4243 Stefan Molyneux Debates Skyler Turden on Immigration!
Noted NPC Skyler Turden returns to debate The Philosopher Stefan Molyneux. Debate topic is Immigration and the refugee caravan. ▶️ Donate Now: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate▶️ Sign Up For Our Newsletter: http://www.fdrurl.com/newsletterYour support is essential to Freedomain Radio, which is 100% funded by viewers like you. Please support the show by making a one time donation or signing up for a monthly recurring donation at: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate▶️ 1. Donate: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate▶️ 2. Newsletter Sign-Up: http://www.fdrurl.com/newsletter▶️ 3. On YouTube: Subscribe, Click Notification Bell▶️ 4. Subscribe to the Freedomain Podcast: http://www.fdrpodcasts.com▶️ 5. Follow Freedomain on Alternative Platforms🔴 Bitchute: http://bitchute.com/stefanmolyneux🔴 Minds: http://minds.com/stefanmolyneux🔴 Steemit: http://steemit.com/@stefan.molyneux🔴 Gab: http://gab.ai/stefanmolyneux🔴 Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stefanmolyneux🔴 Facebook: http://facebook.com/stefan.molyneux🔴 Instagram: http://instagram.com/stefanmolyneux
Alright, welcome back to this installment of Devil's Advocate.
I'm your host, Skylar Turton. Today we have a guest, Free Domain Radio.
He's a blogger and a noted anti-immigrant activist, Stephen Molyneux.
How are you, sir? I'm very well.
How are you doing today? I'm doing well.
Thanks for being here. And is that Free Domain Radio, is that.tv?
No, just freedomradio.com.
I also wanted to imagine that...
Oh, I just wanted to comment that I'm going to assume that your stance on immigration goes along with the highly French mustache that you have going on here.
So I think we know where we are in terms of the boxing ring.
Well, I'm not necessarily up to date on France's immigration policy, if that's what you're talking about.
Oh, that was an attempt at humor.
Okay, got it. Sorry. Well, you know, listen, not all interviews can get off to a great start.
So let me ask you, Stephen...
Why are you so opposed to immigration, to immigrants in particular?
Well, what have you heard?
Because what you've heard may not be my actual position.
Where are you coming from in your analysis of my analysis?
Well, I mean, listen, you're the guest here.
So why don't you tell us what you think about immigrants and immigration?
Obviously, you're an alt-right activist.
Obviously, you lend up more to the right than most people.
I don't think that's a secret.
I don't want to misrepresent you.
So what's your stance on immigration?
So I'm anti-immigrant.
I'm an alt-right activist.
But you don't want to misrepresent me.
All right. Well, listen, I'm giving you the floor.
All right. So the way that immigration should work in a free society is you should be able to go anywhere you want, but you should not be able to compel other people To fund your movement, right?
So for instance, I should be able to take a taxi anywhere I want in a city, but I should not be able to hold someone up at gunpoint to get my taxi fare.
And the problem with immigration at the moment is not the movement of people.
The problem with immigration at the moment is the movement of money at gunpoint to fund the movement of people.
So people who come to Western countries as a whole get huge amounts of welfare, Get huge amounts of free housing, get free education, get free health care.
All of these things are paid for by existing taxpayers, and that is compelled transfer of funds.
And the problem really is not the movement of people.
It's the coercive redistribution of money.
Sure. Well, first off, I was going to say surprise, but it's antonym day.
It's completely expected that you compared people searching for a better life for their family here in the United States to cabjackers, to carjackers.
So thank you for that.
I think we're off to a great start.
I want to make sure that I understand.
Hang on. Hang on.
Hang on. Hang on. Hang on.
Don't misrepresent my argument.
Otherwise, I might be in grave danger of thinking that you're not listening to me, which, you know, doesn't bode well for an interview.
What I said was, I'm not saying that they're carjackers.
I'm saying it's not fair to steal money for your cab fare, not that you rip the cab driver out of the seat and drive off yourself.
The analogy is somewhat important.
Okay. Well, you use the term gunpoint.
My point is just this violent and inflammatory language.
I don't think we need to start off with that off the bat, but listen, different strokes.
So let me ask you this.
I want to understand that your problem then is not with people entering the country illegally.
It is simply the burden that they place in the taxpayer.
It's the redistribution. That's your issue, your primary issue then.
Well, now it feels a little bit like we're slithering past a rather important fork in the road because you started off talking about immigration and now you're talking about illegal immigration.
Well, I guess it's oxymoron day as well as antonym day because illegal immigration is like saying legal rape or legal theft.
I mean, it's actually immigration is legal according to the laws of the host country.
Illegal immigration is a contradiction in terms.
So if we're going to start talking about illegal immigration, that's a whole different matter.
But did we deal with all legal immigration first?
Now we're going to move on to illegal immigration?
Is that the plan? Well, we're talking about migrants.
We're talking about immigrants. We're talking about people who are trying to seek a better life in this country.
So, yeah, I just wanted to make sure that I understand that you have a problem with redistribution, forced redistribution, compelled of wealth.
Let's say immigrants or natural-born citizens.
So then would it be your position, let's say, to allow immigrants who are not yet citizens to come here if they're Contributing members as opposed to, let's say, families in West Virginia who are benefiting from welfare.
Do we deport all the trailer park folks here in this country because they're doing that?
Or is it just when it comes to brown people?
Well, I mean, you're assuming that nobody in West Virginia can get a tan, which I think is not accurate.
But no, the purpose is, of course, the welfare state was a massive step in the wrong direction in Western civilization.
And the welfare state as it stands, I mean, if you count it for old people, it's post-Second World War.
If you count it for, quote, poor people...
Then it's like sort of 1960s and onwards.
It was a huge mess.
It was a huge mistake. And of course, everyone says, well, you know, America is a nation of immigrants.
It's like, well, yeah, but they came when there was no welfare state, when they had to rely on their whole hard labor, on their communities and so on to get started in life or to get going, which is why between a third and a half of immigrants to America in the 19th century went back home because they didn't really like it.
It's one thing to come to America because you're attracted by the beacon of freedom and free markets and limited government and low taxation and liberty and First Amendment, Second Amendment, all of the good things that America put into its constitution and legal system.
It's quite another thing to come for free stuff.
Coming for freedom is good.
Coming for free stuff is bad.
So I think that the welfare state is a disaster for immigrants, it's a disaster for taxpayers, and it's also a disaster for native-born people in West Virginia.
Freedom versus free stuff, I'd really be thrilled if I run into soundbites, but I want to go back to that point of our, sort of, you mentioned the people who came here originally, people, the original settlers, originally we are a nation of immigrants.
Let me ask you, since you wanted to delineate between legal and illegal immigrants, those people you're talking about, they come here legally?
Sorry, which people come here illegally?
Well, the people who first came, I mean, I'm assuming we're not, unless we're talking First Nations, are we talking First Nations?
Oh, I see what you mean.
So the Europeans... Yeah, smallpox blankets, right?
That's a legal immigration, as we're talking about the starting point.
I mean, I just want to make sure I understand.
You know the smallpox blankets thing is a complete myth, right?
They didn't even have a germ theory back in the day.
There's no evidence that it was ever used as germ warfare.
In fact, as soon as inoculations were available for smallpox, they were given to the native population.
Nobody wanted them to die.
It's like saying, well, you see, the native population in North America gave the Europeans syphilis and tobacco, and therefore, that was a kind of genocide.
It's like, no, the communication of diseases and people who hadn't been exposed to each other's pathogens in the past, it was a huge mess.
It was a huge problem, and the idea that we're going to try and take current Legislation regarding immigration and throw it backwards in time half a millennia, I don't think it's a particularly productive discussion.
Well, my only point is if we say we're a nation of immigrants, and then we talk about the difference between legal immigrants and illegal immigrants, we are a nation of illegal immigrants.
They didn't come here legally, they conquered and committed genocide, and then all of a sudden we want to close the books.
I don't think it's consistent.
So let me ask you this. What do you think should be done?
Are you saying that it was bad for the Europeans to come to North America, that it was a break in moral law?
Yes, there certainly is. Okay, so then we should, if that's your argument, we should not allow it to continue.
So that's in the past.
We can't do anything about that.
But if you consider coming to other people's lands or other people's countries to be a bad thing, then surely you should support stopping it now because two wrongs don't make a right.
If you find something wrong in history, you should want to prevent it from occurring in the present, right?
Well, and if I had the foggiest idea or inkling as to this notion that these people right now coming here in caravans or fleeing persecution in Syria are trying to conquer us and commit genocide as we did, First Nations, I'd agree with you.
The contrast is they came here to kill, these people are coming here for a better life.
So I think we should afford them that.
How do you know that they're coming for a better life?
That's why most immigrants come to the United States.
Would you disagree? You just talked about how great the country is.
Well, sure, but coming here for a better life can mean that you want to come and work and contribute to the society, or for immigrants as a whole, particularly from Mexico and Central America, the vast majority of them end up on welfare.
So it's one thing to say, I want a better life because I wish to pursue all of the free market opportunities to manifest my brilliance in trade, or you want to come and squat on the taxpayer's dime.
That's You know, looking for a better life, but that's not the right way to look for a better life.
Like, if there's some criminal who goes and squats in some rich guy's house while the rich guy is out on vacation, you say, hey man, he's just looking for better housing.
Well, yes, but is it moral what he's doing?
Well, I certainly think that obviously one is, I will concede that one is preferable, right?
But would you concede that both are preferable to genocide?
That's my point. Okay.
Wait, why are we bringing genocide in?
Again, if we're talking about whether it's migrant caravans, whether we're talking about refugees from Syria, I don't think that their intent is nearly as severe as that of the white men who took it from the First Nations who nearly wiped out an entire race of people.
No, but the intent of the Westerners or the Europeans who came to North America was never to wipe out the domestic population, ever.
They traded, they bought land from them legitimately, the same thing happened in South Africa.
And unfortunately, up to 90% of the natives were killed by the smallpox virus, which had also ravaged Europe for many centuries, in fact thousands of years.
And unfortunately, the native population fled, thus carrying the virus, and by the time the Europeans got to most of the villages, most of the population had been killed by this terrible virus, which is a horrible tragedy throughout history, but is not the conscious application of the idea of genocide at all.
And it's incredibly disrespectful to everybody who was involved.
In the settling of North America to say that they were all Nazis.
It's simply incorrect and it's irresponsible for you to say that.
Oh, I didn't bring up the word Nazi at all.
I brought up the word genocide. Oh, right.
Because genocide is never meant to invoke the Nazi imagery.
Okay, got it. We brought smallpox and they gave us vitamin C. So they helped their scurvy.
But, you know, anyway, you cut it.
So let's go with us now.
Let me ask you this. Donald Trump's policy on immigration.
Obviously, you've been a supporter of his.
Are you a supporter of his platform on immigration?
Or, let me be more specific, I guess, since he hasn't really done a whole lot, the platform that he ran on.
What's your stance on that?
What do you think we should do in dealing with immigration today?
Oh, I think America needs to vastly reduce the amount of immigration that's going on at the moment.
And there was, I think, a 30 or 40 year period from the 1920s to the 1960s, where America had almost no net immigration at all.
And America survived and did all right.
And because America has been taking, what, a million legal immigrants a year and a couple of hundred thousand illegals coming into the country for decades now.
So at some point, you have to have a chance to digest your meal.
You know, you're in some lovely buffet in a cruise line, and you're eating like crazy.
At some point, you have to stop, unless you're going to go full Roman vomitorium on everyone.
So at some point, you have to stop and see if you can digest.
And this huge experiment on whether the American character can survive endless waves of third-world immigration, well, it remains a conjecture, and a really shaky conjecture as to whether it's even going to work.
So at some point, you have to stop Taking people in and you have to start assimilating the people who are already here.
So I think Trump doesn't go nearly far enough with regards to immigration.
Of course, the border should be sealed because right now, immigration is a giant welfare program that costs...
So building a wall, you support building a wall.
I want to make sure I understand you correctly.
You're pro-build a wall. Sure.
Yeah, absolutely. Okay.
And if I'm not misunderstanding, you're saying you'd go further than Donald Trump, just no immigration at all to the United States right now?
Well, I mean, I would say let's start with zero and then see how close we can get to it for, you know, 10 or 20 years to find.
Because right now, the people who are coming into America are...
It's not in alignment with traditional American values as a whole.
I mean, there are lots of exceptions individually, but we have to make group decisions when we're looking at large numbers of people.
So the Hispanics who are coming in are voting overwhelmingly for large government, socialism, and they're very anti-libertarian.
The people coming in from the Third World are the same way, and that's why the left is importing them, not because they like them, but because they know they're going to vote for the left.
This is a form of cheating when it comes to elections.
It's stuffing the ballot through immigration, and it's subsidizing the growth of government By taking money from taxpayers and redistributing it to immigrant groups.
That is not an argument.
That is simply a cheat mechanism.
So, yeah, it needs to stay low because the American experiment was small government, free speech, gun ownership and so on.
That was the American experiment. And the immigrants do not match those values.
And if you keep getting more and more immigrants, they don't assimilate.
They simply create enclaves within the larger society and then work to gain political power.
I don't necessarily agree with you on all those points, but I want to hone in on something you just talked about, the First Amendment, the Second Amendment, libertarianism, people migrating here who don't have respect, as you said, for freedom and the ideas of, I think you said, traditional American values, i.e. white. But let me ask you about the Fourteenth Amendment.
Isn't it hypocritical when you're talking about a president who's looking to repeal, potentially, the Fourteenth Amendment on birthright citizenship with an executive order?
Why don't conservatives, why don't libertarians have a problem with that?
But the 14th Amendment did not guarantee birthright citizenship.
It was never designed to deal with illegal aliens.
The entire point of the 14th Amendment was to prevent the Democrats in the South from stripping away the rights of the newly freed black slaves.
And so that's what they wanted to say, was that all the people born inside the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, which means Part of the civil society, the legal society.
So the only people who can be American citizens are those who are born under the aegis of American laws.
In other words, existing legal residents of America.
So this was actually, I think, in 1982.
It was basically put in as a footnote by what I understand as a fairly lefty Supreme Court justice.
It was never put to a referendum.
It was never put to a vote.
The American population was never asked about it.
It was simply inserted. Through a leftist piece of hysterical judicial activism, and it had nothing to do with the 14th Amendment whatsoever.
And since the left does not allow this to be adjudicated in any kind of referendum or any kind of general vote, then yeah, I mean, that which is imposed through legislative fiat can be surely rejected through legislative fiat as well.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander, as they say.
Okay, so a lot of words there.
So you support the executive order repealing the 14th Amendment from Trump?
Well, there are a lot of words there, and I'm pretty sure you didn't listen to any of them, because I just rebutted the argument that he's repealing the 14th Amendment, and you just kind of skated past like I hadn't said anything, but I do understand that you are sucking on your galatoire, so it's a little difficult.
Yeah, the migrant caravan right now.
Why so much fear-mongering?
This is something that I think, you know, we talk about fake news, right?
These people coming to the United States.
Let me ask this. What would you do with these people right now?
These are human beings coming to the United States, seeking a better life.
They're on their way. They arrive.
Stephen Molyneux does what?
Well, I don't know what you mean when you say, what would I do with these people?
I mean, I don't understand what you mean.
Well, you know, okay, we're talking about language that matters.
We talked about natural-born citizen.
Okay, here, you know, we do actually have a responsibility to help asylum seekers, refugees.
These people in the caravan, they're refugees.
No, they're not. No, absolutely not.
To be a refugee, hang on, hang on.
You've got to get the law down on this stuff.
If you want to start discussing this stuff, you need to do more than, you know, skim the headlines of leftist mainstream media outlets.
So they're not refugees.
First of all, Honduras is not in a state of civil war, and even war itself does not make you a refugee.
You have to be specifically fleeing persecution based upon your religion, on your race, on your gender, or something like that, and none of that is occurring on Honduras.
Even if it was, even if it was they get to Mexico, the whole point of being a refugee is you must Apply for refugee status in the first safe country you come to.
Mexico is a safe country for these people.
The fact that they're going through Mexico to get to America automatically disqualifies them as refugees.
So Honduras is not targeting them for their religious beliefs or their ethnicity because they're pretty much indistinguishable from a lot of people in Honduras.
So they're not being targeted and they're not taking asylum in the first country they come to.
So calling them refugees is absolutely false.
You spent a lot of time in Honduras?
You spent a lot of time there?
I'm sorry? Spent a lot of time in Honduras, do you?
I'm just wondering how you know how the entire makeup of a country looks, unless you spend a lot of time there.
Wait, you can't look up demographics online?
You actually have to visit every single place to find out what it's like?
No, because it's a compassionate individual.
You have to go to the Sahara to find out if it's a desert and warm?
I don't quite understand what you mean.
An educated person doesn't need to go everywhere to find out facts.
Bro, you just referred to people as a demographic.
Do you not see how this is a part of the problem?
We're talking about human beings.
I mean, we're talking about a president who puts human beings' children in cages, separating them from their parents.
And by the way, according to your own definition of asylum, I guess we're totally cool with the Syrian refugees.
Come on, man. The president doesn't put people in cages.
The children are separated from the people who cross the border because they can't prove paternity and also because There are deportation proceedings that may occur for the parents that have a different timeframe.
So it is the parents...
It's like saying if someone goes and robs a bank and then gets thrown in jail, the court system is just separating families for no reason.
It's like, well, if you commit an illegal act like crossing a border without permission, you're the one who's breaking up your family, not the people who have to enforce the laws of the country.
But they're not the ones putting the kids in cages.
Who is not the ones putting the kids in cages?
The parents, even if they come here illegally, are not putting their children in cages.
That's Donald Trump. Because they're the ones making the decision that ends up with the children being segregated.
They're not being put in cages. They end up with the parents make decisions which result in the children being segregated from the parents.
So it is the responsibility of the parents for breaking the law.
They're the ones who are putting the sequence of events in motion that end up with their children being separated from them.
If they are, in fact, even They're children because sometimes this can't even be proven.
They could be child traffickers.
They could be people using children as drug mules.
There could be any number of horrible things going on.
As you know, 80% of the women who try to cross the border are sexually assaulted.
It is a horrible, horrible, anarchic situation out there on the border.
So who knows whether these families...
And your solution is to turn them right back.
If 80% are sexually assaulted, your solution is to send them right back out into the cold.
Well, that is... Hang on.
First of all, Mexico is not cold.
But secondly, the solution, of course, has to be more than just what's right there in front of your face, right?
So the solution is, if the wall is built and if the immigration laws are enforced, people will stop trying to cross the border, which means the number of sexual assaults will go down enormously.
It is the poorest border that is drawing people across that is resulting in Untold numbers of women being sexually assaulted and to children being used as pedophile toys and all these horrible things that are occurring because of this porous border.
It's not because we hate people or it's not because America wants to just spit in people's faces.
If you let the caravan through, do you know what you get?
You get another caravan.
And you get another caravan, and you get another caravan, and they get more aggressive, they get better armed.
These caravan members are vastly disproportionately young men, and they're also having weapons and they're shooting at the Mexican police.
You mean we'd be letting in people from war-torn countries and helping them compassionately?
What a fucking nightmare.
I'm sorry? I said, oh no, you mean we'd be letting people in compassionately who are fleeing countries for a better life here in the United States?
What a nightmare, Stephan.
See, yeah.
Just out of curiosity, what does it cost you if people come into the country?
I mean, are they coming to live in your house?
Are they eating your food?
Are they taking your doctor's visits that you can't then go to because the doctors are overworked?
Just out of curiosity, because you seem to have a lot of compassion, I suppose, but what is it costing you personally to actually exercise this compassion?
Or are you just basically shouting, Nice platitudes into a void and expecting other people to step up and pay.
Are you delivering free education to these kids?
Are you going to deliver free dental care to these people?
I mean, are you putting them up in your house?
I mean, you're just saying stuff, but there's nothing in it for you.
No, let me answer your question.
It doesn't cost me any more than it costs you, because as a society we agree to a certain set of moral standards, for example, We agree that we build roads.
We agree that we have a military.
We agree that we have a police force.
And I would like to see included in those moral standards, in the societal clause, helping those who are less fortunate who are coming here, fleeing persecution, people who are refugees.
But I know we're not going to agree on the Honduras line.
Hold on, let me ask you though.
The Syrian refugees then were cool because clearly they would fall under asylum seekers.
So you're cool in bringing in refugees from the Middle East, right?
Wait, are you saying that America is the closest country for people in Syria to find safe haven?
If they're the only ones who will take them?
No, that's not the way that the legal system works with regards to refugees.
So, I mean, the Syrian situation is a mess.
Unfortunately, or fortunately, or whether you like it or not, the reality is that a country being at war does not grant anybody refugee status.
And so the idea that they're refugees because there's a civil war going on there, I think that the way that the refugees or the Syrian situation should be dealt with is America should get out of Syria.
And they should find people in the government who helped support and armed the rebels in Syria, a lot of whom turned out to be ISIS, because that is funding a terrorist organization, which as far as I understand it, pretty criminal.
So I think that the American politicians and, you know, the ones who jumped to my mind, the top of the Obama administration, Secretary of State Clinton, ex-Secretary of State Clinton and so on, well, they should be pursued to find out if they did, in fact, send material...
Aid to terrorist organizations should be dealt with legally, appropriately, and then hopefully the situation in Syria can calm down, as it is beginning to calm down after Trump defeated ISIS. And let's include President Trump in that for defending his best buddies there in Saudi Arabia, some of the biggest funders of terrorism on the globe.
You and I absolutely agree on that.
I do not think that America should be selling any weaponry to Saudi Arabia, which is a horrible funder of terrorism and a horrible theocracy that regularly attacks its own people.
Right. And Donald Trump was the only one who defended them when they killed somebody in interrogation, which I just find incredibly interesting.
Something else I find interesting here is you talk about, obviously, the border with Mexico.
And I understand that this is based off of where we were discussing the caravan.
That's fair. But it seems like you get really concerned just with the Mexican border.
You talked about how people can come in and out.
We don't necessarily know who's coming in.
I understand that, too, because it's not just Mexico.
it's people who could be coming from South America, the Honduras.
By that same token, same thing could be happening in Canada.
We don't know who's coming in from Canada, but I notice that the right wing, the alt-right, conservatives, libertarians, don't seem to be pushing for a wall, which wouldn't work, which we'll get to in a second, between the United States and Canada, only when it involves brown people.
Why is that? - Well, I would assume that it's kind of like triage.
You know, like if you're a doctor on a battlefield, you try and deal with the people you can save who are in dire medical condition.
You don't necessarily deal with the people who've got a minor head wound or a sprained finger.
And so when it comes to sealing up America's borders and controlling illegal immigration, the vast majority of it, of course, is occurring.
On the southern border.
So that's kind of where you go to first.
Now, of course, if it starts to become a problem in the northern border, and I feel like I should cough here at this point in the video, then I'm sure people will turn their attention to the northern border as well.
But it's not racist.
It's simply a rational prioritization of where the major issues are coming from.
I don't know if it's a rationale like that.
I guess, you know, I understand. We probably don't have as many Canadian immigrants because they do have a better quality of life in healthcare.
So I think that's fair.
We can agree on some common ground there.
Let's go back to the idea of a wall.
You know, half of illegal immigrants just overstay visas.
A wall wouldn't work.
Why all of a sudden do conservatives want to get loose with the purse strings when it comes to building a wall, again, on a border with With brown people.
They don't want to get loose with the purse strings when it comes to taking care of our children who need health care, who need education.
But spending on something that isn't proven effective to work to keep out the scary brown people, all of a sudden we get a little loose with the budget.
So what you're saying, if I understand this correctly, is that the wall might only deal with half the problem.
Yeah, there's no proof that a wall would work and it would cost the taxpayer billions upon billions upon billions, if not trillions of dollars.
Wait, you think it costs trillions of dollars to build the wall?
Okay, let's go with billions.
Okay. Well, first of all, the cost-benefit justification for the wall is very simple, in that it's hundreds of billions of dollars cost for illegal immigration in America every year because of this redistribution of income at the point of a gun that I talked about at the beginning.
Which you then said you didn't talk about, right, yeah.
So it's easy to justify it from a cost standpoint.
Let's say that it does only tamp down on half the problem A government solution that deals with half the problem is a very rare government solution because most of the government solutions make the problem worse.
Now, if you think that a wall doesn't work, you have kind of a problem because there's so many examples both in history and in the modern world of walls working very, very well.
There was Hadrian's Wall. Which kept the Roman army at bay.
China built the entire Chinese wall, which has been very effective.
The only human structure visible from space, I think, other than my own forehead.
And if you look at the wall that Israel is building, the wall that Israel is building is very effective.
There are walls around prisons that seem to work quite well.
And I see a wall behind you, in fact, that seems to be keeping people out.
So the idea that a wall doesn't work is just false.
Think of East and West Berlin.
I mean, think of East and West Germany.
There were walls all around.
The communist enclaves to keep people in, they worked extraordinarily well.
Doesn't mean no one got out, but if there hadn't been a wall, just about everyone would have gotten out.
No, listen, I agree with most of, most everything you just said.
There's common ground. You pointed to examples in communist China, communist when you're talking about East and West Germany, and you want to go their direction.
I say maybe go a different direction.
Well, technically the Chinese war was not built under the communists.
It predated them by, well, quite a long time.
Yeah. Well, okay.
Listen, whatever. You want to go the direction of China and East Germany.
Cool. I disagree.
Not only – I think you proved the point that not only do walls keep people out and people who could invent, for example, the next cure for cancer, we don't know.
A lot of these people want to come in and contribute to the very fabric of America just like all of us have.
Although, again, I check – I completely recognize I'm not First Nations.
I don't believe you're First Nations either.
Well, that's very ironic for the right to want to pursue directions that we've seen under communist rule.
Again, I guess I shouldn't be surprised when we're talking about spending a bunch of money on a wall.
Saying that walls work doesn't mean that all walls are virtuous.
Like if you say guns shoot bullets, that doesn't mean you agree with every single time a gun shoots a bullet.
You're simply stating an empirical fact.
Walls do work and they've been used by bad regimes and they've been used by good regimes.
So saying that there are walls around Berlin under the Communists, therefore you want America to become like Communists, is a very bad...
You are a master of misdirection, I will say, Stephen.
You know, right now you use them as examples, and I try to address that point.
And then, you know, I can do that too.
Some guns don't shoot bullets.
Some guns squirt water.
Some guns shoot squibs.
Some guns shoot blanks, like the one that killed Jason Lee.
The point is, we can misdirect all we want.
I'm using the examples that you brought up.
Bro, and then you just try to distance yourself.
Wait, so are you saying, hang on, why didn't you bring up Israel then?
Why didn't you bring up Israel?
If you think that all regimes...
That's a conversation for a whole other day if you want to talk about Israel who attack children.
You did a real cherry-pick there. You almost got that past me.
You did a real cherry-pick there, right?
So I talked about ancient China.
I talked about ancient northern UK. I talked about...
The Germans under communism.
And I also mentioned Israel.
Now, you talked about everything except Israel.
How interesting. Why do you think that you wouldn't talk about Israel?
Do you think that Israel is wrong in building walls to keep out illegal immigration?
I don't understand exactly if they're keeping walls to...
One second here.
I got some water, bro. Okay.
Should have tested that first.
This is going to be a much more fun interview now.
Israel was the question.
Yeah, I want to make sure you have that correct.
If I'm not mistaken, they're building walls to keep out Palestinian children with rocks while they approach them with tanks.
Well, no. There's also walls to keep out some of the people trying to get in from North Africa and other places.
So, yeah, Israel has...
It's more than just the West Bank.
There are walls around Israel that they're using to keep people from coming into Israel who want to be there.
Sure, yeah. Namely kids who want to come in and throw in rocks.
They need walls and they need an arsenal more than God to keep out the Palestinian children.
Yeah, listen, I think it's a great comparison as well.
You're comparing the United States to the Israeli occupation and regime.
You want to continue on that direction.
I think it's right in line with Communist China and Germany, as you mentioned.
I think this goes back to the point.
We talk about the wall a lot and I think we just agreed that There's visa overstays as well as the wall, but we don't really hear people talking about the visa overstays.
People talk about the wall.
President Trump stirred up rhetoric with the wall.
It's become a symbol. I'm not saying that President Trump, Donald Trump, or you are racist.
That remains to be seen, but it would seem that the motivations for a lot of people I'm sorry, was there a question in there? Yeah, at what point do we acknowledge that maybe that's a big part of the underlying motivation?
Again, if we look at the data that we have, people don't talk about the visas, which accounts for the vast majority of illegal immigrants in this country, to use your term.
They only talk about the wall.
Why is it only the wall with Mexico and not people overstaying visas?
Well, I think that a lot of people have talked about visa overstays as a big problem.
That's something that needs to be dealt with, but the wall is a little bit easier to deal with because you've got people coming across the border, you can build a wall to stop them, and visa overstays is a little bit more complex.
And of course, once you have taken your resources to build the wall, you'll have more resources available to start pursuing visa overstays.
So again, if you're bleeding from some big cut, you deal with that before you start dealing with a minor toothache or something.
I mean, you just have to triage And deal with things that are more important.
But I'm sure you understand, and you know as well as I do, that people coming in...
But visas aren't as important. Why aren't visas as important when the majority of illegal immigrants are overstayed visas?
Why isn't that as important? I thought you said it was half.
Yeah, half or majority, depending on whose numbers you use.
All right. So, but the wall, you can build and deal with that issue, and it's one area where you can stop people from coming across.
Figuring out how to deal with the visa overstays is a bit more of a challenge, because those people are already in American society, they're scattered, they're hard to find, whereas a wall is something you can build pretty easily and right away.
And it doesn't mean, like, it doesn't have to be either or.
You can work on both simultaneously, if you want.
You know, for instance, if America stops...
Bombing brown people overseas endlessly, I'm pretty sure you'd have enough resources to deal with immigration issues in the host country.
How about we stop bombing brown people overseas and rather than spend billions of dollars to keep brown people out, spend it on healthcare and education?
Ah, well, see, the reason for that, and this is the question around racism, and it's a very, very interesting question.
So, if you are a Republican, let's say, I mean, just put this, imagine, imagine you were some guy with a different hat.
I don't want to, but let's... Hispanics, for instance, vote overwhelmingly for Democrats, like 80%, sometimes higher depending on the demographic, right?
So if you are a Republican, you must understand that having Hispanics come into the country from Mexico or Central America is directly against your political objectives to get lower taxes and a smaller government, right?
Because they're going to overwhelmingly vote for the left, for the Democrats, for the liberals, right?
So, you understand that having lots of people come in from Mexico, Central America, is bad for the Republicans.
And whether you agree with the Republicans or not, I obviously know that you don't, you at least have to understand why they would have opposition to that.
It's really hard to fight those demographics.
I mean, do you hear the words that are coming out of your mouth?
This is the problem.
Conservatives, Republicans, whatever term of the day, you're talking about tearing people, tearing families apart for politics.
This goes beyond politics.
You're talking about tearing families apart, putting kids in cages because Republicans don't like that they vote overwhelmingly Democrat.
Even if we talk about Republicans and Democrats and differences in how people vote, and yes, it's true, Hispanics vote overwhelmingly Democrat.
Most immigrants, most young people do.
Almost all minorities do.
Surprise! The point is, there's only one party, Republicans, who want to tear families apart over politics.
I'm not talking about tear families apart.
How do Republicans tear families apart again?
By right now, having a president who wants to deport people who are in this country, who have been here for decades, who have children who are legal citizens of this country, and deporting their parents, tearing families apart.
Has Trump actually talked about rounding up people and deporting them?
Yes. Okay, well, let's assume that that's all true.
So what you're saying is the people who came into the country illegally, the people who broke America's laws and crossed the border illegally, have no responsibility whatsoever for the result of breaking their laws.
No, I'm not saying they have no responsibility whatsoever.
But you've only ever talked about Trump's responsibility and Republicans' responsibility and intimations of racism.
Do the people who cross the border and break the laws have any responsibility for the consequences of breaking those laws?
Of course they do. Okay, so stop talking about only Trump and all that.
What is their responsibility?
Is it 60-40?
Is it 70-30? Is it 99-100?
Is it only 1%? I'm just curious, what agency you're giving brown people?
Because you seem to think that the brown people have no agency in their lives whatsoever.
That seems about the most racist statement that I could think of.
I think they have agency and I think that all of us to protect our family and to feed our family if we were capable of leaving a country and fleeing oppression and poverty to the United States would have a moral obligation to do so.
So they came here without going through the proper channels as they've been laid out at this point.
I'll give you that. But the point is, just as you mentioned with work visas, It's not an issue that we can solve right away.
It's not an issue that we can solve. That's why you said you were pointing at the wall.
What I'm saying here is we cannot solve this problem immediately.
So why don't we all err on the side of compassion and offer a path to citizenship for these people so that they can pay for their mistakes, they can become contributing members of the United States economy, and we don't have to tear them apart from their children and put their kids in cages, which if people don't believe me, Google kids in cages Donald Trump.
I'm not making it up, okay?
Okay, no, I get where you're coming from.
And listen, I understand it's a mess.
It's a difficult situation, and nobody relishes the idea of parents leaving a country when they've got kids there.
Nobody likes this.
Nobody likes this. Nobody says, yay, this is going to be a great thing.
But this is precisely why it should never have gotten to this point to begin with.
I'm going to take an extreme example.
It's not direct, but I want people to sort of understand this.
If you are a heroin addict and you've been a heroin addict for 20 years, it's really, really tough to quit.
It's horrible to quit. And it might be very bad for your health to even try to quit, which is kind of why you shouldn't be a heroin addict for 20 years, because it puts you in a hugely ugly situation where there's no pleasant, easy, or positive way out.
And so the fact that immigration laws have basically been unenforced For decades, has put America into the situation where there's no nice way to deal with it.
And that's why we should blame the people who didn't enforce the laws.
Well, I just offered a nice way to deal with it.
How do you think we do? A path to citizenship for people who are here, especially people who have children who were born here.
Again, people can find a path to citizenship where they Can pay taxes, they can work, they can contribute to our economy, which is what they wanted to do in the first place.
No, see, that's just another government program, and the path to citizenship is, we already saw this under Reagan in California, so if you want to turn the entire country into California, you can work on the path to citizenship, because that was done under Reagan, and California has become a complete basket case,
where just about everyone is trying to flee out of California, and you've got needles and Oh, sorry, I was under this ill-conceived notion that it was the most popular state in the Union with the most amount of people there and the biggest industries.
I'm sorry, I didn't realize that California was a fraction the size of Rhode Island covered in feces and needles.
Sorry, I can continue. I just want to make sure that I need to check myself because I wouldn't want to straw man California.
All right, that's an argument I'm just going to have to kind of brush by because I'm not really sure what relevance it has to the facts that California went through this whole process.
And so the solution is we have to get back to private charity.
If you want to start talking about compassion and helping people, you and I are on the same page regarding that, my friend, because I want to help people as much as you do.
But the problem is when you use the government to try and help people, it doesn't help people.
The welfare state was brought in to eliminate poverty, and poverty has not been eliminated.
In fact, poverty has been made worse.
There are more poor people in America now than before the welfare state.
Families have broken up.
Boy, you want to keep families together?
You're concerned about family intact, staying intact and having family integrity?
I'm the same way. If you look at the black community, they had an illegitimacy rate or a single motherhood rate in the 20th percent.
Before the welfare state, now it's 75%.
So families are being destroyed under the welfare state.
It's absolutely terrible.
You need private charity to go in, work with people, figure out what's best for them, rather than just firing this cannon of borrowed money at people to buy their votes and then pretend that you're helping people.
Helping people is a very complex, complicated and difficult thing to do.
The government, yeah, okay, maybe it can build some roads.
Maybe it can arrest people who speed.
Maybe it can enforce some basic property rights.
It can't do things like march into dysfunctional communities and figure out how to make them whole and healthy again.
That is the job of private charity with incentives for success.
So I do want to care.
I do want to help the people.
I just don't want to do it through the agency of the state, which generally makes things worse.
Congratulations on blaming the plight of black people and minorities on new minorities instead of a corrupt system designed to continue oppression.
Congratulations on blaming the problem with black Americans on new migrants coming into this country rather than the capitalist system that favors the wealth.
You're right. Listen, poverty is worse because the rich keep getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.
Way to pin that on a few people coming over in a caravan.
Awesome. So what would you do then if not offer them a path to citizenship?
What do you do with the 12.5 million people who are here and who have children?
Well, you eliminate the welfare state.
Okay. Which is going to raise wages.
You just said it's not practical to try and get rid of people who overstate visas.
You think it's practical to get rid of the welfare state overnight?
Right now we have over 12 million undocumented...
Wait, do you want me to answer the question or not?
I mean, if you're going to just interrupt with practicalities, then you can say anything's impractical.
If you're talking about an ideal solution, that's what I'm talking about.
I mean, America eliminated slavery, for heaven's sakes.
I mean, I think the welfare state can be handled.
I mean, let's do it without a civil war, but yes, it can be handled.
So, if you get rid of the welfare state and then the people who need help can get help, the people who can get jobs will get jobs, people's wages will go up enormously.
Now, the people who are here just for welfare will return to Mexico of their own volition and of their own choice.
And the people who are here to work, well, I don't know.
Let's get rid of the welfare state and let's see what happens afterwards.
Because if the vast majority of people decamp and go back to Mexico, well, there's not as much of an issue to solve.
If most people stay and are happy that they're working instead of being on the welfare state, then that's a whole different conversation.
But right now, we don't have any idea what proportion of people are in either camp.
Okay, could there be common ground if we, let's say, limit the welfare state, and then at that point allow immigration as people, please, free to come and go as they please, because we're no longer, again, if this comes to the problem of paying for them, then the problem isn't them entering the country, it's us paying for them.
So in that case, if we eliminate the possibility of us being burdened to pay for them, then immigration isn't a problem.
We can have a more unified world.
Let me ask you this. According to recent surveys, about 150 million people want to move to America.
How many is too many in your formulation?
What is the upper limit?
Should America just say, okay, let's have 150 million people move to America who don't speak English, who don't have a history of Western ideas of separation of church and state and separation of state and economy and so on?
I'm just curious, is there a caravan, for instance, let's say the caravan had 5 million people in it, would you think that is too many?
What is the upper limit for you in terms of compassion?
Is there any limit to it at all?
You said 150 million people would like to move to the United States, correct?
That is correct. As a compassionate person, as someone with empathy, it is not my job to tell people how big they can dream.
Okay, I'm not looking for a Disney song here.
I'm looking for actual practical answers.
Would you support 150 million people?
Oh, sorry, I thought you were offended at the idea of practicality when I tried to hold you to it earlier.
I'm sorry. No, no, I'm asking for numbers.
You want to ask me for numbers?
I'll give you numbers. I gave you numbers on the wall.
What is the upper limit That you would accept of people coming to America in any given year?
Would you say 150 million is fine?
Well, listen, 150 million.
Coming to America. We're talking about total.
Yeah, it's not my job to tell them how big they contribute.
It's not my job to tell them whether they can want to move to the United States or not.
No, I don't think that's my place.
And I don't think that's the place for people who are here.
Answer the question. You think that America should take 7,000 people in the caravan.
You have no problem with a million people coming into America every year from the third world.
You have no problem with hundreds of thousands of people coming across the border.
So we're talking 1.3, 1.4, 1.5 million.
Do you think that number should be higher or lower or stay about the same with regards to people coming into America?
I don't have a problem with the number being higher because I don't fear brown people.
I don't care where they come from.
I am glad to have them here because I'm compassionate and because that Statue of Liberty reads, give us your poor, your tired, your hungry.
It's not my place.
And I think it's ironic that for people who really don't like women's right to choose, they talk about it being women playing God and want to play God with who can actually choose.
Come to this country or not especially.
Again, I don't think you're necessarily First Nations.
I'm not quite sure.
Especially when it is based, it is predicated on people who came to this country and have occupied it.
You and I, we are the occupation.
We came here and we harmed people.
It is not our land, and so for us to act all of a sudden, moral, virtuous, righteous, that we have a right to it when we don't, I think is very hypocritical.
We have about as much a right to this land as 150 million people who want to move here.
So, okay, so you would place no upper limit on the people who could come into America, regardless of whether there were enough doctors, Regardless of whether there were enough schools, regardless of whether there was enough housing, regardless of whether there was any money in the government's coffers to pay for anything, regardless of any of that,
you would just have people come pouring into the country because it makes you feel good, because it makes you feel compassionate, regardless of whether there's any infrastructure to handle them whatsoever, regardless of what it does to wages, particularly of poor Americans, regardless of what it does to housing costs, particularly to poor Americans, you just say, open the borders, let everyone in, regardless of all of that.
Now let me ask you this. You say we're occupiers, and that's a terrible thing, right?
Do you think that...
Can I answer that other question first?
Well, there wasn't a question there, but you can certainly respond to it.
Oh, okay. Well, thank you.
Thank you for the luxury.
Thank you for granting me the ability to respond to it.
Sarcasm. Yeah, listen, I would not...
I would not – because I don't think that we are entitled to this land.
So until we meet with the chiefs of the original First Nations people, maybe they can put a limit on it.
They can put a number on it. But as a citizen of the world, as a citizen of the global community, I've noticed that you're very – you talk about them hurting poor Americans.
Most poor Americans don't have it as bad as the poor in Honduras or Mexico.
So I care about them just as much as I care about poor Americans.
That would be my answer. As a citizen of the world, but continue with the next point.
Just a bunch of platitudes with no policy, but all right.
So let me ask you this.
Do you think that the war to end slavery was, let's say that the Civil War, we'll take the popular narrative, like the Civil War in America, I think that slavery could have been eliminated immediately upon the founding of this country if it wasn't dominated by white,
cis, imperialist males.
So I would have liked to see that problem solved before a war.
So I don't think it was necessary.
I think it was necessary because of the mistakes of the founders who we love to deify when in fact I think they could use a little bit more objective examining.
Do you believe that wealth or land that is accumulated through the exploitation of slavery is justly owned?
No, of course not.
Do you know that most of the indigenous tribes within North America practiced slavery?
They did not. They did.
They did not. They really did.
Well, that just goes to he said, she said, right, what he said, he said here, where people can run a Google search on this just like with children in cages.
You said this administration has not put children in cages.
They did. It happened.
And the Native Americans, I mean, many of them didn't even have concepts of personal property.
So I don't know how if you don't have a concept of personal property, you enslave somebody as property.
Maybe when they saw the Europeans come in and start scalping people, they got a little bow and arrow shy.
But no, they didn't enslave each other.
Not like we did. Well, let me ask you this.
If it's true that the indigenous population practiced slavery, then wouldn't that mean that their ownership of the land and the profits of slavery was illegitimate?
Yeah, well, that's a moot point, because they didn't practice slavery.
That was the white man who brought it with them.
So are you saying that non-whites don't practice slavery?
I'm just trying to understand your historical understanding here.
I didn't say non-whites. I said there. I said the white man brought it with him to this land, which became the United States.
The colonialists, the imperialists at that point, they were a peaceful culture.
Sure, you did have people who would get into conflict.
That'll happen when you have nomadic...
And you have sedentary tribes, right?
But that's not the same as enslaving people, not to the degree that it happened on a massive scale, again, through systemic oppression from colonialism and imperialists.
They didn't do it. So I don't think it's a fair comparison between what they had done and then what the settlers, who then became later on the founding fathers of the United States, like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, people who had slaves working in their house had done.
Let me ask you this then.
So let me ask you this.
This doesn't require accepting basic historical facts, so let's go with this.
Do you think that a culture that fought hard to end slavery and has apologized for slavery and regrets slavery is superior to a culture that practiced slavery but has never apologized for it?
Let me guess. This next question is where you try to lead me down the path and say, oh, First Nations people haven't apologized for slavery.
No, no, no. Just answer the question.
Don't try and look down the tunnel of time.
That's not being honest.
Just answer the question. That fought hard to end slavery, and not just in its own domains, in its own countries, but also around the world, to end the international practice of slavery, is a culture that burned hundreds of thousands of lives and trillions of dollars of blood and treasure to end slavery around the world and has apologized for slavery and feels bad about it and has paid reparations to some degree.
Do you think that a culture that has apologized for slavery and worked to end slavery is morally better than a culture that has never apologized for slavery?
Okay, I'm going to answer your question.
The point has nothing to do with indigenous population.
I'm going to answer your question, and then after this we're going to have to wrap it up and leave.
I will answer your question, but if at the end of this tunnel of time it's going where I think it's going, I'm going to be pissed.
Okay, that's fair.
Yes, the answer is yes.
I think obviously it's superior for a nation who has apologized and made reparations.
Right. So...
You must then be much more critical of Muslim culture or Islamic culture, which practiced slavery at far greater levels than the Europeans ever did and for far longer.
And there are estimates that tens of millions of blacks from Africa were killed, died, as the result of slavery in the Muslim countries.
So therefore you must believe that Western culture It's superior to Muslim culture because Muslim culture, to my knowledge, has not had a giant mea culpa, stare into the mirror, soul-searching repudiation of a history of slavery.
I told if it was going where I thought it was going, I was going to be pissed and you know exactly it's the same thing.
You just swapped out one brown people with First Nations for another with Muslims.
What are you talking about? You don't have to be a brown person to be a Muslim?
What are you crazy? Every single argument that I hear is othering, is marginalizing and as a citizen of the world, as someone who sees myself as compassionate, as someone who does not want to see families torn apart, as someone who is not a hypocrite because they have no claim to this land, I disagree with you, and I think that that's a dirty trick.
I told you I wasn't going to be happy with it, and I'm not.
It's free domain radio, if I'm not mistaken.
Stephen, thank you for taking the time.
I don't think we'll be having you back anytime soon.
You did exactly what I told.
I said you better not.
I said you better not.
Yeah, better not use facts, reason, and evidence, man.
That's rough on you. I get it.
I get it. I appreciate the conversation, man.
It was a lot of fun. Is someone on my lighter?
Let's get them off. Hey, let's get him off!
That sounds great. I wish I was in studio right now.
