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Sept. 12, 2018 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:39:18

4193 The Truth About Anarchy | Dave Smith and Stefan Molyneux

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	Hi everybody, Stefan Mullen from Freedom, Maine.
	Hope you're doing well. I'm here with the man who's very hard to find because of his name, Dave Smith, stand-up comedian, political commentator, and the host of the Part of the Problem podcast, the co-host of the Legion of Skanks podcast.
	I believe he brings the skank part.
	And his debut comedy special, Libertas, is available now.
	You can check him out on the Gas Digital Network.
	That's gasdigitalnetwork.com.
	Website is ComicDaveSmith.
	Twitter is... Comic, Dave Smith again.
	Dave, good to chat with you. How are you doing?
	It's great to be with you, Steph.
	It's always an honor. And let me just say before we get started, congratulations on beating cancer.
	I was thrilled to hear that.
	That is not only a great victory for you and your family, but for all of humanity.
	Yeah, it's the only swelling on my body I've ever really been opposed to.
	So it was a good fight to win.
	And thank you for your kind words. And congratulations on your family-to-be.
	Very cool. We were just talking about that before the show.
	You've got to be a dick. All right.
	So, as is the case every month, Dave calls me up in a manic, downright hysterical sense of excitement because his Teen Vogue has come in.
	And, you know, we all have something to live for, truth, reason, evidence, Teen Vogue.
	And it's easy to be cynical, but I'm going to suggest we not because Teen Vogue has an article entitled Anarchy, What It Is and Why Pop Culture Loves It.
	It's a complicated philosophy that's more than just punk rock music.
	More than just a punk rock phrase.
	Now, Teen Vogue, complicated philosophy.
	These are not things you really ever expect to see on your web browser on the same page.
	So kudos to them for at least bringing the idea up.
	And I guess let's start a little bit about what you believe regarding anarchism.
	We're going to compare that with the article itself and just see.
	I think there's going to be a bit of a gap, but what do you think?
	Yes, probably. And you're right, it is pretty funny to, you know, in Teen Vogue, it's like the article right after how to keep your boyfriend or something like that.
	And then it's, you know, how to get rid of acne scars.
	And then here we go, anarchy.
	Okay, so for me, anarchy, what it means...
	It's from the Greek, right?
	No rulers. And that's the idea, is that it's the belief that human beings shouldn't be ruled by other human beings.
	And for, I think, people like us, that implies self-ownership.
	The non-aggression principle, all those other beautiful things.
	Basically, everything that a libertarian or a conservative, for that matter, when they talk about natural rights or individual liberty or these things, it's that belief taken to its logical conclusion, which is that human beings shouldn't have rulers, the same belief that led to people being abolitionists and against slavery, the same view that Supposedly, this country was founded on.
	I mean my country, America, not Canada.
	It's kind of a funny thing and the way that I've sometimes characterized it is the world seems very alien when principles become consistent, but it's the only way that it fundamentally makes sense.
	So, when everyone thought that the Earth was the center of the solar system, like Mars spins around and then there's this retrograde motion where it goes back and forth and they, because they thought it was a perfect circle, the Earth was the center of the solar system, they had to invent all of these crazy circles within circles called the Ptolemaic system that you ended up with like 15 pages of calculations just to figure out where Mars was because that's the way the world made sense.
	It doesn't feel like it's moving. It looks like everything's rotating around the world and if you're religious then God created the world for man.
	It's the center of creation. And then when you say, okay, what if we put the sun in the center of the solar system, and then the planets go around the sun, it's kind of freaky.
	Like, it really is disorienting, but then you need like one simple calc to figure out where Mars is, and it's actually correct.
	In the same way, if you say the speed of light is constant, The world gets kind of freaky.
	Like, it really does. Like, there's this weird blue shift thing, like when you can't go faster than the speed of light, and when you try to go faster, you convert the additional energy into mass, and, you know, time is relative.
	Like, it gets really, really freaky, but it's true, and it's accurate.
	And so, same thing with quantum physics.
	It's kind of weird and kind of freaky, but it is actually the way subatomic particles work.
	So, in the same way, in society, if you say, okay, well, what if the kindergarten rules We're just universalized.
	Like, what if you're just not allowed to use violence to get what you want?
	And that doesn't mean nobody ever will, but it just means that's not good.
	That's not allowed. Well, the state is an agency of coercion.
	So the first thing that happens is you say, okay, well, if we're going to have a non-aggression principle, if we're going to have self-ownership and property rights, You can't have a state.
	I mean, just because the state is an agency which initiates force against usually legally disarmed citizens.
	And that makes the world seem really, really weird in the same way that all prior intellectual revolutions made the world seem weird.
	But it works, and it's true.
	And if you can get over the weirdness, it actually helps the world make sense in a way that it probably has never made sense to you before.
	Right, exactly.
	Things make sense in a different way.
	And then you realize kind of the absurdity of believing in a state.
	Because almost everyone who justifies statism Does it on the grounds of the non-aggression principle in some sense.
	So in some sense, they'll say like, well, we need a state to protect private property.
	We need a state to protect your natural rights.
	You need to have all these systems.
	And it's like, okay, well, as you said, we're probably never going to live in a world where no one is violent or live in a world where no one violates the non-aggression principle.
	But one way to Definitely make sure we can at least come close to that is to not institutionalize aggression, which is what the state is.
	So and I know you've made, you know, countless examples of the hypocrisy of this belief system.
	But, you know, the idea that like, well, we need police to protect you from people stealing from you.
	So we're going to steal from you in order to fund a police department.
	It's just it falls apart on its face.
	So. Here we go.
	The writer, Kim Kelly, she is an anarchist based in New York City and an organizer with the Metropolitan Anarchist Coordinating Council or MACC. So the article says, in a pop cultural sense at least, the idea of anarchy has been characterized by either a middle fingers up, no parents, no rules, punk attitude, or a panicky, more conservative outlook used by national and state sources to represent violent chaos and disorder.
	Today we can see an extremely serious radical leftist political philosophy on t-shirts at hot...
	Topic. So, I like the way this is kind of introduced, right?
	Which is to say, yeah, it's got a bad reputation.
	Of course it does. You know, like there's, what was it, Johnny Rotten?
	I am the Antichrist.
	I am an anarchist.
	Now, he actually said later he never was an anarchist.
	He just couldn't find anything to rhyme with Antichrist.
	So, it's just, you know, just made up nonsense.
	But... So this idea that there's no rules, that is the very sinister rewriting of anarchism.
	Because no rulers, people get rid of that second R, and they say, well, it means no rules.
	And this is pure projection because it is in a statist society that you have no rules.
	It is in a statist society where you don't know what the value of your money is going to be next week or you don't know what the government is going to do with interest rates or you don't know what legislation is going to get passed two months from now that's going to destroy your business or You don't know which wars they're going to declare or you don't know whether they're going to enforce the borders or they're going to enforce laws against illegal immigration.
	You have no idea what is going on, what rules you're supposed to follow in education.
	There's these wild experimentations about, let's do this new math with blocks and then, you know, the scores in math plummet and nobody does anything.
	You never know what the rules are in a state of society because you've got this epileptic Franken-law That just responds to political pressure and the rampant bribery of a late-stage democracy.
	There's no rules in a state society.
	No rulers is our only chance to actually have rules.
	Right. And what a state guarantees is that any rules that are imposed will be arbitrary and that there will always be a group of people who are above the rules.
	So essentially what our position is, is that the rules shouldn't be arbitrary and that no one should be above them.
	So in the same sense that if I decided I have a really great charity and I want you to contribute to it, I can call you up and try to convince you this is a really great idea, you should contribute.
	But if I were to build a cell in my basement, I'm not going to go.
	That there's a ruling class that are above the rules.
	And then, of course, as you pointed out, they can change these rules at their own whims, at the whims of their corporate donors, or just what the political pressure is at the time.
	And so it leaves us in a state of never knowing what the rules are going to be.
	Well, and you look at someone like Jeff Sessions, who wants to go after marijuana users, but doesn't appear to want to go after the Clintons, does not appear to want to go after, what was it, Eric Holder for contempt of Congress, does not want to appear to go after George Bush the younger, or even the elder, who lied America into unbelievably destructive wars that killed...
	Hundreds of thousands of people toasted trillions of dollars and ruined the lives of millions.
	So this idea that there's some objective rule of law in a state system is false.
	And so when they say there's no rules, that somehow anarchism means no rules, that's a projection.
	What we currently have...
	is a very restrained and semi-civilized but fundamentally brutal enactment of everything people criticize anarchism for and that there really are no rules in the world as it stands and you know you and I can't counterfeit money but the Federal Reserve can print And make up whatever it wants.
	You and I can't initiate the use of force for whatever charitable ventures we have, but that's as well for a state that uses force as its foundation and so on.
	So this is the fact that they're starting off with the darkest case so to speak is really good.
	So they say, what is anarchism?
	Now, I don't like this part already, so let's bring out our ninja scalpels and get to work on the language.
	So she says, anarchism is a radical, revolutionary, leftist political philosophy that advocates for the abolition of government, hierarchy, and all other unequal systems of power.
	Okay, so radical, revolutionary, leftist.
	Already, we're in the land of child-murdering Che Guevara.
	And we are already, you know, you can just get the giant nets into the cities in Cambodia to move all the population out and to have them starve to death on farms.
	The abolition of government hierarchy and all other unequal systems of power.
	So abolition of government, that's consistent with the non-aggression principle.
	Appolition of hierarchy.
	That's not even true according to anarchist theories, right?
	I think it was Bakunin who said, do I wish to get rid of authority?
	No. My cobbler is an authority on how to make shoes.
	My dentist is an authority on how to take care of my teeth.
	I don't want to get rid of authority. I don't want to get rid of hierarchy.
	All other unequal systems of power.
	That is a very wide net.
	And when that net gets cast very wide, I get a little nervous.
	Yeah, I agree.
	I know that there are a lot of people who would say that a stateless society is impossible.
	That's not achievable or it's not practical.
	I'm somewhat sympathetic to just dismissing something as impossible.
	I'm sure that if you were sitting around in 1840, And you told people, you said to someone, you know, I think in 25, 30 years, slavery is going to be completely abolished in the West.
	I'm sure someone would have been like, well, that's just freaking impossible.
	And I would get where they would feel that way, you know?
	But I do believe that not only is a stateless society possible, I think human beings will achieve that if we don't all, you know...
	Kill ourselves in nuclear war.
	If people allow Trump to talk to Putin, maybe we have a chance of achieving this.
	But the idea that we're going to eliminate hierarchy Is just so absurd.
	It is so obviously impossible.
	I mean, I think about, like I used to play basketball when I was in high school and just think about a basketball team.
	Already you have all of these classes, right?
	Like you have a coach who's calling plays and dictating who goes in the game and who comes out.
	You have a captain of the team, oftentimes the best player, but sometimes just like the hardest worker or the best leader.
	You have your starting five.
	You have other players who come in and play, you know, a few minutes a game.
	Then you have some guys who are just kind of on the bench and just kind of there to practice and make people better in practice.
	I mean, imagine you were to say to a basketball team, we have to get rid of all of this hierarchy.
	The players will decide who comes in and out and, you know, everybody will get an equal amount of minutes.
	It's just obvious. Number one, you could never achieve that.
	And number two, your team would not be nearly as good.
	Things would not work in an efficient way.
	And the idea that you could ever...
	You know, the irony of all this is that you would need, and this is why it always goes bad, is you'd need some massive authority, some ruler, to enforce that nobody else is ever rising above anyone else.
	Humans are different. Some people are smarter.
	Some people work harder. Some people have different, you know, talents.
	And the idea that hierarchy or, you know, inequality and any power dynamic would completely be eliminated is just, it's anti-human.
	Well, and hierarchy is the result of voluntarism.
	So to take the basketball example is, of course, as you know, who chooses the basketball team?
	It's not the coach. It's the audience.
	The audience chooses who the basketball team is going to be.
	It's like battle of the bands. Well, whoever cheers the loudest, whoever thinks – So it's the audience and the audience chooses by choosing to go to the game or not.
	So if you have a basketball team composed of people who are lazy, smokers, they're incompetent, they're maybe short or whatever, nobody's going to pay to come and see those people shuffle around the basketball court, you know, bouncing the ball, having it dribble under the stands, tripping all over each other and so on.
	And, you know, tripping over their laces and so on, right?
	So, it's the audience that chooses the hierarchy.
	In other words, if the audience wants to see the very best basketball, then the coach has to choose the very best basketball players.
	And it's the audience who pays the basketball players.
	So, if you just had crappy players, nobody would come, nobody would get paid, and the entire, at least, public sport of basketball would not exist.
	So, the audience chooses the hierarchy voluntarily.
	And I was just thinking before we...
	Here's a little lift the lid on Steph's Fantasyland.
	But I was thinking about a dream I had many, many years ago.
	My favorite band is Queen. And I dreamt that I was on this...
	This slope, like an amphitheater, like they have in ancient Rome, like the Colosseum and so on, but taller.
	And there's a huge crowd down there.
	And I had my microphone, I'm striding around, we will, we will rock you.
	And I was like, the crowd was going nuts.
	And Brian Mayer was like, yeah, good singing, man.
	You know, like it really – I had the whole thing.
	And I woke up from that dream.
	I don't know. I don't often get very sad in my life, Dave.
	You know, you ever had those dreams that's just like, five more minutes, I'll give up reality for this matrix of rockstar fantasy.
	Why was I sad when I woke up?
	Because they're never going to ask me to sing for that band, you know, because there's other people out there who do a much, much better job.
	And it's the audience chooses Freddie or that new guy over me, of course, right?
	And that's the hierarchy.
	They want the guy who's like wrote the songs, who's the great singer, whose voice they're used to and all of that.
	How do you eliminate hierarchy?
	How do you eliminate injustice?
	And, you know, it's the same thing in MMA, right?
	A bunch of good fighters, they're very technically good and so on, but they're just not...
	They're not showy.
	They don't give good trash talk.
	They don't – what is that?
	Like the Jerry Maguire thing, you know?
	Like they just don't wear their heart on their sleeve.
	And then you get fighters who probably are technically less good but, you know, they're thumping their chest and they're shouting and they're screaming and the crowd goes nuts and so on.
	It's like they're being paid for the value they provide to the audience which isn't always just – The technical skill.
	Luciano Pavarotti, technically a better singer than Freddie Mercury, who never took a second singing lesson in his life, but you headline Pavarotti on Queen and it just ain't going to work.
	So for MMA, Demetrius Johnson versus Kimbo Slice.
	By the way, that's just a fantastic name for an MMA guy.
	Those are just realities that there is always going to be hierarchy.
	Anyone who doubts it, go to karaoke night.
	Right. Yeah, right.
	I completely agree with you.
	And it's not, and a lot of times you'll hear people on the left use the term fairness, right?
	Like this is what Obama used to love, say people need to pay their fair share.
	And it's, look, the truth is that life is never completely fair.
	The example you just gave of Demetrius Johnson versus Kimbo Slice, I mean, Demetrius Johnson is Pound for pound, the best fighter in the world.
	He just lost, but he had the longest run before that ever.
	It's unbelievable. But people weren't that interested in him.
	And, you know, this is the reality.
	So you have that situation.
	And then your only other option is to come in and force people to do what you think is fair.
	However, that is unjust.
	And that is way more unfair than allowing people to choose voluntarily.
	And, you know, the chips fall where they may.
	And again, life is never perfectly fair.
	Look, it's not like I said, I used to play high school basketball.
	No matter how hard I worked, I could never be as good as LeBron James.
	That's not exactly fair, but that's reality.
	And it would be far more of a violation of justice for me to somehow force LeBron James to share his salary with me because people don't want to watch me play basketball.
	Right. Well, friends and family probably do.
	But as far as, you know, thousands or millions of paying customers, not so much.
	Let's just stop for a moment on this utopian argument, because there's not much that gives me a facial twitch.
	But this is one of them, a stateless society.
	Well, first of all, the idea that, well, there's never been such a thing in history.
	Well, there actually has been.
	And if you want one example, you can look at early medieval, dark ages in particular, Ireland, in that it was a stateless society and it lasted for a huge amount of time.
	Interestingly enough, the Roman Empire stopped.
	When it got to Ireland, because it's like, we can't invade it because there's no state, right?
	Why do countries invade other countries?
	Because they want to take over the tax system, they want to take over the existing political structure.
	If that doesn't exist, there's nothing to take over.
	It's actually a huge defense against invasion.
	People say, well, it's never existed in the past.
	First of all, it has. And secondly, how ridiculously conservative are you that, well, cell phones didn't exist 30 years ago, so there'll never be cell phones.
	640k ought to be enough for anybody.
	I mean, slavery, equal rights for women, these things didn't exist in the past.
	It's just ridiculous. You can't live a philosophical life facing history.
	That's like driving backwards and trying to win NASCAR. But even more so fundamentally, They say, well, a stateless society, a voluntary society, is utopian.
	And it's like, no! It is actually a recognition of the corruptibility of human nature, that you must have a stateless society.
	You know what's really utopian?
	It's really utopian to imagine you can give nukes, massive weaponry, trillions of dollars of tax policy, massive amounts of political power, the capacity to benefit Your friends and punish your enemies to the tune of jail.
	And look at the Mueller investigation.
	It's a complete witch hunt, right?
	People can't handle that kind of power.
	People are corrupted by that kind of power.
	You know what's really utopian?
	Thinking you can hand that much power to a small cadre of human beings and have everything turn out well.
	That's utopian and it's never worked.
	Yeah, no, absolutely.
	I mean, it's infuriating that we get labeled as being utopian when, you know, the idea that we're going to give a group of people the power to threaten human beings with jail time.
	Like, we will throw you in a cage if you don't give us money.
	And then that's not enough money.
	So we're going to print money. We're going to borrow against our children's future.
	We're going to spend $4 trillion a year that we raised at the point of a gun But it'll all be fair, and this will be done in a benevolent, kind way.
	Yeah, this is what's completely utopian, the idea that you would have a deep state, which I know people like you have been talking about for quite a while, but it's more in the mainstream and more...
	Exposed maybe than ever before right now.
	But the idea that you would have these shadow organizations with the power to lie our military into war, to kill people and torture people, to subvert a democratically elected president.
	And this will all just, you know, this will have such angels that they'll run this, you know, for the good of mankind and not for their own interest or for the interests of other power, you know, corporate interests or whatever.
	Yeah, I mean, this is what's completely utopian and we're living through the disaster of believing in this utopian nonsense.
	Oh, I mean, in England now, they're setting up these hurdy feel lines.
	Call us if you've been upset by something on the internet, even if it's not hate speech, even if it's not a crime.
	At the same time that the British police spent 40 years resolutely not investigating pedophile gangs from Pakistan.
	At the same time that England has a higher murder rate now than New York City, as does Toronto, I believe, as well.
	You've got acid attacks and knifings and stabbings and moped crimes.
	There are no rules.
	There are no rules left in the West.
	We can't even enforce borders.
	No rules. And so the idea that...
	Taking this power away from people is somehow utopian.
	All right, this is going to be the article.
	Don't worry, we won't do this for every sentence, but every other sentence for sure.
	So anarchism, she says, seeks to replace what its proponents view as inherently oppressive institutions.
	Okay, inherently oppressive institutions.
	These are all very abstract terms.
	I like my philosophy a little bit more bone marrow, like just give me some basic principles, give me a moral stand, and then build from there.
	But just this whole bunch of words floating around, it gets very kind of vague for me.
	So here are examples of inherently oppressive institutions, like a capitalist society or the prison industrial complex.
	So, how do we even begin to unpack capitalism and what people mean by it?
	So technically, capitalism is private property rights and free trade.
	That's basically all it is.
	And those are two sides of the same coin.
	Like if you own something, you have the right to trade it.
	And so private property rights, self-ownership.
	And self-ownership is how you get rid of slavery.
	And private property rights is how you oppose taxation and voluntarism.
	And free trade is how you oppose central planning or central coercive non-trade.
	So she's like a capitalist society.
	Now, she doesn't say like a capitalist government.
	She says like a capitalist society.
	And that is inherently oppressive.
	And I've never quite followed the logic.
	Maybe you've had a little bit more luck teasing this one out than I have.
	No, I don't think so.
	I mean, I think... And capitalism, it's almost like when lefties talk about it, it's just become anything where you make money and we don't like the system.
	They're not talking about free market capitalism or laissez-faire.
	I mean, it just seems like it's almost in the same way that I was just talking about this on my podcast with Robert Murphy, who I believe has been on your show in the past.
	And we were talking about how today it's like, Fascism has just become the term for anything you don't like and democracy has become the term for anything that's good in your mind.
	They don't actually mean what the terms themselves mean.
	So they just use capitalism as this kind of like, well, you know, this is an unfair system where people profit.
	And like, you know, you're saying like to compare that to the prison industrial complex, which is just anti free market down to its very core is a complete statist institution.
	It's hard to even respond to it.
	It's like, give me a definition of what a capitalist society is, what you mean by that.
	Because in any accurate definition, as you just said, private property, laissez-faire, free trade, then it makes absolutely no sense that this would be oppressive.
	These are people making voluntary choices.
	Yeah, I mean, always the question is when somebody critiques capitalism is like, well, who's paying the bills?
	Who's paying the bills? The prison industrial complex, and I understand the critique of that, and I think you and I would both share it, which is that when you have people profiting from prisons, there's an incentive to send more people to prison.
	Yeah, I get that. That's very corrupt.
	But who's paying the bills?
	It's the government who's paying the bills.
	How is that part of the free market?
	You know, one thing that drives me nuts?
	Oh, man. This drives me completely insane.
	When they talk about inherently oppressive institutions where people don't have a say, you know, their workers got to control the means of production.
	Workers got to control the means of production.
	They never seem to talk about government schools.
	That, I could never once, I've read, I don't even know how many of these kinds of articles, not once, Dave, have I ever said, well, have I read, oh, the parents, you see, have no control over the schools because the parents are forced to pay for them through property taxes and the students are forced to be there usually by laws or at least an inability for people to have their kids out of them because the property taxes are so high and the other taxes are so high.
	And the teachers' unions, they don't reflect the will of the parents or what's good for the teachers.
	They're just there to shovel money at Democrats and so on.
	Like, there's an inherently oppressive institution you went to, I went to, I bet you the writer of this article went to.
	There's a perfect example.
	The worker control or the means of production would be parents taking over the schools.
	And I've not once seen a leftist advocate for that, but that's the one we've all been through.
	I've never had to go dig for cobalt as a slave miner to serve the giant Hoth planet of Apple, but we've all spent years and years and years in these god-awful brain-mashing oppression tanks known as government schools.
	Where the workers don't control the means of production, the children don't control the means of production, the parents, the local community, no one, anyone voluntarily controls the means of production, but they never talk about that stuff.
	It's all this weird abstract stuff about the labor theory of value and some factory out there in Singapore.
	And it's like, but we've all been to these exact things which they never mention as where the control needs to be, which is local.
	Yeah, it's really amazing.
	It's amazing that there's just like this blind spot.
	And, you know, it's just so, it's so strange, right?
	Because they'll be talking about this kind of like, right, volunteerism and, you know, the idea of not wanting this, you know, like working for a company is so top-down and authoritarian, yet here's an example where all of our children Are forced into a system that even by their own standards they should acknowledge is basically brainwashing them.
	I mean, if you are an anarchist who's against capitalism and all this, well, we're sending our kids to school where they go and, you know, like worship the founding fathers and talk about how great the state always is.
	I mean, they always, they have to kind of put it in the past, you know, like they'll always, you know, George Washington never told a lie and, you know, Abraham Lincoln was the great emancipator and all this stuff because, you know, they couldn't just look at like the current Senate.
	And be like, these are such wonderful people because you look at them right away and be like, I see them on television.
	Are you out of your mind? So they can't do that, but it's like, oh, these people that were like, before we had video cameras or any of that, they were so great.
	And yeah, I mean, it's really, it's hard to understand how they would have a blind spot For such an obvious top-down authoritarian institution that you went through.
	I don't know. Well, because they want to associate the free market with this oppression, and that's kind of tough.
	So they can't say inherently oppressive institutions like private property and free trade, because then people are like, That doesn't fit together so well.
	So they have to say capitalist or prison industrial complex.
	They never talk about the Federal Reserve.
	They never talk about the huge amounts of regulations.
	They never talk about government unions.
	They never talk about public schools.
	It's always something.
	And the idea that union leaders are not interested in profit and they're not exploiting people, not just the teachers who want to do a better job, but the students who are forced to be there.
	Crazy. All right. She goes on to say, anarchists are organized around a key set of principles, including horizontalism, mutual aid, autonomy, solidarity, direct action, and direct democracy.
	A form of democracy in which the people make decisions for themselves via consensus, as opposed to representative democracy, of which the United States government is an example.
	Oh, look! We finally got to something negative, that it's the United States government.
	Now, this is kind of, I don't want to say propaganda, but sophistry 101.
	When people start to give you positive language without clear definitions, they're trying to wash your brain with jicks.
	Mutual aid.
	Boy, I like the word aid.
	Mutual sounds very voluntary.
	Autonomy, solidarity, reg.
	Direct action, direct democracy, horizontal.
	These are all just positive phrases or positive words.
	But you don't know what they mean.
	It just kind of sounds good.
	And we've not had any principles, no ethics, no foundational realities put forward at all yet.
	Right. And as you said, it's just very vague, nice sounding words.
	And so even things like direct democracy and...
	Consensus. Well, those aren't exactly the same thing.
	You're like, so what do you mean here?
	I mean, direct democracy, it's, are you essentially saying we vote on something and if you get 50% plus one vote, the rest of us are all basically just slaves to whatever you guys chose.
	So the other, say 49% of us or whatever, We just have to go.
	So wouldn't that be authoritarian?
	Is that now imposed on us?
	Or is it democracy in the sense of like, well, me and you and our wives could go out and say, hey, what movie do you guys want to see?
	And if three of us want to see it, the other one goes, okay.
	I still have the right. There's not like a gun put to my head that I have to go to this movie.
	We're not actually defining any of these terms or really making this crystal clear.
	It's just kind of vague niceties.
	And yeah, like you said, that is, look, not to call this directly propaganda, but that is the tool that propagandists use, is that you say something very nice that's very vague and you don't define it.
	Oh, and then, by the way, this will later be defined by some authoritarian.
	Well, so then we go on to a definition.
	The first is Mark Bray, a lecturer at Dartmouth College and author of Antifa, the Anti-Fascist Handbook.
	So, clearly we're going to a very objective source here.
	And he says, I would define anarchism as the non-hierarchical, non-electoral, direct action-oriented form of revolutionary socialism.
	Well, thanks for clearing that up, Marky boy.
	I feel the illumination bursting forward like a supernova in my brain.
	Non-hierarchical, non-electoral, direct action-oriented form of revolutionary socialism.
	Got a principle at all?
	Got a moral? Got an ethic?
	Got an example? Got a, well, let's say, what does society do with a piece of land that is unowned?
	How's that? It's all just a bunch of words and positive phrases and it sounds nice.
	I don't know. You know, like, so I was in the business world for a long time and, you know, try standing up in front of a board and saying, I would really like to lead this company to a more profitable and positive and environmentally friendly outcome which is beneficial to all parties involved.
	Do I get a raise? It's like, do you have a specific plan?
	Anything measurable? Anything, anything.
	And of course, the other thing too, when they're talking about revolutionary socialism, to anyone who's had half an eye on the bloody heap of socialist victims throughout history, 100 million plus in the 20th century alone, I'd like to hear how you're going to bypass those pile of bodies because as a pro free market guy, I would be in one of those piles of bodies if you kind of put one foot wrong, you know, as somebody who's spoken out against socialism, communism, fascism, collectivism of every kind.
	Well, you and I don't do that well in these revolutionary socialists, so you're kind of talking about a gun in the room that's going to be manifested by you and pointed at me, so I'd like to hear how you're going to shimmy past that little chasm there.
	Yeah, no, I agree.
	But it's a lot more than guys like me and you don't do very well.
	I mean, the workers, the proletariat who those states were supposedly there to advocate for, these people got slaughtered as well or starved to death.
	So it's not as if even those guys who believed in this stuff are going to do well.
	Mind-boggling to me, and I'm sure to a lot of people, that a lot of people, like communists and socialists, who do often say that the end goal is a stateless society, are at every turn, support a bigger and larger and more intrusive state.
	And this is a contradiction that they have just an impossible time trying to get away from.
	The line that we've all heard a million times, when you talk about, as you were, all the Genocide and starvation and destruction of socialism or communism in the 20th century and still to this day where it exists.
	The line that we all hear all the time is, that's not true communism.
	We all kind of laugh and dismiss that rightfully because it's ridiculous, but there is like a little bit of a kernel of truth to it.
	I mean, if Marx's vision of communism was like a stateless, classless society Where the workers are in control of the means of production.
	Okay, there's no private property, there's no money.
	Okay, I guess in some way you can argue that this was never achieved.
	We never had a stateless, classless society.
	But it's kind of like, if I were to say to you, I have a method of fighting cancer, and I'm going to call this communism.
	And I think the state being compared to cancer is...
	Quite fair. I know you've made that comparison before.
	So let's say my method for fighting cancer is called communism.
	And I say, okay, so whatever caused the cancer, I want you to continue that.
	So let's say you were smoking a pack a day.
	I say, you know what? Double that up.
	Go to smoking two packs a day.
	And then I want you to not treat your cancer and just let it spread all throughout your body and let the cancer completely take over.
	And my end goal is to have a completely cancer-free body.
	And also, by the way, I want you to fly.
	I want you to be able to fly.
	That would be like the classless part.
	Stateless is somewhat achievable.
	You could have a cancer-free body.
	Being able to fly is like classless.
	That's just completely inachievable.
	So this is my plan.
	And every single time we try this, you end up with a dead person because this is what will happen if you don't treat someone's cancer and allow it to spread over and over.
	But then I could look at you at the end and say, but no, no, no, this wasn't true communism because you see my goal was a cancer free person.
	And, and, you know, there is some kernel of truth to that.
	Like, yes, technically.
	Not if you keep doing it though.
	Well, right.
	Right.
	But the point is every time you try this, it will kill somebody.
	It's the only way it can work.
	And, and these, these self-described anarchists, if you just look at any of their political views, like were they for Obamacare or against Obamacare?
	Were they for Donald Trump's tax cuts or against his tax cut?
	At every turn, they'll support a larger and larger state with the goal of getting rid of the state.
	It's preposterous.
	Well, I don't believe when Bernie Madoff was arrested and sent to jail for his Ponzi scheme that people said, well, that wasn't a real Ponzi scheme because Bernie Madoff promised to make everyone rich.
	Right. It's like, no, it kind of was.
	You know, the wanting to make everyone rich is how the Ponzi scheme preys on people, you understand, right?
	That's the goal.
	It's like that anglerfish with the light, you know, like eating Nemo, right?
	Like the light is to get you, then you get eaten, right?
	I mean, so this promise of the stateless, there's nothing, you know?
	I keep shooting guys in the spleen.
	They don't get better. They're not healthier.
	Well, I'll try another one. It's like, I think you're just into shooting guys in the spleen.
	Yeah. Okay. As the New York City-based anarchist group, Metropolitan Anarchist Coordinating Council, of which I'm a member, writes on its website.
	Can I just make a statement here?
	The phrase, writes on its website, is not an argument.
	The fact that something has been written on a website.
	Anyway, so what do they say on their website?
	Let us have a look and see if we can find out.
	Sorry, I just lost my page here.
	Here we go. Alright. So they write on their website and I quote, We demonstrate a vision for a society in fundamental opposition to the brutal logic of contemporary capitalism, a society based on mutual aid, cooperation and radical democracy.
	Okay. Do you want to make any arguments or demonstrate some proof or empirical evidence?
	Because vision doesn't really cut it in the realm of political philosophy.
	I've got a vision. Smoke this, man.
	It'll all become clear.
	I've got a vision. Let's go.
	It's like details. No, a vision.
	I've got a vision of a suspension bridge made out of soap bubbles, man.
	Get driving. Yeah.
	Gosh. And it's so like...
	It's also...
	You know, I remember this from back in the day when you had a debate with that guy, Peter Joseph, and you just tore him apart in this debate.
	And it was really kind of beautiful to watch because he would use all these kind of like, you know, like Big words and kind of this positive sounding, oh, we'll all be sharing this and that.
	And you would just pierce through it with like, okay, non-aggression principle, private property rights.
	It's like, hey, if you want to do any of this stuff, but you're not forcing it, you're not threatening anybody else, you're not being violent to any other peaceful people, If you want to go buy up some land and say, we're going to have like this mutual aid and shared resources and do all that, I don't have a problem with it.
	I know you don't have a problem with that either.
	It's like, okay, fine, go do that.
	But it's always this nice language and then avoiding what our core principle is, which is non-aggression, which is like, okay, you can do this, but no, you want to also force everybody else to live in this You know, utopian vision, which always turns into a disaster.
	So again, if you reject the current system, okay, so do we, so do lots of other people.
	I think we can be a lot more clear about what it is that we reject.
	But again, it's just these nice words, and then I guess you have the power to force everybody else into it.
	I'm not sure what brutal logic is, other than I guess my arguments against Peter Joseph were perceived probably by him as brutal because they were effective.
	I don't know what brutal logic is.
	Is that logic with a chainsaw?
	Is that logic with a ninja weapon or a lightsaber or something?
	It's brutal logic! I don't know.
	Is it true or false? Valid or invalid?
	I don't know. This idea that what's going on right now is capitalism is just astonishing.
	And we would share, the funny thing is that the stuff that I would criticize most about the current system is the stuff that communists have really wanted.
	Government control of currency, government control of education, government control of business, which is generally a little more fascist when you have nominal private hands, government control of higher education.
	And the critique that they have that a lot of leftists have about capitalism, that you're continually trying to drive down the wages of your workers.
	Therefore, your workers end up without enough earning power to buy stuff from you.
	So what do you do?
	Well, you laden them down with debt, like with credit cards, which didn't really appear until the 1970s, except for the occasional business traveler.
	You get students to have a huge amount of debt.
	You borrow like crazy.
	You print up these muni bonds, which you can sell to guarantee tax increases down the road and be able to spend stuff in the here and now.
	And yet another form of unfunded liabilities, you know, where you make promises to particularly government workers for future pensions and health care you can't possibly keep.
	So sure, I mean, when the wages get driven down, but the big question is what drives down the wages?
	What drives down the wages is two things, massive taxation and endless ways of taxpayer-subsidized immigration from low-rent countries.
	And that is the basic reality, that you are continually driving down the wages of the workers, but that's not a function of capitalism.
	I mean, of course, the capitalist wants to pay the worker less, but not so little that the worker either is...
	Not motivated to work or immediately you train them.
	And if you run a business, you know, training people is a big investment.
	Tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to get them up to speed in their job.
	If you're not paying them enough, they're just going to go work somewhere else.
	And so, of course, the capitalist wants to pay someone as little as possible.
	But so what? The worker wants to get as high a wage as humanly possible.
	And they negotiate something in between.
	But what really drives down purchasing power is, you know, inflation.
	Taxation and endless amounts of immigrants who don't come to work, but generally don't come for freedom, they don't come for free trade, they come for free stuff.
	And so that is what's driving down the workers' wages.
	The debt is also foundational to the status system, right?
	Because the government controls currency, the government controls interest rates, and the government guarantees a lot of student loans.
	None of these free market things at all, but of course the market's gonna get blamed because it's around and it's easier than really thinking.
	ED HARRISON Right. I completely agree.
	And then just the flip side to what you're saying, the other side of that coin is what drives wages up.
	And there's really only one thing that does it, and that's increased productivity.
	It's capital investment.
	It's people coming up with better technology.
	Instead of using a shovel, now you have a big plow.
	And now you're way more productive, and you can demand to be compensated.
	So it's Again, just like you were saying, it seems that if there was anything that's truly egregious, like really horrific stuff that happens that these left anarchists, socialists, communists, whatever, can point to, there's always the state right behind it, but they tend to not look at that side of it.
	They'll blame capitalism for the foreign wars.
	Which is, of course, you know, it's the most socialized part of our society, would be like the military.
	And they'll blame capitalism for that.
	They blame capitalism for, as we were saying before, the prison industrial complex.
	But of course, these are the government rules, the war on drugs, and the government's paying the bills for these private prisons.
	So again, it's anything you could look at that where you're going to find this true, just horrific, inhumane systems, the state is right there.
	So then we'll skip a paragraph, which is just a brief history which talks about how they got into violence.
	But Pierre-Joseph Prudence generally recognized as the first self-proclaimed anarchist, and his theories continue to influence anarchist thought today.
	So he's the guy who came up with the phrase, property is theft.
	And because sloganeering is a whole lot easier than thinking, people don't actually go into the roots of this.
	So I'll give the context of this.
	So this is Proudhon's What is Property?
	He says, Why then, to this other question, what is property, may I not likewise answer, it is robbery, without the certainty of being misunderstood, the second proposition being no other than a transformation of the first.
	So the fact that in the context of the paragraph, he's talking about property and slavery would indicate that he's not talking about you having a toothbrush or a factory.
	So property, he's talking about this idea of land property that originated in Roman law, which is The sovereign right of property, the right of the proprietor to do with his property as he pleases, to use and abuse, so long as in the end he submits to the state-sanctioned title.
	And he contrasted the supposed right of property with the rights which he considered valid of liberty, equality, and security.
	And so he's talking about a very primitive form of land ownership.
	And of course, remember, a lot of times when you're talking about primitive forms of land ownership, it's because you were really, really great at murdering people.
	And so the king gave you a bunch of land because you were good.
	You were a good general, a good soldier, a good Macbeth who didn't turn on the king.
	So, when you gain a huge tract of land by being really good at killing people in the king's usually useless wars, well, yeah, I can understand how that's a kind of theft, but that doesn't have anything to do with the creation, and this is something foundational to the leftists, that they don't really understand genuinely.
	And I've listened to professors.
	It's not a matter of intelligence.
	They generally and genuinely don't seem to understand, Dave, that stuff gets created.
	It doesn't just – land.
	Okay, land is there.
	So land is, you know, I can understand the critiques of property and stuff when you're talking about aristocrats having land.
	But a factory, a job, a business, it doesn't just – like a restaurant – They don't just pop into existence.
	Somebody has to work 24-7 for years to save up the money usually and even if they inherit the business they have to get themselves up to speed and work very very hard to maintain the value of that business.
	These things don't just don't pop out of nowhere and in a free market system The poor have a significant advantage over the rich, which is that the poor have a lower cost of living than the rich.
	So the poor can charge less for their services.
	Like when I, as a small, nimble software proprietor, went up against giant companies like IBM, I could underbid them.
	Why? Because my overhead was so much lower.
	And so when you're poor, you're living lean, you're living mean, you're living close to the bone, and you can just charge less.
	So there's this constant churn and cycle.
	If you have A free market, but once you lose that free market, well, sure, then you see a military-industrial complex, the, quote, capitalists go to the government and say, yeah, we'll help you start a war, and in return, we'll get hundreds of billions of dollars in military contracts.
	Again, who's paying?
	It's the state. The moment the state's paying, it ain't a free market situation.
	Oh, yeah, absolutely.
	I've noticed the same thing you're saying many times before.
	It's almost like this argument that they make would make sense if, say, If, say, the world was just started yesterday and some God-like figure just had distributed all of the products and goods around in this certain way, like he just gave, you know, a billionaire and a millionaire, someone who owns a big house, it was just handed to them yesterday.
	Every business was just created by a God and then just handed to people yesterday.
	You could look at this situation and go, well, that wasn't so fair that this got distributed this way, and maybe we should redistribute it another way.
	But the reality of life Is that everything, like you said, outside of say like trees and hills and land, outside of nature, everything that you look at, like buildings and computers and electricity, everything that's man-made was created, it was thawed up before it was produced, and then it was produced.
	And anybody, if you've been around anyone who's started anything I mean, you know, I think about, you know, your YouTube channel, this free domain radio show that you were, you know, I remember the old videos where you're in a car recording on your way to work, you know, and coming back. It's not, you're not just handed this thing.
	You have to build it up.
	And the decades of study and reading and all of that, this didn't come out of nowhere.
	Right, the stuff that none of us even see, the stuff, all the work that led up to that.
	And it's not as if you had just turned on a recorder and started talking in gibberish, you're not going to end up building this huge show.
	It's like, no, every step is work and work and work that you put into it.
	And the other thing that I would point out, I understand sometimes when you talk about property rights, it sounds almost a little bit cold.
	Like there's something about it that kind of comes across like I own stuff and I get to own this stuff.
	Like you mean selfish kind of thing, right?
	It's mine. Yeah, right, right.
	But when you really think about it, there's always property ownership.
	When we talk about property rights, we're just saying who actually has a moral claim on something, like a just acquisition of property.
	So if there is a factory or there is a chair or a lamp or anything, somebody is going to be making decisions about You know, somebody gets to make the call.
	It could be a state.
	It could be a group of people.
	It could be an individual. But somebody, like if I want to run a factory, even if the workers are controlling it or if a state's controlling it, somebody's getting to make that decision.
	You can't have any piece of property without Somebody getting to act in the way that an owner would act.
	The question is really just, what we're concerned with is the just acquisition of property.
	Who can actually say, and the idea is that if you either created something or homesteaded or voluntarily exchanged with it, You have kind of the most moral claim on what you should be able to do with that.
	I mean, you could clearly see if someone else just came in, like if I were to just come up to you and go, I'm going to dictate to you what your next five shows are going to be on.
	Wait, you have five bucks?
	Yeah, right. You can't.
	Well, but see, but then you just voluntarily gave me that right.
	I'm cheap and easy.
	But it's like, well, no, you built this, so you should get to have that claim.
	And it's really just that principle extended.
	Right. Into the land of foggy collective concepts now we go to.
	Classic anarchist traditions include mutualism, which is situated at the nexus of individual and collectivist thought.
	So, listen, Dave, I feel like we haven't spent enough quality time face-to-face.
	So, I wonder if next Thursday you're available to meet me at the nexus of individual and collectivist thought.
	Will you just punch that shit in on your GPS? It'll come right up there.
	I think it's somewhere in Manhattan.
	The nexus of individual and collectivist thought.
	Woo! That's clarifying to me.
	Woof! Done and dusted, man.
	I don't know why they've got... Anyway. Anarcho-communism, which favors community ownership of the means of production and the abolishment of the state and capitalism.
	Ah. Abolishment of the state and capitalism.
	I don't really know what that means.
	Abolishing free trade and self-ownership.
	That is a strange thing.
	Abolishing self-ownership is slavery because that is the basic reality.
	See, people don't understand that you can't have crimes of violence without involving property.
	Your body is your property.
	So you kidnap someone, you're taking over their body.
	You're interfering with their right of self-ownership.
	If you stab someone, you're violating their property boundary called their skin.
	If you rape someone, you're violating their property called their sexual organs and so on.
	It doesn't mean that all...
	Property crimes are violent crimes, and the only thing necessary for violence to be evil is a property crime, but they're kind of involved.
	There's this weird thing where self-ownership is, because everyone's anti-slavery, so self-ownership, oh, you've got to be for self-ownership, you know, self-actualization, having a voice, having courage, standing up for what you believe.
	Self-ownership is really, really cool.
	Everyone also then says, you own the effects of your actions, right?
	When I was talking with Peter Joseph, he would say, your argument, Steph, is wrong, because...
	Right? Or structural violence or whatever, you know, mealy-mouthed, meatball-laced gibberish came out of his nose.
	But he would say, Steph, your argument is wrong.
	In other words, I made an argument.
	I spoke about the argument.
	I'm responsible for the argument being out there.
	So I own myself.
	I own the effects of my actions, whether it's an argument, whether if I go shoplift, I own the theft because I've used my body to steal somebody else's property against their will.
	So you own yourself and you own the effects of your actions.
	That's all there is to the free market because the effects of your actions could be what you say, what you do, what you build.
	It could be a factory. It could be a restaurant.
	It could be a podcast. It could be any number of things.
	So the only way to get rid of Of the free market to get rid of capitalism is to say either people do not own themselves or they do not own the effects of their actions.
	But you logically can't say that.
	You can't say people don't own themselves because you'd be using your own self-ownership to make an argument to say that people have no self-ownership.
	It's self-contradictory at its root.
	And also you can't debate that because if you say people don't own the effects of their actions, you have no one to debate with because apparently nobody owns the arguments that they create.
	So you'd never know who to respond to.
	So This is kind of stuff I'm hoping to see somewhere.
	It's probably kind of optimistic as opposed to what is the nexus of individual collective is thought?
	Apparently, it's typing. Right.
	It's all – and no, you're absolutely right.
	I love the way you put it.
	It's like if you – they'll all accept that like self-ownership at least in theory, right?
	Like they'd say like rape is a crime because the woman owns her body and you can't force yourself into her body.
	My body, my choice, they say. Right.
	But as soon as you accept that the rapist also has responsibility because he used his body to go rape a woman, right?
	So he also has some responsibility, like he's committed a crime.
	Now you're accepting not only self-ownership, but that you own your actions.
	You own what you decide to do with your body and what action you decide to take.
	So likewise, if there's just some...
	Society without a state, without a government, without even laws, say, that just exists somewhere.
	And there was a man who came up and beat up a woman and raped her.
	We would all feel that this is a moral crime.
	Even if there's not a law or a court system or any of that, we would all feel that this is a moral crime.
	In fact, the idea is we would create laws and court systems and all this because this is a moral crime.
	Like, that's why. But so then just take it to the next level that a woman is out in this lawless, stateless society and she collects like some seashells And some rope, and she makes a necklace and puts it around her neck, and someone else comes over and yanks it off of her neck and runs away with it.
	Well, in the same sense, because she did that with her body and her time and her energy, and somebody else came over and just took it from her, we would say that is theft.
	It's just the same principle.
	And once you accept it, if you accept that assaulting someone is a crime, then you're accepting that the effect of your actions is something that you own and have to take responsibility for.
	If that's the case, you can't get around property rights.
	No, that's right. So there's a little glimmer here in the clouds of sophistry, which I'm sure got through by accident.
	So she goes to anarcho-syndicalism, which tragically is a word completely owned by Monty Python.
	Anarcho-syndicalism, which views unions, the working class, and the labor movement as potential forces for revolutionary change...
	Again, not an argument. Here we go.
	You ready? And individualism, Dave.
	Individualism, which has similarities with libertarianism and emphasizes individual freedom above all.
	Well, first of all, they have to put in libertarianism, which is considered to be one of the arch enemies of the Balrog to the fantastical wizards of socialism.
	But emphasizes individual freedom above all.
	See all these feel words?
	I have a vision.
	It's situated here.
	It favors this. It emphasizes this.
	It's like, I don't know what that means other than I like ice cream.
	You know, like this. Where are the arguments?
	No arguments. Then they go into anarcho-feminism, black anarchism, queer anarchism, green or eco-anarchism, and anarcho-pacifism and so on.
	And then, the money shot!
	Are you ready? It's all been a fluffer up to here.
	Here we go. Anarcho-capitalism, which is interested in self-ownership and free markets.
	You know, it's just a fetish, man.
	It's a fetish.
	You know, it just – it gets my crank going.
	You know, like Wonder Woman in a cat suit.
	You know, it's just – I'm just interested in it.
	Like, oh, that got my attention.
	No arguments, no facts, no historical analysis, no syllogisms.
	Just interested. It says, anarcho-capitalism, which is interested in self-ownership and free markets, is much rarer and is considered by most anarchists to be illegitimate because of anarchism's inherent opposition to capitalism.
	What? What a sentence.
	She doesn't even know what she's doing.
	I bet you the readers don't either, but we're going to tell.
	Here we go. So here, self-ownership and free markets.
	What's the two things we talked about?
	Self-ownership and free markets, right?
	Now here, it says that capitalism is self-ownership and free markets.
	Boom! Right there.
	Capitalism has now been correctly defined as self-ownership and free markets.
	Why? Because she says anarchists don't like self-ownership and free markets because they're opposed to capitalism, which means that capitalism is self-ownership and free markets.
	Which, if I were the editor, I'd say, well then, why are you talking about the military-industrial complex and crap like that?
	Because here you're saying, Self-ownership and free markets and this is how far the propaganda has gone that they're actually telling the truth While trying to take down I guess what you and I would argue for Yeah, it's really it's it's I don't even know where to start with this one It's it's kind of amazing that they're just kind of like hint at that right like this Oh,
	this is what they believe and it's just with all of these um Whenever I read one of these articles that's bashing anarcho-capitalism or libertarianism or any of this stuff It's like just tell me Our principle is so straightforward.
	You know, we're not using all of this fancy language and these abstract ideas.
	It's a straightforward principle.
	Now, if you believe it's wrong, okay, show me where it's wrong.
	Make an argument and like, fine, but it's certainly straightforward.
	So it shouldn't be that difficult.
	Our principle is non-aggression and private property rights.
	Okay. So our principle is you shouldn't, it is morally wrong to bring violence to peaceful people.
	That's our principle. You explain to me when it is appropriate to bring violence toward peaceful people, and fine, good luck owning that argument.
	It's a pretty tough argument to make in any moral context.
	But of course, it's just like, well, they support capitalism, and anarchists are against capitalism.
	And the other thing I would say is, by the way, if you want to throw lump anarcho-capitalists into this anarchist world where there's all these other left-wing anarchists, and They're talking about Antifa.
	One of the things that just common sense decent people might notice is that anarcho-capitalists, we're the anarchists who you're never going to see out in black masks throwing rocks through storefront windows.
	You're never going to see us hitting people over the head with bike locks for saying something we disagree with because we actually are grounded in these principles of non-aggression and property rights.
	So we're those silly anarchists who don't go around assaulting people and destroying property.
	Right, right. So what's interesting, because anarchism is on the left, And again, we're going to use these sort of traditional terms.
	Anarchism is on the left, and they consider fascism to be on the right, which is wrong.
	Which is wrong. Hitler hated capitalism, and Mussolini started as a straight-up Marxist and was that way for many years, and then just threw in nation rather than class and bingo, bango, bongo.
	It's still collectivism, right? Which is where the libertarian leadership is these days, tragically.
	So what is the difference between anarchism and communism?
	So, the argument here, I just love the fact that this philosopher tells Teen Vogue something.
	He says, is the perspective on the state.
	In orthodox Marxist theory, the state is an institution that is politically neutral, and it can be used for different purposes, depending on which class controls it.
	Therefore, the orthodox Marxist goal is to capture the state, turn it into a dictatorship of the proletariat, and suppress the capitalist class.
	Once they do that, the state will wither away and you'll have communism.
	The anarchist argument is that the state is not neutral, it is inherently hierarchical, it is inherently An institution of domination.
	Therefore, anarchists oppose the state as much as they oppose capitalism.
	In other words, they oppose tyranny as much as they oppose freedom since she already defined anarcho-capitalism above As all of these wonderful things, self ownership and free markets.
	So anarchists oppose the state as much as they oppose self ownership and free markets.
	That's a very confused philosophy.
	Like I strongly oppose, they say, I strongly oppose both the initiation of the use of force.
	And the non-initiation of the use of force.
	I strongly oppose violations of property rights and property rights.
	It's like I can see why you might need to throw garbage cans because you ain't throwing a lot of effective syllogisms around.
	Yeah, and it just makes absolutely no sense that if you understand, if you say the state is an institution of domination, well, okay, I mean, I agree with that part of it.
	So then wouldn't you be for any reduction in the size of the state, right?
	Like, shouldn't you be celebrating Donald Trump's tax cuts?
	Or privatization of government schools?
	Absolutely. Like any example, because this is an institution of domination, and so you would want to shrink it or eliminate it, okay.
	But the idea that you will, it's just, that's why I made the analogy of I want cancer to take over the body and then the cancer will cure itself and you'll be cancer free.
	It's so, you know, it's just confused and it makes no sense.
	So, I guess the last thing is this anti-fascism.
	Now, I think the rational analysis of this kind of anarchism is to say because it's on the left, it's going to have a special hostility to the most rival violent ideology, which is fascism.
	Now, fascism is one of these words that, I mean, there are entire books written on how on earth do you define fascism because it's just become one of these negative labels that you just throw against your enemies and it doesn't really mean much.
	But they say here, how does anti-fascism intersect with anarchism?
	Intersect, thriving, these are all danger words.
	Anyway, since fascism is an anti-democratic ideology that thrives on oppression, and anarchism is explicitly against oppression in all forms, and for direct democracy, anarchism is inherently anti- Fascist, much like all anarchists are by necessity anti-police and anti-prison.
	So, against fascism.
	Now, what's interesting is that they have a sort of rational critique of Marxism, but they're very hostile towards fascism.
	And you can see Antifa, right, which is short for anti-fascist.
	And again, people report that like that name means something you can call yourself because it's typed on a website.
	It's like the same as being true.
	But this is very interesting how hostile they are towards fascism relative to communism.
	And I think that's because fascism is nationalistic in general.
	Now communism is internationalistic.
	In other words, communism views humanity as united not by culture, history, race, or nation, or anything like that, but by class.
	Right? So the working class in China has much more in common with the working class in England than either of the two elites.
	And I actually kind of agree with that in a lot of ways.
	Like for me, I have much more in common with your average oppressed citizen in Europe or China than I do with the ruling classes in the Western countries.
	So I kind of agree with that.
	Those of us who are on the receiving end of violations of the initiation of the use of force, yeah, we got a lot in common.
	But boy, do they ever hate It's fascism because it's an anti-democratic ideology.
	It thrives on impression. But, of course, they've just above admitted that the state is used to control the means of production, which is, of course, anti-democratic.
	And this is something people don't understand.
	Property and life, people say, well, you've got the right to life, you've got the right to property.
	They're too... The two are the same things.
	I mean, this is why people get a little confused about this.
	If I don't have the right to property, I don't have the right to life.
	Because if I don't have the right to property, I've got nowhere to sleep.
	I've got nothing to eat. I've got no shelter from the storms.
	I've got nothing that I can call my own.
	I have no money. Like, you literally are begging on street corners at best, at best.
	And even then, you can't keep the proceeds of your begging because you don't have any property rights.
	So when you give the government the right to control property, Then you give the government the right to control life itself.
	And that is a very, very powerful thing.
	If you're an outright enemy of the state, perceived even in modern democracies, you know, how good is your healthcare going to be?
	They have the right to withhold things from you that you absolutely need to survive.
	And whether that's Marxist or fascist, it's still the same totalitarian level of control.
	Well, right. And you can't have any degree of freedom without the right to own things, without property.
	I mean, you know, you could say like, oh, you have freedom of speech, but the state owns all of the newspapers.
	I mean, okay, well, then there's basically no freedom of speech.
	And one of the things that's really interesting that you were touching on with this, and this is something that's going on right now in our culture, that I think there's like a big paradigm shift.
	And I think you're a big part of this.
	A lot of other people and whatever they call it, you know, the intellectual dark web term or what, but people like Jordan Peterson and other guys like that, where They've been able, for a long time, and I know you've talked about this for years, but the way that fascism is discussed compared to the way communism is discussed, and it's really, it's quite something where the crimes of the communists have been completely whitewashed from history, and the crimes of the fascists are, like, right front and center.
	Like, everybody knows, you know, you ask someone who the most evil person ever was, it's Hitler.
	Hitler's the guy who gets it.
	Even though, like, Mao Zedong killed way more people, and Stalin killed probably more people, and Certainly, communism in general is responsible for more death and starvation and destruction than fascism was.
	And to me, at least, I think there's a few reasons for it.
	I think, number one, the winners of wars write history books.
	And people who lose wars get written up as being the great evil.
	It's kind of the way, in America, the South was responsible for slavery, even though there was slavery in the North.
	But the South lost the war, so you end up, you know, the history books show the North as being the good guys.
	Now, Hitler and the Nazis, they lost the biggest war ever.
	And so they're going down. I'm not.
	I think they're very bad guys.
	The Nazis were very bad.
	Oh, yeah. I hate that you have to put in these caveats, but I understand.
	I understand. Just so no one takes this the wrong way.
	He's defending? Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I get it.
	Yes. But this is why they get written up as the very bad guys.
	And so what you had was World War II, which is this absolute disaster, like the biggest catastrophe that ever happened, 60 million people dead, just All the productive nations of the world besides the United States just, you know, kind of destroyed.
	And this needs to be justified after that.
	So you have to be like, we were team good guys.
	They were team bad guys.
	And so you have these, generally speaking, in America, you have the left and the right.
	And the left loved the communists.
	They were, you know, they're They apologized for Stalin all the way through.
	They ignored the crimes of the Soviet Union.
	So they kind of have an incentive to downplay how evil communists were because basically they're all a bunch of communists at heart.
	And they, you know, even when they knew what Stalin was doing, And what the communists were all about, they tried to downplay it.
	And then you had the right, who basically got taken over by worshippers of the military industrial complex, and they need to celebrate this legacy of World War II being the Great War, like we were the good ones.
	And even back in the Ron Paul days, whenever You know, Ron Paul would say something like, oh, we should get out of these wars.
	The John McCain attack on him was like, well, this is isolationism.
	This is what led to Hitler rising.
	World War II is what justifies this entire military industrial complex.
	This is the new world order when America became the military superpower.
	And if you tell the story of World War II more accurately, and you say, well, Hitler was a really, really bad guy, but we partnered up with a really, really bad guy in Stalin, and we handed half of Europe over to him.
	That story starts to be a little like, oh man, this isn't so clear who the good guys are here and who the bad guys are.
	Communism won the Second World War.
	There's no question of that.
	Communism won because the reputation of communism not only did not suffer, but you've got tens of thousands of outright communists as academics.
	In America. And you can have someone like Bernie Sanders, not only who seems to comb his hair with a balloon, but also he can be a socialist.
	Now, they put the word democratic socialist in it, although he would impose socialism in a nation-state called America.
	What that means is he would be a national socialist.
	He would be a socialist in a particular nation.
	National socialism is Nazism.
	So the fact that That Hitler, terrible guy.
	Now, of course, I'm not equating Bernie Sanders to Hitler, but as far as the words go, as far as the language goes, the National Socialist German Workers' Party, I mean, if you look at the, this is something from Dinesh D'Souza's movie, right?
	If you look at the platform of the National Socialist German Workers' Party under Hitler, yeah, it's socialism.
	It's government control of stuff and all the usual garbage-free stuff.
	But I do think that there's something interesting that I got.
	I mean, it's sort of on a more personal level.
	But when people have, like, weird beliefs that are just so common, I always look for something real personal down at the bottom because...
	People aren't, most people aren't, like you and I probably live on abstractions a little bit more.
	Most people are kind of rooted in the ground, not so much clouds, they're trees, right?
	So the question is, why do people find this?
	And what I see, and you can see this in this article, we'll put a link to it below, but it's very much around mutual aid and community.
	And one of the big criticisms that leftists have of the free market is that somehow it destroys community.
	It's like, no, diversity and taxes destroy community.
	Feminism destroys communities by destroying families, but They have this big critique that there's atomization and isolation and loneliness and a lack of community and connectivity under capitalism.
	And I can't help but think like, I don't know about you, man, but let's say that we live in some anarcho-syndicalist, communist, anarchist, whatever, whatever, where you've got to get together for direct democracy meetings like nine times a day.
	Oh, God. Can you imagine?
	Can you imagine like what a nightmare that would be?
	You know, we're having some dispute over something like where the plowshare should go next Saturday.
	So we all need to get together.
	We need to debate. We need to put it to a vote.
	Oh, somebody's thinking of digging a ditch.
	We've got to all get together.
	We've got to have a vote. We've got to talk it out.
	I mean, what a complete and total nightmare.
	One of the great things about the free market is it's freedom from busybodies.
	It's freedom from busybodies.
	So the question is, why are people on the left so focused on We're good to go.
	But it's like, why would you care so much?
	Everyone's got to get together. We got to vote.
	We got to communally decide this.
	We got to... Well, first of all, if you like people, you'll get together anyway.
	It's called a party. It's called a barbecue.
	It's called a political meeting.
	It's called whatever, a philosophy group.
	It's called a model railroad club.
	If people like you, they'll want to spend time with you.
	But all of this, we got to get together and vote and debate.
	It's like, that would only benefit people that nobody else wants to spend time with.
	That they now have their ready-made social circle.
	And nobody can escape.
	And if you are someone that people like, why would you want to force them to spend time with you?
	And there's something about fighting, I think, probably a kind of well-earned loneliness by being a kind of a douchebag or a nag or a scold or a bitter or negative or resentful.
	Like something is driving people away from you and you're willing to get rid of all freedoms just to herd them into a room so they have to spend time with you, damn it.
	Yeah, I think you're really onto something with that.
	I mean, the idea that you'd reject the non-aggression principle.
	So in other words, people have to be forced into this community.
	So you're not confident that if people are able to choose, there's going to be any sense of community.
	I think there's some deep psychological stuff going on there.
	And of course, in reality, it's all just so backward and confused, just like the idea of we have to build up the state to get rid of the state.
	In reality, the community, as our state has gotten bigger and bigger in the United States, for example, communities have been destroyed.
	And the truth is, what's so funny is that As close as you're ever going to come to these fuzzy, nice words that they talk about, like mutual aid and stuff like this.
	Well, what did we have in the United States of America before the government got into the business of welfare and getting involved in everybody's medical insurance and everything like that?
	It's like, well, you had these collective communities where people wouldn't get together.
	Yeah, they were called friendly societies, even called mutual aid societies.
	Right. And they were voluntary.
	And this is the closest you're ever going to get to that stuff.
	And the more the government comes in with their welfare and all this other stuff, and you're no longer dependent on your community, but you're just dependent on the state, this is what destroys communities.
	So once again, it's just all backward.
	It's everything as close as we could come.
	To a non-authoritarian, non-hierarchal, you know, society would be under free market capitalism.
	That's the best you're going to be able to do.
	And again, as you said before, and what we were talking about, you know, it's like at the center of the anarcho-capitalist worldview.
	And what I always thought, and this is what I've been really almost, you know, heartbroken in my years as a libertarian ANCAP, is that I always thought, like, Well, this would be a really, once I found it and I found guys like you and Murray Rothbard and other people, I was like, oh my god, this is so great.
	I can't wait to tell everyone.
	And then they'll be like, thank you for giving me this great, you know, advice.
	And then we'll all be at NCAPS together.
	But it's like, look, if you want to go live in this mutual aid workers, it's like, okay, go buy up some land.
	You guys can go there and do that.
	By the way, it's my same message to the, you know, the white nationalists or whoever, people like that, you know, it's It's played up like it's this plague on society.
	It's really like a few people on the internet.
	But it's like, okay, go buy up some land and you guys can live together.
	And I'm against forced integration.
	You shouldn't have to bring anyone else in.
	But why is there this insistence on you having to impose your will on everybody else, that you have to force everybody to live by your system?
	You can go live in your world and you can out-compete other people, at least in our system you could.
	Yeah. Whites were overwhelming majorities during the decision to march to World War I, during the massive hyperinflation in the 20s, during the Great Depression, during the Second World War, during the vote for the welfare state.
	So yeah, I don't think it's the solution that everyone's looking for historically.
	But yeah, if people want to go and do that, if blacks, you know, the followers of Malcolm X and Louis Farrakhan want to go buy a whole bunch of land and have a black-only community, Hey, man, more power to you.
	You know, it's not my particular preference, but if you want to do that, if that's your thing, then go for it.
	I mean, I don't agree, but I'm busy.
	I got stuff to do in my life, so I'm not going to sit there patrolling everyone else.
	So, let me ask you this.
	In a scenario that occurs fairly regularly on my show, there's some guest who's not woke to the anarcho-capitalism thing and they say, it's anarchy or, you know, it's some negative connotation, right?
	And I don't actually stop them and give them the, you know, 20-minute history and definitions and so on because kind of got to keep conversations moving and it's not a debate about anarchism.
	So I don't mind if they use the term colloquially.
	And then, of course, everyone says, oh my god, he's not an anarchist anymore!
	Or people say to you, are you still an anarchist?
	And it's like, it's not up to me, man.
	You know, I mean, it's like saying, do you still believe in evolution?
	It's like, it's not a choice.
	It's not like, you know, well, your tastes change over life, you see.
	And I used to be into this wine, and now I'm into this wine.
	The pairing with this wine and this fish used to be pleasing to my palate.
	This is all nonsense. If you want to talk me out of voluntarism, if you want to talk me out of the universality of the non-aggression principle, make a case, man.
	I'll follow the case wherever it lies.
	This idea, well, are you still this and are you still that?
	Do you still follow this sports team or did you move somewhere else?
	I've got to go where the arguments are and the arguments support self-ownership, free markets, private property and all of that kind of stuff.
	So, as far as the word goes, it's tricky because it's kind of been owned by, you know, biker soap shows Sons of Anarchy.
	It's been owned by Antifa.
	It's been owned by this argument that anarchy is chaos when voluntarism is our only chance for any kind of predictable order.
	You know, what do you want out of your currency?
	What you want out of your currency is for it to be relatively stable and valued.
	Now, you don't mind if it goes up a little bit, but that's going to make some things a bit more tricky, particularly in terms of loans.
	You would love to have a currency that is stable so you could plan ahead without wild oscillations.
	You'd love to have an educational system that actually taught you useful things so that you emerged after 12 years of government education with fantastic skill sets that made you worth $100 an hour.
	These are things that you want.
	You're never going to get them through the state.
	Your only chance to get them is through a voluntary society where you as a customer and other people as a customer have sway.
	You want a predictable set of rules in your legal system.
	You want a bare minimum of rules just enough to protect persons and property in the most efficient way.
	You're never going to get that.
	From the government.
	The government is going to start chasing people who are safe to catch and aren't going to cause much of a trouble and they're going to stay away from really dangerous people like moped gangs or the Clintons.
	So, you know, your only chance to get what everybody wants, every reasonable person wants is through voluntarism.
	But the problem is the word anarchy has been so corrupted.
	Do you think any CPR, I've got a Baywatch thing going on here with you in a blonde wig, but do you think any sort of CPR is going to help it out?
	You know, I don't know.
	I feel like that's a real problem that, you know, people who believe in freedom have had for a long time.
	I mean, look, just the word liberal, right, like it was completely hijacked from people who fought against the power of monarchs and fought for free markets and natural rights and private property.
	And now that's completely associated with the left.
	To me, I've had The word libertarian.
	I mean, it's been completely poisoned.
	People now are thinking of Bill Weld endorsing Hillary Clinton when the word is mentioned, or Gary Johnson not knowing where Aleppo is.
	Or where his tongue should be.
	Yeah. I mean, so I have this problem over and over again.
	All our words seem to get taken and misused.
	And to your point where...
	You know, if somebody's like a guest on your show, and maybe they're, you know, they're great on a lot of issues, but they're not, you know, completely in line with anarcho- if they just use the term anarchist and they're like, oh, these crazy anarchists hitting people with bike locks, it's like, well, there are people hitting people with bike locks and they call themselves anarchists, so you get what he's saying.
	You know, I don't know.
	I don't know what- it seems like any word that we have is going to be hijacked So after a while, I'm just kind of like, well, I'm planting my flag with libertarian anarchists and anarcho-capitalists, and hopefully I can explain it enough that people will get it.
	It's a tough situation.
	Also, like what you were just saying, where there are a lot of people who I'm with like 70%, 80% of the time, but they're just not quite there with you on the other 20%, 30%.
	I remember I was watching when you did the A Night for Freedom thing with Both Owen Benjamin and Gavin McGinnis are good friends of mine.
	I don't know Mike Cernovich, but I know the other two.
	Although we did one episode of Red Eye together, me and Mike Cernovich.
	But I remember at one point, and I was just loving everything you guys said, and there was one point where Gavin goes, he was like, I'm so against the left that I'm willing to work with anybody who's against the left, whether that's That's so-and-so.
	He goes, that could be neoconservatives.
	That could be so-and-so. And I'm like, oh my god, neoconservatives.
	They are the worst of the worst.
	But, you know, sometimes you have to just kind of take your allies where you have them.
	I don't know. I don't have a good answer to that question.
	Or maybe we can just confuse people by promoting arachnocapitalism, which is you're only allowed to trade spiders.
	That's it. That's the only thing we've got going.
	Yeah, it is tough.
	So my sort of solution as a whole, which is not always perfect, but my solution as a whole is when you're accused of an ism, go to the larger discipline, right?
	So if, say, well, are you into Darwinism?
	It's like, I like biology.
	You know, are you a string theorist?
	It's like, well, you know, it's been 30 years.
	Maybe they could produce something vaguely testable.
	No, it's a government program. It's like, no, but I like physics.
	I like science. And so when it's, are you a something-ist, an anarchist or a libertarian or whatever it is, are you identifiable in some kind?
	I like reason and evidence.
	I like philosophy. And that is where...
	I try to refocus people's attention because the isms are fundamentally tribal and fundamentally oppositional.
	And it's saying there's no overarching umbrella of reason and evidence that can join us together.
	Yes, I have stuff in common with the left.
	I hate imperialism.
	The wars, you know, we're recording this on 9-11.
	The wars... You know, the US violates...
	Of course, the US can't protect its own border.
	They keep invading everyone else's borders.
	And then they invade borders in the Middle East, and then they destroy countries in the Middle East, and then people in the Middle East invade countries or don't respect the borders of countries in Europe.
	And it's like, yeah, it's a whole big, giant mess.
	So there's a lot that I do have in common with the left.
	The left has its critiques of the welfare state, a lot of which I share.
	The left has its critiques of government education and indoctrination, of which I share, like I've had...
	Noam Chomsky on the show twice, very much the leftist and an anarchist.
	We would share a lot of critiques, critiques of the war on drugs and all of this kind of stuff.
	So the only chance I think that we have is to reject this innate siloed compartmentalization of isms.
	And these kinds of feel articles like, here's my vision and this is what they believe and they're interested in this and it's like...
	No, we have to meet in reality.
	It's the only place we can meet.
	It's the only place we can resolve disputes nonviolently is to submit to reason and evidence.
	So if I can elevate people's minds, hearts, and souls to looking at reason and evidence, then we can all hammer out something that works in general rather than our own particular preferences that harden into a dogmatism which often hardens into violence.
	Yeah, and you see it all the time where people try to...
	You know, I was watching a bunch of your...
	When you were in Australia on that tour and just watching the interviews for the news media you're doing over there.
	And it's so fun. I mean, things are so entertaining.
	I just love those. It's like those and like Kathy Newman, Jordan Peterson.
	But when they just try to put you in this box, you know, and they just try to go like, oh, far right or far this or that.
	It's like they're trying to put you in this area where then it's easy to oppose because, look, he's just far right guy or he's white nationalist guy or all these things that don't.
	Don't accurately describe your views at all.
	And I do think that there's something there.
	My good friend who's been a guest on your show, Scott Horton, he always says, you got to attack the left from the left and the right from the right.
	So you kind of take them apart at their own worldview.
	And one of the things that's just so crazy to me is that the leftists, and I have more respect for a guy like Noam Chomsky, Who at least is anti-war and consistently anti-war to some degree.
	And pro-free speech and anti-violence.
	Yes, yeah. For all the hatred of Donald Trump, and certainly I think Donald Trump has done some things wrong that I wish he wouldn't have done, but it's none of the stuff that the mainstream hates him for.
	Everything they hate him for is for all the stuff that he's done right.
	Oh, they go nuts on him for maybe having an affair with a porn star, but when he talks about recommitting troops to Syria ad infinitum, it's like, meh.
	That's fine. Nobody's sitting there and going like, you're not turning on CNN and they're like, oh my god, spending has gone up and Donald Trump signed this omnibus bill with higher spending.
	They have no problem with that.
	They have no problem with the military budget going up.
	Their problem is that, oh my god, he's recklessly trying to make peace with North Korea.
	One bang with Stormy Daniels may make her eyes a little bit glassy, but a whole bunch of bangs in the Middle East makes a whole bunch of eyes glassy.
	Permanently. So yeah, it's crazy.
	That's what's so amazing. It's like you talk to these people on the left who hate Donald Trump so much and you're like, okay, look, whatever you may not like about him, George W. Bush on faulty intelligence got us into a war in Iraq where somewhere from Hundreds of thousands to a million people died, like actual human beings.
	And by the way, brown people and Muslims, you know, the ones who you claim to champion, they all died.
	Barack Obama overthrew Gaddafi.
	There's now a slave trade in Libya where it was a relatively, for regional standards, a relatively stable country.
	He armed a wing of Al Qaeda that turned into ISIS. There's now hundreds of thousands of people dead.
	In Syria, there's hundreds of thousands of people dead in Yemen because of their policies directly.
	Now, say what you will about Trump.
	He has avoided, so far, a catastrophe on that level.
	Like, he hasn't destroyed a nation.
	That's not on him, you know?
	And it's really amazing that that—it's almost like you have to throw back at them, like, where are your values, actually, that someone saying something offensive Bothers you more than actual lives being ruined.
	Well, this is the whole question around fake news.
	Which is, if I see once more that Assad is going to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by gassing his own people for no reason whatsoever, and therefore the West needs to go plunging into another god-awful war where they're not going to be greeted as liberators, where they're going to inflame sectarian tensions and create more terrorists and more fundamentalists and destroy people and destroy Europe through a mass outflux of refugees and so on, that's the real.
	That's the real fake news.
	That's the real fake news.
	Yeah.
	Yeah. And the idea that it's really,
	really important to fact check X, Y, or Z person who has relatively little influence compared to large media outlets that can cheer everyone, lemming-like, off the cliff edge into the fiery chasm of endless war, that is, boy, fake news.
	How about death news?
	How about slaughter news?
	How about murder news? That is where we really need to focus our attention, but of course, people don't really want to.
	Yeah, and of course, that's a little bit harder.
	It takes a little bit more to actually look into that stuff and you have to learn about stuff and read.
	And it's not, you know, to just be like, oh, Donald Trump said something offensive.
	I'm outraged is easy.
	But it really is amazing.
	I mean, I've seen I've been on panels where I try my best to argue back with them.
	But, you know, I was on a panel with with Brian Stelter on CNN. Where he was saying, he was talking about, it was right after the Parkland High shooting, and he was talking about the video that I guess was trending number one on YouTube where they were saying these are all crisis actors and this wasn't a real shooting.
	Okay, I don't personally buy into that.
	I think, I mean, it seems to me like there was- I really just like those people as a whole.
	Because there's so much to get the state on.
	None of that's true. They're not crisis actors and it's real blood and it's real people suffering and so on.
	But it's like, if you want to get the state, get the state on war.
	Like, why would you get this fake actress stuff?
	It just discredits anybody who opposes state power to think that there's a whole bunch of actors and vials of blood and nonsense like that.
	It's like, I mean, you don't go after the mafia chief for a potential parking violation.
	You get him for all the smoking bodies buried in his basement.
	Right, right. Absolutely.
	I completely agree with you.
	But to see these guys on CNN, and Brian Stelter's talking about how dangerous this is.
	This is dangerous when you have fake news like this.
	And I said to him, I go, why?
	What's going to come of this?
	Like what you just said, I mean, the biggest danger I see is it discredits people who are trying to actually point out what the state is doing.
	But like, what's, okay, so people believe Parkland High wasn't a real, they believe it was staged.
	And now what are they doing with that?
	Nothing. They're just operating with some misinformation.
	Go, what's the danger of you saying that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction and is in bed with Al Qaeda?
	No, the danger of that is that a million people die.
	Or that Assad is gassing his own people.
	Well, that's the current one that's going on.
	And they basically just proved that that last one, people like you and me, we were right about it.
	And it was obvious. It was so obvious to see right after Trump announces, we're getting out of Syria.
	Congratulations, Assad, you've won.
	He's been fighting tooth and nail for victory for years and years, and he's just going to go ahead and blow it.
	It was obvious. And now they're trying to set it up again, man.
	And this is my biggest fear right now is that They put so much pressure on Trump.
	They've got everybody working against him.
	You've got the Democratic establishment, the Republican establishment, the deep state, the media, Hollywood, everyone against you, and you know We're good to go.
	Well, they work his daughter who comes in and cries.
	Yeah, but he said he didn't want to get us involved in Syria at all.
	And he said it was the images he saw of children.
	And then he saw that and he's like, no, man, I'm going after this Assad guy.
	And I think this is a weakness on his part that he can be played with some of this stuff.
	And I think there's tremendous pressure that probably me or you couldn't possibly imagine on him right now.
	And I just hope they're not able to convince him to get us into something because...
	This Syria thing has already been a disaster because of our intervention and it can get a lot worse.
	I think with Trump, one of the things that I find frustrating and I understand it.
	So if you and I – I don't want to speak for you, Dave, but if I were given the presidency or whatever, I'd hate wielding those powers because power corrupts, right?
	Power is dangerous and it's the ring in Lord of the Rings.
	You want to just throw it in Mount Doom and get rid of the damn thing, right?
	Trump is used to working in a voluntary environment for the most part.
	Obviously, he's had to deal with the state in his business in real estate and so on, but he's used to negotiating.
	He's not used to having this kind of power, the power to pardon, the power to declassify, the power to undercut or even fire prosecutors who are abusing their power and so on.
	Because he's a relatively small government guy, because he doesn't like this kind of power, which is what he sacrificed to take That power onto himself.
	I think he's...
	Not using his power effectively.
	Of course, he should declassify stuff that discredits the Mueller.
	He's got the right to do it.
	It's perfectly legal. It's perfectly valid.
	I've heard the argument that he can just use the troops to build the wall.
	Use the troops to build the wall.
	Well, yes, he's the commander-in-chief responsible for protecting the territorial integrity of the United States.
	Of course he should do that. Should he pardon people who've been unjustly targeted by the Mueller witch hunt?
	Of course he should.
	But that's exercising a lot of power.
	And I think he kind of got into the powers that be to reduce the power.
	And so everyone's kind of guiding him towards an increase in power.
	The right thing to do is to use the power to diminish the power in the long run.
	But that means, you know, put the ring on, be a bar mirror, it'll save us.
	But it kind of will, which is one of these ironies that he wants to reduce state power.
	So he's unwilling to use state power in that end.
	But yeah, he shouldn't be complaining on Twitter.
	He should be using the presidential powers to pardon people, to build a wall, to declassify documents that discredit his opposition and so on.
	For sure, I mean, this is what he should be working on, but I don't – I think he's still getting used to the powers that he has and how to use them.
	Yeah, I think that there's something – you know, it's like there's a weird dynamic with Trump where like if – If Trump, from my perspective, was everything I wanted him to be, he never would have won.
	A lot of people get upset about things like he's kind of crass or he'll be crude in certain areas.
	And that's why he won.
	Like, that's why he got there, because he was the only one who had the courage to stand up and call everybody out.
	And like, he wasn't just going to sit here and be like, well, I respectfully disagree with Hillary Clinton, but he's like, no, she's a nasty lady.
	Let me point out to everybody.
	And that was an amazing moment when he looked at her and said, she's a nasty woman.
	Like, this is a... Because she is.
	If you actually look into Hillary Clinton, she is a nasty, nasty person.
	And she has this image that she tries to keep up, which is not her at all.
	And Sometimes I just wish that Trump would be a different type of...
	Person than he is.
	I wish Trump would have come out and given a public address after that New York Times piece that just came out that was saying that these unelected bureaucrats are trying to undermine the elected president.
	You mean the one where in 2017, the New York Times is like, the deep state is a right-wing hysterical conspiracy theory, and then 2018, it's like, we are publishing an editorial from somebody in the deep state who's undermining the Trump presidency with no connection between these two positions.
	It's really amazing.
	And they almost pretend like the first position never existed.
	Like, what are you talking about? This is the new world now where we acknowledge that this happened and thank God for them.
	And then Obama came out and said, he criticized it and goes, well, this isn't the way it's supposed to work.
	These people aren't elected.
	And for a second, it was almost like, oh, is Obama saying something good?
	And then he goes, because they're only stopping like 10% of what he does.
	The other 90% is getting through.
	So Obama's position was actually that this won't work because they're not subverting his entire agenda.
	It's really, it's nuts.
	Sorry, just a tiny aside.
	That speech where Obama was saying, well, you know, how difficult is it to oppose Nazis?
	It's like, not really very difficult at all because there really aren't any left.
	However, the president who refused to tackle or even talk about radical Islam is talking about how it's really, really tough to oppose bad guys.
	It should be really easy to oppose bad guys.
	Yeah, well, he did more than not tackle it.
	I mean, he sent money and weapons into the most radical Islamist's hands.
	So, you know, he fueled radical Islam in a way that you really – I mean, if they want to throw around the treason word, right?
	Like Brennan likes to throw that around about Trump.
	It's like Obama and Brennan and all those guys are guilty of treason.
	And I don't, you know, like we've said for this whole show, I'm not a statist.
	I don't like these like kind of conservative, you know, the commander in chief and blah, blah.
	But I'm sorry, I am a New Yorker.
	And if there are any real enemies of the United States of America, it's Al Qaeda.
	They actually did come here and slaughter Americans.
	And Obama and Brennan funded and armed a branch of Al-Qaeda that later became ISIS. Those guys are guilty of treason and they should be thrown in jail.
	And they sent, what, hundreds of billions of dollars in cash pallets to the regime that continually says death to America.
	Yeah. Amazing.
	All right. Well, listen, I really, really appreciate your time.
	I just wanted to also thank the Teen Vogue website and the writer...
	of the article because it's gets people I guess questioning and asking and hopefully Kim Kelly you will consider the non-aggression principle personal property free trade as not the evils that you have been instructed to believe that they are also wanted to remind everyone to check out Dave is a great comedian it's a skill that I envy And therefore, I'm just going to turn slightly green.
	But he is, of course, host of the Part of the Problem podcast, co-host of the Legion of Skanks podcast, and you should check out his debut comedy special, Libertas, L-I-B-E-R-T-A-S. We will, of course, put the links to all this below, gasdigitalnetwork.com, comicdavesmith.com, and twitter.com, forward slash comicdavesmith.
	Always a great pleasure, my friend.
	I hope we can do it again soon. Thank you so much for your time today.
	Absolutely, Steph. It's always great to be with you.

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