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Sept. 6, 2021 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:25:36

The Philosophy of Christianity - Stefan Molyneux Interviewed

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	I'm Jacob Daniel. I'm host of the Daniel 3 podcast.
	I've got an interesting conversation for you guys tonight.
	I'm excited to have our guest.
	Before we get into the conversation, I wanted to make a couple announcements and some updates.
	The website is now up, so I wanted to announce that before we got started.
	Daniel318.com is the The domain that you can go to and go check that out.
	I'm very proud of the work that my friends over at Sexton Inventive did to get that up and running.
	It looks great. It looks fantastic.
	Very excited about that.
	And other than that, only other update I wanted to give is that there's going to be a little bit of a hiatus next week in content, but then the week after that, got some more guests coming up, so make sure you stay tuned.
	Yeah, so our guest tonight, for those who didn't read the intro for some reason or just stumbling in, is Stefan Molyneux, and I'm going to bring him up right now.
	Stefan, how are you doing tonight?
	Look at that, not picking my nose like a real pro.
	How are you doing? Nice to chat with you.
	Thanks for having me on. Yeah, not a problem.
	I'm excited. So for those who aren't familiar with you, I feel like most of my audience knows who you are.
	But if you could just give, you know, like a five minute introduction of yourself and, you know, the stuff you do over at FreedomAid and yeah, just we'll go from there.
	Sure. Well, I guess at my peak, I had the world's largest and most popular philosophy show, probably close to 800 million views and downloads.
	I have about a million books downloaded and read a year on relationships, on anarchy, voluntarism, politics, theology, you name it.
	I'm also a novelist, and I have the distinct pleasure and honor, I suppose, of being yeeted off just about every major social platform in the run-up to the 2020 pandemic.
	Thank you.
	work now.
	You can find me at freedomaine.com.
	And I'm really happy to chat with you and your listenership tonight.
	Yeah.
	I remember when I first was, so I came from the left original I was a Bernie Sanders supporter and voted for Hillary Clinton of all people back in 2016, which, yeah, that's a, my voting record is not something I'm proud of.
	Well, but you can't know till you know, right?
	I mean, you can't know till you know.
	But you were one of the people that helped deprogram me, so to speak, when I first started talking.
	I think the word you're looking for is radicalized, because apparently anyone who drifts closer to the truth is just radicalized.
	You know how plants are radicalized by sunlight and so on.
	Yes, yes, the radical philosophy of leave people alone and don't take their stuff.
	Yep, as the saying goes.
	But yeah, I wanted to start off by talking about – we had a conversation.
	I don't know how much you remember it because it was like a call-in show back in 2018.
	But this was back when I was first exploring libertarian thought.
	So people had pointed me to you, but I also found your older stuff where you talked a lot about philosophy and the reasons why you were an atheist, why you didn't believe in God.
	I was still kind of in my like, I don't know, cage stage, Christian mode, like I needed to combat with atheists and stuff.
	And so I called in, we had a conversation and you said, hey, listen, I mean, maybe this conversation isn't the best conversation to have while the state is, you know, Coming and knocking down our doorstep.
	That was back in 2018.
	I don't know if either of us could have guessed what was going to come down the road a couple of years like we've seen over 2020 and even this year.
	It's been a lot of crazy stuff.
	But you have had an interesting relationship in terms of your views with Christianity and the church.
	Maybe you could explain that for my audience, for those who don't follow you as much.
	Sure, absolutely. And it is complicated, I guess, as these things are supposed to be.
	It used to be less complicated, which meant that I was less wise about it.
	So I was raised Christian.
	I was in the choir and went to church two to three times a week, particularly when I was in boarding school.
	And I fell away from I fell away from Jesus because I felt vastly unprotected in a dangerous world.
	My world at home was very dangerous.
	My mother was mentally ill and ended up being institutionalized.
	It was extraordinarily violent.
	And I was surrounded by Christians.
	I was surrounded by friends and family members and neighbors and so on who were all Christians who could hear the violence occurring within my home.
	I'm certainly not alone in this.
	Children who've been abused in society are generally abused with insignificant earshot of everyone around.
	I hope this isn't too frank and personal to your audience, but, you know, we've got time for politics.
	So I think what happened was, and this is sort of stuff I excavated later, it was like, okay, so this is a cold, amoral universe where it's fight or succumb.
	It's kill or be killed.
	It's survive or die.
	And that Darwinian reality of my childhood, I think, translated into a great willingness to accept Darwinianism and secularism and so on.
	And morality Welcome to my show!
	So you can steal them, right?
	So I viewed morality as a con game.
	And this, of course, led to a rather amoral and hedonistic youth.
	And sort of fast-forwarding things, I ended up being quite dissatisfied with all of that.
	And I was an objectivist and I accepted a fair amount of Randian ethics and so on, although I felt that the clincher Still wasn't there in the realm of ethics.
	And as an empiricist and a sort of pure rationalist, I couldn't go to theology to get my arguments because theology starts with the premise that God exists and God has instructed us on moral virtues.
	Philosophy can't do that. Philosophy has got to be completely blank slate.
	You cannot assume any premises.
	It's called begging the question in a lot of ways.
	So I ended up working in the realm of morality in particular and came up with a moral explanation or an explanation of morality called universally preferable behavior, which we can go into if you want, but suffice to say it satisfied me and I spent 20 years or really more being unsatisfied by moral explanations.
	I can't go with the law.
	The law is just an opinion with a gun.
	I couldn't go with theology.
	I couldn't go with the Darwinian what's best for the individual because, you know, you look at Obama, he's got a lovely house in Martha's Vineyard and you look at George Bush who started the Iraq war and he's got a nice pension and loves painting little pictures he shows to people on planes on his iPad.
	He seems to have a pretty sweet existence.
	You look at the Clintons here, your favorite politician.
	I guess at one time they've accumulated ungodly amounts of money.
	I think largely through intimidation and corruption, in my opinion.
	So, yeah, I mean, I couldn't find an explanation, yet I desperately wanted to be good.
	And so I worked from a philosophical standpoint to build a proof of ethics that relied neither upon the guns of the government nor the theology of God.
	And I think I did a pretty good job.
	It's certainly held the test of time.
	I've debated it countless times.
	I've presented it countless times, and nobody's yet to pierce it.
	So I worked a lot...
	On morality. And what I did was, you know, like a child with their first drawing, I brought it with great pride and joy and happiness to the atheist community.
	You know, my brothers and sisters in reason.
	I shouldn't laugh because, you know, I can only laugh about it now many years later.
	But it's sort of like if somebody is dying of a terminal illness and you come in with a magical cure, You don't do it for the attaboys, but it wouldn't hurt to get a couple of, hey man, you just saved my life.
	I really appreciate that. Good job, right?
	And the Holy Grail of philosophy is a proof of virtue, a proof of ethics, a proof of morality.
	That is distinct from theology and is objective and universal.
	And I know now, I mean, I wrote this book like 13 years ago or whatever.
	So I know now, and I wrote the article, the initial articles long before that.
	So I know now for an absolute fact, I have proven secular morality.
	And you'd think that that would be the great gift that the atheists would really love.
	Because that's the thing that atheism has never answered is what is virtue, why be good?
	And theology has an answer for it.
	I remember that, of course, very much from growing up, right?
	I mean, the Ten Commandments, and God is good, and God has commanded us to be moral, so they have an answer.
	The atheists never did, which is why they fell prey to leftism and secularism and hedonism and all this kind of crap.
	So I went to the atheist community saying, dude!
	And dude asks, I've solved it, I've cracked the nut, and we now have the Holy Grail of philosophy.
	Aren't you going to be thrilled?
	Not necessarily with me, but at least with the solution.
	Spoiler! How do you think they reacted to a rational proof of secular morality?
	Well, somewhat akin to, I think a vampire would react to a clove of garlic wrapped around a crucifix at dawn.
	So there was a thunderous indifference and hostility towards this gift which the atheist community has always lacked and always promised that they would embrace when delivered.
	And, of course, then I realized that my brothers and sisters in reason...
	because God gave them morals and rules and they had to restrain their behavior and they couldn't be pompous.
	Yeah, they were nihilists to some degree.
	They were hedonists.
	And what they enjoyed doing was picking at the easy holes of theology and feeling pompous and virtuous because of that.
	But when you came with actual virtue, because, of course, as you know, when you let go of God, you go to the state.
	That's the deal, right?
	That's the communist Christian opposition, right?
	You let go of God and you go to the state.
	And so because the theory of ethics, universally preferable behavior, denies the virtue and value of the state, then the supposed rational people who loved tearing Christians away from religion, although rarely with Muslims and rarely with Hindus and rarely with, anyway, although rarely with Muslims and rarely with Hindus and rarely with, anyway, the other 10,000 gods, but they loved lording it over Christians because, you see, they could puncture holes in Christian theology and felt that they had done a great service
	But when I disproved their God, the virtue and value of the state, well, they reacted as extremists who were addicted to violence, which is status as a whole.
	You react as extremists and violent tendency people would.
	They get very hostile. They get very manipulative.
	They get very destructive. And so, of course, I faced this choice.
	Okay, these people I thought were my brothers and sisters in reason.
	Are persisting in their error, and their error is sanctifying the use of violence against me, my child, my family, through taxation, regulation, control, national debts, well now of course vaccine passports and all that kind of stuff.
	So I looked at these two people, okay, I got the Christians over here, the Christians and I Believe thou shalt not steal.
	The Christians and I believe thou shalt not murder.
	The Christians and I believe thou shalt not bear false witness.
	And where I can identify errors in the Christianity, they do not impose them on me by force.
	However, over here we have the statists.
	And the statists worship a god The state, which they want to have tyrannical and coercive control over me, my family, my children, their children, and so on, right?
	And so who do I have more in common with?
	The people who vastly overlap with me in terms of ethics, who would never dream of imposing their morals on me by force, or the people who violently oppose a rational system of ethics and want to impose their view of the world on me by force?
	So after being rather cruel and unkind to Christians, and of course the Christians being very kind to me in response, which was something I did not deserve, but of course it's the unguessed gifts that tend to be the most meaningful, I apologize to Christians, and we are brothers in the pursuit of virtue and the opposition to coercion.
	Yeah, I mean, it was very much like UPB. You're calling atheists to give up religion, and they gave up what they thought was religion, but they didn't stop being religious.
	They just rejected one god for another, basically.
	Well, they rejected a peaceful god for a violent god.
	And that's the problem because, again, you know, Christians have never sought to impose any beliefs on me by force.
	When I left Christianity, you know, try leaving a country.
	Good luck. You know, the exit taxes and, you know, regulations and, right, so you can, you can, I left the church and nobody tackled me and chased me down and locked me in a dungeon and took half my stuff and, like, it was like, yeah, God be with you, you know, come back when you're ready, right?
	But the atheists, they haven't let you get away quite so easy.
	They're a little bit more stalky and chaining you in the dungeon after chloroforming you with the Bill of Rights.
	Yeah, that's definitely true.
	And, you know, I feel like there was also, you know, like the conversation we had, again, to reference that again, I was still feeling the sting of, not really you personally, but like atheists such as yourself who had spent a lot of time attacking Christians.
	And, you know, one thing that I took away from our conversation that has carried me to this day is...
	You kind of reminded me, again, you don't need to prove that God exists, because it's called faith.
	And the idea of faith is just that you believe it without proof.
	And if I could prove God existed, it wouldn't require faith.
	It would just be science or philosophy.
	And that's something that I'm no longer wrestling with.
	I actually embrace, and I think that Christians should spend less time arguing with atheists about trying to convince them that God is real or Christianity is beneficial for them over the metaphysical argument and more time pointing towards universal morality, which is something that You and I agree on 100%, and you would still – I mean you're still considering yourself an anarchist fundamentally.
	That would be your universal principles carried to their fullest extent.
	You believe that the state is illegitimate and that self-ownership, do not murder, do not steal, those are things that – What are the logical conclusions of if we take those things and make them universal and stop making, you know, exceptions for people because of, you know, they're a king or because we need, as the trope goes, what about my roads?
	Yeah, I mean, so certainly I would be more than happy to be described as an anarcho-capitalist.
	I mean, and I've written books, Practical Anarchy and Everyday Anarchy, going over the details of how we know That anarchy is the way that society should self-organize and how it would self-organize, most likely in the absence of a state.
	The problem with being called an anarchist, though, it's like calling a scientist a Lamarckian or a Darwinian or whatever.
	It's the process of science that matters, not particularly the conclusions.
	So certainly feel free to call me an anarchist, but I would say that the non-aggression principle is universal.
	It bows to no man.
	It bows to no costume.
	It bows to no crown. It bows to no collective praise.
	It bows to no vote.
	It bows to no legislature or no parliament.
	It is in fact universal.
	And thou shalt not initiate the use of force.
	I'm sorry, that's really disrespectful to put UPB first, how ridiculous.
	Given that I believe Christianity is just a tad older and has a few more adherents.
	That unites, or wherein UPB attempts to trail past the magnificent moral structure to a large degree of Christianity.
	So yeah, I mean, non-aggression principle, you take simple things and you universalize them.
	Like that's, that's progress.
	Progress is very simple and very universal, but of course simplicity and universality get in the way of a lot of power mongers and a lot of politicians and a lot of power structures.
	The movements of literally trillions of dollars around the world are based upon two-faced moral hypocrisy.
	I'm reading the trial and death of Socrates with my daughter at the moment and I did it as a show many years ago and it's like, yeah, same thing's still going on.
	Socrates says, yeah, don't get involved in politics because if you get between the politicians and their prey, they'll make pretty short work of you.
	And so UPB is universal.
	When we look at the modern world, what did the modern world What we found itself on was universality, right?
	I mean, how did we understand our place in the universe from a material standpoint?
	Well, Newton had an apple fall on his head, as the story goes, and he said, hey, I've got a thought.
	What if everything falls?
	What if an apple falling on me?
	What if the tree is falling to the ground?
	What if the ground is falling up to the tree a little bit?
	What if the moon is falling around the earth?
	What if the earth is falling around the sun?
	What if it's all universal?
	What if there's no different rule?
	Because they used to believe that the stars hung above the earth in a firmament.
	Somehow they were immune to gravity and universality and so on.
	It's like, well, what if we just have a universe where everything's constant?
	Gravity is a constant. Later, Einstein, of course, the speed of light is a constant.
	What if everything is just universal?
	And out of that universality, that just saying, okay, simple and universal, we get the modern world, modern science at least.
	Now we've done that, and of course this was the end of slavery, one of the great achievements of Christians from the British Empire and other places as well, the end of slavery.
	What if self-ownership is universal?
	What if self-ownership is universal?
	Let's just play that out. Oh, it means no slavery, right?
	And it certainly means no income tax, and you can maybe pay some tariffs or whatever, right?
	So that was the foundation of the republic and the end of slavery, which was, again, the great moral mission of Christians through the British Empire, largely around the world.
	So just making things simple and universal.
	And what if, what if thou shalt not steal is universal?
	Well, what is taxation?
	Taxation is taking property against your will.
	Ah, you can vote for it.
	It's like, well, not really, because you can't vote to not be taxed.
	And so it's not, you know, I mean, we recognize, of course, that sex should always be voluntary, but somehow we exempt property from that.
	And if the state had rape gangs, we'd be appalled.
	But because they're pillaging mostly men's wallets, we somehow don't particularly care because men are disposable.
	So it's just the idea of, like, stupid blindness and simplicity.
	Like, it's like, explain morality to me like I'm three years old.
	It's like, that's what we do with kids, right?
	I worked in a daycare.
	We have kids in kindergarten.
	And what do we say? We don't say, well, don't take other kids' toys unless, unless, if you can get the majority of kids to agree with you that the kids' toys should be taken, then it's totally fine.
	Or if you need the toy to construct some really super important fort, you know what I mean?
	Don't take other kids' candy unless they have more candy than you.
	We just say, don't hit, don't steal.
	And that's universal.
	And we give all of these universals to our kids and we expect them to live by them.
	And then when it comes to adults with power, we tie ourselves into these Gordian lower intestine brain knots trying to justify all these ridiculous contradictions.
	You know, way back in the day, you know, the Ptolemaic system, right?
	Everything had to be a perfect circle.
	So in order to explain the retrograde motion of Mars, right, like the Earth accelerates faster around the Sun, so Mars looks like it's going backwards at one point.
	There are all these circles within circles and it took guys four days to calculate the position of Mars until, was it Galileo or Copernicus or Tycho Brahe, one of those guys, was like, okay, dude, if we take the sun, put it in the middle, I can give you the position of Mars in about three minutes.
	And that simplicity, when things get over-complex, and, you know, I took political science with Charles Taylor at McGill, and I did a whole year on the guy.
	I had no idea what the hell he was ever saying.
	It was always so complex, and, oh, my God, and, you know, there's social this, and contract that, and, oh, like...
	Or it's like Keynesian economics where it's trying to explain – the Austrians have the actual easy explanation for why the economy goes through these booms and busts.
	But with Keynesian economics, it's just like black magic wizardry and the magical money printer that – We never quite get to that part where you stop printing money because supposedly we're supposed to get to a point where we've stimulated the economy and it rebounds and we pay off our debt.
	I'm still waiting for that part of Keynesian economics to play out.
	Maybe they forgot it.
	I don't know.
	Well, and of course, as you know, Keens was a predatory guy, a predatory homosexual, which is not totally irrelevant to me as far as like I look for someone.
	If someone's going to tell society how to run and how to be a good society and a moral and a just society and they're predatory in their personal sexual life, it's like I have questions.
	I like people to show me the little morals before they impose the old big morals on me at the point of a gun.
	So but of course, the people in power loved Keynesianism because it gives them the excuse to bribe the voters with borrowed money.
	And of course, you know, oh yeah, we'll pay it off later.
	Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's the addict who wants a hit saying, I'll get you the money tomorrow and he never intends to come back.
	But yeah, I mean, why did Austrian economics not win and Keynesian economics won?
	Because Keynesian economics serves the needs of the rulers and Austrian economics serves the needs of the people.
	So, sorry people, rulers come first.
	If they didn't, they wouldn't be rulers.
	Yeah. Yeah, but I think universalizing morality is an important exercise, and I certainly have these conversations.
	If someone's an atheist, I don't sit there and try to preach the Bible at them because it just doesn't seem useful.
	But if someone's a Christian, it's really easy for me to kind of do what you're doing with UPB and just apply that to the stories in the Bible, or even just the Ten Commandments.
	Yeah. And then there's scriptures that Christians try to wiggle their way around to justify it, but even those, I think, are misused.
	There's always the render unto Caesar what is Caesar's.
	It's like, okay, well, what is Caesar's?
	Is it anything he claims by force?
	Because what separates that from a mugger on the street saying your wallet or your life while he has a gun pointed to you?
	Because if we just say, you know, it's like if something is Caesar's, well then obviously you should give it to him, but you have to universalize that and go beyond like what, how do you, do you have a sound foundation for what property rights are?
	So that's what I tell Christians, is like if you're going to look at that passage, What is Caesar's?
	Is anything Caesar's just because he declares it by force?
	And how do you separate that from a mugger?
	Because to me, if you can't justify that, you're making an exception.
	And what they don't realize is that, I'm sure you know this, the reason the Pharisees asked Jesus that question was because they were trying to get him in trouble with the Romans.
	Because the correct answer was, you know, they were trying to get him in trouble with the Romans or the Jews.
	He could have said, oh, don't pay to Caesar because the Jews didn't actually believe you were supposed to.
	That's why they... Talked about, you know, how much they hated tax collectors.
	But they knew if he would have said that correct answer, they could have said, see, this guy is saying don't pay your taxes, so off with him.
	But Jesus gave a brilliant answer that cut through to the actual truth of the matter.
	Well, and who knows what render means?
	I mean, I know what it means. It means give to people, but give to Caesar what is Caesar's.
	Well, if Caesar is nothing, then give him nothing.
	I mean, it's a very delicate and open to interpretation answer, which I can completely understand why you'd give at the time then as in now.
	Yeah. I've heard you give some of these stories before, but when you're looking at the Bible and what you know of it, what do you think are some of the most pertinent passages or stories that you think push a Christian, if they're taking the biblical narrative consistently, to question the legitimacy of the state?
	Right. Well, first of all, the focus on free will.
	Which is free will and universality are the one-two punches to me that comes out of Christianity with regards to the state.
	A compelled action cannot be virtuous.
	Because that's the answer to the question of evil, right?
	The answer to the question of if there is God, why is there evil?
	Because there is free will.
	And if God would have forced people not to be evil, they could not be good.
	And virtue is the great gift that God gives us.
	And if he forcibly prevents us from being evil...
	Or did not give us the capacity to be evil, there would be no virtue in being good, and he wants to recreate his love of virtue in us.
	I mean, probably that's a bit of an outsider's perspective.
	But once we have the question of free will, then there is no such thing as a compelled virtue.
	Compelled virtue is a contradiction in terms.
	It's like lovemaking rape, up, down.
	Taxation is a social good.
	So once we understand that there can never be such a thing as a compelled virtue, then when people come along and say, well, we should have a redistributionist welfare state.
	Why? Because we care about the poor.
	It's like, well, if you care about the poor, go and help the poor because man does not live by bread alone.
	Helping the poor does not mean giving them money any more than helping a drug addict is giving them money or helping an alcoholic is giving them money because most times they'll use it for bad effect.
	Helping the poor means getting down with them as Jesus did, conversing with them, finding out their issues, listening to their troubles, giving them spiritual and moral succor and salvation.
	And so the idea that you can help the poor by pointing a gun at someone, taking their money, and handing it over to the poor is a monstrous idea, of course.
	And specifically, it's not just anti-Jesus, it's not just anti-Christian, it's anti-theology as a whole in the entirety of the Christian.
	I mean, this is one of the signs that came after the flood, right?
	When God put the rainbow up and saying, well, that's it for compelled virtue or compelled destruction of evildoers, Sodom and Gomorrah and all the rest.
	I'm not going to drown wrongdoers.
	And this, of course, was Christ moving forward and saying, you are responsible for your own decisions.
	You are responsible for your own sins.
	And It is accomplished is the universality of the sacrifice.
	The break with Judaism, the break with other religions has always been, for me with Christianity, the universality of the morality.
	It is not a tribal.
	It is not an in-group preference.
	A Christian, unlike many other religions, owes the highest moral standards to non-Christians as much as Christians.
	And that universality is philosophical in its intent.
	The fact that you can never, ever compel virtue, to compel virtue is to create a slave and an evildoer.
	The slave being the person who's compelled and the evildoer being the one who's compelling him.
	And so if there is no such thing as compelled virtue, Then the state cannot achieve anything moral by pointing against the people that can only expand evil.
	Yeah, I agree. And I think people often, especially the progressive Christians, like to ignore the parts of Jesus' teachings that were very focused on personal responsibility.
	I mean, Jesus literally said, if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off.
	I mean, it doesn't get much more radical in the personal responsibility camp than that.
	And when he said, what you've done unto the least of these, you've done unto me, he said what you've done, not what you've contracted third-party muggers to do.
	Rob from Peter to pay to Paul.
	You know what I mean? And also the fact that, sorry to interrupt, but the fact that human beings are fallible, and not just fallible but fallen.
	It really, I think, depends on how far you go along the original sin continuum.
	But the idea that humans are never perfectible.
	And it's funny too because atheists and Darwinians should have this as a stronger idea, but they don't.
	Because atheism and Darwinism is so often used to justify totalitarianism of both the fascist and the communist side.
	And so for some reason, purely fallible and corrupted and self-interested and mammals, like mammals who just want to spread their seed and get resources and make babies and eat, somehow they're perfectible in a moral sense.
	sense.
	You can get the new communist man or the new fascist man who's just perfect and only labors for the betterment of others and has no vestigial mammalian impulses.
	Like the atheists create this perfectibility of human beings and the Christians are like, no, no, no, no, no, absolutely not.
	The Christians understand evolution in this sense a lot better than the atheists do because evolution would specifically say human beings evolved to be the apex predator because we prefer our own advantage.
	We prefer the advantage of those genetically similar to us and we're willing to sacrifice anyone and everything to advance our lineage, to advance our genetics, to advance our And so the Christians look at the fallen nature of man, and this to me would be identical to Darwinian evolution.
	It's not a moral process.
	It's a kill or be killed process.
	It's an advantage-disadvantage process.
	It's an in-group preference process.
	It's certainly not a universal process at all.
	And so the Christians in the fallen state are much closer to what the Darwinians should accept.
	And the Darwinians should be purely, purely anarchic because they recognize that human beings seek power.
	Power is a literal drug for human beings.
	You get more dopamine the more high up you get.
	We're addicted to power.
	No human being can handle it because we're animals.
	We're not spiritual beings in the Darwinian view.
	We're not spiritual beings who are perfectible.
	So the Christians much more accurately identify the corrupt nature of humanity and the Darwinians who should accept it based on evolution somehow vault over it and often support this perfectibility argument that justifies totalitarianism.
	That's nuts.
	And so... One of the things that I've loved, as Jesus said, is let he who is without sin cast the first stone.
	It's amazing. You could spend like a year just mulling over that one, which is, to me, a lot to do with the anti-vanity that is so essential for human progress.
	Humility, humility, moral humility.
	Anybody who comes to you and says, I'm going to take a trillion dollars and help the poor— It's dealing with such a level of moral vanity and hubris that it almost staggers the imagination.
	And so let he is without sin cast the first stone means you must be moral for yourself.
	And why are you so concerned about the speck of dust in your brother's eye and ignore the giant log in your own or the beam in your own?
	Deal with your own issues.
	Deal with your own morality first.
	And then maybe, maybe, maybe you can inspire other people.
	But this idea that we have this elite group of intellectuals and power mongers who can survive their own corruption, can survive the abuse of power and can have such moral hubris that they can point guns at hundreds of millions of people,
	move trillions of dollars around in a perfectly moral manner – Well, I mean, that kind of vanity was specifically targeted and punctured by Jesus, which is, again, one of the reasons why there's been so much moral progress in Christian nations, because that humility and the imperfectibility means you always have something to reach for.
	Yeah, well, even Jesus refused political power or, you know, in the desert when Satan said, you know, these kingdoms of men, you know, they're mine to give to you to command, and Jesus refused it there, which is, I think, a really beautiful demonstration.
	Part of the reason in the religious sense that Jews rejected Jesus as Messiah was they were looking to the Messiah to be some kind of political savior, to be someone who's going to claim power, take back, beat back Rome, rebuild the kingdom of Israel.
	And Jesus had a way of cutting through people's expectations and pointing them to...
	There's a lot of lessons on time preference in the Bible, I think, and not being so focused on the here and now and the immediate consequences of things.
	Think about what are the consequences of seizing political power.
	What you're doing is just...
	When you do that, when you force those things on people, what you're doing is you're going to create, you know, backlash.
	I mean, look at what's going on in the Middle East right now.
	I mean, all the warnings that Ron Paul gave over the last, you know, two decades and all the Austrians libertarians about what happens when you try to go and force, you know, through conquest, through democracy building and all that, you know, force your political views upon other people, you know, that just inevitably creates backlash.
	Well, I mean, of course, Washington DC has just about the highest murder rate in America.
	And the idea that...
	Congressmen, politicians, and senators can't even remotely fix the city that they actually live in, where they're under the same laws.
	They have virtually ultimate power.
	They speak the same language. They have the same cultural and religious history.
	They can't even stop people killing each other at about the highest rate right outside the windows of the Capitol.
	But don't worry, folks.
	They can go to Afghanistan, a completely foreign country and culture, speak different language, completely oppositional in many ways, theological history.
	And they can totally turn that into a paradise.
	They can't fix Washington, but they can totally fix Afghanistan.
	And of course, 20 years later, all they did was they produced a gain-of-function Taliban with new weaponry.
	So I mean, yeah, that's the hubris that's really quite mad.
	Yeah. So something you said earlier I wanted to touch on a bit too.
	You said one of the things about religion that you think – about Christianity specifically that kind of causes Christians to diverge when it comes to looking at political power from maybe the atheists or the secularists is the understanding the fallibility or the fallen nature of man.
	And I certainly think that's part of it, and I think it – as a Christian, you should be skeptical of the – like the – Effectiveness of central planning because of knowing how corruptible and fallen man is.
	I think another element, I wanted to hear your thoughts on this, is that I really love universally preferable behavior.
	I don't think you can prove it wrong.
	I think the person who gave it the biggest shot was rationality rules and he couldn't even do it.
	Oh yeah, sorry. For those who don't know, he put a whole series of videos out of attacking it.
	And great, you know, let's polish it up.
	Let's sharpen the sword.
	So we had a debate wherein he fully accepted the four proofs that rape, theft, assault, and murder can never be universally preferable behavior.
	And after that, it's like, yeah, he can say all he wants, but it's like, okay, so we're on the same page.
	Yeah. But I think the one thing he and other people have said is just like, well, and this is where I think religion gives a utility to the universal morality subject, is a lot of people will just go, well, what if I don't care?
	What if I just want to – like, I don't have any argument against you.
	I just reject you out of hand, and there's nothing compelling me to take this seriously when I'm just going to act on, like you said, the dopamine rush of – I don't know.
	Whereas, and this isn't to say that there aren't plenty of examples of Christians who have also fallen short on this, but I think there's a more of an emphasis on Christians to care about wanting morality to be universalized because the idea of God being the law giver and the idea of there being more but I think there's a more of an emphasis on Christians to care about wanting morality to be universalized because the idea of God There being more of a metaphysical imperative for morality to be universalized.
	Would you agree with that?
	I'm just curious what your thoughts are.
	Yeah. So UPB, like Christian theology, can compel you to be good or to accept it or to believe in it.
	What UPB targets are abstract moral and political theories that justify the use of violence against usually disarmed citizens.
	UPB won't protect you from a mugger because you can protect yourself from a mugger.
	UPB will protect you from the state.
	UPB will protect or would have protected the quarter of a billion people murdered by their own governments in the 20th century alone.
	UPB takes aim at communism, at fascism, at socialism, at our slow suicide of democracide based upon money printing.
	UPP takes aim at central banking justifications for counterfeiting on a massive intergenerational scale.
	So UPB is like the big gun that takes on the weapons of mass destruction in the intellectual world, which are the justifications for state power.
	Now, again, there will be individual people in a truly free society.
	Maybe they were raised really badly.
	Maybe they just had bad genes.
	Maybe they got a brain tumor.
	And they'll be violent.
	And they'll steal from you.
	But here's the thing. You can get a security system.
	You can hire a security guard.
	You can be armed. You can protect yourself.
	But you cannot protect yourself against the state.
	I mean, if somebody wants to come and steal from you, they have to take the personal risk of you fighting back.
	How is my daughter supposed to protect herself against the half million dollars of debt she was born into?
	Some guy wants to come and steal from you a half million dollars or however much you've got.
	If somebody wants to come and steal from you, hey, you might be armed.
	You might have a security guard. You might have an alarm system.
	You might have a rapid response team.
	You might have booby traps.
	I don't know. It might be somewhere else.
	And you might shoot him for coming into your house without permission while armed, right?
	So UPB says, look, of course there's free will.
	Of course people can choose evil.
	But society, and particularly individuals, can handle other individuals who choose evil.
	But if a state turns ugly on you, if a state starts incarcerating and imprisoning you, if a state goes communist or fascist or national socialist, That's where your real problem is.
	So I guess you could say that UPP takes aim at heart disease and cancer, but whether you walk out or not is up to you, if that makes sense.
	Yeah, I mean, I guess what I was getting at is I feel like there's too many, you know, like, the utility of religion is that it, not compels is the wrong word, it incentivizes people to, I guess, to care more about the morality argument, where there's a lot of Statists, atheists, you know, or secular people, agnostics, whatever, that just, like, you push them, like, look at, like, you're not being consistent, and they just shrug it off like it's, well, I don't care, like, why do I need to be consistent?
	It's just like, well, you know what I mean?
	Like, that's what I, you know, and this isn't, like, there's plenty of atheists in the, like, you know, I'm involved in here in the United States, here in our Libertarian Party, and there's plenty of atheists and secular people that You know, we get along great.
	And I've tried to, you know, like I talked about earlier, I'm no longer fighting with them.
	And to some extent, I've had to do the reverse to say, you know, when they come after me for being religious, to be like, hey, friendly fire.
	We're on the same team here.
	You know what I mean? So let's get back to, you know, actually going like, you know, my God isn't your problem right now.
	The God we should be focused on is the one in Washington.
	We've got the two C's here.
	You can choose from two C's.
	One, Christianity.
	The other, communism.
	Now, Christianity will let you live.
	Maybe you'll hear some church bells.
	Maybe there'll be some...
	Christianity is the best hymns ever.
	I was in the church choir and all that, so I love the hymns.
	Christianity's got beautiful Christmas music.
	Christianity, you know, you can have Santa Claus, Saint Nick, no problem, right?
	And if you want to come, you want to go, no problem.
	Also, we'll be taking food baskets to the hungry, and we will be giving out blankets to the homeless.
	And, you know, even if you're not a Christian, if you're home alone and lonely, some people will come by and chat with you and bring you some fruitcake.
	You know, so that's your Christianity these days, right?
	On the other hand, you've got your communism.
	Now, communism...
	It is a mass-murdering psycho-ideology that kills hundreds of millions, well, 100 million people plus just in the 20th century alone.
	And that's just straight-up murder, not even just people who were incarcerated in these gulags for decades and people who couldn't get married and couldn't have any economic advancement, depressed and drunk their whole lives.
	So you've got your two Cs, and there's no third choice.
	There's no third choice. See, I thought, okay, so theology, I've got some rational issues with it.
	I mean, communism, straight up insane, right?
	Straight up insane and evil, right?
	So I thought, okay, well, so we'll just, you know, clear aside Christianity, and then we'll go at the communism, right?
	And it turns out it was a bit of an error, a bit of an error, because when I grew up, my friends who were atheists, not communists, right?
	But what happened was, of course, the communists view Christianity as what stands between them and the power that they want because Christianity is focused upon no compelled virtues and if you force people.
	And also Christianity deals with the problem of vanity, right?
	So what communists do is they say all differences in outcomes are the result of exploitation.
	If you make more money than me, you've stolen from me.
	And even Neil deGrasse Tyson, the astrophysicist or whatever the hell he is, was tweeting about, oh, the British Empire, one principle.
	Oh, you have it? It's now ours, right?
	Like, yeah, because, you know, heaven forbid we ended slavery around the world and heaven forbid we bought modern medicine and railroads and roads and the internal combustion engine and We're good to go.
	So they say all the differences in outcomes is just the result of theft and exploitation.
	And because there always will be differences in outcome because of the bell curve in a variety of ways, IQ, talents, you name it, there will always be differences in outcomes.
	And so they'll never solve the problem.
	And then, of course, they say, well, differences in outcomes is really bad.
	So we'll create one political class that has massive universal power over everyone else.
	It's like, isn't that a difference? Isn't that a big difference in outcome in terms of your capacity to use political power?
	No, no, we don't ask that question.
	That's not important.
	Just keep moving. Just submit and obey.
	So Christianity deals with the difference in group outcomes by saying, and I paraphrase here, who cares?
	Who cares? It doesn't matter what treasures you accumulate here on earth.
	Your treasure is in heaven.
	And it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of Haman.
	If you are low now, you will be high later.
	The meek shall inherit the earth.
	And you get to go to heaven, which is infinitely more important than having an extra camel in the here and now or a bigger house or whatever, right?
	So Christianity, by focusing people on virtues and the end goal...
	I had a Christian friend of mine and I just did a video where I talked about my 500-year business plan.
	He said, that's good as a start, but your business plan should not be 500 years or a thousand years or 10,000 years.
	It should be eternity. Yeah, that's very well phrased, right?
	So unless you can deal with the problem of envy where the poor people who are often poor because they're not so smart or, you know, they just don't have the X factor that helps you generate wealth, that mystery Pareto principle that just some people have this golden touch when it comes to the generation of wealth and opportunity— If you have...
	Oh, there'll be poor people. And Jesus says, the poor will always be with us.
	An attempt to eradicate the poor will eradicate humanity as a whole.
	And the poor will always be with us.
	And so Christianity says to the poor, your treasure is in heaven.
	Living a simple life is a great way to avoid the temptations of power, because with money comes power and authority, and with power and authority comes corruption and abuse.
	And this is why the rich of that time, right?
	Who were the rich of the time?
	They weren't Steve Jobs. They were slave owners in general.
	So, of course, they said, you know, slave owners don't get into heaven because they abuse their slaves and take away their free will and so on.
	So unless we can deal with the problem, Of envy.
	We can't have a civilization.
	Because sophists will always come along to the people who are less fortunate, who are making less money, and they'll always come along and they'll say, hey, you know that guy up on the hill?
	That jerk with the pretty wife and the two cars and the mansion?
	He's only wealthy because he stole from you.
	And he stole from everyone around you.
	And he stole from all these poor people.
	And he stole from your ancestors.
	And you just rouse up the mob.
	And then the rob go up and they take everything from the rich guy.
	And everyone ends up broke and starving because nobody ever wants to accumulate any resources or invest in anything or create anything good or lasting.
	And you go and steal from the farmer and the farmer stops growing for you.
	And you go and steal from the guy who creates jobs.
	He stops creating jobs for you.
	And so unless you can deal with the wedge issue of the poor versus the wealthy, and, you know, the Austrian guy says, hey, you want the wealthy guy to have money because he's the best able to maximize resources and produce wealth, and so he's going to lift you up.
	He's like, you know, you want the rich guy with the $10,000 cell phone so you can end up with a cell phone that costs 80 bucks and can call India for nothing, right?
	Yeah. Austrian economics, unfortunately, has not dealt with this problem.
	And so when you take theology and virtue and having a higher goal than the accumulation of material resources, that your treasure is in heaven not here, then everybody says, okay, death is the ceiling.
	Death is it. So I've got to get stuff in a Darwinian sense while I'm here.
	And if joining a mob to rob the rich guy is the way I get stuff, I will do it.
	And you can see this all the time, right?
	I mean, you can see hyenas. They all gang up on the lion and take his kill away from him because there's more of them, right?
	If there's more. And so Christianity allows for disparities in wealth by reminding people not to envy the rich man.
	The communists use disparities in wealth to rouse the resentment and rage of the mob and destroy society so they can take over.
	And again, it's Christianity versus communism.
	There is no other...
	Option at the moment.
	And so given my fear and loathing of communism, it's like, yes, take me to church, brother.
	Yeah. Christianity has spelled out room for the people who are non-Christians.
	The communists don't quite have the spelled out room for the non-communists.
	Oh, they have a room for the non-communists.
	Oh, they do. They do have a room.
	It's very small and tends to be full of rats, mice, and no food.
	Right, yeah. Not a good room to be in.
	Yeah, I agree with all that. I think the kingdom of heaven is almost, and the focus on eternity is, again, it's kind of like, it's a foil to having a high time preference and having a sense of desperateness or defeat in your spirit attitude just because you're on the lower end of the economic, you know, totem pole, so to speak.
	So I think that's all very spot on.
	I wanted to get, we have some commenters, people who are asking questions, but also before I cut to those, I wanted to spend a few minutes also, because you talked about at the beginning of the episode how you've been, you know, deplatformed very successfully by most major platforms.
	Yeah, I gotta tell you, and I was expecting this when I announced I was having you on, the usual very loud, very annoying people were, you know, Made it, yeah.
	Made it known. And I don't know, I'm growing tired of, you know, part of the decision to have you on was that I, you know, don't want to cater to those kind of people.
	And if anything, I remember when Tom Woods had you on, he was just like, you know, actually, the more you guys tell me not to talk to people, the more I'm like, actually, that's a guy I probably want to talk to.
	So, you know, that's kind of where my attitude has been.
	But, you know, what is it with people...
	What do you think it comes from where there's, you know, the people primarily on the left who just don't seem willing to, I don't know, like agree to disagree with stuff?
	I mean, there's things that I even hear in this conversation already, like, you know, we have some disagreement on religion.
	You have had some takes in the past, like, you know, I'm more of an open borders guy.
	You've, you know, at least in, I don't know where you are exactly now, but in more recent years, you've been More of a, you know, controlled or closed border guy.
	I've disagreed with you on various takes throughout the years, which, you know, but to me, it's like, that's to be expected.
	Like, we're not always going to agree.
	And I don't want to cancel people or be offended by things they say, even if even if something someone says I find to be like, you know, Wow, that was, you know, maybe initially I might go, I don't like that.
	But to me, it's like getting offended about it doesn't get me anywhere.
	Like, it's just, it's like, cool, I'm offended by that.
	But, okay, if it's wrong, I should be able to argue why it's wrong.
	If I can't argue why it's wrong, well, maybe I need to reconsider, you know, my initial offense to it.
	What do you think is the source of all this and why some people, especially, it's one thing when the statists get mad, but there's people who call themselves libertarians who go around.
	I mean, you've heard it all. I mean, you're a white nationalist eugenicist who wants to go around and, you know, enslave all the women and make them reproduce for us.
	I mean, it's crazy the things that people make up about you.
	And I'm just like, dude, like...
	Yeah, I mean, the level of lies is the level of truth, right?
	I mean, if you speak important truths, then people will lie.
	So as to where this comes from, I'll use an analogy that's very current day.
	So I don't know if you've heard this theory about immune systems and hyper-cleanliness, right?
	So for a year and a half, people have been socially distanced.
	They've been inside for the most part.
	They've been masked. They've been sanitizing their hands to the point where they can probably disinfect the toilet just by peeing on it.
	And... One of the concerns is, not specific to COVID, but one of the concerns, of course, is that if you live in a hyper-clean environment and you don't get any workout from your immune system, like I was reading this article about people who bite their nails have better immune systems because they're constantly getting germs from their...
	So your immune system needs a workout, right?
	So then what happens is when your immune system encounters...
	A virus in the wild, whether it's COVID or, you know, could be anything, could be, I don't know, measles or a cold or a flu or something like that, right?
	Then what happens is your body will overreact to it, not to the point perhaps of cytokine storm, but your body will overreact to it because it hasn't had anything to do, and so it hasn't got any exercise.
	And it's sort of like if you don't exercise for a long time and then you try and lift a couch, you're going to hurt your back because you have no muscle mass there anymore.
	And so the way that you keep kids healthy is you let them play in the dirt.
	You know, you let them go drink lake water.
	You let them be exposed to the world.
	One of the reasons why I think kids, you know, the whole issue with like peanut butter, peanut allergies and so on.
	I mean, some of it seems to have to do with the sort of hyper clean, wash your hands, sanitize everything, even before COVID, right?
	The sort of hoverboard mom helicopters that keep everyone clean and tidy and all that.
	It's kind of short-sighted.
	I mean, I grew up, we just roamed everywhere and, you know, we'd drink from the stream and, you know, whatever, right?
	And, you know, if it passes a sniff test or it's on the floor for less than three days, you can probably still eat it, right?
	So, fairly robust then as an adult.
	I mean, I shook off cancer, fortunately, very easily, or at least relatively easily.
	So, I think the analogy that I think is important is that Censorship produces this very hyper-reactive immune system of the mind.
	In other words, I grew up being exposed continually to contrary opinions all the time.
	My friends and I debated all the time.
	I was a capitalist in a sea of socialists, and this happened everywhere I went.
	I mean, I was in the art world, I was in academia, I did a master's degree, and I was just continually being bombarded with ideas that weren't just different, but oppositional and sometimes morally oppositional to mine.
	I took a whole course taught by a Marxist on the rise of capitalism and the socialist response, and it was just like battle, battle, battle.
	And so to me, disagreement is like germs, the average germ for a kid who grew up in the country, like who cares?
	You don't even notice it, right?
	But kids who grow up without debate, without arguments, without these kinds of oppositions, when they encounter a different argument, their immune system of the mind, their hysteria kind of goes nuts.
	And this is one of the things when you begin to pare down discussions in society, you make people hysterical when they come across opposing ideas and arguments, which is kind of what happened with me, right?
	Like I interviewed 17 world-round experts on human intelligence talking about group differences in IQ, because it's kind of important.
	Because, you know, if we're going to have a whole bunch of different ethnicities live together, it's real nice if we turn to some science to explain some of these group differences appropriately.
	Otherwise, we're going to end up in a civil war, which is really bad for everyone.
	So maybe we can get some science in here to talk about these differences and cool the conversation down a little bit.
	You know, I think it was a noble quest.
	I think it was the right thing to do.
	I regret absolutely nothing.
	But of course, because, you know, one of the most successful psyops in the history of the world is the suppression of 100 years worth of IQ data, right?
	It's amazing. It's so essential to understanding the world and...
	99% of people have never even heard about it.
	And so when you keep ideas away, when you keep essential arguments and facts away from people, when they encounter them, it's like some kid in a bubble getting his first cold.
	His immune system goes insane.
	It completely overreacts.
	And that's the thing. We haven't immunized our hysteria with constant exposure to good arguments from alternative perspectives.
	And of course, it's always kind of ironic when the left, which claims to love diversity, encounters an idea they don't like.
	They just try and smash it with a hammer.
	That does not appear overly diverse to me.
	At least. And so I think keeping people away from contrary arguments and ideas, you read the media, it's all, you know, it's all just one big wall of like one guy writing the same article 20,000 different times.
	And so people just aren't getting exposed to challenging ideas.
	They're not getting exposed to counter narratives.
	And so when they do get exposed to them, they freak out and can't reason and feel this existential panic in the same way your immune system freaks out if you've lived in a bubble your whole life.
	Yeah, no, I agree with that.
	And it's just, to me, it's silly.
	And like, you know, the whole race and IQ stuff, I mean, that's the people get the most triggered about that.
	And to me, it's like, all right, well, people have come to me, like friends of mine who were like, okay, but who's wrong about that?
	And like, there's all these scientific people in the science community who have said his stuff is debunked.
	I'm like, all right, well, like, you know, the guy had a call-in show and a podcast for years.
	So like, if you had information that you think proved Things he was saying wrong, then, like, what's the scientific or rational response?
	Is it to racist, right, white, you know what I mean, and freak out?
	Or is it like, you know, reach out in a civil manner to be like, hey, Stefan, I listened to your podcasts, you've said these things.
	I think that that's wrong for these reasons.
	Maybe we can have a dialogue and conversation about it.
	Oh, yes. Set me right.
	Yeah. If I'm wrong about something, I always appreciate it.
	But here's the thing, too. I mean, there's a reason I interviewed all of these experts, like tops of their fields, editors of magazines, well-regarded scientific journals on intelligence, because I'm not a scientist.
	I'm not a scientist.
	I am not a geneticist.
	I'm not a biologist. And so it's funny.
	It always strikes me as kind of odd.
	When I interview a bunch of people, And I interviewed people who accepted it as a valid difference, but said it was all environmental.
	Fantastic. I interviewed people who said, you know, we don't know.
	IQ is 80% genetic by mid-teens.
	It's hard to say. Maybe it's a little bit more genetic.
	I don't know. I'm not a geneticist.
	I'm not a psychologist. I can't answer these things.
	But it's really important information for us to debate.
	It really is. Because otherwise it's a massive wedge issue that the left is going to use literally to destroy our societies.
	Yeah. So what I found kind of interesting and really sad is that I get all these emails saying, you're wrong!
	And it's like, what are you talking about?
	I interviewed the guy. I will give you his email.
	You can email him.
	Don't shoot the messenger. Like the fact that people would identify these arguments with me when I'm just interviewing, right?
	It's like if I interview Luciano Pavarotti in his prime, are people going to say to me, well, Steph can't sing!
	It's like, well, I'm the interviewer.
	I'm not the singer.
	So why would people get mad at me for interviewing people from a wide variety of perspectives?
	A wide variety of perspectives.
	They weren't all on the same page because it's a hot topic and it's a tricky topic.
	But why people would then – it's really cowardly and kind of sad to identify it with me personally.
	When I'm the guy just doing the interviews and asking some questions, and it's all the experts who are expounding upon their 20 years of research or 40 years of publications and so on, to identify it with me when I'm just the guy who interviewed 17 leading experts in this field and to completely ignore the leading experts and just somehow pin it on me...
	It's intellectual cowardice and really pathetic.
	Like if you don't want to talk about a topic, then shut up about the topic.
	But don't make up some nonsense.
	Like the eugenicist thing, it's kind of, I mean, it's just wild.
	I remember hearing that. Steph's a eugenicist.
	It's like, wait, I'm an anarchist.
	How can I approve of any kind of government program?
	And it actually came out of a podcast I did many years ago.
	We have to clean up the breeding ground of the species.
	I was talking about pedophiles and child abusers.
	Like, you've got to keep pedophiles and child abusers away from your children, and suddenly I'm Hitler.
	And it's just like, come on. I mean, like, everybody knows that everybody the left dislikes gets quoted out of context.
	And if you repeat those quotes, you are a terrible human being.
	Like, you are a terrible—you've just joined an ugly mob to do an ugly thing.
	And again, if you don't want to look up the full context, fine.
	Shut up about it. But if you go around repeating this stuff without...
	And you know.
	You know for an absolute...
	Anybody who saw Trump for four years knows exactly how much the left takes things out of context and pumps a narrative.
	Like the fine people hoax.
	And oh, Trump told people to drink bleach.
	Like you know. You know they lie about everything and take everything out of context.
	And if you repeat those lies...
	You are now a sinner in the same way but with less excuse because at least I think the left denies that they lie.
	But you know that they lie and you're still out there repeating lies.
	That is an absolutely terrible thing to do for which redemption is a tough path.
	Yeah. No, I'm thankful for Trump, and even though I've never been a huge fan of him, and I think you supported him more than I really cared for, but I appreciate him because that was part of what got me out of the left.
	Like, again, I voted for Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton in 2016, partly because I was a leftist, partly because I was just scared that Trump was everything the left said he was.
	Then a year later, I was like, well, I still don't like the guy, but all these claims that are coming up to be lies, I just kind of can't ignore.
	And I started to see the insanity of the people around me that were on, especially after, like, once Trump got in, then the insanity on the left accelerated, and suddenly I found myself...
	You know, just kind of left in the abyss, kind of like, okay, well, I'm not following them into crazy land, so I'm going to go explore new ideas and stuff.
	And that's where I ended up.
	And yeah, you know, I think, like, yeah, it's silly.
	I don't want to spend too much time, you know...
	Well, if it's any consolation, I have disagreements with me about stuff as well.
	I mean, I don't have the same opinions now as 16 years ago.
	That would be sad. Right, yeah.
	And it's just like, to me, it's a lot more fun and interesting to just be like, okay, like, even if I disagree with somebody, like, hey, let's talk about where we agree.
	We can also talk about where we disagree.
	That seems to be just, I don't know, like regular human behavior, like regular civil discourse.
	Well, that's civilization, right?
	So a narcissist cannot tolerate oppositional opinions because they want to exploit you.
	And if they allow you to be different from them, and they recognize your humanity, they can't exploit you.
	So when somebody can't handle disagreements or attacks disagreements, it's because they want to exploit someone and need to dehumanize them by stripping them of opinions and thought.
	So it is an extremely dangerous thing to be around people who attack you for disagreeing with them because it means that they're going to rape your life in some economic, financial or other manner.
	And it's a very, very big warning sign of a significant predator in your midst.
	Yeah. You know, like, you know, one, I wanted to push, like, so the stuff with the COVID passports going on right now, and, you know, it's a big deal.
	People act like, oh, that's not going to come down the pipeline.
	But, you know, to me, that seems to be inevitably where things are headed.
	But that's not really going to end, though, right?
	You know, the COVID passport is just going to turn into a social credit score where if you tweet something they don't like, you won't be able to use your bank account for a week.
	Or if you say something that goes against a particular narrative, you won't be able to fill your gas or fly on a plane for a month.
	I mean, you know that this isn't, of course, where it's heading.
	I mean, they don't stop there.
	It's giving you a digital ID that permits you rights based upon compliance with the state.
	It's a digital ID that gives you rights based upon compliance to the state.
	And if you think it's going to stop there, I don't even know what – I mean, not you would, but anybody who's hearing this, if you think it's going to stop there, I don't know what to tell you.
	It's like you've got to read some history.
	Yeah. I am curious, though.
	And again, this is coming from a place of good faith.
	Part of the reason I am for open borders is the same reason I am.
	And when I say I'm for open borders, it's like in a here and now, because I'm an Austrian anarcho-capitalist.
	I want private property rights, and the only legitimate borders are private property borders.
	Yeah. That should go without saying.
	But in the here and now, it's like, as much as I agree, open borders is a compromise, and it's not the actual libertarian solution.
	But I just don't want to give the state more power than it has to control the movement of people, whether it's people coming in or people coming out.
	So even if there's, you know, negative consequences to that, it's like, to me, it's the same argument against COVID passports.
	Like, you know, COVID, I had COVID. It was not a particularly fun virus to catch, but, you know, I survived.
	Tell me a little bit about, sorry, if you don't mind, what was your experience there?
	It was pretty rough because I have asthma, so it hit my asthma hard.
	I contemplated going to the hospital a couple of times because my rescue inhaler was doing nothing.
	It's like the elephant sitting on your chest.
	You can't get a breath, right?
	Yeah, it was brutal.
	I mean, two to three weeks. And then even after that, when I kind of got over it, I had a lingering cough and just...
	I didn't get too much of the losing my taste and smell, but a little bit of that.
	Now, I think I got it back in September.
	By Christmas, I was maybe 80% back to normal.
	And now I'm about 100% back to normal, but it took a while.
	I don't take COVID lightly.
	When people are talking about lockdowns, mask mandates, COVID passports, to me it's like they can justify them based upon, well, we don't like state tyranny, but we have to justify it in this case because of the negative ramifications.
	So I'm just curious, you know, again, from a place of good faith, you know, pushback on your position, do you see any contradiction there?
	Or do you think that there's things I'm not considering that would, you know, reasons for why you would still be against the COVID passports and the things coming after that, but be for, at least in here and now, some form of stronger immigration?
	Because people say, oh, he can't be an anarchist.
	They say this about Dave Smith, and I love Dave Smith.
	They're like, he's not an anarchist or libertarian because he's for closed borders.
	I'm like, guys, they're talking about strategy in the here and now.
	So even if I disagree with them, that doesn't mean they're not anarcho-capitalist just because they're saying, yeah, we agree on the end conclusion, but we have different ideas about how to get there.
	To me, that's just a disingenuous attack.
	But I do worry about closed borders because to me that's just like giving the state that kind of power, especially the way things are headed.
	Can you imagine COVID passports and a wall that doesn't let people out?
	That's a little scary.
	I like how we're getting over an hour and you beat the biggest question up right at the end.
	That's fine. That's fine. So, look, it's a pretty standard libertarian argument that you can have open borders or you can have a welfare state.
	You can't have both. I don't care where people live.
	I don't care where people live. What I do care is people who come and swell the welfare rolls, which is generally the case in America.
	Three-quarters of immigrants end up on welfare.
	So that's just a matter of self-protection for your wallet, right?
	If you have people pouring into the country who are driving up I mean,
	that's true. Well, I mean, there's a whole variety of reasons.
	Even Joe Biden and Kamala Harris want to stop the immigration coming in.
	Right. So when people come for freedom, which was the 19th century in America when there was no welfare state, people came for freedom, all right?
	But when people come for free stuff, then...
	You know, it's like if you have employees who are productive in your company, you probably want to keep them.
	If you have employees who are unproductive or maybe walking out with a couple of staplers, you know, probably not so great, right?
	So the way the system is set up right now, there is a collective purse that people can come from that ends up accruing to individual losses, right?
	And people are like, okay, so people are coming in, they're costing vastly more than they're producing.
	And that's a problem.
	And so the idea that people shouldn't have the right to try and close borders to protect their income, to protect their assets, to protect the debt their children would be labored under, when you have a system which is supposed to reflect the will of the people, I think that's a fair argument to make.
	Now, no welfare state...
	I don't care. In a purely free society, there would be no enforcement of these kinds of things from any centralized, coercive environment.
	It would be a matter of social negotiation and so on, which I think is great and exactly how it should be.
	But, I mean, come on.
	I mean, the country nominally is owned by the people and by the voters.
	And the people who pay the bills do have a right to call some of the shots.
	And if they find that immigration is costing them a huge amount of money, and that's just one of the issues, but let's just talk about the money, then wouldn't, I mean, if somebody was coming into your house and taking your stuff, wouldn't you close the door?
	I mean, and you say, well, the country is not in...
	But that's the way the system is currently set up, is that the taxpayers and the voters are supposed to control the country, which they own collectively through the power of the state.
	And so if people are allowed to shut their doors, you know, if you have a dinner party and somebody's, you know, causing a lot of trouble or you're having a pool party and someone's peeing in the pool, you can, right, say, please don't be here, right?
	Or if somebody wants to come over you know is trouble, you can say, please don't come over.
	Right. Look, again, I'm not a big fan of states or borders or anything like that, but given that people are facing a kind of collective pillaging of the public purse as a whole, and again, I'm not blaming any individual immigrants, a lot of them very productive, a lot of wonderful people and so on, but just looking at aggregate...
	I can understand why people would want to, say, put a pause on that while they try and wrestle things down.
	Because, of course, the more people you bring into the country who are dependent upon the welfare state, the less likely it is to ever get rid of the welfare state, right?
	I mean, except by total collapse, which would be a complete catastrophe.
	Yeah, I mean, I disagree with it, but I understand where the concern comes from.
	What do you disagree with?
	Is it a fact or a conclusion that you disagree with?
	I disagree with the conclusion.
	I disagree with all your concerns.
	To me, my concerns about the power that you're ceding to the state and the way that'll be abused to attack control of immigration.
	You're ceding more power to the state with open borders.
	I've heard you say that before. No, no, that's not an opinion.
	That's a complete fact because most of the people who come in, particularly from South and Central America or North America if you can, Mexico of course, the people who come in want more and more government, bigger and bigger government, more and more spending and less and less free speech.
	So by having open borders...
	You are bringing in populations that want more and more state power over you.
	So that's a false dichotomy to say, well, if we have open borders, I'm not ceding any power to the state.
	It's like, yes, you are, and much more so than close borders.
	And again, like I said at the beginning, you're still giving the government that control over the border.
	It's a complicated issue, but I don't know.
	Maybe this is just more of an axiomatic, like, I just can't justify giving the state that power, even if...
	That comes with a cost.
	I'm not saying there isn't a cost to that.
	I'm just worried about, I guess I see the potential hazards of the government having that power as being greater than what you do.
	But to me, it's like, I see where you're coming from.
	And also, you know, I'm involved in the political arena here in the states.
	I don't focus on immigration or going around trying to push for open borders, because it's actually not that popular of an idea, which is something that I do agree with you on, which is people, whether they're left or right, a lot of people on the left like to pretend they're for open borders.
	But at the end of the day, what the politicians that they vote for do is a lot of the same...
	I mean, they might let more in, but they're still at the end of the day enforcing a closed border position.
	Well, I mean, it's all to some degree academic because there's no possibility of closing borders in the West, certainly not in America.
	There's no possibility of closing the borders in any conceivable timeframe.
	I mean, Trump has voted in precisely for that mandate as a whole.
	And was able to do very little.
	So, I mean, we can talk about it if we want.
	And I think there's interesting arguments both ways.
	But the odds of any of this closed border stuff coming to pass, or even maybe massively open borders, I don't know.
	But it would be very much a theoretical discussion because Trump was America's attempt to gain control over its own borders and to try and Find a way to reduce the problems and pressures on the public purse through mass immigration.
	And there's not going to be another Trump, right?
	I mean, even Trump, if he ends up running again in 2024, it's not going to be another Trump.
	So, I mean, we can talk about it, but it is like discussing how crime is going to be handled 100 years from now.
	Yeah, I don't want to, you know, stay on the issue too much longer.
	I really wanted to just bring it up as a quick like, hey, here's a way that two people can agree on a law.
	I disagree on something and I didn't call you a racist.
	So, you know, at least not yet.
	Right, right. And here's the thing, too.
	I never, of course, ever talked about limiting immigration to particular races or anything like that.
	It was nothing like that in anything I said.
	So, ever.
	So, yeah, I mean, the racist thing is a complete non sequitur because, yeah, a case can be made.
	That's all I'm saying. Yeah.
	Yeah, I agree a case can be made, and I think it's, you know, libertarians have been arguing about this for decades, so to act like it's an easy equation is certainly disingenuous, I think, on the behalf of other people, not something you're doing.
	Do you have time for a few questions before we close out?
	If they're snappy, sure. Let's see, I wanted to scroll back down here.
	What is your favorite book and favorite movie?
	I thought that would be a cool thing to give to you.
	I would say, I mean, my favorite book changes from time to time.
	Either Crime and Punishment or The Fountainhead are books that I love.
	My very favorite book is one that I've written.
	So, my novel.
	I originally started as a novelist.
	People can get it for free. I'm a trained actor, by the way.
	I worked a couple of years at the National Theatre School and I narrate my own novels, and it's freedomain.com forward slash almost.
	Get this free novel.
	It's really, really great. And a favorite movie?
	It's an interesting combo.
	I sort of have a one-two punch for this.
	Again, it changes from time to time.
	Room of the View, the mom of Daniel Day-Lewis, and I've always loved that movie, and I love the book.
	And Fight Club also was a movie that packed quite a wallop for me, because I was going through a stage of enormous psychological turmoil, plus insomnia, and I happened to go see this movie at just the right time, and it just left a huge boot print on my face and heart, and I actually have an entire show where I discuss with an English professor all of the meetings behind Fight Club.
	So yeah, it's a very powerful movie, and I really liked it.
	Interesting. One other question here, and what would Stefan think is the best approach to stop the growth of the state?
	Or is there even, is that even a possibility at this point?
	Because I go back and forth between, you know, should we be engaged in damage control or should we, you know, is a collapse inevitable and should we be trying to build something that will last beyond it?
	Cryptocurrency being something that You know, I know we're both involved in and looking at as being something that could do that.
	So what are your thoughts there? Yeah, three C's.
	We had two C's earlier. Three C's.
	Crypto, community, and carrots, right?
	So get some crypto, get part of a good community, and learn how to grow some food or get some food.
	I think that's important. So there's kind of a race at the moment, right?
	So those of us who have been predicting, and I've been doing this for 40 years, many people have been doing it even longer.
	For those of us who've been predicting that statism doesn't work, people are beginning to get a whiff of this, right?
	So people are beginning to get a whiff that maybe Biden isn't the adult in the room who's finally come as Sam Harris take over.
	I'm so relieved that there are finally adults in the room, right?
	Because he's produced the biggest geopolitical and military disaster in modern American history with the catastrophe of Afghanistan.
	So, those of us who've been predicting negative things, bad outcomes, those bad outcomes are beginning to really manifest.
	Now, it's a race, because if our credibility gets elevated to the point where people will start listening to us, if we're no longer mad prophets but wise soothsayers, okay, then maybe people will start listening and maybe there can be some changes.
	If people double down on ignoring the people who called it early, right?
	I mean, the fact that Israel, the most vaccinated state, Well, those of us who predicted that, maybe we can gain some credibility.
	Everybody else who didn't predict it, people got to make a choice.
	And you either choose the people who've been right, or you choose the people who are being wrong.
	You either choose the people who've suffered for being right, or you choose the people who are being well paid for being wrong.
	And I can't make that choice for people.
	I can only be honest and open and show my sources and reveal my arguments and try and be as credible as possible.
	You have a choice to make between the people who are telling the truth and the people who are lying, between the people who are willing to reason with you and the people who will force you.
	You have a choice between the people who will use their words and the people who will use their swords.
	I can't tell which way society will go.
	And the only thing that I can say, and I hope this is the case for you, I'm sure that it is, and for the listeners as well.
	The only thing that I can say, which is going to be enough for me no matter what, I did everything I could.
	I left nothing behind.
	I left nothing in the scabbard when it came to the allegorical battle against these forces of darkness.
	And when you have spent 40 years, you know, 24 publicly, privately, 16 publicly, really fighting to get the truth across and to get reason, evidence, and arguments across, to get philosophy and morality across, I don't know that there's many people who've done more than people like us.
	So your conscience has to be clear, because if you've withheld the truth, if you have avoided bringing honest facts and evidence to people, if you have left them in the dark out of fear, Then the person most responsible for the disaster is you, because the evil people are just like machines at this point.
	They're just addicted to power.
	And so I never, ever wanted to look in the mirror and say, ah, you know, that Schindler's List ended, like, I could have done more of this, watch, could have, right?
	I've never, that to me is a fate worse than death, because I'm like, I'm only 55 this month.
	I've seen a lot of these moral arcs in my life now, and I've seen what happens.
	To people who betrayed their values, and I've seen what happens to people who did not stand up for the truth.
	Now, I've also seen people who stood way too high for the truth and got beheaded, so, you know, you've got to manage this a little bit, but...
	It looks like they got you a little bit already.
	They barely missed. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	So speak the truth and no matter what happens, the most important thing to preserve is your conscience and your good opinion of yourself because you have to live with yourself forever and ever and ever, at least until you die for one of us and forever and ever for the other.
	So be on good terms with yourself.
	Courage, as Aristotle taught us, is the mean.
	An excess of courage is foolhardiness, and that is a bad thing.
	A deficiency of courage is cowardice.
	Finding the mean is really tricky.
	It's like anger. You don't want to be never angry.
	You don't want to be always angry.
	Getting angry is easy.
	Getting angry in the right way at the right time to the right effect is hard.
	So manage what you do.
	Be honest within reasonably safe boundaries.
	And if the world is saved, you have great honor.
	And if the world is not saved, you have no dishonor.
	And that's really, I think, the best that you can hope for in these situations.
	Yeah. It reminds me of the parable of the talents when Jesus, you know, he didn't get mad at the second servant who didn't make as much as the first one.
	He got mad at the third one who did nothing.
	It would have been better if you would have tried and failed and lost me money than just to sit and do nothing.
	So I think that's very much true.
	Last question, one on a very controversial thing, cat or dog?
	You're a cat or dog person.
	Oh, gosh, that's tough.
	That really is tough. I'm a duck person these days.
	I don't know if you've heard about it.
	You've seen a little bit of this.
	We did that a few months before you.
	Oh, yeah? Literally, my wife said, I have a surprise for you when you get home, which I didn't know was coming home.
	I'm on Saran Rats. Right.
	Yep. They are absolutely lovely creatures.
	Like, truly, they're affectionate.
	They're friendly. They follow you around.
	You can pet them. They cuddle.
	They're just really lovely creatures.
	So, pros and cons.
	I love dogs because they're smarter.
	They're more social. You play with them more.
	You can do tricks and so on.
	But they're kind of loud and they get up early.
	And I'm not a morning person.
	So... Dogs would be a little tough for me, although all other things being equal, I prefer them.
	You know, cats are quieter, more cuddly, more relaxing.
	You can get that zen purring state going and so on.
	But, you know, they kind of like throw pillows with legs for most of the day.
	They don't really do that much.
	So to me, it's 50-50 and the tiebreaker is now, for me, permanently the ducks.
	It's not the first pet we've had, but man, it is the one that has brought the most pleasure without a doubt.
	And they grow like insanely.
	You saw this too, right? Like you get them this big and like three weeks later, they're like...
	Like the Nazgul is the next stage, I think.
	Oh, it was so cool. We had a boy and a girl and they were a mallard.
	So we got to see the boy grow up and then see that gradual transition from the head when they turn green.
	And that was so cool to see.
	They're really interesting. And the way they eat.
	I just love the way they just nibble the...
	Oh, and the butt shaking and the legs stretching and the little wing flapping as they're learning.
	Oh, they're the most adorable things.
	They really are just amazing creatures and I believe I may be a duck addict now for life because we had chickens before.
	We had Bantam chickens and so on and they're nice-ish but, you know, they were kind of friendly but only because you have food.
	We had a lizard for a while.
	I just recommend this to people if you can get a hold of them and you've got some land for them.
	We built a hutch for them.
	My daughter is completely enraptured, so that always makes you happy as a parent.
	Let's wrap this up.
	For those who want to check you out and follow your stuff, plug whatever you want to plug before we get out of here.
	So OnlyFans...
	No, I'm just kidding. So yeah, I mean, I would recommend...
	I've got a bunch of books.
	They're all free. And you can get them at freedomain.com forward slash books.
	Please check out the novel.
	You know, it sounds like kind of pathetic to beg, but I'm telling you, you will love this book.
	It's a historical epic European history, First World War, Second World War, British family, German family, the whole scope of the rise of Nazism.
	And it's really... I'm half Irish and half...
	So I've got family stories from both sides that I incorporated.
	So it's really deeply researched and a really great book.
	I hope people will check it out.
	And again, it's completely free.
	You can get the e-book version.
	You can get the audio book version all free.
	So I hope people will check that out.
	Other than that, fdrpodcast.com if you want to listen to the podcast or fdr, sorry, freedomain.com forward slash connect if you want to check me out on social media.
	And I really do appreciate the time to chat tonight.
	It was a really, really enjoyable conversation.
	Great questions. Yeah, thanks.
	I was happy to have you on.
	And yeah, I think, you know, these kind of conversations are illuminating.
	And, you know, I think that the kind of, you know, we don't have enough of this in the world.
	And so the more, you know, part of, you know, like we talked about years ago and tonight, you know, part of what I want to focus on is not bickering with people about, you know, God or not God, but let's just focus on creating a society where that difference doesn't matter anymore because we're all living in a truly harmonious, cooperative fashion.
	Whoever opposes the initiation of force is brothers and sisters, and that's what we've got to focus on these days.
	Agreed. Well, thanks, Stefan, for your time, and thanks for those of you for watching, and enjoy the rest of your night.

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