Sept. 20, 2017 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
02:59:41
3831 Jennifer Lawrence in a Funny Hat! - Call In Show - September 13th, 2017
Question 1: [2:02] – “I had a debate with my Pastor a few days ago -- about Capitalism, the free market and the poor. As Christians we are supposed to be concerned about the weakest among us and help them. I see a free market as a way to helping people -- and as the ultimate in ‘free will’ but he can't see past his belief that Capitalism exploits the poor. How do you convince another Christian that it is immoral to support a large government - because if takes away our ‘God Given’ free will? And what arguments can I use to show that a free society will not only restore ‘free will’ but will benefit the poor as well?”Question 2: [46:16] – "I’m an ex-muslim middle eastern immigrant, I’ve noticed a lot of parallels in the rise of tyranny back home and the rise of tyranny in the west. Obviously, as I chose to be in the west now, this concerns me but not for my own sake. After attempting to relate these thoughts with others, whether those back home or my new neighbours, people are often skeptical of my observations. Despite watching things regress in the last few years to an obvious, almost painful, degree I feel like my observations are only getting more validated despite not earning legitimacy in the public sphere. A big aspect of this is having both the left and the right perceiving me as the other, the far right viewing me no different from those that seek to destroy the west and the far left viewing me no different than those that seek to discriminate against muslims, how do I reconcile this and earn my place in this shaky society? Is there no more room for nuance?""Over this time I’ve also come to realize the importance of balancing tradition but maintaining an open mind and I think both forms of societies have pros and cons. How can we redirect the conversation from eliminating the other side into synthesizing? The biggest catastrophe that has hit the west since WW2 in my estimation is the death of (and on-going war on) the family and it genuinely sadness me, on the other hand things are far too rigid back home and the concept of family can almost be suffocating."Question 3: [1:57:20] – “I am a public school teacher and a resident of the small city in which I teach. I am surrounded by liberals and leftists at work. There will be a new high school built in our city within the next two years, at the cost of about $75 million. There is a faction that looks at that pile of taxpayer money and would love to turn the new high school into a giant ‘sustainability’ project. What is the best way to push back against this faction without appearing rude, combative, or crazy?”Question 4: [2:11:05] – “Last fall, one of my underage teenagers (male) was groomed and sexually assaulted by a(n) (female) employee of the local government school. Since reporting the felonies against my child to the police, the defendant/abuser's family and friends physically threatened my family, including death threats. Last week, my residence was burglarized and some guns were stolen. Since then, death threats have been issued at my family online. The police and district attorney have begun investigating the crimes, which resulted from reporting the sexual assaults. As of today my family is in the process of moving to a different county for safety. Do you think this is the rational course of action, considering the current state of affairs in the USA?"Question 5: [2:45:07] – “Do you think it goes too far to say that we in America are far along a path demonstrating the evils of elite (not by-the-people) government, and that to reform, we need to treat lying almost as severely as murder, teach children not to lie (and not gently), require (even force) our politicians never to lie, and stop paying people to lie (through commercially-sponsored TV including news) or broadcast or film other messages that lie or encourage lying. And, do you anticipate if the coming recession or depression is bad enough, due to the lies of fiat money and fiscal deceit, America will embrace this in a restoration of morality. I contend that a Torch of Truth is one of the three requirements for Liberty.”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
Hey, hey, everybody. Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio.
I hope you're doing well. Please don't forget to check out my new book, The Art of the Argument, at theartoftheargument.com.
And we had five great callers tonight.
The first was a woman who got into a pretty deep...
And powerful debate with her pastor, who is an anti-capitalist.
And we went through some of his arguments and some great rebuttals for them and sent her back into battle.
Well armed, I think.
The second caller is an ex-Muslim who had some frustrations about how he was perceived by both the left and the right.
And we had a pretty digging deep kind of conversation about why he changed his mind and what the response has been from those around him.
The third caller, okay, so he works in a government school, and a new school is going to be built, and he's concerned that they're wasting a lot of money.
Should he speak up about it?
Should he, in a sense, expose or identify himself and his beliefs in this way?
Is it worth it? We all face these calculations every day.
We had a good conversation about that.
Now the fourth caller, his son has been sexually assaulted by a woman who works for a government school.
And he went ahead and took the legal route and now is facing the kind of blowback that staggers the imagination.
Did he make the right decision? What should he do now?
It was a very powerful conversation and I appreciate his honesty enormously in calling in about this very difficult topic.
The fifth caller, I'm going to give you four words and then let you explore the conversation yourself.
These four words are, and I quote, death penalty for lying.
So, this is the show we have for you.
I think you'll find it very powerful.
I really appreciate and respect and honor all the callers for calling in.
Please don't forget to support the show at freedomainradio.com slash donate.
Follow me on Twitter at Stefan Molyneux.
And our affiliate link is always available for your shopping pleasure at fdurail.com slash amazon.
Alright, well for us today we have Laurie.
Laurie wrote in and said, That's from Laurie.
Hey Laurie, how you doing tonight?
Hi, Stefan. How are you?
I'm so excited.
Well, that's peppy.
I appreciate that. You know, sometimes the callers sound there a little bit like an elephant ass of Quaaludes sat on their inspiration.
So I'm very, very pleased.
I listen to you since I found you a couple months ago every day.
Oh, that's very kind. Thank you.
I appreciate that. And I do donate.
So donate. Fine.
Then I will be nice to you.
Fine. All right. Please be nice to me, even if I sound a little ignorant on some subjects.
Apparently, my politeness is very much for sale.
I've never been prouder.
Oh, that's funny. So, um...
You sound like a politician.
Hey, hey, hey!
It started off so well and then you're giving me the Satan treatment.
If your politeness is for sale.
Do you want to, like, we could do this, like, I could just sort of give some arguments, or if you wanted to roleplay the priest, I could sort of say what I would say to a priest in this situation.
Well, it wouldn't be a priest, because I mean, although I was raised Catholic, yeah, although I was raised Catholic, I go to a non-denominational church.
You know, honestly, Stefan, I pulled that question out because it happened right at the time I was planning to talk to you, but there's so many things I could talk to you about, so it's so hard.
Well, why don't you tell me what your thoughts are about talking to a pastor about the free market and about how it affects the poor and free will?
I mean, and then maybe I'll just ask you questions.
Is that okay? No, it's fine.
I mean, I guess my first question would be, does he think that compulsion in the Strips the virtue from the action.
If you force someone to give money to the poor, is that the same as somebody having sympathy for understanding the needs of the poor and voluntarily wishing to show their virtue and devotion to the teachings of the church in order to help the poor?
Or should you just rob them in an alley with a knife and then give the money to the poor and call them saved?
Yes. No, I totally agree with you.
And him and I, we actually do a Monday night...
It's a philosophy class.
It's called Contemplate that we get together and we all discuss all these different topics.
And when I mention that, his response is that the state has an obligation to the poor.
And because we choose to be part of the state, that we...
Use the state through, you know, does that make sense?
I don't know. Yeah, it's social contract theory which attempts to say that the state is not coercive because we're not actively engaged in a revolution or fleeing for our lives.
Exactly. You know, and I hate to use this crude metaphor, but if, you know, if somebody sexually assaults someone else, it's like saying, well, unless they fight to the death, they're consenting.
Exactly. You know, the fact that you submit does not mean you agree.
Right, you may be submitting just to save your life.
Exactly. I mean, the reason that people give money to the state is, or the reason that people pay their taxes for the most part...
To stay out of jail. Is because they are threatened.
You know, I mean, if you have a pizza shop In a sort of stereotypically Italian neighborhood and the mafia guy comes by and says, you know, nice shop you got here.
Be real shame if something happened to it, but I can make sure nothing happens to it for only 500 bucks a month.
And then you pay them.
It's like, oh, look, you're part of the social contract.
You must love the mafia.
It's like, nope, you just love your store, not burning down.
So... And I also would like to know what the pastor would feel the state is not justified in compelling people to do.
I mean, if giving to the poor is justified, what other traditionally Christian morals would he feel it is justified for the state to use violence to achieve?
Yeah, no, that's a good question.
That's definitely something I should throw at him.
Seems like a little bit of a slippery slope to me.
All right, you know how you get to heaven?
Pray to Jesus. So what the government needs to do is round people up at gunpoint and have them kneel and pray to Jesus.
Asking for, you know, in certain denominations, of course, there's confession.
So you've got to drag people in from the street at gunpoint and force them to confess.
And suddenly we start to sound like some sort of Stalin-esque show trial, right?
Sure. Is the state not allowed to force Christians to manifest?
And why?
And if he says, well, no, you can't force Christians to pray at gunpoint, that would be crazy.
It's like, well, okay.
Why? Well, to me, that free will thing is like, that's why I believe that...
A free society matches Christianity so much better.
And I don't understand Christians that don't believe that because that free will aspect, in my opinion, God gave us life.
I mean, if you believe in God, I know you don't, but you're also very kind to Christians, so I appreciate that.
But I mean, if we believe in God, He gave us life, but the other gift He gave us, which is secondly most important, is free will.
And without that, I feel like man spends all of eternity trying to take that away from other men.
Does that make sense? Well, that's the satanic thing.
The satanic thing, in my view, is to say, and it is, you know, that the possibility of salvation in the Christian framework is available to everyone at all times.
And you can always turn to the path of virtue, but Satan says people are so evil that you must force them to be good.
And guess what? You've just turned evil.
Good job, everyone. You've just turned evil.
And you've just stripped people of the capacity.
To help other human beings.
So the other thing I would ask is this.
First of all, what's wrong with being poor?
You know, and the poor today, I mean, they're not really even poor, are they?
I mean, most of the poor? No.
The poor person today is better off than the richest person just 50 years ago.
So what's wrong with being poor?
People might choose to be poor because they want to give away their property.
They may choose to be poor because they don't want to work a full-time job.
They want to work a part-time job and then spend time on spiritual improvement.
You know, like monks were not the richest people in the world.
I'm not talking about the 80s band.
I'm talking about the actual monks.
Yeah. They were not the richest people in the world because they pursued spiritual devotion.
Enlightenment, yeah. I don't quite understand.
What is wrong with being poor as some people choose to?
When I was younger, I was in theater school and a bunch of...
The actors, they graduated and they were dirt poor.
Why? Because they wanted to pursue the dream of being an actor.
They wanted to pursue their dreams. Yeah, it's nothing wrong.
I mean, Jesus was not, Jesus didn't say, you know, man, if you don't get to the middle class, whew, no chance for you getting into heaven, brother.
I need to see some shekels here.
You know, this was not a pay-for-play situation to get into heaven.
Yes, and I feel a lot of people who are poor are poor by choice.
I mean, I would venture to guess most are somewhat poor by choice, even if it's Even if they don't realize it.
Everything is a choice.
Everything is a choice.
So I would, I guess, ask the priest and say, okay, the poorest of the poor, what percentage of their income do you think they spend on luxuries?
Right. And the answer is 40%.
The very richest spend 65% of their income on luxuries.
Middle class people spend about 50% of their income on luxuries.
And the poor spend about 40% of their income on luxuries.
And that's how we know it's a choice.
Some of the poorest, well, generally the lowest tier of poverty in America is composed of households with two adults working, and they work an average of 15 hours a week between them.
So they're each doing one seven and a half hour work day a week.
Huh! I wonder how they magically end up poor.
I know. It must be capitalist oppression.
Also, if you're concerned about poverty, having the government strip huge amounts of money from people's income would seem to me to help make them quite a little bit poorer.
And when it comes to exploiting the poor, look, there are groups out there who exploit the poor.
But exploitation...
Must have an air or a flavor of coercion to it.
You know, like a fool and his money are soon parted.
Like if you've got something that's really valuable and you sell it for really cheap, okay, well, you just learned an expensive lesson and hopefully you'll do better next time.
But, you know, it's...
It's a gray area, I know.
Like if, you know, somebody doesn't know that it's a diamond and they think it's a fake diamond or a zircona or whatever, then you buy it from them.
And, you know, I understand there's a gray area there, but to exploit someone that we have to have, it's the difference between...
You know, if I go into a bar and I say, oh yeah, I'm a male Calvin Klein underwear model and an astronaut.
Also, I can travel through time.
So what do you say we get a leg up or two?
And the woman is like, oh, you're so dreamy.
I do believe I'm going to faint right into your arms.
Well, okay. That's maybe not the most honest way to have a sexual encounter, but it's not rape.
No, absolutely not.
There must be coercion involved.
Now, offering someone a job is not forcing them.
However, I think your pastor is right insofar as there are people who exploit the poor.
One group who exploits the poor are politicians.
They do it now. No, they exploit the poor are politicians because they will offer them free stuff in return for votes.
That's incredibly corrupt. Absolutely.
What about unions who don't provide much material benefit for the poor or the middle class and yet take a huge amount of money out of their pockets in the form of union dues, which are compulsory?
Yes. My husband is getting, he just got a certified letter in the mail.
His company was bought out and he has to join the union.
Or he can't have a job.
And I'm just like, and we are, I'm from Michigan, but I live in Which, Michigan's very blue collar, I'm sure you're pretty familiar with that.
I know a lot of union stuff with GM and all that, and I've never been a fan.
I've always been against the union for multiple reasons.
And so being forced into it for him to keep his job is really upsetting to us.
Of course, because your choice is being removed.
I'm not talking about voluntary unions.
I'm talking about you can't work in the field.
Yeah. Who else exploits the poor is a third of Americans need licenses to do their jobs, which effectively bars the poor from getting jobs.
Who else exploits the poor, and this is a particularly egregious one, is higher education.
Right? I mean, you get 17-year-olds or 18-year-olds to sign multi-decade documents of near-permanent indebtedness, which bankruptcy cannot even discharge.
Right. In return for what?
A bunch of Marxist programming that makes you hate the market and never have any positive attitude towards getting a decent job or enthusiasm for participating in the free market?
I mean, so there is exploitation out there.
And there's reasons to focus.
And of course, you know, there are the shadier religious institutions that offer people, you know, fake cures and holy water and all of this in return for.
However, don't you feel that the government system, the way it's set up now, actually protects those charlatans?
I mean, don't you think that if a free market would take care of itself and the fact that people would be more able to vote with their feet when people were exploiting people because competition would jump up?
There wouldn't be as many regulations.
People would be able to start businesses without the government controlling whether or not they can start them, you know?
Right. And this is the usual thing that happens with people, Laurie, which is they say, here is this very destructive element within human nature.
The capitalists are going to exploit the poor.
People want to exploit the poor.
They want to control the poor.
They want to rip off the poor, steal from the poor, and so on.
They want to just profit from the poor.
And it's like, okay, but how do you get to divide humanity into this weird Taoist bifurcated cake where the capitalists have this capacity, but the politicians don't?
If you're going to say people want to exploit the less able, the less intelligent, the less well-off, the less wealthy, Then you have to, that has to be everyone, in which case you have to say, okay, well, what's going to limit people's capacity to exploit the poor?
Well, if you don't want people to exploit the poor, what you want is more and more people hiring the poor.
So you want to lower barriers for people to be able to create jobs and offer jobs to the poor.
You don't want minimum wages, you don't want ridiculous licenses and regulations, and you don't want really complicated laws that nobody can follow.
You don't want to fine people for selling lemonade on their front porch and setting up their own cake shops in their house or whatever.
The more people who are around to hire the poor, the more the wages of the poor are going to be bid up at supply and demand.
So sure, people have the capacity to exploit the helpless and the dependent and so on, which means that the people in the government are going to do it even more so because there's no competition for the government.
Oh, because they give them a license to do it.
Right. And we pay them to do it.
Heck, they're exploiting people with other people's money.
And the other question is, and this is going to be a little bit more personal, but let me ask you this, Laurie.
Why do you think some people are poor?
Well, I grew up, like I said, in Michigan, close to Flint.
Are you familiar with Flint, Michigan?
I do believe I've seen the Michael Moore film, and it looks challenging.
Well, no, not if you're a feral wild dog looking for human meat, but for other people it seems to be a challenge.
So I grew up on the outskirts of Flint, Michigan, in a small town.
And my family lived in Flint.
I know a lot of people who grew up in the system.
The system? Which system?
The government system.
On welfare. So many systems to choose from.
I just want to make sure we're on the right one.
I'm sorry. I personally believe that Most people in this country are poor because of the system, because of the government welfare system.
That's what I feel. And I think you're spot on when it comes to two-parent households, dads' and kids' lives.
And I was talking to an African-American woman the other day, and the only reason I bring up color is because we were talking about that community.
And they teach their kids things that keep them down.
The language they use with their own children.
Yeah, I was just talking about this with Candace Owens as well, yeah.
Yeah, actually, I just watched that, actually, too.
And I actually messaged her afterwards because I was really impressed.
I really like her. I really like her.
Oh, she's fantastic. I mean, she's perfection.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, I think people are mainly poor because they have a crutch, I guess.
Right. Does that make sense?
No, I think... They have no...
Yeah, I mean, we know for sure that there's like three things that people need to do to not be poor.
And they're not that complicated, right?
Number one... They're really not.
No, number one, finish high school.
Number two...
Don't get pregnant. Don't get pregnant outside of wedlock.
And number three, get and hold a job for at least a year.
Yeah. And I would...
The out of wedlock thing, too, I'd say stay married if you can.
You know, I mean, add that on there, too, because...
Ugh. These kids are nightmares.
Yeah. Yeah.
Anyway, so that's why—and also, I mean, we can always talk about—and, you know, of course, my pastor will bring up, well, what about the disabled?
What about that? But he knows better than that.
He knows he's throwing something at me that I would never say, well, we shouldn't take care of them.
However, my belief is if the state didn't take care of those people, the church would.
And I think it would make the church relevant again.
Does that make sense? This is the question I wanted to get at.
And this is what I would talk to with a pastor.
Why is someone poor?
And I was thinking about this question like all afternoon because it's very, very important.
Because we're preparing. Yeah, preparing.
Very important question. And I wanted to tell you a story of a guy named Bob.
Okay. So Bob is a guy I knew when I was growing up.
Really a very brilliant guy intellectually.
Like top of his class in math and physics and just like a really smart guy.
Great language skills and just smart as a whip.
But, but, he grew up spiritually impoverished.
But that what I mean is he grew up in an environment, no father.
He grew up in an environment where it was petty, it was small, it was no vision, there was no grandeur, there was no possibilities, there was nothing that he could aspire to.
No dreams. No dreams.
And it was brutal for him in particular too because his father actually lived in the same city but never saw him.
Like never saw him.
And his mom would not let him go.
It was like this weird maternal Venus flytrap.
It's like, hey, Bob, I've just made some hamburger helper and I've made too much.
Do you want to come over and help me finish it?
And he's like, well, you know, it's easier than cooking for myself.
And I'm like, no, it's not.
Not in the long run, it's not, I guarantee you.
And she's like, oh, I can't figure out how to work my remote on the TV. Could you come down and help me?
And it's like, oh, well, you're here. Why don't you help me watch Matlock?
You know, we'll see if we can figure out the crime.
You know, like, she was just this gravity well of like, come on down, you know?
I'm gonna make things easy for you, you know?
And because she didn't have a husband, and so as she got older, which is the case, single mom of a single, sorry, single son of a single mom, that's like usually where the gene pool ends, like right there.
It's pretty horrible. Right there, yeah.
And he was super smart, but spiritually impoverished.
And I remember very clearly once he told me, this is when I was a teenager, he said, he told me this story about how he'd woken up as a child and had seen the body of a Victorian woman floating over his bed.
And he was convinced that this was a ghost.
Okay. Okay. Now, the moment to me somebody says, and again, I'm not talking about, you know, the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost and so on.
I'm talking about like the woo-woo, you know, like the clanking chains and, you know, Sixth Sense stuff.
The superstitious form of ghosts, not the religious.
And he, like once he had this, you know, he had contact with another world and she had visited him for some reason and he was supposed to do something.
This made him special.
And this substitute for specialness, of specialness for ability, is very common, I find, in poor households.
They say, I'm special because of, I saw a UFO once, or I'm special because I know the truth about 9-11, or I'm special, like stuff which the market doesn't particularly value, and in fact, it may be a disvalue in the market.
Or I'm special because I see the truth about society that no one else sees, and I'm above it all, and I'm superior.
Well, dang it, aren't you special because...
Because of that? I'm kidding.
I'm teasing. No, to me, it's fine to see the truth about society, then go and make it a job.
Go and make it something.
Don't keep it to yourself and just have it be special in your own private dungeon.
It's not your only thing. Right, right, right.
It can't be what sustains you.
Right, right. Just knowing it, right.
You know, it's sort of like, I have the power to heal at a touch, so I'm saving it for my own hangnails.
It's like, no, that's not really what that power is supposed to be for, use it a little bit more.
And he had this specialness.
And of course, you know, when I would give him the sensible questions as a teenager or the sensible statements, which is, hey, Bob, I mean...
What's more likely, a Victorian woman appeared above your bed in the middle of the night to tell you something and make you feel special for the rest of your life without you actually having to do anything?
Or do you think it might be possible that you had a lucid dream?
You had a dream. Yeah, of course.
It's the middle of the night.
It's really dark. I think I woke up and saw it.
Wow. You know, I mean, so now he, again, despite his brilliance, Because he had this sense of specialness, for him submitting himself to the mere market when he felt that special and that, the vanity, right?
The poverty and vanity to me go hand in hand.
You know, like, I'm too good for the market.
I'm too good to put my specialness to the test of mere materialism.
Or, you know, Jim Morrison snarls in that song, trade in your hours for a handful of dimes.
You know, it's like, I can't possibly trade my hours for a handful of dimes.
I'm special. I'm great.
I'm wonderful. I'm fantastic.
I just don't want to ever find out for real in the marketplace how much my specialness...
You know, can you imagine putting that on your resume?
You know, well, I finished high school.
I took a little bit of college.
Oh, yeah. And a 19th century Victorian woman floated above my bed when I was seven.
So now I don't have to do anything else ever again because...
Do I just get to be CEO because of that now?
I mean, I don't want to work my way up.
I mean, I've been visited by people from the hereafter.
That makes me special. You know, I find that a lot with...
The special thing with people who have really high IQ sometimes.
I know that sounds, that I know, because I know, and I question this sometimes, because it's like, are you really that smart if you're sitting around doing nothing?
Well, there's intelligence and then there's wisdom, right?
These two, they're in separate Dungeons and Dragons categories for a reason.
This is a joke that means nothing to you.
It's okay. I know Dungeons and Dragons.
I'm sorry? I get it.
I know Dungeons and Dragons.
Okay. Just beware.
You're going to have an in ball of marriage proposals from this show.
But anyway. I'm a fantasy artist.
I'm an artist. Oh, okay.
Okay. Wow. Excellent.
So you are doing what my daughter wants to do.
All right. Really?
So I think that this sense of specialness, this vanity that happens where people do not want to submit what they do to the marketplace.
And I don't mean the marketplace necessarily of cash.
It could be the marketplace of ideas.
It could be any number of things, right?
Well, because he did not want to put his specialness to the test or to put it another way, because Bob had a sense of specialness that did not require him to improve, for him to take risks, for him to fail.
You know, he was special.
And so he had this false self-vanity thing going on.
And what does that mean?
That means that he can't ever really succeed because there's very little self-criticism when you have that kind of vanity and specialness.
There's very little capacity to take negative feedback and to work with it constructively and to improve.
You know, one day, Laurie, in this show, I may myself receive some negative feedback.
It could conceivably happen.
Obviously, not yet, naturally.
But at some point in the future, I'm on the lookout for it.
I haven't heard any of it.
I know! I know!
I know! Everyone just sings your praises constantly.
So... Why are some people poor?
Well, because they grew up in an impoverished, no-dream household because they're grabbing onto stuff that makes them special that has negative market value.
You know, can you imagine being in a job interview and, you know, well, what makes you a good fit for this position?
You go through ABC and it's like, yeah, but, you know, what really makes me special is the fact that I get visited by ghosts in the night.
Yeah. It'd be like, I don't know that that's going to add a lot to your marketability.
And so there's just one example, and there's so many different ones.
There's one example of, here's somebody who ends up poor, and what's interesting is I think that the material poverty is a reflection of the spiritual poverty.
Spiritual poverty. And the reason I'm saying this, Laurie, is I would say to the pastor, if the physical poverty, if the material poverty is a reflection of the spiritual poverty, Why would you turn the solution of that over to the state?
Is that not the province of the church?
Exactly. Exactly.
I'm so glad you came around to that because I really do believe that with the state out of it, the church used to be who took care of the poor and who helped with charities more.
I mean, they still do, but not to the extent.
I mean, people used to rely on the church.
And now, I mean, we try to do things, but people don't really need us as much because they have the state.
Well, that is very true.
And I won't go into any particular details, but I have lost complete influence over family members as a result of the state giving them money.
Because the church can say, the church can go, as it used to do, as you know, the church used to go to poor people, and they would try to differentiate between poor by accident or poor by stupid.
Like, poor by bad decisions.
Poor by, like, you drink up your money and you go and blow your paycheck at the racetrack, right?
I mean, and the people who were poor through no fault of their own, well, you help them.
And the people who are poor because they're making bad decisions, you don't give them money.
You give them counseling.
You give them solutions.
Because giving money to people who have, say, they're addicted to drugs or gambling or whatever it is, or sex...
Then you're just reinforcing.
You are enabling. They need spiritual help.
They don't necessarily need financial help.
Giving money to some people makes them better.
Giving money to other people makes them worse.
Now the government doesn't care and can't figure it out.
The church used to invest a huge amount into that and people had to submit to what the church said because there was no other game in town.
Yeah. Right? So the church would say, oh, okay, we'll pay three months of rent, but you've got to go to AA and you've got to do this and you've got to come to church and you've got to deal with this and you've got to go and get your teeth fixed and you've got to whatever, right?
You've got to start exercising.
I don't know whatever it would be to get people out of wherever they were.
And people would, they'd hate it, but a lot of them would say, wow, that was the best, you know, kick in the butt I ever got.
But when you've got the government handing over there with money, money, money, money, the church can't make anyone do anything.
And I think that's a real shame because the government doesn't care about getting people better.
Oh, absolutely not.
They care about votes. Right.
Well, and these days, they just care about not having neighborhoods set fire to.
Like, it's really just, it's no longer even we want votes.
We just don't want, we don't want the neighborhoods set on fire with riots.
If they don't want the neighborhoods set on fire with riots, why the hell aren't they getting in control of the media?
I mean, come on.
Right, right, right.
So these are sort of the arguments that I would make.
You know, it's kind of a shallow approach to say the problem of poverty is a lack of money.
And if you give the poor money, everything will be solved.
That is really not – it's not a spiritual or deep or meaningful or soulful explanation.
Right. And the other thing, too, is that if he's concerned, if the pastor is concerned about people exploiting the poor – Then the best way to help the poor is to give the poor more marketable skills.
Because if the poor have more marketable skills, then they can contribute more value to a business and therefore a business will pay more to have the poor person work there, right?
I mean, if all you can do is push a broom, you ain't going to get more Then a couple of bucks an hour.
But if you can do a lot more than that, if you can program a computer, if you can, I don't know, if you've got really great sales skills, then you can contribute more than a couple of bucks an hour, so you'll be paid more than a couple of bucks an hour.
So my question is then, why is there poor?
They've already been in government schools for 12 years by the time they hit the marketplace.
Why do they have no skills?
Why do they not have anything that's of value to a business after they've been trained by the government five days a week, you know, six, seven hours a day, With summers off for 12 years.
And because they're graduating without skills, they can be exploited in a sense.
In other words, they won't get paid much because they're not worth much.
So the best way to help the poor is to have them be worth more.
So the question is, why are the teachers unions and the governments and everything, why are they not focused on raising the skill sets of the poor so the poor can make more money?
That is really exploiting the poor, which is just basically holding them hostage, teaching them dumb nonsense about nothing.
In return for gaining control of the huge amount of money the government pumps into education.
That's real exploitation. Oh, absolutely.
And you know, it's not like my pastor doesn't know these things.
I mean, he pulled his kids aren't in school.
My kids aren't in school. I mean, I won't.
I mean, I'm like so disgusted with the school system right now.
There's just no stinking way my kids are going to school.
I was really surprised at the numbers.
In 1970, there were 15,000 kids being homeschooled in the U.S. Now it's like 2.6 million.
We have no choice.
Forgive me for this, but my daughter's best friend lives next door, and she just started school.
First week of school, there's five girls that are now boys.
I know that's not the subject.
I know that's not what we're talking about right now.
It's a challenge to explain.
It's just one of those things that I just...
And they can't say anything, and you have to call them what they want to be called, or you're in trouble.
You know, and it's just like, this doesn't make any sense.
Larry Elder, also with regards to the spiritual thing, Larry Elder just tweeted...
I love him. Yeah, he said, kid raised without a dad is five times more likely to be poor, nine times more likely to drop out, 20 times more likely to end up in jail.
So let's talk statues.
And that's true.
So being raised without a father...
Because here's the challenge, and your pastor, I'm sure, would understand this.
If you say, well, this kid is poor because he was raised without a father, or this kid is currently being raised without a father, so let's give the mom a lot of money because the father is not around.
Well, all you're doing is you're paying the Women to be single moms.
You pay them money to not have a father around.
So you tell me how you are going to solve a problem when you pay people $60,000 a year in benefits and welfare.
You pay people the equivalent of a $60,000 a year job to have no husband.
You know, that really irritates me because I work so stinking hard and so does my husband.
And to hear that they get the equivalent of a $60,000 job just really irritates me.
He also said, the number one problem in black community is fatherless households, followed closely by the anger of unwed fathers when this is pointed out.
It's tragic. So, yeah, I mean, I think there is a lot to be said in terms of poverty.
I think that human opportunity is vastly...
It's under-met. It's under-stimulated at the moment.
I think that people could do an enormous amount more.
And I think there is massive amounts of exploitation going on of the poor.
It's just not coming from the free market.
The free market is the solution.
I agree. I mean, him and I go round and round about this.
And I say the same thing.
So I just honestly am getting to the point where I just don't think he wants to hear it.
He's not like, I mean, he's conservative.
Is he? Well, mostly.
But he doesn't seem like he's very conservative on that aspect, does he?
I don't know.
I know he doesn't like Donald Trump.
But that's okay. You don't have to like Donald Trump.
There's a lot of leftists have infiltrated the church.
I mean, we think of the church, the Christian church in the West, and particularly in America, and it still is in a lot of places.
There's this bastion of conservatives and so on.
But it's the same as it is in other companies and so on, and other fields and other areas, like the media and tech companies and so on.
The church has had its stampede of social justice warriors pouring into it.
Yeah, yeah. And that is something that's going to have to be dealt with at some point.
I think it is.
Or we're just...
I don't know.
Yeah. I listen to your videos, and obviously a lot of other people too, while I work.
Wait, I'm sorry. Was that about other people?
Oh, just other people that I listen to, like Larry Elder.
I'm sorry, you were talking about listening to other people.
You poked my heart!
I'm sorry, just go on. Oh, I'm sorry.
Well, usually it's other people I find through you, to be completely honest.
It's still exactly the same as a betrayal and infidelity.
I just wanted you to mention that.
But okay, go ahead. You're the only one I donate to at the time because you're the only one I listen to every day.
Fine! I'll take it.
Okay, see, you can be bought.
I told you. No, but I forgot where I was even going with that now.
I don't know. Just...
Oh, you were talking about how you listen to myself and other people when you're working, and we had just been talking about how the social justice warrior stuff had really gone into the church and needs to be dealt with.
Yes, yes.
And someone was talking about how the church has softened its views, and it's really not—it's more worldly.
It's not— They're not sticking to the values anymore.
And I know, again, I know that you're an atheist.
And to be honest, before I found this church, I was on the verge of atheism.
I was dabbling in some different—I wasn't sure what I believed.
I had a really hard time with whether or not someone who is intellectual or smart can believe in God because he's really unprovable.
But there's just something— For me, that gives me purpose, if that makes sense.
No, it does. And as far as the leftist stuff goes, I mean, I'm not sure how many degrees of separation really there are between the current Pope and a Druid.
You know, because Druids are like nature worshippers and all this.
And he's like, well, we're angering Mother Nature.
I mean, he's like Jennifer Lawrence in a funny hat.
So it is, you know, this is really becoming nature worship at this point with his sort of global warming stuff.
And, you know, man, dude, I mean, I'm just waiting for you to show up in a robe with a staff and, you know, cast a sleep spell or something because it seems pretty pagan to me.
Yeah, well, I think he's just trying to...
Gain popularity with some of the leftists...
I don't know.
Yeah, that's right, because that's exactly how Christianity was founded.
Jesus just wanted to gain popularity with everyone.
That's why he just didn't say everything that was so popular, and he never got into any trouble about anything.
Oh, I'm absolutely not arguing for him.
No, no, no, I'm just being sarcastic, of course.
No, I have a really hard time with organized religion.
That's why, I mean, this church was one of...
What brought me with this church...
Um, and why we're there really is because my daughter at the time, we had just moved out here and she was 12 and she was in school and she was having a really hard time.
She was starting to become a mean kid, you know, one of those mean girls.
And I won't tolerate that.
And I mean, you'd stand up for yourself, but you don't treat people terrible.
You just don't do that. And so I wanted her to get her around a better influence.
And so we started going to church and found a youth group, which really has helped her because she's at least being taught some values again, you know, outside of the house.
You know, when you're in school, it's just they teach them such crazy stuff.
And all the other kids are...
Being raised by parents who don't care.
I mean, their parents think they care, but they obviously don't care if they're not watching what their kids are doing on social media.
They're not watching how their kids are...
Treating other people and what exactly their kids' belief systems are turning into.
And you have to engage with them and you have to know what they're learning and that they're not turning out to be little, pardon my French, but little shit asses, right?
I mean, because that's what they're turning into when they go to public school.
Isn't that terrible? Oh my gosh.
Well, no, it's one of these things too.
Like I always have a kind of rule that if I'm in a relationship where I'm really starting to feel the urge to be mean, it's time to take a step or five back.
Yeah, exactly. Because in healthy relationships, you can be assertive and it's fine.
But if you're in a relationship where there's this escalation and there's meanness, it's like, okay, well, I don't like being that way and I don't have to be that way.
So I have to take a step back.
And this is the same thing with... Government schools.
Yeah, parents have this weird thing these days.
I care about my children so much.
I really found a good daycare for them.
It's like, no, no, no, no, no.
That's not it. I'm sorry.
I wish you could rewind and try again.
But what you're doing is you're gaining a bit of peace and quiet now, and you're going to get a huge bladed boomerang coming back on you in the teenage years.
Oh, yes. So I'm an older mom, too.
I have a three-year-old son. He will never go to school.
As long as I'm alive and kicking and can teach him, he will never go to school.
Luckily, I work from home, so I can do that.
And you too.
You find a way, right?
When you really want to, you find a way.
If that means you have to downsize, if that means you can't have some of the material things you want, you find a way to raise your kids.
Number one, you love them.
No one else does. And they're learning such terrible things in the world.
And I think that has a lot to do with the poverty, like you were talking.
I think these kids are just raised with no values.
They're raised with no ambition.
No one cares about what they do.
And so why do they care?
And they don't. And then they become useless.
There's an old cartoon I remember when I was a kid, like just a single frame cartoon.
And one businessman is looking at another and all of their lines of the charts are going down.
And a businessman is looking at a whole sort of table, I guess it's a board of directors.
And he says, well, Hannibal got elephants over the Alps.
With that in mind, someone come up with something.
And it's always really struck me.
That really stuck in my head because it's sort of like, well, I'm not sure it's going to be easy for me to homeschool my kids or to not have my kids in government schools.
But it's like, go watch the movie Dunkirk and then talk to me about a difficult day.
You know, go watch the movie Saving Private Ryan or...
I don't know, a day in the life of a 12th century French peasant and then talk to me about how difficult it is to make these kinds of choices.
It's not. Well, in the state, it was leading to the poverty of these kids because they're not educating them correctly.
They're talking the parents basically into letting the state raise their children.
And they're just being indoctrinated into being slaves, basically.
I hate to say it that way, but...
Well, I'm sorry, but it's even worse because not only are they being indoctrinated in being slaves, but if they certainly, more so if they go through a university and so on, they are being indoctrinated into being slave masters.
And that is the real crazy.
It's better to suffer wrong than to do wrong.
I'm with Socrates as far as that goes.
But, you know, when they come out of these government schools, you know, I get messages from parents who's like, oh yeah, you know, my daughter, we had a great relationship.
You know, she spent three years taking feminist courses in college and now she hates my guts and we don't talk anymore.
And it's like, that is horrifying.
It is so horrifying.
Because now they're like, oh yeah, well you're just part of the patriarchal, cisgendered white scum, whatever, right?
And now they're slave owners.
Now they're part of the apparatus that's oppressing other people.
That's oppressing other people.
The scariest thing I think right now for me is the fact that I have a young son and the rhetoric and everything that's being said right now.
I mean, he's a young white boy, blonde hair, blue eyed boy.
And I mean, he wasn't born inherently evil.
I am so tired of what they're teaching about white men right now.
It makes me want to punch somebody.
No, I'm kidding. No, listen, I understand that.
You know, there are certain people in the world and they are ginning for a race war.
They are trying to poke and prod and escalate and so on for a race war.
Like there was a video that was posted, I guess, relatively recently on YouTube.
It's a music video where a young white child is being hung.
Like they're raising him off the ground.
He's jerking. His legs are jerking.
He's being lynched and hung by a black man.
Thank you. By a black man.
And this is the problem.
This is what Mike Cernovich pointed out as an excellent point.
Once you start censoring, then everything you don't censor, by default, you approve.
This is why you don't censor.
Right? So then everything by default, you approve.
And that is a real challenge when it comes to public-facing stuff.
And it is brutal.
It blows my mind. Yeah, it is brutal.
It blows my mind. And you come up with some conservative viewpoints and boom!
Right? Wow. And I find that most of the conservatives that have viewpoints are usually pretty respectful in how they deliver them.
Well, that's the problem now, isn't it?
And I think conservatives are figuring this out, which is why there's a new conservatism, which is saying, okay, well, this being nice stuff, we've taken a pretty good swing at it for about 150 years, maybe 200 years.
I actually had one of my African-American friends say that to me the other day.
She was talking about race relationships.
She was talking about interracial relationships.
But it brought that to my attention.
She was talking about her white girlfriend who's married to a black man and how terrible he treats her.
And this is her talking, not me.
And she's like, well, you know why black men marry you white girls?
And I was like, no.
And she's like, because you guys are docile.
And I was like, huh.
I don't know what to think of that.
I mean, it's kind of like we were saying with the conservatives, and we do.
We just, we play nice.
Yeah, yeah. Does that make sense?
You know, unfortunately, the time for nice play is...
It's over. I mean, it's a shame, you know.
People gave it a good long shot, but it's pretty clear that it's the squeaky wheel getting the grease these days.
And anyway, listen, Lori, I love the topics.
I got a bunch of other callers.
I really, really appreciate the call.
If you want to have your pastor call in, I would certainly love to chat about this topic with him.
I send him your videos all the time, but I don't know if he'd ever call.
Yeah, it's, you know, if he wants to, you know, I'm telling you, he can preach to, you know, half a million people nice and easy.
That's got to be worth something for him, right?
But I appreciate your call.
You're welcome back anytime, and thanks a lot.
All right, thanks so much. Take care. All right, thanks so much.
Bye-bye. Alright, up next we have Matt.
Matt wrote in and said, Despite watching things regress in the last few years to an obvious,
almost painful degree, I feel like my observations are only getting more validated despite not earning legitimacy in the public sphere.
A big aspect of this is having both the left and right perceive me as the other, the far right viewing me no different than those that seek to destroy the West, and the far left viewing me as no different than those who seek to discriminate against Muslims.
How do I reconcile this and earn my place in this shaky society?
Is there no more room for nuance?
Bonus, over time I think I've come to realize the importance of balancing tradition, but maintaining an open mind, I think both forms of societies have pros and cons.
How can we redirect the conversation from eliminating the other side into synthesizing?
The biggest catastrophe that has hit the West since World War II, in my estimation, is the death of, and ongoing war on, the family, And it genuinely saddens me.
On the other hand, things are far too rigid back home, and the concept of family can be almost suffocating.
That's from Matt. Hey, Matt, how you doing?
Hey, Stefan, good, how are you?
I'm well, I'm well, I'm well.
So ex-Muslim, that, as far as I, and I'm no expert, but as far as I understand it, that's not the easiest belief system to leave in the rear view.
No, it's definitely not.
Right. I mean, for those who don't know that there are, it is not, of course, what every Muslim believes, but there is for the punishment, the punishment for apostasy for leaving the Muslim faith is death.
So... I mean, that's the worst case scenario, but you also, I know of a lot of people who might get even disowned by their family, disowned by their friends, people might be actively out to get you, whether that means losing your job, whether that means beating you up, it kind of depends on the situation.
But for most ex-Muslims, it's definitely not a nice place to be in.
No, and I mean, a huge amount of sympathy and respect for that.
I mean, it's something that's hard for me.
I was a Christian, raised a Christian.
I'm no longer a Christian.
And as you know, from the last call, and certainly since I've recognized that I was not being as nice to Christians as they well deserved, It's not been a particular problem.
And of course, when I would criticize Christianity, I never thought, oh, no.
You know, I'm really taking my life in my hands here.
So I just wanted to point out for ex-Muslims, I mean, massive respect, massive sympathy.
It is a huge challenge. And as you point out, I mean, you can experience significant ostracism because there are belief systems that say that leaving the faith is a huge, huge challenge for just about everyone.
Yep. I think for ex-Muslims in particular, it's because in the Western society, for a lot of Christians, a lot of people might be culturally Christian.
And whether you necessarily agree with the practices and the principles and the philosophies behind it or not, at the level of culture that exists in the public sphere, it's not really anyone's business whether you believe or not.
Obviously, there are some churches that might be campaigning, for example, pro-life or whatever the case might be.
But when it comes to Islam, a lot of people who may be culturally Muslim would not say that they are culturally Muslim, and thus they reinforce all the bad aspects of Islam that they're ignorant to.
I mean, I have a maybe not so popular saying that I say a lot of times, which is I say that, like 1.6 billion Muslims, and I bet that more of these people are the biggest victims of Islam than any other spot on earth.
It's just because I believe that from my personal experiences and from the stuff that I've studied, the stuff I've reviewed, it just seems to be...
It's just increasingly obvious that more and more Muslims that are so-called moderates are just illiterate when it comes to their own background.
What do you mean? I just want to make sure I understand.
I think I have an idea of what you're talking about, Matt, but if you could explain it a bit more, I'd appreciate it.
Okay, let me give you an example. So I had a discussion with my friends the other summer.
When we were talking about, there was this lady in Kuwait.
She's saying, like, we should go back to our roots.
Men should have four wives.
We should have six slaves if we need it.
And her claim is justified by her religion.
But you get people like my friends who might be Muslims, and they're like, oh, this lady is bananas.
Like, she doesn't know what she's talking about.
Like, all of this stuff is like lies and publications.
And I'm like, no, if you actually review the history, whether it be the Quran or the Hadith.
Or just any factual textbook you can pick up on what happened between this year and this year in these locations.
You can see that Mohammed, for example, did have sex slaves.
He did have more than four wives even.
But to the average Muslim, it sounds like you're making up this lie to kind of like straw man the religion.
And very few of them are actually willing to, like, recheck their sources and come back and tell you, okay, so this is what happened, what do we do about it now?
Because they'd rather be in denial.
Because the way it's set up, it's such a totalitarian system that if you have a few things that go out of place, the whole system comes crashing down.
So everyone is living in this constant state of hypercognitive dissonance where they're trying to identify these holes before they come up and trying to, like, preemptively board them, if you know what I mean.
Right. No, I understand and I certainly appreciate the points and the arguments that you're making.
And to your point about sort of these loss of freedoms and so on, and you may know a lot more about this than I do and probably do, but...
My sort of understanding from conversations I've had with people is that looking at Iran, which in many ways, of course, was much more free in the sort of post-Second World War period, or this is true even of places like Afghanistan and so on.
And you can see the, there was, I think, a prime minister of Egypt in the 50s, you know, laughing about the very idea that they would be...
I can give you a very great example from my own personal history.
I'm Lebanese. I'm Lebanese by birth.
And if you look at the history of Lebanon, it's...
It's of the same trend that's happening to Egypt.
I mean, now the Christians, the Coptics, they're a minority in Egypt, and it's not being a minority, just a number.
There are literal discriminatory laws and effects, societal customs that make it really difficult for you to maintain your Coptic faith in Egypt.
And I think the similar thing is happening to Lebanon now, where the Christian Maronites, it's becoming an ever-decreasing A number of Maronites in Lebanon.
A lot of them are choosing to immigrate elsewhere.
A lot of them have immigrated a long time ago.
I think the statistics say that there's more Lebanese people outside of Lebanon than Ennis.
And this kind of stuff, when I think about it, it just seems to me that this wheel has got to stop sometime.
And it just seems like everyone is just panicking and not sure what kind of What kind of action do we need to do?
Because everyone is trying to protect themselves.
So you have the Muslims who may be ignorant of their own religion and their own history, but as far as they're concerned, they haven't really done anything wrong to anyone else.
So why should anyone interfere in what they're doing?
And at the same time, you have people who haven't hurt anyone else and they're also being affected by the system that people aren't aware or tuned to.
So it's kind of weird because you're fighting this battle on different fronts.
Some of them overlap.
Some of them contradict. You're not quite sure which one is the right way to proceed.
I think there's no right answer to this.
Well, I mean, for me, it's always reason and evidence and philosophy.
That's sort of my thing.
One of the things that I've heard in particular with regards to the revolution in Iran was that the hardcore leftists Yeah.
Would basically work sort of hand in glove with the fundamentalist Muslims to overthrow the sort of secularism and the remaining free market freedoms and freedoms of religions that existed in the country.
And I've heard this from a number of different sources.
I'm not... I'm not certain how much of it is true or I don't – so please understand this is something I say very tentatively.
But it does sort of help explain why the leftists who seem very sensitive to, you know, anti-gay stuff or, you know, stuff that oppresses women and so on, don't seem to have as much to say about fundamentalist Islam as they do about, you know, some Christian who won't bake a cake.
That there does seem to be something that works together between the extreme left and the fundamentalists with the Muslims.
That they seem to have some sort of synchronicity, some sort of similar goals.
And again, that's just stuff I've heard tentatively.
I just wanted to know what you think of that.
I've heard a lot of that stuff.
There's a lot of conflicting rationales behind it.
I've talked to people who, for example, they're the ones who would say, I'm a huge feminist.
I won't rest until every woman is free in the world, and at the same time, they're like, oh, these women in burqas, definitely that's okay.
And I haven't really heard anything convincing.
There are a few reasonable comments that have made me think about it a bit, but it doesn't justify this kind of weird unholy alliance we have going on between the regressives and the Islamists, who both don't have the West's best interests at heart.
Well, or you could say certainly have a slightly different view for the West and its future than a lot of people in the West have.
Sure, certainly. And it's weird to me because a lot of these so-called feminists, for example, mentioning all the stuff you talked about, like if I ask them and I'm like, okay, like how come do you have these conflicting views at the same time?
And they would say something along the lines of, like if a woman chooses her religion, in this case be it Islam, and she chooses to cover her head, Like, I'm fine with that.
And I'm like, okay, I understand you're fine with that.
But the same way you talk about you want to dismantle the patriarchy.
Or even in the Middle East, the dominant patriarchy is Islam in a way.
I don't know if the women are choosing to wear burqas in the Middle East because they're severely punished in many places if they don't.
Oh, by the way, for your records, the burqa is actually not an Islamic thing to begin with.
Okay, I'll give you an example.
For example, in Kuwait, after Iraq invaded Kuwait in the 90s, it's only after that period where burqas became more and more common in Kuwait.
If you go back to the religious texts, and mind you, while I'm explaining this, I'm also trying to talk at the level of the person I'm talking to.
So, for example, when I'm talking to this so-called feminist, and I'm saying, for example, when it comes to these women wearing burqas, I'm trying to address it from their perception, because even under their perception, which is incorrect, if it was correct, there's still some logical inconsistencies there, you know what I mean?
Right, right. And at the same time, I can take that same angle and talk with Islamists, even though I might disagree with what it is, but under your assumptions, which you think are true, there's still some logical consistencies there, and I think if you believe what you actually say you believe, then you need to be aware of all these inconsistencies happening within your own kind of sphere of...
Sphere of awareness or belief or whatever people might choose to categorize their beliefs and actions.
So it's a bit weird because if you read the text, for example, let's not go with the burqa.
Let's go with the hijab. So the whole idea is that you're covering your hair.
You're covering basically the majority of your body.
You're not wearing anything tight.
You are showing your face and your hands and your feet, and that's about it.
So, women can be free to choose that, hey, that's something I want to do for myself.
But this is what happens. You get a husband who says, like, we both believe in the same God.
Our God says that to be a better Muslim woman, you need to cover your hair.
You got to do it or otherwise, I'll take away whatever privileges I can take away.
I'll make your life as hard as it could be.
I'll make it as easy as you want it to be.
Just go along with me. So you see this, for example, like a lot of in school, I see like a lot of women, sometimes you go over the summer, you come back, and suddenly they have their hair covered.
A tiny minority of them wanted to do it by choice.
Most of them felt huge, immense social pressure, whether it be by their family or by their peers or by their religious scholars, that this is something that they should do, this is something they should aim to do.
It's not something they should be repelled by or disgusted by.
It's not something you should put off.
So it's kind of weird because, for example, my mom, She chose herself to do that in the later years of her life.
But at the same time, I've had women in my classes who had to do it just because their dad wanted them to do it.
So I'm not quite sure where to address these kinds of comments as they come up just because there's such a huge range of answers.
Of course, yeah. And I mean, the one thing that is challenging for me, because as you say, there are the cultural beliefs within Islam.
There are moral beliefs within Islam, which are open and debatable, I'm sure.
But the challenge is, of course, that in certain ways of viewing Islam, and I don't think it's particularly rare, Islam is not just a religious system.
It is a political system.
It is absolutely not.
Yeah, it is a political system.
And I think treating it as a religion alone is not taking into account the full scope of the belief system as a whole.
And the belief system as a whole is a regulation of life using the power of the state.
It is a legal system.
It is a political system.
And mistaking it for a mere religion alone, I think, certainly doesn't do justice to the scope of thought within Islam.
And I think then if we think, well, it's freedom of religion, but if it's a political system, that becomes a different matter when it comes to discussing a multicultural or pluralistic society.
way.
That's a very astute observation, because in my years of study and my years of trying to search for any kind of thread that would make sense for me to hold on to and keep going with, Islam is definitely not a spiritual religion.
I think when you compare all the religion and maybe even the mythologies and the polytheistic traditions of different people in different times and different places on the earth, I think Islam is the most unique in the sense that it's a political, economical, social, spiritual, totalitarian system that is not built on anything other than sheer dominance of the individuals in it and the individuals outside of it.
Yes. And so, you know, that is one of the great challenges, is that if you come up with a political system, but people think it's merely a religious system, then they will say, well, freedom of religion is what applies here.
But if it's a political system that would replace an existing political system, as it has done in countries that has taken over, that becomes a different matter than merely looking at it as a religion.
Yep. And the thing that's really nefarious about Islam, and keep in mind, to anyone hearing this, like, I'm not...
I come from a Muslim background, my family is Muslim, all my friends are Muslim.
I don't hate Muslims, but I do have a particular distaste for Islam because of a few things that it does very nefariously that people are not aware of.
So when I was talking earlier about the example of the moderates who are not actually aware of what their religion is.
Now there's another level to this, which is that, for example, when you take a group like ISIS, They've established their goals very clearly, they said what they're going to do, they said why they want to do it, and they said how they're going to do it.
Maybe we don't know a whole lot about it, but we do know a lot about ISIS already, if you just examine the literature that they provide.
But there's also, those are the more active elements of Islam, whether you want to call it Islamic invasion, Islamic growth, Islamic outreach, whatever it might be, those are the active elements.
Now, there are passive elements.
For example, In the religion itself, you are encouraged to have kids.
You are encouraged to be married.
You are encouraged to go out and travel.
You're encouraged to spread your religion.
You're encouraged, if you have to, to even lie, to put your religion in a good image.
So all these kind of things people may not be aware of, but they're contributing to a lot of things that are just by design, like just by virtue of all the kind of things you know about your religion.
It doesn't spread by accident, right?
Exactly. And you can go over to your neighbor and have a sword to their neck and say, hey, you either convert or you die.
Or what you can do is you can slowly over time, there are no more neighbors.
I mean, if you look to the West, there's not even enough reproduction there to replace you.
So where are all these people coming?
They're coming from all these countries.
Now, which countries have a huge boom in reproduction?
It's mostly the Islamic countries.
So as far as they're concerned, some people are thinking, oh, we might need to be a bit like ISIS. We need to be going out and doing this expansion by force.
And then there's people who are just saying passively.
They think, hey, we're going to out-beat everyone on Earth and everyone on Earth is going to be Islam.
And then we're going to have our...
Islamist peace ushering, utopia happening, and everyone's going to be happy and everything's going to be fine and deadly.
Yeah.
And also, I just wanted to – sorry, Matt, to interrupt.
And I just wanted to remind people about, of course, you know, we don't want to talk about Islam as one sort of big blob, right?
I mean, the Sunni, the Shiite, there's like – there is a lot of different belief systems within the general umbrella.
And it's not like they're all getting along perfectly well either.
So it is a challenge.
It's not like peace will arrive, I think, even if everyone did become Muslim.
Yep.
I mean, actually, it's a bit of an odd thing because even the Islamic Empire at its height, it had issues within the differing parties of the things they were governing.
Whether that be Muslims and non-Muslims, or whether it be different non-Muslims wanting different rights, or whether it be different Muslims who had different versions of the Quran at the same time, or they had a different translation, or whatever it might be, there's always conflict between these people.
And At its root, like, for example, the most common belief that all Muslims would have is that there's only one God, and Muhammad is his messenger, and he's the latest messenger, and he's the last messenger, and he's the one to conclude all the messages before him, which include Abraham from Jews to Jesus and Christians all the way up to Muhammad being the final one.
Yeah, I mean, the Jews and the Christians are people of the book, but they're just not at the final stage of enlightenment, right?
Yeah, it's kind of like a movie.
We got the prequel, and then we got the sequel, and then we're getting the trilogies tied up all together.
So a lot of Muslims choose to view it that way.
Then you have, for example, the Sunnis and the Shias.
The Sunnis, it's more like the people who follow the hadiths more closely.
And whereas the Shias, for example, think that after Muhammad died, there was a lot of injustice and how the caliphate leadership was handled and stuff like that.
So they're more dedicated to Muhammad and his lineage rather than the entire caliphate, if that makes sense.
I'm just trying to keep everything very...
As least confusing as possible, because I don't want to confuse you or anyone listening, or even me for that matter, because I don't want to ramble on this too much.
I appreciate that.
And the other thing too, I think it's hard, you know, certainly, you know, white people in the West or Christians in the West, There is, there's been a lot of aggression against in-group preferences for whites, you know, like if, like the idea of, oh, there's going to be some white group that's going to advocate for whites.
Well, that's automatically white supremacism or racism and all this, you know, crazy stuff that goes on.
But I think people don't quite understand also that within—and again, I'm just using the big blog term here.
I apologize for the lack of distinction.
But within Islam, of course, there is a very strong in-group preference, to put it mildly, to the point where, as you talked about the lying earlier, you know, that there's no real justification in Christianity for lying to a non-Christian.
But to further the spread of Islam, there is a wide variety of deceptions and lies and falsehoods that are not only permitted but encouraged and you may in fact be rewarded for.
And I think that's one of the challenges that maybe ex-Muslims or non-Muslims have is this idea.
It's like, well, I don't know.
Because I don't know what the person is saying, how truthful it is, how honest it is, particularly if I'm not a Muslim, because there is this permission to lie, to further the course of Islam.
And that, I think, does not engender a lot of trust in some interactions.
Yep. Okay, so the way I look at that is this way.
For example, when you open a Quran and you read it for yourself and you look at the interpretations, you can interpret that any way you choose to.
Like, a text can't lie to you.
It says what it says. How you interpret that is up to you.
But the problem becomes when...
This is something Islam does that makes me think of it very less than a lot of other religions.
For example, if you wanted to convert to Islam, the barrier of entry is almost non-existent.
All you need to do is you need to go up, they're going to tell you, say the Shahada, which is literally just you re-emphasizing that there is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet.
If you say that, you're a Muslim.
Done deal. If you change your mind, like too bad, you can't.
Like you either die and you change your mind or figure it out some other way.
There's no in-between there.
You're right. And so it makes it really difficult because you have the lowest barrier of entry and you have no contingency plan.
You have no exit strategy.
And when you compare it to, for example, like Judaism, if I wanted to be a Jew today and I went and I talked to a rabbi, he would extensively drill me for the kind of knowledge I have about Judaism, the kinds of things I expect to get out of it.
Why would I choose to convert?
And then if I want to leave, can you just stop practicing?
Yeah, sure, no problem. The state of Israel isn't going to detain your prisoner for three days.
And if you don't choose, and if you don't take back your apostasy, then you will be trialed and executed.
I mean, it's... And that's part of the way that it passively works, too.
I mean, because if you invade your neighbor, And you kill the dad and now all the kids convert and then you brainwash them and then they grow up and they have kids of their own, then their son is going to be arguing and telling you online that Islam is a religion of peace and that he would kill you for saying all the bad things you said.
I mean, it's just lunacy sometimes.
Right. Sorry, go ahead.
For example, a lot of Pakistanis, I feel like if they were more familiar with the knowledge of what I think a lot of Pakistani Muslims are ignorant of their own kind of oppression that happened to their ancestors before them and they're not quite sure why they're wrapped up into this religion anymore.
Right. You talked, Matt, in your question or your commentary, and really I wanted to learn more about this.
You said a big aspect of this is having both the left and the right perceiving me as the other.
The far right viewing me is no different from those who seek to destroy the West, and the far left viewing me no different than those who seek to discriminate against Muslims.
So the other, I mean, it's a bit of a postmodern term, I understand, sort of alien and foreign to your way of thinking.
I wonder if you could help sort of Help me understand how you view these, sort of the far left, far right, and your position relative to their relief systems.
Okay, I'll give you a brief rundown of what led to that precise statement.
So when I was growing up and when I started to realize that, hey, if this is a religion that I have, then I should actually know what it is that I'm applying, right?
And I started reading and reading about it, and I wasn't a huge fan.
So I was thinking, okay, worldwide, because, for example, in Lebanon, It's a fairly open place.
It's fairly westernized. There's like a good mix of Muslims, non-Muslims, Christians, whatever it might be.
But for example, the trend going in the future is not something that pleases me.
So I was thinking, what is a good place to go to where I can be free with my spirituality and not worry about keeping my head on my shoulders?
So I'm a huge fan of the Western values.
I'm a huge fan of classical liberalism.
I'm a huge fan of freedom of expression, freedom of speech.
All that great stuff.
So when I came to Canada five years ago and I started studying, it was all under this assumption that I'm in this place that values liberalism.
Everyone is free to explain their mind, their thoughts, their expressions.
And then we would take it from there and have a discussion.
Whereas in my background, you're not so free in the things you could discuss.
Because if it's declared heresy, then like I said, best case scenario, you might get disowned by your social peers.
Worst case scenario, you might not go back home with your head.
And And then over the last five years, I saw this increasing creep of totalitarianism happening in the West, in different aspects, of course.
And it's just happening in a way where I'm starting to get those same feelings again, which is I'm feeling like I can't speak my mind, that people are going to try and socially discourage you from doing so if the thing you're going to be saying maybe is politically incorrect in some way or another.
So, once you start talking about this kind of stuff, for example, I'm sure you're familiar with Milo Annapolis.
Yes. So, for example, I follow his Facebook page.
I'm not a huge fan of Milo.
I think he has some good arguments, and I think he has some nonsensical ones.
But that's pretty much the case for everyone.
I don't know anyone who's perfect.
Hey, if you can come up with some good arguments in this life, that's pretty good.
Yeah, so sometimes when we see the comments and...
And it's just weird because people would just see my name, obviously like on this show I emailed you at Matt, but that's not my birth name.
So people would like see my name and then instantly they'd be like, oh you're just a goat fucker, like you should all be killed and stuff.
And I'm like, okay, but death.
I'm like, okay, even if I was a far, a very extremist Islamist, I don't think that kind of conversation is really achieving anything, but I'm not.
Oh, unfortunately, as you know, Matt, it's achieving quite a lot, just not productive things, right?
Yeah. I mean, it is achieving opposition, it's achieving escalation and all that, right?
I mean, it just depends on what is the goal you're trying to serve here.
And I think for the majority of reasonable people, all they want is they want to live a relatively free life.
They want to be as free as reasonably possible.
They don't want to be deprived of things they need, like shelter, food.
They want to spend time with their loved ones.
I'm pretty sure that most people on Earth are in agreement over what they actually want out of their life.
Like, no one says, oh, hey, I'd love it if we had a genocide.
I mean, I'm sure there's a sociopath that thinks that, but I'm talking about the reasonable average person.
So for example, when I start talking about these issues, if I go into a very right-leaning kind of atmosphere, then I'm not much better than your typical Islamist extremist.
I'm just the other. And if I go to the leftist and I start talking about, like, for example, hey, I'm an ex-Muslim in the Middle East, for example, we might just be the largest, most endangered minority, and no one gives a fuck.
Oh, sorry about this, by the way.
Trust me, that's no problem at all.
So it's like, for example, for me, if I never came for school in Canada, I don't know if I would have ended up dead first or if I would have killed myself first.
I don't know. I'm sorry, say that last sentence again.
I got the end. I just missed the beginning cut out for a sec.
I'm saying, for example, in my personal background, like if it wasn't for me coming to study in Canada and then pursue immigration over there, I might have either ended up killing myself first or having someone kill me.
And so when you start talking about these issues, for example, like how come I think Christians from the Middle East should get priority when they immigrate to the Western nations?
But if you say that, then you're just a Nazi.
You know how it is these days.
And it's like, how come...
Like, all the people closest to me, all the people I love most in my life are Muslims.
Right? And I don't have an irrational hate of Muslims.
I have a very rational fear of Islam.
That's different. Well, and this is something really, really important to understand.
And people conflate this all the time.
And it's massively unfair.
Of course, there are good, nice, kind, wonderful, thoughtful, generous, charitable Muslims.
Of course. The question is the ideology, not the individual.
Saying I criticize a belief system is not saying that I think everyone, even tangentially associated with that belief system, must be whatever.
We're talking about the ideas themselves.
Not the individuals who have any association with those ideas.
And this substitution of an individual for a set of ideas to me is, I think it's almost deliberately trying to muck up the issue and have everyone start to take things personally when we really are talking about a set of ideas.
And I think some people are abusing that for their own nefarious purposes, but also some people are legitimately that naive and think that way.
Because when I tell this to some people, they might say, well, you might have no disregard, you might have no ill intentions with Muslims, but Joey, whose Facebook cover photo is of a fish and a Confederate flag, when he's criticizing Islam, what he really means is kill all the Muslims.
And then you get stuck in this endless debate of semantics Between left and right.
And meanwhile, either side doesn't really truly...
They're both not amazing platforms to have this conversation because they both, I feel like, get in the way of the actual conversation that we need to have.
Oh, and it's really frustrating for me as a whole because the idea that there are certain truths we cannot speak Because some bad people might use them to some ill end is just another form of censorship.
You know, and I get this from people sometimes, you know, when I talk about race and IQ and stuff.
Well, really evil people might use this information.
It's like, this is true of everything.
This is true of just about everything you could say.
Some bad person could use it for some ill intent.
It's like, well, you can't have a stove because somebody might use it to torture children.
You can't have a fry pan because someone might use it to hit a dog.
Anything, anything you come up with can be co-opted by nasty people for their own benefit.
But saying the truth that you're speaking, which is important and valuable and contributes to the human discussion of how to have a better planet.
Well, I could conceive of a situation wherein a bad person might take this piece of information and use it for some notorious purpose.
Therefore, you better shut up.
It's just another kind of stupid anti-free speech censorship.
Now, debate the idea saying there could be some negative consequence from someone for even the discussion of these ideas is just an elegant way of censoring people and I think it's really horrible because what it means is that It's not like if I don't talk about race and IQ, it's not like really horrible racists are never going to raise any of these issues.
It just means they're the only ones talking about it.
You know, we want to have reasonable people talking about these issues because it's not like the crazy people or the evil people are going to shut up about it.
So let's bring reasonable people into the discussion so we can get saner voices talking about important issues.
So I just, I find this really...
I need someone to present me with a list of facts I'm not allowed to talk about because bad people might do bad things with them.
And if you're not going to allow honest discussion between reasonable, well-informed people about important issues...
It just means that you're going to leave the whole debate for the crazies.
And that just means endless escalation.
So that's why I wanted to talk with you today about these issues.
Because the idea that if we don't have this conversation, no one's ever going to talk about this stuff.
I mean, it's a fantasy.
It's really shocking to me.
Because it seems to go against everything that a reasonable person would be thinking in their head.
But then groupthink happens.
And all logic flies out the window.
I mean, like, just because I don't tell you that the stove is hot doesn't mean that you're not gonna burn your hand anymore.
Like, that reality still exists.
You're just not aware of it.
And you chose to, by your own doing, you chose to be ignorant about the reality of that.
Now, I'm sure that if you give everyone the right to speak, a lot of people are gonna say a lot of stupid shit.
But that doesn't mean that no one gets the right to speak because all you need is one moment of brilliance To make up for all that stupidity that led up to it.
Well, and I'm not entirely sure that everything I hear that sounds stupid actually is stupid.
Because I'm not that smart to know what everything, like, I remember, like, I can't even tell you, Matt, the number of ideas I've heard in my life where I'm like, oh, come on, that's ridiculous.
What a ridiculous thing. And it turns out like, actually, you know, that is kind of true.
You know, now I look into the information, I look into the data.
And I mean, I could, I won't bore you with the whole list, but just off the top of my head, I can think of like 20 things.
Just probably over the last couple of years where I'm like, somebody sends me something or I come across something and I'm like, oh, that's ridiculous.
And it can be something as simple as like some comment somewhere on someone's YouTube channel.
There's a little comment down there where somebody says, and I'm like, ah, come on.
And then I see it again. I'm like, now, come on.
And then I look it up. So the thing is, I have no idea what's really brilliant, what's insane, what's true, what's right, what's smart, what's stupid.
That's why you need free speech, because nobody knows.
What the very best and the very worst things are, you know, when the people first said, hey, let's end slavery, that was considered to be astonishingly insane and deeply immoral by the people.
What would happen to the economy?
Yeah, who's going to pick? We're all going to starve because nobody's going to be able to pick the crops.
And it's like, I don't know.
I don't know. I mean, I could sit there and say, well, there's some things I really, really hate.
And it's like, yes, but if I'm going to put those candles out, Everything goes out.
Because once you start that process, that is a slippery slope argument that really, really does matter and it does work.
That once you start saying, well, you can't discuss this and you can't talk about that, it is really a slippery slope because I can't figure out for the life of me where you stop then.
Well, you don't stop.
You just try and get people to think that you are the The most reasonable authority to be able to dictate what people should be able to think.
And I think these days, there's this really weird echo chamber happening, mostly in the left, where it's like, the poison is the cure.
Whatever hurts us, if we double down, it's going to work amazingly.
Over time, you can see just how toxic that stuff is becoming, but people are still convinced that the poison is the cure and we need to double down on this.
For example, welfare.
I think welfare did more damage than good.
And the intentions were certainly good.
But over time, once you realize it didn't work out how you wanted it to work out, the solution is not to double down.
The solution is to pull out and reconsider.
Right. Yeah, well, I mean, as you know, checking into government programs is pretty easy.
Checking out is a whole other situation.
And we can't even have those conversations these days.
You know, like as an ex-Muslim, I mean, as somebody who's an ex-statist, I mean, I think I really sort of understand some of the challenges here.
I mean, I've been... I've been attacked and disowned and, you know, people have hadons for me that defy any rational analysis because I have broken from a dominant ideology within the West, which is that the government needs to solve every problem and every time anybody makes a mistake, the government needs to tax more responsible people and subsidize all the stupid stuff that they do.
And so it is a real challenge when you break from particular belief systems that are considered universal, moral, and accepted like physics.
But with the added spice of ethics, it is a real challenge to reason with people because they slide into this language.
Like you say, welfare, okay, well, yeah, let's question the value and the virtue of welfare.
It's like, no, that just means you hate the poor.
That just means you want poor people to die and rich capitalists to keep all their money, and it's like you can't have a debate because everybody has their magical languages, the magical words that drive away thought and analysis and evidence.
I think an element of it is within the last, maybe let's say, whenever the internet became mainstream, whatever that might be, whether it be email or Google, however you define that thing, just keep it in mind.
Whenever the internet became mainstream, I think people had such an ease of access into information.
And we have this need for short-term verification.
And for example, over my life, I've had many observations where year after year, I just keep thinking, how stupid was I one year ago?
And for me, that's a sign that as a person, I am thinking and growing and developing over the years.
But you have all these people who are 20 years old, and they just started taking their...
queer dance theory classes and they think that like within the first course of their first class in university that they're gonna find the answer and this answer is gonna be the answer from now until the moment they die and there's no possible reconsideration there whatsoever.
I mean I just find it like I think any intellectually honest person will review what he believes time after time again and the problem is when people refuse to do that and then what they claim is that Like, I've made this analysis once, and this was my conclusion.
So from now until the end of times, this will forever be my conclusion.
I mean, life doesn't work that way, because all those factors that you put into your analysis, they're going to change over time, and your conclusion is going to change over time.
Any algebraic basic equation.
If you change some values around, the whole thing is going to change.
Yeah, philosophy is a process.
Conclusions almost are its enemy.
And the thing is, too, Matt, it's not...
Even if people had certainty for stuff that was not rational, that's bad enough.
But what I see growing, and I see this more in the left as well, tell me what you think, but what I see growing even more is not only do I have certainty But people who disagree with me are irredeemably evil and I should punch them.
That to me, it's one thing to be certain within your own skin and say, well, I'm just going to march around and be certain and I'm never going to...
That kind of bigotry and lack of reflection, that's one thing.
But when it's not just that you're certain, but everyone who questions or opposes or has any doubts about what you say...
That you have the right to use violence against people and call them Nazis or white supremacists or apostates.
If you have the capacity to use violence against people who question what you believe, that to me is really the most toxic element that's going on intellectually at the moment.
And you know, Stefan, I would understand that if that was a single simple topic.
For example, If someone told me, hey, I just randomly beat up people on the street, I'd be like, wow, you're kind of an asshole.
And I think you'd be pretty certain of that until you die.
And I think I would be too.
But the problem here is that the issues we're facing in the modern era, I think that we're truly at the turning of ages.
And I think that the way the complexities of our life is working, it's becoming the It's becoming inherently more and more complex and all these complexities sort of feed into each other and overlap and they create more complexities that also do the same.
So someone tries to break down the entire, the most complex list of rationale and arguments they could think of.
They try and break that down into like batch of the fashion.
Like I think that just, like you can't possibly go from like analyzing something so complex And all you have is this very simple answer that you're very sure of that's going to work all the time everywhere with everyone.
And yeah, if you're chanting, you're wrong.
You know, if it can fit into a handy chant, you know, like, what is it they say, the people on the left, no fascist, no KKK USA. I don't know what the stupid chant is, but...
Yeah, no fascist, no KKK something, something USA. No racist USA or something like that.
If you can chant...
You're just wrong. You know, if your book of philosophy can fit on the back of a bumper sticker, you are not doing it right.
I mean, it is complex.
And this is the most amazing thing, too.
Like, when you think of...
You and I would never have met or had this conversation, almost certainly, right?
I mean, we have this incredible technology for having conversations, for evaluating ideas.
And for trying to understand different perspectives and trying to find ways to merge them together under some rational, empirical umbrella.
This incredible technology that we have.
And this rising opposition to free speech is occurring at the same time that we have the most capacity to reason with each other that the world has ever seen.
Like the history of the planet, this will never be replicated again.
And it is to me, it's kind of almost inevitable.
It's like when the water recedes, you see all the rocks.
And it's like, as our lack of, like, the internet is like the opposite of the Tower of Babel, right?
I mean, the Tower of Babel is a story where people tried to build a tower to reach God, and God broke the tower and broke everyone into different languages so they couldn't work together and so on.
We are able to unite...
Through the internet in ways inconceivable, even like 30, 40 years ago.
And at the same time, as we have this capacity to connect and to reason together and to try and understand different perspectives, There's all this hysteria.
And there is, of course, the hard free speech limitations.
I mean, some of the stuff that's going on in Europe and in Germany in particular is brutal as far as free speech goes.
But there's also the softer free speech, which occurs, which is, well, if I say this and people find out who I am, you know, I'm going to lose my job.
I'm going to be in big trouble.
People are going to be out to get me and so on.
That kind of soft censorship is occurring as well.
And it seems to me we're kind of in a race.
We're in a race. Where reasonable people are trying to connect with each other and understand the world.
And then there are people who are trying to shut down those conversations because they don't like what it's going to reveal about them and what they believe.
And that race, to me, it's one of the reasons I work so hard at what I do is I really feel that that race is a race for the very future of the world.
And I think that's kind of where you were, if I understand, Matt, when you were talking about your original question.
Yeah. I mean, you gave me a lot of great stuff to work with there.
So I just want to add a few points.
The soft limit of speech you were talking about, I think the biggest aspect of that is people who are self-censoring.
I think people need to stop doing that.
They should be able to say no.
They should be able to freely discuss their thoughts and opinions.
Just because if you're shy or if you're introverted or if you're anxious, it doesn't mean that what you're thinking is any less valid than what someone who's outspoken might be thinking.
It doesn't matter who's right or wrong.
I keep repeatedly seeing that theme where people are self-censoring themselves.
And I think that's even worse than when someone censors you.
Because when someone censors you, once you realize that the power dynamics have shifted or that you can shift them, you tell them to fuck off and you start speaking your mind.
But when you censor yourself, you just weaken yourself time and time again.
And you stop thinking properly even.
And I think that's the biggest disaster out of this whole free speech thing is that people are willfully Choosing not to do their own thinking anymore because whatever they think they feel they might not be able to speak and it's not because someone is limiting them by law already although in the future certainly that could be the case but they start kind of justifying how to self-censor themselves and why they think that might be a better way of approaching things.
Now I understand that sometimes when you have an unpopular opinion it gets really painful to say it but I believe that's no excuse for a person to self-censor themselves.
I think that That's like literally the antithesis of actually living out your entire being.
Well, and as you point out, there are a lot of people in the Middle East and in other countries who are suffering as a result of fundamentalist Islam, who don't have the freedom to speak or to practice the morals that they want to practice with the volunteerism that I think characterizes real morality.
You know, if somebody puts a gun to your head, whatever you choose is neither moral nor immoral because all you're doing is you're obeying.
And, you know, as I've talked about with my loathing contempt and hatred for all of this imperialism and Obama dropping, you know, these 100,000 bombs largely on Muslims in the Middle East, that is brutal and that is hideous.
And for the Muslims who have their beliefs about ethics and virtue and family and responsibility and charity and so on, I want those Muslims to be able to practice their virtues free of compulsion.
And if we can't have a conversation about the political side of Islam and the degree to which it limits some people's moral choice and therefore, philosophically speaking, at least according to me, it limits their capacity to be moral because they're forced into it and therefore it's not as much of a moral choice.
If we can't have these conversations, then the people who don't have a voice in some countries, we are not doing them any favors.
In fact, we're kind of condemning them to more of the same, which I think is terrible.
And that's truly the tragedy of this whole mode of thinking.
For example, when I talk to some of my Canadian friends and they say, okay, so Matt, you're a visible minority.
Why do you believe that someone should be able to openly be racist to you?
And I'm like, okay, this is why.
Because when I meet five people and one of them starts to call me all kinds of derogatory terms, In my heart, I know that those other four people can be like that, but they choose not to be like that, which makes them even more valuable to me as whether they might be friends or acquaintances or some form or another stuck in my social network.
But when all of them are telling me nice things because legally they have to and they can't say anything bad, that's when you start acting out your racism in passive aggressive ways that I'd rather not deal with.
You want the enemy to sort of be marked by their own freedoms, right?
Yeah, like, if you think I'm a lesser being than you, then I believe you should have that freedom to tell me.
Not because your views are superior, but because I am entitled to know the truth and I believe that I should know the truth, right?
Like, I don't think the government protects me when it tells that person they can't say anything.
I think in fact, Like, just the opposite.
Like, they hurt me when they do that.
Because now I don't truly know who's my ally and who thinks less of me.
Because everyone is worried about saying the politically incorrect thing.
So everyone is saying the politically correct thing to say, which is a long way of saying nothing at all.
Because nothing of value was being exchanged in that.
Well, and it's funny too, because, you know, the one thing that is a big challenge in the conversation regarding racism, which is an important conversation to have, but right now it seems too limited and polarized.
Which is really frustrating, is that at some point, you know, and I really dislike this phrase, persons of color, because it's like, well, all non-whites are this big blob, different from whites, and so, I mean, I think that's terrible.
But I don't want collective judgments, and I don't want racial or gender collectives and quotas and numbers and whatever.
I don't want these to be encoded in law.
We need a separation of state and race.
We need a separation of state and religion.
We need a separation of state and gender.
And at some point, I hope, I hope that the conversation about racism is going to include anti-white racism, which is a thing.
It is a thing. I mean, you don't have to be on the internet for very long.
If you're white and you're talking anything to do with racial issues, or maybe even if you're not, I don't know, I've been talking about them so long, I don't know.
Oh, I've been called a white supremacist, and I don't look anything like the traditional white supremacist.
I don't know what they would look like, but certainly no one ever sees me and assumes I'm a white supremacist, but they do it the other way around.
They don't know what I look like. Well, you try having blue eyes and a square half-German jaw, my friend.
You'll find out exactly how that goes.
But I think, you know, because this idea that we're all just going to set, we're going to get set against each other and the idea that, well, you can't be racist against whites because whites are all powerful.
We're magical. You know, we can travel through time.
We can do anything we want.
And therefore, we can't, I mean, look at the whites in South Africa who are currently being, there's horribly racist laws against the whites in South Africa, the hundreds of thousands of them living in these shanty towns because they've been disallowed from getting jobs because of I think?
The more that whites are told, A, that they're racist by default, and B, no one else is racist against whites, that to me is really fanning some ugly flames.
There is racism. There are collective judgments that are unjust and unfair.
We need to talk about them.
But the idea that whites are singled out with this, you know, mark of Cain of racism and no other group is ever racist, either towards each other or towards whites, that is going to cause a terrible escalation because it is such a fundamentally racist statement.
Only whites are racist.
It's like, you get how racist that is, you know?
Only non-whites.
If you're non-white, you can't be racist against whites.
It's like, you get how you're collectively judging and moralizing and calling people good and evil based on skin color?
Do you understand how racist that is?
But if we can't have those conversations, I don't have much hope for keeping the peace.
It's such an extremely painful thing to repeatedly hear over...
The time span that I've been trying to engage in this conversation, which is when you say, whites can't be racist because they have the power.
Even if you assume they're correct and you go with this logic, it still leads nowhere.
And that's something that really kind of troubles me when I'm trying to debate with leftists mostly, is that because even if I assume everything you told me is true, it's still so logically inconsistent and infactual that doesn't really help me in addressing any question I might have that you think you have an answer for.
To shut up. I wish I could say it's more elegant than that, but it's just like, white people, you can't have any experience of racism.
You can't ever complain about racism against whites, so shut up and let us dominate the conversation.
And that's bullying, and it's manipulative, and it's dishonest, and it's racist.
And that, I think, is, you know, hypocrisy is one of the things that drives moral people the most crazy.
You know, I guess it's the You know, when whites are called racist and that you can't be racist against whites...
Oh, man. I think whites are getting kind of annoyed at this point.
And, you know, if I wasn't white, I'd say, well, yeah, rightly so.
And, of course, if I am white, the fact that I would say the color of the skin doesn't matter.
I would say this. If there was some belief system out there that said that blacks are incredibly racist and you can never be racist against blacks – I'd be saying, well, that's horribly unjust.
What a collective, racist, horrible, silencing statement.
But the fact that it's whites and not blacks, what the hell difference does that make?
It's still philosophy. That's the biggest bone I have to pick when it comes to these kind of types of people because I think that all this kind of collective judgment, that's the worst kind of judgment you can ever do on a person as an individual based on some arbitrary collective you've assigned for them as a group.
It's... It's such an odd thing because a lot of people that are being called white supremacists are in my opinion not white supremacists.
There's nothing wrong with saying I'm just trying to pick the angle I want to get on.
No, it's a tightrope, right?
It's, you know, the old saying, sorry to interrupt you, Matt, but it's the old saying, it's like, if you look up black pride or gay pride or Hispanic pride or, you know, whatever, then on Wikipedia, then it's all like, you know, a legitimate expression of joy and appreciation of your own cultural and ethnic history, right? But then if you look up white pride, it's like, KKK, Nazi, racist, supremacist.
It's like, oh, come on.
This is pitiful.
This is not even sophistry.
I mean, it's like three-year-olds with a spray can on the side of a railway car.
And that's really sad to me.
Not because of the obvious fact that you can celebrate your pride in whatever you might be.
I think everyone is entitled to be proud of who they are and who they choose to be, more importantly than who they are.
And the problem is that when people start doing this, I think people have a fear of having an identity.
I feel like, for example, a lot of the Deep South, I think way less of them are racist than people might assume.
I've had friends We're good to go.
For the right. And that's why they all have to be characterized as these, you know, mouth-breathing, one-toothed, unshaved, unwashed, two cars up on blocks of the front yard and maximum education.
You know, there's this old thing about the state Arkansas census, you know, level of education achieved, kindergarten, grade two, grade three, other.
You know, I mean, they have to make fun of them in the same way that the left often makes fun of the military, because the military votes for the right, and the South votes for the right, and therefore they must be demonized.
But no, it's nothing to do with racism as a whole.
And this is sad, you know, like, I mean, I can say there are things I respect and treasure about the Indian culture.
I can say there are things I respect and treasure about the Japanese culture or the Chinese culture or wherever, right?
But then if I say, well, there are things that I respect and treasure about white European culture...
Racist, supremacist, it's like, oh, come on.
I mean, if we're supposed to be multicultural, why is one culture and race always being singled out for the most horrendous verbal abuse that can be imagined?
Well, by multicultural, they just mean plain and blank.
No one is entitled to have any identity because any kind of identity can lead to in-group preferences, and that's bad.
I don't know.
I wouldn't agree with you that no group is allowed to have.
Like, I've never heard anyone on the left rail against the Hispanic advocacy group called La Raza, which literally translates to the race.
It's a racial advocacy group.
And I don't think anyone rails against them.
But, you know, you try saying El Blanco.
I don't know. What the hell would be like the white group and a white...
And then you'd just be Nazis.
And so I think some people are allowed to have in-group preferences based on ethnicity.
Just those people tend to tan better.
I think in the meantime, you're absolutely correct.
But within five years, if this whole extreme regressive leftist extremism doesn't kind of, you know, screech to a halt...
I think eventually, like, not right now, the straight white male is the biggest bad guy.
Once that's out of the equation, I think that there's going to be in-group problems where people try and, like, you know, they're going to try and form a new identity where everyone is the same instead of celebrating the differences between the groups they've managed to bring in.
But that's just purely speculative on my part.
So, I mean, I agree with you.
And I've talked a lot about this, Matt, sort of the death of the family and so on.
And I think it is brutal.
And it is very difficult for people.
We're all tribal species.
We need communities. And to me, the communities are those of values.
You know, the ethnicity and the race I don't particularly care about.
But it's a community of values that matters.
You know, honesty, integrity, curiosity, reasonableness, and so on.
And the death of the family has been just unbelievably vicious.
You know, once you wake up to this kind of stuff, like, I can't...
I can't even really watch...
Movies and TV that much anymore because I see the programming just bam, bam, bam, bam, you know, all the time.
Like even if I just pick up some stupid comedy, it's like the young people who are free and sleeping around are having the best time and they're all beautiful and they're lean and they're happy and there's never any STDs or unwanted pregnancies and there's very rarely any kind of Glenn Close with a scissor bunny boiler chasing you down in Fatal Attraction style.
And then all of the parents are tired and fat and depressed and ugly and their kids are brats and this relentless propaganda against families and for spending your precious sexuality on useless trash and useless people.
It's really...
It's hard to...
And this whole thing about...
Women in the West, particularly educated women, go have a career!
It's like, why? Why not have your kids and have your career later when you won't be interrupted by kids?
It is... And because everybody knows, if you can convince women to have kids later, you're going to get fewer of that group, whatever that group is.
You know, if I could convince Eskimos to, you know, you've got to go and build snow castles for the first...
From when you're 20 to you're 35, well, when you're 35...
You're lucky to have one kid, let alone two, and three is pretty much out of the picture.
So you're below replacement rates already.
So this relentless convincing women to give up their most fertile and sexually attractive years in the pursuit of education and career attainment and so on when those things are...
More efficiently done later in life.
You know, if you spend 20 to 30, you know, raising your kids, you've still got another 35 years to have a great career and all of that.
But this relentless, don't have kids, pursue hedonism and so on, I think is one of the main reasons why there is this underpopulation.
Now, the underpopulation in the West doesn't particularly bother me insofar as you can just automate the crap out of stuff and you don't need more and more people.
But if there is this sense of like, okay, well, people in the West, you don't have enough kids, therefore we need to bring...
You know, 12 billion people from Africa in.
Well, that makes things a little bit different.
And until we find some way to resurrect the joys of the family, it is going to be a very, very tough system to sustain if people believe that lower birth rates must lead to higher immigration.
I mean, it almost seems like on the mainstream level, the maturity level has declined to that of a 10-year-old.
I mean, you have your basic left is good, right is bad.
Do whatever you think is fun.
Don't worry about anything else. Don't worry about responsibility.
Don't worry about virtues. Don't worry about what's going to happen to you when you're old because you're going to live fast, die young.
That's the kind of message people are being constantly bombarded with.
And it's just so self-defeating.
I mean, to try and even tackle that, I don't know from which point to even begin to address that just because the whole thing as a whole just doesn't really quite vibe for me.
So the thing you start talking about, automation, that's a great point.
I'm really happy you made that point because, in a way, it is true.
We have all this technology and we should make it work for us instead of working for it.
For example, when people start talking about immigration, let's ignore the extreme ignorance in saying, for example, that the USA is the most oppressive country in the world.
Meanwhile, It's one of the most desired place for immigrants to come to.
And like when you start looking at the kind of levels of the population, the kind of shifts that could happen, the kind of ranges at both different ends.
So when I start looking at that, I think that the best solution is not to immigrate people to improve their quality of life, is that you need to export The things that improve the quality of life.
For example, when the West started going through the industrialization and all the other countries followed, they all prospered because of that.
They didn't all say, oh, we're not going to do any industrialization in my country, we're just going to go to the US and get it done over there.
No, people were thinking, how do I bring this to my backyard, right?
Right. Yeah, no, I mean, if Western countries, if white countries are so racist, then surely immigration should be stopped so that these poor non-whites don't experience all of this toxic, horrible racism.
It's like, shouldn't you want to, you know, you don't move to Chernobyl, right?
Because it's radioactive. You don't go there.
You move away from Chernobyl.
So it is just one of these goofy things and much more serious than the word goofy implies, which is, well, those white countries are so terrible.
Those white people are so racist.
It's like, hey, can I... Can I get me to a white country?
That would be excellent. It's like, which one is it?
It's like there's this joke that sort of pops around in meme format, which is some guy from Mexico who is like, you know, Mexico's the best!
And he's waving his Mexican flag, you know, Viva Mexico!
And, you know, I hate America.
Viva Mexico! And then it turns out he's in America, and someone's like, okay, I'm going to deport you.
I'm going to send you back to Mexico.
He's like, what? Send me back to Mexico?
Are you kidding? You're going to ruin my life?
I don't want to go to Mexico? And it's like, uh, I don't really understand any of this at any point.
That's funny. From my personal experience, I've traveled almost all of the continents on the planet.
I've been to very different countries, different religions, different economic systems altogether.
And the most extreme forms of racism I've ever experienced have been in the Middle East.
And within North America, I haven't really had any kind of encounters where I was like, oh, that was definitely some racist POS. It was mostly like, hey, the most recent racist example I can think of Because I was trying to rent this apartment, and the landlord happened to be Asian, and he just didn't like me. That's the most racist thing that has happened to me in Canada yet.
Right. Well, the other thing, too, and this racism stuff, it's a big topic, so I'll just give you one or two points and then get your thoughts on it, Matt.
But first of all, I'm not entirely, certainly online racism, I'm not at all convinced that there are genuine racists out there.
Of course, there are some racists in society, no question about that.
But when you look at the number of racial hate crimes that are reported, which then turn out to be committed by members of those races in order to get sympathy or to sometimes even get out of an exam that they failed to study for or whatever, there's a lot of, quote, self-inflicted hate crimes from particular racial groups and so on.
And this happens in every ethnicity and so on.
And so some of that, you know, when you see some, you know, there's a Trump video and underneath there's some racist statements, I don't know if those are genuine racist.
I don't know if they're leftists pretending to be racist in order to discredit the comment section of a Trump video.
Like, I have no idea.
What you see online, a warning may not reflect what's actually happening in the world.
And secondly, there are people, I don't know if you've known people like this in your life, Matt, but I certainly have.
I was talking about this the other day with a guest.
But there are people who kind of know what to say to upset people the most.
And people know that there are these racial sensitivity wounds, that there's this big racial wound that if you push it, then people will really react.
And it's interesting because when people use racist terms or they escalate, maybe they're genuine racists or maybe they're just general sadists who are saying What is going to upset people the most?
You know, it could be something about the Jews.
If it's one particular area, it could be something about gays in another area.
They'll just say whatever is going to upset people the most.
Are they genuine racists or are they generic sadists who are just rubbing that wound because they know that it's there?
I don't know. I don't know.
In other words, if there is a lot of sort of racial tension where there doesn't need to be, what that does is it invites the sadists in to come and try and rob salt into that wound, which makes everyone think that there are more racists than there are.
It's just a particular thought.
I don't have any great proof from it, but there does seem to be some evidence, at least online, that some of the negative statements about race or racist statements are not genuine racists but people playing the part to discredit others.
I mean, that makes a lot of sense.
Like, for example, when I read all these news that are saying that the USA has suddenly become, like, a Nazi country overnight.
And it's like, you can't have a country where, like, a few months ago, they all voted in majority for a black Democrat, and then overnight they all became KKK. Like, it doesn't quite...
Like, the math doesn't add up over there.
And, like, there are a lot of people online who are just trolls, whether it be about racism, sexism, just pure ignorant...
Stuff that they're just saying to get a reaction out of people.
Some people love that.
They just want to say the most obscene thing they can say and get away with just to get the most possible extremist reaction out of whatever it is that they said.
I think we also contribute to that, for example, when I had a recent discussion on this about the N-word.
And I say that the more we make it a taboo, the more it becomes powerful when you actually call people that.
Whereas if Whereas if it wasn't a taboo, then if someone says that, I mean, if you open the radio now, you're going to hear that word time after time again.
And no one seems to be offended.
But if I quote someone who said that word and I actually say the word instead of the N-word, somehow I am this extreme racist, white supremacist, Nazi KKK member who is neither American nor lives in America, but somehow fits that stereotype.
It's just... It boggles my mind sometimes how people process these events.
From my experience, ever since I was really young, I got into computers.
Thank goodness for the internet, because if that wasn't there, I don't know how I would have gotten out of the situation I was in with all the censorship that was happening to different kinds of books, whether they be science, philosophy, history.
I've had a lot of interactions online.
Probably the biggest reason I'm a good speaker of English is because I've had Very early-age experiences with technology, with the internet, with English-speaking people.
Like, I played World of Warcraft when it first came out.
I met tons of amazing friends over there.
And sure, was there some, like, guy who wanted to say something racist every now and then to get out of it?
Sure. And were there people who were legitimately racist?
Also true. But the vast majority of experiences have not led me to believe that case.
Led me to believe that to be the case.
Sorry, go ahead. Finish your point.
So, for example, just like with this whole online thing, the same can be said for Twitter these days and age.
For example, the whole fiasco with Twitter banning Milo for stuff that he didn't even say just because someone likes Milo and they do something doesn't really mean that Milo is at fault.
We need to give people back their individual power and their individual agency.
You can't associate, whenever you hear Yeah, and if we keep getting hysterical over every racist post, we're just feeding the trolls.
I mean, that's exactly what you're doing.
And once you start feeding the trolls, there's going to be more trolls showing up, so you think the problem is even worse, so you double down.
This goes back to my whole thing where I say the poison was the cure, because if something doesn't work, doubling down doesn't really make it more effective.
And if it did make it more effective, eventually you get to the point of inefficient diminishing returns, and at that point you're better off with another alternative to double down on altogether.
Right. Well, Matt, I've got to move on.
We've got a bunch of more callers.
First of all, massively appreciate the call.
A very, very important and foundational call.
And, you know, I know that there are people out there who are like, oh, there's a white person who's talking about racism and so on.
You know, the Reverend Jesse Lee Peterson had a couple of chats with the guy.
He's a great writer, and he's been really encouraging, saying white people talk up about these issues, because if you let the crazies dominate the conversation, it's just going to get worse.
So I really appreciate the opportunity to talk about this stuff.
Your thoughts and your observations are fantastic, and I hope we can do this again.
Thank you so much for the opportunity, and I too am hoping that we get the chance to do this again.
Thanks, Matt. Take care. Thank you.
Bye-bye. All right, up next we have Andrew.
Andrew wrote in and said, I am a public school teacher and a resident of a small city in which I teach.
I am surrounded by liberals and leftists at work.
There will be a new high school built in our city within the next two years at the cost of about $75 million.
There is a faction that looks at the pile of taxpayer money and would love to turn the new high school into a giant sustainability project.
What is the best way to push back against this faction without appearing rude, combative, or crazy?
That's from Andrew.
Andrew, how you doing?
I'm fine. How are you?
Well, thanks. So, sustainability project, is that the, you know, we're going to plant trees to offset the carbon credits and we're going to make it solar?
Is that sort of environmental stuff?
Is that what you mean? Yeah, I actually have a little more or better information than at the time I sent in the question.
Well, you kind of get the idea.
There's a lot of left-leaning people, both where I work and in the city where I live.
And so they're talking about building this new building, geothermal versus a conventional heating system, and also solar panels.
Right. Okay, okay.
Yeah. And why do you care about this sustainability project and how the money is spent?
What does it matter? I mean, I get sort of at an abstract level, it's not maybe the most efficient thing to do, and maybe it's a waste of money in certain areas and so on, but what is your real interest in this, and why would you want to push back against this?
Yeah.
Well, so I, part of it is, I'm a taxpayer here, a resident of the city where this high school is going to be built.
So my – part of my concern is that, well, if this – say if this geothermal heating system is put in, I don't know the track record on these I don't know the track record on these things.
No, but sorry to interrupt Andrew, but what possible difference is it going to fundamentally make to your tax bill?
Because if they end up spending more, they're just going to borrow or they're going to put out bonds or something like that or whatever, right?
So it's not likely to have much effect on your tax bill.
Or if it does, what's it going to be?
A hundred bucks a year, 50 bucks a year?
How is it worth your time, specifically as a taxpayer, to risk the blowback, the hostility, the aggression, the poking the leftist beehive and having them swarm you or whatever?
I mean, I'm just trying to... If you're going to say there's some practical or pragmatic reason for doing this, I'm having a tough time seeing how it works just as a taxpayer.
Yeah, maybe it doesn't.
Maybe it doesn't. Now, if there's another reason, I mean, I could sort of understand, but if it's like, well, I'm worried about my tax bill going up, like, why is this the hill to plant your flag and to take the bullets on, right?
Why is this the one that you're choosing, given that, you know, life is short and there's an infinity of things that we could be working on?
Why is it this one for you?
Well, okay. And I'm not saying it's this one, but I guess, so, like I said, so I... I don't work at that.
So this building that's going up is replacing the high school within the city where I work, right?
So I work at a different school in the school district, at the middle school.
So I guess part of my issue is I'm sort of surrounded with this kind of stuff.
And it's here, it's there.
So you want to pick something and fight back, right?
I'm not saying you're wrong or it's bad.
I just don't understand. You're just like, this is the mosquito I'm going to swat.
I know there's a thousand mosquitoes around me, but this is the one that's right on my arm, and this is the one I want to swat.
Is that what you mean? Yeah, I mean, the temptation, I guess the impulse is there.
It's sort of like lying in the sand.
It's like, wow, this far and sort of like far enough.
Okay. Now, what are you willing to give up in order to have this fight?
Like, what is your – not even a worst-case scenario, but what do you think reasonably might happen if you oppose this measure in a way that is somewhat successful?
Is there really any point opposing the measure if you have no chance of succeeding?
Well, that just puts the mark of non-leftist cane on you and makes your life difficult and isn't going to change that much.
But let's say that you have a chance – Yeah, let's just say you have a chance to stop this and to push back against stuff, to thwart this leftist obsession with some of the sustainability stuff, you know, because the leftists are so interested in sustainability, that's why they're constantly fighting against the national debt.
Oh wait, no, they don't do any of that, so they don't care about sustainability at all.
It's true. So what do you think the reasonable outcome might be if you succeed in blocking this measure?
What's going to happen to you? Yeah, that, uh, it would be sort of like a, whatever the, whatever, like the, uh, scarlet letter of, like, you know, um, They're going to go for you.
They're going to gun for you. And so what could they do?
They could launch complaints against you.
They could try and gin up your students against you.
They could assign you to bad or dangerous areas.
I don't know. I mean, what do I know about what could happen?
They could ostracize you like nobody's going to talk to you in the teacher's lounge.
Or, you know, you could get bad performance reviews for political motivations.
People might try and get you fired if that's even possible where you are for a government teacher.
I don't know. But...
This is the kind of stuff that could happen, and I'm not trying to say don't do it, I'm just, you know, be aware of the blowback so you can put your efforts into perspective.
Yeah, that's true. I think you sort of gave similar advice.
There was a fellow that called a couple of weeks ago, I think a jazz pianist, I think he was a young guy, and he was concerned about whether to speak up, and I think you've Do you want to...
Here's my question, Andrew.
Let's say that you get some significant...
And you will. If you succeed, you are going to get some significant blowback.
These people keep pushing the envelope so that they kind of hope people fight back so that they can vent their spleen and their rage and their immaturity on someone.
So you're going to get boom, right?
You're going to get hit hard.
Now, that may be stressful for you.
That may be difficult for you.
That may be distracting for you.
And your students will find out about it.
Now, do you want your students to see good people being attacked and what, being stressed or being upset?
You know, if this isn't something that, you know, I'm used to it, got to hide like a rhinoceros in a double set of plate armor.
But if you're not used to it, it's going to be difficult.
And your students are going to see, well, first of all, they're going to be told lies He hates the environment and he hates the poor and whatever.
They'll go through every post you ever made on Twitter.
They'll go through your Facebook.
They'll go through whatever they can get their hands on to try and find ways to discredit you or make you look bad or whatever.
And it may be the case that you lose.
I don't mean like maybe you win against the school, but then you lose in terms of you get fired or reassigned or you quit because it's too unpleasant or whatever.
In which case, you're going to show your students, here I took a stand and I lost.
And I lost what I wanted.
Now, the other option, of course, is that you don't fight something you probably can't win anyway.
And you continue to teach children about sort of, you know, reason and the free market and philosophy or empiricism or whatever it is that...
It has you listen to this show and can communicate to the kids.
And continue that for the next while until you retire.
And that's a pretty good thing to be doing with your energies, isn't it?
Yep. It is, yep.
And also, it's not like if...
We have this illusion, like if the government doesn't spend $50 million, then it will spend $50 million less.
No, it won't. It will just spend the $50 million on something else.
Well, yeah. Actually, that was a meeting I went to.
It just kind of staggers my...
Blows my mind that...
So the state's going to build a certain number of high schools.
And the fellow that gave the presentation, the public meeting that I went to said, well, if you folks don't approve this, they're just going to spend the state portion of this, which was $54 million and change.
They're going to spend it on some other town.
Well, or maybe what they'll do is they'll return the money to the Treasury, in which case it's available to buy weapons to drop bombs on people in Afghanistan.
You know, I mean, it's really tough to say, I'm going to win a victory in every conceivable sociopolitical, economic, military dimension by not having the government spend money on this.
You know, as far as things that the government spends money on, solar panels...
Really not the most destructive things.
You know, hey, we're going to take these $75 million and we're going to pay more irresponsible women to have children without fathers.
It may be that this is the best use for this unholy government money because if you cut this spending, the government doesn't shrink.
And, you know, I mean, they're going to build a school anyway.
Whether it's got solar panels in a garden or not is not particularly important.
And there certainly is many more destructive ways the government could spend the money.
True. So, yeah, I mean, it's up to you, but I think just be aware, and maybe you can talk to other people who've gone down this road, but it could make the remainder of your teaching career a whole lot less fun, significantly more unpleasant.
It doesn't Save you any money, and they may spend money on stuff you disagree with even more.
I mean, this is a bit of a hydra head to fight.
And I'm not saying don't fight. I mean, I'm just, you know, you really want to be aware of the pluses and minuses before you go in.
And if it's going to distract you from your capacity to sow the seeds of reason into the minds of the children you're teaching, then it may not be that...
The kids will benefit.
And, you know, in this kind of situation, I mean, I think a lot when I do shows of what the audience needs and what the audience would prefer and what the audience will like.
And what do you think your students would want?
Would they want this battle consuming your mind and your energy?
Or would they like more of your mind and your energy to be available for better teaching of reasonable principles to them?
Yeah, that's a good point.
That's a good point. Obviously, in the reading of the question, you see my age, and I'm not that far from retirement.
It's a consideration, though.
I really want those...
Yeah, if you're not far from retirement, too, you can always work until you retire and then be the gadfly that haunts the school board.
I don't know. Then they can't do anything.
They're not going to pull your pension, right?
Yeah. That would be my thought.
Anyway, I'm going to move on to the next caller, but I do appreciate the question.
I'm, you know, again, I don't tell people what to do, because what would be the point?
But I hope that helps at least put some things in perspective.
And listen, just as a final point, and this is, don't feel like philosophy is ordering you to do stuff.
Don't feel like, well, I really disagree with this, so I am honor-bound to stand up and take the bullets.
This is not how battles are won.
Battles are won through the balancing of resources and energy.
They are won through advances and retreats.
You don't just take all of your soldiers and march them into gunfire, and you don't take your personal energies and, you know, just drive them into gunfire.
What you want to do is figure out what you can handle, figure out what's going to keep you motivated, and don't take on more than you can...
Reasonably enjoy and recognize the costs of standing up for and fighting for certain things.
And, you know, I'm out there, I'm fighting every day for a reason, for philosophy, for evidence.
So I'm not saying don't do it, but don't feel like you have to do it as some sort of principle.
I mean, philosophy is supposed to liberate you, not order you around like you're in some sort of rational army.
So that's my thoughts.
I appreciate the question, and I certainly wish, I'm sure you'll make the right decision, and do let us know what happens.
Will do. All right. Thanks for your time.
All right. Up next, we have Peter.
Peter wrote in and said, Last fall, one of my underage teenagers, male, was groomed and sexually assaulted by a female employee of the local government school.
Since reporting the felonies against my child to the police, the defendant-slash-abuser's family and friends physically threatened my family, including death threats.
Last week, my residence was burglarized and some guns were stolen.
Since then, the death threats have been issued at my family online.
The police and district attorney have begun investigating the crimes, which resulted from reporting the sexual assaults.
As of today, my family's in the process of moving to a different county for safety.
We're just up and leaving for two main reasons.
One, people with guns, a motive, and a vendetta who have burglarized my home have threatened to murder my family.
And two, even if I successfully defend my home from an invader, I'd be labeled a white racist black person killer, and I'd have to move anyway, and my teenage kids would be stigmatized their entire lives.
Currently, we're hunkered down with security cameras and guns waiting to move to a safer community.
My question to Stefan is this.
Do you think this is the rational course of action considering the current state of affairs in the United States?
My teenagers were raised in a majority-minority environment, and they understand we are moving from one distinct demographic area to a different demographic area, and why?
They will be transferring from a majority-minority environment into a whiter environment specifically to avoid physical attacks, burglaries, and possible death.
Can you recommend a conversation point or activity to help identify and address what I perceive as the PTSD they are developing and how should I help them adapt and interact in their new environment?
That's from Peter. So, the first thing I want to say is I'm incredibly sorry for this kind of situation, which seems just about every conceivable level or layer of hell that can be imagined, and I just wanted to first start off by expressing my deepest sympathies for all of this situation first.
Well, thank you for that.
Actually, I've kind of trained my family to work as a unit, and everybody is kind of Collectively tried to comfort my child that was assaulted and healed each other.
We've actually done reasonably well on that.
We have a lot of horror ahead of us.
We have to be witnesses for the original crimes in December.
And we're just trying to move forward in a positive direction.
So, your son was sexually assaulted by this teacher.
I assume, based on what you said later, that she's a black teacher.
Is that right? She's not a teacher.
She was an employee of the school.
She worked in the attendance office.
Okay, but she was black, right?
Yes, she was. Okay.
And so you reported the felonies to the cops, and then this family and friends are threatening you.
And I assume, is it fair to say, that you have reported these threats as well?
Yes. When I learned about what happened, the woman actually didn't think I would report it and did seem to think it was a crime.
And... So I obtained the evidence that I needed, ironclad evidence.
I went to the local police.
They looked at the evidence.
They issued an arrest warrant.
They promptly nabbed her.
She is going to prison for 40 years.
Now, after we reaffirmed to the district attorney that we were not going to back down and that we were going to testify with a linchpin testimony, the threat started coming on.
He was approached at school by Cousins of the defendant and their friends, all of a sudden, you go from being the cool white guy to the absolute opposite.
This proceeded throughout the year, got picked on, threats now and again, chased around campus a couple of times.
Then, apparently, somebody decided to burgle my house.
One day, right after school started up, I'm a teacher too, by the way, right after school started, my home was burglarized.
Somebody broke in the back door and stole pretty much all of my kids' Christmas presents or anything that they had saved up for in the last few years.
They were able to break into one of my safes and get some light arms and Then, you know, we came home and it was just, you know, crushing because, you know, the boys got home before I did and my daughter wasn't here.
By the way, I'm a single father.
And so I got the call at work, left work, talked to the police.
They found evidence, but it's going to take a little while.
And so my thinking, once a death threat went out on Snapchat, is that The system will most likely work, but I need to remove myself and my family from the danger, and I think I can move about 50 miles away, keep my jobs, and just relocate my family to a new school district.
I'm concerned with teaching my kids about running away from problems.
I'm concerned with teaching them about that they obviously understand, regardless of how non-racist their upbringing and their early socialization was.
They understand that no other race community would be doing this right now, given the fact that my son was the one that was sexually assaulted.
Does that make sense? Well, that's certainly, I mean, statistically, it would be less likely.
Forty years!
That's a staggering potential sentence.
If you'd like me to elaborate, I'll say that sexual crime is sexual crime.
Right. And this person has two felony charges, and I'm not going to be graphic, but she deserves them.
And the district attorney actually offered her a plea bargain.
Her attorney turned it down, and now she's getting 40 years.
There's irrefutable evidence.
And now...
Because of these threats, you know, if somebody steals guns from you and puts out a death threat on you, I don't perceive, you know, a Guido mafia hit.
I perceive someday some people build up enough courage to break in my house and try and shoot me.
And I just, I'm removing myself.
Now, what I've done, thankfully, I'm being serious when I say this.
Since my children were much smaller, we bonded deeply as a family.
They all know how to shoot. They all work out.
They all know how to fight. They've been trained to do these things.
I know it sounds funny. It's part of my culture to give that to my kids.
They have that. They're soldiers right now.
We got some security cameras, and they got into one of my safes.
They didn't get my guns there.
So we have those, and I am probably going to be moving in the next two days from today.
Now, how should I... I'm sorry, maybe my real question is, what do you think would be the best way to approach my kids with this understanding that, look, you can't be friends with people from the old community anymore, and the reason is because they gave a nod to the people that are trying to kill us.
You know, I have to address The fact that right now, we've kind of gotten numbed to the idea that we have to go through security procedures to come home late, things like that.
Yeah. Do you have any thoughts on this?
I do, and I've been thinking about this a lot today, but I just...
It's a couple of thoughts I just sort of get off my chest.
Number one, you get death threats, presumably, I suppose, associated with the family of the woman who assaulted your son, and...
I mean, to me, you know, what I've heard, and I think it's true in many places, that if the woman, like if there's a divorce and the woman says, I'm scared, or he attacked the kids, or he attacked me, they don't wait for proof.
They just go in and take the man out of the house, right?
They swoop in like, boom, right that day, that moment, that hour, right?
And yet you're getting death threats rained down upon you and you're the one.
They're not swooping in and saying, okay, well, this person and this person and this person, well, now you're off the streets and we'll keep going until the death threats stop.
That, I guess, is not how it's working, right?
No, it's not.
Now, I'm going to go ahead and tell you, to be ambiguous, I live in the greatest state of this union.
And the way it works down here is Is that even when there is something that's compelling, they have to have evidence before they will go pick somebody up.
Now, I've talked to the detective personally several times, and what he's given me is layers of evidence.
There's a certain threshold of evidence before he can do anything.
Now, I've talked with him.
I have private lawyers looking at this.
And what it comes down to is these young people are incredibly tech-savvy.
They know how to make messages circulate and not circulate.
If something is visible or screen-capable, it was meant to be seen.
But I have a lot of evidence, and they just need to reach a certain threshold before they go picking people up.
And it'll happen, just I'm getting out of here first.
Right, right. I'm going.
Well, so I just want to give this a little bit of context for people as well, because this may be surprising to a lot of listeners.
And this goes all the way back to 2004.
There was a researcher who did a 2004 study prepared for the U.S. Department of Education.
Her name is Cheryl Shakeshaft.
And according to this Research, and I quote from it, the physical sexual abuse of students in schools is likely more than 100 times the abuse by priests.
I'm going to say that again because people don't really get this.
All we hear about is the Catholic pedophiles, Catholic sexual abuse scandals and so on.
According to this, this is now a pretty old study, right?
13 years old, quote, the physical sexual abuse of students in schools, by that I assume she means government schools, U.S. Department of Education, is likely more than 100 times the abuse by priests.
According to this study, the most accurate data available at the time indicates that, and I quote, nearly 9.6% of students are targets of educator sexual misconduct sometime during their school career.
Nearly 9.6% of students are targets of educator sexual misconduct sometime during their school career.
And in sort of comparison, the sexual abuse by priests, that was a phenomenon that spiked mid-1960s, mid-1980s, but has been to a large degree dealt with In the recent years, the Church has really worked to remove the sexual predators in the priest class, and in 2009, there were only six credible cases of clerical sexual abuse.
Reported to the U.S. bishop's annual audit, and that's a church with 65 million members.
There were six. And this capacity for children to be groomed, to be assaulted, to be raped, to be molested in government schools is far more prevalent than in the Catholic clergy.
But of course, given that leftists in general are control of the media, what do you hear about?
Leftists hate the church and love government schools.
So you will hear a lot About priestly sexual abuse, which of course is abhorrent, but you will not hear about the far more prevalent crimes of sexual abuse by educators and other people working in the school system against children.
Almost one out of ten students are targets of educator sexual misconduct at some point during their school career.
One out of ten?
Almost ten percent? And that's the data that is reported.
That is the information that is provided.
Is it higher than the people who just it happens to and they never say anything and won't even fill out a survey indicating it?
I would imagine that it could be believable that it was true.
And here, you know, even if we accept these, it is about 1 in 50 women who will experience sexual assaults or sexual problems, violent problems in colleges across America.
But even if we took the standard...
It's one in five, which is not true, but if it was one in five, the standard feminist talking point about rape cultures on U.S. campuses.
Women are safer on U.S. campuses than they are in just about every other sphere of American life.
But even if we say, okay, it's one in five, that's 20%.
Now, they're adults, which is bad enough.
But we're talking about one in ten children, students in government education.
Nearly 1 in 10 are targets of educator sexual misconduct sometime during their school career.
Children. Now, will you ever hear about the rape culture in government public schools?
Well, you won't.
Because that's not the narrative.
The narrative is there are evil pedophile priests, the church is horrible, the church covered up, the church protected, it's endemic.
But you won't hear about the far more prevalent I'm incredibly sorry, of course, that your son got caught up in this...
Nightmare, which is all too common and is ridiculously and criminally, morally criminally, covered up by the mainstream media, the amount of abuse, particularly sexual abuse, that can go on in government schools.
So I just wanted to point that out to give sort of context for a larger understanding of this.
Now, as far as should you run?
Well, yeah, of course you should run.
Because you're not being protected by the state.
Your children are in danger, and I think they have legitimate reasons to feel in danger if, and we don't have to get into the details, and we shouldn't, the crime against your son was as egregious as it sounds, a 40-year sentence, then this is—the people who are willing to defend that, I would take those threats then this is—the people who are willing to defend that, I would So yes, of course you should run.
Because the state is not protecting you.
You don't have the right of self-defense in many ways practically.
Because if you're a white person defending against a black person...
It's Russian roulette. If the media happens to fixate on what happened, then you will probably get charged for political reasons.
And even if you get acquitted after some time, your finances will be destroyed, your reputation will be destroyed, and your kids are going to have to live with the consequences of that decision if your self-defense gets politicized.
Which can happen, you know, particularly should it happen in an election year, that's when the media tends to escalate this kind of stuff up through the stratosphere.
So, yeah, of course you should run because facts don't matter and you are putting your children in considerable risk.
The best case scenario is you get tried for murder for something which turns out to be justifiable self-defense.
But the media will report that, you know, some homeless guy was looking for directions and was offering to sell you some pencils and you shot him for no reason.
I mean, I don't know what they'll say, right?
Like the guy who was the disabled guy shot reading a book and so on.
And what was it?
The Freddie Gray! Years later, they're not prosecuting the Freddie Gray, the policeman involved around when Freddie Gray received his injury that resulted in his death.
Now, what have they had to go through?
And what are they going to be going through for the rest of their lives?
What kind of lives are they going to have from here on in?
Doesn't matter. Let's say you're acquitted.
Well... You can't...
It's what Marie Henland said about defending Gian Gomeschi, which she did successfully.
She said, I can never return you to the place where you were never charged.
I can't do that.
That will never... I can get you...
Hopefully, I can get you off the charges if you're innocent, but I can never return you to the life you had before you were charged.
So I just wanted to point out that, of course, you have to recognize when you're in a situation where you can do something productive and proactive.
And when you are facing these kinds of threats, you know, the fact that your kids know how to shoot, the fact that they go to the gym, that doesn't matter if there's a drive-by.
That's not going to help them if they get jumped someplace where they're not allowed to have a gun or where they don't have time to draw it or who knows what, right?
So, yes, of course, you have to get your family to a place of safety because you're not in a situation where you're going to be protected by the state, which you have paid taxes your entire life for the supposed protection.
And from that standpoint, I would say you're doing the right thing, in my opinion.
Well, I'm going to go ahead and tell you that the night of the burglary, I called, you know, the proverbial family meeting.
And we sat around the table and we just talked about, OK, you know, what's going on, you know?
How are we going to address this?
And I'm really heartened to say we came to a very similar conclusion to what you just said.
And it does me a great service to know that somebody whose intellect I respect, such as yourself, would Proffer that advice.
So thank you very much for that.
Now, I appreciate that.
And again, I'm so sorry for what your family is going through.
You know, when it comes to talking to your kids, you know, the problem of black criminality is huge.
It's enormous, and it is largely unspoken of.
And if it is ever spoken of...
The only answer that is provided is systemic discrimination in the justice system and white racism.
And these are not answers.
For reasons which I've gone into before, but very briefly, the arrest records by race almost identically match The crime victimization surveys.
In other words, if people say, well, you know, 50 blacks burglarized my home, or, you know, there were people who burglarized my home, 50 of them were blacks, and then it matches the arrest record of 50 blacks.
You know, it's close. But of course, you know, if some...
If some white guy assaults you, and you go to the cops and you say, a white guy assaulted me, and then they give you a lineup of black guys, of course you're going to say, well, no, none of those people assaulted me.
I told you it was a white guy. He had red hair.
He had blue eyes. I don't know why you're showing me all these guys.
It's got nothing to do with it. The criminality is really shocking when you dig into the numbers.
When you're talking about interracial crime, A black person is 27 times more likely to attack a white person than the other way around.
Hispanic, 8 times more likely to attack a white person.
When this kicks in, obviously not in the crib, but at some point as adults, does it escalate during times of school?
Well, at some point, right?
At some point. This is from 2013 data.
A black is 6 times more likely than a non-black to commit murder.
And a black is 12 times more likely to murder someone of another race than to be murdered by someone of another race.
In 2014, we're talking New York City, a black is 31 times more likely than a white to be arrested for murder.
Hispanic is 12.4 times more likely.
For the crime of shooting, which is a, this is a firing a bullet that hits someone, a black was 98.4 times, not percent, 98.4 times more likely than a white to be arrested.
Hispanic 23.6 times more likely.
Now, as far as moving to a more white neighborhood, I wish the numbers were different.
With all of my heart, I wish the numbers were different.
But just for example, if New York City were all white, statistically the murder rate would drop by 91%.
The robbery rate would drop by 81%.
And the shootings rate would drop by 97%.
If Chicago was all white, the murder would decline 90%, rape by 81%, and robbery by 90%.
Now, in case anyone thinks this is just mindlessly pro-white, I can tell you with virtual certainty that if New York City were East Asian or Oriental, like sort of Chinese and Japanese, if New York City were all East Asian or Chicago were all East Asian, the crime rates would be even lower than if it were all white.
So, these are the basic...
I mean, there's lots more data and statistics that go on.
I mean, in South Korea, the crime rate is effectively zero.
In Japan, the police have nothing to do.
They're making things up to do.
They have virtually nothing to do.
Whites are more crime-prone than East Asians.
Hispanics are more crime-prone than whites, and blacks are more crime-prone than Hispanics.
These are the facts.
I wish with all of my heart they were different.
There are some things which can be changed.
Parenting, peaceful parenting, not hitting your kids and all that kind of stuff.
There are other things that can be changed, such as working to keep the black family together, which would help enormously.
But it is not just white racism and a corrupt justice system that is causing these numbers.
It is not the case at all.
To borrow an argument from Ben Shapiro, right?
People say, well, you know, blacks are arrested more, that must mean there's racism.
And he says, well, men are arrested more and convicted more than women.
Why? Is it because it's anti-male bias?
And people say, well, no, because men commit more crimes.
Right. That's right.
Now, you know, we've talked about the race and IQ. We've talked about a wide variety of systemic factors that produce all of this stuff.
Some of it is under our control.
Maybe some of it isn't. But, of course, we should focus as if everything is under our control because we don't ever want to shoot too low or too short in attempting to redress problems of violence or criminality in any community.
These are the facts. And your children, unfortunately, and you a lot of times...
Have not been given the facts.
Because the facts are considered to be racist.
And unfortunately, facts cannot be racist.
And the fact that moving them to a more white school, to a more white neighborhood, will significantly lower their chances of being the victim of a crime, of attack, of assault within the school. If you were to move them to an East Asian school, their chances would drop even further.
So as far as this goes, these are The facts of the situation, of the distribution of criminality across various ethnicities.
Again, though it's useless to say it, and if wishes were horses, beggars would ride, I desperately, with all my heart, wish this data were different.
I wish it was just white racism sometimes.
I really wish it was just white racism and a corrupt justice system, because that stuff could be fixed to some degree.
Much easier than this stuff, which nobody knows as yet how to fundamentally change.
I mean, there are ideas, you know, peaceful parenting and so on, but when you have a traumatized, largely single-mom environment with 75% of kids being born to single moms in the black community and higher and particular areas, I don't know how we're going to get peaceful parenting wedged into that.
I'm actually, well, I'm working with some people that, anyway, that doesn't really matter, but The reality is that even if we were able to solve the parenting issues tomorrow, the solutions wouldn't show up for another generation.
So there's no want that you can waive to protect your children in the environment that they're in.
It may have been an uneasy enough environment before this situation happened.
But now, they're targeted.
And based upon these statistics and based upon, as you say, the proof of the woman's guilt in committing a heinous sexual assault upon your underage son, I would not assume that the family members are steeped in deep and abiding virtues as a whole.
I mean, these things tend to cluster.
So, I think you just have to give them the facts.
About what you're doing. The challenge then becomes, well, why were we there in the first place, right?
Why were we in this environment in the first place?
And I don't have an answer for that with regards to how you could answer that, but that is going to be one of the challenges that your kids are going to ask, I think.
Well, I thought that we've been holed up here, so I've had a lot of time to be kind of reflective, contemplative about this very issue.
And Really, I understand the reason we're here.
I discussed this with them.
I had lived here during the time I was in graduate school, and when their mother and I divorced, I wanted to give them stability.
So we stayed in this school district so they could keep all of their friends.
And frankly, it made my life very difficult to be here.
Not a racial uneasiness, but just economically.
It's expensive now.
And so... I took on extra work and all this kind of stuff.
I don't know.
The data that you're citing obviously suggests in the aggregate that there is this amazing gap and the evidence is really high.
I buy it right now.
I don't doubt it one bit.
We've just lived here for more than a decade and all of a sudden people that were friends since elementary school Started to turn on and picking on physically, that kind of thing.
So I think that's going to be a difficult reality to face.
It's just kind of going from feeling threatened to not feeling threatened and correlating those things with the two environments.
I think that's just a really tough red pill for teenagers to swallow, especially given the state of the propaganda.
I mean, the television shows, YouTube, BuzzFeed, you know what I'm talking about.
No, I understand all of that.
I'm sorry to interrupt.
And this is not going out to you, because the ship has sailed.
But I just want to point something out to people as a whole.
This is my rant, Peter.
And for the audience as a whole, this is not some reasoned, evidence-based philosophical examination of mere empirical data.
But this is my rant.
Let me ask you this, Peter.
So... How many friends do you have still in your life as active friendships that you also had when you were 10?
I'm an exception to that.
I have a ton. I'm an exception because I'm a hometown type person.
Probably more than 20, but that's okay.
For the sake of this conversation, we'll say most people have very few.
So go ahead. Yeah, I mean, most people I know don't have...
And, you know, it's not necessarily because of incompatibilities, but, you know, life sometimes takes you in different directions, particularly if one person succeeds, the other person doesn't.
One person has kids, the other person doesn't.
One person travels, the other doesn't.
One gets a higher education, the other doesn't.
And... It can be as simple as you live in one place and somebody else lives in another place.
But a lot of people, a lot of people, don't retain friends from their youth.
Now, kids want their friends.
I understand that. And I'm going to get in trouble for this.
I want to say it anyway. It's a little too late to worry about all of that now.
But kids want friends sometimes like kids want candy.
Kids want continuity sometimes, like kids want sugar.
It doesn't mean they should get it.
And the idea of living in a risky environment for your children for the sake of their friendships, well, it's...
I mean, it seemed like a good decision right now back in the time, but right now it probably doesn't feel like such a good decision based upon...
What's happened to your son and what's happening to your family as a whole.
And again, this is not to say that this is always going to be the case for everyone who's in this situation, but you have to look at the numbers, you have to look at the data and make your decisions.
And you have to do, of course, what you're doing now.
Your kids' friendships are going to be interrupted for the sake of safety.
And I'm very much of the opinion that you can make new friends.
You know, this is not like, they're not family, they're not blood.
They're just people in the same school.
And yes, you get along, and I'm sure you know you'll miss your friends for a little while.
And I say this as a guy, like, I went to a bunch of different schools.
I was able to make new friends.
I went to a bunch of different countries.
I was able to make new friends.
I went to three different universities.
I was able to make new friends.
And And so on.
And as an adult, I, you know, through this show and other things, I've been able to make new friends and so on.
Just had a lovely family stay with us for a little while, who I met through this show.
Wonderful, wonderful people. And had a great, great time.
And, oh, tomorrow there's more coming.
Anyway, but you can make new friends.
You can make new friends, but you can't be unassaulted, if that makes sense.
You can't get that like it never happened.
And so I'm very much a one for do whatever is safe.
And listen, this fundamentally isn't a race thing as far as the only marker that goes.
You know, there may be some, you know, wonderful upscale, middle class, wonderful professional black kids schooled up the road.
And then there may be some, I don't know, low rent, trailer park, meth sniffing, single mom, white bunch of kids down the other side of the road.
And you move to where your kids are going to be the safest.
And it's not the only marker is not race or anything like that.
It could be a whole bunch of other things.
But you move to where your kids are the safest.
Oh, my kids, I got friends there.
It's like, eh, you can make new friends.
Your friends come and go.
But security and stability within the family is something to be enormously treasured.
And I think that's...
My perspective for other people in terms of prevention rather than cure.
Right now you're looking really not even so much for cure, but just survival.
And I would say that keep your kids in a safe an environment as humanly possible, if that's, you know, hopefully that's not a government school, because I don't think those things are particularly safe, even if they're physically safe, mentally, you know, as Candace Owens recently said on the show, or as I quoted back to her, you know, your education wasn't free, you paid for it with your mind.
And your kids now are getting an education.
And I would certainly suggest, and I'm sure you would too, Peter, if you could go back in time to say, given the data, given the facts, given the markers, it is risky to be in particular situations.
Yeah, if I had the data at the time, I probably would have decided differently.
But we're talking about more than 15 years ago when I moved to the area.
There's been a shift since that time.
And frankly, I wasn't aware of the data originally.
So you're absolutely right.
They keep it suppressed for a reason because it's a big industry.
To pretend that the only problems with non-white communities is white racism.
I mean, it's sad. Practically, it has become a big business.
It's become a big cash transfer.
And this is one of the reasons why you won't hear about this kind of data.
And it's tragic because, of course, this kind of data could stimulate an examination of the real causes and sources of these problems rather than everybody looking in the wrong place for a solution.
Yep. I totally agree.
Well, Stefan, I appreciate your advice tonight.
Keep me posted if you can, Peter, and please give my very deepest sympathies to your kids and take a massive heaping, as much as you can handle, for yourself.
What a difficult situation.
And, you know, this is...
If we have more honest conversations, some of this stuff can be prevented.
And if some of this stuff can be prevented, everyone's going to get along better.
And that's my particular goal.
So thanks very much for your call.
I wish you the very best. And I think, in my personal opinion, you're doing the very best that you can for your family.
And if you did anything less, I've been nagging you ridiculously.
Peace be with you, Stefan. Thank you very much.
You too, my friend. Alright, up next we have Thomas.
Thomas wrote in and said, Or broadcast or film other messages that lie or encourage lying?
And do you anticipate if the coming recession or depression is bad enough due to lies of fiat money and fiscal debt?
America will embrace this in a restoration of morality.
I contend that a torch of truth is one of the three requirements for liberty.
That's from Thomas. Hey Thomas, how are you doing?
Are you unmuted, my friend?
I am unmuted.
Can you hear me? There we go. Well, it sounds like you...
I'm going to step in, or it sounds like you're in a fairly ferocious place mentally.
Is that fair to say? I'm not complaining.
I'm just pointing out. Okay.
Well, you're aware of the Agenda 21 stuff.
I've heard of the term, and this is some UN stuff.
Is that right? Well, no.
There's a lot behind it.
But basically, there's...
We have a situation where we've got elite government and it's sort of like become our enemy.
It doesn't identify with us anymore.
So there's a lot of people on the internet that are uncovering documents and so forth that talk about how elite government had some plans for us that Trump got in the way of.
But The reason I called you, or the reason I wrote to your producer was because of your book and your discussion of it.
And it's my contention that lying in our society is something that is just poison for all of us.
And earlier in the evening you mentioned the movie Dunkirk.
And there's only two decisions that were made by characters in that.
One was to keep flying even though he was running out of gas.
But the other one was it was okay to lie so long as you were talking to someone in an inferior mental state.
And so I think that this movie Dunkirk was a propaganda movie in that it was trying to help normalize lying.
And it seems as though I've read on the internet that they had planned to try to normalize a lot of the other garbage they've been doing.
Right. Right.
But where I got to...
Sorry, sorry to interrupt. But okay, so let's sort of dig into some of the challenges around what you're saying.
And I'm not defending lying or anything like this.
But treat lying almost as severely as murder.
You know, who's going to determine what are lies and what is truth, right?
I mean, there are people who, you know, who say stuff I say is a lie.
I have the data behind me.
You know, who is going to be given that awesome power to put people in jail for decades for lying?
And who is going to figure out what that line is?
You know, is it going to be Snopes?
Is it going to be Politico?
Is it going to be... Who is it going to be?
Did you know, for example, that there was an invention called an MRI lie detector that is supposed to be nearly foolproof?
Oh, so then you would...
I'd love to see politicians hooked up to that while they're having their debates.
Right, right. Well, of course, politicians, the moment you pass that law, politicians will exclude themselves.
You know, it's like Obamacare, right?
I mean, John McCain is going to get treated at the Mayo Clinic, which is, he says, it's the very best healthcare you can get.
You think they take Obamacare?
No, they don't. And Congress excluded themselves and many of their friends from Obamacare because they don't want to be subject to the law.
And what's the point of being a politician if you subject yourself to your own laws?
Or increasingly these days with Trump, your own political promises.
So I don't like giving the government the power to punish by lying.
Now, of course, the government does have the power to punish for lying.
It's called perjury. And if you lie in a criminal investigation or if you lie in court or if you lie when you're under oath, Again, unless you're a politician these days, it seems like, well, you will be punished for all of that.
But now, of course, if you lie and grow, you're part of the power lead.
It doesn't really matter. So I agree with you that we need to be able to find ways to punish liars.
And the way that we should punish liars is teach people how best...
To evaluate and understand the truth and then teach them to ostracize people who were liars.
But the problem is, as I talk about, I assume when you talk about my book, you're talking about The Art of the Argument, available at theartoftheargument.com.
I hope that you will grab a copy and leave a review.
But the problem is that we have people lying all the time in academia, misrepresenting, falsifying things all the time.
One of my ideas was to...
Hang on, but the problem is we can't stop funding them because generally they're paid for or supported by the state.
Right. And so we can't ostracize people who are lying because they get their money in ways that we can't control.
You can't boycott people.
In a sense, universities. Now, I know in America, with some of the more private universities, there are taking hits for not standing up for free speech and for disallowing conservatives.
Charles Murray was just not allowed to speak because they were afraid of Antifa and so on.
And so if universities won't protect First Amendment rights in America, and if they bow down...
To bullying, they will receive negative economic consequences.
See, you're subsidizing universities even if they're private, even if they have massive endowment funds.
Taxpayers are still subsidizing universities because the federal government and other agencies of the state are supporting or encouraging or subsidizing universities.
Loans to students to go to colleges.
And again, because the laws are such that student debt can't be discharged in a bankruptcy, it is like money in the bank, right?
And you can't discharge it through bankruptcy.
That's a pretty good source of income for the incorrigibly corruptible.
So I like a situation, and I talk about this in the book, the need to ostracize people who are sophists, people who falsify, people who lie, who misrepresent.
And that will work in the free market of ideas, but there's so much in modern culture that is not subject to the free market of ideas where People are subsidized or controlled or dissent is squashed or crushed.
And so, until we get to a place where we can genuinely ostracize the sophist, it's really hard to control these kinds of falsehoods.
Now, we do, of course, have the internet and these kinds of conversations where we can push back against that stuff, which, you know, I do on pretty much a daily basis.
And I think that's the best that we can hope for at the moment.
How about if we stop paying people to lie, like, for example...
Require people to pay for all their television shows.
In other words, no commercials.
No megaphone to the corporations to tell us their version of reality.
Instead, we have to pay whoever we would trust for newscasts or we have to subscribe to a television show.
But Thomas, why would anyone propose that law or try to pass that law?
And governments would simply say, well, there are public service announcements, which we won't consider commercials, and then the government will just lie to you through those public announcements.
Service announcement. Of course, a commercial is not a violation of the non-aggression principle, and you're giving the power to censor free commercial exchanges between people.
I mean, this is why I said, you know, in looking at your statement, that you were in a particularly aggressive place.
You know, you're talking about, you know, treating lying almost as severely as murder, and you're talking about teaching children not to lie and not gently force our politicians never to lie and stop paying people to lie through TV and so on.
You know, people pay for movies.
Are you saying that movies don't lie?
I mean, there are very few commercials.
I guess there are more now.
There didn't used to be. But, you know, people pay to go and see movies.
People pay to go and see plays.
And there are no commercials in plays.
And movies in plays can be very false.
So, you know, I appreciate your commitment and passion for the truth.
And, you know, what I would suggest is if you...
Want to help contribute to the cause of truth, then you could set up a show on the internet, a blog or something like that, where you find egregious and terrible lies and you expose them.
And hopefully then people can learn who to trust and who not to trust.
Yeah, I considered, I was interested in possibly people talking about some of the ads that we have to see.
For example, there's an ad in which two bankers are wandering around a community that is very decrepit, and you've probably seen it, in which they go up to a baseball field and caress a little gold memorial to a couple who never missed a game.
And the reason they never missed a game was because they couldn't afford to fix their car or their television set, and So they had to eat their principal, and they ran out of money, and when people run out of money, they die.
So these bankers are acting so much like they love everybody in that community.
It's so false.
And the whole reason they did the ad was to turn that onto and completely go the other direction, as if they love people.
In fact, they could care less.
They're just all about money.
Right. Yeah, well, I mean, there's great profit in lies as well.
And people have a thirst for lies because they've been lied to as they've grown up.
They've been lied to by teachers. They've been lied to by politicians.
And they've been lied to by their parents.
They've been lied to by some of their institutions, both secular and religious.
People have a great thirst for lies.
If we stop raising children with lies, they won't need lies or have a great thirst for lies.
There won't be a great market demand for lies.
uh when they when they get older but yeah my my concern Thomas is that you have this idea that you're gonna have this great control of state apparatus and be able to use it to enforce truth and and to punish lies and um you don't have the wisdom for that I don't have the wisdom for that nobody has the wisdom for that we need free speech we need people have the right to lie they have the right to misrepresent they have the right to falsify and uh you know not not in terms of fraud and so on but you know I can't uh you know
I can't you know you you got a politician who says build the wall build the wall and build the wall chant the wall lock her up lock her up like you He's not locking her up. He's not building the wall.
There's evidence now, according to Pelosi, that Trump is now going to Give, like, what is it, between 800,000 and 1.7 million DACA potential or existing recipients surpassed citizenship, and he's not even going to tie in funding for a border wall there.
I mean, it's literally like he's just committing political suicide by...
It's enfranchising people who are going to vote left in the same way that Ronald Reagan gave away California to the Democrats forever by legalizing millions of illegal immigrants in California in the 80s.
So, yeah, I mean, the idea that you're going to somehow be in control of the government and get it to do all of these things that you want it to do, it's not how it's going to work.
What you need to do is commit to what you want to do to rid the world of lying and to oppose sophists and liars and...
That's going to give you more power rather than thinking you have a magic wand to make the government do what you want it to do.
Well, we've got a system that's supposed to divide the powers, and then we need a press that tells us the truth, and then we as citizens need to absorb that truth and direct the system to do what it's supposed to be doing.
And the way things are right now, people don't have the time.
They're too exhausted when they come home to participate in government, go to meetings.
And it's...
The mainstream media is not telling anything but whatever they think that the corporate media has told them to say.
So it's...
We haven't had really...
According to the constitutional plan, we haven't had the kind of system that would support liberty for quite some time.
Yeah, but I'm not sure the death penalty for lying is the way that you support liberty.
I think, again, free speech, free market of ideas, and I strongly urge you to put your...
Lie detector mind and typing fingers into action and into motion to point out lies wherever you can.
So I'm going to close the show off with tonight.
It's a great and exciting and wonderful show.
I really appreciate everyone's time and effort and energy who calls in.
Please check out my new book, The Art of the Argument, at theartoftheargument.com.
Please support the show as best you can at freedominradio.com.
