3586 Changing Incentives – Call In Show – February 2nd, 2017
Introduction: [1:58] – Stefan Molyneux responds to listener feedback on “the end of arguments”Question 1: [8:27] - The University of California at Berkeley was in flames on Wednesday after violent leftist rioters shut down the finale of Milo Yiannopoulos’s college lecture tour. Innocent supporters of President Donald Trump were assaulted, property was destroyed and free speech disgraced on the infamous site of the 1960’s student Free Speech movement.Question 2: [1:18:03] - “As the product of teenage parents, I struggle with the fact that I've turned out "alright" but hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of children from broken homes don't share the same fate. With the statistics out there showing the wide majority of children from "broken homes" ending up in poverty, jail or worse, what makes the difference in those like myself, and is there anything one could do to assist the majority?”Question 3: [2:07:23] - "Do you think that there are dangers in taking an apologetic or conciliatory stance toward organized religion and faith-based religious attitudes? Do you think that faith and reason can coexist peacefully if faith becomes the dominant entity in the dichotomy? What qualities do you see manifested in an individual governed by faith, as opposed to those found in a person governed by reason?"Question 4: [2:30:30] - “As an atheist who maintains Christian values, how and when should I tell my new Christian girlfriend about my lack of faith? I met her online after indicating a religious status as ‘Christian.’ Is it possible for an atheist man who maintains Christian values to be happily married, and to have children with a Christian woman? If so, is it wise?"Freedomain Radio is 100% funded by viewers like you. Please support the show by signing up for a monthly subscription or making a one time donation at: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate
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Duke Pester.
Great show tonight.
We had two listeners.
We've had a number of listeners call in who were at the Milo riots in California at the U Berkeley.
Two men who were there called in and give you the on-the-ground view of what went down.
Shocking, appalling, surprising, enraging, frustrating, and motivating, I think, in a very important way.
The second caller has come from a broken home but feels he has done pretty well with what he was given and where he came from.
How can we best assist those who didn't make it out, who didn't make it out of the war of broken homes?
And it's a great, great question.
Third caller, joyfully challenging, is the phrase that I would use.
He wanted to know, Steph, how could you have any conciliatory stance towards religion in any way, shape, or form?
So I had a conversation with him about that.
I guess it didn't go quite as long as he wanted, but it was certainly instructive.
Now, the fourth caller told a woman he was Christian when he's not really, and he now wants to know how...
He could make that better.
Now, right before that was his question, right before he called, he said he had told her.
So we talked about what does it mean to be good if you follow the values but don't have the faith?
How does that fit into your relationship?
So some great questions, great callers.
Really appreciate your support.
Follow me on Twitter at Stefan Molyneux.
Use the affiliate link, fdrurl.com slash Amazon.
Oh, that's right.
I might have remembered or not remembered to remind you.
Yes, I did.
freedomainradio.com slash donate.
I just wanted to say I'm listening.
Thank you everyone so much for the messages that came pouring in yesterday after I put out my cry de cour of wondering whether there were more arguments to be made given the feral nature and escalation of the war against free speech that manifested.
In blocking Milo Yiannopoulos' speech at the Berkeley campus in California, I really, really appreciate and cherish and treasure and love what people had to say, positive and negative.
I'm going to just read it.
A couple of comments that I thought were interesting.
Someone said, As being your assumption that everyone in the world possesses the rationality, intellect, and conscience to enter into productive fact-based solutions.
Surely you have not led such a sheltered life, your IQ videos alone.
But paid to this, we will always need thinkers like yourself.
Someone else said, Stephan, if the sword must be drawn, then the job of the philosopher is to remind us why we drew it in the first place.
When the need has passed, the sword must be sheathed again, lest a reign of terror ruins what we had fought for.
And the number of people who said that they'd never commented before, who were giving me very passionate arguments, were very much appreciated.
One person said, Stefan, I always watch YouTube on my TV, not on my computer, meaning that my system won't let me make comments.
I just finished your video and I was compelled by your compelling paint words and expressions to go get my PC and respond.
With great emotion and pain in your voice, you said maybe your job is done and that maybe conversations are over.
While I'm rather liberal, not libertarian, I always enjoy your show and I'm a believer that free speech is crucial.
Malcolm X once stated that it would either be the ballot or the bullet.
To me, words, speeches, books, talks, videos, or how we as a society vote on who we are and where we are going.
Please keep up the good work.
Even if the battle is to be lost, and I do not believe even then it will long stay lost, why not go down fighting for righteousness?
Be encouraged, my friend.
Please keep it up, someone else said.
A student said to his master, you teach me fighting, but you talk about peace.
How do you reconcile the two?
The master replied, it is better to be a warrior in a garden than to be a gardener in a war.
A person wrote, and you know it's funny because we don't...
I share this a lot with everyone out there, but we get a lot of messages from all over the world here at Free Domain Radio, from amazing, brave, powerful, insightful, brilliant people in all cultures and countries, and it does give me a sense of a wider network around the world of people who are willing to put aside prejudice, open themselves to reason and evidence and truly think, and the courage that it takes.
For people to have this kind of open mind and curiosity and rationality in certain places in the world is extraordinary, and I massively respect and appreciate that.
So somebody wrote, Seeing the left being dominated by cultural Marxists, socialists and progressive authoritarians on the one side, and religious fundamentalist authoritarians on the other side.
On top of that, no understanding of capitalism or the concept of the coercive nature of the government.
With all that in mind, you haven't seen anything yet.
I think Pakistan is the way it is because I have seen my parents' generation fight for nothing.
Objectively true.
As long as the West doesn't have authoritarians versus authoritarians, and there are people conversing on both sides, The West's chances of maintaining liberty through conversation remains.
He said, not an argument, just an anecdote.
A number of people commented on the gun-free zone aspect of the campus.
The pithy one was, get rid of your guns, they said.
The police will protect you, they said.
Someone said, Hi Steph, just wanted to say first, do not despair.
Things are rough, yes, but you are living proof of hope.
Just look at your channel and all the change you have brought to people to fight this evil we are facing.
Don't you ever give an inch, because if you do, then why would we not do the same?
Dear Stefan, you must never give up.
One of the few times I appreciate caps.
You must never give up speaking the truth from your sacred point of view.
Yours is a voice of reason.
You are a light shining in the darkness.
Your analysis of events and the historical perspectives that you bring to them pierce the fog of ignorance, confusion, anger, hate, and fear.
The way you articulate your ideas is enlightening and entertaining.
Without your food for thought, I would starve.
And we also get views from inside the university.
Somebody wrote, talking to one of my profs today, and he said he supported the rioters.
Universities are stuffed with despicable anti-intellectuals like him that don't deserve to work in academic institutions.
And somebody else wrote, said, you have not failed because we are still here.
Ooh, Matrix.
We are still listening.
We are still asking and questioning and arguing.
Thank you for all you have done.
I know it can be discouraging.
Yesterday I shared your video on, did Trump just save Western civilization?
And it got more likes and shares.
than anything else I have ever shared before.
And the last comment I wanted to mention, I couldn't find it again.
YouTube commenting search, terrible.
Anyway, somebody pointed out something that I had pointed out in The Truth About Slavery that Wilberforce had argued for 42 years for the end of slavery.
Why am I being such a pussy and giving up after 10?
That is a very, very good point.
That is an argument.
So I just wanted to tell everyone, thank you, thank you for your support, for your kind words.
It was like a trapdoor opening in a dark cellar and many, many wonderful hands helping me back to the light.
I appreciate it.
I am forever in your debt and thank you everyone so much for your support.
I am back in the saddle and soldiering on.
That having been said, let us move on to the first callers for tonight's show.
All right.
Well, up first tonight, we have Warren and Nima, who both were at the UC Berkeley riots.
I'm not going to call it a protest because that's not what it was.
They're both in attendance and they witnessed what went down.
So we get the on the ground perspective.
Welcome to the show, Warren and Nima.
Hi there.
Hey, how you guys doing?
Thank you so much for having us.
Oh, thank you guys so much for giving us the on-the-ground reports, so don't be shy about being detailed, and why don't you start from the beginning?
I don't know if we, you know, my daughter says, put your feet in the circle, and she does some sort of eeny-meeny thing, but let's just go with Nima first.
What happened when you got there, and what was it like even before you went?
Did you anticipate anything like this occurring?
Yeah, actually, Warren wanted to say thank you first.
Oh, Stefan, I'm just a huge fan, a donor, and I love what you and Mike and the team do, so I just want to get that out of the way before we go on with anything else.
It's nice that you think it's me, Mike, and the team.
The team is mostly hand puppets that we use for amusing each other when we're too depressed with the world, so I appreciate that very much, and we'll get to you in a second, Warren, if you just want to go ahead, Nima, with what your mindset was before going and what happened when you got there.
So before I went there, I would say I was expecting the worst.
And by worst, I mean what I'd seen at Trump rallies in Costa Mesa and San Jose.
So quite frankly, you know, I was sort of, I wasn't really ultimately not surprised.
Sorry to interrupt you just as you're starting.
What had you seen in those areas?
Well, I saw people getting beaten bloody with sticks and rocks and eggs thrown at women.
People chased through the streets.
People doing donuts with their car through crowds.
Totally dangerous things.
I don't know if you remember or seen those clips from back then.
So I sort of was expecting that, and I would say it wasn't the worst I expected.
It got really bad.
If you want, I can just go through the notes I took of what I saw.
Well, just give me your, what was it like?
What time did you arrive there and what happened before the rioting began?
So, I only arrived around 6.30, I would say, which is around when the fire started.
And that's also the time when it got really tense and really violent.
Sorry, your question was when I arrived there.
Yeah, just keep going on with the story.
I'm going to interrupt as little as possible, so go ahead.
Okay, okay.
So at one point, I suspect the explosion that sparked the fire occurred.
Masses of people ran very fast toward me so that people were running for cover to the sides, but then people slowed down, I guess.
The fire was burning as I walked closer to the ballroom.
I tried to find a way to get into the ticket area.
I saw rocks being thrown at smashed windows, so I backed off that area close to the entrance again.
I was also trying to find a Facebook friend but couldn't and his phone was dying.
At one point I heard another explosion, or at least it sounded like an explosion.
Honestly, I didn't know what it was.
I saw people around me, mostly students and bystanders, laughing, giggling, cheering, filming.
At one point people started really celebrating when it was announced that the event had been shut down.
I saw very little outrage overall.
The whole time I saw cops standing by and watching, not following the rioters anywhere.
I walked back towards Telegraph Avenue in Bancroft, successfully connected with Warren, who's also on this call, through the Facebook group.
Antifa rioters, drummers, dancers, and so on began marching through the barricades towards Telegraph Avenue.
I saw one group of rioters communicating about how they just found like 50 Nazis over there.
I walked on Fights emerged, Antifa seriously overpowering and chasing out Milo fans and people with mega hats.
I saw one guy beaten and surrounded by numerous Antifas, apparently beaten so bad he wasn't moving anymore, as I saw later on in the footage.
Two Trump supporters beaten with flag sticks and chased away by Antifa by shrieking females and males, shouting things like, beat him up, get the fuck out of here, Nazi scum.
I saw one woman with the Make Bitcoin Great Again hat after she'd been pepper sprayed while interviewed by a masked individual who immediately ran off.
I got tear gas somehow or pepper sprayed because my eyes started burning at that point pretty bad.
It seemed like my throat was irritated from what I was inhaling.
I walked away from the situation together with Warren.
And then we met a couple of people here and there who we were able to talk to, Milo fans.
And ultimately, we actually just went to a place a little more remote and just sat down and had a drink together.
What did you see in terms of...
Enforcement was there?
Because, you know, we hear these stories of these non-lethal bullets, but I've also read that there weren't any arrests made, which I find rather incomprehensible, but did you see police or security?
Was anything being done to protect people?
I saw police standing by and doing nothing.
I mean, actually, later on, Warren showed me pictures that before the generator started burning, which is a generator that they apparently threw a Molotov cocktail at, there was actually cops standing right there.
But later on, when I got to that area, when the fire had already erupted and was huge, I didn't see any cops in that area.
I saw cops in the building nearby inside looking out of the windows.
I think some of them even filmed and took pictures.
So the cops were standing in the relative security of inside a building while this mayhem was occurring outside?
Yes.
And there's also only like 30 cops, if I'm not mistaken.
Maybe, you know, 30 to 30, I would say.
Not more than that.
And I just wanted to mention before I forget that for people who received injuries, you can go on Twitter and And you can look up Mike Cernovich or Michael Cernovich.
Mike Cernovich, I think he goes by.
C-E-R-N-O-V-I-C-H. He is a lawyer and he's interested in talking to you just in case you feel like joining a class action lawsuit against people who I believe were supposed to be responsible for protecting everyone.
There was no question that there was going to be aggression and riots out of this.
I mean, this has happened at a number of Milo Giggs and UC Berkeley is kind of on the left in many ways.
And the question is, were there stand-down orders?
The FBI is now investigating the chancellor.
And what might have happened in terms of was there enough security and were stand-down orders given to the police?
And this is a big deal because just last year, UC Berkeley got $370 million in funding from the federal government.
And this is from their website.
They boast that, quote, And Trump tweeted this morning, If UC Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view, no federal funds?
And I guess that's why he's in power and I'm not.
I would have already made that decision.
But I just wanted to mention that for people who are interested, this could be a very interesting development.
And if the police did receive stand-down orders, I don't know.
Do you blame the people on the receiving end of the orders?
Do you blame the people on the Nuremberg principle as you blame the people giving the orders, not the people carrying them out?
But that will all come out should a lawsuit move forward or should the FBI investigation into the incitement of riots and so on.
Prove fruitful and I think we're gonna see some very interesting stuff should it get to discovery coming out from that particular situation so I'm so sorry guys to to interrupt I just wanted to mention that for people who wanted to follow this up I would suggest you get in touch with Mike Cernovich on Twitter and give him your thoughts so sorry was there something else you wanted to add or should we switch to one I was actually really upset about that question mark at the end of Trump's tweet.
Anything I wanted to add?
Yeah.
That's the Captain Hook weasel question, but I would have preferred four exclamation marks.
I was just forcing the American taxpayer to pay.
For a bunch of lunatics who are out there seeming wanting to undermine the basis of American civilization, that is pretty bad.
I mean, I would argue that the lack of free speech comes in in this half a billion dollars.
Forcing people to fund ideas they find antithetical to everything they hold dear.
Forcing people to hand over money to fund this identity politics feminist crap.
That goes on.
All this leftist Marxist indoctrination and hysteria, forcing people to fund that, that's the most important violation of free speech, I think, that came out last night.
The violence is hidden in compliance, but it is very powerful, and you should not force people to fund those they find Anathema.
Or even though you can't force people to fund anyone when it comes to the realm of ideas.
The realm of ideas must be kept as voluntarist as possible.
And it is, of course, my hope that these higher education institutions stop getting a single goddamn dime of government money and start having to provide some fucking value to their culture.
Yeah.
And I also want to point out that there's...
Apparently, I read on the news that protesters started a bonfire In front of the university, I just want to make sure that people don't think that it's a bonfire.
It was a generator that they threw a Molotov cocktail at and exploded.
So it's a little more serious than a bonfire, I would say.
Right.
Yeah, and they dragged down a light pole and scrawled Milo on it, which I think is inappropriate.
Milo likes dark pole, but that is...
Yeah, there was some very dangerous stuff going on.
I mean, you start messing around with fire and generators.
It seems to me you could either get some significant explosion or some cuts in power, which could be quite catastrophic for certain people.
And there's one guy, I'm not sure, I've been trying to find news about it, but I wonder if he's alive, honestly, because he wasn't moving anymore on the street.
And I've only seen people speculate over whether he's alive or dead.
We actually, yeah, when I did the video, when I cut the video last night, the source was that there was speculation that he had died.
I did include that in the video.
I cut it out because we couldn't get confirmation and I didn't want to put out anything wrong.
So inflammatory in the absence of any proof.
I haven't heard anything about it today.
I think if he had died, that would be another Rubicon.
And sooner or later, it's going to happen.
I mean, you keep throwing things and smashing people with flagpoles.
You keep setting fire to things.
You keep throwing molotov cocktails at generators.
You keep blocking traffic.
People keep driving through people.
You drag people out of cars and beat them.
Someone's going to die.
I mean, this is not even a matter of if but when.
And, you know, maybe the administration is waiting for that to occur before a crackdown happens.
I don't know.
But it seems to me, I mean, you guys were there.
I wasn't.
But looking at the footage, it's like, okay, just count down to death.
Yeah, I'm just waiting for sessions.
But that was all I had to say, I guess.
I guess Warren can...
Yeah, Warren, what were your thoughts about going?
What did you expect?
What did you anticipate?
What did you prepare for him?
Then what happened?
Yeah, so I've actually been paying attention to this for quite some time.
And I was really excited at the start of the tour because on the original lineup, there was Stanford, there was Berkeley, there was Stanford University, there was, I'm sorry, Santa Clara University where I went to school.
And a couple months went by and I checked the roster again and Santa Clara got cancelled.
I emailed folks trying to get answers on why that happened and I never got an answer.
Usually as far as I understand it, it's because there were security costs or requirements that exceeded what was feasible?
Correct.
And so Milo disclosed that and also said like a private donor stepped in at Berkeley to cover the six and a half grand that was slapped right before Yeah, it's just unfortunate that in the Bay Area this battleground was not allowed to happen and this discourse was not allowed.
So I've grown up in the Bay Area my whole life and you're just simply not allowed to be pro-Trump in this last election.
For example, I actually have a Trump sweater and I never wear it outside the house or at the gun range because it's just not safe.
And I work in downtown San Francisco If I took the train into the city, I would just not make it.
I would just end up as a bloody pulp.
And it's just a fact here.
You're just not allowed to disclose your identity if you're leaning towards the conservative side.
And this is what drives me mental.
Is that all you hear about are these fucking microaggressions and you're mansplaining in the subway and you're mansplaining things I already know and all these microaggressions and then, oh, we need safe spaces.
You know who needs safe spaces?
Conservatives on American campuses need some safe spaces because they're not exactly facing microaggressions.
Is that a fair way to put it?
Absolutely.
It would be a sucker punch or just a mob would show up wherever you go.
You would just not be left alone.
So I'm definitely mindful of that as I'm doing my daily business and I just keep it on the down low.
So whether it's at work or socially, I just don't bring it up unless I know who I'm talking to.
So yeah, I've been watching this event for a long time and I try to get some extra tickets for friends and Tickets disappeared a couple weeks ago, and I saw a lot of trolls just scalping tickets, trying to flip them for an extra $100, $150 per ticket, and were selling them, still right up to the event.
And it's just unfortunate to see that.
Well, I'm sure that they will be happy to offer up refunds, given that the end of mine.
Go ahead.
That's right.
Just like in Saudi Arabia, they appreciate the refund.
Yeah.
So yeah, so I took the BART train in from downtown San Francisco.
And once I arrived in downtown Berkeley and walked up the escalator, I started seeing signage everywhere of KKK with Trump and just anti-Trump literature everywhere.
And the walk from the BART station to the campus is about three blocks.
I just walked down and you see this literature everywhere.
And it's just, it's like, It's just like a sign.
It's just like a street meter.
It's just normal in that environment.
So it was just really unfortunate to see that the whole city has accepted this as the state of affairs.
It's escalated the opposition to such an extent that you're literally fighting Satan, Lucifer, Nazis, like the most evil conceivable people are congregating to hear Milo.
And once you have escalated your sense of moral outrage and hostility to that degree...
Then what you've done is you've let slip the dogs of violence.
I mean, you are then justified to do anything.
To do anything!
It's a cartoon story.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, and I don't know if they genuinely believe it, this stuff.
I mean, because I don't know the kind of echo chambers that they're inhabiting.
So I don't know if they actually believe it or whether they just...
Want to use violence and are using the linguistic tricks that they need to to unleash the demons of their darker natures.
I don't know.
But once you make people that evil, just about anything you do is justified.
To them, right?
And so...
And it's funny because, of course, the left always talks about there are no moral standards, no absolutes, except Nazis.
Nazis?
Oh, yeah.
Absolutely.
Everything's relative, except Nazis.
And, of course, they have been the vilified group.
Not that I disagree with that, but, you know, they're the one...
Nazis are the one group left that you can always shoot in video games and no one's going to get too upset.
You know what I mean?
It's the most boring cliche you can come up with.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, and, of course, the media is...
Using the power of their blood-soaked megaphone to whip these idiots up into even more of a frenzy than they would otherwise have been.
And, of course, I was reading on Twitter today that someone went scouring like all the prominent leftists.
And...
Couldn't find one that was denouncing this violence.
Deborah Messing, who was on a television show called Will& Grace, which seemed pretty gay positive, now seems to be celebrating the shutdown of the free speech of a gay man.
And Judd Apatow was, oh yeah, this is just the beginning!
And Sarah Silverman was basically calling for some sort of revolution.
I mean, it's really, really...
Terrible.
And of course, this is all the stuff that was imagined that the right was going to do.
All the violence that was supposed to be happening at the Trump rally, spitting at people and calling them the N-word.
I mean, none of which could ever be verified in any way, shape or form.
And this is all the projection.
And I think it was a woman who said, you know, I get the sense that, you know, this is always people don't have an argument.
I get the sense, I get the feeling that...
If Hillary supporters lose, they'll be sad.
If Trump supporters lose, they'll be angry.
Oh, there's a difference.
Well, you didn't quite call that one correctly.
And this polarization is like Moses and the Red Sea.
And the Red Sea being the appropriate ocean of blood that could be unleashed.
You are simply setting people with no capacity to come.
You don't compromise with Nazis!
And how the hell do you compromise with somebody beating you on the head with a flagpole?
This is the language of the negotiation of compromise and things have become so hysterical with the whips of the media driving the mindless horde forward with pitchforks in a truly French Revolution-style demonic mob that this is where I felt last night, what can be said?
If people are coming at you with bricks and throwing fireworks at your buildings and hitting you with rocks, What can language do at this point?
And so let's go on with what happened in your evening of excitement, Martin.
Yeah, so I'm walking up to the campus.
I arrive in the general area around 515, and this is located in the MLK Student Union building.
And ironically, this is where all the violence will be happening.
And the actual event will be held on the ballroom on the second floor.
And there's actually two levels.
There's an upper level with the main entrance, and there's a lower level with two smaller entrances.
And the barricades were only on the upper level.
And there was about one police officer every 20 feet or so.
And there's more police officers inside in riot gear.
And there's definitely no more than 30 or 40 officers total.
And then in terms of other hired security, there's about maybe 10 to 15 folks in kind of like rain gear that were hired kind of just whatever contractors probably from that whatever six and a half thousand security fee.
So those folks are kind of spread out inside the building and it's all glass and you can see through inside.
So about 530 I'm just walking around taking everything in and you can kind of see that more of the folks are gathering on the upper the upper level and There's a lot of weird signs.
Karl Marx is quoted, anti-fascist signs.
There was a couple of German signs that Nima mentioned later, and it just seemed a little bit too organized.
You can clearly see where there's the attitude of the students, and they're just kind of really confused and kind of just watching, and they have backpacks on.
And then there's the formal agitator, and they're all masked.
They have hats on, and they have gas masks.
They're all dressed in black.
They have bags of just stuff.
And they seem really well equipped.
Paintballs, Molotov cocktails, flagpoles.
They have weapons that they're trained with.
They're really well trained and prepared for the whole thing.
Right.
So you can definitely see the difference between a casual, just innocent bystander or a student and then the formally organized agitator.
And then sort of behind this area on the upper level is another hall.
It's a sprawl hall.
And it has the architecture of like Greek columns, sort of like at the White House.
And those are lit up with like rainbow colors.
And I think people forget that Milo is gay himself and is obviously supportive.
And then the actual club that was hosting this event is the Republican Club of UC Berkeley.
And I got to give him a lot of credit for having the balls to do this.
And just put this on.
And you could kind of see that they were behind the barricade and there's just young students and kind of like ill-fitting suits.
And they're kind of lost and just looking for their friends and fellow attendees.
And then the crowd around like 5.30, 5.45 was starting to shout them down because they were just letting their fellow club members in to get a seat.
And they actually retreated back inside the building and then We're just waiting inside or going on the second floor, which overlooks the whole area.
And then as for myself, I'm trying to figure out, everyone seems like they're here protesting or just watching, and I couldn't really figure out who is an actual fellow attendee.
And it was really a guessing game.
So I was checking the Facebook event page, just trying to see folks, and I saw there was a lot of posts happening on the event page.
There were just trolls shouting down people.
It was almost like we had moles everywhere, and you weren't really sure if you were actually talking to a Milo supporter or someone who was just looking for an excuse to kick your ass.
So I just kept walking around.
I definitely didn't see a lot of Trump gear.
There's no shirts from Infowars, and everyone's really discreet or a student or an agitator.
And then about 5.45, the chants kept getting louder and louder.
And I started counting how many different chants there were, and there were like six to eight different chants.
Could you hear what they were?
Yeah, I actually recorded a couple of them, and I can send that to you afterwards.
And there's a bunch of them on YouTube.
And they're not just simple one or two liners.
They have their own, I guess, verses, verse one, verse two.
They almost tell a story of violence.
It's like this demonic choir that has been practicing for weeks, right?
Right.
And I'm just standing there.
And I'm a fairly obvious guy.
I'm like 6'3", Asian-American dude.
And I'm just watching these like 50 to 80 people just start chanting.
And I'm trying to record them.
And they're all masked.
They have bandanas on.
They have their megaphone.
Where's that?
This is library, guy, when you need him.
But anyway, go on.
I love that video.
Yeah, isn't that?
That was just one of the most jaw-dropping things I've ever seen on the internet.
But go ahead.
So, they're on their megaphones and they're screaming into it, trying to rile up everybody.
And I realized, like, oh my god, they're actually calling for violence.
And I'm in just a black jacket, gray sweater, really discreet and trying to fit in.
And obviously, I'm not chanting.
Obviously, I don't have a flag or a resist ribbon or a handout or something in my hands.
And I started, like, I thought to myself, like, oh my god, I probably look like I might be a target.
So I saw people eyeballing me and I just kept walking around and trying to get myself away from these mobs that are just going through their retina of just chanting.
So I just kept moving and eventually I did find some other attendees and you could tell because they look just as lost and confused as me and we're all trying to find each other.
Definitely when you go to, for example, a pro-gun community, you go to the gun range or a gun store, you can tell that they look the part.
They have camouflage gear on.
I go to a shotgun range frequently, and everyone has Browning gear on or Beretta, and it's the various brand names of the type of tools you like or firearms and such.
And trying to meet a fellow attendee was like, am I talking to a double agent or am I talking to a legitimate attendee?
So we would just cautiously approach each other respectfully.
Hi, are you attending this event?
And then this is how I got to see Nima.
And he'd actually show me his Infowars shirt buried beneath his jacket and his other sweater.
I'm like, okay, this guy's legit.
And I met another guy and he's like, he actually had his Eventbrite ticket printout.
I'm like, okay, this guy's the truth.
And then another person had like, he was standing by his car and he actually had a Trump hat on actually.
So that's how we identified each other.
And then about 545, 550, then the destruction starts happening.
And people start pushing against the barricades, and people actually rush the barricades and just start throwing it and pushing it back.
And then the officers actually just retreated back into the building.
And then more bottles got tossed, rocks, and eventually someone actually rushed the light generator that's actually standing there in that corner.
And I actually used to sell those generators at a previous job.
Those are like Baldor light generators.
They cost like $15,000 to $20,000 a piece.
So this gets toppled.
It falls down.
It's not running anymore.
Fuel's leaking.
Someone runs up and spray paints, no Milo on it with the cross and stuff.
So the fuel from the light generator was leaking on the ground?
Yeah, so it's toppled over.
What if somebody flicks a cigarette in that?
What if somebody lights it on fire?
I mean, aren't you going to end up with this torpedo boat scenario?
Right.
You would think someone has like a fire extinguisher just to spray it because that unit has to stay upright.
There's a lot of mechanics behind it from cooling to just it has its own engine inside to power it and you just need to keep it upright.
I think it has like a 10 to 15 gallon fuel capacity so it's not an idle tool that can just Just be resting on its side.
So yeah, this was just abandoned.
There's a glass wall there that proceeded to get smashed and nothing was done.
The police officers just retreated back into the building.
And then I continued to walk around to the other entrances, and I wanted to see what that looked like.
And there were much more passive groups occupying that.
And maybe those were most likely like students.
There was like 30 to 40 people with just like homemade signs just saying, no fascists, blah, blah, blah, KKK, get out of here, and stuff like that.
After that, I kind of noticed, I was trying to study the crowd, and UC Berkeley is predominantly Asian.
It's like 42% Asian, and it really struck me that a lot of students are- Sorry, just to clarify that, what kind of Asian are we talking about here?
It's a mix of Asian-American and also international students.
No, but for some people, Asian also includes Indian, and I just want to sort of break it down.
Oh, absolutely.
Do you see all the phrase, you mean like Oriental Asian, like Korean, Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese?
Fancy Asians.
Okay.
From China, from Japan, yeah.
And so, I believe like UC San Diego is like 50% Asian, and just to see all these stories...
Oh, Warren, can I give a little guess about the next part of your story?
Please go on.
Please.
Can I guess if the proportion of people rioting, the proportion of them who were Asian was slightly less than the proportion of Asians at the university?
Am I correct?
You're just right on that you're hitting.
It's almost like I know something about IQ now, isn't it?
Anyway, go on.
Right.
So the propensity for crime is just lower with Asian Americans, blah, blah, blah.
So, yeah, that definitely was the case.
And For the students that did stop by just to take some video feeds, just take some pictures, it was really entertaining to them.
They were just giggling.
Nima remarked, he got really upset about this too.
It was just theatrics to them.
And for us, it's life and death.
It's Western civilization smoldering right there on the side of the building.
I'm going to assume that you didn't grow up in a daycare.
Yes and no.
So half and half, sort of.
Yeah, I mean, the people who are dumped in daycare full-time, it's not the only thing, but I think it has a lot to do with this non-empathy thing.
They just don't get the bond, so the empathy doesn't develop.
And that's the IQ thing, too.
But anyway, go on.
Yeah, so by this time, there's explosions, and I am on the Bancroft side of that plaza, which is near, like, the main street.
And...
I'm also a professional DJ, and then I saw something roll by.
There's these two QSC speakers, and they're powered by car batteries.
And there's these two kids pushing it inside, heading towards the fire and the rest of the riot crowd.
I'm like, what are they doing?
And when you see reports of an LGBT dance party that starts, it was from these two guys with just $4,000 on a small dolly powered by two car batteries.
They're just playing Bay Area hip-hop tracks from Mactray and blah blah blah.
And I was like, what the hell are they doing?
Why not some nice soothing classical music?
Wouldn't that help lower the tensions in the environment as a whole?
Yeah, so I'm just blown away watching that just roll by into the crowd.
And then by now, more cops are trying to shut down the event.
It's about 6.15.
I also have a video of this.
I'll send this to you.
6.15, the cops get on their megaphone and tell the crowd to disperse.
This event is being shut down by the police, which Milo later confirmed post-event.
And they said, oh, you have 10 minutes to leave.
So once this started happening...
People start leaving slowly and we're on Bancroft walking down and scuffles start breaking out and the street mob actually forms and you see people just fighting one-on-one and there was a pro-Trump guy that actually broke up that fight but then the mob saw him break it up and they targeted him and his friends and then eventually that got broken up again but then these guys wouldn't leave because they had someone In the crowd,
still getting destroyed by 20 other people.
And I was trying to get the guy to leave, and he's like, yeah, you know, my friend, his name is so-and-so, he's still in there, he could be dead.
And at this point, we had to make the call, like, do we wait and try to de-escalate the situation and fight the mob, or do you just really try to exit and get out of there?
And it just seemed like there was no way that you could engage this mob.
They were armed with now sticks and They were using their flags and banners to beat people.
There's just no way that you could do anything anymore.
It's definitely not like the scene in To Kill a Mockingbird where Scout shuts down the mob by herself.
That's definitely not happening.
Instead, it's people getting sucker punched and falling down on concrete and more people are kicking them and just, like, I don't know what happened because you can't even see that.
So we make our way out.
And we're getting on Facebook and trying to figure out what happens.
But this time, it's, I think, closer to 6.30 and I finally connected with Nima.
We're just trying to find out more news, because at UC Davis, this event also got shut down, and Milo took it in good stride and had an after-party at the local Hilton.
And I thought, like, hey, this is UC Berkeley.
If I had a big tour bus, where would I park that?
And I kind of know the area, and I guessed at where he might be.
And we thought, hey, maybe we'll go there and just see if we could start trying to find Milo.
And...
So we went to the Doubletree by the marina, and me and Nima, we didn't find anybody there or see the tour bus, so we decided just to hang out there and talk a little bit and have a beer.
And then sometime in the conversation, I'm like, hey, do you know Stefan Molyneux?
And he's like, oh, I've been on the show, and blah, blah, blah.
And here we are today, and we're like, hey, we should get on the show and report what was happening from the street.
So here we are.
And as it turns out today, some leftist douchebag tweeted out the location of Milo's bus, and they all had to flee the bus, and it ended up being vandalized, which is not an argument.
So how was it relative to your expectations?
Obviously, you went there with the expectation that you'd get to see the speech.
Were you very surprised when it was canceled?
I expected it to be cancelled, but not in this way.
I've seen brutality, but I've never seen 50 to 100 people ready for violence to the point where they want to break bones and kill someone and feel blood on their fists.
That was really, really unnerving.
And even to this moment right now, I still feel like the after effects of pepper spray or tear gas.
I'm still having a light headache and My face is still kind of on fire.
It still shocks me that this really happened last night.
I cannot believe civilization broke down where a mob formed and they just started vandalizing everything from cars to the local Starbucks and everything.
Well, that's what the left does.
The left is murderous.
I mean, we can see this with National Socialism.
We can see this with Communism.
It is murderous.
I mean, there are significant elements within the left.
Who want us all dead.
And, you know, they would like to do, as Ann Coulter points out, they would like to do to Sarah Palin, or maybe even Ann Coulter, what they did to Marie Antoinette.
And there is an emptiness and a demonic possession that occurs in an indoctrinated mob, where, because they feel that their enemies are inhuman, they have the right to descend to worse than animals.
Yeah.
So, yeah, we're just still shocked at how well organized it was.
And you only needed about 100 or so agitators to really set the pace for the whole event.
Everyone stands on the side and watches.
The police have their orders to not engage.
And you see all this chaos and this madness.
And this is the thing.
Because, you know, a lot of people were messaging me after my video yesterday saying, well, it was just a tiny number of people.
It's like, hello, that's all it takes.
You know, what was the population of people who wanted to overthrow the Romanovs in 1917 in Russia?
What proportion of the population were the communist cadres under Lenin?
0.0000001%?
Doesn't take a lot.
It doesn't take a lot of people to cause this kind of chaos.
Yeah, there were a thousand people out there protesting, and I'll get to my rant about protesting in just a moment, and about 200 of them turned feral.
And that's all it takes.
In fact, it wouldn't even take that many.
So they were supported by everyone else?
Well, that's the thing.
That's the thing.
It's the support.
See, the left, the extreme left, they understand the media better than the right does.
They know that the media is on their side, that the media will cover things up, that the media will portray anyone who fights back I think because
they're not organized.
Well They've come down and been organized, right?
Right, but they didn't.
But why?
I'm not saying they should or shouldn't.
I don't know.
I mean, I don't want to see pitched battles in the street, obviously.
But in terms of basic self-defense, why is the right not organized?
Maybe part of it recognizes that if they actually fight back, that's what the other side wants.
That's what the media wants.
Now, I don't think so.
I mean, I don't think that's it.
I think – well, let me tell you what I think.
Maybe you're right.
You were there.
But let me tell you what I think.
I think that for several years, the left has been – the left for many years has been very frustrated in their inability to get rid of guns because, you know, that's what the left wants to do.
If you want a dictatorship, not that all people on the left want a dictatorship, but the extreme forms.
Well, you don't want people having guns.
The first thing that wannabe dictators do is pass gun control.
Now, they've not been able to do that.
So what have they been trying to do through the media?
What they've been trying to do, I believe, is they've been trying to disable the Second Amendment by making self-defense a suicidal social action.
It started with Zimmerman, and before that as well, but it started with Zimmerman, who used self-defense according to the courts, used self-defense against Trayvon Martin.
His life was destroyed anyway.
You know, he was slanted, he was lied about, they manipulated, they escalated and so on.
Darren Wilson, attacked by Michael Brown, exonerated, but he has to quit the police force and he's got to look over his shoulder for the rest of his natural life and where the hell is he going to get a job and how is he going to support his family?
And he faced investigations and trials and charges and...
Well, it didn't go as far, but he was investigated for civil rights violations.
And so, what happens?
This is occurring over and over and over again.
The people who use force in the defense against a protected class, and the protected class is people on the left.
It's not gays because Milo's gay.
So they're trying to repeal the Second Amendment through making self-defense on the right such a catastrophic event that people would rather just get beaten up than defend themselves, especially because everyone's got Video cameras and cell phones and so on.
So someone's going to be attacked and they're going to fight back.
And I think everyone knows deep down the most likely outcome is someone's going to catch it on film.
And just like the Rodney King incident, which was selectively edited to make the police look insane and resulted in massive riots in Los Angeles and other places, a billion and a half dollars worth of damage or a billion dollars worth of damage done, deaths and maimings and so on.
That the media is going to get a hold of the footage of you with a MAGA hat on, defending yourself against the initiation of force.
They're going to selectively edit it and make you look like the crazed Nazi.
And then your face is going to be all over the newspapers.
And it's going to be all over the blogs.
And you're going to be targeted.
You're going to be marked.
There are going to be investigations.
And even if...
The best outcome happens and you're found perfectly innocent.
Welcome to the rest of your life with everyone knowing who you are and thinking that you are just unjustly let go by Trump's administration because you were wearing a MAGA hat, but they're going to make it right.
They're going to get even with you.
If it's the last thing they do, welcome to the rest of your life.
They have rendered self-defense inoperable.
By creating all of these hysterical baiting narratives that portray people who are defending themselves against violence as the initiators, the aggressors, the racists, the whoever, right?
They turn their lives into conflagrations of ostracism and hate and slander.
Because they're exercising the right of self-defense.
They need to disarm the right.
Now, they can't take away their guns, but they can take away their right of self-defense.
And they've been working on that for years.
And they've been disarming the cops through the Ferguson effect, right?
The cops now are hesitant, right?
We saw this footage a year or two ago of, I think it was a detective, being beaten up by a black suspect.
And he's like, yeah, go ahead, beat me up.
I'm not going to fight back because I know what happens if I do.
So I think that they're attempting to disable the capacity of the right to defend themselves.
They can't take their guns, but they can make it easier to get beaten up than defend yourself because everyone, I think, knows what the media would do and what kind of narrative they would paint, even if they didn't have footage, or maybe even especially if they didn't have footage on who you were and what you were doing.
Innocent protester out peacefully demonstrating against Trump is viciously set upon by heart, right?
Right.
Yeah, I think that analysis as a California gun owner is spot on.
We've lost the will to defend ourselves because we know the catastrophic cost.
Sorry, it's not a will.
It's a cost-benefit.
You know, there used to be an old saying, better to be judged by 12 than carried by 6.
And it's not the will.
It's not, oh, the will just faded away.
It's incredibly risky.
You might end up with a life that you almost wish you hadn't saved if the media gets hold of the story.
And we know where the media sympathies lie with these rioters.
You defend yourself, you are in for a world of hurt, I would believe.
And I think, because it has to be, there are a lot of people who are well-trained, they go to gyms, you know, and they know martial arts, but I don't see anyone defending themselves, and I think it's because of this.
Again, I wasn't there, but that's my thought.
Yeah.
Pretty traumatizing.
Now, what's the fallout been?
What's it been like there now that it's Friday and this happened last night?
What is it like the day since?
What have you guys been up to?
Other than, you know, Visiting yourself like crazy.
It's really bizarre.
It's like you have to go back into the matrix after you just got out and witnessed all of this.
It's very casual.
I shared this on social myself and I got maybe three friends interested.
No one really cares.
It's not a big deal.
Same here, yeah.
I mean, that's what's most upsetting of all of it, I think.
First of all, the giggling and the cheering from everyone at Berkeley was bystanders, majority of them at least.
But then also the silence today, it's just unbelievable.
And then the things that people actually pretend to care about.
Now, silence from who?
I would say from acquaintances and friends.
And what is your sense of what's behind this silence?
Well, I looked, for example, on CNN. I saw the way they reported on the story.
The headline today was Milo Yiannopoulos wants to make hate speech cool at college campuses or something like that.
And then I also looked at...
Fox and CNN today, I didn't really see a whole lot of reporting on it, honestly.
I don't know, maybe last night I know they did, but today I didn't see much attention to the event.
Yeah, I mean, I've certainly listened to and watched some of Milo's stuff.
It's assertive, but it's fact-based.
He's got a strong research team and he presents facts and statistics and arguments and...
This phrase, hate speech, I mean, I don't want to go off on a whole rant, but this phrase, hate speech, it's not an argument.
And it's not engaging people in the realm of ideas.
It's just attempting to cloak them in a negative pejorative so that people think, oh, well, he's just a hateful person and blah, blah, blah.
He's upsetting people.
And it's a way of blaming the victim, right?
It's like calling a short skirt rape speech.
It's like, no, it's just...
It's just a way of making someone sound hateful so that nobody has sympathy for them and has sympathy for the rioters.
Yeah, it's almost like a setup, isn't it?
From people from above to brand someone something that people then just go and beat everybody up over.
Well, this is how stupid everyone's getting.
You know, he's a white supremacist, which he's not.
He's a white ethnostate, which he's not.
He's hate speech, which he doesn't.
I mean, any intelligent person, the moment that you hear this, you know, big fusillade cannon face of ridiculous pejoratives aimed at someone, the first thing you'll say is, well, why aren't you telling me what he's saying that is so objectionable?
Or if you see the titles of articles, Rather than, well, here's the arguments and here's where he's wrong.
Here's where he's false.
Here's where he's incorrect.
But the moment people just say, well, here's a provocative, okay, so he makes some provocative article titles that are surprising.
Guess what?
You know, people can mine what I've said over the past 10 years and come up with some really startling stuff, you know, and, you know, with no context and no data and all that.
But any intelligent person, and I don't mean even super smart, just like basic common sense, the moment that someone is presented to you as just bad, terrible, but there's no content provided.
No content provided and no context provided.
Well, everyone knows that that's just terrible.
It's anti-intellectual.
It's anti-factual.
Don't tell me the conclusions.
Don't tell me he's a this or he's a that.
Don't tell me the conclusions.
Tell me what his arguments are and how he's incorrect and how, after being shown he's incorrect, he refuses to change his stance.
And this is mad.
And how Milo ends up in the category of hate speech when the Women's March gives a microphone to a woman who kidnapped and tortured a gay man and killed him and went to prison, how is that not hateful?
And a woman who supports Sharia law and has some sympathies for the Islamic State, I mean, how is that not hateful, hate speech?
It's all...
I don't know.
If we had a population that had any kind of education, any real education, then these tricks wouldn't work, which is why, of course, you can't get any real education in government schools because it's all about the fields.
Oh, it's hate speech.
Well, that's all I need to know.
Really?
Really, that's all you need to know.
Well, fuck, even Socrates got his day to make his speeches, but it's madness.
Madness.
So it's silent.
It's silent.
It's silent.
And there is a kind of sympathy for the violence and condemnation for you guys.
I get a sense of that in that kind of silence.
Yeah, on CNN.com right now, I'm looking right now, I don't see the story anywhere anymore.
Fox News, I don't see any story.
I just see a note that Milo's going to be on Tucker tonight.
No real prominent story.
Well, that's...
Mike, did you want to jump in and talk about What you were feeling yesterday, because you had some ambivalence about all of this and how you thought it might actually help the cause of reason in the long run.
Well, seeing all this stuff, I was angry just like everyone else was at the senseless violence that was going on.
On this show, Steph's talked about for years and years and years, the application of the non-aggression principle, and I'm right there.
I want to see as little violence as absolutely possible in the world and society at large.
So seeing this kind of stuff naturally is terrible, especially when it's people that you know and have interacted with before.
So all that being said, I'm pissed off, I'm angry, I'm seeing it.
I see women getting smashed in the face with flagpoles, pepper sprayed.
Boy, if you're a case-elected individual, that's a bit of a trigger.
And looking at it the next day, it's like, well, if you wanted to actually deal with some of the problems that society is having right now, This type of response from the left, you couldn't write a better one for the people that are sensible to contrast with.
You know, the people that were on the fence in the last election, the people that were pro-Hillary, the people that were Democrats but didn't like what happened when Bernie getting screwed at the nomination and everything of the sort, the people that were like, okay, I'm going to buy into what the media is saying about Donald Trump.
Maybe they didn't look into the untruth about Donald Trump.
Maybe they just went on what was being reported in the media.
Those are the people, the people that still have a rational brain, a couple brain cells to rub together, an IQ point or two to spare.
Those are the people that are looking at what's happening at places like UC Berkeley and going, what the hell is going on with the left?
What the hell is going on with my party?
What the hell is going on with the mainstream media, which seemed to be very upset when Donald Trump once said, back in the good old days, you know, you know what we do to those kind of people when you had a protester that was getting rough and violent at the event.
They were all over Donald Trump for that, and we had to hear about it nonstop over the course of the last what?
It was over a year we had to hear about that.
He said it once.
Okay, well, look at this.
Look at all these leftists, all these big Hollywood figures that are, good God, Sarah Silverman calling for revolution.
The response, the contradictions, the hypocrisy, the violence.
There's not a lot of reasonable people in the world that want to be associated with this.
So, this kind of stuff happening and being put on blast, top story in the world, last night, I think it does a whole lot to help the cause of the people that actually want to have a conversation.
It does a lot to help the cause of the people that want to have a discussion about the problems in society.
It does a lot to help the cause of the people that are against violence in all forms.
And anyone, anyone that is not actively condoning this, this type of violence, they are supportive of it.
If you are not actively disavowing what happened at UC Berkeley last night, you support it.
And I will treat you in the future, and I suggest everyone else do the same, as if you support, condone, thumbs up, 100% approval on what happened at UC Berkeley.
Because those on the left that have created this atmosphere, everyone's a Nazi, everyone's a racist, everyone's a bigot, a misogynist, a homophobe, whatever.
You are the people that are responsible.
And I think it's incredibly important moving forward that those who do not actively condemn this violence are treated like the supporters of it that they are.
And that means you don't go see their movies.
If they're a producer, if they're an actor, an actress, you don't see their movies.
You don't financially support them in any way.
If they're a company, the CEO of a company comes out and says something incredibly stupid, you don't support them in any way, shape or form.
The left has been very effective at using ostracism in all its forms.
Financial, you know, social, everything along those lines, to actually get things done.
And oddly enough, in the past, when Steph pointed that out and talked about the power of social ostracism, because if it's not social ostracism, it's going to be violence and fists.
Well, people didn't like that very much.
But look what the left is doing.
Ostracism in all its forms.
Look, we dug up a tweet from five years ago that said something that could be taken out of context and misconstrued.
Boom!
People are fired.
This is what the left does.
The right needs to look at this.
The sensible people of the world need to look at this and understand that this is the game that's happening.
And we need to hold everyone on the left, everyone that's not condemning this violence, condemning this type of behavior.
We need to hold them responsible and give them a taste of their own medicine when it comes to social and economic ostracism.
Because if we don't do that, if it's not something to be solved through peaceful non-association, We're good to go.
It's hard to look at that and say, well, if that doesn't stop, if that continues to escalate as it has been, this isn't going to end until there's mass chaos and violence in the streets and the police and the National Guard are going to have to be called out.
It's going to be violence.
It's going to be chaos.
It's going to be everything that the media has warned that Donald Trump is.
He's terrible.
His campaign's chaotic.
Oh, my God.
He's going to get the nuclear button.
They are going in that direction.
And I think at this point, there's certain elements within the leftist community that they want that to happen.
They were terrified of Donald Trump.
They want it to happen so badly that they're going to manifest it themselves.
They're going to create the violence and then blame it on Trump.
The only option for reasonable people at this point is to make the case, make the arguments, use social and economic ostracism in all its forms to push back against this.
And then, see what happens.
Because if that doesn't work, it's going to wind up being violence, and at that point, the job of the philosopher is over.
If it comes down to violence, then, okay, it's going to be the National Guard, it's going to be the police, it's going to be the military, and we'll see how it shakes out.
But this can't continue, this won't continue, it's only escalating, and something's got to give at some point.
So, if you don't condemn this shit, you support it, and the blood is on your hands moving forward in regards to what happens.
Ten years ago.
Seven years ago, I gave a speech at Libertopia 2010.
And we'll put a link to it below.
It's a very good speech.
This is seven years ago.
I told people exactly what they needed to do to avoid this kind of escalation.
That they needed to try and bring reason and evidence to those around them.
But if people around them refused to give up their addictions to state power, if, in other words, if there's someone in my life who wants me to go to jail for following my conscience, they will not give up their addiction to state power, you need to not have a relationship with that person.
Now, you can give up your ideals and you can continue to have relationships with whoever the hell you want, but if you really believe in the non-aggression principle, then you try to talk to people and bring them to reason and if they still want you thrown in jail for following your conscience for disobeying what the state unjustly demands that you do or forces you to do then ostracism and it's not ostracism out of hatred it's ostracism out of love because ostracism is not the end you
know a boycott doesn't mean you will never ever ever go back to that business You might say, until you guys stop doing X, I'm not coming back.
Ostracism isn't forever.
It simply says, in your current moral state, I cannot associate with you because you wish violence inflicted upon me for my peaceable and voluntary activities.
And hopefully then people get that you're serious about it.
And you actually, by going to the ostracism, by refusing to associate with people who want you thrown in jail for peaceable activities, you show them that you're serious and hopefully you bring them around with that, right?
Not all arguments are intellectual.
Some of them are empirical.
How much do you believe what you believe?
So, seven years ago, I gave this speech.
It was a long speech.
I took questions from the audience.
I've been talking about it for close to 10 years.
And people have thought, many people have thought it appalling that I would ever bring this up.
But I brought it up because I know that this is where we come to if we don't use this.
The left understands the power of ostracism.
How about we learn from them and actually use it for good rather than for evil?
And anyway, it's just one of these things that, you know, if you heard these arguments from me seven, eight, nine years ago and you didn't do it, It's on you, too.
It's on you.
I mean, it's on you.
My conscience is perfectly clear.
Perfectly clear.
I told everyone what needed to be done, what was necessary to avoid this kind of escalation.
A few people did it, and a lot of people got mad at me and said, that was crazy.
My goodness, why would you actually want to live your values to the point where you decide your relationships based on your values?
But if you heard these arguments and thought they were crazy or said I was crazy, this violence is also on you because this could have been easily avoided and many, many more people could have been brought to the light by the empirical energy behind your values.
And values that are only talked about, nobody really takes them very seriously.
So I just wanted to point that out.
And guys, is there anything else you wanted to mention before I finish off with my what I dislike about protest rant?
Yeah, there's a definite silver lining here.
This is sort of like Twitter banning Milo, but even better and bigger because now Milo has more influence and he's being catapulted up to another plane of leadership.
He's going on Tucker Carlson tonight.
He may in fact be on right now.
I don't know.
And if you look at his book...
Oh, great.
And if you actually look at his book, it's just pre-orders right now, but it's number five for all top 100 books on Amazon.
It's number one for politics and government on censorship, number one on politics and government with commentary and opinion, number one for political humor.
That's huge for him.
Yeah, you know, this is a ridiculous analogy, but there used to be, I don't know if it's still done, but there used to be this glitter dust that you put on drums.
You can see it in some 80s videos.
I think it's in a Prince video or two.
It's always slow motion.
The drummer hits the drum and the glitter dust Just go spiraling up into the air, obscuring the entire scene.
Well, this is what happened.
They've hit the drum.
And I guess it's appropriate for Milo.
The glitter dust is rising up for everyone to see.
And I have to tell you, I mean, this is going to come as a surprise for these people.
But I actually love them.
I love them.
I love Milo.
I love Mike.
I love the people who are doing all of this incredibly courageous stuff.
Many of whom have been on the show.
I don't just like them.
I love them.
I will have their children.
I think it's incredible what they're doing.
Milo's courage in facing up to what he's facing and doing what he's doing is so brave.
And so powerful because he is exposing the left in a way that ideas and words and debates and trolls and arguments and message boards simply couldn't do.
He is drawing them out of their caves and exposing them for what they are.
People, it's only 200 people.
No, that's not what it's about.
It's not about the 200 people.
It's not about the 200 people.
They're the mere tip of the iceberg of what is going underneath to make those 200 people Know that they can do what they're doing.
It's all of the enablers.
It's all of the avoiders.
It's all of the supporters.
It's all of the provokers.
It's all of the baiters.
All of the media.
The academia.
All of the stuff that's going on.
All of them.
Most of the media.
Everyone who's out there giving them support.
Everyone who's refusing to push back.
Everyone who's refusing to demand people disavow.
Everyone who's refusing to push people into the light so we can see them for who they are.
And what a lot of people I enormously love are doing.
are shining a light on some very very dark places in the world that were tunneling under us and taking us down and I love respect and admire these people for what they're doing more than I can possibly possibly express so let me just do a tiny bit on protests oh yeah you got a right to protest and you should protest if you really really feel it's important And
this is not all protests, but it's most of the protests I've ever seen in my life.
And by protests, I don't mean you gather with some signs to hear some speeches.
That's fine.
You know, go hear some speeches.
Those are at least arguments and so on.
But what I'm talking about is when you got that tinny ass megaphone and you're blaring some stupid shit, whether it's in the library or not.
You're just two, four, six, eight.
Who got the power?
We got the power.
Who fight the power?
We will.
Oh, come on.
Come on.
This is idiotic.
It's retarded and it's embarrassing.
Protests are not an argument.
Chants are not an argument.
Signs, in general, are not an argument.
And getting together and mouthing idiotic, empty-headed, pseudo-monk slogans is not an argument.
Protests are idiotic for the most part.
So if someone's coming to your town and you don't like what they have to say, Here, let me...
I can't believe I actually have to say this.
Let me tell you what you need to do if you want to be considered a brain cell and a half by anybody with half a brain.
Someone's coming to your town.
You don't like what they're saying.
Here's what you do.
This is going to be a challenge.
Go and find the library.
You don't have to do it in a library, but I hear ever since that Chinese guy came by, they're pretty quiet.
But anyway.
Go to the library.
Find that person's book.
It's free.
Libraries, magic places.
Open their book.
And those little squiggles on the page can magically set your brain on fire with new ideas.
It's alchemy.
It's beautiful.
You read what they've written.
And a highlighter might be a bit too much.
You can probably get free pencils.
You know, around.
They might have some at the library.
People leave pens behind.
Don't mock up.
Or photocopy.
Don't mock up the library book.
But make notes of what the argument is of the person who's coming to town you don't like what they're saying and then what you do is wonderful place called the internet you can write your rebuttals to what that person is saying or you can record them on a webcam on your cell phone I've done it a whole bunch of times of articles I disagree with and you can prove this person wrong and then what you do is you try and get as many people as possible To read your criticisms of
what that person has written or spoken or said.
And maybe you'll have to spend a little bit of money.
You could maybe promote it with ads or whatever.
But it's okay because you've got to spend gas money to go and protest.
You've got to, I guess, first you sniff the fumes of the paint can and then you make your sign so that it's more comprehensible to you.
And you might need some throat soothers after you've been chanting stupid shit all day.
But what you do is you find a way to rebut the person's arguments and you engage at that level.
Going down and virtue signaling your horrified, empty-headed disapproval of what the person is saying is unbelievably ridiculous.
It is basically like saying, the person inside with the microphone is a warlock who frightens me.
Now, I don't know what strange magic they're doing to convince people's minds.
It must be a form of mass hypnosis.
There must be some Kool-Aid involved.
But they're doing something weird to change people's minds.
Now, I don't know what it is because it's a weird kind of voodoo magic.
But I do know this.
That I'm going to stand out here and I'm going to try and disrupt their magic spell.
Because I read...
In the Player's Handbook, huh, inside joke, I read in the Player's Handbook that if you interrupt the spellcaster while in the process of casting a spell, you disrupt the magic.
The magic goes away.
The spell is broken and people are no longer hypnotized by the warlock or the witch with their magic words.
So I'm going to come out here with my electrical voice amplification box and attempt to disrupt the magic of the spell that they're casting.
Protests show You don't have an argument.
If you had a good argument and a good way to present it, because, you know, it's important not just to have content but form, it's important not just to be right but to be engaging, to be entertaining, to be funny, to be enjoyable, to be witty, to use different voices.
And that's what they don't like about Milo.
It's not his arguments.
His arguments can be fantastic, some of them original, a lot of them I've heard before.
What they don't like about Milo is he has...
A medium-sized supernova's worth of charisma and some truly, truly astoundingly excellent hair.
And they don't like the fact that he's enormously charismatic.
They don't like the fact that he's enormously funny.
Same thing with Ann Coulter.
Incredibly charismatic.
Incredibly.
Ann Coulter is like jaw-droppingly hilarious in written form, which is not the easiest thing to do.
You try writing books about the French Revolution and make them funny.
I mean, it's really...
I'm in awe.
I love Ann Coulter too.
But...
You've got to work on charisma, on engagement, on connecting with people, on you've got to practice like crazy to become good at communicating in this way.
What I do doesn't come out of nowhere.
I mean, I was doing it.
I was practicing speeches in my spare time for years before I ever pointed a webcam or a microphone at my face.
So, you are confessing you don't have an argument.
You don't understand what an argument is.
You don't understand how to analyze an argument and rebut it.
And you are just...
Saying you're frightened of classical music so you're going to fart a lot.
I mean that's really all it comes down to.
Not all protests are like that.
Anyway, but I just wanted to point that out.
The people who are coming out and protesting It's noise.
It's static.
It's not an argument.
It's not intellectual.
You're simply showing that you think it is valid to drown people out with amplification systems that your tiny pea brains could never have invented in about a billion years.
So, just wanted to make that point.
Let's move on to the next caller, guys.
Thanks so, so much.
Thank you for checking out the show.
And I really, really appreciate getting the eyes on the ground.
For those who don't know, Nima, you can search up Econ Junkie.
He's got a blog which is excellent.
Warren, do you feel like saying anything you've got on the web or should we just keep moving?
I don't have anything yet.
Okay, if you do, let us know.
But guys, thanks so much for the boots on the ground.
Thanks, Steph.
Yes, sir.
Oh, I said thanks, Steph.
Oh, sorry.
I thought I was missing something.
Do you want to give us your blog, Addy?
Oh, it's economicsjunkie.com.
Economicsjunkie.com.
All right.
Well, thanks, guys, so much.
Let's move on to the next caller.
Alright, up next we have Brandon.
Brandon wrote in and said, That's from Brandon.
Oh, hey, Brandon.
How are you doing?
I'm well, Steph.
How are you?
I am all right.
I am refreshed by the energy of the audience, which is nice.
And do you want to mention a little bit about...
We've got a presentation called The Truth About Single Moms, Single Motherhood, which people should look up at youtube.com slash free domain radio.
So I won't go over all the statistics because I've done it before.
But did you want to mention something about any of the troubles that you had in your own childhood growing up?
With teenage parents, and you didn't say single mom, but it's not a great indicator either.
Or the childhoods of your friends where you saw dysfunctions?
Absolutely, actually.
A good friend of mine growing up, him and I were in similar situations.
I was very fortunate because I had my maternal grandparents pretty much raised me.
My paternal grandparents were involved, but my father was off in the military for the first few years of my life.
But I've seen them every now and again.
Kind of troubling not really knowing my dad up until I was about maybe six, seven years old.
That was probably the biggest struggle.
You mentioned it in some of your shows, you know, that you kind of need a father figure as a boy growing up.
Yeah, trying to figure out how to shave in a single mom household.
Seriously.
I remember there's a Michael Keaton movie from years ago.
He's dying and he gives videos to his kid.
And one of them is like, here's how you shave, up and down, not side to side.
I actually learned how to shave by looking at an old Life magazine from the 1950s, which had a series, like, that's how I learned how to shave.
My mom couldn't help me.
Oh, wow.
Luckily, my dad was back before that happened.
But, yeah, my dad, he came back from the Marines, I think, I was about eight years old when he finally left, for good.
Do you know why he left?
Well, when he got out of the Marines, he left pretty much to be with me.
We spoke about it a few times as I got older.
You know, his dream growing up was always to be a Marine.
That's all he ever wanted to do since he was a child.
By the time I was conceived, he was kind of too far through the process to just quit.
So he did his tours.
He came back, did four years in the reserves so he could be closer to me.
And then about when I was eight years old, I believe he left the reserves, eight or nine in there.
He was a pretty big part of my life from there.
Do you know why you were conceived if he was just about to head off?
Was it an accident?
Yeah, I don't believe it was on purpose.
Teenage parents might be an understatement.
My dad was 16 going on 17, and my mom was about 15.
Whoa.
Yeah, it was really teenage.
Wow.
Wow.
So, he might have just been learning how to shave, too, when you came along.
Wow.
Probably.
Well, we're Italian.
We start young.
Oh, yeah.
Back of the hands, knuckles, top of the neck.
Yeah.
My struggle.
All right.
And...
We have your Adverse Childhood Experience Score, and I would just recommend people go check this out.
We had Dr.
Vincent Felitti on the show years ago about this, the Adverse Childhood Experience Score.
You can also go to bombinthebrain.com to learn more about this.
So you had to score four.
I'm sorry about that.
Verbal abuse and threats, physical abuse, non-spanking, parents divorced, lived with alcoholic or drug user.
What was that last one?
That's the other ones I generally understand.
What was the last one?
My mother, I mean, she's cleaned up and sober.
She's come a long way since then.
When she was young, you know, probably up until her early 20s, she was a party girl, you know, and basically left me with my grandparents.
And I really didn't see too, too much of her that I can remember growing up.
I found out as I got older, you know, she was into some drugs back then and, you know, got herself into some pretty nasty situations.
Luckily, I was too young to remember.
Like what?
My grandfather actually told me of one situation where I couldn't have been older than maybe a year, year and a half old, where he actually had to kick down a door because she basically left me off with her friends to go be with some guy or get high or something.
Obviously, I was too young to remember.
I got the story second there.
I'm sorry, what caused your granddad to have to kick down a door?
She basically left me with some friends of hers, from what I understand the story, and they wouldn't let my grandparents in.
He could hear me crying.
My grandfather was always very protective of me, and he basically forced his way into the house to come make sure I was alright.
Him and my grandmother came in and took me away and took me home.
Right.
Right.
Okay.
Well, is there anything you wanted to add?
I mean, I've certainly given it some thought today, and I have some thoughts that hopefully will help, but I don't want to interrupt if there's more that you wanted to add about your history or the question.
Uh, just a little bit I wanted to add about the history is, you know, I think, you know, part of my question was why I turned all right.
And one of my theories is the fact that I did, I was fortunate enough to have, uh, you know, my, my grandparents and my father was a big part of my life.
He's, uh, you know, even though I live in a different state than my father, I live in the same state as my mother.
I feel like I'm closer to him and to her just because of the, uh, the stability there, you know, the, the, he basically gave me that discipline that a father gives a son and, uh, I guess that's my theory on why I turned out the way I did.
Right, right, okay.
Is there anything else you wanted to add?
No, I would love to hear a little bit about it from your perspective.
Okay, so I've talked on this show with experts about this aspect of intelligence and genetics.
It is an absolutely essential topic for people to understand and we're not going to talk about the race side of it just in terms of the bell curve as a whole.
Now estimates range when you're young of intelligence basically making up about between 40 and 60 percent of your intelligence comes from your genetics.
Now later on in life that seems to rise to about 80 percent of your intelligence is genetic.
Now, let's take the worst possible scenario.
I think it's better than this, but let's take the worst possible scenario.
And let's say that 80% of your intelligence is genetic.
Boy, 20% is actually quite a lot.
You know, when I was a salaried employee, I would like be angling for a 5% raise or 7% raise.
We're like, woohoo!
You know?
That's good.
You know, 20% is three to four, you know that feeling, three to four times that, right?
And you're like, woohoo, I got a raise.
And then you get your paycheck after they've deducted the taxes and it's like, woohoo, the government got a raise.
Or if I said to you, I've got this cologne that improves your chances of picking up women by 20%, you'd be pretty interested, right?
20% boost?
I mean, think of how close people are in a race at the Olympics, right?
It's the old Seinfeld joke, you know, the guy who's second is like, man, if I'd had a pimple on my nose, I'd have won.
20% is a big deal.
Now, when you're young, you know, 40 to 60% is a big deal.
So the environment stuff is really, really important.
So people say, well, you've got this genetics and IQ stuff.
It's like, well, why do you talk too much about parenting?
Because environment is really, really important.
It's not the whole story.
I'm not, you know, the sort of environmental determinist stuff that goes on that's too much on the left and not supported by the data.
So, no, it's not all genetics, not all environment.
We can't do much about the genetics, but we sure as hell can work on the environment.
At least we can't do anything about the genetics yet, but we can certainly work on the environment.
So, trying to convince people to...
Do the three things that get you into the middle class almost every single time.
49 times out of 50, this will get you to the middle class.
Number one, finish high school.
Number two, get and keep a job for a year.
Number three, don't have children until you're in a stable marriage.
Do those three things.
You're not going to be poor.
It's a kind of magic, right?
It's just what you need to do.
And these things are possible.
They're doable.
You don't need to be a genius.
Now, this single motherhood, the teenage motherhood and stuff like that...
Well, the teenage motherhood is going down in America to some degree.
Single motherhood is not.
But it's new.
This is not...
An IQ thing.
Now, it's true that single mothers tend to have a lower IQ than married mothers in stable relationships and so on.
But it's not the low IQ that causes them to become single mothers.
Because if that was the case, there's arguments that people had lower IQs in the 1920s, but there sure as hell were a lot fewer single moms around.
I mean, single moms around were in like the single digits now.
Women under 30 becoming moms, like half of them are single moms.
So how do you go from a couple of percentage points to nearly 50%?
You get a welfare state, right?
So this is one of the reasons why I really, really viscerally loathe the welfare state, is that the welfare state provides entirely the wrong cues for the most vulnerable among us, right?
Because what it does is it says, oh, well, okay, so you had kids, fine, here's a whole bunch of money, here's free healthcare, here's free housing, here's food stamps, here's, you know, money, like it provides entirely the wrong incentives.
Now, I knew a guy When I was young, younger, young.
And he wanted to take the summer off and he'd worked and he was eligible for unemployment insurance.
So he made his application and, you know, he kind of looked for work, but not really that much.
And he basically spent the summer bumming around playing Frisbee golf in the park.
Hacky sack and seeing movies.
And then what he said was after like two or three months of this, I remember sitting down with him and having a conversation with him about all this stuff.
And he's like, ah, you know, it was good for the summer, but yeah, I can't spend my life doing this.
And then he ended up becoming pretty successful and doing well.
Because he's smart enough to realize that this is not, you know, there's not a good path to stay on, right?
And I've mentioned this about, this is not a welfare state story, but it's just a cool story that another friend of mine finished his college education, and he'd worked as a bartender, and he'd finished his college education, and he came back, and he didn't really know what he wanted to do and so on, and his, you know, the guy who ran, he's very charismatic and good-looking guy, and The guy who ran the bar called him up and said, man, there's a job here if you want it.
Tips are great.
Business is booming.
You could work here for a couple of years.
Maybe you'll end up a part owner.
He really wanted him to come back because that guy could pull the chicks like a gravity will.
And...
He was walking over thinking he was going to take this job and he was like, I don't know this much of a future here.
So he ended up getting a job at an office and went sort of a more, I guess, professional route.
Nothing against bar owners or anything like that.
It's just he wanted to do something a bit more intellectual with his life.
And this is the problem.
I think it's absolutely terrible.
The incentives that are out there for single moms and teen moms and so on, it's terrible.
They're too young to have kids and single moms have a bad time of it.
Now, if they're smarter, they say, oh, you know, I really got to make sure I don't get pregnant.
I've really got to make sure I'm in a stable relationship because if I have kids without a father around, it's going to be rough.
It's going to interfere with my education.
It's going to interfere with my career.
It's going to lower my sexual market value.
Won't be able to get a good man.
So the smarter women, they get this stuff and they don't fall into that trap.
The less intelligent women...
And this, you know, people get crazy with me about intelligence like it's an insult.
No, it's caring.
It's love.
I've seen up close what happens to single moms.
I grew up in the matriarchal manners of dependent state, dependent single motherhood.
My whole childhood I saw dozens of families, new hundreds of families with single moms.
It was almost universally a soul-sucking, crap-tabulous, ghastly fest from hell.
The single moms were stressed.
They were panicked.
They were upset.
They were fighting with their teenage boys who didn't have much respect for them.
There was trouble with the law.
There was trashy guys floating through.
The apartments like headless beholders with penises attached.
I mean there was just it was a mess and I don't want people to end up in that mess.
Now the people who are the least intelligent in society need the best cues from society.
Religion used to provide these But one of the things that took down religion was the welfare state because it bypassed the need for community charity.
Anyway.
So the welfare state encourages the less intelligent people to make the worst possible decisions for their lives.
This is the great tragedy of the welfare state.
It preys upon and traps, for the purposes of political power, it preys upon the less intelligent and traps them to become giant farms of votes for bigger government, right?
Like they call the...
Public housing, government housing, they call them girlfriend farms because just women out there who'll be friends with benefits because they, you know, having no life with their kids and all that.
Well, these are just vote farms, right?
The welfare state is just vote farms, single motherhood and all that and teen moms.
So it is out of love because the life of a single mom, teen mom, I mean, look at your mom's life when you were young.
Was it good?
Was it quality?
Was it good for her?
No, no, I wouldn't say so.
It was terrible.
It was terrible for her, terrible for those around her, terrible for you, terrible for her body, terrible for her mind.
And then she gets stuck with the guilt of what she chose to do for the rest of her life.
She's got a walking eggshells around you, praying every single day you don't bring it up, make her feel bad.
It's terrible.
It's terrible.
When I think of the incentives, even within my own family, when I think of the incentives and the decisions that were made, that otherwise would have been made very differently, Very differently.
We need to care for the less intelligent in society.
We need to care for the less intelligent in society.
Now, the way that caring used to happen is that if a woman got pregnant outside of wedlock, she'd either, you know, before abortions, she'd go away, give it up for adoption, and it would never be spoken of again, and it would try to be swept under the rug, but the parents would be very keen on Making sure that the young woman in question did not get pregnant.
Now, the welfare state and so on, you know, it's not that bad.
It's not that bad.
And by making it not that bad financially, immediately, directly, the social control and pressure on young women to not get pregnant has largely evaporated, which has opened them up to terrible decisions like getting pregnant when they're teenagers, like getting pregnant when they don't have a stable provider around.
Well, now they do.
It's called the state, but the state can't raise your children.
And so what happens is you get these women who sacrifice years of their life, maybe not so much your mom when you were younger, but they sacrifice years of their life.
And what happens is they don't end up being very good parents.
They end up having an extremely dissatisfying and friction-filled conflict-based family life.
Their children grow up to be problematic.
Sometimes criminal, dysfunctional, sometimes addicts, sometimes bullies, sometimes victims of bullies.
And they can't be proud of the kids that they've raised and they can't be happy with the family that they have created.
And the kids grow up, especially if they're sons without fathers, without a lot of respect for the mom, because either the mom couldn't attract a good man, in which case she's not worthy of respect, or she could attract a good man, but the good man ran away because she was such a horrible person, in which case she's not worthy of respect.
It's a hell of a situation to be in.
So everyone ends up miserable.
The children, the mom, society, the dads, I mean, everyone ends up miserable, and all of this could be prevented to a large degree, like significantly, tenfold prevented.
By simply having the right incentives in place and taking care and making sure that the least intelligent among us have the best social structure by which to make decisions.
And the best incentives, people who are less intelligent, they need the incentives right in front of their nose.
It can't be, well, you know, if you get pregnant now, woo!
You might not get to do your second PhD when you're 30.
You know, I mean, that's not, they need incentives like, boom, right in their nose, this close.
Nothing wrong with it.
It's perfectly fine.
I have great affection for the less intelligent.
I care about them enormously.
We have to, those of us who have more intelligence, look around society and say, is it serving the less intelligent?
Well, it's not.
It's not.
Herding them up and putting them all in UC Berkeley is not helping UC Berkeley.
I can tell you it's not going to help UC Berkeley when their funding probably gets cut and also when employers say, oh, you got a degree at UC Berkeley?
I'm sorry, that position has already been filled.
Oh, you want me to donate to UC Berkeley?
Why?
Are you running out of mace?
So, it's terrible all around.
So, working on fixing the incentives.
You know, this fiat currency...
This stuff, this welfare state money.
It's a drug.
The government is like a fiat currency drug dealer.
And it's brutal for the women.
They get sucked into this lifestyle that makes them miserable.
I mean, I don't know if you look at single moms or like in their middle age.
They're not happy people.
They're not.
Happy people.
Look at Winona Ryder in Stranger Things.
Yeah, I dipped into it just after that asshole made the comment at the SAG Awards.
Yeah, pretty good portrayal.
This is not a happy woman.
And it is making the less intelligent, the most vulnerable people in society, the most miserable.
And if you care about them at all, you've got to at least question the incentives that we're putting in front of their faces.
Oh, absolutely.
If you don't mind, can I expand on that?
Oh, yeah, no, absolutely.
Well, just that single mother's gone through a little bit of background on this.
My mother did get married around 19, 20 years old, maybe a little bit older than that.
I know she met him about 18, 19.
Ironically enough, they met in NA. Basically, you know, they went through, they had three more children.
I have three very young sisters between the ages of about 11 and 19.
And she's a single mother again.
Basically, marriage completely failed.
She's living off his dime.
It's a miserable situation over there.
I don't mean to speak poorly about her.
I don't want to give that impression that I dislike my mother for any reason.
The situation over there, it's almost exactly what you're talking about with the single mothers in middle age.
She's completely miserable.
She has no direction.
She has no incentive to really do anything.
She's not happy.
And she can't go back and fix what's made her unhappy, right?
Exactly.
There's no redo switch on it.
My sisters are suffering for it because there's no direction at the house.
It's just her being miserable.
She's not I guess without, because she's living in a house that her ex-husband paid for, and he pays her alimony and child support, and pretty much she doesn't work.
But there's no incentive for her to work, but also you can tell it's just a very, I'm trying to think of the word for it, bland existence.
There's no motivation, there's no momentum to it.
If that makes sense?
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, and where does she go?
She's got decades still to go in her life, and what happens?
She's never going to be able to go back and be the kind of mother she should have been for you when you were young.
I'm not excusing her decisions, but she was 15.
Her brain is still a decade away from its maturity.
She's a child having a child, and she can't go back and fix it, and you can't ever go back and have the kind of mother that you needed to have and the kind of father that you needed to have when you were young.
Sure, sure.
And, you know, it's funny you bring up the mentality, so to speak, because I really think it didn't, you know, having me so young have an impact on her permanently.
You know, again, not to make excuses, but it seems like she hit a wall in terms of maturity.
I can remember clearly, and I don't know if this comes back to the genetic intelligence you were talking about, but right around 14, 15, I do feel that I outmatured her.
It seems like she still does very much have that teenage mentality.
She constantly calls me up and, oh, do you want to come over for a bonfire or have a few drinks?
I have a house, a wife, kids of my own, and I work for a living.
I can't.
She doesn't seem to see that.
It seems like that friend in high school, nothing permanent.
She was a server, odds and ends here and there.
Cleaning houses.
When she was married to my ex-stepfather, she was a stay-at-home mother.
She constantly blames that on her lack of career.
I gave up my career options to be a stay-at-home mom.
It always struck me as kind of a cop-out.
I got to think it maybe has more to do with the drugs and alcohol.
Oh, of course.
Of course.
I was going to say, from what I can remember her, granted I was 5'6".
She didn't seem like she was really the academic type, you know, especially not at that age.
Right, but she could have had a perfectly fulfilling and happy life, been a pillar of the community, being a good stay-at-home mom.
All of these things could have happened if the incentive structures had been, and I'm not trying to say she's got no free will or no choice or anything like that, but less intelligent people need more immediate education.
Incentive structures for them to make the right decision, you know, smarter people we can sort of look over the horizon and figure out bloody bloody blah But we really need to design a society That helps the less intelligent people in society and the one we have right now is this big giant stick sticky trap of honey that rots No, I agree a hundred percent I You know, that would be the prime example.
I think, again, the only thing that got me out of it, because for all intent and purposes, you know, I've seen plenty of kids who grew up in my situation, excuse me, who basically use it as a crutch.
You know, always me.
I can't succeed.
You know, I had my cards stacked against me, and, you know, I constantly tell them, I had my cards stacked against me, and I just pushed through it.
You know, and I don't mean to say their situations are any worse, but it seems like you said that the lack of incentive there, it just doesn't push people forward like it should.
Yeah, because I never wanted to take government money.
I had to Hustle like credit.
Bust my ass to get work and to make money.
What's your option then?
You just go sit around and watch daytime TV and design Warhammer scenarios and take other people's money?
Gross.
Yuck.
Also, when I grew up, I grew up because I'm 50, right?
So I grew up and there was still a lot of the fading remnants of welfare is for losers.
Like welfare is a big giant confession that you failed.
And there was ostracism.
I just went on Google Maps the other day for the first time ever.
You know the street view thing?
And I went to my old neighborhood and looked around.
And a lot of it is still kind of the same.
Although it looks different that I remember because I was much smaller then.
So everything looks smaller now because I'm bigger.
But we lived in these apartment buildings on this council estate.
And in the back, there were these grungy bungalows.
It always reminds me of that The Doors song.
Got some bungalow.
And there were the welfare people back there.
You know, the guys and the wife beaters and the grimy shorts drinking beer and sitting out all day looking at the people going by.
And this is before the computers and the internet and cell phones and stuff.
But...
You didn't go back there.
That was kind of a sinister area.
That was like a negative area.
And it was like, those are the people who've chosen to go on welfare.
A lot of them don't really seem to be that disabled or unable to work.
They were ostracized in general.
And that all began to decay, of course, as it got more normalized and so on.
But I think I internalized that.
Like, I don't want to be the grimy guy with the pot belly and the wife beater and the grimy shorts drinking a beer and watching the world go by and watching my life slip underneath me like a bowling ball into a...
Pile of quicksand.
And that gave, I think, me the incentive to work.
Now, of course, I had a lot of native intelligence, but it was the hustle that sharpened it.
It was the hustle that gave me the training and the discipline that I didn't get at home.
I mean, discipline at my house was ridiculous.
You know, my mom would be like, you're grounded!
And then like three hours later, hey, let's go see a movie.
It's like, what the...
Actually, it was exactly the same in my house.
Oh, yeah.
Single moms who can't possibly discipline.
I mean, if they had discipline, they wouldn't be single moms.
And here's the thing, too.
And I don't know if you've seen this with your friends, but when you were talking about your mom saying, you want to come over?
Single moms, welcome to the extremely lonely second half of your life.
Ooh, the interstellar isolation.
They got no husband.
Their kids have moved away.
They don't have a close relationship with their kids because they usually weren't good moms.
And they usually don't have a job.
Or if they do, it's not that great.
And they have, you know, they've passed 30 or 40 or whatever.
You know, grown kids probably passed 40, right?
So their sexual market value is in the toilet.
There are no guys who really want to date them.
And they've got another 45 years to go.
Statistically, they're not even halfway through their lives and they're set up to be encased in this isolated history like Han Solo reaching for a hug that never comes when he's got molten metal poured over him or whatever the hell that stuff was.
And that loneliness creates this neediness and creates this guilt and this manipulation.
I got a sense when your mom was calling up, you went, come over for a bonfire.
It's like, I'm so lonely.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's about right.
Brutal.
It's a horrifying existence that we're handing to these people, and it could all be fixed and changed so easily.
All we have to do is care more about the less intelligent, more about the poor, than we care about ourselves.
You know, people say, well, if you get rid of the welfare state, it would cause a lot of suffering.
Eh, yeah, you know.
Men go to war, for God's sakes.
You know, women can handle this.
And it would help.
But people...
Don't want to get rid of the welfare state because they'll feel bad and guilty, not because they care.
You have to stop caring about yourself and stop caring about other people in order to do what's right for them and what's good for them.
Your mom, that's not a life you would wish on someone, is it?
No, no, of course not.
It's not.
It's not.
A confused and chaotic and addicted youth and, you know, hitting her child as you were hit.
No discipline.
Chaos.
Desperately reaching for men who often recoil.
Loneliness.
Isolation.
Neediness.
And there's a reason why so many middle-aged women in America and other places are on these antidepressants and these psychotropics because the incentives suck them into a life That chewed them up and spit them out on the other side with very little left to hang on to.
It's horrible.
It's horrible.
And it can't be fixed.
It can't be changed.
Should you move back in and be the pseudo-husband?
Because you know what happens.
If you're the son and there's no dad, welcome to being the little man of the house.
Welcome to being mommy's little husband.
Welcome to Arrested Development.
Welcome to...
Oh, you don't really want to go and date those girls, do you?
Mommy needs you.
You don't really want to go out.
Mommy needs you.
You don't really want to go to that bar, to that disco.
Mommy needs you.
I can't get free.
Actually, that would explain a lot of the tension between my wife and my mother.
Go on.
Well, yeah, my wife, I actually met her when I was super young, but...
You know, her and my mother always got along until it became pretty apparent that we were serious.
And it's only gotten worse and worse since, you know, we've gotten married, we moved in together, and then we finally bought a house.
I also have two small children together.
And it's just, it's nonstop bickering.
And nine times out of ten, if it's not instigated by my mother, it's blown out of proportion by my mother.
It was a situation just a couple weeks ago, actually.
It kind of prompted me to write in.
My wife made a very innocuous Facebook post.
My mother felt offended by it.
She felt called out by it and proceeded to basically start a war on Facebook that all my friends and family and co-workers can see, which was wonderful.
What do you mean?
I don't want to get you in any trouble, but can you give me tiny details ahead?
Oh, sure.
My mother...
I guess runs a cat rescue, you could call it.
She's a cat lady.
I'm sure you couldn't see that coming.
Hopefully not a real pussy hat coming down the driveway, but go on.
Our cat got out, got into a fight.
We needed antibiotics.
Of course, we tried calling my mother.
My wife ended up putting a post out on Facebook asking anybody for help, if they had any suggestions.
Just kind of asking the crowd.
Somebody asked, well, why don't you ask Brandon's mom?
She said, oh, well, she's busy.
She's got this, this, and this to do.
My mother took that as just an unparalleled personal attack.
How could you say that I'm too busy?
That's actually exactly what she said.
Wait, so, sorry, let me just, I always have trouble following the instigation of drama because I have a pretty rational brain and I can't figure out what the hell people are going on about.
I don't mean you, I just mean your mom.
So your wife needed the antibiotics and your mom said, I'm busy.
And then your wife posted and then people said, why don't you ask your mother-in-law?
And she said, oh, she said she was busy or she was too busy.
And then your mom, when her words were accurately reported by your wife, got incredibly offended and upset.
Yes, exactly.
What?
Yeah.
You bitch!
You said what I said!
It's a personal attack for you to repeat what I said.
When you asked a factual question about what I said and you told people the facts about what I said, that was horrible!
And it's funny because I'm a lot more like my father and I go to him with these problems.
He's had the same reaction you have.
He's like, why is she doing this?
I know why she's doing it.
It just blows my mind.
I can tell you why.
You probably know.
But the reason, just for those who are following along at home and currently trying to put their heads up their own ass so they don't hear the rest of the story.
But the reason she's doing this is that women are hypersensitive to any perceived slights upon their familial beliefs.
Allegiance.
And so when your wife publicly said that your mother was too busy to help her, Your mother freaked out because she would be perceived as selfish or uninvolved or uncommitted or aloof or too distant or too busy to take care of a sick animal, not interested in helping a sick cat.
And it portrayed her in a social way, in a way that flipped her out because she viewed it as people possibly perceiving her in a negative light because of what your wife said.
Is that more or less what you would think or is it something else?
No, no, that's essentially accurate.
Basically, it was all about her.
We were having this conversation about the cat, and it turned into, how could you say that about me?
Right, and that's never a rhetorical question where anyone accepts the answer.
How could you say that about me?
Well, it's what you said.
But, but, but!
90% of questions are just rhetorical and nobody will ever accept the answer that you give them.
So how did it turn?
You said a war?
How did it turn into a war?
At that point, I ended up getting involved, which I rarely do because I just don't have time for it.
Oh no, you must.
I'm sorry, man.
She's your mom.
It's your wife.
You got to.
You've got to.
You chose your wife.
You didn't choose your mom, but you're choosing to have her around.
I'm afraid that's the job as the man.
So, yeah.
Yeah, you're right.
As it proceeded, I basically just...
It turned into just a personal slugfest.
No, tell me about it.
So, what was said?
She basically just went on about...
She brought up the house and all the help she does with the girls and how she's made up for all her mistakes as a mom and you know it went on and on and I'm just trying to bring it back down to look it was an innocuous comment just calm down you do this all the time just just let it go oh wait a minute you said to an upset woman calm down you do this all the time those are two contradictory commandments to a woman's amygdala calm down you're repetitively insane no no no Don't
say that!
No!
That's not how you get a woman to calm down or anyone for that matter.
You need to relax because you're constantly paranoid and irrational.
Hmm.
Did that help her relax?
No, no, no.
No, it didn't.
It continued to go on to just a slugfest.
What I was getting at, though, was a day or two later.
She texted me.
She asked me to bring her food.
One of my sisters was in the hospital and they were there late and She asked me to bring her food.
She's like, hey, I know you're still mad at me.
I'm still not sure why your mom would call you.
Is there no takeout?
I couldn't tell you.
I mean, maybe it was late.
We live in a relatively small town where everything closes at 10 o'clock.
She was lonely.
And now there's that too.
And she began the text message with, I know you're still mad at me.
The point of the whole conversation I had with her two days before was, I'm not mad.
This actually personally affects me.
It just went right back to her.
That's basically what happens every time.
What is the solution to this kind of escalation?
How do you solve it?
How do you resolve it?
It's not uncommon, unfortunately.
More often than not, it goes unresolved.
Basically, the two of us just kind of keep our distance for whatever the period of time is.
We either run into each other at a family gathering or we just randomly start talking about something else irrelevant.
It just blows over until the next one.
How often do these things happen?
Maybe every other month, maybe.
Oh.
Wow, that's...
It's quite a lot.
You said that she was involved with your kids?
More lack thereof.
Huh?
What?
Yeah, it's more of a lack thereof of involvement.
I don't know what that means!
What does that mean?
She's not involved.
At least not the way I think she should be.
Oh, okay.
Oh, you think she should be?
You think that your kids would really benefit from more exposure to this kind of personality?
No, but on the flip side of the same coin, I also feel like she doesn't make enough of an effort to even just see them.
I mean, she lives about 30 minutes away.
Wait, wait.
Hang on.
I'm so sorry.
I shouldn't be laughing.
I'm sorry.
Let me compose myself.
Man, you don't know how to count your blessings, do you?
No.
I mean, holy God, man.
If your mom is blowing up at your wife and doing all this crazy escalation stuff and you're like, boy, it'd be great if she was around more, what am I missing?
No, you're probably right in that respect.
I guess it's just a...
Did you ask your wife if your wife would be happy if your mom was around more?
No, she wouldn't be.
No.
Not even a little bit.
Quick question.
Quick question for you, my friend.
In terms of...
Say, pleasing the women in your life.
Do you think it's more important to please your mother or your wife?
Oh no, my wife.
Yes!
That is correct.
For a variety of reasons that were they to be violated, the play Hamlet would make a lot more sense.
So...
You kind of got it good.
I just got the Hamlet reference.
If she's not...
I know.
I'm doing a chat with Duke Pester tomorrow about this.
I've been reading it.
But...
So...
You kind of got it good if your mom's not that involved in your kids, right?
I mean, careful what you wish for, my friend.
This is true.
And I guess it just comes from an idealistic perspective.
You'd like to have the kind of mom that it would be nice if she was more involved than your kids.
Right, right.
Rather than the mom you actually have, where there's some upside to her not being involved with your kids.
Yeah, that's a good way to put it.
People without enough to do...
For some weird reason, I don't know why this is.
Maybe you can help me out with this one.
You're certainly closer to this than I am.
Anybody like this is so deep in my rear view, I can't even tell you.
Were they wearing a sombrero the size of the Eiffel Tower?
I still couldn't see them.
But people who don't have enough to do, and it sounds to me like your mom doesn't have much work, you know, doesn't spend a lot of time around her grandkids, not married, not dating much, I assume.
People who don't have a lot to do, People who are lonely seem to drift towards drama pretty regularly.
I can't figure it out.
Like, if I was lonely, then what I'd want to do is make other people enjoy my company so much that they'd keep inviting me over.
You know, be so funny, be so warm, be so engaging, be so helpful.
Like, it's what I would do.
It's what I would do.
So, you know, I used to work – after high school, I went and worked for quite some time as a gold planner and prospector.
I talked about this before.
And I'd work out for a couple of months and then I'd come back to town for a couple of weeks and then I'd go back and work out for a couple of months.
It was a great way to save money because when I was working in the bush, they paid for everything and just deposited the money back in my account in Toronto.
Now, when I would come back to town, I'd need some place to stay because I'd only be in town for a couple of weeks and then I'd go back for another couple of months working up north.
And so, I would stay with friends.
Now, I know...
That it was an imposition for me to stay with my friends.
So I'd do their groceries, I'd cook, you know, I'd clean, I'd make their lives more enjoyable, we'd have great conversations.
I'd make it so that when I was going back up north, they'd be like, oh man, you've got to come and stay with me again when you come back down from the great white north.
I'd be like, yeah, that'd be great.
That's how I ended up not having to pay money.
I don't know where the hell I wouldn't afford to live in a hotel for a couple of weeks.
I mean, it's just a gold pattern.
It's not like I'm making a fortune.
So when I needed things from people, it was an exchange, a trade, right?
Now, it wasn't like if I was paying them, I'd be an asshole or anything because, you know, generally, if you're living with people, it's more fun if you're getting along.
But I don't know what it is with people who are lonely and want more human contact, why they choose to have human contact Through negative mechanisms, through drama, through war, through frustration, through upset, through being offended, through...
It's like, why don't you use a little positive economics so people actually want to call you rather than feel guilty and call you, rather than feel cornered and call you, rather than feel, like, obligated and call you?
Why don't you just make them want to call you by being nice?
Actually, I do have a theory on that.
I'm just watching the people around me.
Please help me.
Help me.
It seems like there's always a side.
There's always people who are going to be on her side when this drama occurs.
I think that it's their positive confirmation that she's after.
Whoever's going to take her side in this argument.
Oh, so people call her with sympathy and, I can't believe she said that, and another thing, and you're totally in the right, and this has been a problem for a while, and I stand by you, and all that kind of crap?
Oh, definitely.
One of the situations between her and my wife on Facebook.
One of her friends actually attacked my wife verbally on Facebook.
I don't remember how it started.
It was probably something over one of my daughters or over me.
One of the things that upsets me, and because it upsets me, upsets my wife, is my mother likes to take credit for my accomplishments.
Like, oh, look, this is my son.
Look at what he's done.
It's like she's bragging on herself.
My wife called her out on it one day.
One of my mother's friends actually attacked my wife.
I'm guessing he didn't know who she was.
You don't know what she's been through.
You can't do this.
You You know, you better keep your mouth shut.
And my wife just backed off.
She's not a very confrontational person.
Well, actually, that's just called being a sensible person.
I mean, why on earth would you want to engage with someone like that?
Exactly.
And she didn't.
And that's what I think my mother's after.
If she does have these friends that in most cases are just like her.
Who will back her up on these things and who will, oh, well, it's okay, you know, your son was mean to you or, you know, your daughter-in-law was mean to you or so-and-so was mean to you.
And that's what I think she's after, you know, or even just people like her.
You know, there's always somebody who's going to be there to say, oh, you know, even if it's a momentary acquaintance who takes your side, that's what they're after.
Someone's there to prop up the crazy like a folding circus tent, right?
And there's no shortage of those people, I assure you.
Ugh.
Oh man, that's rough.
I'm sorry about that.
I'm sorry about that.
Unfortunately, once it goes on this long, it was that I'm not a religious person, but the serenity prayer, not the things you can't change.
So that's sort of my thought, that you can remind people, and these kinds of conversations, you know, just having this call, millions of people can listen to this over time, and Painting the portrait of what life is like after conception, you know, is important.
We are bringing the incentive structure closer to people who might otherwise not make better decisions.
So I think having this conversation helps a lot.
But yeah, the long-term solution is, you know, when the government runs out of its monopoly money, then at some point the welfare state is going to collapse.
It always does.
And it's going to be painful for the people who've become addicted to the state currency.
It's going to be very painful.
But it's going to be for the best.
You know, it's so much going to be for the best.
You know, one of the reasons why your mom can be horrible is because she doesn't have to earn her money, right?
So if someone is horrible in the free market, they get fired, right?
Nobody wants to work with them.
So they get negative feedback on being horrible and then they have to learn how to control their temper, how to work with others, how to be nice and all this kind of stuff, right?
It's tough and it's grueling but they come out so much better as human beings.
But this thing where people can just kind of live this void, it's either alimony or child support or welfare state or whatever kind of crap is going on.
It's really really tough because they don't have to become better people to keep getting the money and it's one of the things that has really really enrages me about all of this kind of stuff.
The family loses control of dysfunctional family members when the government steps in and starts Giving them all the money.
Then the government takes over.
But the government doesn't have any interest in making these people better people.
In fact, the government has kind of an interest in keeping them dependent on the state.
And so the opportunity that families have to...
Make improvements in wayward or dysfunctional members of the family that vanishes and it is a brutal thing you lose control of any Authority or effect you might have over dysfunctional family members when the state starts paying them or they get money from the family courts or whatever and that is That is a really really difficult thing and there's no way to solve it I mean other than again when the government runs out of money then The influence over wavered family members will pass back to
the family, but that's one of the great problems.
You have limited capacity to influence people when they're not dependent on you in any way.
I agree.
The effect of cutting somebody off is gone.
Fine, you can cut me off.
off, I'll just go down to the welfare office.
Right.
And then the only thing you're left with is ostracism at a personal level because the government has removed influence from a financial level.
And that's pretty nuclear for a lot of people.
All right, well, listen, thanks very much for the call.
I hope that it was helpful and I appreciate the topic.
It is very, very important.
And, you know, if you have people around you who aren't making particularly good decisions, try and help them.
Try and get them to make better decisions because by the time life's Masses accumulate, it's often too late to turn them around for these kinds of people.
So thanks for your call, man.
I appreciate that.
And let's move on to the next caller.
Absolutely.
Thanks so much.
Alright, up next we have Doomguard.
Doomguard wrote in and said, Do you think that there are dangers in taking an apologetic or conciliatory stance towards organized religion and faith-based religious attitudes?
Do you think that faith and reason can coexist peacefully if faith becomes the dominant entity in the dichotomy?
What qualities do you see manifested in an individual governed by faith as opposed to those found in a person governed by reason?
That is from Doomguard.
Quite the name.
Quite the name.
Oh yeah.
Is there anything you wanted to add to the question before we dig in?
Maybe not immediately.
You can tell me what you think.
I know it's a little too wordy, but...
Oh, that's...
That's not a problem.
No, I don't think there are dangers in having a considerate stance towards organized religion.
Do I think faith and reason can coexist peacefully if faith becomes a dominant entity in the dichotomy?
You know, I don't know what that really means because it's very abstract, but the answer to that lies in the question, right?
If one aspect becomes dominant, then it's not coexisting peacefully, right?
It's like, can I coexist peacefully with my wife if I'm constantly ordering her around and telling her what to do?
It's like, well, no, that's not coexisting peacefully, right?
What are the dangers that you see with a conciliatory stance towards organized religion?
Well, as far as whether or not one's dominant over the other, I mean, I think we do kind of live in a society...
Where faith is more and more becoming, it's kind of a dominant ideological force, reasons kind of being confined to a smaller and smaller territory in society, you know?
I mean, we don't even really have the ability to speak freely anymore in a country that was, you know, was founded.
You know, our First Amendment is freedom of speech.
So...
And do you think that's because of religion?
I don't know.
Maybe because of religious thinking, maybe because of faith-based thinking, because of religion itself.
Hang on.
Do you see the hostility towards free speech coming from Christians?
Well, maybe not in the sense that we're accustomed to.
No, no.
Come on, dude.
Don't start redefining things.
That's a yes-no question.
Christians are very specific entity.
Do you see the modern pushback against freedom of speech?
Do you see Christians rioting?
Do you see Christians setting fire to things?
Do you see Christians hitting people with bats and sharpened axe handles and flagpoles?
Do you see Christians throwing fireworks at buildings?
Do you see Christians beating people up because people are saying stuff the Christians don't like?
No, not at the moment, but historically.
Okay, so that's a no to that question.
No, I didn't say historically, right?
If we're going to have a conversation, let's be blunt and clear with each other, right?
So it is not Christians who are doing these things.
It is not Christians who are suing people for not wanting to bake cakes for people they have questionable approval of, morally or ideologically.
It is not Christians who are starting riots.
It is not Christians who are suing atheists to have atheist paraphernalia removed from everywhere they can lay their hands on.
So it seems to me at the moment, and I think it's more than seems, nay, not seems, tis, I've been watching Hamlet, but it is the Christians who are suffering from restrictions upon freedom of association and freedom of speech, and a lot of it is coming from not atheists in general, but a lot of people who have far less faith in the Christian God than the Christians do, and who are characterized by things other than atheism, but atheism is associated with it like extreme leftism.
Okay.
Well, Christians are one group of religious people.
They're one faith-based religion, but I don't know.
I'll be honest, the reason why I bring it up is because I listened to your conversations with Duke Pesta or with Vox Dei, and part of it's kind of alarming because I have experience, a lot of experience, with religious people, with Christians, definitely.
I live in the Midwest, and I mean, rioting is one thing, you know.
Outward violence is one thing.
But I mean, there are other factors in the stability of a society.
You know, I think really the most important factor right now is their ability to meet reality and pursue virtue.
I'm sorry, I'm trying to figure out what you're saying, but I'm not following what you're saying.
So if you could, you know, feel free to dumb it down for me a little more.
Well, I mean, I just notice.
So what are you talking about?
Are you saying that people don't want to associate with you because you're not Christian?
Yeah, that.
But also, I just noticed.
Is that not freedom of association?
Why should they associate with you if you're hostile to Christianity?
I mean, why would they want to associate with you if you're hostile to Christianity?
What would be the incentive for them?
Well, their association with me, I mean, that doesn't really mean anything to me.
Whether they associate with me or not.
Hang on.
If them not associating with you is not a problem, what is the problem?
Well, I live here.
If society does well or does poorly, it does kind of affect me.
Oh, society is doing poorly because of Christians?
I don't know.
I'm not trying to be confrontational here.
I think you are actually trying to be confrontational, but whatever, Stefan.
No, I'm not.
I'm trying to understand what you're saying.
I can't follow what we're talking about.
I see it all the time.
I see a lot of people that are having a hard time in life, and they can't seem to get back on track.
A lot of them are Christian, unfortunately.
A lot of them do hold those beliefs, and they think that that's sufficient.
And I don't really see that working out.
Also...
Quite frankly, I've met a lot of people.
Quite frankly, I've met a lot of people.
Okay, I'll wait until you finish, and then I'll ask my question.
Sorry, go ahead.
I have met a lot of Christian people.
I've known a lot of Christian people who are anti-Enlightenment, anti-Renaissance.
They think that the Renaissance was a mistake.
They think that the American Revolution was a mistake.
In particular, Catholics and Orthodox people.
But there's an uncomfortable amount of them around, actually.
A lot more than you might think.
I don't know.
I've heard some of your experiences with religion and the church.
I can understand where you're coming from, but I don't know.
I'm not sure what the environment is like where you're from.
I'm not sure what kind of people you have to deal with on a daily basis, but I live around them all the time.
From what I've seen, Christianity is not really Exactly opposed to some of these forces, some of these ideological forces on the left that you've been preaching against lately.
So you think that the left has no particular problems with Christianity and Christianity has no particular problems with the left?
Well, they have problems with each other.
But this idea of egalitarianism didn't really originate with leftism or communism.
I mean, you know that, right?
What do you mean?
I mean, the idea that there can be something that makes people equal or that makes people deserve the same treatment in society.
That's not something to start with communism.
But what you're saying is so incomprehensible.
So, to be treated the same in society, do you mean equality under the law or do you mean equality of outcome?
I don't know.
Equality of opportunity or equality of results?
Egalitarianism generally means equality of results, whereas equality under the law is freedom to pursue happiness and so on.
That tends to be smaller government, fewer interferences from the state, so I'm not sure what you mean.
Okay.
So, you don't think that this is a problem at all, then?
You don't think that...
What are you talking about now?
I'm asking you to clarify your position.
I don't even know what your position is yet.
How do I know if it's a problem or not?
I just asked you to clarify your position on what you mean by egalitarianism.
Well, there's a certain attitude in Christianity that people can be spiritually equal in acceptance of their religion or their faith.
And this idea that there can be something that equalizes people in a spiritual sense, I think has led to these more modern ideas of equalizing people materially or in their social standing or in their class or whatever.
And what do you mean by spiritually equal?
I don't know about that.
Sorry, it's obvious, but I don't understand it?
What do you mean?
It's so obvious that I'd be an idiot to not understand it, or I'm being willfully obtuse.
I'm not sure what you mean.
So, what's going on here?
I just don't know what you mean by spiritually equal.
Does that mean everyone has the chance to get into heaven?
Does that mean there's no free will, but everyone's soul goes?
I mean, I don't know what spiritually equal means, if you can just help me to understand.
Yeah, that is what I mean.
Everyone gets to go to heaven, regardless of their exploits in life, regardless of who they are, what they've done.
Wait a minute.
Everyone gets to go to heaven regardless of how they act on earth?
Well, yeah.
I have never, ever, ever met a Christian.
Oh, I guess there are a few really extreme sex, but I've never met a Christian who says it doesn't matter at all what you do on earth.
You don't have to follow the Ten Commandments.
You can be an axe murderer, you can be a rapist, and you get to go to heaven just as much as Jesus did.
I've never met a Christian who holds that particular belief.
That seems to me the complete opposite of Christianity.
So wait, forgiveness?
Forgiveness is not a Christian idea.
But you have to earn forgiveness.
You have to earn forgiveness.
Well, the only thing you have to do to earn that is recite certain words.
Nope.
No, that's not how Christianity works at all.
No, Christianity works when there's genuine repentance, and that is a spiritual journey that you go through either with God or with a priest or something like that.
It's not just a matter of reciting particular words.
And for a lot of Christians, there are two kinds of sins, right?
This is particularly true of Catholicism, right?
There are what are called Venal sins, which are sins that you can recover from and be given absolution for.
And then there are mortal sins.
And if you commit those, no priest on earth has the power to prevent you from going to hell.
Okay.
And who decides if you've actually repented in your heart or not?
I mean, what basis do you have for deciding that?
I already talked about that.
Did you not hear what I said?
Yeah, mortal and venal sins.
No, no, before that, I said, I don't know if you remember, I said that the process of genuine forgiveness is a spiritual journey you would go through, I guess, either alone or with a priest guiding you along, and I assume that the priest is pretty good at knowing.
And we genuinely know, we generally know when we are receiving a genuine apology as opposed to some manipulation, like, I'm sorry, you know, that kind of stuff, right?
So God would certainly know whether or not you're Contrition is genuine or not.
And a priest, I would assume, would know.
I mean, certainly therapists can know when you're being honest with them or not.
So I don't think you really understand that aspect of Christianity, which seems to me the kind of core of Christianity, you know, that you follow the rules and you get to heaven or you go to hell or limbo for some of the denominations.
But the idea that everyone just goes to heaven.
Now, I do know and I can't remember which sect it is, but there's some sect where like the number of people who are going to heaven is already preordained.
And it's like I don't know much about that.
But as far as the Christianity that I was raised in and the Christians that I've talked to over the years, your dedication to spiritual virtue is what gets you the ticket to ride up or the escalator down.
Okay.
To spiritual virtue.
So what's that mean?
I'm sorry?
So what's spiritual virtue then?
Did I use the phrase spiritual virtue?
Yeah.
You said their dedication to spiritual virtue.
How's that different from normal virtue, by the way?
Do you not know the Ten Commandments?
Do you not know do what Jesus did?
Do you not know the ideals behind a lot of the Christian thinking?
Yeah.
Okay, then you know what spiritual virtue is, right?
It's virtue related to your soul.
It's virtue related to your afterlife.
It's virtue related to the commandments of Jesus, who defines Christianity along with some aspects of the Old Testament.
So good, you know that, so we don't need to stop and define it.
Okay.
And do you think that this idea of virtue is healthy for society?
Because I've heard you argue with someone before on your show who said that he was a psychedelic drug user and He was arguing that he's visiting other worlds and of course you shut that down.
Saying that that's not part of our shared reality so therefore somebody's drifting off in these other worlds and they think they're seeing something or they think that they can relate to this other world in ways that they can't relate to our world.
I'm just wondering Does that bear any resemblance to heaven?
If people can preach these certain values that are supposed to get you into another world that none of us can see and that none of us share with each other on a daily basis, does that have any effect on how we deal with objective daily realities?
Does that have any effect on how we can deal with society's problems?
Are you asking me, does the concept of heaven change what people do in the world?
Yeah, definitely.
Of course, of course it does.
Yeah.
Of course it does.
They want to get into heaven, so they'll pursue particular actions, some of which I agree with and some of which I don't, in order to get into heaven.
Yeah, I mean, that's the big carrot.
So, yes, it definitely has an effect on what people do in the world.
Okay.
Now, you're asking, is that healthy?
Is that healthy?
My question is then, compared to what?
Compared to what, right?
So...
Is the concept of heaven healthy if it means that you're not going to get your kid a blood transfusion to save his life?
No, it's absolutely not healthy in that context, and I think that most people would agree with me, even if they're on the religious side.
So yes, absolutely not.
If the concept of religion gives you the idea that this world is so sinful that it's better if you set fire to your house with your family in it so they can sin no more, yes, extremely unhealthy and dangerous and destructive.
If it has you respect property rights because Jesus said thou shalt not steal and therefore you oppose massive taxation in the welfare state, yeah, that's Actually quite healthy in some ways in terms of society doing better.
If the absence of religious faith leads you to become A communist or some sort of fascist on the left, which seems to be kind of the same thing these days, or if it leads you to want to use the state to solve social problems, then a belief in the fantasy of the state is far more dangerous than a belief in the fantasy of heaven.
And this has been my journey, as you know, for the past few years, is finding that what I thought was...
An enclave of rationality, which was the atheist community, turned out to be a far more dangerous religion in many ways, and for many people, than anything the Christians have come up with since Pius II. So, compared to what is the question?
Yeah, ideally, would it be great if people believed in neither heaven nor the state?
Sure, philosophically, those two systems are not sustainable, not valid arguments.
However, if I have to choose between people who believe in the state as a solution for social problems and people who believe in fidelity to theology as a solution for social problems, well, I cannot participate in the second, but I'm forced to participate in the first.
And so, I throw my heart in with heaven rather than the state if I have to choose between the two methods of organizing society.
Wait, so you think religions are aposical entities then?
I'm sorry?
Do you think that religions are apolitical, that they don't seek any political agendas?
What did you hear me say?
I'm always kind of curious about this because you just seem to be leaping in with things that I didn't say.
Well, you said you'd rather side with people who believe in heaven than those who believe in the state.
But, you know, people who believe in heaven are still involved in the state.
It will still seek to influence the state.
I understand that.
I understand that.
But the people who believe in the state as the solution to social programs are completely political.
Sure.
So 100% versus some less than 100% chance.
You know, so if I say, okay, let's say the Christians are 25% political, but statheists or statist atheists are 100% political, and I say, well, I'd rather have 75% less force with Christians than 75% more force with atheists.
You say, what does that mean, that 25% equals zero?
It's like, that's not what I said.
Right?
So either you're having trouble processing what I'm saying, I think what I'm saying is pretty clear, or you're just kind of being obstructionist because maybe that's your nature, but it's not that hard to follow logically.
Oh man, you have no idea.
Well...
Oh, I have some idea.
We've been talking for a little while here.
Yeah.
Okay.
Now, if you look at a system like Buddhism, it seems to be relatively non-political.
If you look at a system like Islam, which is a complete socio-political system, well, that's very statist, right?
Because the religion manifests itself in particular laws run by the government.
So it really does depend on the religion.
Modern Christianity is relatively, relatively benign with regards to its pursuit of state power compared to a lot of people on the left who are atheists, who are Uh-huh.
Okay.
Vox Day talked about the necessity of having devout leaders.
Do you believe in that as well?
Do you think that we would have gotten the same quality of leadership and the same results from Ted Cruz as we're currently getting from Donald Trump?
I don't even know what these questions mean.
Well, he admitted that he doesn't think that Donald Trump is particularly religious.
He's just kind of a common sense sort of guy.
But he still thinks that religious leaders...
Well, no, listen, if you've got questions about what Fox Day thinks, then you should talk about it with Fox Day.
I can't speak for him.
Well, okay, but I mean, if you guys are having a conversation and you're...
We're still not the same people.
Look, he's not in the room with me.
We're not co-joined at the brain, right?
I mean, it doesn't mean that we agree on everything, and he'd be the first to admit that, too.
So if you've got questions for Fox Day, don't ask me for a speaker.
As far as Ted Cruz goes, I mean, I did the whole truth about Ted Cruz, which you can look at, as well as the truth about the Ted Cruz sex scandal, which you can look at.
I think my views on Ted Cruz are pretty clear.
Right.
So then leaders who appeal to people's faith in order to gain influence in politics, do you not see any problem with that?
I'm not going to continue this conversation because you're ridiculous when it comes to having these conversations.
It's almost offensive, but it's too ridiculous to be offensive.
I mean, do you have any problem with people who lie to people and want political power?
It's like, oh, come on.
I mean, I'm not going to...
Have this conversation where you create these ridiculous extremes that answer themselves and then you pretend to be engaging me in some sort of arena of ideas, you know?
Do you support axe murderers by evil clowns?
Come on, I mean, this is not a conversation that's productive for me or for the audience.
There's no subtlety, there's no curiosity, there's no...
You're a troll in this particular conversation, maybe elsewhere in your life, which might have something to do with the kind of religious people who you surround yourself with or who are around you.
It may not be the problem with Christianity.
It actually may be something in your personality that is causing people to respond to you in a negative way.
But if you want to externalize it to Christianity, that certainly could work for you, although I don't think it'll work for the long run.
But thanks for an entertaining and interesting call.
Let's move on to the next caller.
All right.
I think every single one of his words was wearing a fedora.
Up next, we have Jeff.
It wasn't just me, right?
Oh, God, no.
What was he talking about?
And the nice thing, too, is he actually seemed to be offended when I asked him for clarification.
That's always nice.
That's always pleasure.
Word salad.
What does that mean?
Well.
Alright, go on.
Alright, up next we have Jeff.
Jeff wrote in and said, As an atheist who maintains Christian values, how and when should I tell my new Christian girlfriend about my lack of faith?
I met her online after indicating a religious status of Christian.
Is it possible for an atheist man who maintains Christian values to be happily married and have children with a Christian woman?
If so, is it wise?
That's from Jeff.
Hey Jeff, how you doing?
I'm doing alright.
How are you?
It's a tough act to follow.
Please don't follow it.
Okay, I was a bit of a douche.
Anyway.
So, yes, it is possible.
In fact, I will relate a story of a girl, a woman that I knew years ago.
She was interested in dating me.
She was a Christian.
I was an atheist.
And...
I asked how this would work and she said, well, it would work with us the way that it would work in my family, which is my father's an atheist, my mother's a religious.
He sleeps in on Sunday and she takes us to church.
Right.
Let me ask you this question.
On a dating profile, if you are pinged by a woman and the only thing you know about the woman is either that she's an atheist or a Christian, who do you think you would have a better chance of a successful relationship with?
I've given this a lot of thought.
And I think it would be a Christian.
And that's why, you know, ultimately I did indicate that I was a Christian on the dating profile, if that makes sense.
You know, and I have to tell you, I think I agree.
It's weird.
This show takes me...
One of the reasons I love continuing to do this show, my friend, is that it takes me in some very surprising directions.
And to that lady in the past, should you ever hear and you know who you are, I'm very happily married, but I'm sorry that I didn't see this 25 years ago.
Anyway, so, yeah, I mean, so why?
Why would you say that?
Why?
Why are you cock-blocking the Christian girls?
I mean, the atheist girls.
Why?
Why?
What's wrong with them?
Right, so, I mean, for about, I don't know, three years or so, I was doing some online dating and You know, I went on quite a few of them, quite frankly.
I went on quite a few and I always...
Wait, you went, like, sorry to interrupt.
Do you mean you went on quite a few dating sites or quite a few dates?
Yes, both.
Okay, no, so, and because I don't know much about online dating, what happened?
Well, oftentimes, you know, I'd meet with them one date and I'd quickly determine something about them that I didn't like and that I probably couldn't live with.
I wouldn't necessarily ghost them, as they say in the online dating community.
I wouldn't necessarily ghost them if they tried to contact me.
Ghost them?
What does that mean?
You blocked any notifications from them?
Well, ghosting is sort of just like disappearing online.
So to speak, it's just sort of like not responding to text messages, not responding to any sort of online messages.
And that's quite common in the online dating world, I think, these days.
Right.
So you would contact them if they contacted you, but you wouldn't contact them.
Right.
If they tried to contact me, I'd certainly...
Not ignore them by any means.
I also wouldn't go out of my way to contact them again after that initial first date.
You'd give them those pleasantly neutral responses that are designed to indicate very clearly to everybody who's not a psychopath that it's not going any further.
Exactly.
And so that happened quite a bit and usually I was able to suss out pretty quickly in the first date that this is not a person who shares my values.
This is not a person who You know, I would, you know, maybe a person I might enjoy spending a little bit more time with, but not necessarily a person I would, you know, can see spending the rest of my life with.
So I kind of, you know, I went on probably 20, 25 of these dates in the last few years, and I only had like one, no, sorry, two second dates out of all that.
And one third date out of all of it, up until recently.
So that's pretty slim pickings, or is it because they're not very slim?
But what were the major turn offs for you?
Like I said, it was mostly the values issue.
And so, what happened essentially was, because I wasn't indicating my status as a Christian, usually I would indicate, you know, no religious or spiritual but not religious, or sometimes I would even put atheist as my religion.
You know, you kind of tinker around with throughout the years.
And And, yeah, basically, in so doing, I sussed out that I wasn't getting the right responses, or the right people to respond, partly because people filter by religious status, if that makes sense.
Sure, sure.
And when you would put yourself forward as an atheist, what kind of women were you getting?
Typical women?
I don't know.
You know, generally fairly intelligent women, fairly attractive, but also women who Had a lot of baggage.
It's difficult to really generalize.
It's difficult to generalize.
Wait, but by baggage, you mean like bad relationships, STDs, kids?
I mean, what are we talking?
Drug problems, debt, or all of the above?
Maybe too much time spent in university.
Maybe too much...
Yeah, just...
I say I live in leftist loony land.
Too much leftist looniness, if that makes sense.
Yeah, and that means welcome to family court.
Did you find atheism and feminism at all went hand in hand?
I got the sense that...
I mean, I've always gotten the sense that you're typically dealing with maybe not women who are self-claimed feminists, but...
They certainly are indoctrinated with a certain degree of feminism just by virtue of the society that we live in, if that makes sense.
Yeah, listen, if you get a Christian woman, you're not likely getting a feminist.
And that doesn't mean that you're not getting a great woman.
It just means that you're not getting that lefty feminist woman.
Looking for offense, patriarchy crap, right?
Yeah, hopefully.
I may have found the exception to the rule in this most recent girl that I met because she's a fairly devout Christian.
It's just she's, you know, I live in leftist loony land, as I like to call it, and she herself is...
She'd probably consider herself on the left.
Yeah, that's fine.
You can work on each other, right?
I mean, people don't have to be the same when you meet them as after you've known them for a while, right?
Right.
I mean, it's not like everyone who starts listening to this show, at least I bloody well hope not, everyone who starts listening to this show ends up exactly the same after years of listening to this show.
I mean, the stories we get every day is really...
Changes people's lives.
So you can just be great enough to change your mind about things, you know, make good enough arguments, be engaging and all that, and, you know, do it right after she had an orgasm, and, you know, it's going to be great.
Oh, it's funny you mention that.
Not available to this show, sadly, or happily perhaps, but go on.
Well, it's just funny that you mention that because, like I said, she is a good Christian girl, and I'm a formerly good Christian guy.
I became an atheist when I was about 22, but, you know, technically...
I use the word technically.
Technically, we're both virgins, so it would be a scenario where there wouldn't be much orgasm.
Are you born-again virgins or what?
Born-again virgins.
You know, like some play, if you don't have sex for seven years, you're a born-again virgin.
No.
Well, for her, this is actually...
No, you know what?
Don't talk about her history this way because she's not here or whatever.
But for you, what does technical mean?
So for me, I have had two serious relationships, and then the second one, that meant doing everything but intercourse, if that makes sense.
But see, that's really good for you guys.
Statistically, that's fantastic.
Because statistically, it means if you get married, and she's a virgin, it means that you're much, much more likely to stay together and have a productive marriage without divorce.
No, absolutely.
I couldn't agree more.
This is not my opinion.
These are the facts.
In The Truth About Sex, we go through all of this.
More sexual partners is much more likelihood of divorce, and it's dose-dependent.
More carousel, more getting thrown off the carousel into the yapping, feral pits of the family court system.
Right.
No, I mean, I'm a big fan of that video of yours, and I've watched it several times.
I've shown it to a lot of different people, and I'm waiting to show it to this girl at some point.
Not that she really needs to hear it, but just to give her some rational reasons why I, as an atheist, would hold the value of being abstinent until marriage.
Right.
So, I would say this.
The shared values matter.
The source of the shared values is not nearly as important.
And this is a big question that Christians have been debating for hundreds, if not thousands of years.
Which is, are you a Christian because of what you do, or is it faith alone that makes you a Christian?
In other words, if you have faith but don't act as a Christian, are you a Christian?
If you have the actions of a Christian but you have a lack of faith, are you a Christian?
It's called faith versus works, and there's massive amounts of literature about it if you're curious about it.
Philosophy makes this a whole lot easier, which is, it is the actions that matter.
You can't claim that you're rational if you think rationally but act irrationally.
You're not rational because part of rationality is empiricism, and the empiricism of your actions defines who you are.
You shall judge them by the fruits of their labors, right?
As it would say in the Bible.
So, if you both hold Christian values, you have a compatibility That is not particularly dependent upon the source of those values.
Does that make sense?
It makes complete sense.
To me, that's been my position when I've had these conversations with other Christians.
Most of my family is Christian.
Sorry to interrupt, but let me argue her side, just so people, I don't want to lose the dichotomy that we have to work with.
Sure.
So this is it from her side, I would guess.
I don't know what denomination she is, but it might go something like this.
Well, it's all great that it's well and good, and I'm happy that you're practicing Christian values, but without faith in God, you're not going to heaven, and I want to be with you forever.
It's not enough to do the works.
You have to believe.
You have to accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior.
Oh, I can just wait for people to meme that.
But you have to actually have the faith.
You have to accept the values for the right reasons.
And without accepting Jesus as your Lord and Savior, You will not get to heaven.
Doing the good works is not going to be enough.
You have to have the faith, and I want a man I can spend not just this mortal life with, but eternity with, and I don't want to think of you going to hell, so sorry, you're going to have to accept the big stuff.
That's one possibility.
I don't know where she sits, but that's the challenge that may occur.
Yeah, that may be the situation with her based on our conversation about it, but I think she's somewhat unsure about that at this point, so...
So all you have to do is be a great enough person to change your mind about that.
You know, people are clay.
I'm clay.
I mean, God, when I think of that, and I won't go into a big thing, but when I think of the difference from when I was younger to now, I mean, just look at the difference over the course of this last two years.
I've gone from, you know, ripping on Christians to detente to, like, praising Christians.
I know.
Just be great enough to change people's minds.
Be compelling enough.
Be interesting enough.
Have great enough arguments.
Let the evidence accumulate.
Don't be passive.
This is my whole show for the night, I guess.
But this don't be passive.
People are clay.
You can mold them.
You can be molded by them.
We interact with each other.
We are a system together, particularly when you're married.
Now, if she's got values derived from Christianity that you strongly disagree with, like if she's like, you know, says spare the rod, spoil the child, so I'm going to have to hit the kids with a rod, it's like, no, no, that's, you know, Jesus said what you do to the littlest of the children, you do also unto me, and you shouldn't, you wouldn't hit Jesus, right?
But if you have a, if you're in the same place but came from different directions, you can still live together.
Does that make sense?
Yeah, no, she's not pro-spanking, which I really like about her too.
But what I was going to say about that was that she – all I was going to say about that is I'm working on that already.
So I think I'm already making good arguments with her.
I think I'm already kind of showing her that I'm kind of worth it and that sort of thing.
So, you know, I hope you're right.
I hope you're right.
You won't be, listen, if you want to have a good marriage or a great marriage, you will be constantly changing.
When I was a little kid, this is back in England, I had a hamster.
Ah, brownie.
I had a hamster.
And there was a French couple who lived upstairs.
They were old when I was young.
I meant that they'd been in France during the war.
I brought my hamster up.
to show them the woman screamed and they slammed the door in my face even though i had a good relationship with them i didn't understand it at the time but of course being in france during the war i can't imagine what horrible things they must have seen people being eaten by mice or being trapped by i don't know right but the point is the point of that story is the man this old french guy once sat me down I don't remember how it came up, but these are the little things.
You drop these things in people's ears.
I never know which sentence is going to rocket people to a different life.
But old man sat down and he said, you know, I have been married for a long time.
And this is what I tell you.
If you do not get married, you may date 10 people in your life.
But if you get married, You will date thousands.
And I sort of asked him what he meant.
He's like, because you're a partner and you will change every day.
That is very true.
I remember that, and that to me is one of the most compelling arguments for.
You actually get more variety in marriage than you do dating.
And I don't care if you're Hugh Hefner or that creepy British guy who just came forward saying he slept with 2,000 women.
Good job, British ladies.
But there's far more variety in marriage than there is in dating.
Because in dating, you go so deep.
The relationship breaks up.
You go so deep.
But in marriage, you go all the way.
And you're affecting each other.
You're influenced by life, circumstances, environment, ideas.
You're constantly influencing each other.
You get to date a lot more people and have a lot more variety in your life if you get monogamously married than if you date all the people in the known universe.
So...
Don't assume that you have to be 100% compatible before you get married.
If you have the same methodology, the same conversations, the same approach to values, it doesn't matter.
Because even if you're compatible, when you're perfectly compatible, 100%, not that that's even possible, it's 100%, you're going to drift over time.
So you have to have a methodology that's going to keep you together.
You don't have to be photocopies to get married because everything's going to change as you go forward anyway.
Yeah.
I'm really glad you say that.
The thing I struggle with is the sort of saying that you can't change people.
People change themselves.
Yeah, but you can influence, right?
Oh, and by the way, I didn't do a bad French accent.
He had a bad French accent, that old guy.
I imitated him perfectly.
Anyway, sorry, go on.
But no, you influence people, of course.
Why would you want to get married with someone that didn't influence you, that didn't change you, that didn't inspire you, that didn't Excite you that didn't stimulate you in intellectual ways and physical ways.
I mean, of course you want the person to influence you.
I mean, what would it mean to love someone and not influence them?
What would it mean to respect someone to the point where you want to spend the rest of your life with them but say, but you're not going to influence me in any way.
I am a rock.
I mean, it would not be sane.
Of course, you're going to blend together.
You pour the food coloring into the water and they are united.
And of course, both affect each other.
I mean, the food coloring in the water gets paler and the water gets darker, right?
I mean, the food coloring in the vial is darker and the water is perfectly clear and you put the two together and you get a mix.
Of course, they influence each other and that's how it should be.
Yeah.
I completely agree.
I completely agree.
That's great advice, I think.
Wow.
Well, good.
Well, I think I may have solved your issue.
Now, that having been said, I do wonder there is limit to these things, right?
I've made the analogy before.
Don't Don't buy a boat and try and turn it into a car, right?
But, you know, be with each other.
And if you guys share the values, that's what matters.
Because, look, she may meet a Christian guy, and you can make this case to her as well, she may meet a Christian guy who genuinely and totally believes in God, but has taken different things out of the Bible than you have.
So the faith in God is not going to be the solution.
Now, she can wait to meet a guy who has the exact same faith in God and has the exact same values But that's a bit of a risk, you know, bird in the hand, two in the bush kind of thing.
That's a bit of a risk waiting for that amount of simpatico.
So you could remind her that if she has problems with your faith, say, well, you know, I could change.
I don't know.
But the reality is you could have some guy who's got the faith but doesn't have the actions.
Would you rather have the actions?
Now, maybe you could get both together, but there's really no guarantee of that.
That's hoping quite a bit for you.
Perfection, right?
You know, unless she has a PhD and looks like Heidi Klum or whatever, right?
So I would say that it's the actions and the values that matter more than the faith.
And if she could get the faith without the concordance in values, and that would be much, much less satisfying for her.
Well, it would be impossible for her if she didn't want, like, if she gets to spare the rod's ball the child hitting parent, co-parent, then that wouldn't work out at all.
Yeah, I completely agree.
I completely agree.
All right.
Well, thanks very much.
Let us know how it goes.
I will expect a wedding invitation momentarily because, you know, time for you to get some.
But anyway, thanks everyone so much for calling in, for supporting the show.
Always a massive, giant, and great, gargantuan, Rob Nabagnian pleasure to chat with you all.
I appreciate all the callers, good, bad, and indifferent.
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That's Stefan Molyneux.
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