreign policy and everything like that, and she said, well, you know what, I would rather have, you know, someone in office who maybe has made, you know, like a few foreign policy errors than someone who's racist.
And I was just like, what just happened?
So she's fine with, you know, hundreds of thousands of innocent Muslims dying in the Middle East.
Right.
But heaven forbid that somebody who could be called racist.
Okay.
Yes.
And so since then, and maybe this is because of my history, you know, I've been a little more like stealth undercover, right?
Like, in my sphere, because I live far away from my family now and all that.
And so I'm kind of, you know, not offended by Trump.
Well, I kind of would probably vote for him, possibly.
And I, like, I don't even think...
You know, so we just went on vacation with my dad and...
And all that.
And, you know, I just let all the conversations happen around me, but I'm like, I don't think I could even begin to bring up that as a possibility.
Oh, you mean, so Trump is worse than Ron Paul?
So, orange is worse than white.
That's what you're saying, right?
Okay.
And...
Yeah, it would just be really bad.
But even just in general when it comes to even personal choices or decisions or things with my family because there's, of course, a lot of family dysfunction.
And I tend to be the fixer.
But it's always been in the get the next five seconds of peace kind of thing.
Right.
I know that planet pretty well, so yeah, I'm with you there.
Versus really saying, okay, now look, you're just being ridiculous.
And if you say you really don't want this when you talk to me and I say, well, maybe...
Then you go do the opposite and then it's like...
Oh, Nicole, help!
So, anyhow.
So, I've become, I guess, a little more quieter.
Like, at first I would never say anything.
Then I did my brazen Ron Paul t-shirt, big explosion, then other things, and it got a little quieter.
But my husband's the opposite.
My husband...
Just, he has no filter.
So everyone looked at my husband and they're just like, Nicole, how can you live with such a man?
And I'm like, he's so great.
He's a great, you know, wonderful person.
He's fine.
But there's, you know, but there is also...
Because that same year that I had my Ron Paul t-shirt was the same year that my husband and I kind of started dating, so they also kind of blamed him a little bit.
But it's really not his fault.
It's his best friend's fault.
Look, as long as it's a man's fault, I'm satisfied.
As long as it's not your fault as a lady, I am perfectly happy to feel like I'm in comfortable territory.
But, you know, so anyhow, I'm kind of rambling around the bush here.
But I also, you know, my children are getting older, and they're more verbal, and they're more aware of things.
And so, you know, they'll bring up, like, casual stuff.
And it's like, well, mommy said.
And then I'm like, oh, snap, I can't lie and be like, I didn't say that.
And I'm like, I don't want to be a hypocrite.
So I need to...
And it feels weird telling your kids, this is our little guilty family secret.
We are interested in the free market, and we have some sympathy for Republican positions.
Don't tell anyone.
Right.
Don't tell me, Daddy.
That's right.
Do not tell anyone.
We will be ostracized.
Right.
We won't tell you.
Yeah, no, that's that.
Yeah, you don't want to.
Yeah, absolutely.
I get that.
Yeah.
So there's that.
So I'm wondering...
From a personal standpoint, too, if it's possible for me to, I guess, kind of gain that courage where...
I mean, still have everything, obviously, you know, coming from a good place, but how do I get over the hump of the consequences on the other side?
Because I know you were saying it's not that bad.
It's really not that bad.
And I'm like...
Well, no.
I mean, it's...
Maybe for me.
I mean, I can understand that things might be a little bit more exciting for you.
Okay, do you think that facts would matter in this debate?
Only to maybe like a few individuals.
And do you think your family would respond to any sort of, any of the facts about what's happened to blacks under Obama's reign?
No.
I think the initial reaction would be to excuse it or to say that just can't be true and then not do the legwork themselves.
Yeah, no, I get that.
But I mean, of course, everybody reacts.
A lot of people react to this kind of new facts.
Recoil, right?
But, you know, after a while, you know, water wears away stone kind of thing.
You can just sort of be Be patient and all of that, right?
Right, right.
So here's a couple of facts that I would say out there to my black brethren and sister in the world, right?
So this is under Obama.
This is from earlier this year.
Seasonally adjusted labor force participation rate for black Americans across the board is down 2.4% from 63.2% to 61.7%.
Labor force participation rate.
Well, that's not good.
The percentage of black Americans struggling below the poverty line has increased from 25.8% in 2009 to 26.2% in 2014.
Real medium income among black households has gone down 1.5%.
The really shocking one is the number of black food stamp participants has exploded.
From 7.4 million to 11.7 million.
That's almost 60% increase.
Almost a 60% increase.
From Obama's oath of office through the fourth quarter of 2015, the percentage of black Americans who own homes crashed from 46.1% to 41.9%.
percent down nine point one percent.
Wow.
And it's not good.
Minority households' medium income fell 9% between 2010 and 2013, compared to a drop of only 1% for whites.
Minority households' medium income fell 9%.
I'm sorry to use the word minority.
It's a cheesy word, right?
Because, you know, you're not a minority to you.
It's a cheesy word, but this is how it's reported.
So I apologize for that.
So, it is pretty bad, the wealth gap.
The median non-white family today has a net worth of just $18,100, almost a fifth lower than it was when Mr.
Obama took office.
White median wealth has gone up by 1% to $142,000.
In 2009, white households were seven times richer than their black counterparts.
That gap is now eightfold.
Both in relative and absolute terms, blacks are doing worse under Mr.
Obama.
And these numbers apply to all non-whites, right?
Including the hyper-performing Asian, right?
It's crazy.
Wow.
If you just look at black net worth, white households are 13 times wealthier than black households.
From 2010 to 2013, white household median wealth Wealth increased 2.4%.
Hispanic families went down 14%.
Blacks' net worth fell from $16,600 to $11,000.
A three-year drop of 34% in three years.
That's a steeper decline than 2007 to 2010.
Which was the depth of the recession, right?
So in 2007 to 2010, blacks' net worth fell 13.5%.
But from 2010 to 2013, it went 34%.
Now, some people say, ah, well, you know, but the black unemployment is down.
It's like, well, yes, because labor participation is down, sure.
Because they ain't looking for works.
And you ain't looking for work, you don't get counted, right?
And we even...
So kind of just an on-the-ground view kind of commentary because my husband and I, we moved from kind of a suburban area to the hood, as you call it, intentionally with some other families to try to at least try to be I don't know,
maybe be a little lamp of, you know, virtual value, community help, resource, network, and all of that.
And I remember, again, talking with another friend about Black Lives Matter.
And she's, like, overseas right now.
But anyhow.
And she started talking about it, you know, kind of the assumption, you know, It's like all black people love Black Lives Matter.
And so I kind of squeaked in there.
I was like, well, you know, I have some criticism, you know, and all that.
I just want a new movement to restore the black family called Black Wives Matter.
Right, right.
Exactly.
And I was talking to her about how even just some of the rhetoric and what it does to the mindset of, you know, just The kids in the community that I talk to or have cut my grass, you know, and this and that and the other.
And she's like, but no, it's really bigger.
It's about policy.
It's about this and it's about that.
And I'm like, you know, all these kids here are, you know, pigs in a blanket fry like bacon.
And there's, I mean, they're already in, you know, a lot of them, unfortunately, are...
In households where there's not a lot of, you know, stability, we've had like three people asked to, you know, live with us at varying points.
You know, all these kind of different things.
No, I don't actually know too much about that.
You mean like kids who need a more stable environment want to come and live with you and your husband and your kids?
Right.
So there's been...
Like relatives?
Kind of cousins?
No, no.
These are just kids that we got to go on the street.
So what my husband used to do...
Was when we came down, he would take a bunch of kids out to play basketball.
Like, we're just gonna, you know, hoop, chat, and talk, you know, all that.
And then some of them, you know, got, you know, intertwined into, you know, to our lives.
Because then when it wasn't, the weather wasn't good to play outside, then they came in and, you know, cleared out my basement and I made them sloppy jails, you know, all that kind of thing.
And so you would hear these stories that were just...
It's just really depressing.
I think one of the craziest ones was there is a young man.
Well, he's a teenager.
He's much older.
He's older now.
He's kind of a few years back.
But he also had a brother.
And, you know, his mother was tied to the state.
And And not being very honest with the state either.
So, the brother, I guess when he was younger, was said to have some type of mental illness.
And...
But then it wasn't really the case.
I mean, he's, you know, pretty articulate, you know, does okay in school and all that.
I just wanted to mention, you're really not allowed to refer to Blacks as articulate.
You may not be aware of this, but it's just very, very important.
I mean, but he's, I mean, overall, you know, just...
It's fine from all we can see.
He's a teenager now, but what his mother had been asking him to do was every year when they would go to see the caseworker, she would ask him to pretend like he was dumb or had some issue.
I remember this from someone else's show years ago.
I think it was Brett Venant's School Sucks, but he was talking about how And you can get additional payments from the government if your child has some sort of problem, mental health or disability or learning problem.
Is it something along those lines?
Yes, I think it's like an SSI disability type of thing.
Yeah, that's it.
And so he recently was like, you know, I'm not going to do it.
And she was, you know, very upset.
And, you know, put him on punishment.
Got upset with the older brother.
And then got upset with my husband.
Because it's like, you don't care about my family.
You don't care about my kids.
If you cared, you would, you know, make sure we had the money and all the stuff and whatnot.
I don't know.
How about you care about my tax bill?
And, I mean, it's just totally like...
So I was trying to, you know, communicate this to her that...
The, that I think there's this kind of weird divide and gap because, you know, Black Lives Matter is also really popular on, you know, college campuses and all that.
And that there's this rare gap between the, I'm not sure if you would call them like Black intellectuals or, you know, kind of however you would call it, versus, you know,
when you Live every day and you're Seeing the impact of, you know, fathers not being in, you know, young boys' lives and not trusting of police officers so crimes don't get, you know, reported and stuff doesn't get shared.
And it's just very common to be like, oh, yeah, someone just went in my garage and stole my lawnmower.
And so you just get all your lawnmowers from the pawn shop.
So hopefully you're not out too much every summer.
Or, you know, just like these other varying things.
And that if you really wanted to help and encourage the Black community, especially in urban culture, right?
Because this isn't all just Black people in my neighborhood.
I mean, there's like, you know, there's white poor kids too, but they kind of adopt that urban culture.
And that it's really, you know, devastating.
And I mean, even the ones that my husband kind of talks to and works with now, I mean, he mostly talks with teenagers.
So they kind of have like two years to like flip their whole lives upside down.
And sometimes it's, you know, hard to really...
Get to a point where you're, you know, 18 and able to fully be independent because you've, you know, lived in such a lifestyle for so long.
And I think a lot about, you know, when helping hurts and, you know, especially when I feel really offended a lot by helping.
By leftists who I think just view us as like a voting block, right?
So we'll just say that all these people are racist.
We'll say, we're here to help you.
And then, I mean, all those statistics you just read off and you're worse.
But then if, you know, someone says like, hey, this is not, this is not helpful.
This is destroying you.
This is, you know, eating up alive, whether it's, you know, if it's a white person, then it's just, oh, you don't understand or you're racist or We only like white people who, um, apologize for their privilege and, you know, all that.
And then there's the, you know, other side is if you are a minority and you are black and you say, you know, Hey, this is wrong.
It's like, uncle Tom, uncle Tom, you love the plantation.
And it's like, you, you ask Negro.
Yeah, right.
You're, you know, all that.
Um, And that's another thing that makes me so frustrated with the left, too, is that they've taken blackness and they've made it, and they've given it this definition that it's not, or that doesn't have to be, I should say.
What do you mean?
So give me the definition they've given it, and then we'll see.
Well, what I mean by that is, like, you have to, you know, love big government You have to be, you know, very supportive of, you know, handouts and all that.
Oh, and you have to believe that the big barrier is always sort of institutional white racism and like, okay.
White people, white boogie men everywhere.
You know, I've got to tell you, sometimes when I pass by the mirror, I get that same feeling.
Right.
And I mean, just...
Where, and so when they say, so when you look at someone like, you know, I guess a Larry Elder or someone, I'm trying to think of other conservatives that are black.
It's like, oh no, they're not really black.
Don't be like them.
Like, you just want to...
So black is not a biological thing anymore.
Now it's an ideology.
Right.
Right?
Like, you can become non-black...
By becoming a Republican.
And it's funny because the ironic statement I like to say back, partially because of all the politics around some of the Black Lives Matter movement in police, is I'll be like, you know, they'll say, oh, well, you're not really black.
I'll be like, tell that to a cop.
Or, I don't know, a little sorry.
It would be interesting if you and your husband turn out to be Republicans and you give birth to a white baby, that would actually be kind of proof of that, right?
It actually happened in here.
But yeah, so I feel all of that.
And so maybe it's because of the election or my Facebook feed or, you know, whatever.
It's It's like all that's building up and I want to be like champion for, I don't know, Black community, but will not probably be received at all.
I mean, to talk about the value of family, how we should be, you know, treating our children, the values we should be putting in them.
Even when I think about just our educational system, I mean, the state itself is obviously a big problem.
But even to the level of investment, and at least I can speak for my particular, you know, relationships that I've had with some of these, you know, basketball kids.
You know, the investment that their parents make in them for their education.
There's this one guy who, unfortunately, I can't remember.
I'm such a terrible quoter, but lived a long time ago, like in India.
He said the best university was his mother's lap.
And...
Was his mother's what?
Was his mother's lap.
Sorry.
And that, you know, there's just not that...
That same amount of, you know, quality time and this and that and the other.
Anywho.
And wanting that message to really being, you know, received or palatable.
And then again, having the courage to do so, to still want to be, to still feel like, okay, I'm a part of my community or I'm a part of my family.
But I guess I might just have to let go of...
I suppose.
I don't know.
No, listen, I mean, I can really, like, your passion and your sensitivity to your community, I get that.
I mean, I really, really understand that.
You want blacks to do better, and you want things to improve, and who doesn't, right?
I mean, yay, fantastic.
What a great approach.
And it is tough, you know, and Trust me, white people are annoying as hell, too.
When it comes to reason and evidence, it's a challenge, right?
But if the community as a whole is like, you know, big government and handouts and reparations and all that kind of stuff, if that is sort of the black identity in a lot of ways, and you're trying to sort of bring reason and evidence and facts and all of that kind of stuff to the table, and you can be rejected...
And your facts and evidence can be rejected.
Right.
Then that is really frustrating because you know that you have great things to say to the black community that could really be helpful.
Right.
Really, really, really be helpful.
And I've said this on the show before, Nicole, and I apologize for repeating it, but I feel like it can't be repeated often enough, right?
So in 2012, the U.S. Census Bureau released a report studying the history of marriage in the United States.
African Americans aged 35 and older were more likely to be married than white Americans from 1890 until sometime around the 1960s.
Right.
Not only did they swap places during the 1960s, but in 1980, the number of never married African Americans began a staggering climb from about 10% to more than 25% by 2010.
Now, there is incarceration numbers and a decline in 1980 with sort of the drug and crack epidemic and the tougher sentencing laws and so on.
But, man, for now, what is it?
Out of wedlock births, the African-American community is 73% or something like that.
I mean, it's brutal.
And the harm that this does, at every level, I've gone into a bunch of different times, so people can check that out.
I've got the truth about single motherhood and all that kind of stuff.
But from 1890, African Americans aged 35 and older are more likely to be married than white Americans.
1890, it wasn't a paradise back then for African Americans.
Far from it, right?
But if that can be recaptured, that dedication to the family.
I mean, it's an old quote and it's still powerful though.
Was it Walter Williams who said that the welfare state has done what slavery couldn't do, what Jim Crow couldn't do, what segregation couldn't do, which is to destroy the black family.
Yeah.
And this focus on the solutions coming from the state is like an alcoholic thinking that the solution to his marital problems are at the bottom of the next bottle.
Right.
And of course, you want to get that across.
How do you get it across when there is such an investment into a particular way of looking at things?
Right.
If you can, I'll tell you that, pretty heroic.
Pretty damn heroic.
Yes.
I mean, because then I guess it really boils down to getting to the underneath of that philosophical discussion and especially I'm thinking about the previous caller who talked about, you know, this idea of rights and it's like I have a right to housing and I have a right to this amount of food and this amount of clothes and then it gets You know, morphed and turned into something else.
I mean, and not that everyone is even necessarily, you know, abusive because I've, you know, also had folks who were like, okay, I'm on this now, but I need to do better and I'm going to try to get a job and all that.
And so there's like two moms that I know who did that, who cut off the welfare and got jobs, thankfully.
But that There's such this attachment to being owed something.
And sometimes it even gets wrapped up in the argument of slavery, like Black people were treated so horrific in America that we are now owed by the state all these benefits and we are owed equal outcomes versus opportunities and You know, things of that nature.
And I was reading Pedagogy of Press.
I haven't finished it because I think he's kind of maybe like a socialist-y leaning, but he talks about, oh my goodness, what's his name?
Paulo Ferrer.
But he talks about how the people group that was oppressed or is oppressed needs to deal in objective reality.
And if you don't deal in objective reality, it just becomes my side versus his side and this kind of free-for-all grabbing type of thing.
This is a terrible paraphrase, but kind of the impression I got.
And that I guess, I don't know, it just has to start, I guess maybe start there, because I just don't think there's a fundamental understanding, and maybe this is partially our education system, of how the world actually works, of how economics works.
I mean, you can say all day, like, we should all, everyone, free college and unicorns, farting rainbows everywhere!
Um, but, but it's just not feasible or sustainable.
And then when you ask for those things and they don't work and then, well, it's, you know, everyone should get in the NBA. Right.
How's that going to work?
Exactly.
Like I would love, like, it is not fair.
I couldn't even jump when I was young.
Right.
I'm a five for a black woman who can't jump, but I deserve to play.
Yeah.
Equal outcomes, man.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar got nothing on me.
I got me some springy steps, some slinkies in my shoes.
I'm ready to go.
Right?
So, I mean, we all understand that, right?
I mean, everybody gets a TV show.
Everyone gets on the basketball team.
We all know that that would destroy television and basketball.
And everyone gets a free college degree.
Well, it just means college standards are going to have to crash and it won't be worth the paper it's printed on.
And there's this funny thing, too, which is...
It's almost like a desire for vengeance, which is like, well, the government treated us really badly under slavery and Jim Crow and segregation and all that kind of stuff.
Absolutely true.
But now, the government is going to make it all better.
It's like, nope, same institution.
Same institution.
Same bad group of people with bad intent.
You know, I'm going to make the mafia do better this time.
It's like, still the mafia.
Right.
Still the mafia.
Not going to work.
Right.
Not going to work.
And letting go of that desire for vengeance, you know, that's a Christian thing that I find quite powerful, that I've really sort of been, I've meditated on at various points in my life, just, ah, let it go, right?
You just, you got to let go of that desire to get vengeance and to get people to pay, especially if it's multi-generational.
You know, because no, I mean, as we all know, it's an old argument, like no slave owner is alive now and all that kind of stuff.
And This idea that, well, we're going to get back what was taken from us by using the same agency and methodology, which is the government's power to initiate force, using the same agency and methodology that robbed us we're now going to use for restitution.
Ooh.
Trying to find a way to let go of that is a real challenge.
That's so true.
And so I'm a Christian, and...
It was one of those things that, the letting go of vengeance, that even started on a personal level.
And I think as a whole, something worth, that everyone who's maybe had childhood trauma and things going through.
And maybe this is even kind of a weird connection to another caller.
I think, not another caller, another interview that you had before with...
The other Black guy, I can't remember his name, but, you know, I had fatherhood issues, or father issues.
And so my parents had divorced when I was, you know, really young, but it was, like, not civil at all.
Like, violent, crazy, terrible, horrendous, and all that.
And then my father in general just had a lot of other anger issues, whatnot, just very...
Looming, leering type of figure.
And I just had this whole identity crisis as a result.
And so I went like headlong.
So I've been on like, I guess maybe the previous Black Lives Matter.
I'm not sure, guess what you call it.
But I was on this whole like back to Africa thing once I got out of the house.
And I was like, I'm going to find my roots.
I'm going to find out who I am!
And got all into this perverted version of, I guess, black nationalism that really made everyone else the enemy.
And there's that moral kind of superiority that comes with being a victim and saying, you know, like, I deserve, I'm owed on this, I'm that, that you kind of get.
And after Becoming a Christian and really having to, like, examine all that, you know, aspect of what was going on inside of me.
When I got that, I was really able to make peace not just with, you know, I guess just my personal history, but I guess kind of the history itself.
As a whole.
And I guess like an internal kind of thing.
Because I have younger siblings who are like much younger than me because of my dad and my stepmother.
But who are kind of going through their own journey in that regard.
And one of whom is also kind of falling into like the I guess the perverted black nationalism aspect.
And so I'm trying to like...
And I'm sorry to interrupt, but the black nationalism is the idea that blacks would get their own...
Right.
That we should just segregate, be our own people, get our own stuff.
White people are...
But then there's also that underlying theme of, you know, everyone agrees white people are devils and, you know, deal with white people and all that stuff.
I've had my whitey limit for the day and, you know, all that sort of thing.
I don't actually know.
Oh, no, you don't.
I absolutely...
I accept it.
And...
Go on.
I've got a question or two, but please go on with what you're saying.
So I'm trying to draw them back from that too.
So, I don't know, I guess, and I'm trying to think of where to even land here.
Well, okay, if you gather your thoughts there, let me just ask you a question.
And I'm really, really sorry, like heart to heart, incredibly sorry for...
The aggression that you experienced and witnessed it with your father.
That's very scary stuff, and I feel that coming through, and I'm very sorry for all of that.
There's harsh stuff to live through.
But here's the thing that is always interesting to me, which is the person who scared you, the person who was alarming to you, was a black man, right?
Your father.
Mm-hmm.
And I talked about this with the Colin Kaepernick video a while back ago, but it's like...
How does that...
Is there a way, Nicole, that that shifts from your father to...
It seems like it shifts almost from your father to white people.
The problem is not this scary, dangerous guy in my house.
The problem is white people.
Like, is there a...
It's not the most obvious thing for it to displace to, if that makes sense.
Right.
And it's kind of a weird one, too.
I think...
What happens, at least in my case, is that I had all my, you know, childhood baggage.
And when I went off to college, I wanted to be this new person and find myself and all that.
And so I took a...
Like an African history type class and all that.
And you meet people and you start socializing.
And you tend to get sucked into, you know, this is who you are.
And this is who you belong to.
These are your enemies.
These people are, you know, the problem.
And we are champions and, you know, all that.
And like these overcomers and that whole sort of thing.
And so...
Um, so I think part of it is because of that fracture of, of not feeling connected that you kind of go to, hmm, well, there's one thing I do know, the color of my skin.
Let's see, you know, let's see what's, what's up with that.
And, um, And I think, unfortunately, what the sad part is, is in the college space, when you kind of get out of your house and you go to that environment, it's not really an environment to kind of help you deal with those two things separately, right?
It's like, oh, you realize you're Black?
We realize you're Black.
Let me tell you all the things that go along.
With being Black and what that means in this culture.
And because the college campuses are so leftist dominant, I mean, even the counseling is, you know, very, you know, skewed.
I remember just talking to a counselor about some experiences I had with an ex-boyfriend and they tried to, well, they did convince me at the time and now I have a better perspective on it, but they tried to They told me that, you know, I was statutory raped and that he was a bad guy.
You know, so, I mean, I got, like, all of it.
Like, I got the feminism, the black stuff.
It was just all this big, bad mush.
And so when I got out of it...
And it's compelling, right?
And it's compelling.
It's fair.
It's really compelling.
It gives you structure.
It gives you mythology.
It gives you...
It gives you enemies.
It gives you victimhood.
It gives you a passion.
It gives you a goal.
I mean, there's a lot of structure in that, if I understand it correctly.
Yes.
I mean, it's a whole package.
And you're like, great.
I can take this.
I can work with this.
And this is like my foundation and my rock now.
I didn't have one before.
And you have companions.
And I have companions.
Right.
You have people who are going to work with you, fight the good fight, and make a better world for groups and...
Of course, the price for that is you can't really question stuff.
But other than that, it's like, boom, you've got a whole group, right?
Right.
And I even compare it to maybe an extreme comparison.
But when I think about, you know, like the Crips and the Bloods and the gangs and the cliques and, you know, all that, it's to, it fills this void, this vacuum for identity, connection, and I guess some value because you feel like you're a part of something that, now, in the other sense, in the gang sense, I guess, for, you know, negative, but, I mean, it's, It's very similar.
No, and I respect the power of that.
We really do.
I mean, we all need a narrative.
We all need a story.
We all need something that makes our lives not just these empty, repetitive days, but gives us a bigger sense of purpose and perspective.
And it sounds like you landed in a lot better place, Nicole, with Christianity than you did with some of this stuff, at least in the long run.
Yeah.
I mean, and...
Because I know, you know...
Because even with that, I was like, oh, should I say I'm a Christian?
Because I know you're an atheist.
But I know we can have honest conversations here, because I do respect your position and your argument.
Did you really think that was going to be the controversial part of our conversation?
Oh my goodness, about the atheism thing.
No, I mean, as I've said, I have a massive amount of additional respect for Christianity these days, mostly because of really nice Christians like you, but no, that's totally fine to chat about.
And that was something that really, I mean, That really kind of reframed my sense of morality because in those movements, you know, the means justify the end, right?
There is no right or long as long as we get our ideology manifested.
Yes.
Yeah, I mean, that's the lefty thing.
There are no standards other than success.
Right.
And so once it flipped to, you know, no, there is right and wrong before the end, right?
It just, and, you know, and it takes some level of, you know, humility, you know, across the board.
I mean, especially intellectual humility to be like, oh, wow, I spent all this money and now I have to, like, undo all my...
All my training and go to the library and read something else.
And just out of curiosity, and it's a big curiosity, so hopefully indulge me, but what was the moment where you felt the call to Jesus rather than...
Malcolm X or whatever.
I mean, where was...
Was it a slow thing?
Was it like a boom?
Was it a beam of sunlight hitting you while you were napping?
Like, what happened to cause this kind of...
It's a huge transition.
And it's fascinating to me because, I mean, I remember my big transitions in life and I'm always curious to call how other people make that switch.
Well, it was the best of both.
So, I started off...
It started off slow.
I had met this young woman who...
Through dance, through a dance class we had to take.
And we were talking, we found out we both wrote poetry.
So I was like, oh, well, we should, like, have a poetry session.
And so I go first.
And, like, all of my poetry is, like, dark and depressive and, like, rage, you know, all that.
And so she's, so I, like, finished and she's like...
Wow, that's great use of language, you know, right?
But then she goes, and it's like about all these virtues and love.
And then I start feeling like really embarrassed, right?
And so, but she was a Christian.
And so that's kind of where she got that from.
And was she nice too?
Those nice Christians messing up all my prejudice.
You know, they're just like, damn it, people, can't you just be a little meaner?
You're really, really messing with my calibration here.
My compass is spinning.
I don't know what's going on.
You know, this relentless positivity and niceness of some of these Christians, it's like this gravity well.
It's like, you know, it's like those, you ever see those little, they're like simulators in science.
You roll a coin and it's supposed to be a black hole.
It goes down this little hole after a while.
That's what the nice Christians are.
It's like, you can't fight the gravity well of niceness.
Well, and because that was, because I was very, um...
Before, I wouldn't necessarily call myself an atheist.
Like, I just was angry at God for, you know, that was probably legit.
And so we ended up having, you know, different conversations over time.
And then that summer, I went to LA for an internship.
And I had started kind of Being fooled a little bit, but right before then, I was like, you know, bump it.
I'm so angry.
I'm just angry.
And I went to LA and was just kind of like this big well of hedonism.
And then one day I was just like, what am I doing?
I'm just having a grown-up temper tantrum.
I decided to end my internship and take summer classes in philosophy and then by the end of that class I went kind of back to my room and so this is like maybe the Paul bright light kind of thing but I just started yelling and screaming I was like cursing at God and all that stuff and whatnot And then it was like, I just had this like epiphany moment.
It was like the strange thing.
Just like Jesus.
And I got all this revelation on where my anger and hostility was coming from.
And then all this stuff that I was learning about love and virtue was like flooding in and everything else.
And I just started crying and I was just weeping.
And I was just like a broken person.
I was like, you know what?
I kind of have two choices right now.
And the choices weren't even like a heaven and hell sort of thing.
It was just, you know, I can, you know, live my life in relationship with God, you know, understanding, you know, truth, beauty, and goodness, you know, all that sort of thing, and getting back the pieces of my life together, and it's not the other.
Or I can live my life without God and just be this, like, Crazy person who thinks they know everything, and I really don't.
But you know you don't, but then you're just going to decide to just, I'm going to just keep pretending anyway, like Jesse Jackson.
Let me stop.
Everyone, but Nicole, everyone is supposed to crack and everyone is supposed to break.
That's how the light gets in.
Right, right.
It's true.
We're all raised in these distorted fashions with propaganda and nonsense and lies and misdirections, and sometimes with people who have the very best of intentions, but...
And to break out of that distorted mind trap, we all have to break.
We all have to crack.
And that's how the bird gets out of the egg, and that's how the light gets in.
We're all supposed to break.
And people spend a lot of their lives resisting being broken, resisting cracking, because there's the arrogance.
This is how I'm supposed to be.
This is the shape of the world.
I am a mere shadow cast by the tree of knowledge.
I can't change it.
And then we crack, and then we break, and then we fly.
Right.
Yeah, that's so true.
And I will certainly, I will thank that woman, you know, because I've, I mean, so much enjoying this conversation, which I'm kind of thinking we may not have had if you hadn't made this kind of transition.
Or I guess it would have been quite a different conversation.
It would have been a very different one.
A very different conversation.
So I, you know, I appreciate this revelation for the opportunity it gives for us to speak as well.
Oh, thank you.
I appreciate it and taking the time to answer my question.
I know we kind of evolved since then, but I think taking that humility and just being like, you know what, kind of a second epiphany of, you know, it really, you know, what's the, I guess, kind of the cost when, you know, ratio and the cost is that if I don't say anything, nothing is going to change.
Nothing's going to happen.
Yeah, maybe some people won't talk to me anymore, and this and the other.
But at least there might be someone else who might get that epiphany too.
When you decide to take that, you know, the thorny road, the narrow road, the high path of virtue, it is a trapeze act at times.
Without a gnat, it feels like.
And it sounds like you have a very powerful soul and a very...
Deep and abiding desire to make the world a better place.
And there are the majority of people.
This is just a rant.
This is not proof.
This is just my thoughts.
But Nicole, there's a majority of people who are kind of designed to get along with people and to not make a lot of waves and to kind of just be pulled along like a water skier behind the wake of the general opinions of those around them.
And...
I don't know that there's much that can be done about that.
I don't think that there is.
But there are people who...
I could say I put here, and whether it's genetics or God or whatever, it doesn't hugely matter.
But we're here to change the conversation, to change the direction, to turn the wheel on the boat.
And that is going to come at a cost.
Because if it was easy...
Everybody would do it.
The rewards are very clear, that if you affect the world in a positive way, you can go to your grave with a blissful smile on your face, and you can, of course, float onto an afterlife that I may envy if I'm wrong.
But you can have a life of power and depth and meaning.
I never go to bed sitting there saying, well, what did I really do today?
I never, that never happens to me.
I sometimes go to bed thinking I could have done a little more, but that's all right.
It's good to have that kind of Batman-repelling-hook-over-the-wall kind of ambition.
But I never worry about the meaning of my life.
I never worry about, I never have any concerns about the positive effect of my life.
Just thought I was perfect, of course, right?
But those existential questions never arise in me.
I never feel lonely.
I never feel bereft of purpose.
I never feel that I'm not making a difference.
I never feel extraneous to the world.
I feel incredibly central to the forward thrust to a better place.
And The benefits are clear, right?
You may be a person for the ages.
You may be a person who is going to change the course of history.
You may be a person who's going to change the course of 50 people's lives or 25 people's lives, which is a huge thing.
And the benefits are very clear.
The costs are also very clear, which is why we hesitate before that leap.
And the flapping as we fall, hoping that feathers are going to grow before we make that wily coyote puff of dirt on the bottom of the canyon, right?
But the rewards are clear.
The risks are clear.
And the risks are fundamentally our personal relationships that are historical.
And I don't know any way around that.
I've spoken about this off and on for years in this show.
I don't know any way around this, that if you're going to strive for truth and for greatness, and greatness is not like a personal vanity kind of greatness, but just greatness in terms of having an effect and jolting people out of unthinking into thinking, right?
Because your purpose, Nicole, is not to tell people what to think, I would assume, but to stimulate them with information and get them to think for themselves.
You know, how do we know?
How do we know that the Democrats are great for our community?
The numbers seem to show otherwise.
And the Democrats were not great for our community in the past, right?
The KKK was a military arm of the Democrat Party.
They resisted civil rights.
They resisted desegregation.
They resisted the end of Jim Crow.
They resisted the new civil rights in the 60s.
They They were not.
Great.
I mean, goddammit, Hillary Clinton's mentor was Robert Byrd, longtime member of the KKK! Which is crazy.
I mean, it's, how do we know?
And trying to get people to be humble.
You know, I mean, the reason I keep doing this show is I'm so gloriously wrong a lot of times.
You know, like, how many times do I say, oh, I had this perspective, turns out I had to change it because I got this information or this fact or this new thing or whatever, right?
Right.
And being gloriously wrong and self-correcting is a great public spectacle.
And I don't know...
Okay, a few people I'm sure have, quote, lost respect for me for changing course.
You know, it's like, I don't know.
What do you do when you get new information?
Stay exactly the same.
What do you get when you get better arguments?
Reject them completely?
Sorry, I sail with the wind.
I don't just...
I'm not a submarine, you know, with the crazy glued, the steering shift.
And so...
So the personal relationships are a challenge because people know you as who you are and who you were and how you grew up.
And you've conditioned them and they've conditioned you to have a certain kind of relationship.
But if you can be out there saying, okay, black people in America have not done very well under Obama and in some ways they've done pretty disastrously.
Right.
These riots that happen with very sketchy information, not great for the community and not great for public perception of the community.
And marriage, commitment, fatherhood, pair bonding, monogamy.
These used to be way better when blacks had it way worse in society.
And if you, I mean, I'm not sort of trying to give you any kind of speech, but, you know, if you can get some ideas across, and the idea of finding a way, finding a way to let go of the anger, and this is not a black-white thing.
This is just a human thing.
You know, I mean, if you've listened to this show at all, you know, I've had some stuff to be angry about, particularly in my past, in my childhood.
And I could keep circling that drain, and I could keep staring At this hellish blood-soaked disco ball of my early personal history and I could consume me.
And then what?
Then I never get to grow up.
I never get to leave that ancestral home.
I never get to be myself.
I never get to look forward because I'm always looking back.
I never get to chart my own course because I'm being blown by what happened decades ago or centuries ago for some.
And finding a way to let go of that, you know, there's a way of letting go of the anger Without pretending it didn't happen.
Right.
There's a way of letting go of the anger without blanket forgiveness.
And as you know, this is a Christian teaching, you let go of the anger, and Jesse Peterson is fantastic on this stuff, you let go of the anger so that you can be free and happy in the present.
Because being angry at the past...
It means fearing the future, a future of more anger, of more resentment, of more escalation.
It's never being free of the past to remain staring at it and clearing daggers at it and thinking about the wrongs and the injustices as the fire in the hearth of your heart grows cold and is covered with ash and footprints of ancient enemies long dealt with.
And I don't know the answer as to what gets people to that click moment where they say staring into the black moored tunnel of past injustice cannot be our eternal future.
Right.
I don't know what gets people to that, but you've done it.
And you've become, you know, I mean, I hope you'll listen back to this.
I mean, delightful person to chat with, very positive, great energy, great positivity.
You've done that.
Thank you.
And because you've done that, and more than just a personal—I mean, you had an ideological—not just a personal, but an ideological commitment to the perspectives that you were— Engaging within university and through your internship.
Ideology is in some ways harder to overcome than personal history because at least personal history recedes in the rear view.
Ideology is about the future and it races ahead of you and makes the whole world into an image of itself and you can't get free of it then.
At least the past recedes.
Ideology creates the future for you.
So if you've been able to do that, figuring out how you did it and figuring out how to engage people who are Really angry and really resentful and not without reason.
That's the tough part.
No one can say, oh yeah, slavery, Jim Crow, segregation.
Who cares?
Who cares, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, that's not reasonable, right?
But getting people to understand that the same agency that did that was the government.
The government did that to blacks.
And it wasn't white people as a whole, as you know, like only a couple of percentage point of Southerners owned slaves and white people hated having to go on slave catching missions unpaid.
It was terrible, right?
Everybody's enslaved by the government and certainly blacks were the most enslaved and it was horrible.
Horrible.
But running back to the agency of the state to try and gain justice for the prior injustices of the state.
I don't know.
It's the question and this is a harsh way to put it.
But it's a question of you're standing at the edge of the plantation and you can head for freedom or you can go back and you can beat up the slave owner.
Right.
Which do you choose?
Which do you choose?
You're standing right there on the edge.
You know you can get to the Underground Railway.
You can get to Canada.
You can go and be free.
There are other people who've made it.
There are people who will help you, white and black, all along the way.
You can get to a free and beautiful place.
Okay, a little cold, but free.
But free.
Or you can go back to beat up The plantation owner.
Right.
And probably get caught.
Right.
And if there's a way to get that across in some manner that's motivating, I mean, boy, you're the person to do it, if anyone.
Well, I appreciate the compliment.
I'm like, thinking of that task, like, oh, like, I don't know, like, finding, like, I know three There are four other people, and most of them were the people who went down kind of with us, who beat that, you know, kind of drum.
And we, you know, sit around scratching our heads all day like, what more, you know, can we do?
And what more?
Because it almost feels like this weird tipping point where Where if Hillary is president, it's just going to go even more to the extreme.
And it's going to be terrible for blacks in particular.
I'm sorry to interrupt, but I just read this study today that the immigration pouring into America has cost American workers $500 billion a year in lost wages.
And because the immigrants tend to be low-skilled and because the blacks tend to be lower-skilled, There is that direct competition.
I mean, a vote for Hillary, God, I mean, of all the things.
I mean, I believe it's going to be a complete disaster for the black community and relatively quickly, too.
Maybe I'll be proven wrong.
Lord, I hope so.
But I really think it's going to be a disaster.
And I think it's going to be now or never, as far as being able to turn some of this stuff around.
Yeah.
Agreed.
Agreed.
Well, thank you.
You're very welcome.
Thanks very much for calling in.
If there's anything that you end up doing that we can help publicize or help get the word out to, I certainly would be very happy to you taking on some very, very powerful stuff.
And I certainly wish you the very best with what you're doing.
And I hope you'll come back and let us know how it goes.
Oh, yes, most certainly.
Thank you very much, Stefan.
Thank you very much.
Thanks, Nicole.
Thanks, everyone, for calling in tonight.
It's a great, great pleasure to have these conversations with everyone.
It is a wonderful part of my week.
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