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July 20, 2019 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:16:21

Anarchy Means "Without Rulers" - Not "Without Rules"!

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	Good morning, friendly fellow brain cells of the philosophy Borg brain.
	I hope you're doing very well, Stefan Molyneux.
	Hey, we have a treat for you next week, and that treat is Les Me.
	It's time for more news and Les Nesman.
	We have a spirited and, I dare say, entirely brilliant Host who's going to be taking questions for the show.
	Yes, I'm talking about Dr. Warren Farrell.
	He of the myth of male power.
	And so if you have questions about him, you can check him out online, Warren Farrell.
	Lots of duplicate letters in that name.
	And he's going to be here, and he's going to be answering your questions.
	And I will be thanking him.
	While I, I guess, recline in the philosophy hot tub of language co-hosting.
	So, I hope that you will join us next week for Dr.
	Warren Farrell, who will be answering questions about what it's like to have different PPs.
	Without any particular further ado, let's get on with the caller, James, who is up first.
	Up first today, we have Nathan.
	Nathan? Yes, yes we do.
	My daughter insists on having an opportunity to talk.
	Do you want to say hi? Hi.
	Absolutely. Hello, hello.
	How are you? Yeah.
	And what are you doing this morning?
	Right now, she's sitting on the counter kicking her feet.
	Wow. So she's doing some cardio.
	Yes. That's some early training, but it sounds like it's a spirited way to get over the hurdles.
	So do say to her, good morning.
	We blow an air kiss like the queen in a royal carriage.
	Mwah! That's the way we do it.
	Want to blow one back? There you go.
	All right. Boomerang kiss.
	That's the way we like it. So what's up, Nate?
	I had an argument that I've been hearing a lot lately that I wanted to just get your feedback on that I find really odd, and that is anarchists making the case to other people that they cannot be anarchists if they are also Christians.
	And the premise of the argument is if you believe in an all-powerful, omnipotent being that rules over all and controls everything, then you are not actually against the idea of rules and controls.
	But I find this kind of a strange argument in the same way that somebody might say, well, if you believe in gravity, you can't be an anarchist because the belief in a god is a metaphysical position, not an ethical one.
	I wanted to get your feedback on that.
	Well, I suppose it depends on how you define anarchism.
	I mean, if the anarchism is without a state, then clearly you can be religious and be an anarchist because you can certainly be religious and you can believe that we don't need a state, right?
	Sorry, I'll be muting between my statements at my end in case there's any background noise, but yes, I agree.
	Well, but yes, of course.
	Now, anarchy, though, does not refer to the state in particular.
	Anarchy is, of course, as you know, is without rulers.
	Now, the difference between rulers and authority is, to me, quite simple.
	Authority is rational, empirical, provable, and is earned over time in a voluntary market, right?
	So, when I go to my dentist and she says, you know, gargle with nitroglycerin...
	I may say, well, that seems like an odd request.
	But for the most part, I'm going to do what she says.
	And, you know, I flossed before I knew what the heck it was all about.
	So, if authority is rational, empirical, voluntary, proven, and if there are specific remedies against incompetence, right?
	I mean, if they bring me the wrong sandwich, I can send it back.
	If I buy something and it doesn't work, I can return it.
	So, Authority is when I defer to somebody else's judgment based upon a voluntary and empirical evaluation of their competence.
	And that's everywhere in life.
	I mean, it's everywhere in life.
	Every time I check into a hotel room, I'm deferring to the authority of the architect.
	That is not going to fall down, right?
	Every time I drive a car, I'm deferring to the authority of the engineers that...
	The steering wheel isn't going to fall off in my hands again.
	And so every time I put on pants, I assume that they're going to last for the day, whether I want it or not.
	So the deferring to authority, in a sense, is continual in life.
	And so that is not the same as being a ruler.
	Being a ruler is when you demand obedience without it being chosen to And without any specific remedies for incompetence, whether you sue someone or simply return the item or don't go back to the restaurant again or something like that.
	So a ruler is somebody who enforces an involuntary contract with no remedies for incompetence and That, to me, is what anarchy in particular is talking about.
	Now, if we look at it that way, I think we can see, of course, that religion is not chosen.
	Religion is inflicted by parents on children before they have the mental capacity to understand what is being talked about.
	There are no specific remedies against the gods who fail to provide what is offered, right?
	So there's no, oh, there's no heaven.
	Wow, that's it.
	I want my time and money back, right?
	Or, oh, there's no hell.
	Oh, or anything like that.
	There are no specific remedies for incompetence.
	Or I prayed and my tumor didn't go away and therefore I want all the money that I donated to the church back because the offer was not valid, right?
	So I think the fact that it's involuntary, in other words, inflicted upon children, the fact that it's not chosen.
	Any particular deity is not presented to the child as one of a buffet of many deities, but as the only one true deity, and no other deities are mentioned.
	Well, that is not valid.
	That is not valid, because it's not true.
	There are 10,000 gods or so that people believe in, not counting the secular political ones.
	And so I would think that a deity would fall into the capacity of ruler rather than authority.
	And therefore, it would be hard to say that if you define anarchy as against rulers, that one can be religious and be an anarchist in the true sense.
	Does that make any sense? It makes some sense.
	I'm not sure if it ends up being useful, but I understand where you're coming from.
	Okay, how is it not useful?
	Well, the challenge that I find in social interaction is kind of what I call the Ron Paul effect, which is that conversations start from politics and then try to proceed backwards into more foundational aspects of philosophy.
	And it becomes interestingly divisive in that you see people trying to have a conversation about a topic and bleed into these other foundational aspects and end up in really great conflict.
	And that's one of the reasons I was asking the question.
	It's just that I see this kind of conflict all the time.
	It's very strange to me that this is...
	I'm sorry to interrupt. I don't know what you're talking about.
	I'm sorry if I'm missing something, but can you give me an example?
	I don't know what it is you're talking about in terms of the conflict.
	Sure. I'm picturing two people talking on...
	You know what? Actually, I feel like I don't have my question well-formed, so why don't we go on to the next caller and I'll come back to you.
	No, no, no, no. This is where the questions get really interesting.
	Yeah. No, if you don't mind, I'd like to stay on this for a sec.
	I feel my particular experience of this is that this seems like quite an intense topic for you.
	Well, it was intense recently, so I suppose it is.
	I'm also heavily distracted because I'm here with the kids.
	No, no problem at all.
	Let me take a swig of it.
	Are you by any chance a peacemaker?
	I don't know many people that would say so, but I'm trying to become one.
	Okay, because it seems like you're, you know, let's take separate corners and let's find common ground and so on, right?
	And so, because you said the answer that I provided was true-ish or, you know, was valid, but not useful.
	And I don't know anything about definitions of virtue that would be valid and not useful.
	But what it means is it's not useful for some agenda that you have where the definition does not serve that.
	Does that make sense?
	Like if you have an agenda that you want to be able to call religious people anarchists, then my argument would be valid but not useful to that agenda.
	But that means you have an agenda that is not based upon philosophy but rather a need that you have, which we all have and we all do.
	But I think it's just important to differentiate that.
	Well, certainly. The need in this case is an effort to engage other people in productive conversation who may not have the philosophical grounding that you or I or the other people on this call already do.
	Let me just say one other thing.
	When you told me that it was valid but not useful, I felt kind of annoyed, which doesn't mean anything other than I felt kind of annoyed.
	I felt kind of annoyed because I was sort of thinking, Okay, so I didn't give him the answer that he wanted, although I think I gave him a well-reasoned answer.
	I didn't give him the answer that he wanted, so he's going to discard what I said.
	And I felt used.
	You know, like, Steph, give me a reason that I can call a Christian an anarchist so that I can fulfill some preference that I have.
	Oh, Steph didn't give me that answer.
	I can't argue against it, so I'm going to just discard it.
	And that's not a good way to approach the truth, right?
	I agree. So what's the need?
	You're exactly correct.
	That's exactly what I was saying. Right.
	And so if you want to engage people in productive conversation, I guess my question would be, what do you define as productive conversation?
	I think that's a very broad question that I'm not prepared to answer right in a second.
	Well, certainly if I follow your lead...
	Then it would be engaging in a curious and questioning manner and attempting to apply the Socratic method where possible.
	And this is where I think the particular issue comes in, in that people try to engage from the conclusion.
	So they're already starting out from the premise of here are fellow libertarians or anarchists or voluntarists or whatever they want to call themselves.
	And the conclusion is already A common ground.
	And if the conversation turns to more foundational aspects of philosophy, if it turns to metaphysics or epistemology, if two people engaging immediately go into conflict, then there's no opportunity to get the other person to answer a question, right? As you've observed many times, they tend to double down on the conflict if you approach them confrontationally.
	Do you agree? Well, but how is the, I mean, in general, how is the truth confrontational?
	If I say two and two make four, like if someone says two and two make five, and I say, you know, I lay out the little beads and say two and two make four, how's that confrontational?
	I don't have a good answer for you right now, Steph.
	Is this somebody close to you that you're engaged in these conversations with?
	Well, I'm not directly engaged in the conversation.
	I'm witnessing the conversation.
	And it's somebody close to me that I am wishing would not engage in this fashion.
	Is it the emotional tenor of the interaction that is problematic or is it the intellectual content?
	It's definitely the emotional tenor.
	It comes across every time as...
	I'm thinking of one specific situation that was recent where I was attempting to engage in a questioning fashion and somebody else interrupted the conversation with this position of, well...
	You're not really an anarchist because anarchists can't believe in God.
	So you're not really an anarchist.
	You shouldn't even be talking about this stuff.
	But it was that degree of emotional content injected into the conversation.
	And for me, it was as if I was trying to sit and have coffee with someone and somebody drove a car through the window.
	Can I tell you what I would say in that situation?
	Sure. I would say something like this.
	I would say that if you are...
	Imposing a conclusion without going through the reasoning, then you are not an anarchist at all, to the person who interrupted.
	Because you are stating a forceful conclusion without providing reasoning behind it, without providing evidence for it, which means you are attempting to impose yourself as an arbitrary and aggressive authority over someone, and anarchy is without rulers.
	But you are attempting to rule this conversation without reason, without evidence, with emotional aggression.
	And that is not what anarchy is about.
	You can't say, well, people should reject arbitrary authority because that's a self-detonating statement.
	You are attempting to be an arbitrary authority.
	In other words, you're presenting your argument without reason or evidence, saying that people should not accept arguments without reason or evidence.
	So the least anarchic person in that conversation...
	It's the person saying you can't be an anarchist if you believe in God.
	Because it's not an argument. That's just a statement.
	And people... Why would somebody accept that?
	Because they either bow to your authority or they're afraid of your aggression.
	Well, that's not...
	That's trying to be another kind of ruler.
	Does that make any sense? Yes, it does.
	And I would say that that was entirely my emotional experience within that part of the conversation.
	Right. So any conclusion that is presented without argument...
	It's an attempt to impose arbitrary authority.
	Now, it's not obviously a violation of anarchy in the way that taxation is, but still, it's a violation of the principle.
	And so I can safely say that that answer is useful.
	Well, I think that you always want to look for the self-detonating statement in people.
	Always. I look for this in myself all the time.
	It's my constant. Check in the mirror.
	Did I finish shaving? Am I currently embodying any self-detonating statements?
	Am I enjoying my workout?
	But am I enjoying my workout because I'm exhibiting or internalizing self-detonating statements?
	They are the live grenades of our baseball game.
	And so I think that's really important.
	Now, I think the other thing to do is remember is that If we can reason people out of religion, there's only one fundamental way that it's going to happen.
	There's only one fundamental way that we're going to be able to reason people out of religion, and that is to forget about religion and focus on peaceful parenting.
	Do you think that religion can exist in a household where the parents do not impose their will on the children?
	No, I don't, actually.
	Sorry, now we have both kids trying to get in.
	She's enthusiastic about it. Exactly.
	You don't let your daddy impose your will on your honey.
	Don't you let him. You say, Daddy, you can do what my daughter does.
	I'll tell you what my daughter does when, well, actually just does it regularly, is that she will say, Daddy, come here for a sec, and then I will lean down, and she will suddenly jump up, and she will grab my spine, and she will run over, and she will throw it in the vent.
	And then she will say, Daddy, you can't say no now because I took your spine.
	And that is her way of reminding me that I cannot and should not impose my will upon her, which is entirely fair and right.
	And it's a fun game and it's a great reminder.
	So feel free to do that, honey.
	You take your daddy's spine.
	You throw it in the vent.
	And then you all have no choice but to reason together.
	So, yeah.
	So I would focus on that.
	And I would also focus on the person's emotional history and experience with religion.
	I get these emails, of course, all the time about people who say that their lives were very much scarred by – and their childhoods, of course, in particular, very much scarred by aggressive kinds of religion.
	And you understand that it doesn't have to be religion that scars people.
	It is pretty much any apocalyptic worldview.
	Teaching children about how half of humanity is going to drown because of global warming is abusive.
	Anything which gives children an apocalyptic sense of their own future or possibilities is, I think, incredibly destructive.
	It can be eschatological in religion.
	It can be eschatological in terms of the environmental movement.
	People can do it in terms of national debts and the growth of state power.
	People's horror about their existence can so easily be squeezed like lemon juice into the eyeballs of children.
	It burns.
	It scars. And it can happen through an apocalyptic communication about the inevitability of class conflict through the left or through communism.
	It can come through...
	I guess as Adam Lanza's mother did, it can come through telling your children about the end times, stocking up on food and weapons and so on and giving the children a sense that the future is a shark that's going to eat them, a closing tunnel that is going to crush them.
	This is incredibly destructive to children and it is a self-indulgence on the metaphysical anxiety on the part of the parents.
	And it can happen, of course, with Jesus is coming back and is going to take us all to heaven.
	Anything which shreds a child's sense of continuity and time and a future is incredibly destructive to children.
	My guess would be that this person is reacting to doom scenarios that played out in his own childhood.
	And is attempting to latch back at that, which is, you know, all forcefully imposed conclusions arise from unprocessed emotions, in my opinion, because if you have the patience and you've worked through the emotions, then you can help people step through it.
	But it's a weird kind of thing, right?
	It's a weird kind of thing like if you can just get people to accept the right conclusions without having to go through the emotional difficulty of processing how you get there, it's almost like a kindness but it turns out to be a cruelty.
	It's almost like, well, if I can just saw off people's bellies, then they'll lose weight and they don't have to go through all the pain of dieting and all that that I had to.
	So it's a weird kind of seeming kindness that ends up I think as a greater cruelty.
	Steph, I want to say thank you for getting me to the honest place with my question in the first place.
	Yes, sir.
	Yes, sir.
	Sorry. She got a nice voice.
	There is a castle in a cloud.
	You're right that I was approaching my question originally in an attempt to use you to get a specific answer, and I really appreciate your refocusing my question to get to the honest version of it.
	So, thank you so much.
	Let me know how it goes. Thank you.
	Bye, sweetie! Bye.
	Bye. Bye!
	Next up today, we have Robert.
	Bobby! Hello, Robert.
	How are you doing? Hey, doing well.
	We've talked a few times, actually.
	I'm just going to go put a note into the cellar.
	I was going to say, here it is.
	Money, money, money must be funny in a podcast world.
	Yeah, there you go. 200 bucks, buddy.
	Alright. Well, you get...
	I think you get a philosophical answer with a happy ending.
	So, you know, relax.
	There it just went.
	You got $200.
	I just said it right now. Thank you.
	So, anyway, you have been an amazing resource for me in my life.
	And I called you out on some stuff and was real upset about things.
	And a lot of mine...
	You have helped me more than any counselor I've ever gone to.
	Truly, you've got some great insights, and I hope to share some insights with you in future years.
	Well, thank you. I appreciate that.
	That's very kind. Thank you. So, I've been having conversations from people on the left, people on the right.
	And I found that an easy way of talking with people on the right tends to be, well, when it comes to private versus public, you know, let's say a private company doing your DMV crap and Whatever, or mail-in some stuff for you, which tends to be better?
	You know, you have the monopoly, the government doing it for you, or you have the public doing it for you, and which one tends to be better?
	And they always say, well, obviously, you want to have the private sector do it for you.
	And so then I push them on.
	Why do you think that you have to have the public sector provide policing?
	I mean... Wouldn't it be better if it was done in a private environment?
	It's the same kind of thing. And they kind of get it.
	And it's a tough sell, obviously, but you can really push their buttons there and you can really make some headway.
	But when it comes to the libs, when it comes to liberals, that's where I get into this...
	Well, they're freaking talking from a different concept.
	Their mindset is totally...
	It blows my mind. I mean, I just don't see where they're coming from.
	Well, I came up with a new argument that tends to address that particular concern.
	And what it is, it's an argument from the tragedy of the commons.
	I'm sure you're familiar with the concept.
	But just for those who are listening, who are familiar with it, let's say that we have A new area that we're going to all go in and inhabit.
	We've got a new planet that we're going to go ahead and inhabit.
	And what we're going to do is we're going to set up a colony here and we're going to go ahead and let people do their thing and this is yours and that's mine.
	But this area here is going to be a communal grounds for our cattle to live on and eat and do their thing.
	Well, when you have the communal thing, everybody tries to get their cattle on it so they can get fattened and grow to be bigger.
	And everybody will use that resource as best as they possibly can, as quickly as they possibly can, because they're worried about everybody else taking advantage of that resource.
	Same kind of situation can be...
	Exemplified, if you take a bunch of children and you give them all a 20-ounce soda, they'll drink it fairly slowly.
	But if, let's say, you've got five kids and you have a 1,000-ounce soda and every one of their straws goes into the same soda, they'll suck and suck really fast.
	And they'll go into it really fast.
	So, when you explain the tragedy of the commons to the lib, they start to realize, well, yeah, obviously it creates an incentive to suck as much as you can out of the situation.
	So, then you ask them, well, who owns the government?
	Who owns the dollar signs that are Behind the government, this trough where everyone can go in and take their food out of.
	But nobody does.
	Nobody owns it. It's not like we have a monarch that's going to say, oh, no, no, cut it short.
	You know, let's just hold back.
	No. It's everyone else.
	It's welcome because we live in a representative republic, a democracy of some sort.
	And so we all are going to try to take what we can.
	And that gives an incentive to the business owner to try to suck as much as he can out of the system as much as possible.
	And... Every single business owner has an incentive to push and suck as much as he can out of the system.
	And when you explain it in that way, they start to get it.
	It is surprising how the leftist, the person who is like, well, people are greedy, can understand the tragedy of the commons and really, like, See how it promotes a destruction of the system.
	And it was surprising to me how successful that was in persuading people to consider that property rights and individual governments and individual respect for others and interaction, voluntary interaction, creates A personal investment in the goal and the end.
	And I was wondering what you thought about that particular approach on how to explain to people that it is by its nature destructive if you create a tragedy of the commons by creating a government and instead have each people I mean,
	I think it's an excellent approach.
	And of course, I mean, it's a great argument.
	People say that the state exists to solve some particular problem.
	And then when you point out that the state is the one most subject to that problem, they'll just try something else, for the most part.
	I mean, do you know what philosophy has been, almost exclusively throughout history...
	It's a way of trying to lock people in a cage.
	Now, everybody has a different lock that will put them in the cage.
	Everybody. And so what happens is you have a whole bunch of, quote, thinkers.
	State whores. And what they do is they try...
	They have a big keychain. The big keychain is full of various aphorisms, various little mental tricks, various little...
	Rabid, horrible monkeys of vampiric subjugation.
	And what they do is they take out this big bunch of keys and they try to lock you in this cage.
	And if one luck doesn't work, they'll just try another one.
	They'll just try another one until they get that, oh, so satisfying subjugatory click.
	Ah, yes. Just like the anti-gun advocates.
	They're like, oh, look at that!
	I found a freaking state that has guns and this state doesn't have guns.
	Well, let's just go ahead and push that button.
	Yeah, so what they'll do is they'll say...
	Well, you see, we need the government to solve the problem of the commons.
	We say, well, the government is the entity in the world most subject to the problem of the commons.
	And they'll sit there and say, well, gosh, I guess that's one strike down for the government.
	No, they just try another key.
	Well, we need the government because there are bad people in the world.
	And we say, well, where do you think bad people are going to go?
	But straight to the government. Exactly.
	We need the government because the government will take care of the poor.
	Well, in a democracy, the majority of people...
	Where are they going to go?
	Government will subjugate the poor and how have the poor been doing?
	The evidence is in from the past 40 or 50 years of programs and also – oh, the government – and the other thing too is of course if the majority of people in a democracy vote for poverty programs, the majority of people want to help the poor anyway.
	And so they'll be taken care of without the ridiculous overhead of government, right?
	And then people say, well, you see, we need the government for national defense, right?
	I say, well, the government generally tends to use its resources to attack other countries, to destabilize democratic regimes, to To sow seeds of dissent all over the world.
	And it's really hard to say that the government is going to protect us when the government uses force.
	Oh, you see, to take money from us.
	If you say, oh, the government needs to protect our property.
	Well, how on earth can the government protect our property when it can debase our currency at will, when it can sell us off and the unborn after foreign banksters at will, and when it uses the initiation of force to strip us of more than half our property, all told, before we even get out of the gate?
	Right. So, I mean, sorry.
	So what happens is people just have...
	What is going to lock you in the cage of statism?
	Oh, this key doesn't work?
	Fuck it, fine. I'll just use another key.
	Oh, that key doesn't work? No problem.
	I got six million keys here.
	And philosophy has been the development of the keys that close to lock to the cage of the state.
	And that has been the entire some history in general of the development of philosophy.
	What will get you in the fucking cage?
	What is going to put you in the cage and keep you there and get you to see that cage as a gilded, gorgeous, golden hall of privilege?
	That is all that history is.
	It's just like you said in a previous discussion where they want to feel your guilt.
	They want you to have an understanding of, well...
	This is where you want to have some...
	Hey, Mark, could you hit mute on that, please?
	Mark? Okay.
	Alright, so...
	They want to find out what it is that you care about and you feel guilt about, or this...
	Need that you need to try to take care of other people for.
	And instead of actually doing it on your own action, instead of it being an individual choice, they want to make it a common.
	And when you make it the commons, everyone all feels it's all taken care of.
	But it's not.
	It's not taken care of.
	There is no being taken care of when it is in the commons.
	When everybody believes it's all taken care of, well then, nobody will act.
	Nobody will actually take the action necessary to solve the problem, and instead they assume that it's already taken care of because it's in the commons.
	Yeah, it's a simple aphorism.
	Do you ever change the oil on a rental car?
	No. Boom! Statism doesn't work.
	Simple. Yeah! Holy crap!
	Crap, that's a beautiful explanation.
	Right there, boom, you got it. .
	Yeah, so I mean I get these emails all the time where people say – I got one just the other day.
	People have a big list of philosophers.
	What do you think of these philosophers?
	Hume and Kant and Nietzsche and Hegel and all these sorts of things.
	And I could go through. I mean I studied most of these guys at one time or another, so I could go through and I probably will.
	I think I'm going to do this in – ah, yes, globalescapehatch.com.
	I will be speaking in Belize next month.
	I hope that people will come and check it out.
	But my basic answer is we only have heard of these people because they are useful to the powers that be.
	We have only ever heard of philosophers in the past prior to the internet.
	We have only heard of philosophers in the past to the degree with which they served those in power.
	Because people in power were the gatekeepers.
	They could basically kill, imprison, repress, threaten anyone that they wanted.
	So anyone they felt was okay to publish, they felt was okay to have the word out, well, that's great.
	You know, it's because it doesn't harm their interest.
	In fact, it serves their interests.
	And some people, like Hegel, serve the power of the state, obviously.
	And some people, like Nietzsche, serve the power of the state, less obviously.
	But by attacking religion and portraying society as conflict, he promoted the fascist worldview, basically.
	Not, of course, that he was a fascist, but it serves the fascist worldview.
	And so these people all serve the sociopaths of slippery language to one degree or another, which is why they're promoted.
	And, of course, for the basic reality is anybody who's promoted in academia is somebody who serves...
	The power that academia serves.
	Academia are domesticated word slaves of the ruling classes.
	So people – you see, Steph's philosophy is not valid because he hasn't been peer-reviewed by professional philosophers.
	Yes, exactly.
	If I were peer-reviewed by professional philosophers and they liked what I was doing, I would be so ashamed I would just stop – I would just stop what I was doing because clearly I would be serving the wrong powers if that were the case.
	And of course the vast majority – it's always interesting to me and I remember having this conversation with a philosophy prof back in the day that we consider peer review in philosophy to be the standard of philosophy.
	And I said – I remember bringing this up and I said, how many of the philosophers that we study were peer-reviewed in their own environment and found approval among their peers?
	Was it Nietzsche?
	No.
	Nietzsche was fired as a professor or quit as a professor of philology.
	Hated academia.
	Was it Locke?
	No.
	Was it Socrates?
	No.
	Plato?
	No.
	Aristotle?
	No.
	Tertullian?
	No.
	Luther?
	No.
	In fact, they were all hated.
	So the idea that everybody that academics study was never approved of by academics.
	But then academics say, well, you see, to be a good philosopher, you have to be approved of by academics.
	It's like, but everyone you study did not fit that paradigm at all.
	Everyone who was a good philosopher – I mean, look at Spinoza.
	Spinoza was completely ostracized in his day.
	He was told in the Jewish community nobody can even look at him.
	And he's freaking awesome.
	He is awesome. He is awesome.
	I know. What you get out of academic philosophers is that – Mealy-mouthed, pro-socialist gobbledygook like John Rawls, The Theory of Justice.
	That's what you get out of academia, for God's sakes.
	I mean, it's horrendous.
	I mean, we've got a moral crisis in the world.
	When was the last time a professional philosopher was on a show on TV or on the radio and they said, we are in dire straits, man.
	We've got to get a philosopher on here.
	The world's going to hell in a handbasket, man.
	We've got to get somebody with a PhD in philosophy here to clear it all up for us.
	You know, where's the Dr.
	Spinoza show on television?
	It doesn't exist. Because they've put forward the standard which says you're only a philosopher if you are approved of by the philosophers that the state approves of.
	In other words, the academics.
	Well, screw that.
	What a revolting accolade that would be.
	You know, Hitler gives the movie two thumbs up.
	It must be a great movie.
	Anyway, sorry, just a minor rant, but Well, so philosophically, I mean, you see where I'm coming from on that, and it's a viable approach.
	It really explains the concept to people who have that perspective to understand it.
	So, on a question that's not as easy as that...
	My question is, I recently hit a significant amount of money in Slot Machine.
	And I'm actually considering taking a moral stance on this and just saying, fuck it, I'm going to go ahead and challenge the system.
	And I'm going to go ahead and say...
	I'm going to do the conscientious objector concept to taxes.
	I'm going to say, well, I conscientiously disagree with the idea that you're going to use my money to bomb people in Africa.
	I conscientiously disagree with the idea of coercively demanding money from other people For their funding of whatever.
	And I think that if I were to...
	I mean, it's not like a huge amount of money, but we're talking about something that they might actually come after.
	But if I were to fight the good fight, so to speak, maybe it could bring the concept into the conscientious nature of society.
	Well, hang on.
	Let me see if I can make a case against that.
	Obviously, your conscience is your own to follow, but let me see if I can make a case against that.
	There is the idea, of course, that if – let's say – I know it's not this, but let's say you got a million bucks.
	Let's say you said, well, that's it.
	I'm not going to pay taxes on this million bucks.
	Do you think the government is going to spend a million dollars less?
	Maybe. Nope. Nope.
	Not a chance. What are they going to do?
	They're going to print a million dollars more.
	They're going to borrow a million dollars more.
	If they print a million dollars more, then you end up hurting the poor.
	And if they borrow a million dollars more, then you end up hurting the unborn.
	You see, you don't reduce the power of the state by not paying your taxes.
	I mean, we can see this.
	Just over the last eight years, government revenue has collapsed so many people out of work.
	They lost property taxes because 10% of the US housing market is unoccupied and what have they done?
	Well, they've just simply borrowed and printed more.
	Government spending has continued to increase while government revenue is decreasing.
	So you do not do anything to shrink the power of the state by not paying its taxes.
	All you do is you shift the burden to people who are probably far less able to deal with it than you are.
	So in terms of the argument from effect, Not paying your taxes simply shifts the burden to people who are probably less able to handle it than you are.
	I mean just saying that's the practical reality.
	Sorry, are you going to say? Well, I know that it's not a million dollars.
	I mean we're talking – No, it doesn't matter.
	It doesn't matter how much. It's a penny.
	It doesn't matter how much it is. The reality is that if you don't pay your taxes, it does nothing to shrink the power of the state.
	In fact, it increases it because what happens is – If the government prints more, then of course it hurts the poor.
	And if the government borrows more, then you end up with the government minus a million dollars, then plus a million dollars plus interest over time, which people will have to pay off sort of forever.
	I'm not looking at it from that perspective.
	I'm looking at it from the publicity perspective.
	Oh, yes. But you see, people – it's way earlier.
	No, listen, listen.
	If you want to gain publicity for an act of tax defiance, you just have to look at what's happened before.
	Wasn't there a dentist named Brown who didn't pay his taxes?
	They cornered him in his house and they holed him up and the government, of course, all reported that he was a lunatic, that he was crazy, that he was selfish, that he wasn't willing to pay his fair share, that the government provided roads and healthcare and education for him and his children and now he didn't want to foot the bill.
	It's way too early.
	Way too early. In fact, I don't think it's ever going to be a case that we're going to solve the problem of statism through non-compliance.
	You don't think that we're at the point where doing the Gandhi thing is like if we have some people who actually will stand up and do that kind of thing, like I would make a statement to the press and say bottom line is I'm going to give all my money to the lawyers who are going to fight against this oppression and Yeah, no, because you see the difference was that Gandhi wrote – this is a long and complicated story, so I'll just touch on it briefly.
	But Gandhi wrote the wave of socialism that was erupting all throughout the colonial world at the end of the Second World War.
	But don't we have a wave of voluntarism that is like – I know that the Tea Party is not exactly – I know that the Occupy Wall Street is not exactly on board with it,
	but both of them would find a common ground here to just say, screw those people who are just trying to take our money and redistribute it to the war machine or the...
	I don't know, whatever machine you want to call it.
	I mean, whether it be imprisoning people who do nothing but to have grass in their pants.
	So, I mean...
	No, sorry. Let me be a little bit more clear before we sort of jump on that.
	So, Gandhi rode a wave of socialism, and socialism was a way of transferring power.
	So, socialism was a coup as a whole, right?
	And socialism, of course, expanded the number of people who could take government power and use it for their own advantage.
	You get more bureaucrats under socialism and more union control of state power under socialism and all that kind of stuff.
	So, Gandhi, remember, why is Gandhi famous?
	Because he was useful to people in power.
	Gandhi is famous because he was useful to people in power.
	Because Gandhi helped to usher in Nehru and of course created his own political dynasty and he was promoted as – like in the media, he was promoted as an all-loving man of peace.
	In fact, my understanding is that he cheated on his fast and he also slept naked with young ladies because he wanted to test his erotic willpower.
	You can read – Paul Johnson writes a lot about this in modern times and I won't get into the details of it.
	And he was obsessed with his own feces.
	I mean he was a bit of a lunatic of course, right?
	But he was portrayed as an all-loving man of peace.
	Why?
	Because he was an all-loving man of peace?
	Good heavens no.
	Lysander Spooner was an all-loving man of peace.
	I don't hear a goddamn thing about him.
	But no, Gandhi was portrayed that way because he greased the wheels of the socialist coup.
	And so lots of people said, well, if we can promote Gandhi, then we can push out the British and we can take power ourselves.
	And so they promoted him.
	But not because they valued his non-violent stance, but because he was useful.
	Now, if he had been an anarchist, do you think that he would have done anything other than rot in a jail and be mocked by anyone who'd ever heard about him?
	Of course, because he would not be useful to people who wanted to grab power.
	Intellectuals have to constantly be vigilant about being seized by people who wish to use them to justify, legitimize and coat the sword that they're unsheathing for the coup.
	And that is something that happened with Gandhi.
	So I wouldn't believe the public tales of Gandhi any more than I would the public tales of Mother Teresa who was an all-loving fascist groupie.
	So the reality is that if you say pull a Gandhi, well, this is not anything like pulling a Gandhi because we would not be facilitating a new group's rise to power, but we would be opposing power in itself.
	So if you don't pay your taxes, you certainly don't – Well,
	when is the time then? Well, it's not for us to decide.
	There's nobody who can decide when the time is.
	What we can do is continue to promote the principles of reason, of evidence, in particular of peaceful parenting.
	We can continue to promote all of this and if we can get the peaceful parenting message across, then a generation will grow up that will be approximately 8 to 10 IQ points smarter than Even with the Flynn effect, then we're going to talk even more.
	It'll be like 11 to 14 IQ points smarter, which is exactly what we want.
	Exactly what we want. I mean, we need smarter people to be able to understand the truth, and the only way to get them is to raise them peacefully.
	Go ahead. You keep saying this like… We want to create the new realm, the new understanding of reality and the way we do that is through peaceful parenting and creating a new generation that will understand things and then we will start to, I don't know, just ignore the concept.
	And people won't buy into this hierarchical bullshit.
	But I'm impatient.
	I'll be honest.
	I'm impatient.
	I freaking want it to happen now.
	Or not necessarily now, but sometime within my lifetime.
	Of course.
	And I want, I mean, Bill Whittle has, I mean, he's kind of like a Tea Party-esque guy.
	And his idea is that, well, what we do is we create agorist alternatives and so on.
	And then there's other people who have come up with ideas of conscious objectors, and we all get together at On April 20th in Colorado and smoke weed or, you know...
	No, no, listen, but...
	Sorry to interrupt you, but no, you don't want to see freedom in your lifetime because if you wanted to see freedom in your lifetime, you wouldn't be contemplating defying the state and wasting years, if not decades, being threatened and harassed and going to jail and fighting things in court where you can't win.
	I mean, geez, be instructed by Larkin Rose.
	Larkin Rose decided not to pay his taxes.
	He got hauled up In court.
	And he had prepared an entire, I'm sure, extraordinarily eloquent and well-researched speech, which he was going to give about the morality of taxation and where it stood in the legal framework of the United States and so on, right?
	And what happened? Was he given an opportunity to speak?
	No, they just threw his ass in jail.
	So if you really want freedom, then you pay the people off and you go about spreading freedom.
	But if you don't pay the people off, they will come after you with guns.
	And that, my friend, is not freedom.
	Okay, well, let's just take it to the freaking extreme then.
	Let's say I set up bombs.
	I set up all sorts of defense situations and I can kill a crap ton of people who are coming to get me.
	Well, they're not stupid.
	I mean, they won't come in.
	They'll just starve you out. Yeah, but I set up bombs outside of that.
	They'll just look. You have to put yourself in the mind.
	These people aren't stupid. I mean, they're not going to do that unless it's going to serve their purpose to do it.
	But each individual cop, I mean, cops don't want to go in and get blown up, right?
	So if they, I mean, they'll just circle you.
	I mean, that's what they did with the Browns.
	They don't know what booby traps are inside the house.
	So, of course, they're just going to circle you and starve you out.
	Well, I got a crap ton of food.
	Okay, then they'll wait.
	I mean, in the meantime, they get great publicity for...
	I got 10 years worth of food.
	And water? And what if you need healthcare?
	What if you get an abscess in your tooth?
	What if you have appendicitis?
	I mean, come on. Dude, you're freaking marching on my mellow here.
	What the hell? No, I'm giving you a bitter pill called reality.
	A bitter pill called reality.
	And the whole time that you were holed up Of course it is.
	Of course it is. Absolutely.
	And that frustration is really important.
	Frustration is really important.
	As I was saying to my daughter the other day, frustration is the part of you that worries that what you're trying to do might not be achievable.
	It's an important emotion to process, but don't overreach frustration by impulsive action because that's what they want.
	They want us to get so frustrated that we do stupid things.
	Well, I knew that that was the answer.
	And don't take – sorry, let me also take this.
	Do not take one atom of shame or complicity in submitting to force.
	No, no, no. Not at all.
	All I can think is that I can spread the message and I can encourage people to question and encourage people to think.
	And when I do that, I've made the contribution that I can.
	This martyr type thing.
	It's just not realistic.
	It's not an understandable position to have.
	You try to explain to those people that you come in contact with and you try to get them to realize that taxation is robbery, that we're living in essentially a mafia situation and get them to understand that and then More importantly, Just get them to stop beating their kids.
	Get them to stop beating their kids.
	And look, if you work on your writing skills and you work on your communication skills, then people will always listen to something.
	Most people will listen to something even if they disagree with it, if it's put forward in an enjoyable fashion.
	Yes, exactly.
	I mean what do I do?
	I throw bad jokes in, snippets of songs and funny stories and all that.
	I mean I will try to make philosophy – I'll try and ring as many rainbows as I can out of the clenched sphincter of truth.
	And that's because I really need people to listen to this stuff.
	And we can learn from people like Rush Limbaugh.
	Rush Limbaugh is an excellent, excellent communicator.
	I mean, he's engaging. He's funny.
	He's passionate. And he's got, what, 40 million listeners?
	So it is important.
	I mean, why do we know more about Plato than most of the other writers?
	Because he was... Of the time, most of the other thinkers of the time, because he was a fantastic writer.
	And this is really, really important.
	So work on your communication skills and be as engaging as you can and spread the truth as much as possible.
	Who knows how far you can go?
	I mean, people put – I mean, Elliot Spitzer is on TV, for God's sake.
	Wasn't he holed up with hookers and blow?
	I mean, the proverbial – he's on TV, right?
	I mean, it's just astounding.
	Mark Furman is on TV. I mean, it's just amazing.
	Well, delivery is a significant part of what we're trying to do, and I think that if I can create another niche for this message of the tragedy of the commons, because that's what government is, is a tragedy of the commons.
	I'm going to try to spread the message as best as I can.
	I think that we obviously are on the right side of morality.
	We're on the right side of economics.
	There's nowhere but up to go.
	Sorry, the last thing I'll say is let's at least be incredibly thankful that we have economic and not ideological farmers.
	See, ideological farmers like theocracies and so on, I mean, they'll kill you for saying the wrong stuff.
	Oh, yeah. Right? I mean, they'll just kill you for saying the wrong stuff.
	I mean, as we all know, I mean, the penalty for apostasy into Islam is death, right?
	And the penalty for unbelief in all the Old Testament religions is death for skepticism, for attempting to convert people.
	So if you have ideological masters, then you have no freedom.
	Particularly if you have a few brain cells rolling around your ape-like skull.
	But if you have economic masters, then they'll let you say whatever shit you want.
	Just pay your taxes. I mean that's what they said openly.
	March all you want. Just pay your goddamn taxes because all they want is the money.
	I mean the farmer doesn't care if the cows sing spiritual hymns together about identifying with the yearning for freedom and brother Moses.
	All they care about is give us your milk.
	Yeah, give us the milk and give us your calves and we're – you can do whatever you want.
	Go play volleyball with your hooves.
	We don't care. Just give us your money.
	Give us – show me the money.
	That's all our society is and that's wonderful.
	I mean this is the pinnacle of human freedom in history.
	You and I having this conversation is the pinnacle of human freedom so far in history.
	And all we have to do is pay off these guys and be left with more money and more resources than the wealthiest people throughout 99.9% of human history.
	We pay them off.
	We still have more money than the richest people throughout 99.9% of human history.
	So listen, don't feel hard done by.
	We have it pretty damn sweet.
	I agree.
	I agree. And, well, I will do what I can to spread the message and I won't be the martyr.
	I'll pay my freaking taxes, which pisses me off because I'm funding the killing of innocent people.
	No, you're not funding the killing of innocent people.
	You're not funding it. Don't confuse voluntarism with violence.
	It's like saying, I'm making love to my rapist.
	Well, I feel like that.
	And that's how they want you to feel.
	That's how they want you to feel. Of course, they want you to feel that you're morally compromised when you have a gun to your head.
	No. The only people who are morally compromised when you have a gun to your head are the people holding the goddamn gun.
	Not you. Not you.
	You're doing what it takes to survive.
	And you are taking a more honorable and ethical course than 99.9% of your fellow citizens.
	So don't take the shame of what you have to do when there's a gun to your head.
	Only focus on the immorality of the gun being A, there, and B, pointed at your head.
	So don't take a shred of moral stain from doing what the gun compels you to do.
	Don't. I mean, it's like the old moral argument.
	Someone rushes in and says, you know, where's your best friend?
	I want to go shoot him. And then you say, oh, I feel so bad for having lied to that person.
	No, that's not lying.
	No. Lying is when there's a choice.
	When there's a gun, there's no choice.
	So just don't feel like the war is somehow your fault and your responsibility and so on.
	No, it's the responsibility of two groups of people.
	Well, three. The rulers, the enforcers, and those who sing the polysyllabic hymns of praise to those in power, the intellectuals and the media.
	The verbal abusers, the physical abusers, and the sociopaths who rule them both.
	So it's their moral responsibility, not yours.
	Well, just one last time, I do want to thank you for everything you've contributed to my life.
	And, you know, I appreciated it enough that I found that there was at least 100 people who were bitching and complaining about $2 tips and shit like that.
	Well, here's $200, and you go ahead and kick some ass, because you have seriously given me, quote, salvation, unquote.
	Yeah. Well, thank you very much. I'll actually be on TV tomorrow.
	I'm still working on...
	the times.
	But anyway, so I'll obviously post that on the channel when it's done.
	But thank you very much.
	Thank you for your kind donation.
	Thank you for bringing the moral agonies that you're facing into the public conversation.
	That's a very powerful thing to do.
	And I'm sure that at least I hope that the conversation has been useful to others.
	I'm sure it has been.
	So thank you.
	Thank you.
	Thank you so much.
	I appreciate that.
	And of course, thank you for your donation.
	It's really nice.
	Oh, listen. Sorry, not you.
	You can listen too. But let me just mention something that we have a few new emails.
	So if you would like a listener conversation, I would like more myself, but it's been a little tough to schedule them lately for a variety of reasons.
	But if you'd like to chat with me about something, The general parameters are, you know, call in, don't give name, location, but talk and, you know, it can be a show if you're okay with that.
	I bet you get a chance to listen to it first.
	You can email convos, C-O-N-V-O-S, at freedomainradio.com.
	If you have a suggestion for a guest, I'm really, you know, if we can book Satan, that would be great.
	But guests, so you can email guestsuggestions at freedomainradio.com.
	If you want articles or stories to be processed through the True News Chatterbox, Max Headroom slash PBHerman, head of mine, you can email truenews at freedomainradio.com. And if you would like to volunteer, if you've got a skill or talent and would like to volunteer, volunteer at freedomainradio.com. Also, we've got some tickets for the New York City gig that I will be speaking at along with some significant luminaries in April.
	We've got some free tickets for that if you'd like to put together a quote or a meme from a show that I've done.
	You can email quotes at freedomainradio.com.
	I mean, so you get some free tickets, but also I'd like to sort of put some memes out there.
	They're a great way of sharing the conversation.
	I mean, the one I did on gun control has been shared huge amounts of times, so I hope that you will do that.
	So I just wanted to mention that and bury it right in the middle of the show so fewer people hear it.
	I request Sam Harris.
	Yeah, Sam actually really did like the show that I did with Peter Boghossian.
	And Peter Boghossian working on a new book he is.
	Ah, how exciting.
	And he's going to be out in a month or two, I think.
	And I will, of course, share my thoughts.
	Can I also be so bold as to make a media recommendation?
	That's going to take you away from Free Domain Radio.
	But, you know, drop some breadcrumbs from your medulla and you will be able to find your way back.
	But on Netflix, there is an original series called House of Cards that is like the West Wing's bad-tempered, evil sociopathic twin.
	It's Bad Kirk and it's really interesting to watch.
	Kevin Spacey has got his reptilian, heavy-lidded – what's that?
	Melting-faced dog that used to be on Looney Tunes.
	I can't remember his name.
	But he looks like a sort of melting wax model of Walter Matthau, and he's got that cold-eyed reptilian stare down to a tee.
	He's very good.
	Robin Wright, ex of the Princess Bride, has tuned in a perfect ice queen sociopath performance, and it takes a little bit to get into it.
	I wasn't too keen on it for the first half of the first episode that I watched, but stay a little patient with it, and it's well worth watching.
	It is really like...
	Kicking over a flag and finding a rotten half-eaten bunny with maggots on it.
	I mean this is the reality of the political process.
	It is very powerful.
	It is very revealing.
	I'm happy to say it is entirely in concordance with the ideas that we've talked about here for many years about the reality of power and who is drawn to power and what power does to people.
	And some of the language is really great.
	Some of the subplots are a little – who cares, right?
	But that's okay. It's a sprawling series and therefore some subplots are kind of silly.
	But nonetheless, it's well worth checking out and it does lift the lid.
	As I think it was Bismarck who said, the public should never see how two things are made, sausages and laws.
	And it is fascinating to just see the thuggery that goes on in politics.
	I mean, these people are hit men with cufflinks, and it is very fascinating to see.
	So I would check it out if you would like to.
	House of Cards is based on a book, based on an old series.
	There is a movie. I don't know if the movie is related at all, but I would really recommend it.
	It is – it's not revealing to us, but it is entirely heartening that there is an audience for this.
	It's also heartening that the bad guys are Democrats, right?
	Because it is – if they were Republicans, then it would be about republicanism.
	But because they're Democrats, it's just about government because in the media, Democrats are the government and Republicans are the interlopers.
	So it is really quite fascinating that there are no good guys in politics, that there is an exquisite verbal brutality – In politics and the unspoken deals that go on, which, of course, in everyday anarchy I talk about as a proof for anarchy that the government runs on unenforceable, non-written-down contracts.
	Of course, we can run society with enforceable, written-down contracts.
	If society can be run on unenforceable, unwritten-down contracts like lobbying pressure and the resulting favors, it is really quite – Quite exquisite, and I think it also dips into – well, I know it dips into the media as well and the politics of a newspaper.
	So I would really – I would recommend it is what I'm saying.
	Check it out. It's – yeah, it's a little brutal, but it's well worth looking at.
	Yeah, it's like Yes Minister without the comedy.
	All right. Do we have any other callers?
	Yes, we do. And you were thinking of Droopy.
	Droopy! Thank you, thank you, thank you.
	Can you do his voice?
	I can't remember. Jon Stewart does it sometimes when he's imitating...
	I can't remember that guy.
	Oh my god, where is my brain today?
	Lieberman. Anyway, do you remember how the voice goes?
	Oh, I know. I can hear it.
	Yeah, I can. I can do it.
	I can do Marvin the Martian. Something like that.
	Anyway. It's really nasally and very...
	Not enunciated very well.
	That's all I remember.
	It's not like how I can describe it.
	I can't actually do it, I don't think.
	So we have two more callers if we can get them.
	Let's do it. If we can fit them in.
	Chris is up next.
	Hey everybody, how y'all doing?
	Hello. Hey, thanks for taking my call.
	Steph, I have a question about a career choice and a potential ethical or moral dilemma I see.
	With regards to being a volunteerist and going into business in the financial services industry.
	All right, go ahead. Sorry about that.
	I try and do my due diligence and research before I make any kind of move.
	This is going to take... This move's got to take place in the next 9 to 12 months, so I'm really trying to narrow down some choices, and I am interested in the financial services industry because there's a lot of people that do need the help.
	On the same token, I know that a lot of these businesses focus probably 98% on sales as opposed to financial advice and planning and whatnot, so if I limit my I don't think so.
	I mean, weren't there people who...
	I mean, to take extreme examples, somewhat extreme, I mean, there were people who sheltered Jews in war-torn Europe, and this was...
	Very helpful, of course, to the Jews and the homosexuals and the intellectuals and the gypsies and whoever else the Nazis had their laser beam eyes of racial purity on.
	And so they were, quote, participating in that they were reacting to an environment but helping to save people.
	And, of course, the other thing that comes to mind is the Underground Railroad that helped to shuttle slaves from the South, I think that you are rescuing people.
	I think that you are providing an essential underground railway service for resources.
	You can help them fight against inflation, rising interest rates, devaluation and so on.
	So I think that you can do a huge amount of good.
	I mean think of the amount of resources that people like Doug Casey's group and Jeff Berwick's group and Peter Schiff's group and lots of other great financial investors and financial experts are helping people to hang on to their money and hang on to their resources,
	hard-won, hard-earned, Thank you.
	I appreciate that. That's what I was looking at primarily was the opportunity to provide a different perspective to people because the majority of it People are among that group we know as the unwashed masses who don't have a clue and don't care.
	And that gives me some concern with regards to my capabilities for success.
	You know, I have a family to take care of as well and things.
	So I'm weighing all this stuff, but primarily, which I'm actually proud to say, my primary concern was potential ethical dilemma of Yeah, but I mean, you're not talking about joining the government.
	You're talking about helping people to hedge against all the invisible forms of predation that the government can impose at will, right?
	Like QE99 or whatever it's going to be when they do finally exchange fiat currency for toilet paper.
	No, not toilet paper because that actually has value.
	I don't know. Sandpaper in a world of glass houses.
	I don't know. But yeah, so I think that you can do real good in this environment, in this scenario.
	And I think through doing that real good, you can gain an enormous amount of credibility doing real good, particularly in money areas, doing real good.
	Is, you know, is really the key to long-term success, right?
	I mean, you can be a great doctor in a socialist healthcare system and you do then actually save lives.
	So, you know, you pursue your dreams.
	Don't worry too much about the environment but use it to further your knowledge about how best to serve the financial interests of your clients and that's just win-win.
	You make money, they get to keep their money and you also know that Because of your knowledge, I would assume, of this kind of fiat currency environment, you can provide better financial advice than your peers.
	And if it's not you, then they're going to get to someone who doesn't understand the stuff, who's going to cost them a huge amount of money and possibly even wipe out their life savings.
	So if you're a great doctor in a socialist system, if you choose not to practice, it just means people go to crappy doctors and it costs them a lot.
	Thanks. I appreciate that perspective.
	And to make room for everybody, I'll go ahead and take off.
	But thank you again for all you're doing.
	I'm looking forward to the documentary and for the show next weekend.
	Y'all take care. Oh, thanks.
	Thanks. Yeah, the documentary. Luke is my hero, and the animators are my heroes, and the music has been recorded with professional musicians, all 300 of them playing one kazoo.
	Man. Was it ever a Spitfest?
	But, yeah, the music is coming along fantastically.
	I'm completely thrilled by it.
	And we're not quite at the finishing touches stage, but we're closing in.
	And so, yeah, we probably will be on schedule to have something.
	I'm going to try and put out the first 10 or 11 minutes as they stand with some of the music in place over the next couple of days.
	But we'll see. I'd like to put that out as a teaser and...
	Hopefully we get the movie out.
	It's still looking hopefully late March or maybe early April, but that's how it's going.
	So thanks to everyone so much who's contributed to that.
	I am incredibly pleased with the way it's going.
	So thanks everyone for that.
	Another caller! Hit me!
	All right. Up next is Mark.
	Yes, hello. Can you hear me?
	Yes. Yes, my name is Mark.
	I'm calling from Tokyo, Japan.
	And I've been following your work for quite a while.
	I think you were the one who provided pretty much all the answers I was looking for.
	I've been in Japan for 15 years, and somewhere, sometime five, ten years ago, I started looking for answers.
	And you bump into Friedman and others, Milton Friedman, and obviously they have answers that make sense.
	But you obviously, I think you took Orwell's work in a way, and I remember you phrasing it in a way that I mean, could not be discussed.
	The best or the animal that man tent to farm today seems to be its own pretty much.
	It's a huge farming business and we farm gullible, fearful kids.
	And it made sense and I wanted to thank you first of all for bringing so much clarity and for having the courage because it's not an easy message.
	And I've decided to embark on I'm trying to help, in a way, Japan get out of some of the slump it's in, even though I'm not Japanese.
	I've been here for 15 years, 30 years.
	I just think it's the normal, right thing to do.
	I guess I'm trying to engage in a lot of...
	I've been involved with the Tokyo Tea Party and whatnot, and I'm trying to follow the work of others, like yourself, abroad, Jeff Berwick, and all these people.
	And I have a question. I think you may well be the only one to have an answer for that question.
	And as I was pushing my thoughts, as I was trying to understand, obviously, it's all human farming.
	I mean, it's all the easiest way to explain it, even though it's not very elegant to phrase it that way.
	And it hurts a lot of people, I assume, to hear it as bluntly.
	The best animal to farm on this planet is Second to none is babies.
	They're gullible, fearful.
	They give great revenues.
	And so ultimately, it's just this temptation.
	It's just too high to farm kids.
	I guess that's the story of humanity or that's one of the secrets.
	And I've given a thought, and we farm other animals in a way.
	And I'm curious to know if we farm other animals.
	I mean, we seem to be cool with the concept of farming other animals.
	We farm pigs or cows or chickens.
	So farming our own sounds like moral, like soul cannibalism in a way.
	It's like moral farming of your own pretty much.
	But I still can't put a principle on it because obviously it seems as if other animals also sometimes farm their own.
	I've heard ants or bees or others seem to farm their own.
	So where's the principle?
	How far can you push the principle of why it's not...
	Cool to farm your own.
	I mean, it doesn't sound normal.
	It doesn't sound cool, but I can't – I'm still looking for that one final principle that I can actually just use to see it all make sense since we farm other animals.
	I was wondering what your thoughts were on that one particular topic.
	No, that's a great question.
	That's a great question.
	So if I understand what you're saying, we don't consider the farming of animals – To be evil, at least in the same way that the farming of people is evil.
	And since the farming of animals is not evil and people are animals, how do we make the ironclad moral case that the farming of people is immoral?
	Is that what you mean?
	In a way, I mean, it feels wrong.
	It feels like cannibalism in a way.
	It feels like moral cannibalism to farm your own.
	My mother tongue is French, by the way, so I apologize for what sounds like a bit of a weird accent.
	But we seem to...
	Be cool with eating other animals, but we're not cool with eating our own.
	It makes moral sense.
	I do feel it as if it's something normal.
	The farming process, forcing people to give you their milk and eggs and giving them a bit of healthcare.
	We're cool with doing it with other animals, but I'm not cool.
	It doesn't feel right to see it happen within our own.
	Where's the principle? I'm looking for that one principle.
	I'm still missing that one last bit, that one last chunk.
	It's not farming your own.
	It's not farming animals because we farm other animals.
	It's farming our own. And where's the wrong thing about it?
	If other animals also farm their own, ants, bees, apparently farm their own bees or their own ants into forcing their labor out and using it for...
	I still have to go into more research, but I was wondering what your thought, is there like one solid, robust principle, farming your own is not moral or is not good because, or it's just not optimal or it's not encouraged?
	Where do you draw the line? How far did you push it?
	That's my question. Right, right, right.
	Well, optimal is...
	It's difficult, right? There's no such thing as collective goods.
	So the fact that farm societies collapse doesn't mean a huge amount because the individuals who are the farmers always escape that collapse and go on to do other stuff.
	So that's not the argument.
	Yes, of course, it's destructive and millions of people often die in the collapse and the war tends to be provoked.
	But for the people in charge, they stay in charge and they accumulate massive amounts of wealth.
	So it's kind of optimal for them.
	I mean, can you imagine in a free society whether – either of the George Bushes or Obama or Clinton, I mean, what sort of traction would they have in a free society?
	Well, they'd be used car salesmen in bad sections of town, right?
	I mean, they wouldn't be in control of the amount of resources that they – so for them, statism is a fantastic deal.
	It's a fantastic deal.
	And that's why they want to get re-elected and they're addicted to power and it's wonderful for them.
	I mean it is literally delightful for them which is why they pursue it.
	I mean think about Bill Clinton.
	I mean the guy has got enough money.
	He could sit on a beach for the rest of his life and have Mai Tais or whatever but he's constantly in there, right?
	I mean so even when they have enough money, they don't leave.
	They're doing what they would do if they had all the freedom and power in the world because fundamentally they do.
	Whatever someone does after they win the lottery, it's kind of what they always wanted to do and these guys have more than won the lottery.
	They're worth millions and millions and they never have to worry about working another day in their life and they choose to do this.
	So clearly, it's hugely beneficial to them.
	It's hugely beneficial to all the social systems that have adapted to state power, right?
	I mean, so the corporations that have invested in getting lobbyists all embedded into the capital and so on and Have adapted their entire workforce to keeping the competition of small and more nimble mammalian companies out of the marketplace through big regulations and legal requirements and so on.
	All of the organisms and entities and collectives that have adapted to statism really like statism.
	I mean this is – I can't sort of – Explain this fundamentally enough, so I'm sorry if I repeat myself and I'm sorry if I say things I've said a million times before, but it's really, really important to understand.
	Everyone who's adapted to statism is going to fight to defend the state.
	And because statism is so all-pervasive in society, the majority of people will fight to maintain the state.
	And they will, of course, come up with all these ex post facto moral justifications, but...
	Why is it that single moms, despite their hugely negative impact on their kids as an aggregate, why are they not criticized?
	Because there's enough of them now that the whole ecosystem has adapted to the reality of single moms and single moms are almost exclusively a phenomenon that results from state power.
	The reason that men have lost such respect in society is because they're fundamentally not necessary to To women, because the women can get what they want from the state, and thus from men and other women who are more responsible.
	But you've created this whole cohort now, and so therefore, once you get enough mass in society, you can't really criticize, at least in any particular public forum, because the whole system, and this is the media that serves them, right?
	So you've got single moms. There's not single moms in particular, it's any group.
	It could be welfare, it could be the military-industrial complex, but When you create a large cohort in society, then you create a large group of people who profit from them.
	So you create a whole group of people who justify the military-industrial complex, who justify welfare, who justify single motherhood, who call them brave and noble.
	You've got a whole media industry around calling teachers brave and noble and self-sacrificing because you've created a huge market in society.
	You fund a group. You create a group through statism.
	You create a massive market.
	The media then grows up around that market like mushrooms in a dank and dark place.
	And then anybody who criticizes that group threatens the livelihood of the people who are selling to that group and therefore those people will turn on you and shout you down.
	And this is why it is pretty much impossible to reverse – it's one of the reasons why from a propagandistic standpoint, it's pretty much impossible to reverse the growth of the state.
	I mean at the beginning, it's possible.
	But once you create a large enough market, you create people who serve that market, institutions that support that market – And that whole ecosystem will fight to protect itself from any encroachment of freedom.
	And of course, particularly where there are children involved, where children are hostages as they are in particular constellations of families and where they are, of course, in public schools.
	I mean, what are you going to do with the kids, right?
	I mean, if you've got a whole bunch of single moms out there who can't survive without the state, what are you going to do?
	They hold up the kids and say, my child's hungry and how many people can stomach that?
	Well, tragically, not many and it sure as hell isn't the kids' fault.
	So you've created a A sort of big mess from that standpoint.
	But fundamentally, the reason why it's immoral is because morality is used.
	So it's not immoral to keep a chicken in a fence because you don't use morality to keep the chicken in the fence.
	So who is subject to morality?
	Well... Anyone who uses morality as I was talking about a couple of weeks ago with Daniel Mackler.
	The moment you use morality, you're subject to morality.
	And so we don't cage chickens with appeals to the common good and with patriotism for the chicken coop and with rituals and we don't tweak their empathetic concern for their fellow chickens who are without grain.
	We don't keep cows in a cage by telling them that the cage is freedom and And outside the cage are all these wolves and they owe loyalty to the farmer who gives them food and we don't encase them in these moral absolutes which exclude ourselves.
	And so because we don't use morality to cage livestock, non-human livestock, then moral arguments are tougher to...
	I mean you can still make moral arguments about owning cows and so on, right?
	But it's not the same because we don't use ethics to keep cows in a cage.
	We use a cage. But as I've mentioned before...
	It is fundamentally unproductive to cage human beings in obvious cages.
	In obvious cages.
	And the great genius of the modern age of human farming is the understanding that the best cage for human beings is other human beings.
	Our cages are not composed of bars but of Right?
	Which is why when you bring up freedom, the state doesn't have to lift a finger because you will be attacked by your fellow slaves.
	And we see this all the time.
	We see this from the mainstream media to liberty candidates.
	We see this even within the liberty movement.
	If you bring up something that is uncomfortable to people, they'll just lash out at you.
	They'll just attack you. But this is all perfectly predicted by the theory, which is why it doesn't bother me that much.
	It would actually bother me more if it didn't happen because then that would mean the theory is faulty.
	And that would mean that I had sort of fundamentally misunderstood the mechanics of human ownership from the beginning, which means I'd have a lot of apologizing and explaining to do.
	So the fact that when you bring up uncomfortable topics, even within the liberty community, like spanking and so on, or men's rights or whatever, people tend to get upset and lash out.
	But this is perfectly predictable.
	This is what the cage is.
	So the fact that we are kept in the cage's of artificial conscience and that our jailers are each other all while the universality of virtue is proclaimed and all the while although the universality of virtue is proclaimed the rulers are excluded and they're not honestly excluded they're implicitly excluded by they invent an alternate language People always say,
	well, in an alternate universe, there could be a God.
	But this all comes out from, if we call theft taxation, then it's virtuous.
	They invent a different language for themselves and slither out of the universality they impose on us.
	And so it's the manipulation and dishonesty that is the immorality.
	The initiation of force is not the primary definition of statism.
	The primary definition of statism, in my opinion, is the willingness...
	I mean, that to me is the very definition of slavery, is the willingness of other people to attack you for speaking the truth.
	Because if that's not present, there can be no state.
	If that's not present, there can be no religion.
	If that's not present, there can be no tyranny.
	The tyranny is horizontal.
	The effect of the horizontal tyranny is the vertical tyranny of the state.
	But the real tyranny...
	The real whips are not in the hands of the masters, but in the hands of your fellow slaves.
	And of course, that doesn't come about by accident.
	That comes about through a deliberate and I think actually quite conscious program of indoctrination.
	Of collective punishment of children in public schools and in religion.
	So once you have collective punishment, then the slaves become each other's, right?
	So if someone steals from the master, then all the slaves get beaten.
	So immediately all the slaves start focusing on making sure no other slave steals from the master.
	So, I mean, all of this stuff that happens in a hierarchical society arises out of our willingness to attack each other.
	And all of that, to get back to your point about babies, all of that arises out of our willingness to sacrifice our children's integrity for the sake of our own anxiety.
	And this is the most fundamental thing.
	Like, if you really want to look at the root of human ownership, it's when the parent looks at the child and says, you're asking questions that make me uncomfortable, so I'm basically just going to tell you to shut up.
	That is the fundamental root of tyranny right there.
	Children are born empirical and rational and clean-minded and curious and logical, incredibly illogical.
	I mean, my daughter can rip off a syllogism like Stradivarius going up and down a scale.
	Sorry, he was the maker of the violin.
	Yehudi Menuhin? I can't remember.
	But whoever it is, right?
	Like some operator doing a Molina up and down like...
	Mariah Carey scaling up and down and throwing enough molinas in to choke a horse.
	But it's masterful.
	And children are born this way and they're not born believing in ghosts and goblins and devils and flags and countries and all this kind of stuff.
	In fact, it's pretty embarrassing to talk about why there are these artificial lines that we have to go on an airplane.
	What does it mean? Well, it means that you live in a world of deluded fools, I'm afraid, who actually can be quite dangerous.
	So when we have children, they approach the world...
	From a position of curious and rational empiricism.
	And if you approach the world from curious and rational empiricism, it is revealed to you as a cage of bitter, self-lacerating, angry and hateful slaves.
	In general, for the most part, there are lots of exceptions, which is a great place to build a community.
	But in general, we all know this, that when you bring freedom to the notice of your fellow human being, the only person they get mad at is you.
	So, it's a weird kind of thing that when the world gets crazy enough, you face the challenge as a parent of what do I do with the craziness of the world.
	If I reveal that to my child, that's pretty alarming to be a child.
	If I deny it to my child, that's pretty alarming for the future and that's allowing the craziness to win.
	Right, so I said many years ago, I don't think there are any really good parents.
	Well, I've met some great parents since then.
	I hadn't met any before then, but I've met some great parents since then.
	But all of the great parents face the same challenge of raising sane children in a crazy world.
	It's a huge challenge.
	So I think it's not really possible to be a great parent, at least in the way that we can be in the future, because we do have the challenge of raising sane children in a crazy world.
	Raising good children... Right.
	Right.
	So when the child is curious about the world and the child wants things to be explained and wants to understand how the world is, do we tell the truth?
	Well, if we tell the truth, what is the child's relationship to society, to their fellow citizens and so on?
	It's a challenge.
	If we lie to them, if we give them the mainstream narrative, what does it say about our integrity and our dedication to truth?
	Children are hostages of the future, and how do we prepare them for that kidnapping?
	I don't know. I'm still working on that, so I don't have a good answer for that yet.
	But it is that fundamental thing, a fundamental moment when your child asks something that makes you uncomfortable.
	What do you say? Well, if you Start enforcing the mainstream cultural drug narrative.
	Well, then you are adapting them to insanity, which is not going to be healthy for them.
	And if you don't, then you are giving them integrity at the cost of revealing what the world really is.
	So it's a challenge.
	And I'm sorry if I haven't answered a shred of your question, but I hope that makes some sense.
	It does. One thing I wanted to quickly add, you often speak about single mothers or men who are obviously absent, and I'll just speak for my own self, because I was farmed for quite a while.
	I grew up in Montreal, Canada, which is pretty much everything is managed by the state.
	I live in Japan now, but in Montreal from the buses all the way to Pensions through schools and whatever, everything is managed through the state.
	And it keeps babies, or at least myself, that's how it worked.
	And I got to understand Jean-Jacques Rousseau's work much later, but obviously, the bigger the social contract, or at least the higher the taxes, or the more the state will manage, the less virtuous a man will Or at least that's how it worked for me.
	I can tell you that the very instant I moved out of this mentality of there's this tape all protecting and providing and I don't need to think about what a bus ticket costs or what I will do with my life.
	It's just blending in is as good as it gets.
	Trying to find a school where everybody will be happy to see me there.
	I think it's interesting to see that.
	I think a lot of men today wake up late I think I'm blending in a lot of words that may not necessarily always meet a lot in the same sentence, but I can confirm that a lot of women today are single or are faced with a lot of non-virtuous men,
	like myself probably in a way, because I think farmed men, at least, we move away from the eagle And closer genetically, whatever that means, to the chicken kind of thing.
	So we're obviously not in a position to tolerate or withstand tough pressures of handling of families.
	I mean, I can speak for myself.
	Even promises of something longer than a year or two years feels kind of uncomfortable.
	I'm not sure I have the shoulders wide enough to be able to withstand the pressure that comes with a lot of these promises.
	And so I can confirm that a lot of women today probably find the planet somewhat boring or in a very kind of difficult time because a lot of men probably are bathing in this farmed environment.
	And I think I joined back Rousseau from my own experience, at least, that the bigger the social contract or at least the wider the state manages, the less virtuous I myself got.
	And I assume, I mean, from what I... I can tell you the friends I used to have back then, and we used to run for girls, you know, not care about jobs.
	Everything's going to be covered anyway, alcohol, party on Tuesday, party on Thursday, who cares anyway?
	So I think there's a lot of that.
	I think there's a lot of the virtue, whatever the word means.
	Also, I think the farm pulls man away from an eagle, potential eagle, responsible, virtuous, morally stable, self-sufficient, competent.
	Animal towards more of a reliant, you know, chicken mode.
	And I think that's one of the reasons, at least that's my friends.
	I can tell you a lot of people in Canada do not have the shoulders wide enough to be able to withstand the responsibilities that come.
	Forget a wife.
	Talk about kids, for example.
	It's exponential in a way, and we're talking about promises of 20, 25 years, and we're not even ready to promise things for a week or two.
	I have one last question.
	I don't want to take too much time, but my second question is...
	Sorry, just before we move into that, let me just mention something about...
	I mean, you talked a lot about gender relations.
	Of course, I'm sure you've heard about this, and my pronunciation, of course, is pretty wretched.
	Kick on one? Sorry, Hikikomori, socially withdrawn boys.
	Hikikomori, yes, yes, very good.
	And Sashuku, Danshi.
	Yes, yes, yes.
	Her before men are uninterested in meat.
	And this is the sexless men, right?
	The men who are not interested in sex.
	Sure. And… This, of course, is a growing phenomenon, which we can understand.
	I mean, in a time of economic recession and depression, a time of lowered opportunities, the entire remaining aspects of the free market start to provide empty, useless entertainment, right?
	Whether it's junk food or pornography or video games and so on.
	And don't get me wrong. I mean, I'm sure all of those three can have their place in a life.
	But It tends to become sort of – it takes over.
	It's a bit more of an addiction. And so Japan is sort of a foreshadow, right?
	I mean there is I think something that's going on between the genders at the moment which is very interesting, which is that we're kind of figuring out what use do we have for each other without sex and money, right? I mean so as I said, women can do fairly well without men providing an income.
	A good girl writes what has this great conversation about the Inuit, right?
	The Eskimos, right? That the men are out there trying to spear a whale 300 times their size on a little raft to bring food home for their wives and kids.
	And this is not exactly a patriarchy.
	I mean, why the hell would you want to do that?
	Hey, I'll stay home with the babies.
	Thank you very much. That's pretty cold and dangerous out there.
	And so the women in the Inuit communities where this was occurring would never dream about Of saying that men were idiots, men were useless, men were pointless, men were boys, men were babies, men were – it's like having three children when I only have two.
	I mean they would never think of denigrating men in this way because the men are out there sacrificing like crazy to bring food home to the family.
	How do we know that men have worked harder throughout history?
	Because men are bigger and stronger than women.
	I mean there are mammals like the marmoset where the males and females have almost identical body mass and muscle mass because they both work about equally in getting resources.
	Women are far weaker than men physically because men have had to work that much harder throughout history and they call this a patriarchy.
	I mean this is just the nonsense that people spew out about the world.
	But because women can get resources without men and men can get sex without marriage, I think the genders are kind of looking at each other like, okay, so the necessities are out of the way.
	What do we do with each other?
	And this of course is a great problem.
	I mean, I hate to call statism and all that a great opportunity, but it is in some ways in that we get to figure out what love is without necessity, right?
	So why did men get married?
	Because women had a monopoly on sex, I think, and men like that and, of course, women do too.
	And why did women get married?
	Well, because they needed someone to provide resources to them while they pumped out endless children.
	I mean, this is very ridiculously oversimplified and there's much more to it, but just to be very, very brief, but when the state takes away the need for resources for women – And pornography and sexual availability takes away the need for sex for men, then we have to sort of ask the question, what is the other gender for?
	And I think that's a very important question.
	And I think that is a question that's not really understood as yet in society as a whole, but it is a great opportunity for us to focus on a virtuous friendship, which is really the basis of romantic love, a virtuous sexual friendship.
	And that is a challenge.
	We take away the necessity of Right.
	So, I think the state, just to come back on that comment you just made, I doubt the state.
	Tate will be able to undo millions of years of Darwinism or whatever the name is.
	I think I see a lot of women.
	They don't say it out loud because they're very proud.
	They just don't want to admit it. They don't want to be seen like the ones saying it out loud.
	But behind the curtain, all of them.
	All of them are bored out of their minds.
	It's very clear that they do feel extremely single.
	They need the presence of man like never.
	They can tell. They enjoy seeing a man capable, competent, self-reliant, thinking for himself.
	I mean, it's harder and harder to find.
	We don't do that thing anymore because we don't have to, because we're farmed in a way, so we just don't need to develop these skills.
	And so I think women find the time on the planet really, really boring, at least it's been boring for quite a while, for a lot of them.
	But I doubt the state will undo the need that we both have.
	I think the planet made it so that we just popped up as a species, at least for us, with a polarized And like you said, we have all these things, probably side or muscles, and they have different things, and obviously they complete each other.
	In a very interesting way.
	So I doubt the state will be powerful enough to undo millions of years.
	And I can tell you, all the women I speak, and I've traveled a lot.
	I'm talking about 60 countries.
	Every single woman in every single country, they're still very eagle.
	They long to find a man that behaves like a man.
	The only thing is a man atrophied doesn't provide for What's usually expected from a male eagle kind of thing.
	It's more like a chicken that's kind of useless and it renders the reason of the whole – like you said, the whole couple thing just gets challenged.
	Well, no, but let me sort of mention something though is that one of the – this is all rank opinion, right?
	This is not my philosophical reasoning.
	So please put this in the – could be a steaming pile of yak bullshit pile.
	But I was talking the other day.
	With a friend of mine about how in society there's this thing where men are idiots, right?
	I mean you see this portrayed all the time that men are idiots.
	I mean this is – where Lucille Ball used to be in the I Love Lucy show with Desi Arnaz many years ago where she was just – Whiny and manipulative and incompetent and all this kind of stuff.
	Men are idiots.
	The women put up with them for reasons that they can't fathom.
	The men are constantly screwing up and the men have nothing of value to offer.
	The women are always rolling their eyes and you see this all over the place in the media.
	The problem is that the media doesn't give women any reason to surrender authority to men.
	I mean, the media gives endless examples of why men should surrender authority to women.
	Repeat that, repeat that, repeat that.
	The media doesn't provide women any reason to surrender authority to men.
	Okay. So for instance, in my marriage, I'm in charge of the emotional aspects of our marriage in general.
	I mean it's not 100 percent.
	My wife runs the household and I run the emotional side of things.
	So I make sure that we're connected and if there are barriers to communication, I identify them and bring them down.
	So that's how it works.
	There's a division of labor and so on.
	But if you ask women in general, what would you – What would you be willing to surrender to a man's abilities in?
	Well, what if they'd been told that men are better at?
	Nothing. Nothing.
	They're always going to be marrying down.
	So even if they say, well, okay, men are way better at bringing in resources to the household.
	Well, that's no longer necessary because you can get by without the man.
	And, of course, they've been told, well, you see, women work an extra 18 hours a week in the home, right?
	So then they feel that they're getting ripped off.
	Of course, the other side of that statistic is that men work 22 hours extra outside the home.
	Ah, but you can't hear about that because, you know, you get paid for victimhood and statism.
	You don't get paid for competence.
	And every revolution should seek its own end.
	But once it gets public funding, it simply keeps creating more imaginary injustice in order to maintain its own funding.
	So you have to ask women, I mean, if you want to, it's an interesting question.
	I'm happy to have women call in about this.
	What expertise would you be willing to surrender to in a man?
	And I bet you they couldn't come up with a damn thing.
	You know, like, so, for instance, I mean, a typical one is that men, sorry, women are more prone to suffering discomfort by other people being upset with them, right?
	Right, so, you know, this is why you go to the family gathering with a present for the aunt you don't like.
	Because if you don't bring it, the aunt's going to be upset and the woman can't, right, can't bear that.
	Whereas a man will say, I think, something like, so she's upset with us.
	But the reality is we don't like her.
	So let's not bribe her with something when we don't like her.
	And we've good reason to not like her.
	She was rude to you.
	She disrupted her wedding.
	So no, I'm not buying her a present.
	Will the woman be willing to say that the man has competence and expertise in knowing when being disliked is okay?
	In fact, good.
	To be disliked by bad people is a mark of honor.
	As Churchill said, you have enemies, good.
	That means you have stood up for something sometime in your life.
	Yeah, so are women willing to surrender some area of expertise to men?
	Well, if not, then there can be no equality in the marriage.
	Or they have to say, well, I'm not going to surrender any expertise to the man, but similarly, I expect the man to surrender no expertise to me.
	Well, I don't know that that's really codependent in a good way.
	Like you and your doctor are codependent.
	You need health. He needs money, right?
	So the question would be what – to ask women, what value do you get from a man that you can't get without a man, that you can't get from your female friends, whatever, right?
	The problem is, of course, from the very beginning of their lives, boys in general are treated as if they're just broken girls.
	Boys are disciplined nine times more.
	They're medicated nine times more for disruptive behavior.
	The school is... I'm really focused on serving the needs of girls and this makes boys go kind of squirrely and insane.
	And the girls are considered to be more mature and they're smarter and they're doing better in school and so on, right?
	So, and basically the message to boys is you need to be more like girls.
	You are. Girls are the ideal and you are just kind of smelly, noisy, non-compliant oafs who need to become more like girls.
	And girls grew up seeing this and Girls don't then say, well, I have a great respect for what boys bring to the table.
	It's different, maybe, but it's, you know, I have great respect for what boys bring to the table.
	No, they don't hear any of that. They just hear basically the boys have problems and the boys need to be fixed and maybe more like girls.
	And then they turn on the TV and they see the girls being smart and wise and sensitive and kind and boys being, oh, these scratchy, ridiculous, smelly idiots.
	And all of this is...
	Ridiculous. It's all propaganda, of course, right?
	I mean, it's all about making the utility of men vanish and making men a liability, which means that women don't want them, which means that they'll turn to the state and swell the power of the political class.
	When you downgrade the husband and the father, you upgrade the state in coercion.
	So I just want to sort of point that out, that this is pretty common.
	And there is, of course, this isolation, right?
	Which is that even if it were true that men were idiots, but women marry them.
	So, you know, who's the idiot?
	The idiot or the idiot who chooses him?
	So, but this, of course, is not never mentioned.
	And, of course, because you have a constituency of women who have been unable to attract and keep a man, you have a constituency of people who want and desperately need to believe that men are a negative, right?
	It's sour grapes, right?
	I can't get and keep a man to raise my kid.
	And therefore, I would love to consume media which says that men are a burden and an overhead and don't add anything of value.
	Oh, but I'll tell you, just these little things show up in my life as a restaurant the other day with my family.
	And there was a woman sitting a table over.
	She had a kid, a little girl, maybe 18 months, maybe two years old.
	And she didn't have a wedding ring on.
	She was there by herself.
	And the little girl just stared at me the whole meal.
	Like she'd never seen an adult male before or something like that.
	And I smiled at her and chatted with her a little bit and all that.
	I mean, I could be wrong.
	Maybe the dad was a doctor.
	I don't know. It was on call.
	But my instinct was that this was a single mom, that there was not a male influence in this girl's life.
	And I just thought, what a tragic scenario to set in motion.
	And how lied to this girl has been about the necessity of men in her life and in her child's life.
	How much she's been lied to and how much, in a sense, she's a victim of all the people who manipulate others for their own profit by withholding information and providing false and unbalanced information to women about the necessity of men in their lives and in their children's lives.
	So I feel very sad about that, quite strong about that.
	I've got one last question, which also you're probably one of the only guys who can answer it easily.
	We're launching in Japan, at least I am, I'm involved in all these different groups.
	The Tokyo Tea Party, the Japanese for tax reform.
	We're just launching an internet radio show, and I'm not really Japanese.
	I mean, I'm from Canada, but I spent most of my life here.
	But you're turning Japanese. I've been fighting that joke the whole time, so I'm not going to go any further.
	You're turning Japanese.
	I really, really...
	Yeah, well, obviously, yes.
	And I wanted to know...
	I'm opening up, I'm taking the microphone, and I'm obviously arguing in disfavor of a lot of topics that a lot of people have kept silent.
	I remember seeing you once, and I think that video shocked me back then.
	I was still kind of putting pieces of the puzzle together.
	But you argued that if a kid talks to a mom at a dinner or whatever about an uncle molesting the kid, then typically the first reaction the mom has is to challenge the kid, not the uncle.
	The first emotional reaction, the burst, obviously goes directly to the messenger.
	Sorry, let me just clarify the example that I gave.
	I think you may have misremembered it a bit, or maybe I did it twice, I don't know.
	What I'm saying is that if someone is an adult, right?
	So let's say you're at a family dinner and you're, I don't know, a 25-year-old woman.
	And then at the family dinner you say, you know, Uncle Joe molested me for five years from the ages of 8 to 13.
	Yes. That the family will be most upset that you've brought it up, not at what happened.
	In general, in a very aggregate kind of sense, that would be my strong suspicion.
	So I just wanted to sort of be... It wasn't a kid, if I remember rightly, but it was an adult.
	Oh, yeah, yeah. I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
	Yeah. Yes, yes. But what I was curious about is, I mean, coming up loudly, obviously challenging the state, coming back on one of the comments that one of the guys who was previously on this show today was asking,
	once again, my mother, I'm being French, I've read Rousseau with some affection, and Rousseau suggested that if you can shake the chains, Shake them, but don't go out of your way to not respect the rules.
	If rules exist, even if you don't like them, if you can shake the chains of liberty, then do shake them.
	Just make sure you gain back as much power as possible.
	Don't go burning red lights just for the sake of saying that you're free, just because you disagree with lights, determining whether you should sit instead of spending time on your kids and whatnot.
	And my question was the following.
	How much, through all the work that you've done, all the videos, all the podcasts, and there's no doubt about where you stand on a lot of these topics, how much has the state,
	and when I say the state, I mean government employees, from Obama all the way to the guys in your municipality, how much have these guys Have they showed up over the last four years or five years?
	I don't know how many years you've been doing that.
	Have they showed up at your door or one way or another bothered you?
	And I want that number divided by how many slaves have bothered you, like taxpayers have challenged you.
	I'm curious to know, if we're going to do that in Japan, it seems to me as if If you shout again taxes, weirdly enough you get some form of immunity from the government because they don't want to attract attention to you and weirdly enough it almost seems as if the easiest way not to pay taxes or at least to get the state not to point in your direction ever is by being a vocal proponent of Anti-state material because then the state has a huge incentive to never point in your direction either through newspapers or whatever because they just don't want attention to go to you.
	But I wanted to know how much damage have you received yourself for all these five, six years or whatever you've been doing that from the state end of society?
	Well, I mean, the theory predicts that it's the fellow slaves who attack you, not the state, and that That has been the case.
	So I don't really want to say anything more about that.
	It's not particularly important or relevant, but the theory holds very true and holds very fast.
	But as far as I've talked about before, I mean, not paying taxes is not how the state is going to be dealt with.
	The state is going to be dealt with through intergenerational progress in Sowing the seeds of love, basically.
	I mean, I hate to put it as cheesily as that, but that is the fact.
	Speaking about theories without acting on them is ridiculous.
	And Rousseau is a prime example of this, right?
	So he wrote about the necessary – no, I mean, your pronunciation is better than mine, but – I mean, Rousseau wrote about the need to tenderly instruct and raise children and dropped all of his children off at the most brutal orphanage you can imagine and just walked away.
	I mean, the man was a moral monster.
	Even by the standards of his time, that was pretty sick stuff.
	Like, you know, Marx talking about the exploitation of the working class.
	Well... I mean, Jesus Christ, are you people serious?
	It's embarrassing to look at the lives of intellectuals and compare them to their ideals.
	So for me, I never wanted to – and I would recommend Paul Johnson's book, Intellectuals.
	It's a fantastic read about this.
	But after reading that book and after reading a little bit about the life of Ayn Rand, actually quite a lot about the life of Ayn Rand, I wanted to respect my mentors, the people who I respected most by trying to avoid – I hope that people will avoid my mistakes.
	But what I got from the people who talk about ideals but don't practice them is that if you want to convince the world of something, you have to first do it yourself.
	And this is so obvious, it barely needs to be explained in any other field than philosophy.
	If you want people to follow your diet, follow your diet, right?
	I mean, don't be a fat guy on a diet book.
	That's really all I'm saying. Otherwise, people can't hear what you're saying over what you're doing and they'll just discredit you.
	And the great temptation when a powerful idea comes along, what the state and the powers that be want you to do is to talk loudly about the idea without enacting it because that neutralizes it.
	You understand? That means it's meaningless and that diffuses any power the idea has.
	If you talk about the idea without enacting it in your own life, then you are a joke and you are completely harmless to the state.
	In fact, you're very valuable to the state because by embodying the hypocrisy of having a virtue you refuse to enact, you neutralize that virtue.
	So the great temptation is to get us to pour our moral and intellectual energies into the invisible stratosphere of abstract futility.
	And so what I wanted to do was to make sure that if I have ideals, if I have virtues, then the first place I look to enact them is in my own life.
	In my own life.
	And if I can't enact them there, I won't say a goddamn thing about them publicly because I refuse to exhort other people the virtues that I am unwilling to achieve.
	That is to become futile.
	That is to become ridiculous.
	And that is to serve evil by neutralizing the power of virtue.
	So I said, okay, I'm into the non-aggression principle.
	What can I do about that?
	Scream about the Fed? Well, yes, on occasion.
	Why not? But it's pretty irrelevant.
	What I want to do is say, where can I enact the non-aggression principle?
	Well, I can enact it in my own life.
	I believe that the power of ostracism is the most fundamental force to shape society.
	Evil people know that.
	Evil people will ostracize you at the drop of a hat.
	You know, it's funny because people think that I'm somehow associated with ostracism.
	It's ridiculous. It's like saying the man with the pea shooter is violent when he hears an atomic bomb whistling down on his Hiroshima-laced head.
	No. Statists are ostracizers because they'll throw your ass in jail for disagreeing with them.
	That's ostracism.
	So I understand the power of ostracism, and I say that ostracism is a very powerful way to run society and to bring virtue to being, which is why I talk about the against me argument and say that if people want your ass thrown in jail for following your own conscience and disagreeing with them, then they want guns pointed at your head for having integrity.
	They are the ones threatening you with ostracism, and not just ostracism like they're not going to talk to you, but ostracism like you're in a goddamn jail cell for years.
	That's some serious ostracism.
	Me not listening to a band is not the same as saying that band should be thrown in jail.
	So the ostracism that I talk about is incredibly minor and unimportant relative to the ostracism that is statism, which is to force you into a little cage for years.
	Now that's ostracism.
	Whereas I just say, hey, you support the use of violence.
	You have no place in my life.
	I'll give you time to adjust to the idea.
	I'll explain it to you patiently.
	But if you finally, when push comes to shove and when that fork in the road arises as it inevitably does...
	And you say, yes, I support you, Steph, being thrown in jail for following your conscience and disagreeing with me, then fuck you.
	Fuck you, you evil-serving state toady.
	And then people say, oh my gosh, he said fuck you.
	Well, would you rather have someone say fuck you or would you rather have somebody have people in blue come to your door with a gun to your head and throw you in a cage?
	I think I'll take the fuck you.
	Yeah. Regarding Rousseau being not necessarily in line with what he was preaching, I'm afraid that I need to make a case in his favor in that sometimes people who have a given disease or, and I'll take my own example, for example, if I've been farmed all these years and I wake up at the age of, say, 30, and I'm obviously not virtuous, I like all these I don't eat well.
	I can't hold the responsibility of a huge family.
	I've been forced into businesses that I never cared about, studies that I never cared about, porno, whatever, crazy partying, cigarettes, alcohol, and whatnot.
	Sometimes, rarely enough, the people who suffer from a given disease, and I'm not saying it's a disease to be farmed, but It's interesting to see that I wake up with a huge amount of clarity that allows me to eventually write on the damages that I'm myself victim of.
	I think Rousseau was a bit like that.
	I'm not trying to take his defense, but sometimes the shoemaker is sometimes the guy who wears the weirdest shoes or sometimes the dentist doesn't have clear teeth, and yet they still make a decent job.
	I think there's a bit of that.
	I'm trying to make the argument because I just don't want to remove No, no, no. I'm not saying you have to be a perfect angel.
	Of course not. We all have the history and the scar tissue of the propaganda that was rubber-bulleted into our brains.
	I mean, of course.
	You sew it up, but you still see the tear, as the song says.
	I mean, nobody has to be perfect.
	Of course not. We don't have to be perfect and we can even knowledgeably avoid virtue for some time as long as we're conscious of it.
	I mean, the only thing that matters is being conscious of things.
	It doesn't matter in a sense what you do after that.
	Just be conscious of it. Nobody has to be perfect.
	Perfection is another way of anesthetizing and destroying the truth.
	Right? Right? Because if we say, well, I'm not going to follow any diet if I see anyone put a gummy bear in their mouth, then all we're saying is, I never want to follow any diet.
	And people are desperate for this kind of stuff, right?
	You see this stuff all the time.
	People who say, well, you see, Dr.
	Benjamin Spock, he was not an advocate of spanking and one of his grandchildren committed suicide.
	Aha! See?
	So I don't have to examine any of the evidence.
	But the reality is that if somebody is a dentist...
	that are fixable, right?
	If somebody is a dentist who has really bad teeth, then he's not a dentist who makes good decisions because he doesn't know the importance of having decent teeth if you're a dentist, right?
	So he may be a fine dentist, but our first knowledge of his judgment is that he does not understand how he presents himself to other people.
	He doesn't have a third eye at observing ego.
	In other words, he lacks empathy because he doesn't know how he comes across to people when he has really bad teeth.
	Same thing with a guy who has a smoking cessation program who lights up at the podium when he launches into it and smokes the whole way through.
	He may have a great smoking cessation program, but what we know is that he lacks the capacity to know how he lands on people, which means he lacks empathy.
	And if he lacks empathy, why would we take advice about him if we're not real to him?
	It's just a matter of being realistic about the possibility.
	So a guy who shows up in a bunny suit for a job interview may be the best thoracic surgeon you could imagine, but he showed up in a bunny suit.
	So you're probably not going to find out.
	Maybe I did win the Microsoft Award of a million dollars in the Netherlands this time.
	Maybe, but I'm not going to follow it up.
	Maybe that spam message is the one genuine one that's going to come through in my lifetime.
	But what are the odds?
	Except this one is even more certain because when the fat guy tries to sell you a diet book… He's saying to you that he doesn't understand that losing weight is important if you're trying to convince people to lose weight, that you need not to be fat yourself.
	If he doesn't understand that, then he lacks emotional intelligence.
	He lacks sensitivity. He lacks empathy.
	He lacks an awareness of how other people see him.
	So why would I put my trust in the hands of someone who's that mad?
	And it's the same thing with people who champion the non-aggression principle and then yell and respect their children or punish their children.
	It's just a way of...
	Rendering inert the virtues.
	It's interesting because I still want to believe in a way that, for example, someone who has cancer or someone who has really screwed up emotions or relationship can still write brilliant lyrics and make extremely interesting songs about love or whatever or someone who has a weird disease.
	What are you talking about? No, that's not the same.
	Someone who has cancer can write a great love song.
	What I'm saying is I'm not necessarily ready to agree that people have to be completely – their message has to be perfectly in line with their lifestyle.
	That's not at least what I'm expecting.
	No, no. Look, my friend, you injected the word perfectly again.
	Not even remotely.
	I'm trying to focus on people.
	If someone has a message, I'm trying to make the effort.
	That's the effort I'm making myself, and I agree with you on the fact that others probably do not make that effort.
	I will not look at how someone behaves If there's a given message, because the message may be of relevance to me, even though they don't themselves practice it.
	But I understand how others do that.
	And I'm okay.
	I'm in a way in peace with the fact that some people have completely screwed up relationships or emotions or maybe abusive, whatever.
	And yet the words coming out of their mouth may be wisdom that I'll buy nevertheless even though they don't apply it to themselves.
	But I understand the fact that others typically want the example.
	They don't want the words.
	A lot of people just don't want the message.
	They want to see someone actually do it more than simply being told what to do kind of thing.
	Okay.
	So what you're saying is somebody could be incredibly wise about relationships but have a terrible, abusive, violent, ugly relationship.
	Well, weirdly enough, I know what you're going to say, but yes, in a way, I think sometimes people with screwed up issues have a much clearer vision of why they're screwed up and they can provide wisdom even though they can't apply to them or their own self.
	Just because they can't apply to their own self, they just see it with so much clarity.
	I think Rousseau was in that line.
	I think he just saw the mess that he was leaving behind and yet he was...
	He meant better for himself, and he knew he could have done better, and I think his words are interesting, even though he didn't apply it.
	I mean, I like his words, and I know he was nowhere close to being in line with what he was writing, so I still like to think that, yes, it's possible to have someone.
	I mean, I'm willing to listen to people, even though I'm willing to listen to the wisdom of some, even though their acts are completely, completely 180 degrees away from the message.
	Well, let me make a very brief case.
	Look, I know you're trying to find a way to have people in your life who don't live the virtues and maybe you're trying to find a way to have the virtues in your life without living them, which is why you're trying to find a way out and maybe there is.
	I mean I just say go – just write a letter to a publisher saying I'm a 300-pound guy who wants to sell a diet book and there's none.
	There's not one in history – That has ever had – there's no diet book with a fat guy on the cover unless it's the before photo.
	So I mean you can make up something if you want but I trust the free market in this.
	That if you want to sell something to someone, you have to live it yourself.
	If you really want to sell it, if you don't want to talk about it and rope other people into talking about it, that's different.
	But if you really want it to change the world, it has to change your world first.
	If you want ideals to change the world, they have to change your world first.
	Otherwise, it's – I mean there's just no – I mean there's no fat guy diet books out there.
	Not one throughout history ever.
	I think that's an empirical fact that's worth examining.
	But let me tell you one other reason why Jean-Jacques Rousseau created such harm.
	Now, this is a tenuous theory.
	This is in the – very close to the opinion-based thing, so maybe a slight overlap of facts.
	But I believe that whenever there is a fundamental betrayal of children, violence follows.
	Whenever there is a fundamental betrayal of children, violence follows in general a generation later or half a generation later.
	What do you mean? So – You mean in history cycles?
	In history cycles.
	If a given generation is betrayed, then typically violence is on the list of things to happen within the next 20 years kind of thing.
	Right. So to give an example, the betrayal of child sexual abuse that Freud perpetrated where he said that people who are women in particular, but men and women who were reporting rape as children were fantasizing about it and making it up and it was a wish fulfillment because they desperately wanted to have sex with their What followed after that was World War I. I know, I know, there's six million different ways in which it could be explained, but I think this is an important one.
	The betrayal of children in the realm of mid to late 18th century France, what followed?
	Sure. What followed?
	French Revolution. Sure.
	Oh, yes. French Revolution, which was one of the most savage revolutions ever I mean, you know, if you throw out Russia, I mean, it pretty much was the most savage and brutal and vicious and violent and murderous revolution.
	I mean, Ann Coulter's got a...
	I think Demonic is the book where she goes into the differences between the American and the French Revolution.
	Now, in America, interestingly enough, child raising was at a very high standard.
	In fact, visitors from Europe who came to America before the revolution remarked upon how free and easy the parenting was and how...
	Relatively non-punitive it was compared to places like Germany and Russia.
	And after the war, then people either go back to the old shitty ways of raising children, thus preparing the way for the next war, or they finally learn their goddamn lesson and they start treating children better and then you don't get another war.
	So a counterexample is Germany.
	After the Second World War, there was an incredible revolution in child raising.
	An incredible revolution in child raising.
	I mean, I had cousins who'd come over from Germany, as I've mentioned before on the show, and they weren't allowed to play with war toys.
	They weren't allowed to, you know, they were being raised peacefully, they were being reasoned with, because the Germans got it.
	The Germans got it. The Germans got that if you hang babies on the wall in lights-ridden blankets for hours at a time, if Hitler was beaten into a coma regularly by his father, I didn't know that.
	If you have an addiction to rampant child abuse, then you get Nazism.
	And if you have parenting like you had in Russia before the Russian Revolution, then you get communism.
	And then when you have Parenting begin to improve after the Second World War in Russia, then you get Glasnost and you get the fall of the Berlin Wall.
	This has been traced quite well.
	You can look at Robin Grill's book, Parenting for a Peaceful World, for more historical examples of this.
	But wherever there's a fundamental betrayal, wherever child abuse is identified and then the children are betrayed, I believe the abusers get great confidence and The victims get enraged and that acts out as a war within half a generation.
	And if you look at how children were raised in pre-Second World War Japan compared with how they're raised now, then you can understand why there aren't Japanese suicide bombers anymore.
	So what Rousseau did may not have been obvious, but he identified child abuse and then viciously abused his own children That's nullifying his actions and I think creates a lot of unconscious rage which then gets acted out.
	So I just wanted to mention that and I hope that that's some utility.
	Anyway, that's probably it for this show.
	Thank you for your patience as I answered these questions.
	Thank you for great questions and great conversations from the listeners.
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