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July 7, 2023 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:05:47
5216 SOUND OF FREEDOM - Movie Review

Philosopher Stefan Molyneux dissects the powerful new film...

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Thanks everybody for joining me tonight.
Sorry it was a minute or two late.
Traffic was a bear.
So just went to go and see the Sound of Freedom.
And I wanted to get your thoughts on it.
I have some thoughts.
It's a good movie.
Please no donations tonight.
Much though I like donations, if you want to donate, please save your money.
Either donate it to the movie, or because you can buy tickets for other people, or go see the movie yourself.
I do think it's definitely worth seeing and it's a very important cause, of course.
So keep your money and give it to the movie makers.
I think certainly tonight they have well earned it.
So it is well worth watching.
It's well worth watching.
So, if you've seen it, there is going to be spoilers here.
Not a huge number.
Yeah, serious talk only tonight.
And we'll keep this relatively brief because I have a couple of rants about the movie.
It's based on a true story.
And of course, you never know how close it is to the true story.
If you know the history of Queen and you saw Bohemian Rhapsody, you realize that some liberties are definitely taken.
And of course, when I know my own life and see how other people describe it, you also know how many liberties are taken with people's lives.
But of course, we only have the movie to judge.
It's PG-13, so there's no... I mean, it's appalling the subject matter.
It's about...
The kidnapping of children and the selling of children into sexual slavery, their repeated rape, and of course the famous line in the movie is, God's children are not for sale.
And it is about the hunting of pedophiles and the breakup of pedophilic rings and just this whole demonic underworld of people who prey on children.
So it's
The topic as a whole is rough.
It's handled with some delicacy, as you can imagine, and nothing horrendous or graphic is shown.
There's a lot of, you know, curtains closing and people watching the videos with tears in their eyes rather than seeing the videos, of course, right?
So as far as stomach-turning stuff goes, it's certainly survivable.
Of course, again, the subject matter is horrendous, but it is survivable from that standpoint.
So if you're squeamish, and I'm a little squeamish about movies, so if you're squeamish, fret, don't sweat, it's well worth it.
Well, we're watching.
The acting is great.
Jim Cavaziel?
Cazabiel?
I can't remember his name.
Passion of the Christ guy is very good, although he has a very tough character to work with because the character is largely incomprehensible from a motivation standpoint, outside of theological imperatives.
But the acting is fantastic all the way through.
Jim Camp plays a vampire guy.
He's not a real vampire, of course, but has some great speeches.
The children are incredibly good, just astonishingly good in their acting.
And yeah, it's just all, you know, they say, with Mira Savino.
Now, I've been a big Mira Savino fan for years.
Of course, she had her tangles, to put it mildly.
With Harvey Weinstein and so... So, but she barely shows up in the movie and she's got like two lines or three lines.
Hit me with a why.
Do you have, is it just me, do you have a hard time hearing things in movie theaters sometimes?
All this murmuring, all of this murmuring.
Is it just me?
Like, I find it so... I can't see action movies without, like, ear plugs because it's just too loud.
And I've kind of gotten used to subtitles.
Subtitles are the new cleavage of movies.
You don't want to look, but you kind of have to look.
So I do find it hard to hear what they're saying.
And I've got one semi-bum ear, but the other one is fine.
And I don't have trouble with conversation, but a lot of murmuring, a lot of whispering, and the background noise and all of that.
And it's funny because I don't know what it is why they have close-ups.
Why is it when they have close-ups these days, does everybody have to murmur in this kind of way where they barely use their voice?
Why, yeah, why can they not, like, why do they have to speak like somebody who just inhaled 14 doobies worth of smoke?
I don't know.
Because, you know, when they raised their voices, I think it was Alec Baldwin who first did this kind of crap to begin with, and they made fun of him for that on 30 Rock.
But yeah, I don't know.
Why can people not use their voice?
Like, why do you have to talk like this?
What is that?
Why?
Is it because you've screamed your whole life and therefore you're a tough guy?
I don't know what that means.
So, you know, it's a very powerful topic.
It's jaw-dropping numbers, right?
So it's like a hundred and fifty billion dollars a year is in child exploitation.
That's, of course, staggering.
going to exceed, you know, other large industries.
It's on its track to do that.
And it's, uh, again, I mean, you know, you, you get the, the dads out of the home, you got the single moms and the single moms need the boyfriends and the boyfriends are sometimes creeps.
And, uh, yeah, it's, uh, yeah.
Hanging up the phone without saying goodbye.
Yeah.
So the way that I sort of work with, with acting is I, I sort of imagine, okay.
Like if I was sitting across from the table from someone like this, would they sound natural?
I try not to have like show voice, like I try not to have... yeah, the child exploitation is on track to become bigger than the drug industry.
I think a lot of this stuff is going on in Ukraine as a whole.
Why are leftists typically less attractive on average?
Because they don't
They don't rely on the free market to get their resources.
So they don't have to compete.
They don't have to be appealing.
They don't have to be attractive.
Right?
It's the new aristocracy.
Ugliness is the new aristocracy because it says that you can get your resources by force, right?
You don't have to get your resources by being attractive or appealing or providing voluntary value to people.
So, um, now do you guys, did you know, hit me with a why, if you knew when the movie got made, it's, I was kind of surprised to hear about this.
Did you, did you hear about this?
So the movie was made in 2000, like it was finished in 2018.
It was finished in 2018 and then it got swallowed up by Disney who did not release it.
I'm trying to avoid conspiracy stuff even though there does seem to be a bit of a gravity well that way but yes Disney did not seem to be overly keen on and of course you know you think of I mean if I were to imagine taking my seat in hell and being a movie executive like a movie producer executive or some sort of movie studio executive if I was on a film like this
And I didn't release it for five years.
I would think of the countless children that would have been swallowed up into this trafficking stuff because the warning hadn't been out there.
Like I couldn't, like every day that went by without this movie being in the theaters there'd be like another dozen or 20 or 50 or however many kids getting swallowed up because the movie's not out there warning people about what the hell.
I can't, I can't fathom what goes on.
Like do I, is it just me?
Do I have this gadfly conscience that orbits me like the rings of Saturn?
Like, how do people... Oh, no, well, you know, it's complicated.
We're not going to release that film because, you know, we've got Ruby Gilman to push out or whatever the hell's going on.
Like, we've really got to focus on elemental because imaginary fire people is so much more important than protecting children from kidnapping and rape for sale.
Did you know, I mean, did you know that there are more people in slavery now than at any time in human history?
In sort of modern recorded history.
There's more people in slavery now than even in the height of slavery.
More people in slavery now.
And this is sort of what bothers me about, you know, the people who strip mine slavery guilt in the past.
It's like, why don't you spend your efforts trying to get people released from slavery now, as opposed to talk about the slavery from the past?
Well, I guess we all know the answer to that.
Let me just, I want to make sure I get this fact correct.
But yeah, I think it was held up.
Let me, let me just get the actual
Let me just get the actual facts here.
Jim Cavazzo, Cavizel, Miroslavino and Bill Camp.
Bill Camp is very good.
So let's see here.
Yeah, the film was completed in 2018 and a distribution deal was made with 20th Century Fox.
However, that studio was purchased by the Walt Disney Company, which shelved the film.
It shelved the film, like it's already made!
The filmmakers reportedly spent years trying to get the distribution rights back from Disney and take it to theaters.
So the way that they, to get the funds to distribute and market the film, this group, Angel, they used crowdfunding and 7,000 people invested, made the five million dollars in two weeks.
And that's how it got out.
It's wild.
It's a very good movie.
It's very powerful.
The acting is great.
The message is great.
Yeah, Angel Studios is the same company that made The Chosen.
They ended up being able to buy it from Disney.
They literally had to bribe Disney!
They had to bribe Disney!
for a film that was already completed to get it out to the audience.
Can you imagine holding a film about child sex hostages, holding that film hostage for money?
Dear God!
I mean, that's absolutely astounding.
I have no idea what to say.
I could say stuff, but I'd probably end up in a ditch.
Well, you know, we've got this movie that could save countless children from child sex trafficking, but we're gonna keep it on the shelf because you're just not coming up with enough money for us.
Do I recommend the film?
Oh yeah, absolutely, go watch the film.
Yeah, yeah, watch the film.
I do recommend the film.
I do recommend the film.
But I'm going to be difficult.
I'm going to be difficult.
Starting in a minute or two.
I'm going to be difficult.
And I may in fact be a little appalling.
Yeah.
I may in fact... It's been a while since I've been appalling, right?
It's been a while since I've been truly shocking and appalling.
Would you say?
I would say so.
I would say so.
So obviously I'm backed up like a teenager on his honeymoon.
So... Okay, 1 to 10, how appalling should I be?
Did I watch the movie with my daughter?
I did not watch the movie with my daughter.
I absolutely did not.
It's not appropriate for children to watch.
No, the the subject of pedophilia that I have not.
No, my daughter lives in innocence of that and all of that.
So it's late.
Go for it.
Hit me with a why if you're a donor.
I'm not gonna I'm just just curious.
Yeah, okay.
Well, thank you.
Of course.
I really, really appreciate that.
All right.
This one.
So this one is for you.
Okay.
Did you hit me?
Sorry, hit me with a Y, a donor for life.
Thank you, brother, sister.
I really appreciate that.
All right.
I am going to go big because I'm already home.
So go home, go big, go big, go home.
I'm going to go big.
All right.
Hit me with a Y if you ever were involved in the entertainment industry when you were younger.
Hit me with a Y. Yeah, you can hit me with an N if you never were, right?
Yeah, a little bit.
All right, so I'm gonna, this is not a spoiler because it's right at the beginning of the movie, but let's say that you're a dad, you got a daughter, and you got a son.
Your daughter's about seven, your son's about four, right?
And you come home, and first of all your kid's been alone for a while, your daughter,
So you come home, and there's this woman who is saying, oh, I heard your daughter singing from the plaza, from the mall, from the courtyard.
I heard your daughter singing.
Oh, I think she's super talented.
You know, I represent a big talent show.
And you should drop your kids off.
You should drop your daughter off, and she can be part of this talent search.
We'll take some photos, and we'll get her registered.
And she'll just be part of this soul
Talent show thing that's just great.
And you should just, you know, hand over your daughter.
Because she's so talented, just drop her off at this talent show thing, right?
And then, okay, you're obviously a little skeptical because you're sane, right?
But then what happens is your son, who's four or five or whatever, comes in through the door.
Because apparently he's just been out playing on his own at that age.
I think they're in Columbia or something, right?
Not known to be super child-friendly.
So the woman is saying to your daughter, oh, you'll be a super talent, you could be famous, and then, because you're such a good singer, right, you should come to this talent show.
And then your son comes in.
Your son comes in, and the woman turns to him and says, ah, yeah, bring him too.
Yeah, bring the boy too.
Okay, so if it's a talent show, wouldn't you as a dad, like, this is not,
Quantum physics here, right?
Like wouldn't you as a dad say, wait a minute, you haven't even asked about any of his talents, how can you have a talent show?
He's just four, he's coming in, he's dirty and dusty playing soccer or something, right?
So what you do, apparently, apparently what you do as a dad is you say, oh okay, so they want my daughter for her singing, they want my son who's four or five because
He's breathing.
Yeah, this seems totally legit.
You don't look anything up.
You don't try and figure anything out.
You don't make any phone calls.
And then when you get to the address of where you're supposed to drop your children off, it's just some ratty old apartment in some dingy building.
It's not a studio.
It's not anywhere downtown.
There's no security guards.
And then you just leave your kids and go.
You leave your kids.
With strangers?
In a ratty apartment?
Because why?
Why?
Why?
Because you think they could be stars?
You could make money?
You could be famous?
I mean, that's greed, isn't it?
The sins of the father are not even remotely examined here.
Okay, pro tip.
Pro tip, okay?
If some creep wants to scoop up your children in a dingy apartment to take photos and you're not allowed to be there,
Don't go!
Like, what's it Courtney Love was saying?
If Harvey Weinstein, he says, what can I say without being sued?
Well, if Harvey Weinstein wants you to go to a late night business meeting in his hotel, don't go!
Right?
So, I find this wildly confusing.
Because of course the dead is noble and heroic and appalled and shocked and all this kind of stuff, right?
No, listen, strangers and government workers, schools and daycare, I get all of that, but this is still a different, a different kind of situation, right?
This is a, her career stopped when she said that, well, Mira Savino's career stopped as well.
I mean, it's wild.
Okay, hit me with a why if you were ever in a compromised situation as a child.
I was.
But hit me with a why if you were ever in a compromised, dangerous situation as a child.
With one of the creep players of society.
Yeah, most of you.
Most of you, it seems, yes.
Maybe about two-thirds.
Yeah.
Let me ask you this.
Were you street-proofed at all?
Well, hit me with a why if you were street-proofed.
In other words, your parents sat you down and told you all of the things that were important to stay alert, situational awareness, keep your head on a swivel if someone gives you a bad feeling, you stay away from that person if anyone gets too close to you, you yell as loud as you can, you back away if anybody grabs you, you can bite, you can kick in the groin, you can gouge the eyes, you can do anything you want, you raise bloody hell, you raise bloody murder, you scream at the top of your lungs,
And you just make sure that person gets away with you and you do everything.
Like, did you street proof?
I mean, this is the conversations you need to have with your kids, right?
Did you street proof your kids?
You have to, right?
I mean, just life.
Again, you know, while reminding kids that, you know, obviously these kinds of abductions are extraordinarily rare.
Assuming you're not dropping your kids off at some faux talent show in some dingy apartment in the industrial part of town.
So yeah, so there's no street prooping of the kids.
There's no... the father doesn't sense any danger.
The father drops his children off voluntarily in this complete creep show of an environment when there's no credibility to anything to do with
A talent, right?
Because, okay, the girl can sing a little, she's not great, she can sing a little, but then it's like, oh yeah, bring the boy!
Sure, what does he do?
I don't care, it's a talent show, he just has to breathe.
Come on, I mean, this is... Father of a family of four, so it's a possible easy way to get money.
Well, okay, but that's a sin, right?
Handing your children over to strangers
Because you hope to get some money out of their talents, even though your son has displayed no talents whatsoever, is a sin, isn't it?
So, again, the children shouldn't pay, but for me, I was really angry at the father in the movie.
I was really angry at the father in the movie because of the ridiculous danger, the horrifying, obvious danger he put his children in.
I mean, his daughter is home alone at the age of seven and his son is out doing God knows what in the streets.
So he's not taking any care or protection for his children.
There's no mention of the mother.
Now again, the mother, he could be a widower, the mother could have died or whatever, but there's no mention of the mother.
There's just two kids in ridiculous danger, in unbelievable amounts of danger.
You know, because there's this, again in the credits, there's these terrifying images of children getting snatched out of the street, right?
Just grabbed, right?
And these kids, they're home alone.
People can just walk in the door.
The boy's out there playing at the age of four or five, doing something in the street.
No one's taking care of him.
There's nobody in charge of him.
Like, it's crazy to me.
I mean, okay, let me ask you this really, really important question.
It's a really, really important question.
Just listen carefully, because it's a really, really important question.
On a scale of 1 to 10, how many disasters are pure accidents?
Now, 10 is just accidents.
1 is could have been prevented, right?
A lot of accidents could have been prevented.
10 is it's all random and just bad stuff, right?
Do you think?
How much of what happens in life is preventable?
How much bad stuff is preventable?
It's a really, really important question.
You know, when I get into a car, I'm like, this could be the day I die, right?
So I drive super carefully and I'm always, you know, checking everywhere and, you know, I assume everyone's driving 178 miles an hour to Vegas on crack or something like that.
Yeah, as you get older this number goes down, right?
How many bad relationships are pure accidents?
How many accidents are pure accidents?
How many dominoes have to fall for a terrible thing to happen?
It's absolutely appalling what happens to these children.
And, you know, I can't, I'm no expert in this area, but I can't imagine if you have been imprisoned and raped for months or years as a little kid.
I don't know what the path to recovery is back from that.
Somebody says, the principal at my kids' elementary school raped a boy.
Horrifying, but not surprisingly, it was a child from a broken home.
The principal didn't go after any kids from two parent homes.
Right.
Right.
Yeah, so three or four significant dominoes have to fall to lead to an accident.
Yes, that is correct.
That is correct.
Accidents is almost... and this is how I was raised.
This is how I was raised and it served me well in life.
This is how I was raised and it served me well in life.
You know, I worked with very dangerous equipment when I was younger, right?
As you know, the gold panning, the prospecting, I had big heavy drills, and we were in the middle of nowhere, I had flamethrowers, I had giant axes, and we used jet fuel to heat our prospector tent at night, so we always had the problem of flammability and going up in flames, and of course if you go up in flames and you're days away from anyone coming to rescue you and it's minus 40, you're kind of fucked, right?
Carbon monoxide?
Could it be?
So we had to be, like, super careful.
And I remember being told and, you know, is that accidents don't just happen.
I mean, accidents in general, in general, this is a principle of my life and I'm passing this out to you to save your ass and save your children.
Very, very rarely do accidents just happen.
Like in this movie, it was like, okay, how did this end?
How did these kids end up being trafficked?
Because the father drove them, or took the bus, he hands the kids over to strangers in a dingy apartment, and then you see him taking the bus away.
Going home, going some other place.
Not exercising the sense, God gives a goose.
When you look at these, quote, disasters, you look at the sequence of everything that happens in order for that to happen.
I mean, did you know that one of the ticket agents or security guards or something on 9-11 totally ID'd one of the guys as a potential terrorist?
But he's like, well, I don't want to be a... I don't want to profile and... Right?
He's like, well, he talked himself out of it, right?
So, the big lesson to me... God Almighty!
Oh, Lord above!
Great Zeus's kilt, staring up his giant, hairy, thunderclad legs.
I mean, wouldn't a movie have been a lot more powerful if the father had a scene like, what is the matter with me?
I just handed them over.
Or the father had been greedy or there was some... No, no, the father's got to be perfect and noble and wonderful for pathos.
And it's like, no, no, no.
You want to help people.
You want to help people.
The father, if I'd written the movie, the father would have had an absolutely agonizing scene of like, what the hell is wrong with me?
I handed them over.
I handed them over to strangers in a dingy apartment.
No vetting, no checking.
It's the modern times, right?
He's got a phone.
He could just look up, is this a legit person?
Is this a legit talent show?
Is this?
And then you don't, you know, you don't just drive your kids over and then take a bus over, drop your kids off and take a bus and go somewhere else.
Like the father should have had a scene where he's just racked with guilt.
Because that would have been helpful in terms of actually keeping children safe, but they have to always, always, always go for the excuse for the parents, right?
If you fail to prepare, you prepare to fail.
Amen to that.
Amen to that.
My football coach in middle school, somebody says, used to invite boys to his apartment for tickling parties and he served wine to underage boys.
Again, only boys from single parent homes were invited.
Yeah, that's right.
That's right.
Women are fantastic at protecting children when those children are very young.
They are not very good at protecting children when those children get older, particularly pubescent boys and pubescent girls and afterwards.
Yeah, for sure.
For sure.
So I found it really frustrating that instead of giving a powerful message to parents on how to protect their children, prevention is way better than what they had to go through in the movie to get the children back.
Prevention is infinitely better than cure.
We seem to have completely lost this whole prevention thing.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
That's what I was told as a kid.
A gram of prevention is worth a kilogram of cure.
I guess the movie wasn't to sympathize with the father, but with the children.
Right.
But you know how you sympathize with the children is you try to work as hard as you can as a filmmaker to prevent children from being abducted, right?
And if you point out the fact that the father drove, took a bus with the children there, completely uncredible, handed it over.
If the message had been, you fucking protect your children.
You don't hand them over to strangers in dingy apartments for talent shows, right?
Because, of course, there would be no movie if he had protected his children.
Or at least not handed them over to traffickers, right?
So, I mean, of course, as a parent you're watching this and it's every parent's nightmare and so on, but... I mean, is there anybody out there alive who doesn't know that people prey on children?
Anyone?
I'd like to know what liberties they took with the story.
That I would like to see.
So... That's the first thing, and that's not particularly appalling.
Hit me with a why if you're ready for the appalling part.
All right.
So... The guy who...
risks his life, literally has guns to his head, is about to be murdered on multiple occasions.
The guy who risks his life to save strangers' children.
No connection with, no history with, nothing particularly in common other than, you know, obviously humans, right?
So, the guy who almost certainly is going to die on this
Equipment, right?
On this expedition, right?
He's almost certainly going to die.
The police say, we can't come with you, it's too dangerous, we don't go there.
The main character
almost certainly is suicidal as far as I can see like in terms of like just going he literally goes into the middle of the jungle unarmed to steal the underage concubine of a sociopathic jungle warlord like a Mr. Kurtz on steroids kind of guy.
So to rescue one kid from in my view a very irresponsible father's error
A quick question.
How many children does he himself have?
Just out of curiosity.
Yeah, how many children does he have?
No, I think he's got six or seven kids.
Himself.
He's got this lovely blonde wife, these beautiful kids.
He's got six or seven of his own children, and they're all young.
So you see this parental irresponsibility thing is a theme in the movie that nobody's talking about?
I mean, have you heard about this before?
Just unbelievable levels of parental irresponsibility.
Anybody talking about this?
I was watching the movie like my jaw is on the freaking floor.
What the hell is going on?
Like, the first father hands his kids over to the traffickers.
And takes the bus home!
Doesn't go in, doesn't wait outside, nothing!
The hero, the main guy, wanders into the jungle with no weaponry to go and steal the underage sex slave concubine of a sociopathic jungle warlord and all of his trigger-happy buddies.
They portrayed the wife as being 100% supportive.
But you've got to wonder, says someone, what the real conversations were at home.
Can't imagine sending my husband into a Colombian warlord jungle for someone else's child.
Why?
Am I wrong here?
Tell me if I'm... Am I off the rails here?
Like, what the hell is going on?
Why is nobody talking about this?
You've got six or seven children of your own!
And you're going on a suicide mission to rescue a child.
Again, we have sympathy for the child, of course, right?
But the idea that there's a path back to robust mental health from that kind of situation is hard for me to imagine.
I don't understand.
Is it the white man's burden kind of thing?
Is it, well, you know, only blondes can save the world?
Like, what is that?
Soldiers do this all the time?
No.
He's not a soldier.
In fact, he quits his job to go privately with no government support, no backup, no Marines.
And the guy says to him, listen, if things go south out there, you can't call in the Marines.
We're done.
He's not paid.
It's not his case.
It's not his war.
He's got no tactical support, no backup, no weapons.
Spoilers, I said spoilers.
So the main guy pretends to be a doctor going in to vaccinate... Okay, I can't even... I couldn't... I'm literally like... I felt like somebody had injected my brain with some mind-altering substance other than philosophy.
Because I'm watching this movie and it's like...
Well, uh, what I'll do is I will pretend to be a doctor from the United Nations, and I'll just drive up the river to where these warlords are, and they just, they won't shoot me.
Like, I'll just, I'll, hey, I'm just, I'm a free doctor who wants to treat sociopathic warlord sex trafficking criminals.
What?
Like, I, I don't understand.
That's not even remotely credible, is it?
Does, does, do people do that?
Is that how they infiltrate?
Like, the warlords are just like, oh, there's some guy who says he's a doctor.
Okay.
Oh yeah.
No.
And he's got, he's got all these vaccines, right?
He's a doctor who's got all these vaccines.
So they're just like, yeah, come on in.
Sure.
You can inject whatever you want into us.
What are they, Canadians?
So it's like, how could you survive as a warlord if you just let people come in and inject you with, like, it doesn't make any sense to me at all.
Yeah, does the UN actually care if the warlords get cholera?
It's like, you know, this thing's spreading like wildfire, which is why I had to sail for two days up this river to find your completely remote area, because we wouldn't want it spreading in your completely remote area!
So, again, you know, maybe there's a book about it that explains it in more detail, maybe there are cuts and corners for the movie, but... My God.
I mean, honestly, I was sort of, you know, I imagine that somebody called in and said, you know, they called in the call-in show from Columbia, right?
Call-in show from Columbia and somebody says, oh, you know, my daughter got kidnapped and so on.
And I'm like, well, honey, I'm off.
I'm going to go fix it.
I'm going to go rescue that kid.
I mean, is it just me?
Does that strike you as completely mental?
Bye Izzy!
Bye wife!
I've got to go into the jungle unarmed to snatch some kid from a warlord.
Does he have particular skills to handle this with great success?
No, he's like a DEA agent but for pedophiles as far as I understand it.
And again, I don't want to pick at the movie.
I mean, it's not my movie.
And, you know, I'm sure if I had made the movie, there would be things to pick at.
I don't want to say that the movie is disappointing.
Look, it raises people's awareness of the danger out there.
It raises people's awareness of something that Hollywood just is not touching with a 10 foot pole, really.
So I don't want to diss the movie.
I really don't.
Right?
So it's definitely worth seeing.
It's an exciting movie.
It's got a lot of twists and turns.
The acting is fantastic.
So I don't want to discourage people from seeing the film at all.
His children would just like Reginald from Almost, you know, maybe.
But how do you explain this to your kids?
It's just something that daddy had to do.
And it seems to me like, so he's been working for more than a decade, um, catching 220 or 230 pedophiles.
And that's pretty horrifying.
Cause he's the guy who's got to look at all of the material to, to get the charges to sick.
And he says, and it was pretty strange seeing Woody from psych show up in this role, but he says to his boss, he says, look, this job tears you apart.
And this is the only thing that can put me back together.
I can put things back together.
It's not much of a motivation, but clearly the job has broken him in two, right?
So the way that I would see it, I don't know the guy, this is just my particular theory, but the way that I would see it is that he's seen so much that he's just got a death wish.
He's got a, he just wants to step off the planet.
And so this whole, uh, marching, uh, to he's, he sets up a whole sting operation on a sort of Epstein like Paddo Island, and then he,
Plunges into the jungle with no weapons like to me.
That's just like he's he's seen too much It's too horrifying for him, and it's not about saving the kids.
It's about erasing himself So you say many parents in third world countries actually sell their own children into sex slavery I've heard that I I don't know if there were many studies on it.
I'm not disagreeing with you.
I just don't know for sure
Tim Ballard has done tons of interviews, you can go see his reasoning and see what you think.
Sure, but that's not the movie, right?
I'm here to talk about the movie.
Obviously there's good things, but here's the thing.
If he's about reducing child trauma,
You understand that if he had disappeared in that jungle, which he almost did, which he almost did.
Also, he kills a guy, like he murders a guy.
I wouldn't say murders, it's self-defense.
The guy attacks him, but you know, that's still something to live with, that you've taken a human life.
You understand that if he had been caught, uh, he would have been tortured.
He would have been mutilated.
And you know, these are the kinds of guys that will find out who you are and then send the video to your family or whatever.
And so, or he would have just disappeared and nobody ever would have known what happened to him.
So then what happens to his little kids?
What happens to his six or seven kids or however many he's got?
What happens?
What happens to them?
He's really into trauma and dad got himself killed for a stranger.
It wasn't his job.
He wasn't paid for it.
He'd actually quit his job.
He was going completely rogue, completely free market, privately funded.
And so you say, well, uh, daddy cared about a kid he'd never met from some guy he'd never met before.
Uh, and he went and got killed for that.
Oh, and then, yeah.
And then the mom has to try and find some stepdad for six traumatized kids.
Yeah, I don't think that's gonna work out very well.
So, again, I don't want to diss the film, you know?
I mean, it's a passion project, and again, I'm not saying I would have done it perfectly, and it's real easy to armchair quarterback other people's creative stuff, but this is stuff I just found really jaw-dropping.
I would have, like, if I was
In charge of the movie, I would say, okay, everything which promotes child safety in this movie is job one.
Every line, every shot, everything, every character arc, everything, every facial tick, every potted plant in the back of a room, its sole job is to promote child safety.
And I don't feel that it did that.
And in fact, I know for sure that it didn't do that because the man's kids were in danger of massive amounts of trauma because he was almost certainly going to get killed in the jungle.
The father who handed his children over, and he didn't know they were traffickers of course at the time, but the father who handed his children over, who was being completely irresponsible and greedy, had no sense of remorse, there was no lessons, no like, how could I think, what was I thinking, nothing like that.
Because that could have been a really terrifying thing.
Because the only thing worse than for a parent's child, for your child to get harmed, is to feel like it's your fault, or you could have done something, or you, you know.
He failed to protect his children!
Both before the movie, and during the movie.
And then the guy, the main guy, fails to protect his own children by taking on something unbelievably dangerous.
Yeah, this, this, and you know, you couldn't, I couldn't help but notice it's like a blonde guy in a sea of brunettes and black haired people and it's like, what, they can't fix it?
They can't solve it?
It's got to be the guy from Utah or whatever?
Like, it just, it's wild.
It's wild, and I have a tough time following it.
Again, if there's something I'm missing, this is far afield.
Look, I'm willing to make some sacrifices, like I've sacrificed my reputation, I took a big pay cut to start all of this.
I'll take some sacrifices for the cause.
But again, if I'm being unfair, you know, please, you know, be friends, be companions on the road to truth and let me know.
If I'm being unfair, I really want to... I just... I'm putting myself in this guy's shoes.
His behavior is incomprehensible.
Like if it was his own kid?
And he says this to somebody who's hesitant about this.
He says, well, what if that was your kid?
And it's like, but it's not!
I mean, you could say that to anyone about anything.
What if that was your child?
But it's not!
You know, if my child needed a kidney, I would give my child a kidney.
Of course it would.
Of course I would.
I mean, you would, too.
Hit me with a why.
Your kid's gonna die without a kidney.
You've got two.
You're gonna give a kidney.
Of course you are, right?
That's not even a question.
It wouldn't even be any... Well, I don't know, man.
I kind of like drinking scotch, you know?
That's liver, right?
But see... But you could go to anyone's child.
Well, this kid needs a kidney.
This child needs a kidney.
Well, I'm not going to give this child a kidney.
It's not my child.
Well, what if it was your child?
But it's not!
And again, I don't want to sound cold-hearted, but I'm just being straight up.
Like, I'll give my child a kidney.
I'm not giving another child a kidney.
What is it somebody said?
I would sacrifice myself for two of my children or eight of my cousins.
Yeah, everyone is someone else's child.
What if that was your child?
It's not!
I mean, can you imagine you go in a marriage and you go and sleep with some floozy, right?
Some floozy named Jane, right?
And your wife finds out and she's enraged at you and she's screaming at you, yelling at you.
She's heartbroken.
And you say to her, well, no, imagine if Jane was you.
I would just be sleeping with you.
Imagine if Jane was you.
Wouldn't that be an insane thing to say?
And she would say, oh, you know what?
That's yeah, of course.
If Jane was me, it would be perfectly legitimate for you to sleep with her because that would be monogamy.
Oh, I don't like this.
What if that was your like this, this pathological outgroup, hysterical altruism is just wild.
It's just wild.
Did they play up the going crazy from work angle in the movie?
I won't say it played up.
But
It was, I mean, the guy said, I'm, this, this job has broken me and I'm now obsessed with this kid.
And that would be the entire, that would be exactly the time to pull the kid, the guy off.
Right.
Like, no, no, you can't, you can't go do it.
And then I tried like them, but the guy sent him out and then tried to pull him back.
And the guy just went, he went rogue.
Right.
Yeah, this, you know, what if that was your kid, right?
You know, like you remember this with the kid on the Turkish beach, right?
The kid who drowned.
Because his dad, if I remember the story correctly, his dad wanted to make it all the way to Canada to get some free, some subsidized or cheap or free or dental work or something like that.
And so he put his kid on this wildly overloaded boat and then they sailed off into a storm.
Well, what if that was your kid?
Well, I'm not putting my kid.
On an overloaded boat and sailing into a storm.
So that's not going to be my kid.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, it's kind of strange for me.
This, well, what if that was your kid?
It's like, that's not my kid.
Am I wrong about this?
Like, maybe I'm wrong about this and maybe I'm just over-attached, but it doesn't seem to me that way.
I mean, I'm happy to help other people's kids, for sure.
I mean, I actually donate quite a bit to help out kids.
I mean, I'm happy to help out other kids.
I care about the world and so on.
Well, what if that was your kid?
Spoiler, it's not.
Right?
It's the kid of an irresponsible parent who handed over his kid to these monsters.
That's tough.
He pays taxes.
There's a whole judicial system out there, a whole police system.
Well, they won't handle it.
It's like, and he's got to change his vote and vote in people who will handle it like they did in El Salvador.
Like, I don't know how it's like
Everyone in the world is your child.
Everyone in the world is your relative.
We are all one.
We are all the same.
That is a strange thought to me.
I mean, listen, if somebody close in my life had died over the course of this show, I'd stop the show and go deal with that.
Break my heart and cry and have planned funerals and all that.
But you understand, like, probably, I don't know, over the course of, what have we been talking here, 48 minutes, like, thousands of people over the world have died.
I mean, we all have to live with that, don't we?
Like, we all have to live with the fact... Like, I have to live with the fact that everybody who was old when I was a kid is dead.
Everyone who was old... I think about this occasionally.
I remember playing tennis with some woman when I was in my early 20s.
I went on vacation on my own.
I was in a resort and played.
She was really good.
I remember thinking, well, I'm young, but she's old and cunning and she's winning, right?
Now, she's dead decades ago.
You know, my hyper-muscular, always-smelled-a-weed shop teacher in junior high school.
Yeah, he's dead.
Almost certainly, right?
And people like, when we talked about this in the show last night, the people who were like, well, the welfare state runs out of money, which it's going to do, and people are like, well, how's my kid gonna eat?
It's like, it's not my kid.
My kid's got food.
Yeah, so we have to have a shield, right?
I mean, you could hang out, I guess, in the ER and watch everybody having the worst day of their life, right?
But we have to have a shield, a dissociation, a distraction, a rational exclusion of the horrors of the world, don't we?
How could you, you know, like, my daughter wanted to go, my daughter wanted to go skating.
So we found a place, it's summer, we found a place and went skating, you know?
And a whole time we were skating, thousands of people are dropping dead all over the world.
Right?
Thousands of miscarriages, thousands of car crashes, whatever, right?
You know, a hundred kids diagnosed with leukemia, like... So... Is it about a hundred people every minute die in the world?
Yeah?
So when people, like, they say this stuff, like, it's supposed to just rewire my whole brain.
You have this, like, well, what if that was your kid?
And what if that was your mom?
But they're not!
This is how we get through life, is we care about some people and kind of ignore everyone else.
Am I wrong about this?
I mean, aren't the people who claim otherwise just kind of lying?
Well, I care about everyone.
No, you don't.
Come on.
Listen, is it fair to say that I care about the world more than most people?
I mean, look, I have my weaknesses, and this may be a weakness too, but I care about the world a little bit more than most in that, you know, I promote what I think is, and I know is best for the world at some considerable personal expense.
So, yeah, I do.
And I think I have the right to say, like, I'm not some cold-eyed guy just, you know,
Buying bonbons and eating them in a basement.
Like, I mean, I put myself out there.
I've talked to thousands of people about how to improve their lives.
Never charged anyone anything.
I don't tell people what to do.
I try to give the best advice I can.
I try to always be available to people if there's an emergency.
I'll try and find some way to, you know, talk to people that day or the next day or whatever, right?
So I think, I think I've earned some props with regards to caring about the world.
But the idea that you should just treat everyone as if they're family and you should just treat everyone as if they're your kid or your parents or your brother.
And it's like, I don't understand.
Yeah, the white man's burden.
Yeah.
I mean, there's a certain amount of, you know, well, we got to, you know, the blondie's got to bring the whatever, right?
To the world.
I don't, and here's the other thing too.
I could, look, if somebody, like let's say somebody, you know, when I got sick years ago, right, and I had cancer, right, it was a fairly rough process going through the treatment.
Now if somebody had been like, you know, oh man, you know, like I'm going to come to your house, I'm going to drive you around, I'm going to, you know, if you're having trouble getting up the stairs, I'm going to be right there with you.
Now of course I had, you know,
Friends and family and all of that to help me with that But if somebody was like I'm gonna treat you like you're my own brother, but they never do that do that They always like what you gotta treat this like they're your kid, but it's no one ever treats you like you're their brother, right?
Does that?
Does it ever go both ways or is it just like I want you to do what I want?
So I'm gonna manipulate you into thinking Everyone's your family
You know, I mean, I don't want to bitch because, you know, it's just a kind of fact.
But, you know, people I kind of got their careers going because I was like the OG of sort of libertarian alternative media.
Right.
So, yeah, a lot of the people I got their careers started and I, you know, good for them.
You know, when I got deplatformed, I mean, they stepped over me on the way to the disco, so to speak.
Right.
Which, again, I'm fine with because it was very liberating for me.
But, you know, like the people who are like
Well, you got to treat everyone like they're your family.
It's like, well, how often does that happen the other way?
Right.
How often do you, I mean, maybe I'm just off putting that way on nobody, but hit me with a why, if it's two way for you and other people treat you like you're their family.
I mean, it is just one way.
It's just an exploitation mechanism.
Right.
And this guy demonstrates it.
Yeah, I did help my friend when he had a baby and then, yeah, didn't come back.
Yeah, I remember I had a family member having a baby and I spent like the entire long weekend cleaning the place with them and getting it all baby-ready and baby-friendly and pulling out the fridge and, you know, you get this wild nesting instinct that happens, right?
And then...
I asked him to read a play of mine that would have taken him about an hour, hour and a half to read.
We never got around to it.
It just doesn't, you know, it's always one way, right?
It seems to be.
And so the main guy is like, well, what if that was your kid, he says, when he wants someone to come and do it with him.
And it's like, but it's not my kid.
Well, what if it was?
But it's not.
But it's not.
My loyalty is to my family.
I mean, is it that hard to say?
Or, you know, like, I'll be happy to, quote, sacrifice to people who would also sacrifice.
Yeah, why didn't he drag the father along since it was his kid?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Why didn't the father say, I have to, why wasn't there a scene where the father said, I go, you don't go.
You have your own children.
I messed up.
I handed my kids over to these monsters.
I have to go.
You go home to your children.
Nope.
Off you go, gringo!
Go save my kids.
Why can people not just say, but it's not my kid?
Is it some kumbaya, we're all one?
Is it the soul?
Concept of the soul?
Is the character who ran after the jungle played by Jim?
Yes, he is.
Like, I get the empathy, and I appreciate the empathy, but the empathy is universal morality, not universal obligation, right?
That's the difference, right?
The empathy is universal morality.
We're all subject to the same moral law.
Not, we all have the same moral obligation.
Steph, your point seems so glaringly obvious.
I don't see how it can go overlooked by the creators.
Well, it's a little bit of the self-sacrificial stuff that goes on in Christianity.
And I love Christianity, wonderful stuff in Christianity.
I'm huge friends with Christianity.
Doesn't mean it's above or beyond criticism in the same way that I'm, no one, right?
No one, me, anything, UPB, nothing's above, beyond criticism.
But there is a certain amount of, a friend of mine who's Christian said, you know, we're at our best when we're being persecuted.
There is a certain amount of,
Pathological self-sacrifice that goes along.
An over-identification with the self-sacrifice of Jesus, because Jesus sacrificed himself so you'd be free of sin, not so that you would sacrifice yourself as well.
Somebody says, my impression is the main character is bothered by the broken Columbian family, but ironically he would do that to his own family.
Right.
Right.
So yeah, because he quotes, it's a famous line in the Bible, whoever would harm the littlest among you, it'd be better that a millstone were hung around his neck and sunk into the sea.
So I think he talks himself into it.
It's like, well, you know, but the kid's being harmed and I have the power to stop it.
So I'm kind of complicit in harming her.
So I have to go and help her, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
But that's just a one-dimensional.
It's a one-dimensional.
It's like a one-factor variable.
Well, the kid who was kidnapped is being harmed.
Absolutely.
Do you have the chance to maybe stop it?
Yeah, not really, but you can try and you're most likely going to die.
But what happens is then you say, okay, well whoever would harm children is like terrible, but you go enough to get killed in the jungle to save some stranger's kid who's probably already harmed beyond recovery as a whole.
You're now harming your own children.
So it's just like it's reducing everything to one variable.
One variable.
As opposed to, there's a principle.
Now, principles are supposed to be universal.
They're not lasers, they're like sunlight.
Principles are universal.
Don't harm children.
Okay, did you harm this child?
Did you hand her over to traffickers?
Did you sell her?
Did you rape her?
No, you didn't!
But it's like, if I could conceivably prevent it, I'm somehow complicit in the harm continuing.
Do you see what I'm saying?
I think this is the logic.
Hit me with a why if you think this is getting close, because I don't understand the logic.
But I think it's something like, well, this kid is getting harmed.
Whoever harms kids is the worst.
This kid is getting harmed.
I could conceivably stop it, and therefore I'm responsible.
I have to save this kid.
In so doing, I harm my own children, right?
I mean, how great is it?
And you can see this, right?
You can see this in the movie early on.
The main guy who has to review all of this horrible pornography, he's just staring, he's trying to have dinner with his kids, just staring off into space, right?
It's hard for me to fathom and to follow.
And again, I'm not saying this because I'm some selfish guy who never wants to help anyone.
I think I've got fairly good credibility that way.
Uh, God has given me a task that I must complete above everything else.
No, no, no.
God doesn't give orders.
God gives morals.
God gives 10 commandments.
If God says jump off a cliff, it's not God.
It's the devil.
God gives you morals.
God does not give you tasks because tasks would be to remove your free will.
Tasks would be to remove your free will.
And I know one guy says, well, when God tells you what you have to do, but the way he learned how to have to do was to having, having genuine empathy for one of the victims of trafficking.
He then ended up wanting to save the traffickers.
So no, God can't give you orders.
That that's, that's very much again, God does not give you orders.
That's very much against free will essential to Christianity.
God does not get, God gives you morals, but God's not going to give you orders.
You always have a choice.
So I think that there is, you know, again, it's a good movie and, you know, the fact that we're having an hour good conversation about it, it's a good movie, well worth watching, but I would, and again, if you, would you say God gives rules not orders?
What?
I just said that.
Maybe you're a little behind.
Maybe you're a little behind.
That's okay.
That's fine.
I'm, you know, no, it's fine.
It's fine.
Maybe you got distracted.
So,
It's a good movie and of course good movies stimulate thought and this movie does stimulate thought.
But I just, I couldn't help but notice like all of these wonderful kids he's got at home and then he's off in the jungle trying to rescue some irresponsible dad's kid when the dad kind of half handed her over to these traffickers.
Was the movie based on a true story?
Yes it was.
Yeah.
Because I think some of this pathological stuff
Pretty sure Tim Ballard is a guy who believes in personal revelation from God.
Hard to argue that if you're coming from a religious framework.
No, because Tim Ballard is, he quotes God's law, right?
He brings God's law.
Don't harm children by going off... Well, first of all, what's the best case scenario?
The best case scenario is he goes in, he doesn't get killed, and he gets the girl out.
But what he does, he goes in, he ends up killing a guy, he kills a guy in a brutal fight right in front of a child, he kills a guy,
And now he's got to go home as a killer.
Now again, we can argue the sort of self-defense and the just violence and so on.
I get all of that.
He did not initiate the use of force.
But, you know, taking a life is taking a life, and I think it would be not great for you as a dad to have put... Now, if you jumped in the middle of nowhere, and you got to shoot someone to save yourself, and you didn't do anything, it was just bad luck, wrong place, wrong time, okay, then, yeah, I think that's not good.
Obviously, it's not a good experience to go through, but that's fairly survivable.
But if you genuinely go into the jungle and end up fighting this guy and killing this guy when you never had to be there in the first place,
I don't know, man.
Does that make you a better father?
You said, I think the main character killed others in his time with Homeland Security.
I don't know.
I don't recall that.
I mean, I, I, you know, I'm always thinking, I'm watching the film and sometimes I try to lose my sort of analytical brain and just absorb in the movie, but when jaw dropping stuff is happening, I need to deal with it so I can continue to concentrate.
Okay, so you could say he killed others in the line of duty, but he wasn't in the line of duty.
He wasn't in the job.
He was not necessary to be there.
He had no backup.
He had no weapon.
He killed a man with his bare hands.
He didn't even shoot him.
He just strangled or snapped his neck or killed a guy with his bare hands.
And again, I don't need to be overly delicate.
I know that we're a warrior species and so on, but it was not necessary for him, and how is that going to affect his parenting?
I gotta think it will.
Alright, listen, I don't want to flog a dead horse, and it is kind of getting late, but yeah, listen, don't donate for this show.
I really appreciate that, but don't donate for this show.
Let me get you, let me get you the website, because it is an important movie to watch, and it is an important movie to discuss.
Things about right?
So let me get There's I think it's angel.com slash freedom.
Let's see here Yes, so you can go to angel.com slash freedom and you can donate
Um, you can donate so that other people can watch it.
And I think that's fine.
I mean, again, it's a very important topic.
The movie is called Sound of Freedom.
You can go to angel.com to find out more about it.
I definitely recommend watching it.
Certainly we've got some good conversation out of it.
It's a very, very important topic and it's a very, uh, if, if you want to donate it and pay it forward, I think that'd be great.
If you would normally donate to me because of something like this, you can go to angel.com slash freedom and donate for someone to watch.
This movie because again, I think it's an important movie for people to see and again, it's given us great discussion and I definitely do you know anything that's bought out from under the Maw of Disney and released in this kind of way I think is a positive thing and I do want to encourage this kind of filmmaking.
I think that the filmmakers were very brave and
Very skilled, very passionate, and again, the script is good, the performances are fantastic, cinematography is great, the topic is powerful and deep, and so I would highly recommend going to watch the movie, and it just raises people's awareness about, you know, this hellscape layer of society that is out there.
All right, well listen, thanks everyone so much.
We will be back tomorrow night for Friday Night Live, and yeah, what's it?
Oh my gosh, 11.08 p.m.
So yeah, you can
You can check me out on Friday night, so don't forget to check out my free books.
You can get them at freedomain.com slash books.
You can also go to almostnovel.com.
You can go to justpoornovel.com.
And I will talk to you guys tomorrow.
Thank you for a wonderful, wonderful evening and a great life.
Lots of love.
Sorry, just a little note here at the end.
I made a bit of a mistake about the children's ages in the movie.
I wanted to be fair about that, of course.
So, the boy was 7 when he was taken, not 5, and the girl was 11.
They looked younger to me, but there were some indications in the movie, so I just wanted to be clear about that.
Alright, thanks, and I appreciate you watching the video.
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