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July 13, 2019 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
53:18
New Hampshire Liberty Forum - Keynote Speaker: Stefan Molyneux from Freedomain Radio (Part 1)
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It's always tough you get these speakers lined up, and you're thinking like a theme and how things are going and this year a lot of different thoughts went through my head and we talked about the speaker for closing it who could sum up what we do and More and more people more and more people like us are attracted to anarchy and not the word anarchy that I the world thinks, but the true meaning of anarchy.
So I could think of nothing better than to get a volunteer, because I skipped his name too, but Anarco Jesse did a lot of volunteering.
All right?
So I'm going to pass the microphone.
He wants to talk about a little bit of anarchy, and he's going to introduce our next speaker.
So please welcome Anarko Jesse.
Thank you.
I, uh... I...
Pssh.
This was kind of thrust on me last minute, Chris.
All this is like, hey, how would you like to come up and introduce the last speaker?
I'm like, fantastic.
This would be great.
So I'm kind of flying by the seat of my pants here.
But I think we would all agree that we had some great speakers here today, real pioneers of liberty, people that have been involved in the liberty movement in and out and all around.
And I've learned a few things.
I was running around a lot, so I didn't get to sit in on a lot of speakers, but every time that I did step into a room to make sure my volunteers were doing things that they were supposed to be doing, and I was getting on their case, I heard things that I liked.
But this last speaker we have has been a really big part of my libertarianism.
He has been truly A boon to myself and the Liberty movement.
We all know who he is and he doesn't really need much of an introduction, but I'm just gonna go over kind of his resume and how he's kind of affected me and other libertarians and anarchists that I know.
He's a software entrepreneur and executive.
He co-founded his own successful company and has worked for a number of years as a chief technical officer.
Now, this is just, you know, business stuff.
For Liberty, He has been, like I said, a boon to our community.
He's been this voice that has always shouted, consistency, consistency, consistency.
And if that's one thing that libertarians need, and if that's one thing that libertarians need, it's consistency.
Conservatism, liberalism, they mean nothing anymore.
They're watered down, political, they're issues.
It's not a philosophy to them.
You know, we live a philosophy.
We have a lifestyle.
We have our own way.
We have principles.
We don't just pick and choose, cherry-pick what we're all about.
And this man has exercised such rigor and scholastic fortitude in getting to that core and trying to maintain it.
Trying to maintain That intellectual and what's reality?
I mean, the philosophy is always an observation of reality and trying to draw conclusions.
and he has drawn the most concise and poignant conclusions that I have ever heard and many others have ever heard.
He's authored five books regarding libertarianism and anarchy.
He's authored five books regarding libertarianism and anarchy.
He's produced over 1,500 podcasts.
He has over 5,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel, which is actually how I found him.
And he has over 4 million downloads a year.
I actually met-- this is Stéphane Molyneux.
I met this man for the first time a couple nights ago.
I ran up to Jack Shimmick's room to grab a beer, and I grabbed it, and I had to run back downstairs, and I was running.
I was hustling, and there was Stefan Molyneux.
He was waiting for the elevator, and it was just going to be me and him, and I introduced myself.
I'm Jesse Maloney, and he's like, oh, hey, how are you doing?
And I'm like...
And I'm getting all sweaty, and sweaty palms and all that.
And I was really excited, and then I got in the elevator, and I got all sycophantic.
I'm like, oh, I'm like your biggest supporter.
But he was a very, very, very nice gentleman.
I had dinner with him later on, and he was very down to earth.
Like Chris said, there was no prima donnas.
He was so real, and I think his intellectual rigor is something that's going to resonate and echo for hundreds of years.
Right now, we all quote Rothbard and Voltaire and Proudhon and all these philosophers and thinkers from the past.
And I'm almost positive 100 years from now, people say, ah, but Molyneux said.
And so without further ado, I would like to introduce Stéphane Molyneux.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
I appreciate that.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
I'm wireless, and there's a lot of cameras.
We have an AV group, like everyone here was in the AV society in high school.
In so many cameras, I feel I should be protesting that I did not have sexual relations with some woman.
Somewhere.
Somehow.
Maybe you.
Anyway.
Well, thank you.
That's a very kind introduction.
I really do appreciate it.
As I said, my name is Stephan Molyneux.
I run a podcast, which usually translates into Not Good Enough for Radio.
And hopefully, I'm more used to doing just one camera, a red room, and just me.
So there's a lot of eyeballs here.
I'll try not to let it goose me.
I actually wanted them to build a red room.
up here.
I'd do the talk and just wave from the top, but apparently that wasn't going to happen.
Sorry for those who've got the cameras.
I like to walk a little, so I'll be moving.
You won't know where I am.
I'm the wind.
I'm going to do a talk today about what I hope is going to be some very powerful and effective ways for you to take more of an offensive position when it comes to debating not anarchism versus statism, really, but freedom versus coercion.
Because what we do, if I may go out on a limb here, what we do as individuals is we fight evil.
And I know that sounds like a superhero description, but it is.
Right?
Because if the future is going to be free, it's going to be free because we don the silly tights and the capes of philosophy, reason, evidence, empiricism, and win the battle of ideas.
That is the only way that freedom is going to exist in the future where we can build a bridge to the libertopia we all wish we could live in today, but all we can do is lay down our time and energy in building that bridge to the future.
And I've been having these kinds of political debates and arguments for about 25 years, and I've made such a staggering number of mistakes in a year You know, when I say we should take the offensive, I've certainly been offensive to many, many people, and that's not exactly what I'm talking about.
But I've made so many mistakes that I thought it worthwhile circling back, looking at some of the people I accidentally ran over, learning the lessons so we can drive better.
And so I've developed an argument and an approach called the Against Me argument, and I'll go a little bit into that.
But I don't want to talk for the whole time.
It's not like the world is, what, 1,500 podcasts?
It's not like the world is short of me talking.
So what I'd like to do is I'd like to just go over the theory of the Against Me argument, and then If you would like to grab a microphone, I'd like to take it for a spin with the devil's advocate position from people in the audience.
We all have at least one of these.
I have like a dozen.
The arguments that you just always seem to get stuck on when you're speaking about freedom or voluntarism or peaceful solutions to social problems.
It sticks like a hairball.
You just can't ever quite get that.
And I'd like to take the against-me argument, run that through, so you would then bring this position up.
Everyone who does it can get, if they want.
I'll hand out a book.
This is my little incentive.
So I'd like to just do a little bit of the theory, and then let's try some role plays, put it to the test, and see if it works.
And if it doesn't, full refund.
So we fight evil, and one of the great challenges with fighting evil is you can't fight evil.
And the reason you can't fight evil is that the moment that people see that it's evil, it loses its power.
So if we said, you know what we should do is we should bring back slavery, everybody would say, well, no, no, that's evil.
So it would never happen.
So we don't actually fight evil.
Because you can't fight evil.
What we fight is evil that people think is good.
Right?
That's the real challenge that we face.
Because if everybody said, well, the initiation of the use of force is evil, statism is evil, we would have to lay down our arms because we'd be done.
So the challenge is to get people to understand that what they think is virtuous It's in fact evil, the initiation of the use of force.
I think we would all agree as the foundation of that property rights and the initiation of the use against the initiation of the force and for property rights, which are really two sides of the same coin.
So the against me argument is designed to be a kind of talcum powder.
And what I mean by that is, if you've all seen movies where there's some invisible guy, right?
Some guy you can't see.
And all you see is, you know, like something moving around because he's picking something up or whatever.
And then something always happens in the movie.
There's like some dust or some talcum powder or something, and you see the outline of the guy, right?
And what we're trying to do is to get people to see the gun that's in the room that nobody talks about, which is the initiation of the use of force that is at the core of the statist philosophy.
And it's really hard to get people to see that gun in the room.
It's like going to a bunch of fish and saying, you're swimming in water.
And they say, what water?
We don't know because it's all we know.
It's our entire environment.
People can't see it.
And the against me argument is really designed to show the violence that is in people's advocation of statist solutions to social problems.
Because there are two characteristics of evil that I think are really, really important to understand.
The first is that it's really, really, really effective.
I mean, it works really, really well.
If you want to cow a population, if you want to take their money, if you want to put their children in these lack of concentration camps called public schools, if you want to rule them, the gun Works everywhere, always, beautifully.
But it only works if people won't look at it.
Violence is incredibly effective as a tool of ruling what, of course, I call the human tax livestock.
But it's only effective to the degree to which people don't look at it.
Because the moment people see the coercion that is at the root of statism, They see that it's immoral, and statism as a philosophy falls.
So the first characteristic of evil is that it is incredibly effective.
And we all know this, right?
Is it six years now that this Iraq war has been going on?
Six?
It's longer than the Second World War, right?
It's actually, I think, coming on for longer than U.S.
involvement in the First and Second World War.
It's amazing.
It's the incredible invisible war.
There's no bodies.
Six years, you can look at the mainstream media and you can't see any of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who've been killed or driven out.
You can't even take a photograph of a flag-draped coffin coming off a plane at Andrews Air Base.
That's not legal.
Did they change that?
Okay, good.
So in year six, you can now maybe take a photograph of a body.
But what you see is you see these yearbook photos of these guys, you know?
The guys who've fallen like they tripped.
When we look at something like a war, you hear patriotism, flags, protection of the realm, defense of the homeland, service to the nation, and this and that.
So you hear all of these amazing, morally eloquent terms, but what you'll never see is the reality of war, which is people being disassembled by machinery and bullets.
And that's very clear why they would not want you to see that.
Because if people see violence, they oppose violence.
So the violence has to be hidden in order for it to work.
And the argument that I'm going to lay out for you is designed to help you show the hidden violence that is in the status position.
And to take the offense, right?
Because generally, and I'm going to generalize here, but maybe I think it'll make sense.
The way that we approach a statist argument, somebody who's advocating a statist position, or when we propose a voluntarist position, is we'll take one of two approaches.
There's either the pragmatic, practical approach—it doesn't work—or there's the abstract, moral approach.
The initiation of the use of force is wrong.
The government is an agency which is a monopoly of individuals who claim the right to initiate violence in a particular geographical area.
And that's very abstract and that's very hard for people to connect with in a visceral way.
Because another thing that's true about violence is that there's very few people who want to do it directly.
People will support it in the abstract as long as they don't connect it with what is actually happening at the other end of the bullet or the bomb.
But there's very few people who actually want to do it directly.
So that's what we need to do, is to bring this violence that is inherent in the system that we live in to people's understanding.
When you take the pragmatic approach, right?
So you argue the welfare state, right?
What if someone says, oh, the welfare state is great or necessary or good or whatever.
The pragmatic answer is to say, well, but you know, there were these friendly societies before we had the welfare state.
They did a much more effective job.
There's private charities.
And by the way, the number of poor was declining 1% a year until the welfare state came in in the early 60s.
And then it leveled off and now it's increasing.
So it doesn't actually solve poverty and so on.
And you end up arguing statistics, which can always be criticized for bias or interpretation, you end up having to be the libertarian Googlebot research robot, right?
Where you're sort of like, oh, intellectual property rights!
Let me go and study intellectual property rights, and then I'll come back, and I have to become the master of everything, and I have to understand everything, and I have to know every statistic, and here are my charts, and here are my graphs, and here... I mean, it's exhausting, right?
And you can't ever become An expert at everything.
And when you finally do have the ironclad case as to how the welfare state contributes to the problems of poverty, people say, well, but it's a social contract, so... I'm glad you did all that research.
I'm not giving you a degree, and I'm going to walk away from the argument anyway.
And maybe there's, I mean, anyone... We've all done that, right?
So we've all... And it's not a lot of fun, right?
I mean, after a while, you sort of feel like, man, this wall is really beginning to...
Now, the second approach is where we take the abstract argument.
Well, you see, the welfare state relies upon the initiation of force against usually legally disarmed citizens.
That's immoral.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
And what do people say?
Anyone?
What do people say to that argument?
Well, it's not the initiation of force because it's a social contract.
You can leave at any time.
You vote.
You can change the system.
You can get involved.
You can do this.
You can do that, right?
So it's not force because, you know, When you're in my house, you do as I say, right?
I mean, that's what people say.
That's how they view the government, right?
And then you can argue about the social contract, which is a real quagmire, right?
It's really hard to pin people down on the social contract.
So, I have not found those two approaches to work, and I've poured an embarrassing amount of time and energy into just those approaches to making these arguments.
So in desperation, you know, when you're looking over that cliff saying, if I have one more argument like this, I'm going to jump.
I started to try and take another approach, right?
Because I like to be so proactive that I wait until I'm really desperate before I come up with a new approach.
So my third approach doesn't rely on any statistics.
Praise be to the heavens above.
I don't have to look up everything all the time.
And then just have people say, well, those come from the Cato Institute.
Come on.
Might as well be quoting from Hitler.
And I don't have to have all these abstract arguments against the social contract and go into that quagmire, which never seems to come out particularly effectively.
So I wanted to come up with a third way.
And I'll give you an example of this in action, and then I'll give you a tiny bit of theory, and then, you know, grab a mic and let's take this thing for a spin and see how it works.
So, in a call-in show that I do every Sunday at 4 p.m.
Eastern, a listener brought a friend.
You know, that's always exciting, because you've always got to start from zero, right?
And his friend, this was a woman who was a teacher, and she said, I'm really for the surge in Iraq.
I think it's going to work.
I think it's good.
I think it's going to be effective.
I'm really behind it, and I hear that you're not.
It's like, well, it's not that I'm against the surge.
A doctor isn't against one cancer.
And my old way of arguing would have been, "Ah, 913 lives, the start of the Iraq war, and it's imperialism, which is really bad, and the troops are paid by aggression against citizens, and, and, and, and, and."
In other words, trying to move her like the four-ton piece of cheese through the grater of education in libertarian principles.
I see other people know that grater, right?
We've all had our fingers, right?
Ow!
Ow!
But you can't.
You can't push a camel through the eye of the needle, right?
You can't.
Yes, you just need a big needle.
I don't have that big a needle.
So I took another approach.
And I'll just run through the argument briefly.
We'll then apply it to stuff that works, hopefully, for you guys.
But what I did was I said, so you're for the search, right?
And I didn't say, but this is the fifth surge, and there were four before, and they didn't work, right?
And I said, that's fine.
I said, I completely respect your right to be for the surge.
You like the surge?
Go hug the surge.
I'm fine with it, you know?
Take it out for dinner.
Buy it some flowers.
Whatever you like, you know?
I said, and I would never, never think of using force against you because of your opinion.
I would never dream of hiring guys in costume to come to your house and cut you off to some torture chamber because you like The Surge.
You're free to like The Surge.
I respect your opinion.
She was a little surprised.
I thought you were an anarchist.
Aren't you supposed to yell at me?
And so I then said, I don't agree with The Surge.
Do you give me the same respect and consideration to be against the surge as I'm giving you to be for the surge?
What you gonna say?
No.
I want the guys in costume to come to Europe.
Because we have to, you know, you've got to use the levers that people already believe in, the ethics, right?
And people already believe in freedom of expression, right?
So if I say, look, I'm allowed to disagree with you, right?
You don't advocate the use of force against me because I disagree with you, right?
Of course she's going to say no.
Of course I don't think that you should.
She said, you shouldn't be aggressed against because you disagree with me.
I said, excellent.
Progress.
I'm not used to this.
Let me get used to this.
I'm dizzy.
And so then I said, now, it wouldn't make any sense at all, logically, if I was allowed to disagree with you, but I could not act upon that disagreement.
That's an illusory right.
It's like our right to money, right?
Like if, I don't know, I had some daughter in the Middle Ages, and I said, you are free to marry whoever you want, but you have to marry the man I choose.
We understand that would be a logical contradiction, right?
That you can't be free to disagree with someone, but not be able to act upon that disagreement, right?
That's like having the right to a free press, but not the right to type anything, right?
I mean, it wouldn't make any sense.
And she said, yes, it wouldn't make any sense if you were allowed to, if I said, it's okay for you to disagree with me, but you can't act on that disagreement.
Excellent.
I'm even more dizzy now.
Like, how can we be?
This should be three months down the road.
And I said, okay, so if you like the surge, you like your surge, no problem.
Then you should take out your checkbook, and you should write, I think he goes by Don as well, back then, Donnie Rumsfeld, here's my money, because I'm so down with the surge, here's my cash, right?
Because you should be free to support the surge.
So pay the money, if you like.
Clearly, since you have already agreed, That I am free not only to disagree with you, but to act tangibly on that disagreement, because there would be no right to disagreement otherwise.
I'm allowed to not write a check to Donnie for something I disagree with.
And there was a pause.
And you know, somebody's brain hangs in the balance, you know?
Like a pendulum, you know?
A big wet thing going back and forth, you know?
Reason!
Propaganda!
Reason!
Propaganda!
It's like one of those claw things where you're trying to get something out of the, you know?
Come on!
Fall here!
Fall here!
Actually, there.
There.
So, she finally said, well, yeah.
Yeah.
That makes sense.
If you're free to disagree with the surge, then you're free to not pay for it, right?
And, shockingly, that was it.
Now, that doesn't teach her volunteerism, obviously.
It doesn't teach her the theory.
It doesn't teach her all of this lovely stuff that we sit and dream and reason about and think about and talk about and read about.
But what it does do is it puts her on the defensive.
And this is the core of the against-me argument.
Right?
So the welfare state.
We'll do that one.
Then we'll do anything that you guys want to talk about.
Because I know it's really tough to get a room for libertarians to grab a mic.
But if you can, somehow, find it within yourself to want to speak.
We'll have some fun.
So the welfare state.
Okay, so someone says the welfare state's good, right?
So I say, well, I respect your decision.
You'd like the welfare state?
I respect it.
I would never dream of using violence to prevent you from acting upon your beliefs, your values, your virtues, what you consider to be moral, just, right, and good.
Never dream of it.
Gun it safely in its holster.
Will you accord me the same respect that I am according you?
Am I free to disagree with you without violence?
Am I free to not like the welfare state without you thinking I should be thrown in jail?
Am I free to disagree?
Because if we don't understand that in a free society there's a plurality of solutions, statism is this fantasy—well, it's not really a fantasy, let me—statism is the belief that there's one solution that—sorry, honey.
That was enthusiastic, I feel that.
Statism is the belief that there's one solution, right?
So we either have to have a welfare state or we can't have a welfare state.
We either have to have social security or there's nothing.
It's binary.
Like economic planning in the old Soviet Union, right?
There's no plurality of solutions.
If people like the welfare state, send the checks.
If people don't like the welfare state, which I assume is most of us here, are we free to withhold our consent, our economic consent?
from the welfare state.
The amazing thing, and I've done this so many times now, but the amazing thing about this, I hope you can get a sense of how it puts you on the offensive, and you don't have to look up anything.
You don't have to look up anything.
You don't have to become the master of time, space, dimensions, statistics, charts, fields.
You don't have to become the PhD in everything, which is our constant temptation.
Ooh, with a little more knowledge, I can change the world.
With some more numbers.
So the against me argument puts you in the offensive, because you're extending a courtesy to people which says, you're free to believe what you believe, I respect your right to believe what you believe, and I respect your right to act on it.
Will you accord me the same respect?
This is a volatile argument to make.
Just so you know, right?
It's volatile.
Try this with family members.
Do you support the use of violence against me for disagreeing with you?
Because that's really what Stateism is.
Am I allowed to disagree with you about the war?
Am I allowed to disagree with you about the welfare state?
Am I allowed to disagree with you about Social Security?
Am I allowed to disagree with you about Homeland Security?
About the need for a passport?
Am I allowed to disagree with you Without you advocating the use of force against me.
Now, a few people will openly say, oh no, force is good against you.
It will.
I mean, shockingly, it happens, right?
A few people will say, yeah, that's the deal.
You disagree with me about the welfare state?
Yeah, I support you getting gunned to your temple and thrown into a jail.
Now, you know, you can't wrestle with someone who's got a bazooka, right?
If you're not going to play by the rules, right?
I don't like to serve up a tennis ball to somebody with a shotgun.
No lasers, right?
If somebody is going to openly say to you, yes, I advocate the use of violence against you for disagreeing with me, there's no civilized debate or interaction that is possible at all.
I would never debate with somebody, and I've had that, people will say that to me, in which case it's like, bye-bye.
Because I'm not going to pretend to debate with somebody who's got a gun.
I'm not going to pretend to debate with somebody whose final reasonable position is me being thrown in prison for disagreeing.
I'm not going to give that violent premise the appearance of a rational conversation.
That's the withdrawal of consent.
I am a big fan of objectivism.
So, this against me argument really comes down to when you hear a statist position, you don't have to talk the person out of the statist position.
That's a statist premise, that we have to talk statists out of their position.
Am I free to disagree with you?
Without you advocating the use of violence against me.
Because remember, I said earlier, violence, the more abstract violence is, the easier it is for people to live with it.
That's why you don't see pictures of bodies in the newspapers.
The more abstract it is, The easier it is for people to support it.
So we need to, this is the talcum powder on the invisible man, the invisible gun in the room.
Not, statism is coercion against legally disarmed citizens, which it is, but that's for most people who don't have the same relationship to Between concepts and reality, we have this weird special pipeline.
You know, like, most people have a relationship between concepts and reality, like, lower intestine, you know, like, it just goes all the way around, takes forever.
We're like those ads for antacids, you know, this one tube and a... One tube and a stomach, that's all it is, right?
So, we get, concepts go straight through us.
This is a really bad metaphor.
I'm sorry, I just...
Sometimes when you wing it, it goes really well, and other times you're some Imodium ad.
So I'm sorry about that.
This is why I'm walking around, you see.
But we have a very visceral and strong relationship between concepts and practice, between theory and practice.
Most people don't.
So in order for them to understand that what they're advocating is the use of violence, you have to have the eyeball-to-eyeball.
Are you actually and honestly going to sit there And advocate the use of violence against me for disagreeing with you.
Against me!
Not some abstract citizenry, not some social class, not some contract from the gods, but against me.
Are you advocating the use of force against me?
That makes people a little uncomfortable.
But, you know, frankly, haven't we spent enough time being a little uncomfortable that it's time to make other people feel a little uncomfortable? haven't we spent enough time being a little uncomfortable that It's tough for us to look like the reasonable ones, right?
It is.
Because we're so far outside what people accept as true and real and virtuous that, you know, we look a little like we should come with tinfoil, right?
I mean, we do, right?
But when you can say to somebody, I support your right to disagree with me, do you return to me the same mature, civilized respect for disagreement without violence?
We become the reasonable ones, the ones who are giving respect to a difference of opinion and validly and morally asking for the same respect in return.
And when we point out that ours is the pluralistic and peaceful solution to the problems of poverty, of education, of security for the aged and the infirm, that ours is the peaceful, pluralistic, positive, rational, empirically valid, moral approach to solving these problems.
If we keep reminding people that violence is the very worst conceivable way to solve social problems, then we are the reasonable ones.
We are the ones who accept plurality of opinions within society.
We are the ones who will not pick up the gun unless there's a bullet arrowing its ray right towards us, which, you know, has not happened on my show yet.
That's why I have my compound in Canada.
We are the reasonable ones.
We are the ones who will say to people, I respect your difference of opinion, will you respect mine?
We point out that they're holding a gun.
And in any debate, the first guy to pull out a gun, he might win in a way, okay?
But he loses.
The battle of ideas.
Anybody who says, well, we have to force people to be good, obviously doesn't believe in virtue, doesn't believe in rationality, doesn't believe in reasonableness, in which case, why debate?
But anybody who debates obviously understands that reason and evidence are the way to go.
And this argument, the against me argument, it's really scary to do.
At least it was for me.
Maybe you're all more courageous than me.
But it's really scary to do because it really It puts your relationship with whoever you're talking about.
Could be some guy on a plane, could be your brother.
Puts your relationship to a real test, right?
Because when you stay abstract, and you stay statistics, and you stay social contract, and you stay what Jefferson said, right?
Whatever, right?
You know, the Fed is whatever.
And I agree with all of those, right?
But when you put it down to eyeball to eyeball, are you saying that you advocate the use of force against me for disagreeing with you?
That is a hot moment in a relationship, right?
That is a scary moment in a relationship because what if they say yes?
A challenge.
Now, of course, if they say yes, you can give them a little bit of time.
It could be the heat of the moment, and so on.
But this argument I have found to be, after 20 years of, as you can clearly see, shredding my hair against the wall of other people's indifference to statistics and abstract arguments, this I have found to be an incredibly powerful argument, and an incredible argument for, especially if you're debating with other people around.
Because other people will then see that you're the one who allows for plurality and peaceful solutions and the other person is the one using force.
That is an incredibly powerful moral position to be in because when people see the gun, they reject the gun.
So the entire point of the statist approach is to talk about everything but the reality of the situation, which is someone's getting a gun to their head for disagreeing.
Whether it's with the general opinion or the opinion of some politician or whoever.
Someone's getting a gun to the head.
Anybody sees that, statism collapses completely.
And it's our job, I believe, since life is short and we have a long way to go, to be as effective as humanly possible in pointing this gun in the room out over and over and over again.
Because when it's seen, you beat evil by getting people to see that it's evil, right?
And what is the government?
The government should come with a A trademark or a slogan.
Government!
Free evil!
That's what the government is.
Free evil.
And we want people to see that violence.
When they see that violence, they will reject that violence.
That doesn't mean that they'll, you know, all the way over to our position and so on, but at least they will get that violence is involved in the state of solution, and violence is at the core of the state of solution, and we are the ones Who want a respectful and rational plurality of opinion, a free market of ideas to triumph in the solving of social problems, which are very large and very serious and which we need to address.
So that's it for the speech part.
So the next thing is, if you've had a chance... Question?
Oh, stretching?
Devil away!
Devil away!
Do you want a mic?
I didn't mention this, I just wanted to wait for the first volunteer.
At the end, we do a duet.
If you've never heard me sing, you might think that was a bad idea.
I've taken my stab at that a few times, too.
Is this an argument that you've had before that's kind of nutty-makin'?
It's related to an argument that I've had before.
Do you agree that the difference between a democracy and a republic is that in a democracy, people make decisions about government policy directly, and in a republic, we choose people to make those decisions for us?
Well, I mean, my first response is to say that the difference between a republic and a democracy is the illusory paperwork.
But let me let me explain why I bring this up.
Yeah, sorry, forget my pet answer.
That's okay.
Now, assuming that you think that we live in a republic, or some vague approximation of it, I understand the elections don't work quite the way they should and the press doesn't work quite the way it should, but assuming that we did for a moment, Somebody whom you choose to make those decisions might, within the scope that you think is proper, within government, make the decision in a direction differently than you personally would make it.
Sorry, let me just make sure that's a bit of a cheese grater for me.
Let me just make sure I get through that one.
So, if I elect Barack Obama because I like his policies, then... Now, let's imagine you elect Ron Paul because you like his policies.
Let's imagine that I elect Ron Paul because I agree with his policies, and then Ron Paul does something that I disagree with?
That's right.
It is entirely possible that the person whom you have chosen would make a decision that is different from the decision that you would have made if it were up to you.
When you say entirely possible, do you mean completely inevitable, or is that something that's a little different?
Even Ron Paul, right?
Because nobody agrees with everyone and everything.
That's why we need a free society, right?
Well, so just if you can get to the question, I don't want to give a response before.
The thing that you are proposing, which is that you wish the freedom to act upon your beliefs, which is to say not to pay for those government policies that you disagree with.
Doesn't that make it rather impractical to have a republic in which the decisions on policies are not made individually, but they're made by elected representatives?
Doesn't that become impractical if you actually wanted to run a government that way?
Yes.
Well, I mean, the only way that what we call democracy could conceivably work in any free society is, and we do this all the time, right?
If we have specific legal triggers where control over our estate or our decision-making passes to someone else.
We have a contract with someone to negotiate on our behalf, a real estate agent, a doctor, a lawyer, whoever it is, right?
And so if someone has such wonderful ideas, like Ron Paul, about how we should all live and what we should all do, then people can sign contracts saying, you know, Ron Paul's going to call me every morning, you know, and he's going to say, OK, 9 o'clock is what you're going to be doing, and then 10, whatever it is that people want to do, that's great, right?
And then they may be bound by that contract.
And then if Ron Paul suddenly says, you know, I want us to go and invade Cambodia, I say, well, let me check my contract here.
No, no, imperialism, not so good.
So I'm sorry, I'm not going to do that, right?
So democracy is a kind of social contract.
Clearly, I can't enter into a contract on your behalf, right?
I can't go buy a car and send you the bill, right?
Unless I'm in Congress.
So if people want a contract with experts and leaders, which we do all the time, I don't go and drill my own teeth, right?
But if they want to do that, that's great.
Then they can do that on an individual basis with a specific contract with a specific individual.
But if you like Ron Paul and I like Joe the Plumber, For whatever reason.
There was a Joe Plummer here, wasn't there?
I saw that in the... Am I wrong about that?
Okay, not the same... No.
Then you can have that contract with that person, and I'm free to disagree with your contract with that person, or to have no contract, or to have a contract with someone else, if I want.
Right, and so I would never interfere.
If you wanted to follow Ron Paul's advice on how things should be done, then you would fund his foundation, you would obey what he says and have a contract with him, but I would be free to disagree with that.
I would never use force to prevent you from following a leader that you felt to be very powerful and helpful and important.
Similarly, of course, I would expect the same respect in return, that you would never use force for me choosing another leader or no leader at all.
We do have a mic just because I know we're recording.
Are you going to host that like a boomerang?
Oh, sorry.
Gentleman in the back.
Let's pretend for a second that we're all the classic perception of libertarians, which of course means you're for drugs and guns.
Hang on, that's this side of the room.
It seems to me that both of those issues end up with a position where the other side feels the moral superiority of saying, yeah, I'm okay with the use of a gun because, after all, drugs harm kids, and it's okay to take away your gun because you're going to use it against me.
So I don't see how that argument that you're saying, the against me argument, works in either of those cases.
Okay, moving on.
Sorry, that mic cut out a little.
No, okay, let's do this.
Okay, so can you be like the drug czar guy?
Okay, give me the acumen.
I'm happy.
Well, you just want to go ahead and you want to unleash this anarchy, and we're going to have kids using all kinds of horrible drugs and ruin their lives, and you're perfectly fine to go ahead and ruin your own life, but you're going to ruin the lives of others, and so therefore, yes, I would feel comfortable using force against you because you're a menace to society.
Right, what about the children?
Absolutely.
Okay, sorry, I can just see you're Afro, I can't actually see you.
I keep wanting to call you Hagrid, I don't know why.
Don't worry, I have my own share of names.
Kelsey Grammer.
That's okay, because I commented to Angela, I said when you started talking about the violence inherited in the system, I basically flashed on Monty Python.
What is it somebody said?
I didn't know Phil Collins was an anarchist.
That ties back to our duet that we're doing.
Okay, so the argument is that the legalization of drugs results in drugs being given to children and that's the initiation of force or poisoning of children and therefore it's okay to use violence against those who sell any drugs anywhere whatsoever, right?
That's an excellent, excellent point.
Let me just run that through my own little cheese grater here.
Talk amongst yourselves.
Because the old me, right, the me who just was a masochist with his forehead, would have gone to something like this, to say, well, but children drown in swimming pools, and therefore we should ban all swimming pools, and before drugs were illegal, they never went to kids, but now they go to kids because they're so profitable that they get free samples to get addicted, and I'd go down all that route, which leads to a whole big pile of nowhere, at least in my experience, because it requires people to have knowledge of history that they don't have, right?
I would say that people who poison children are initiating the use of force against children because children are helpless and relatively and they don't have the long-term reasoning skills to consequences of blah blah blah, right?
This is my form of parenting.
So yes, people who give drugs to children, which harm those children, are responsible for that violence, right?
But you can't use force against everyone because some people do bad things.
Right?
That is a collective guilt approach.
Right?
That's like saying, well, some Mexicans steal, so let's round them up and throw them all in jail.
Right?
I mean, obviously that would be unjust.
And people would say, well, yeah, that would be unjust.
Right?
So because, let's say, some crazy nutty people will give drugs to kids and so on, then that's like saying, let's shut down Halloween because a few nutjobs put razor blades in candy bars.
Right?
I mean, you can't do the collective guilt thing.
And so I would not support that.
And that's not specific to the against-me argument, because the against-me argument is really for more general social policies, but I would definitely ask if that person believed in collective guilt, or whether individuals should be punished for individual behaviors, or whether there's this original sin that somehow spreads like a squid ink in the social water.
And I think that the person would probably say, well, no, you can't punish people collectively for the actions of specific individuals, and then you're back to, well, a guy smoking pot in his own basement is clearly not poisoning children, right?
And therefore, using force against him would be illegitimate.
Does that...
Okay, let's do that, right?
Okay, so then they would say, well, you see the moral imperative.
We'll get back to the against me argument if that initial thrust doesn't work, which is great.
Then I would say, okay, well, you believe that everyone who takes some kind of illicit substance should be thrown in jail, should have a force used against them, should be punished violently, thrown in jail, where they'll be beaten and all sorts of godforsaken things will happen to them, right?
They'll get big tattoos, they'll try and break out.
And then I would say, well, I disagree with you.
And then I would say, am I allowed to disagree with you?
You would obviously not sell, as this devil's advocate, you would not sell drugs to anyone.
You wouldn't have them, you wouldn't write.
Now, is someone, anyone, maybe you wouldn't say you, because you look like some creepy drug dealer, right?
But, not you.
You still look like the friendly giant, but I'm talking about Drug dealer.
They say, but is someone allowed to disagree with you if they're into recreational drugs or this or that or the other?
Are they allowed to, you know, whatever, without you advocating the use of force against them?
Now, if this person says, yes, anybody who touches weed should be, you know, thrown in jail and violence and force, then it's not a debate.
Right?
It's not a debate, because this person's already got the gun out and will point it at anyone that disagrees with them.
And then I would withdraw from that debate.
Because I would say, well, look, you've already got the gun out.
You're already willing to point it at anyone who disagrees with you.
So I'm not going to pretend that we're debating here.
Now, if the person is interested in reason and evidence, then you can.
I'm not saying this is the only argument.
I'm saying this is what my first draw is.
It doesn't mean that I don't have shivs in my shoes and stuff like that.
I know that's not a perfect, perfect answer.
So does that, I know that's not a perfect, perfect answer, but...
Oh, I think it addresses the issue that this isn't necessarily the end of the yaw.
Oh, absolutely, yeah.
I'm not saying this is the only thing.
Like, throw out every book you've ever read and just use against me, against me, against me, against me.
Oh, that wouldn't be bad.
But I mean, I think it's a first place to start.
But yeah, it's not the answer to everything for sure.
But I would really, you know, for the really, really big, big issue things, it's where I would start.
Oh, sorry.
What I'm trying to do is find the person furthest away from the mic handler.
I thought you were going to do, like, somersaults over the audience.
I wonder if, you know, you come to that point where they say, yeah, they should use violence.
Can you zero it in onto them and say, would you be the person to kill the pot smoker?
Would you pull the gun out?
Yeah.
That's a fantastic point.
I'll sit there.
You finish up here now.
That's a completely fantastic point.
I mean, I'm British, right?
So for me, social confrontations, I'd rather rip my own toes off, you know?
If you're comfortable with that, that's a very powerful argument to make, because it really is like, would you be willing?
I think all of us, if we saw someone being horrendously assaulted, would do a lot to stop that, and would sleep well that night.
If we employed some sort of violence, some old lady getting beaten up or whatever, we would deploy some level of coercion if we were comfortable and able to do that, and we wouldn't sit there racked with guilt about, oh my God, I did something that was violent.
And to recognize that as third-party self-defense based on universal ethics is valid.
So I think that if we were in a violent situation, we'd be able to say, yes, I would.
I wouldn't want to be in that situation.
I'd rather it didn't happen, but if it did, this is what I would do.
And I think that that's an excellent, excellent point.
If you can do it, I mean, you may be a braver soul than me, in which case more power to you.
I have a tough time with that one.
But it is that question, would you pull the trigger?
Because really, it does come down to that.
If you support the use of violence, I support self-defense, therefore I would be willing to pull the trigger if I were ever unfortunate enough to be in such a position.
So I would pull the trigger and I would regret the situation, but I would not lose sleep.
And so that is, if you support the use of violence, would you be willing to pull the trigger?
I think that is a very, very powerful argument.
Now I don't have a speech for next year.
Now I've got to come up with something new.
Thanks, man.
Sorry, I haven't been keeping track of who's next, so why don't you just hand me some people and we'll rub some brains.
Alright, you're in a crowd, obviously, with people who go through these sorts of things all the time, so you're probably getting very good advocates for the devil here, but while we're at it, let's do land property, alright?
Land property?
Land property.
Let's do it.
Alright.
So, I think the government should own all property and land.
I think that all property and land needs to be Owned by the government and preserved for the use of all people or at least in some sort of fashion that results in equality across the land.
Right.
I don't agree, and I fully respect your belief in this socialization of dirt.
I'm down with that.
You want to nationalize the soil?
That's fine.
That's your prerogative to believe that.
I don't particularly agree with that at all.
In fact, I would violently disagree with that, though without using any violence.
So, and I respect your right to have that opinion and to advocate that position.
Would you, I mean, we assume that this is not a completely closed case, that this is a debatable issue.
Sure.
Right?
And so if we assume that it's a debatable issue, I assume that I have the right to disagree with you and to act on that disagreement, that you would never advocate the use of violence against me for disagreeing with you.
Absolutely.
I do.
Fantastic.
Then we will leave it open to debate and let the free market of ideas carry us forward.
So you disagree with the notion that the government should operate land and ensure some form of equality, right?
Sorry, if you're interested in equality, I don't see how a minority of people controlling all the land results in equality of rights.
If you'd like to step me through that sometime, that's fine.
If you have a piece of land, then, that you claim ownership over, would you advocate violence against me if my belief is that I can operate that piece of land as well?
Yes.
I mean, I believe that you can't have a right without the right to exercise it.
That's sort of a theoretical pointless thing.
So if I have property rights and you invade my property and harm it, then yes, I believe I have the right.
Now, of course, I understand where you're going with this, right?
Which is that if your position is right, then you can initiate the use of force against me.
Right?
Because if everyone owns the land by the government, and then I want my little corner here, right?
And then the government can initiate the use of force against me because the government owns everything and I'm trespassing because I'm alive, right?
Right.
In which case, you would be advocating the use of force against me for living.
But, I mean, aren't we sort of equally advocating the use of force against one another?
You're saying that you own land, and it's my belief.
So I can almost ask you, would you advocate the use of force against me for my belief that that piece of land belongs to everyone?
Yes, I absolutely would.
I absolutely would, and I would pull the trigger.
This debate is over.
I'd say the guy with the beard, but that doesn't narrow it down too much.
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