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July 13, 2019 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
27:55
Ron Paul, RNC Corruption And the True Political Education
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Hi everybody, it's Stefan Molyneux from Freedomain Radio.
I have on the line Brittany Schaefer, or as she's colloquially known in libertarian anarchist circles, Schaefer Spawn.
I think that's a fair way to put it, and I actually saw her article, you wrote an article called The Revolution is Over.
Long live the revolution, and I guess like a lot of libertarians, anarchists, minarchists, you name it, even I guess the freedom-loving side of the Republican Party, it's been quite fascinating to see What's been going on at the RNC convention recently?
Now, I know some of the details.
I don't know some of the other details.
What's your big-picture view on what went down and what it means?
Well, basically, what it looked like to me.
I wasn't there.
I was watching it live.
I also have my sister's husband as one of the delegates, so I sort of heard about what was going on last time around and also this time around a little bit from him.
The RNC was just willing to break its own rules and then change the rules in order to avoid an outcome that it didn't want.
To me, it's just one more example of how you're not going to change a corrupt system by working within the rules of that corrupt system, because they'll just change the rules.
If you start to have any impact, they'll fix it so you can't.
That's my take on what happened.
Yeah, I think people mistake rules, you know, as anarchists, we understand that rules are sort of social consensus and ostracism and enforcement and common law and all that kind of good stuff, stuff that actually means something to people.
But in politics, rules are almost always ex post facto justifications for people doing what they wanted to do anyway.
So if I understand it correctly, the Ron Paul supporters use some little known Republican rules to get... Five states went forward with the nomination.
It was at six?
Yeah, okay, so they got six.
Yeah, six of the states went forward with the nomination, and then live, in the moment, the committee decided to change the rules to require eight states.
Now, if I also understand this correctly, the Ron Paul supporters, so in Utah, he got almost no votes.
But, you know, through jigging various rules that I didn't pretend to understand, it's like trying to memorize the monster manual, figuring out these kinds of things.
But they kind of jigged the rules to get these nominations, and then they basically blocked him by raising the requirements live with no vote.
And also putting in rules in place that they could now change the rules when there's not a convention in practice, as long as three quarters of the executive committee approve of it.
So they can basically just do whatever they want and justify it afterwards.
And people have this mistake, I think.
A lot of people who have tried to evade tax law and so on, they think that there's this magical rule that you can make the state bend to your will if you can find the right rule.
But I think, you know, the purpose of the Ron Paul campaign has kind of been twofold one.
One is, of course, there's the stated goal of getting elected, but the second is to educate people.
And I think that people got quite an education about politics yesterday.
Perhaps the most powerful education about politics.
What do you think?
I think so.
And to watch, if you watch the video, I mean, there are videos all along from the campaign four years ago and also from this campaign of You know, local conventions completely breaking the rules, you know, shutting all the Ron Paul supporters in one room and turning the lights out and, you know, shutting, closing off the, walling them off.
I mean, just ridiculous things.
And to see this on video, I think it's, it's, it's absolutely educating for people.
And what was, what was funny about, about this, this instance, you know, when they voted on, on that rule change, you can hear, they, they call for the ayes, they call for the nays.
And, you know, I was listening and it sounded to me like the nays had it.
At the very least, you would have called for a floor vote, and they didn't do that.
It was just the complete disregard for their own rules, I think, was very educational.
And I think the point to bring home is that the rules don't apply to the people in power.
When you have a monopoly on power, the rules don't apply to you.
They don't have to.
There's no agency, there's nothing that can enforce those rules against you if you are the sole enforcer.
And I think that's what people need to get, and I think that's what people are maybe starting to get.
I remember this as a kid.
I grew up in England and Canada, and not so much in England, but here in Canada, every now and then the teachers would have a protest, they would not come to work, there'd be some sort of strike and so on.
And I remember thinking even at the time, it's like, okay, so wait, if I don't like school or if I'm unhappy about something and I don't come to school, I will be arrested for truancy or there'll be some horrible negative consequences and so on.
But if the teachers don't like something about school and want it changed, why then?
It's a legitimate strike, they're fighting for their rights, they're airing their grievances, and everybody will be immensely sympathetic to them.
And so I remember thinking even then, it's like, and the same thing, it's like, I remember when I first was reading about how teachers can't get fired, it's like, okay, so I, at the age of seven, can fail a test and have negative repercussions.
But the teacher who's giving the test cannot fail the test called teaching and get negative repercussions.
I think the basic case for anarchy is just to remember what it was like being a child in government schools, but that's very accurate.
But do you think, I mean there's a lot of emotion, and I really understand that emotion.
I think that there's a lot of people, and this is what I liked about the article you wrote, and I'll post a link to this below the video.
The article that you wrote is sort of a third way, you know, because for a lot of people who are interested in freeing the world and having a less violent and hopefully non-violent society free of political hierarchies and all that sort of nonsense, It's politics or despair.
That's it.
It's politics or despair.
And I think that's why people do throw so much of their energy into pursuing a political solution.
And certainly a political solution is nice and easy.
If Ron Paul can come in and set you free, that's really nice.
Boy, wouldn't that be great?
That means you don't have to have difficult conversations with people in your life, you don't have to think about You know, whether you're spanking your kids and violating the non-aggression principle at home, or maybe looking into barter or other forms of legal agorism.
But I really like the way that you are pointing out that it doesn't have to be politics or despair.
There is a third route.
I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about that, or a lot.
Yeah, yeah.
In fact, I'm actually, I'm writing a follow-up article because I have had, as I expected to, I've had a lot of comments saying, well, yeah, this sounds great, but, you know, what do you mean?
What specifically do you suggest people do?
And I think, first of all, I think it's important to recognize that The act of voting, the act of participating in this sham, is not going to be an effective way of getting what you want.
So you can fool yourself, you can pretend that it is, that you're actually accomplishing something, but for the most part, and I'll make a distinction between national politics and local politics, because I think, as much as I abhor them, I think there are some good things that have come out of local politicking, and I'll just mention the Tenth Amendment Center.
I think they've done some great things.
There is a little bit of a difference, but as far as, you know, getting someone elected to the role of... I think we've seen over time that this doesn't help to advance liberty.
I mean, people have been trying to do it for decades, you know, as long as I've been around, and government keeps getting bigger, it keeps getting more intrusive.
So the first thing to recognize is what you're doing now isn't working.
So just because it's the only thing you know to do Doesn't doesn't mean that doesn't mean that it's that it's actually effective So that's the first thing My own suggestions.
I mean, I think the most important two most important things one is to start building that society You know, there are things we can do now that are completely legal some of them are legal some may not be but There are perfectly legal things we can start doing to start putting in place, you know the infrastructure where the government is failing I mean I live in California and You know, social services, education, it's starting to really crumble.
And, you know, you hear parents complaining about it and talking about it and all these cutbacks and how awful it is.
Well, that's an opportunity for those of us who think these things should be provided privately and through voluntary means to step in and start doing something.
So, you know, create homeschooling groups.
You know, take over a school that's been shut down and turn it into a homeschooling collective.
You know, start feeding the homeless.
You know, the government is not going to be able to do it.
I think, you know, basic things like food and shelter could become, you know, serious needs for a lot of people.
They already are for many people.
And, you know, if we start taking that over, start providing an infrastructure, start supplying the things that people have come to rely on government to supply, we'll be changing that infrastructure already.
We'll be laying the groundwork for something For something very fundamentally different from what we have now, police services, you know, whatever kinds of genuine protection people can offer to each other, arbitration, things like that, that, you know, challenge the view that this is something that has to be provided by government.
I mean, the reality is that the police have sort of become the enemy of the people that they're meant to be protecting.
And again, I think more and more people are starting to see that too.
So just to start building these things that we think, you know, we anarchists, we non-political folk, we pro-liberty people look around and we say, hey, you know, government shouldn't be doing that.
Private people should be doing that.
That should be involuntarily.
That shouldn't be a monopoly.
Well, we're in a position now, and I think that's going to become more true as the economy gets worse and as the government, you know, starts to become even more unable to provide what it's been providing.
We're in a unique opportunity to start making that vision come to life, making that vision real.
So I think we need to start doing that.
And then sort of the second prong of what I think is the best approach to bring about liberty, you know, the biggest obstacle to liberty is the belief that so many people hold in their minds that government is necessary.
And when I say government, I mean a monopoly state.
that it's necessary and that it acts in our interests.
And more and more, you know, if the evidence is piling up that neither of those assertions is true, but I think it's still a small minority of us who can see that clearly.
And I think it's our job to educate, you know, the rest of the people, enough of them to come to realizing, wait a second, this institution called the monopoly state is something that it's not helpful to society.
It's not helpful to civilization.
It's actually counterproductive.
It's actually disastrous.
When you look historically, it's actually very destructive to peaceful coexistence.
So those two things, building very real things on a local level, for the most part, I think, that can help to be the foundation for what comes after the state, And then just educating people.
I think educating people is so important because there are just these insane beliefs that people have, you know, in the face of all the evidence, in the face of history, they still want to believe in government.
And, you know, I think it's our job and it's a big job to educate them otherwise.
Yeah, it's funny how libertarians are skeptical, if not downright hostile, to every single government program except politics.
But politics is just another government program, and it produces exactly the same thing as every other government program, which is the opposite of what you want.
And, you know, I have two sort of minor tests.
Get your thoughts on these.
The first, of course, is if somebody tells me they can lift a hundred pounds, then I'm going to give them.
But they look kind of frail.
I'll give them a five-pound weight first and say, hey, can you lift this?
And if you can't lift that, then obviously you can't lift a hundred.
And you could really argue that classical liberalism since the mid 19th century, or you could really argue all the way back to Adam Smith and the Founding Fathers a couple hundred years ago, that rhetoric and philosophy and politics has been used to try and restrain the size and power of the government.
You start with the very smallest government in history.
The American government has now become the very largest government in history.
That's exactly what you would expect from a government program.
You try to get rid of the war on drugs, drugs become more prevalent.
Try to have a war on poverty, poverty becomes entrenched.
Try to have financial stability, end up with booms, busts and debts.
So government program violence always produces the opposite of what you want and certainly the political process is participating in a violent oligarchy.
So, yeah, but the fact that it has produced less liberty and the biggest government the world has ever seen is entirely in line with every other government program.
And the other thing, too, is that I think people underestimate the degree of corruption and immorality in the state.
I mean, I've never seen, you know, you could ask a libertarian or a libertarian could say this program, it's like, okay, well, we want to take on the federal government, which according to the anarchist is, you know, biggest gang of
legal criminals the world has ever seen but let's start a little smaller than that let's just join some local mafia group and try and turn it into a charity or try to get it to at least reduce you know the the number of hits and murders and and kneecappings and and extortion and whatever but of course nobody would think well you can join the mafia and turn it into a charity but we still somehow believe that we can join a much bigger and more unpleasant organization and turn it toward the light.
It just seems strange.
Of course, I'm a big one for testability of theories, and I just don't see anyone trying to test it on a smaller scale.
Yeah, yeah, and you know, I think it has been tested.
I think, you know, the 20th century alone showed how disastrous, you know, big government can be, and yet we're still left with this myth that there can be, you know, a minimal state, that there can be a small government, that we can restrain it, and I think what's becoming clear is, and the U.S.
is perhaps the best example of this, what's becoming clear is that any time you have a monopoly, and it's funny because the people who are the staunchest defenders of government are terrified of monopoly in the private sector.
That's anathema to them.
No, we can't have that and we have to have all kinds of regulations and anything that even looks like a monopoly.
Whereas they have no problem with granting a monopoly to a single body to perform some of the most important tasks.
I mean, protection of our lives and liberties.
If you're afraid of a monopoly in your phone services, why would you grant someone a monopoly in protecting your life?
It's crazy.
Well, and one other thing people say is, well, you know, let's say that we could get rid of the government.
Well, you know, what's to stop another government from coming back?
We have another government.
It's like, okay, so the worst outcome from my system is your system again?
I mean, are you kidding me?
That's not even a reasonable argument.
Anyway, sorry, just my little minor thing, but go on.
That's funny, yeah.
And there are plenty of people, you know, there are plenty of theorists, you know, Rothbard and David Friedman and, you know, Hoppe, lots of... And your daddy!
And my dad too, yes.
Bob Murphy also has done some great stuff on, you know, really going into the nitty-gritty, the specifics of how it might work.
And obviously it's not how it would work because nobody has a crystal ball, but just to sort of, to go after some of the objections, you know, the people who who insist it couldn't work or it would necessarily go back to being what we have today.
There's a lot of work out there.
There's a lot of very detailed exploration into how it in fact could work.
Yeah, and I've certainly dabbled my own toe in that water, but fundamentally it doesn't matter and who cares?
I mean, it's like saying, well, a hundred years after we end slavery, how's cotton going to get picked?
Exactly.
I don't care.
I don't care.
It doesn't matter.
The fact is slavery is immoral and we should stop pointing guns at people and keeping them in shackles.
And we should stop selling off the unborn and starting foreign wars and indebting everyone and their daughter and have a Ponzi scheme where they all prey on the young who are more vulnerable.
I mean, it doesn't matter to me how it all works when we start pointing guns at each other.
Let's just climb out of this Tarantino movie and get into something a little more animated.
Exactly, exactly.
And that's the other thing that's kind of, for me, coming from a perspective of looking at politics from a moral standpoint, it's sort of become more clear over the years that most people don't.
Most people just don't ask that question.
And whether it's because they've been indoctrinated in public schools or that's just how they're raised or because I'm weird, I don't know.
But most people don't even ask that question.
It's not that they examine it and say, oh, yes, it's wrong to use coercive violence, but it's worth it because blah, blah, blah.
They don't even ask the question.
They don't even confront the immorality of what they're proposing.
Yeah, I mean, I don't remember anybody when I was a kid saying, well, of course, if women go into the workforce, who's going to raise the children and keep house and cook the food?
Therefore, women got to stay home.
I mean, no, it was, anyway, that's it.
The consequences of a moral decision are actually not relevant.
And people, but people make up these negative consequences.
It's kind of a ghost story to scare away the approaching lights of freedom, because they don't know what's going to happen.
Anyone who claims to know how roads will be provided in the absence of a state, I want to know.
Just tell me what the price Apple stock is going to be tomorrow, and let's be a billionaire.
Nobody can predict the future.
You make your decisions based on principles, not on consequences.
Otherwise, you can just make up whatever scare stories you want to prevent you from doing anything.
Exactly.
And that's another important point, is that you can always make up scare stories.
You can always come up with some you know, overblown hypothesis that could happen, you know, that, oh, sure, you know, we could all revert to, you know, go back to living in the caves and starting each other and, you know, whatever, whatever, you know, you can always concoct some, some rationale for why something can't work.
And I think that's true of anything.
I think that's true of any human endeavor.
But if you look at the success stories, if you look at, I mean, Hong Kong, for example, I lived in Hong Kong for a long time.
And it just, you know, it occurs to me that if, if someone had proposed in advance, you know, advance of Hong Kong success, that they had proposed that, you know, go out to this, this rock, you know, out near China and desolate rock, nobody there, nothing, no, out near China and desolate rock, nobody there, nothing, no, no resources other than the harbor.
And that, you know, 50 years later, 60 years later, that it would start to become this successful hub and that, and, you know, after Actually, save millions of people's lives from what was going on in China, that it would become the phenomenal success story it was, you'd have all kinds of arguments for why that was impossible.
And if it had been up to a vote, if it had been up to the electorate or anybody to decide whether Hong Kong was going to exist or not, it would never have happened, because there are always scare stories.
There are always reasons why something can't happen.
And like you said, If you don't have principles, if you don't make your decisions from some principled standpoint, you're kind of just floating.
And yeah, you'll buy into the scare stories.
Well, the other thing, too, is that the people of the future have no voice, whereas the people who are going to suffer in the present have a very loud voice.
And there's no question that the transition from coercion to voluntarism causes suffering.
I mean, just as all the people who had invested in slaves and moving slaves and selling slaves and catching slaves, they all suffered a lot.
When slavery was ended and the dependent classes, and I mean, there's going to be suffering.
All of the big corporations hardwired into the frontal lobes and back pockets of the politicians, they're all going to go through a lot of suffering when there's going to be a lot of transition.
And they make a lot of noise.
But it's the unborn.
It's the kids of the future who have no voice.
And that's, of course, why they're sold off to bankers for the sake of bribing the electorate in the here and now.
But the principles actually include the future, whereas if we just listen to the cacophony of the present, then we'll never change anything, because change always has, you know, dispersed benefits and concentrated costs, and so all the concentrated cost people who step on the landmine of change yell that their legs are gone, and now, oh my God, we've got to go and appease these people, and it just becomes this... it is not exactly an orchestra.
It's, you know, one person yelling in your ear and 10,000 violins down a block.
And, you know, it's important to remember, too, that the people I think the interests that would suffer if we were to snap our fingers and eliminate the state tomorrow, the people who suffer the most are the ones who've been inflicting suffering on others.
They're the ones who've been stealing the wealth that other people have built up.
They're the ones who start the wars.
They're the ones who keep the police state in force.
So, yeah, there are people who would lose.
I kind of don't feel too bad for them because they're, you know, they've gotten where they are by hurting other people and by stealing and by, you know, violence.
Yeah, so the guy who sells the slaves with slave whipping paraphernalia is out of a job and I think we will not cry any tears over his suffering.
I mean, there is a dependent class and people who've had six kids based upon welfare and public schools and so on and there will be a transition for those people, of course.
However, that's managed would probably have to be intergenerationally.
But yeah, I mean, this is why You cannot make an argument from consequences and really affect political change.
The benefits, as we all know, are way too concentrated, the costs are way too dispersed, and if you reverse that equation, the media, of course, will find whoever suffers from change, the media will trumpet them, and they'll be teary-eyed and slowly walking down the street to sad violin music, and they'll tweak everyone's image.
There's way too much propaganda for, I think, any kind of change, which, you know, I sort of argue that it's a multi-generational thing, which If you look at female emancipation, if you look at the end of slavery, 100, 150 years.
And I think we're pretty early on in it and trying to, yeah, just trying to grab the reins of power.
You know, we all got to be a little less Saruman and a little more Frodo.
Ooh, there's a reference that my listeners may get, but yours may not.
Let go of the ring!
Let go of the ring!
We can't get the ring and hold on to it.
And I think, I mean, Ron Paul himself, I mean, he knows that they'll be suffering if people change, and yet he still funnels tons of money to his own constituents.
He doesn't want to ask them to suffer the financial consequences of less statism, so it seems a little precious for him to demand it of others.
Sorry, I don't mean to take over with my rant, I just wanted to sort of mention that.
Something you said about, I mean, They're, you know, about there being innocent victims as well, and, you know, people who've become dependent on the state.
If the state were suddenly taken away, they would suffer.
Well, the reality is that they're going to suffer anyway.
The reality is the state is taking that away already.
I mean, as I said, in my state, you know, California, there are already cutbacks.
And of course, the first thing to get cut back are the things that people are dependent on.
It's not congressman's salaries.
It's not bonuses.
It's not their, you know, their private jets.
It's, it's the services.
It's, it's, you know, fire, maybe police, probably not police, social services, schools, things like that.
And I just think it's a, it's a tremendous opportunity for those of us who believe that those things should be done privately to step in and start doing it and, you know, take over that role because the state is failing.
And I think the lesson to be, to be learned here is, you know, it's not a transition to anarchy.
that causes this failure.
It's the natural consequences of the way the state operates and its economic policies that essentially strip the nation, strip the people of a country, the wealth that they've created.
It impoverishes them and then at some point it can't even produce the services that it claims to.
So I see that as a real opportunity.
Yeah, no, I agree.
I was just thinking when you were talking earlier about Living California, you're probably maybe too young, but there was a film in the seventies with Christopher Reeve, one of the first Superman films, and in it Gene Hackman was going to reprogram some missiles to go and land on the San Andreas Fault and California was going to fall into the sea and so on.
You know, the worst possible reboot or remake of that film, but more politically accurate, would be to Uh, to simply have missiles made out of public sector pensions, and pretty much the same thing will occur from an economic standpoint.
That sort of popped in my mind, and this is what people say, you know, well, oh, you don't care about the poor.
It's like, well, yes, of course we do.
What we want is a managed transition rather than the abrupt cliffhanging trapeze death trap that's going to happen when the government simply runs out of money to pay people.
I mean, that is not going to be a, um, A gentle transition at all.
And we can do something more managed, or we can just, you know, completely hit the wall at Mach 12.
And I think, you know, turning things a little bit would be better than this faceplant.
Yeah, yeah.
And what happens with faceplant, what happens when, you know, when it's abrupt, if there's an abrupt change like that, is those who favor violence and a coercive state, you know, they end up on top.
They end up You know, getting to say, see, this is what happens, and you need us to come in and take control.
Even though what they're going to do is going to make things worse, they get, as you said, the propaganda benefit.
It makes them look necessary.
So... Freedom has failed!
We have tried it, and now we just need a strong arm who's going to make the trains run on time, and I need food tomorrow, I don't care about all these abstracts, and... Oh yeah, I mean, this is... History is just a grim repetition.
It's like a disco ball that never stops and never changes.
Yeah, yeah.
And the sad thing is that That so few people learn from it.
That so few people, you know, understand.
So many people think that we actually have tried freedom and that it's freedom that's failed rather than intervention.
Oh, but Brittany, don't you know that it was financial deregulation that caused it?
It's nothing to do with the Fed and it's nothing to do with shielding corporations from the consequences of their own decisions.
It's nothing to do with financial bribery from Wall Street to the Capitol building.
It was, you know, the free market.
Alan Greenspan said so.
It's got to be true.
Anyway, listen, I want to make sure that I want to get this video out today, and I really want to thank you for your time.
A very, very enjoyable chat.
Welcome back to the continent of exciting political challenges.
And I also want to make sure that you get your vital statistics out to my listeners and, you know, recommend certainly the stuff of yours that I've read.
Very sharp, good writer, clear thinker.
And so if you want to give your websites and mention the books that you've written, I definitely want to point some people your way if I can.
Okay, great, thank you.
So my website is www.bretne.com.
Weird spelling.
B-R-E-T-I-G-N-E.
Blame my parents.
So www.bretigne.com.
And if you go there, you'll see, it's basically my blog, but then I've also got there a couple books I've written.
One is Memoirs of a Gaijin, which is sort of my memoirs of the time I spent in a Tokyo gaijin house.
The other one is Why Mommy Loves the State.
And it's horribly overpriced on Amazon, so I recommend going to Lulu, where you can download it for free.
And then my latest thing is, it's actually a webcomic series called Urban Yogini, and it's about a superhero who can't use violence.
And the first episode is up.
I'm working on getting funding for the future episodes.
So, yes, www.britney.com.
The house that you were in, of course I'm completely up on this Japanese lingo, but for my listeners who aren't, what kind of house is that that you were talking about?
So it's a gaijin house.
It's like a hostel.
It's where gaijin foreigners live while they're living in Japan.
There are lots of little gaijin houses and it's basically a place where you can get a cheap room, cheap by Tokyo standards, a cheap room temporarily.
It's kind of hard to rent Short-term in Tokyo.
There's there a lot of weird restrictions, but so it's basically it's a kind of still but you have sort of your own room usually and shared kitchen that kind Okay, great.
Well, thanks again.
I guess we'll see each other at Libertopia Libertopia org Late October 23rd, I think 24th in San Diego and a real real pleasure chatting with you Of course, say hi to your dad and we'll talk soon.
Okay, great to talk to you.
Thanks.
Goodbye
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