July 13, 2019 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
09:54
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| Hey guys, Dan Dix here from Press for Truths. | |
| We're here at the Toronto Bitcoin Expo with Stefan Molyneux of Freedomain Radio. | |
| Stefan, thank you so much for taking some time to speak with us here at Press for Truth. | |
| My pleasure. | |
| Now, I just recently watched your The Truth on the Nevada Ranchers standoff. | |
| Great video. | |
| What on earth is going on there right now at the Bundy Ranch? | |
| Well, first of all, it's important to remember that the federal government is very concerned about the tortoises. | |
| And one of the ways they've expressed that concern over the past few decades is exploding hundreds of nuclear weapons over Nevada, in the Nevada desert. | |
| Because as we all know, if you have a tortoise shell, you're fine. | |
| Right, so I mean this is what they give people in nuclear attacks, a tortoise shell. | |
| So they've literally incinerated hundreds of thousands of these tortoises, but now this guy's 150 head of cattle that they want to let on this land, they fear, the cover story is that that might interfere with some tortoise habitats. | |
| It's all complete nonsense, of course. | |
| It's a mere exercise of power. | |
| I've heard some rumors that it's about oil rights, or fracking, or solar panels, and who knows? | |
| Maybe that's true, maybe that's not. | |
| But this is a mere exercise of power to destroy one of the last ranchers around. | |
| He said originally there were like 52, 53 other ranchers. | |
| They've all been run off the land with these excessive grazing fees. | |
| And then people say, well, why is food so expensive? | |
| Well, because you've got these ridiculous grazing fees from a government that has done nothing, nothing whatsoever to actually own this land. | |
| You know, you and I want to own something. | |
| We don't just get to sit there and say, mine, right? | |
| You actually have to go earn the damn thing, or build it, or make it, or enclose it, or grow something on it. | |
| But the government has this magic ability to just like, boink, fill program, that's mine, and now you have to pay me rent. | |
| So, it's a terrible exercise of power. | |
| And it shows you that when there are no clearly defined property rights, you're going to end up with this kind of ridiculous conflict. | |
| The government owns nothing and controls everything. | |
| It controls your house, because if you don't pay your property taxes, they take your house away. | |
| Everywhere you go, The government allows you to be there if you pay them off, and this is a really clear example of that. | |
| And I, you know, kudos to the guy's, you know, nutsack is the size of like two basketballs on steroids, because he's really showing the degree to which, if you don't comply, they're there with guns. | |
| You know, he was out there, his son was filming them before getting roughed up by them. | |
| They had, you can see from the video footage in the background, they have snipers, trained lasers on these guys' families. | |
| This is the state, and hopefully people are seeing what it is, for what it is. | |
| So it's obviously such a ruse that they're protecting the tortoises. | |
| Would this amount to, like, theft? | |
| I mean, could it be considered theft by the government? | |
| Well, I mean, there's many layers of theft that is occurring here, right? | |
| The first is that this, I think it's 158,000 square acres of land, that they're concerned about a couple hundred cattle. | |
| I mean, it's ridiculous. | |
| Nine million cattle on a postage stamp? | |
| Sure, this is ridiculous, right? | |
| So they claim, the federal government claims ownership of more than 80% of Utah and Nevada. | |
| Based on what? | |
| Based on the fear, based on the fact that they have guns. | |
| Right? | |
| So that is the first violation of ownership. | |
| The second violation of ownership is not just asserting ownership over the land. | |
| The second violation of ownership is to demand rent for something that they don't actually own. | |
| The government doesn't own. | |
| The individuals haven't done anything to improve the land. | |
| I mean, literally, it's like me touching your car that you've paid off and saying, now you owe me money for that car. | |
| You can't do that. | |
| And then the third is that they're taking this guy's cattle. | |
| And it's a brutal process. | |
| It's a slow process. | |
| I imagine there's going to be quite a lot of cattle deaths that come out of it. | |
| Where PETA is, well, I think we know, right? | |
| I mean, people, the ethical treatment of animals, why aren't they out there? | |
| Saying, look, you're ripping these cows out of their, what is for them, their natural habitat at the moment and shipping them off to God knows where. | |
| Whereas PETA and the fact that they're going to, these tortoises that they're supposed to be protecting, they have 1,400 of them in a government sanctuary, which is closing down because they can't rip off enough of the remaining ranchers, of which there's only one, to pay for the facility where they're going to kill 700 of these tortoises that they want to protect. | |
| So there's so many layers of theft here. | |
| It really is just like a manual of pure evil. | |
| Well, it sounds like they're already trying to cover their tracks by removing documents from their website, for instance. | |
| Have you heard that it's been found out that it could have something to do with solar panels after all, and have nothing to do with the tortoises? | |
| Does that incriminate them by them pulling off these documents? | |
| Well, I think it's almost pitifully naive for an agency to say, well, it's OK. | |
| We took it from our website, so it's gone. | |
| I mean, that's insane. | |
| That's like Kim Kardashian saying, it's OK. | |
| I deleted my copy of my sex tape, so nobody can see it anymore, right? | |
| There's no better way to bring attention to something than to remove it from your website. | |
| That's just like bringing everyone swarming in. | |
| So it's touching to see just how little governments understand media, how little they understand publicity, and how much they're putting down a cent for people to go and follow this story to its source. | |
| So yeah, I'm sure it has something to do. | |
| Obviously, it's not about the tortoises. | |
| It might just be about the exercise of political power. | |
| It might be like that parent who's lost it for insane reasons, you know? | |
| Like, I've told you three times, if I've told you once, they're just going insane. | |
| But I think that there's something probably more immediately profit-based that's triggering this action after 20 years. | |
| Because they were going to do it last year, right? | |
| Everything was set up and then they just, for some reason, abandoned it. | |
| So I assume that there's some reason now that's pretty nefarious why they're doing it now. | |
| Well, like you said, he's the last man standing. | |
| I suppose they need to take him out so they can carry on with the agenda. | |
| But you see, I mean, as far as solar panels, I mean, they already have 80% of the state. | |
| You know, why do they need this guy to leave? | |
| I mean, it doesn't make much sense to me. | |
| They've already got so much land that they can use. | |
| So there could be something about it, but it seems kind of unlikely. | |
| You know, if you own that much or claim you own that much land, one guy's little postage stamp in the middle of a football field probably isn't that, it's like building a road through it or something. | |
| So I don't know what the real story is. | |
| We may never know, but it really doesn't matter. | |
| I mean, fundamentally, it's still the initiation of the use of force. | |
| Well it looks like some of the latest news now is the sheriff in Nevada is actually stepping in and trying to stop the feds from coming in and doing this. | |
| Where do you see this going now with the latest news today of the sheriff kind of stepping up to protect Bundy's Ranch? | |
| Where do you see this going in the next few weeks? | |
| No way to predict. | |
| I do think that the guy is going to stick it out. | |
| I'm not religious myself, but I really have to admire his conviction in this, even if it is like watching a slow-motion train wreck. | |
| It is very admirable, and I'm sure a lot of that comes from his Mormon faith, this belief that he has answers to a higher power than the federal government. | |
| Kudos to him for that. | |
| I think it's not going to end violently. | |
| I think they've learned their Ruby Ridge examples. | |
| They've learned their Waco examples. | |
| Like if you remember the Browns, this dentist and his wife who weren't playing income tax, they just kept them surrounded, they starved them out, and now they're in jail and nobody's heard about it, and there's not this big bloodstain that people can point to. | |
| I think they've found that because of media, because of the Internet, because of this instantaneous sharing of everything that goes on in the world, they can't just leave these sort of nuclear shadows up against the wall and have people not notice them. | |
| So I think they're going to try and find some peaceful resolution to this. | |
| Peaceful is very, very heavily, like air quotes around it. | |
| I don't think that they're going to go full bore in. | |
| They're not going to drop a bomb on this guy's house or anything. | |
| They're not going to shoot anyone. | |
| I think that it's too obvious. | |
| It makes the other tax livestock too nervous to see some cow getting gutted right in front of them, right? | |
| You think maybe a precedent has been set now and they're going to have to change their tactics? | |
| Without a doubt, you know, 20 years ago, I mean, this guy, there'd just be a bunch of smoke and wreckage where his house is. | |
| But I think that, you know, where they require cops to wear cameras, cops act better. | |
| You know, there's something really great about this, being able to record people. | |
| Although there was just a recent case somewhere in the States where a cop's testimony is now considered superior to video evidence. | |
| Which to me is, I mean, the fact that anyone can make these rulings with a straight face is just testament to how insane power makes human beings. | |
| But I think it's not going to end with any kind of bloodbath, but it's not going to end well for the ranchers as a whole. | |
| Well, what would you say is the overall message that people should take from this, and a lesson to be learned, if you will, from everything we're watching unfold right now? | |
| Well, there are fences and they're electrified. | |
| You know, like a lot of cows, we're all, like, staying back from the fence. | |
| You know, I'll pay my taxes, I'll pay these guys off, and so on. | |
| Every now and then, some fence, you know, some cattle wanders over to the fence and, you know, like, whoa, that's smelly, right? | |
| It's the horns are light, the hooves are lighting up, you know, disco balls. | |
| So it is important for us to remember that we are not free individuals. | |
| We are not sovereign individuals. | |
| We have our liberties at the pleasure of the government, and the government can impose rules as it sees fit, and it can enforce or not enforce those rules. | |
| So just because we're not currently seeing the skeleton of a fellow tax livestock pressed up against the electric fence doesn't mean they're not there. | |
| And there is something really important to be fought for for the long-term capacity for us to be free. | |
| I mean, we know this as libertarians or philosophers, but for the general population, they need that electrified cow spine showing up in their vision from time to time to remind them just how powerful and huge and ridiculous, particularly the top echelons of government, like the federal government in the U.S. | |
| I mean, it's completely insane how large they've become. | |
| And I think the only tragedy of this is the guy saying, well, I'd be willing to pay my grazing fees to Clark County, just not the federal government. | |
| Oh, man! | |
| It doesn't matter how close the farmer is. | |
| It's still a farming situation. | |
| So yeah, it looks like it's coming down the course of the arm of the state, basically using force to stop this. | |
| So we wish all the best for Bundy. | |
| And again, thanks for bringing it up and shedding some light on the subject. | |
| Well, thank you very much. | |
| I appreciate the time. |
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