July 28, 2017 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
09:45
3762 The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name. | The Daily Argument
Mailing List: http://www.fdrurl.com/newsletterWe Need Your Support: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donateThe beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name. Stefan Molyneux breaks down the explicit lies contained in modern political language and how this propaganda is used to obstruct reasonable change. Your support is essential to Freedomain Radio, which is 100% funded by viewers like you. Please support the show by making a one time donation or signing up for a monthly recurring donation at: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate
Hi everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Freedomain Radio.
Welcome to today's daily argument, essential ammunition for a fractious world.
So, let's talk about language versus results.
There is this tendency in government programs to obviously give themselves noble names, you know, they're the dreamers and it's the Department of Education, it's the Department of Defense.
There was one up here in Canada called the Fair Share Health Levy because, you know, who's against A fair share.
And who's against health? And levy sounds better than tax.
And they put a lot of work into these names.
The Patriot Act, right?
I mean, so that if you argue against it, you must not be a patriot.
It's all, I mean, people who argued against the Patriot Act were the real patriots.
So they put a lot of work into this language.
Welfare. Well, welfare is a positive word.
Food stamps. Well, you're helping poor people get food.
Socialized medicine.
You're helping the sick. Right, so this Language problem is a big challenge for people to overcome because you do have to refer to it like, I want to end welfare.
Sounds bad. I want to end government health care.
All people hear is, I want to end health care, right?
I mean, it's a real challenge.
And judging a program by its propaganda is extremely dangerous, of course, right?
If you look at America, For instance, what do you have?
You have a country which never was supposed to be an empire, never claimed it wanted to have an empire.
It has peaceful neighbors to the north, somewhat to the south, giant oceans to the east and west.
Now there's a country that should be able to stay out of world affairs and keep its nose clean with regards to the general hurly-burly of fractious international competition and wars.
And no, this is a country that has 700-plus military bases around the world that is still occupying Germany and Japan and Okinawa 70-plus years after the end of World War II. You have this supposed Department of Defense that has a lot of offensive weapons and sends its ships all over the world.
And you have a Department of Defense and a military-industrial complex that's supposed to be focused on protecting Americans that seems to spend an inordinate amount of time, energy, and taxpayer money Shipping arms at great profit to the elites to very unstable and often extremely anti-Western governments overseas.
I'm thinking of the recent sale to Saudi Arabia.
I mean if you had a security guard like a private security company was supposed to be guarding your warehouse and it turned out that they were funding and training thieves and and robbers who are going to come in through your windows at night, you'd probably have a bit of a problem, right?
It's not A department of defense.
It's a department of oligarchical profit, taxation, and arming crazy people around the world.
But you know that's tough to jam onto a business card.
And you have this thing called the Department of Education.
Say, I want to get rid of the Department of Education.
All people hear is, I want to get rid of education, right?
It's not the Department of Education.
It is the Department of Indoctrination.
It is the Department of Finding more unique and creative ways to punish children who dare to even think about trying to learn how to think.
Originality, concentration camp or something, or lack of concentration camps, which is the modern definition of government schools.
Government education. I want to get rid of government.
You really could not literally design a worse system for making children cynical, lost, alienated, and self-hating, particularly if they're white.
And so this problem of language versus outcome is a real challenge because it is kind of like an intelligence test.
Well, this is what the government says.
Well, so what if it's what the government says?
I mean, the government will say anything.
You know, the government is like some middle-aged Lothario who's trying to get into your pants if you're like a young, nubile, attractive woman.
I'll say a bunch of stuff, but is he really a pilot and a brain surgeon?
I'm drenched. So this gap between what is said and what occurs in reality is something that is quite a challenge.
And so how do you deal with the challenge?
Well, Refusing to cede positive terms to your opposition or to your debate partners, if you want to look at it in a slightly more positive way, that's really essential.
Do not cede positive terms to those who wish to oppose you.
And so we don't, I mean, I try not to, and you know, I do my best, but if I'm in a debate, I will try not to say, well, you know, I want to get rid of the Department of Education.
It's like, well, I want to end coercively funded indoctrination or I want to end You know, coercively funded pretend education.
Like, I want real education to take the place of fake education.
I want real news to take the place of fake news.
And that is a real challenge to not cede the high ground, to not give up the high hills of language in this.
That is really, really tough.
Like, if you say, I want to get rid of welfare, then people think, well, you just, you know, you want to dump Poor, benighted, heroic single moms into the street and, you know, have like yuppies and arms merchants take up their former places of abode.
And so saying welfare, well, I want to get rid of coercive income redistribution.
It's immoral at its root and it's wrong and it's in effects and it's destructive in every conceivable way that you can imagine.
And that is an important thing to remember when it comes to having these kinds of conversations with people.
We are, you know, sadly, we are in such a state of propaganda and knee-jerk reaction to hyper-emotional phraseology that if you lose the debate on definition, you lose the debate.
And it shouldn't be that way.
Of course, it shouldn't be that way.
But if people think that the Department of Education has something to do with educating children, then talking about, you know, any reduction or elimination, And this is the point, you understand, these are all the sticky honey traps of language that have been set up by the powers that be and reinforced over decades by people in the media and people in the entertainment industry and so on.
It has all been set up so that the left, the tyrants, the coercive addicts own the language that is considered benevolent and therefore, you know, What have they set up?
Well, they've set up that the right equals violence, but the left equals compassion and niceness and helping people.
And so, they've set up this wonderful thing where the only reason that you would be against leftist policies is you're crazy, you're immature, you're bigoted, you're racist, you, you know, this old canard that, well, white men are lashing out because they're losing power, you know, this kind of, like, it's all this emotional stuff.
And this translation to emotional language is also very important, you know, like, you can see this in my videos, like, on the flat earth and stuff like that, and people writing, you can see the fear in Steph's eyes as his worldview begins to crumble.
Okay, I mean, pretend creepy ESP, still not an argument.
So this translation to emotional terms is also something you need to watch out for and you just need to try and patiently bring it back to it's not an argument.
What you're doing is not an argument.
You don't have any facts.
You don't have any syllogisms.
You don't have any debate skills.
It's not an argument. You have to push back against this stunning Kruger effect whereby the dumb think that they're brilliant and the brilliant are humbled by A deep knowledge of all that they don't know.
This is one of the asymmetries that happens in debate.
I mean, yes, as a smart person, I recognize there's an enormous amount that I don't know.
But the stuff that I do know, I'm going to the wall for.
And helping to push people who think that the name of a government program has something to do with what it's all about, pushing those people out of debate if they won't give up that delusion, is pretty important.
Because government programs, I mean, it's pretty easy.
You know, back in the day, I guess you can still find this on some webcam programs.
Back in the day, they used to develop a negative and then print the picture, right?
And if you're really good, like at doing camera work and processing film, you could look at the negative and kind of see in your mind, you'd flip it to see what it actually looked like.
And that is...
That's how it works with government programs.
If you want to know what the government program is for, look at the opposite of what it claims.
Is welfare there to help the poor?
No. Welfare is there to make sure that the poor don't escape their dependence on government power so that there's a demand, right?
There was a big problem. The free market was getting rid of people's need for government because they had enough money they didn't need to steal.
They had enough money to be able to pay for their own kids' education if they wanted to.
They had enough money that crime was going.
There was lots of wonderful things happening.
And so When you're about to escape the net of government power, the government wants to trip you up and get you back.
If you're about to kick a drug and the drug dealer is making a lot of money off your purchases, he wants to get you re-hooked on the drug.
And so the purpose of these government programs is the direct opposite of what is stated.
But if people stay in the realm of what is stated rather than looking at the data and the effects of what's happened, You can't crack them because they are just useful idiots for those in power.
So challenge the language, win the debate, save the world.
