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Sept. 16, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:47:59
Charlie Kirk: Left vs Right CANCEL CULTURE! Twitter/X Space
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All right.
All right, all right, all right.
I hope you're doing well this afternoon.
It's time for some philosophy, my friends, and it's time to put some myths, lies, falsehoods, manipulations and propaganda to rest in eternal peace, in eternal logical shredded pieces.
It is time to hear from you, my friends, and it is time to take some relish in the squealing of those who are now shocked and appalled, shocked and appalled that there could be some possible potential, factual reality, any kind of blowback for whatever wild words they happen to put out there in deep kneeling praise of the Moch guard of political violence.
What kind of bizarre Bruce Lee mirrored maze echo chambers do you have to live in to the point where you are beyond shocked and appalled that there might be some negative repercussions for doing a sick little demonic TikTok dance because a reasoned political debater got shot through the arteries.
It's bizarre to me.
Listen, I'm no lawyer, and I think we're mostly talking about the US here.
I'm no lawyer.
But it seems to me that if somebody informs you that one of your employees worships and relishes violence, then I wonder if that gives you some liability if they ever end up being violent in the workplace, and you had foreknowledge of their predilection, worship of and bloody blade licking of the joy of violence.
There's blowback.
Now, of course, and utterly predictably, it ain't so much it ain't so much fun when the rabbit has the analogous gun.
Because the left likes being in control of blowback for speech.
Of course.
Of course.
You know, they're all kinds of courageous when it comes to these are just analogies, right?
When it comes to having a duel, if they empty out their opponent's weapon ahead of the jewel, they're all kinds of courageous.
So when they're in control, a blowback for speech, then it's just it's right, it's fair, it's good, it's good.
But when the right does it, oh no, this is terrible.
They're so hypocritical.
My God.
It's like a hairball of hypocrisy down the gullet of humanity.
It is I mean, it's very predictable, right?
It's very predictable.
Because I don't know if you've ever known people like this in real life.
It's a wild thing to see, man.
People who just lie and make up whatever intergalactic shite they feel like to win in the moment.
You ever you ever argue with someone like that?
They just make up whatever they want, and you feel like you're losing your mind in a way.
Because when you are trying to debate or argue with people who are completely removed from any integrity, any morality, any requirement for truth or virtue, or consistency, when people will just make up whatever they want to win in the moment, it's time to despawn.
It is time to flee to the nether of reality.
It is time to get away from such people.
So for those who are kind of confused, right?
First of all, it's just lies.
So people say, oh, so the people who are really into free speech are now trying to deplatform people simply for criticizing Charlie Kirk.
No.
I mean, just no, no, no, a thousand times no.
You can criticize Charlie Kirk all you want.
You can say I disagree with his argument for this, that, and the other, I think he was an idiot, I think you could say all of these things, and no one is going to try to get you fired.
If you say, well, the data he presented for this argument, I disagree with because there's data presented uh in other formats, or he misunderstood this, or he forgot to apply per capita, or whatever it is.
Nobody's going to nobody is gonna oh, I just had criticism, like it's just liars.
Just liar.
If you've ever had trolls, like you've ever run any kind of community and the trolls come in and they're just, you know, horrible, wretched, and and then you have to you're ban them because they're being like weird and abusive and stuff.
And uh, you know, what do they always say?
It's it's it's a script.
Like once you've done this for a while, it's as predictable as uh sunrise, right?
So, you know, people come in and they, you know, they're insulting and weird and mean and uh they don't respect the rules and respect the people and do all kinds of crazy stuff and and nasty stuff.
And then uh you give them a warning, they don't listen, they escalate, then you ban them.
And then they immediately create an alt account and come back and say, let's say the guy's name is Bob, right, on your forum, and they come back as an alt and they say, Hey, man, I haven't heard from Bob recently.
He had really great and interesting contributions.
I sure hope he wasn't banned, right?
This is what they do, right?
It's it's again, it's it's grindingly and boringly predictable, right?
And then, of course, if you say, well, you know, yes, we banned him because he didn't listen to this.
No, no, no.
Just because he disagreed with you, I don't like just because he didn't agree with everything you said, why would you ban him?
You know, little finger in the dimple, and oh, so innocent.
Why would you ban somebody just for disagreeing with you?
And of course, you know, then they're all over the internet.
It's like, oh yeah, no, I was on this guy's forum, and and I got banned just because I asked a few simple questions.
Like, oh it's just it's so grindingly predictable and it's like NPC.
NPC stuff, right?
So, yeah, you're not you're not uh you're not getting fired, right?
Because you disagreed with Charlie Kirk.
You you're you're getting fired because you praised and celebrated a terrorist political assassination.
That's that's why.
That's why.
That's why you got fired.
Because your employer either, A, finds your praise and ghoulish bloody bullet sucking praise and worship of a political assassination,
repulsive, as it is, by the by, as it is, or alternatively, maybe your creepy boss agrees with your macabre tastes in watching fathers get uh their jugular spattered halfway across the stage in front of their families, you sick ghouls.
Maybe he even agrees with you, but maybe he's talked to a lawyer, and maybe the lawyer has said, uh, you know, if you have foreknowledge, and again, it's not legal advice.
I'm not a lawyer, just you know, hypothetical in my amateur way.
The lawyer has said, well, if this person, like if you have foreknowledge that this person is pro-violence, then if they're ever violent or disruptive in your workplace, it might not be ideal from a liability standpoint.
Who knows, right?
I don't.
But could be, could be.
So the lying.
The lying, the lying, the lying.
And the cause of hypocrisy is wild.
So if somebody marches up, punches you in the face, and then you punch them back, and they immediately cry, oh, what a hypocrite you are.
You said you were against violence.
Oh, it turns out you're not against violence, it's like, bro, just punching back.
Just punching back in a metaphorical way.
Self-defense is perfectly legitimate in libertarian, anarcho-capitalist, minarchist, Christian, common law traditions of morality and law.
Self-defense is fine.
So sure, someone's gonna punch you, and then if you punch back, they're gonna be like, oh, it looks like you are pro-violence.
Look like you are hypocritical.
Oh, look, you are.
Turns out you aren't against punching.
It's like, no, no, there's uh uh literally a world, a world of difference between punching and punching back.
So this uh charges of hypocrisy.
Oh, looks like the right is really keen on cancel culture now.
This is in like uh trying to deal with these kinds of people in any rational context will drive you mad.
Like you you you must recoil from this kind of language, because it's so transparently manipulative.
What you could say, what you could say, you know, there's a a concentration camp or gulag guard from Alexander Soljanitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago would regularly administer beatings to his prisoners.
And then he ran afoul of the communists, as you generally do.
And what happened was he ended up being beaten by other guards.
And he crawled into the cell next to Solzhenitson and said, I had no idea it hurt that much.
That's possible, right?
It's possible.
That what the left could do is they could say, damn, this really is horrible.
We shouldn't have done it to you.
As opposed to playing the victim, crying hypocrisy, manipulating, lying, falsifying.
Because if cancel culture is bad, let's just say that what the right is doing post-Charlie Kurtz's assassination, let's say the cancer culture is bad.
Okay, well, cancer culture is bad, then the left shouldn't have done it.
They should apologize.
If it's not bad, then they shouldn't complain when it's done to them.
But what they want to do, of course, is to make it good when they do it, but bad when you do it.
Of course.
I mean, of course.
And that's a weak, weak ass position, right?
It's a weak, pathetic, manipulative position to only want a particular form of blowback to be on your side.
Only I can hit.
This is like the girl who runs up and punches the boy and then says, boys can't hit girls.
As I was repeatedly told when I was a kid, don't dish it out if you can't take it.
Don't dish it out if you can't take it.
Or here's a taste of your own medicine.
Now, what the right is doing is not cancel culture.
Cancel culture is when you lie about people.
So, let us take a scenario.
So if there's a priest, we'll call him Father Bob.
Ah, good old Father Bob.
So there's a priest called Father Bob.
Now let's say two scenarios.
Number one, Father Bob is quoting from the Bible in the middle of a big sermon, and he quotes from the Bible where the Bible says, the fool in his heart has said there is no God.
The fool in his heart has said there is no God.
And let's say that the first part of the sentence is removed, and only the second part of the sentence is kept, and a viral clip goes with Father Bob saying, There is no God.
That would be a lie.
That would be a lie.
That would be defamatory if that spread, and uh Father Bob lost a lot of his congregation or lost his sponsorship, so lost.
That would be a lie.
Because you would be cutting the context and reversing the meaning.
That's bad.
That's wrong.
That can in fact be evil.
Now, let's take another scenario where Father Bob is recorded in some legal manner, is recorded privately confessing to someone and saying, I really like the money of religion, but I haven't believed in God for years.
I view my congregation as suckers.
Right.
Now, in the first instance, you're lying about him.
You're making the claim that Father Bob is saying there is no God when you cut out the context that he's quoting the Bible, which says the fool in his heart has said there is no God.
In the second instance, let's say you have this legal recording of Father Bob confessing that he never hasn't believed in years, he likes the money, he likes the prestige, does that weird Camella Soprano food and preying on spiritually starved women.
And he doesn't believe in God, he views his congregation as suckers.
Now let's say that the second instance, the recording, which is legally obtained, is sent to Father Bob's boss, Bishop, Jim.
Are these two the same?
They are not.
They are not the same.
In the first instance, you are reversing what Father Bob actually meant.
You are taking out the context, and you are lying about Father Bob.
In the second instance, you are accurately quoting Father Bob, confessing his lack of faith and his contempt for his congregation and his thirst for money and power.
You are accurately, in context, relating overlaying what he actually says and we presume actually believes.
It would be the same as recording an actor who's playing a character who's confessing to a crime and then sending it to the police saying this guy's confessing to a crime.
It's taking out the context that he's an actor.
So cancel culture is when you lie about someone.
You know, they're a leftist activists.
Maybe this happens on the right too, I don't know.
But there are less leftist activists who will create accounts and who will post the most offensive stuff under a video, and then use that to get someone canceled.
Maybe there are reporters who do it as well.
I don't know.
I mean, I've experienced it myself.
It's very vivid.
People misrepresent what I say all the time.
They take things out of context, they snip things, they reverse things.
If I'm if I'm straw, if I'm steel manning a bad argument, they will take it as if I'm actually advocating for that, right?
It doesn't matter what you say, and everybody who's been taken out of context, you have this continual program running which says, can this be snipped?
Can this be reversed?
Can this be blah, blah, blah, right?
So people on I mean, I'm not exactly on the right, to put it mildly, but let's say, let's take the sort of left-right paradigm.
So people on the right who are canceled because people on the left lie about them are angry.
And that is reasonable, in my humble opinion.
It's more than opinion, let's say.
Now, to be canceled because people have lied about you is bad.
To lose your job because people have told the truth about you is not bad.
You know, there are people uh bleating around on X is like, whatever happened to free speech, man.
Well, look, it's free speech to contact your employer.
That's free speech.
That's free speech.
I mean, the left has always lectured that freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences, and they loftily lectured that you should accept that.
But now that it's happening to them, listen, if somebody accurately represented my arguments and contacted various platforms saying, Steph advocates for this or has identified this or says this or makes this case or makes this argument,
if they accurately described my position and then contacted various platforms with my actual position, okay.
Hey, fair play.
I'm I don't think you've ever, I've been doing this like over 40 years, 20 years, much more so in the public eye, but I don't think you've ever heard me withdraw or disavow a position that I know to be true.
I won't do it.
I won't do it.
I'd rather not be in the public eye at all than disavow something I know to be true.
Because I'm not here for the money, I'm not here for the fame, I'm not here for the praise, I'm here for the truth.
If I can't sell the truth, I don't want to be here in in the public square.
So my issue was the falsehoods.
You know, the idea that white supremacy, right?
The idea that white supremacy is the argument that white people should rule, violently rule over other races, which would be repulsive, is repulsive, violation of the non-aggression principle.
Wretched, evil and wrong.
Disavowed it, repudiated it, rejected it.
Doesn't matter.
People just lie, right?
Eugenics.
Eugenics is forced government control of reproduction through sterilization or things like that, violation of the non-aggression principle, status position.
It's Wretched.
Doesn't matter.
People just say it anyway, right?
It doesn't matter what I say, people will just make things up.
People believe I'm Jewish.
People believe that I pretended to be a teenage girl and commented on one of my own videos many years ago.
People believe that I publicly shamed and berated a listener for only donating a dollar because I'm a greedy monster.
I mean, people just believe the most wild crazy outlandish stuff.
It's low IQ behavior to repeat gossip without verification, of course, right?
Doesn't mean everybody has to be perfect.
We all make mistakes, but it's just low IQ uh shitty behavior, and it's people taking their small stained, sneaky and surreptitious souls and painting the that image or that visage on other more noble personalities.
Because I'm small, everybody's got to be small, because I'm petty, everyone's got to be petty.
Now, uh Tim Poole has uh finally said, Monsieur Labigny has finally said, that's it, I'm cutting people for differences in political opinion.
I've never wanted to do that, but this has gone too far.
And today I dug up a speech I gave in New Hampshire in two 009 to a 009, right?
Almost 15 years ago, 14, 15 years ago, and I talked about it before that.
And it's uh the against me argument, called the against me argument.
The against me argument, very briefly, is let's say that you are a big fan of the welfare state, and I am not.
You think that the welfare state is the best way to help the poor, I do not think that.
I do not believe that.
I do not accept that.
Am I allowed to disagree with you without you wanting me thrown in prison?
Let's say I want to help the poor as I have by going out, starting companies, and creating jobs, thus raising the demand for employees, thus raising the wages for everyone in a small way.
You know, I've interviewed a thousand people over the course of my business career, hired about a hundred, mentored people, helped increase their skills, their business thinking, their knowledge of economics, customer satisfaction, all kinds of good stuff.
It really helped a lot of people.
Just in my business career.
That's the way that I want to help the poor.
And also by advocating that if you are surrounded by negative, destructive, dysfunctional, and abusive people and you can't reform them, you don't have to stay.
Because that's gonna keep you poor in spirit, and that's going to keep you probably poor in wealth as well.
I may have mentioned Bitcoin once or twice over the last 12 minutes, maybe that helped a few people as well.
So I have a different way of wanting to help the poor rather than uh take money through the coercive power of the state and redistribute it in a pretty corrupt manner, thus creating multi-generational dependency on an unsustainable system which is brutal for the poor.
So, you want the welfare state, I want something else.
Am I allowed to disagree with you without you wanting me thrown in jail?
You believe that the government, which can't even maintain roads, is gonna be excellent at bringing knowledge, wisdom, and virtue to children through government quote, schools, prisons for the mind, encircled by the unsheathed weaponry of property taxes.
Am I allowed to disagree with you without you wanting me thrown in jail?
Now, if somebody looks in you and says, Yeah, sorry, man, but this is how the poor have to be educated, this is how sick people have to get health care, uh, this is how retired people have to get their income, and this is how the poor are going to be saved.
And if you disagree with me, I want you arrested and thrown in jail.
In other words, if you don't want to pay the taxes, so if you don't pay the taxes, you should pay your taxes, but you know, theoretically, if you don't pay your taxes, I support you being arrested and thrown in jail.
This is an argument I've been making for decades, decades and decades.
God, I'm getting old.
Ah, well, high in time and deep in wisdom is the place to be.
So I've been making this argument for close on twenty years.
Now, I want you to Consider an alternative timeline where people had, I don't know, listen to me.
Or listen to reason.
So starting 20 years ago when I was making this argument, people had sat down and said, listen, do you support the use of violence against me for disagreeing with you?
Because if you do, if you want me thrown in jail for disagreeing with you, you're kind of a corrupt person.
Well, that would have made the reality of political violence very real to its advocates.
Because they like to hide behind a whole bunch of euphemisms, right?
Now, that would have brought things to a head to people who like to hide their advocacy of violence from themselves.
Because you'll notice that people will create endless amounts of language to obfuscate the brutality of the violence they advocate for, right?
Charlie Kirk, they'll say he was a racist or the sexist, a misogynist or that.
Okay, well, but this is just a ways to say that it's kind of some weird twisted version of self-defense to shoot him in the throat in front of his family and in front of 3,000 people.
People like to hide the violence from themselves.
And what you need to do is you need to reveal to people the violence they advocate for so that you can decide if they're evil or not.
Because if you can very clearly demonstrate to someone that what he's advocating for is violence, then he's either going to recoil from it if he's got any kind of empathy or heart or soul at all, he's going to recoil from it, or he's going to double down.
Now, those who recall from it are souls to be saved and to be treasured and respected, and you can lead them to reason, and they can help you with well, your blind spots and wonderful, you know, bind yourselves to those kinds of people with hoops of steel.
But the people who double down, you know.
Communism killed a hundred million people in the 20th century, yeah, but it wasn't real.
Yeah, right.
Then you gotta run.
You gotta run.
Because then you have people who love violence and want to destroy, destroy those who disagree with them.
Uh, that's monstrous.
Deeply corrupt and immoral.
Now, if libertarians had, I mean, we won't even get into the peaceful parenting stuff, peaceful parenting.com, please get the free book.
But if libertarians had adopted, shun those who advocate for evil, shun those who approve of political violence.
And not the first time, you know, I gave a speech uh later out in California with Libertopia saying, eh, a month or two, you know, take a month or two and educate people and step them through the violence that they advocate for.
You know, I can never stop hearing, and it drives me crazy, but I can never stop seeing, hearing this Monty Python line, come see the violence inherent in the system.
But if libertarians had dug themselves in, put their roots down to the center of virtue, and hung tall and strong like oak trees, society would have changed to accommodate that.
Whoever is the most certain, whoever is the most rooted will win.
And I made the case many times, in conferences, in call-in shows, in debates, in books, in articles, I made the case many times.
And nobody can disavow it, really.
I mean, nobody can say, no, no, no, it's not violent.
Political blah, blah, blah, right.
Well, that would have nipped this escalating movement towards justifying and thirsting after and approving political violence would have nipped that in the butt.
People would have suffered negative consequences for the violence they advocate for, for the coercion they drool over.
And it would have headed this off, Charlie Kirk might still be alive, probably would be, in my humble opinion.
And now, seeing all of these libertarians and all these people on the right, when I've been talking about this in the most successful philosophy show in history, like a billion views and downloads coming up.
People knew about it.
They knew about this argument, they knew about me.
Everyone's shied away, shied away.
No, no, no, I want to complain about the Fed.
I don't want to actually confront those who might be lusting after evil and violent in my own life, but that seems a bit extreme to actually have your values inform your actual relationships.
It's crazy cult-like behavior, you see, Steph.
To actually take the non-aggression principle and apply it to my actual relationships, a social and familial sphere where I can actually do something about it.
No, no, no, no.
It's for criticizing the war in Iraq, uh, foreign policy stuff, uh, deficit financing, fiat currency, uh government control of interest rates, yeah, yeah, yeah.
All the shit I can't do anything about, that's where I'm gonna focus my moral energies.
My actual relationships of people in the real world, are you crazy?
No, you see, they say, they act.
My values are only to be applied to all the things I cannot change.
All the things I can change, I will never apply my values to.
Well, it's just a fantastic way of discrediting values as a whole.
If twenty years ago, libertarians had listened to me when I made this case repeatedly, vociferously, and I might add, at great personal cost, at the cost of reputation and spread and growth.
If they'd listened, well, I wouldn't have been alone.
And if they were to at least say to me now, Steph, that case you made Lothos many decades ago was the right case, we should have listened, we should have done it, and things would not be nearly as bad now, in fact, they'd be a whole lot better.
Because if those who identify the initiation of violence, particularly political violence as a great immorality, if they refuse to apply those values to the people in their lives, or to require that people I mean, is it really that crazy?
If you want to be a friend of mine, if you could do me a solid and renounce political violence, that would be great.
Is that crazy?
I don't understand how that's crazy.
If you want my affection and my loyalty, if you could do me a solid and stop wanting people herded into the rape rooms of government prisons at gunpoint just for disagreeing with you, can you do that?
Can you reject political violence?
Can you reject violence?
Is that possible?
And this was considered crazy.
Now, the fact that it's no longer considered crazy, but it's actually the plan of the right, because they had to wait until somebody was vividly shot right in front of them to understand what I was talking about for these decades.
Decades.
It's a long time, brothers and sisters.
It's a long time.
To be in the wilderness, to be rejected, scorned, eye rolled, blacklisted, never invited, never approved of, never supported, never mentioned, become Voldemort.
And now for everyone to say, you know, I'm not sure I can be friends with people who are fans of political violence.
I mean, I'm telling you, yeah, oh, everyone's like, oh, but it's good to be right.
No, it's not.
No, it's not.
It sucks to be right, especially when you're right decades ahead of time.
It sucks to be right.
I'll be honest with you.
It sucks.
What's what's the benefit?
What's the benefit?
People aren't even saying, you know, Steph, I mean, I know some people are, but there are no prominent libertarians that I've seen who said, you know, Steph was talking about this decades ago.
We really should have listened, because it turns out he was right, and we could have been we could be in an entirely different position in the world, with much less political violence if we'd listened.
Sorry, Steph, you were right.
Come on my show and explain your reasoning.
I'm not saying I'd go, but it'd be nice to get the invite.
I don't know.
I don't know.
And I was on Joe Rogan.
I was on Joe Rogan uh three times.
And yeah, I t I talked about you want you you cannot have relationships with people who consistently advocate for political violence.
It's not healthy, it's not right, it's not virtuous, it's not good.
Shocking, appalling, terrible, he brought up all these quotes, you know, and you sit there thinking, geez, did I say something crazy when I was out of my mind?
No, I brought this stuff up.
And it doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter how right you were.
People completely ignore how right you were.
They step over your smoking body, and then when they are forced to confront the truth of what you said, they'll never reference you, but have come to this conclusion amazingly on their own.
Just on their own.
Charlie Kirk didn't have to fucking die.
Charlie Kirk didn't have to die.
If people had listened and confronted those slavering and drooling over the macabre, sinister and sadistic joys of political violence decades ago, this movement towards the justification of political violence would have been nipped in the bud decades ago.
Because people would have suffered negative consequences in their personal lives for advocating for violence, And we wouldn't have had to wait for the bloody trail of bodies, blood and bullets that has led us to where we are.
But how many people will admit that I was right?
How many people will apologize for blacklisting me and attacking me and backstabbing me and ambushing me and right?
How many people?
Well, we'll see.
I uh I'm not holding my breath at all.
But we'll see.
All right.
Enough of me.
Let's talk to others.
I would like it if you could stay on the topic of censorship, of cancel culture, and of what's been going on over the last week or two.
If you'd like to, I'd love to hear from you.
If you just want to absorb my words and roll them around in your cheek juice like a jawbreaker, I'm also fine with that as well.
But if you do want to raise your hand, I'd love to hear from you.
Privateer, what's on your mind?
Yes, sir.
Go ahead.
So I just wanted to get your thoughts on my personal barometer of empathy and whether or not, for example, it's someone on the other side on the moderate left that that still exists.
Weren't you another prominent figure?
This is a hypothetical.
Um, would it suffer from the same level of gratuitous attack that Charlie Kirk suffered from?
If that would disgust me just as much as what happened to Charlie Kirk, and for me personally, I would say yes, they wouldn't.
I just wanted to get your thoughts on that.
So let's say that there's a um a fellow named Bob who goes out and has sort of peaceful and good natured and positive dialogues.
He's on Bob is on the left, and he goes out and he has good natured, peaceful, respectful dialogues with people on the right, and then Bob gets shot.
Is that right?
Yes, sir.
That is correct.
Right.
Well, the question for me is who draws first, right?
I mean, it's the what's it Han Solo and was it Grito or Guido or a grito, I think, something like that in in the uh Cantina in Star Wars.
Who drew first, right?
So the problem, I think, is that if the left has been using uh a lot of violence, and they have, I mean, we can sort of go through the list, but in general, the left uses a lot of violence.
If they'd be using cancel culture, and like I'll tell you this, from my own personal experience, uh, I've given speeches with bomb threats, uh, death threats, which is why, of course, you know, watching what happened with Charlie was, you know, seared me to the soul at just about every conceivable level.
So uh these these uh bomb threats, death threats, violence, uh, shut down terrorist threats uh to shut down venues that were facing me when I was out uh wanting to have recent discussions with people in the world.
Uh that would that was not coming from the right.
That was not coming from Christians, it was not coming from conservatives, it was coming from the left.
So I think what's so deeply shocking is that Charlie Kirk, without a doubt, was an olive branch extender.
He was a man of peace, he was a man of God, he was a man of reason, he was a man of debate.
And the right, certainly there are this violence from the right.
I'm not, you know, it's not 100% and zero percent.
I get all of that.
But certainly over the last while, the preponderance of uh violence, political violence has been coming uh from the left.
So there aren't a lot of leftists who sit down for productive, positive, respectful dialogues with people on the right.
So I I I mean, an example would be, and and maybe it's out there and I just haven't seen it.
Of course, that's beyond possible, and if people know of this, you know, please let me know.
But I don't know of leftists who've set up a booth at a conservative Christian college and had positive and respectful debates.
I mean, Stephen Crowder used to do this change my mind stuff, and of course Charlie Kirk's been doing it for years or was doing it for years before he was assassinated.
So I don't see a lot of that stuff happening from the left.
Now, there have been some.
Uh I'm I'm thinking of was it Dean, was it Dean?
I can't remember his last name, Witherers or something like that.
I think he's had debates with people where they come up and and sit across from him and so on, which is not bad.
It's not great, but it's not a bad venue.
But I don't think it's been a consistent pattern of the left to engage in positive And respectful debate with people on the right.
So I don't know that the two would be equivalent.
And I think that's I think that's the deep shock that's happened is that this guy, he was the absolute moderate position.
He was the dialogue, he was the reason, he was the debate, he was the conversation, and there's this deep shock reverberating from people, which is what happens if that doesn't work.
Like I could even argue that Tim Bull is probably the closest I can think of as being moderate left, or at least started that way.
You know what I mean?
I don't know much about Tim Poole's political opinions, is he on the left?
I mean, he's he's kind of moved towards the right more, but I would say he's more spiritually on the left, but others might disagree with me, but that's just my opinion.
Yeah.
Yeah, I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know much about his his political uh opinions.
But I think what's what's again, what's so deeply shocking is Charlie Kirk devoted his life, risked his life to have a reasonable dialogue and conversation, and he got his head blown off.
And there's uh that ended up.
Hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on.
So there's there's a great deal of concern and fear and anger from people on the right, which is like, okay, well, if we can't dialogue, what can we do?
Right?
And and again, my answer is always like find out the people who support political violence and ostracize them if they won't reform.
Uh, that is the last peaceful, that's the last stop on the peaceful train.
Uh after that, things get very bad very quickly, and then I have nothing to do with that environment or that scenario.
So that's my answer.
A lot of people don't seem to really like that answer, and uh I think that's really tragic.
Sorry, go ahead.
Oh no, I just want to say thank you.
That was wonderful.
Fantastic.
I really appreciate that.
And uh let's move on.
Uh Garthha, if you would like to step up, step in and out of the rain, I'd love to hear what's on your mind.
Uh what's on my mind.
So I was thinking about uh cancel culture as well as the whole uh Charlie Kirk thing.
And I would say that um in terms of getting like leftists fired, like I'm in favor of that.
Don't get me wrong, because like they're collectively trying to destroy our own civilization.
Second of all, they don't even believe in like voluntary exchange of goods and services and see work as like literal slavery, so we're liberating them by getting them fired.
Right.
Well, and technically, if you send if you send someone's accurate, in context statements to a boss, are you getting them fired?
I mean, this is the old question of like, well, why does God send people to hell?
It's like, no, no, God doesn't send people to hell.
They send themselves there by choosing evil.
Well, I'm more of a Gnostic, so I kind of do believe God does send people to hell.
And you could look at him as like a bloodthirsty demiurge.
That being said, like there's a big difference between let's say, I don't know, random person who says like mean words or has like a bad taste in something versus someone who number one doesn't even believe in like work, looks at that as slavery and tries to like let's say they're part of like the state and the whole welfare system.
That's actively like trying to like uh destroy our civilization.
So it's like it's not wrong to like get them fired in the first place.
Well, freedom of association, right?
If you send, if you send, like, look, if people hadn't lied about me, and and if they sent my accurate, honest statements, perspectives and opinions to some platform, and that platform decided to be deplatform me.
I mean, obviously we're supposed to have some kind of contract, right?
There's supposed to be warnings, they're supposed to be this, that, and the other, right?
So I mean there should be warnings, but like hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on.
So if somebody sends accurate things to me and they say, listen, we don't want these perspectives or opinions on my platform, I'd say, okay, well, how does this violate the terms of service, because you're supposed to have protection from contract in terms of service.
And but let's say that for whatever reason, right?
For whatever reason, uh I get uh kicked off some place, then it's like, okay, but but they should not be forced to service me, right?
If if um if I go against their entire belief system.
So let's say that there's a socialist or communist video platform and they say, listen to post here, you gotta be pro-communist, right?
And then I upload all these anti-communist videos, and then people accurately send those anti-communist videos and they say uh you're off this platform.
Okay, I I can accept that.
I I do think in America, of course, it's complicated because the platforms are considered to be part of the public square, which is why they're not liable for illegal or defamatory content that people post.
And so the question is if you're part of the public square, if you get government subsidies, government funds, can you discriminate against people based upon lawful perspectives, arguments, or opinions?
Uh that's that's dicey.
You know, that's really, really dicey.
If you get protection from the government for what people post, then you can't editorialize.
So uh magazines that post defamatory articles can be sued because they're literally commissioning the articles, they edit them and they publish them and so on.
So now they're liable.
But platforms can't.
In other words, platforms cannot editorialize.
And this is one of the things that's kind of floating around in the U.S. legal mind at the moment, is that uh an a platform is immune from liability for what people publish because they don't editorialize.
Now, if they do start editorializing, then they are disapproving of some opinions, which means they're approving of other opinions, which means that they then become close to publishers rather than platforms, which means that they start to accumulate liability for that which they allow.
So you have to be neutral in order to gain the protection in most legal systems, certainly in American law.
Again, I'm not a lawyer, so this is just my sort of understanding and perspective.
But you have to be neutral.
You cannot editorialize, you cannot put your thumb on the scale.
You can't say, well, this opinion is good and this opinion is bad, and right, because then you're become a publisher and then you're liable for what gets through.
And so in the American legal system, things are tricky.
The more you put uh the more you say, well, this is a bad opinion, this is a good opinion, this is okay, this is not okay, then you start to become liable for what people post.
You have to be truly neutral to gain the protections from liability afforded by the Communications Act, I think it is within America.
So it's all kind of dicey, but look, if people share with my employer my true and accurate opinions, and my employer doesn't want to work with me anymore, doesn't want me to work there, hey man.
Uh because what are we gonna do?
Are we gonna say, well, it now becomes what, illegal to contact an employer with something that somebody voluntarily posted?
You know, if if somebody does a video uh dancing with joy about Charlie Kirk getting assassinated and that gets sent to their boss, what what?
Is why is that is that bad?
Because now, what you can't you can't send people stuff on the internet.
You if you voluntarily post that stuff on the internet, I mean, if it's a private recording that's illegally obtained, you can't send it to the boss, I get that.
But if you voluntarily post your celebration of a political assassination on the internet, that gets sent to your boss.
The hell's wrong with that?
It's free speech to be able to grab people's stuff from the internet and send it to their boss.
That's not that's not bad, that's not wrong.
That's fine.
Totally fine.
But of course, now there's blowback and there's negativity and people are out of their bubble.
And you know, it's it's really healthy to get out of your bubble.
Uh I've said this a million times, I'll keep it brief.
The left is like physics, like it's just everybody's immersed in it.
It's like air.
It's in the schools, it's in the colleges, it's in the media, the movies, the entertainment, the video games, everywhere you look, everywhere you think, it's all over the place online.
That the default position, because of the government control and and so on, is the left.
So the left is a bubble and bubbles are unhealthy.
You need to engage with people who disagree with you.
You need to engage with people who oppose you.
You need to engage with people who think you're nuts to make sure that you're not, right?
To be able to defend your position from any and all commerce.
And I think there's a deep shock on the left that there are actually lots of people out there who disagree with them and have uh a reasonable case.
Sorry, go ahead.
Oh, yeah, it's like a few different things I wanted to touch up on in terms of cancel culture.
So I'll say when it comes to cancel culture, um could you uh uh unblock my other uh account?
Uh I just want to apologize for like sounding maybe too condescending in the Comment section uh before you blocked me last time?
I'm not sure what uh uh do you think I blocked you for being too condescending?
Um I I don't know.
I said something like condescending about philosophy.
No, that's I don't see I'd I I'll unblock you, but you can't misrepresent what happened.
Like if somebody says something condescending about philosophy, oh I think philosophy is is is foolish, oh I think philosophy is ridiculous.
I'm not gonna block someone for that.
Come on.
I I'm gonna be honest with you, like I'm a bit autistic, so oftentimes like I'll say dumb stuff and get myself canceled.
Like not even knowing it.
So I'm sorry, how do you know that you're a bit autistic?
Uh I think like psychiatrists or psychologists have been telling me this since I was like nine.
I mean, sorry, you've been officially diagnosed, is that right?
Two-thirds of diagnoses are fake, so but a few different times I have been, so yeah.
Okay, so you've gone to a psychologist or a psychiatrist, and they have diagnosed you as autistic.
Yeah.
But it depends on the one I go to.
Some of them say no, I'm not, I'm bipolar.
It depends on who I surround myself with during the time.
And what was your childhood like Um My Oldest brother's autistic.
I have let's say I don't know.
It's like Okay, let me ask you something a bit more more clear.
Sorry, that was a big big, big old general will debeast question.
When you were growing up, did you see people around you who modeled good social skills, healthy social interactions, how to disagree respectfully, how to have productive conversations.
No, honestly, I'd say it was pretty terrible at first, but it's kind of interesting thing.
Like I got I I kind of grew out of the whole cursing randomly part before most other kids did, because I think like that part of my own self was I already went through that phase earlier.
So it's like middle schoolers like they'll just call everything gay or use a bunch of curse words.
Whereas like myself, I kinda was exposed to like a lot of like that bad etiquette, maybe in like elementary school.
Okay, who was exposing you to bad etiquette?
Uh family, I'd say.
Okay.
And and what do you mean when you say that you were exposed to bad etiquette?
What did you see?
Hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on.
I'm asking questions here, right?
So what did your family do that was bad etiquette?
Or what did you see?
What didn't my family do that was bad etiquette, I would say.
Um yeah, like for instance, like my dad would he he's Chinese, so it's like uh I I mean like he has like some etiquette, but he's also diagnosed as like Asperger's.
But uh I mean like he'll like curse at my mom.
And what will he say to your mom?
Uh he'll like call her stupid or call her fat.
Or call her illiterate.
So you said your dad's Chinese, is your mom not Chinese?
No, my mom is uh Oshkenazi, like like half Ashkenazi.
Okay.
Got it, got it.
Okay, so you're your dad is verbally uh horrible or hostile to your mom, right?
Yes.
Okay, so with your parents, did you did you see your parents at all uh having negotiations, having disagreements, and finding a way to resolve them without you know?
Just to be honest with you, like my mom was like pretty uh submissive in some respect.
Like she generally like wouldn't like she doesn't like talk back to him much, but it's like yeah.
Uh uh, I mean like she only like ever seemed to like I would say show anger at him in like two different scenarios.
Like either I encouraged it because I kind of just didn't like how my dad treats my mom in that respect.
But it's like also I would say another thing is um what else was I thinking?
Or like I don't know, like this other time, like how to explain this.
I don't okay.
Let me ask you not comfortable with like personal details of my.
No, I get it, I get it.
So listen, I'm obviously I'm not a psychiatrist, I can't diagnose anyone, and what do I know, right?
But I would just tell you this.
Like, I didn't grow up speaking Japanese.
I didn't have any exposure to Japanese other than maybe a sticks song from time to time.
So I don't speak Japanese.
Now, I don't consider it a mental deficiency that I don't speak Japanese, because if like Jared Taylor, I've been raised in Japanese, even as a white guy, I would speak uh Japanese, right?
So I don't view it as a huge uh as any kind of mental deficiency.
It's just something that I didn't learn and wasn't exposed to as a kid.
Now if you grew up, and this is not to you in particular, but this is just to the audience as a whole, and this is something that I sort of had to deal with when I was in my teens.
If you grow up and you're not taught social skills, I mean social skills are not easy.
They're not automatic any more than Japanese is easy or automatic if you're not exposed to it.
You have to learn it later, right?
And uh when I was growing up, I grew up in a very poor neighborhood, and one of the things that really characterizes poor neighborhoods is people's social skills really suck chunks.
They they're just they're bad.
They they yell, uh, they curse, they uh storm out, uh, they they they give you the silent treatment.
Like you just you just see this all over the place.
And and and siblings are are bad and and so on.
And so neither in my family, nor really in my school, nor uh in my neighborhood as a whole.
Nowhere did I learn productive and healthy and positive social skills.
And that's like Japanese.
So I had to spend a fair amount of time in my teens learning how to have good, decent, positive, and healthy social skills.
Now I'm comfortable in just about every environment.
I've I've talked to very wealthy people, I talk to middle-class people, I talk to poor people, I have endless conversations on these shows.
I'm pretty good at uh social skills, I'm pretty good at negotiating, and I'm pretty good at uh figuring people out and so on, and and helping communicate these sorts of things.
So one of the things that's possible if you lack social skills, you can you could say, well, I have X, Y, or Z, mental defect or deficiency or problem or issue or something like that.
And you know, what do I know?
Maybe you do.
But another potential explanation, or even if you do, maybe you can backfill it by saying, well, when I grew up, I was not taught any good, decent, healthy, or helpful social skills.
And so I need to figure those out.
I need to recognize a deficiency in my upbringing, right?
Like I grew up not speaking Japanese, so if I move to Japan, I'm gonna have to learn Japanese.
I can't just say, well, I have a cognitive deficiency and I don't speak Japanese.
It's like, well, I just wasn't raised with it.
So I need to learn it.
And I mean, I needed to learn, I need to learn things in the business world, I need to learn things in the art world, I need to learn things in the relationship world, friendship world, and so on.
And, you know, when I grew up, uh, friends would have these regular blow-ups, and they they made maybe in a fist fighting, or they just wouldn't talk to each other.
And nobody really I was not modeled, nothing was modeled on how you negotiate.
And I remember one of the first families that uh I had a friend, uh, and his family was was was pretty good, was pretty functional.
And I remember seeing how the family would work out conflicts, like I was looking at an alien set of life forms.
Like it was really amazing.
Like, you know, the the uh the scene in the first Jurassic Park where Sam Neal and Laura Dern, like they come off the top of that Jeep and they're like, oh, you know, they're the agog, we're gonna have to evolve, right?
They're just astounded.
I mean that for me, that was my face, seeing people actually negotiate and resolve their differences in ways that weren't horrible, violent.
And of course they're not resolving differences, you're just blowing up.
And I I studied like an anthropologist, like, okay, they do this, and then this person says this, and then this person doesn't yell, and this person doesn't escalate, and this person isn't mean, and this person isn't abusive.
And, you know, they just listen and they disagree and they can get quite heated, but they're not they're respectful with each other and so on.
And, you know, I mean, I've been married now like 23 years and, you know, I've never raised my voice in my wife, I've never called her a name.
And we have disagreements, probably like honestly, one or two a year.
Nothing major.
But uh, you know, we can both be firm and we can both listen and negotiate, and usually we come to something really interesting.
Because, you know, even if you have a a real good, healthy and stable relationship, you know, life changes, things changes, uh, things change in your life and circumstances changes and and so on, and you just Need to negotiate new things sometimes.
But yeah, I I would just invite people as a whole, like if you lack social skills, you can either label yourself.
I don't know, maybe the label's accurate, what do I know?
But it's also possible, I would at least invite people into the possibility that maybe you just gotta observe people learn how to negotiate.
I mean, I I remember I read I read a book.
It was not a particularly moral book, but a very interesting book.
I read a book uh as a teenager and I read it many, many, many times called You Can Negotiate Anything.
And it's just how how to negotiate.
I read books on uh therapy, I read books on self-knowledge, I read books on psychology, I read business books on negotiation just to figure out how you could have productive discussions with people you disagree with.
Because I didn't grow up with that, so I had to study it, and I put thousands of hours in as a teenager in my early 20s figuring out how to negotiate.
And it's just like learning another language.
So I would invite people to look into that.
Sorry, is there something that you wanted to add?
Oh yeah.
Um this is one area where I guess uh actually no, never mind.
I kind of don't want to like make anything too personal.
Okay, well, I hope it helps.
Sorry, you wanted to say in terms of like cancel culture, this is another area where I find kind of um interesting because it's like when we talk about um earlier forms of like cancel culture, I would say like someone for instance, Papa John's might be like uh uh a better example because it's like he uh it's like he said don't use the n-word or whatnot.
And like he got canceled for that like decades later, so I thought like, no, it's pretty ridiculous example.
But um, I'll say like with most people in general, this is where I'd say I'm generally pretty forgiving if it's like just on like a personal note where like for instance, what you were using as an example, like um people like yelling or screaming or lashing out or or being like that in some way.
That being said, like I have um like my social skills definitely do get better.
But after uh what was it like lockdowns, they definitely decayed a lot significantly.
Oh, yeah, no, of course, a lot of people ended up with their social skills atrophying uh over lockdowns.
And and it's particularly true for uh younger people, and of course I've massive sympathy for that as a whole.
I mean, it's it's really really tragic and awful uh what happened to younger people in particular over COVID and um, you know, all I could do with my platform was to say lockdowns were a terrible idea and we're gonna cause far more harm than they would uh solve.
But uh of course I don't have any particular power with regards to government policies that way.
But yeah, I so I'd be careful.
So so when you said earlier, you said, could you unblock me?
I may have said something slightly condescending about philosophy as a whole.
Uh I don't believe you, honestly.
I mean, I'm not saying you're some big stinky liar, but I'm just telling you I I think it was I I don't tend to block people, you know, for for just uh, oh, I think philosophy is a waste of time.
It's like, okay, that that's you know, I I disagree, but you know, that's not offensive, it's not insulting, it's not mean, it's not abusive.
Hang on, hang on.
Still, see, that this is a social skill, right?
Let me finish my point and then I'll I'll let you speak, right?
Or you can then speak.
So uh but then when I pointed out, I don't think that's why I blocked you, you know.
Well, but I'm autistic or whatever, and it's like, well, okay, but that still doesn't autistic, let's say you're autistic, that doesn't mean that you have to misrepresent things.
Because you understand that it's not pleasant for me when you come on my show and you say to the world, uh, you banned me, Steph, or you you blocked me just because I said something a little condescending about philosophy as a whole.
Like, you can you understand that that's insulting to me because that's saying that I've got this trigger happy banhammer for a mild disagreement that's not personal.
Like that's an in-like I just I'm just telling you, you know, if you have this deficiency in social skills, I'm telling you that that's a volatile accusation to make.
And it is not pleasant to be on the receiving end of the accusation that I'm so volatile and immature and jumpy and aggressive that if you just make a mildly condescending or a condescending statement about philosophy as a whole, that I'm just gonna block you.
Right?
So I'm sorry, go ahead.
Aaron Powell It wasn't about philosophy, it was about philosophers.
Okay, so if you make uh listen, I I have a whole series uh for donors.
It's a 23-part series, The History of Philosophers, where I rip to shreds a lot of the major philosophers in history.
And you know, give them their props and so on, but point out their flaws.
So if you've got negative views of historical philosophers, I can't imagine why I would block you for that, because I would share those views.
And so I again what you're doing is you're coming on and you're saying to again, this is a live show, and that's fine.
You know, you've got free speech, you can come, you can come and say that kind of stuff.
But I'm just telling you that if you publicly accuse people of being immature and unable to handle poorly phrased differences of agreement or condescending statements about philosophers as a whole, that you're painting me as somebody who's very immature and unable to handle opposing perspectives or opinions and just ban people at a whim,
that is a very volatile and negative accusation to make about someone in public, and uh that's why I asked.
Now, of course, I haven't uh hung up from you in rage and um willing to engage in in a conversation and willing to engage in debate about this kind of stuff, because I do think it's a very interesting topic, you know, and there's a gray area.
There's obviously stuff which is bandworthy or blockworthy, and there's stuff which is clearly not, and there's maybe there's a gray area in the middle.
But if you ask me to unblock you and then insult me, that's not I'm I'm saying this to you because I want you to get what you want in life.
I want you to be able to get, and I say this to everyone.
I want you to be able to get what you want in life.
And if you ask me to unblock you, and then immediately insult me by saying, well, I was blocked for saying something uh condescending about other philosophers, right?
Then that makes me look like a crazy person.
I honestly don't know why uh you specifically blocked me, but I think it's like it was like multiple different comments just on I think like general like disagreements in terms of um philosophy or good faith arguments.
See, now now see here again, you're insulting.
I'm telling you what I think, not what you are.
Hang on, hang on.
I'm just telling you that if you're now accusing me of blocking you because you disagreed with me and you were making good faith arguments, that makes me look very in your view, right?
You're you're uh you're painting me as somebody who's very petty, can't handle disagreement, blocks people on a whim, and so on.
Did you understand that?
I uh honestly don't know what to believe as how I'm framing this conversation, or uh No, no, because it's not accidental.
No, no, no, d you you can't play dumb with me now, because it's not accidental.
So you are downplaying what you did to get blocked.
Because here's the thing, too.
And I I'll tell you this straight up, and this is going on, and I really appreciate this conversation.
It's very interesting, and I'm glad that we're having it.
It's it's a good conversation to have.
So let's say that you're right that you made good faith arguments, but you disagreed with me, and I'm so petty and maybe vindictive or whatever it is.
I'm I'm so impatient and volatile in vain that I can't handle differences of opinions, and I blocked you for making good faith arguments.
If that were true, why on earth would you want to be unblocked?
Aaron Powell I'm not saying I made good faith arguments, but uh I'm not arguing like I made good faith arguments in the first place.
What did you do that got you blocked?
I honestly don't know.
Uh I don't believe you.
Because now you've made you've you hang on, because you've hang on, hang on.
I can't believe it.
The reason I the reason I don't believe you is you're now making this is your third thing, right?
The first one was condescending About philosophy.
Well, first was condescending, then it was condescending about philosophy, and then it was condescending about specific philosophers.
Right.
And I can't remember that then it was something else, and and now it's I don't know.
So I think you do know, and I think you're trying to sidestep.
Listen, if you said something mean or rude, and you have you say this this Chinese father who's very aggressive and uses uh absolutely horrible language with regards to your mother, as you say, right?
She's fat, she's she's dumb, she's like illiterate, I think you said, which is a strange thing.
I can I can guarantee you that an Ashkenazi will not be illiterate in general.
So if if you got these bad habits of verbal aggression or abuse from your family, and you let rip on the internet, okay.
Look, we can all lose our temper, we can all be impatient, and particularly if you're a young person and you were raised in a very volatile and aggressive verbal combat kind of environment or verbal abuse kind of environment, then maybe you let rip and maybe you got harsh, and maybe you got mean.
Okay, it's not the end of the world.
It's not like you killed anybody, right?
So then you say, listen, man, I'm really sorry for getting real harsh on your your ex account or whatever.
Um I'm really gonna work on my temper and and all of that.
If you could unblock me, I'd really appreciate it.
Okay, that's that's fair.
But if I blocked you and I hear, you know, four different stories as to what happened, followed by an I don't know, then what I think you're trying to do is you're trying to get unblocked without admitting fault.
And if you will admit fault, and I did say sorry uh as one of my first sentences, I believe, in this fault.
My fault um for sounding I I mean, like my fault was like being mean or condescending in terms of arguments.
So what did you what did you say?
What did I say?
Uh I called philosophers sad mental masturbators besides that.
Oh, so you called me a sad mental masturbator?
Because I'm a philosopher, right?
Oh that's pretty mean.
Yeah, I'm totally sorry, that's fucked up.
Okay, it's I mean, it's not particularly pleasant.
Neither I mean, it's okay if it's funny, but it's not even funny.
And so so if it was the case, and I think I may vaguely remember this, so if you called me a sad mental masturbator, then why on earth would you complain if I blocked you?
If if that's what I am, if that's what philosophy is, and that's what philosophers are is sad mental masturbators, why would it be negative to not be in the on the feed of somebody who's a sad mental masturbator, if that makes sense?
Why?
Because honestly, I look up to you a lot.
So it's like you're one of the exceptions in terms of most philosophers.
So whenever we think about philosophers or most people getting into philosophy.
Um that's generally like what I think of it.
Like, so when you're sad.
So when did you remember this phrase?
I think a few months ago.
No, no, but because I asked you uh what did you do, and you didn't say, well, I called philosophers sad mental masturbators.
Like you you were kind of hedging and being kind of vague.
Well, condescending, blah, blah, blah, right?
I mean, that's just that's not condescending.
That's just straight up insulting, right?
Yeah.
I'll admit that's pretty fucked up.
Well, it's, you know, it's not the end of the world.
Uh, but so when did you remember?
And again, I appreciate the conversation, I really do.
So when did you remember why you got blocked?
Did you know it at the beginning of this?
Because you seem to have access to it now, right?
Um when did I remember this?
Uh right after I got blocked.
Because I think it was like 30 years.
No, no, in this conversation.
So when you when you called me up and you said like if you'd have said to me, Steph, you know, I loved it the entire time.
Okay, so you were lying in a way by omission, right?
And I said, well, what got you blocked?
And you're like, well, I was kind of condescending, and and uh I I may have insulted uh I may have been condescending to other philosophers or or whatever it is, right?
So if you'd have said at the very beginning, well, Steph, you're a philosopher, and I called philosophers sad mental masturbators, you can understand why I wouldn't view that as a particularly positive addition to the conversation on my channel, right?
Of course.
So what you wanted to do was you wanted to get unblocked without admitting fault.
And again, I'm not trying to grind your gears or anything like that.
I generally don't want to embarrass myself in front of your audience, that's all.
Okay.
So but the best way to not the best way, and here's this is another thing that that's really, really important about this aspect of the conversation.
So have you uh have you seen me be wrong and admit fault online?
I have not.
Okay, I I can tell you that I have, for sure.
So if I got something wrong, or if I had uh been mean to someone, and I said, listen, this is what I said, it's not true.
It's a bad it's a bad thing to say.
I'm absolutely going to work on my temper.
I'm really, really sorry.
Would you think better of me or worse of me?
Better.
Right.
So when you say, well, I don't want to embarrass myself, the best way to not embarrass yourself, in my humble opinion, is if you've done something wrong, which we've all done.
You, me, everybody listening to this, that he who was without sin cast the first stone, right?
I've not told you any names.
I'm not putting you down, and I'm I'm right there in the trenches with you because we all make mistakes and we can all be too volatile and I get all of that.
So the best way to avoid people thinking poorly of you, I think, is to say, Steph, I called philosophers of which you are one, sad mental masturbators.
I kind of caught a ban for that.
Uh it was wrong.
I actually do respect you.
And uh if you can help me with my temper, I'd appreciate it.
But if you don't want to get too personal, that's fine.
Uh and I'm really wrong.
Uh would I what do you think I would say?
Or what do you think people would view how how do you think people would view you if you owned up to making a mistake to being aggressive or kind of uh mean and apologized and took responsibility for it, how do you think people would view you?
A lot better.
That's a lot more well spoken in terms of an apology.
I didn't have that exact phrase in my mind.
Well, it's not an exact phrase.
You're hedging again, right?
Now, let me ask you this though.
In your family, and again, we don't have to get personal.
I understand you don't want to talk about that, and I respect that, right?
So, but in your family, what happens if you admit fault, if you admit that you were wrong or mean.
Honestly, I people generally only time like I've ever apologized.
Wait, have I?
Twice now I think about it in my family.
Actually, three times, but like that.
I want to call that like a real apology now that I think about it.
Um People don't really apologize regularly in my family.
We just like move past it and it's like I mean mean words.
Okay, so we currently say each other on a regular.
I'm sorry?
Like my family, like we curse and make fun of each other on a regular cell.
No, from what you I mean, maybe you do, but but from what you talked about with regards to your father, uh that's not that's not making fun.
Like calling your mother uh dumb and illiterate and fat and like that that's just vicious.
That's mean, right?
Yes.
And does your father apologize for that and say I've never heard him apologize?
So you've okay, so you've never heard your father apologize, right?
And so have you heard your mother apologize?
Yes.
Okay.
And what does your mother apologize for?
Um, I was like younger, she used to go on like tantrums and then like pinch her children randomly.
She pinched her children, okay.
Like hard, like painful?
Yes.
Okay.
And she apologized for that?
Yes.
Okay.
And uh, how old were you when she apologized for that?
Six.
Okay.
And are you in your twenties now?
Yes.
Okay.
So let's say anything closer than say close to 20 years ago.
No, I've never heard anyone in my family apologize for anything.
Closer.
Do you think that people in your family have things to apologize for?
I would say a lot.
And definitely.
Sure.
And and how do we know that?
Because they're human beings.
And human beings make mistakes.
And uh we should apologize when we make those mistakes, right?
Because an apology is a recognition that we did something wrong that was negative for the other person that was unjust and that we'll work to improve, right?
Yes.
Okay.
So uh earlier I was saying that if you grow up not speaking Japanese, then you don't know how to speak Japanese.
And unfortunately, you grew up in a family where people are too proud to apologize.
And so you don't know how to apologize, not because there's anything wrong with your brain, but because it's never been modeled for you and you've never seen it really happen.
And so how would you know how to do it?
Apologies are a skill, like playing guitar or, you know, uh uh doing the Macarena or cooking a flan, right?
It's a skill.
And, you know, we don't have this innate knowledge of of how to play guitar or how to make a flan or anything like that.
We we have to be taught.
We have to learn these things any more than I have innate knowledge of Japanese.
I have to grow up, I have to be taught, right?
So if you are in a family situation, and again, I appreciate the conversation, but if you're in a family situation where people don't apologize and they're mean, and they have things to apologize for, but they simply refuse to apologize.
How would you know how to apologize?
You'd have to study it, you'd have to learn, you'd have to read about it in the same way that if I grew up not speaking Japanese, I gotta go learn Japanese when I get older.
Does that make sense?
Uh yes.
I mean, I always thought apologies were as simple as saying I'm sorry, or self-flagellation, or giving someone a gift as well.
So then they're just trying to move past it.
So let me ask you this.
Your family's approach is to just move past it.
Has that solved the problems?
Has that made people act better in a consistent way?
I mean, in general, my family is like they just try to move past it.
It depends on how fucked up it really is.
Um, let me ask again.
Has has this move past it, pretend like it didn't happen, has that improved the behavior in your family over the years in a consistent way?
In some way.
Have people become nicer, have people become better, have people become more respectful, they become better at negotiating.
Not better at negotiating.
I I mean, kind of.
But it's like most of my family, I'm gonna be real with you.
Like all my siblings are like incels, so they're definitely not very good with people.
Okay.
Has your parents' relationship improved over the years by them not apologizing, taking responsibility and working to improve?
No.
Honestly, it's like, I'm like, damn it, like they probably should have gotten a divorce.
Okay, so so the idea that you and listen, I this is what this is what most people do.
Like they're still married.
Yeah, yeah, I get that.
Uh but this is what most people do when they do wrong, is they just kind of want to have a very brusque kind of thing and just move on.
And it doesn't work.
It doesn't work.
It's like putting makeup on a lump on your body, right?
It doesn't work.
Because in order to change, we have to acknowledge that there's a problem.
And we have to have the humility to say, I did something wrong, and I'm sorry, and it was unworthy, and I should, I'm gonna work to improve and so on, right?
So your father, if he's launching these, you know, horrible words that your mother should apologize and should go and take anger management courses so he learns how to deal more productively with his anger.
Or, of course, as you know, I'm I'm a huge fan of competent talk therapy, uh, particularly um uh Richard Schwartz's um internal family systems and other kinds of things.
So you have to acknowledge and you have to work to improve.
But if you just kind of blow past things without acknowledging what you did wrong, then excuses are promises of repetition and minimization is definitely a promise that you're just gonna do it again.
Oh, it's no big deal.
Oh, it doesn't matter.
Oh, why are you hung up on this, right?
You just want to move past it because you or your father or your mother or whoever, you don't want to stop and say, what did I do wrong and what does it mean?
And again, we all do wrong.
We can all I I mean, I I did a whole show uh praising Charlie Crook's patience, which I could certainly use a little more often.
I it's uh I have to keep working on it, right?
So there's nothing wrong with having deficiencies in social skills.
I think it's a shame.
And I think that one of the things that parents should really work on is teaching their children social skills.
Really, really important.
I mean, the fact that you have a bunch of brothers who are incels, to me, is a really tragic deficiency on the part of your parents.
Because when you get interested in if you're a young man, if you're a boy, you get interested in girls around the age of 13, 14, 15, then your parents should facilitate that.
Who do you like?
Here's how to talk to girls, here's how to ask a girl out, make sure you've got a nice haircut, make sure you dress well, make sure that you're got deodorant, you brush your teeth, like all of these kinds of things.
You know, here's what some girls like, you know, maybe learn to tell some jokes or be, you know, whatever it is.
Find some way to ensure or help your children be attractive to the girls.
And if your parents didn't do that, that's really terrible sabotage.
It's really terrible parenting to not work to make sure that your children know how to talk to the opposite sex, know how to talk to uh how to interact with in a positive way, understand what a date is, understand how to work with attraction and romance and all of these kinds of things.
And I'm gonna go out on a limb here, of course, correct me if I'm wrong.
Did your parents talk to you and your brothers about these matters starting from around puberty?
No, not at all.
Like East Asians, they definitely don't have the talk.
I I mean, like the the only talks we might have, like let's suppose if my brother, like one of them brought home like uh a woman of like a different race, like sure my dad might be upset with um being black because he's Chinese, so whereas my mom, like, didn't he marry?
Like my mom would be upset with um y yes, yes.
He he married like uh a white woman, but um uh Chinese people, they're racist towards other minorities.
No, no, I I get all of that.
I've I've been to China.
I understand pick nose foreign person is what I was referred to as.
But uh, okay.
So did your mother and your father talk to you guys about dating?
And and not at all.
Okay.
So again, the incel thing has a lot to do with parents who just haven't instructed their children on how to be interested, how to date, how to approach, how to deal with rejection, how to learn.
I mean, God, teach your kids how to dance, like anything, right?
Anything.
Teach teach your kids how to have confidence.
Teach your kids what to look for in the opposite sex, teach your kids how to vet for red flags, teach it like these kinds of things.
Teach your kids how to handle or manage the problem of uh excessive attraction.
You know, like uh let's say that you're a leg man and there's some your kids 20 and there's some 20-year-old girl around who's got legs for days, and it's like you might be a little susceptible to this, it might hit the lust thing or whatever, right?
You just kids need to be coached on uh uh everything.
Everything.
I mean, you know, parents spend a hundred times more time teaching their kids how to throw and catch a ball than they do on how to date, get married, and have kids.
And I think that's just it's really tragic, and it's uh it's a terrible dereliction of parenting responsibilities.
So uh listen, I'm uh do me a favor.
Uh you don't have to, right?
But um if you read uh uh you know you can go and look in whatever book works for you.
There's tons of books on on how to manage your temper, right?
And I've had to read them.
Uh I have a pretty volatile temper.
It's because I'm Irish, man.
Uh well, no, I just uh German, half Irish, half German.
It's a great combo.
But uh yeah, I'm happy to unblock you.
Just um, you know, do me a solid and you know, just read a book or two on anger management, on on temper, because the reason we get angry and act out is because we tell ourselves things.
And if we don't tell ourselves those things, then we don't tend to act out that much.
But it's you know, it's a it takes a little while to figure these things out, how to intercept the thoughts and how to act in a more rational and consistent and uh positive manner.
So you can just email me your username.
Uh you can email me at support at free domain.com, Support at free domain.com.
And listen, bro, really do appreciate the conversation, and I'm really sorry that you were so untutored in societal stuff, but you can you can absolutely learn these things in my opinion.
Alright, um, could I just tell you my, uh, other, uh, username?
If it's not hard to remember, I don't have a pen and a few.
Will May 98.
All right.
I think I can remember that.
All right.
Thanks, brother.
Appreciate the chat.
Thanks.
Appreciate you.
All right.
Take care.
Bye.
Very interesting.
I appreciate that.
All right.
Let's see one more fellow brother Gen X Dad.
Gen X. I don't hear much about Gen X these days.
It's all boomers and millennials.
What's on your mind, my friend?
Um I'm sorry.
Are you on a are you on a speakerphone in the loud in a car or something?
It's not great.
Can you pull over and uh give me a headset?
Yeah, give me a sec.
Yeah, no problem.
Or if you want me if you want to mute me for a second.
All right.
Muted.
Muted.
Hopefully he's not on the highway.
But yeah, just in general, if you're going to call into somebody's show, uh I was there.
Somebody called in the other day.
I had to cut all the callers from the other show because it was somebody called in from a mariachi restaurant or something like that.
It was crazy.
Is this better?
Uh yeah, I think that's better.
So yeah, go ahead.
Okay, perfect.
Sorry about that.
I wasn't sure if you were coming to me how and how soon.
Um Robert Barnes mentioned last night on his stream um the the Amish have been doing Sean and Shane for you know centuries.
Um it's a big part of one of the things that you've been advocating for for a while.
And by the way, I only discovered you after you reached out once we heard Scott Adams situation.
So I'm just discovering your work.
Um I've got a you know, a situation where I'm trying to figure out if I need to take the shun steps.
Um I don't want to, but I was wondering in terms of advice how to begin to have those conversations within um you know close circles over what's happened in the last week.
Uh sure.
Sure, okay.
Is this a conversation where you're coming in with knowledge about how the other person has behaved or without knowledge?
Uh with knowledge of them reaching out to uh people in a very aggressive way.
Okay, so what's um without sharing names or anything like that, of course, right?
What have you heard or seen that would have you want to talk to someone?
Well, what specifically have you heard or seen?
Well, my uh my child reached out to a neighbor about their for or what happened last day, upset with them because they believe that Charlie is a lot of the things that um you know there's been a lot of propaganda about what Charlie really is and my child is is you know bought it all.
So um crossing and very and uh I've tried to reach out to the child who does not want to interact.
Uh my wife and I have had some conversations, and I'm trying to find the grace and the tact to take to repair this relationship and also to uh redirect before uh you know I I feel like since she's uh situation she's in, she's the parallels of what the Robinson family went through.
Um it's it's it's a little too close to home.
You mean the alleged shooters family, is that right?
Well, just like getting caught up in something in college and and potentially being very pliable with some of these activist groups concerns me, and I've I have no way of knowing if if that's where the circles my child's running in.
And I'm I have no way to alleviate fear because I'm not giving getting inf any information telling me otherwise.
And she lives out of state.
Yeah, I was I was just gonna ask, I assume that this is a daughter, right?
Yeah.
Okay.
Did your daughter go to regular old government schools?
Yep.
And what sort of track did you keep of the curriculum to see how close or far it deviated from your values?
Oh, it's it's been deviated from my values uh from from the job.
So a lot of people just my daughter does not hold my values.
Well, hang on, hang on.
Hang on.
We don't know that in terms of her own independent thought, right?
So she's uh late teens, early twenties, we don't have to get specific, but I just wanted to get the rough age rage.
Okay.
So how old was your daughter when you first began to notice that the curriculum she was being taught in school was deviating from your values?
Aaron Ross Powell Like many, COVID really made it uh clear.
Some of the assignments and some of the um stuff, it's it's just a lot of you know a lot of uh what I would say, you know, ideology that's baked into the cake that I you can't argue with a teenager about it.
Well I'm not sure about that absolutely.
I mean, my daughter certainly has disagreements with me, and we have uh some pretty pretty good arguments about that stuff, and I've learned some stuff and she's learned some stuff.
Okay.
So what about when she was uh much younger?
In the single digits, early teens, uh what sort of stuff was she being taught?
Um I don't know if I did enough of of that.
Um just going to public school and um I I will say there was one uh situation where we moved and she had very, very good grades when we left the public school, and she did do a private school stint briefly and uh was pretty clear the uh grades that were one place once put in a little more competitive situation were not actually strong grades.
Um uh sorry, I mean I'm gonna have to just sorry, I'm just gonna have to be a bit strict and annoying here, and I apologize for that.
So did you lose track of how your daughter was being indoctrinated?
Absolutely.
Okay.
Why do you think that happened?
Because, you know, I mean, you you're helping your daughter with her homework, she's talking to you about school, and and I'm sure she would have mentioned the things that she's learning and you would have seen them in her homework.
So how is it possible that I assume you and if you're married, your wife lost track of what was being put into your daughter's head?
Um I don't think we were uh I I I don't think I was ever involved in the schoolwork.
Um You'd never helped her with homework.
I I my my job and my situation at the time um required a very early bedtime and a very early rise time.
And um as long as it seemed like she was doing okay grade-wise, I wasn't really getting caught too caught up in things.
Um my sorry, well so what what what what time would you go into bed and getting up?
Just out of curiosity.
Um sometimes seven, uh eight, eight o'clock, getting up at three in the morning.
Oh my gosh.
Okay.
Yeah.
Uh okay, but so uh you're getting up at three in the morning, so when are you when are you done in the afternoon?
I assume it's not right before you go to bed, right?
Um there's a stretch there where um it was sometimes 80-hour weeks.
But my my wife and I don't see the world the same either.
Our votes have probably canceled each other's out for the last 20-some years.
Okay, hang on.
And I appreciate that.
Now I want to get to that, but tell me a little bit about your 80-hour weeks.
How many kids do you have?
Two.
You have two kids, so for how long were you working 80 hour weeks?
Probably 20 years of my life.
So for 20 years of your life, you've been working 80 hours a week, 80 hour weeks?
Probably.
But why?
It was what the job required.
No.
No, that's not an answer.
Come on, man.
I did not set boundaries for myself.
I mean, was it because you wanted a lot of money?
I mean, 80 hours a week, I assume you made a fortune.
Easy come easy go.
I don't know what that means.
I mean, I know what it means, but I know what it means in your context.
Yeah.
No, it it it was it was good when it was good, and um when there's stretches of unemployment stretched, uh it's it's it it got tough.
Okay, so for how long were you unemployed?
Uh 31 months the first time.
Okay, so that's 31 months when you can keep track of your daughter's education.
Right?
That's over two and a half years.
Yes.
And so don't tell me all of this, well, I couldn't keep track of it because I was working too hard.
You had two and a half years.
Yeah, and that was um sorry, that was before third grade.
Um the the really long hours began about 13 years ago.
And um, you know, from 12 through like at least 2020 is when it was the the grind.
The unemployment was our nine to twelve.
Okay, so for like 10 years you're working 80 hours a week, right?
Yes, sir.
Are you a Christian man?
Yes, sir.
Okay, maybe I've misunderstood my theology.
But who is your primary responsibility to?
Your employer or your children?
My children.
So help me understand what the living heck was going on.
When I finally got work again, I was so fearful of being out because I was out for so long that I was gonna do anything I had to do to keep the job and keep the money coming in.
Because the money that was coming in when I was finally back employed was maybe uh a tenth of what I was making before.
So that's why I was trying so hard.
So you were working much harder but making 10%?
Yes, sir.
I mean okay.
So let's say you were making 50k, but before you were making half a million dollars a year, right?
So you must have had a lot of savings from working for years making half a million dollars a year.
I'm still trying to understand.
Sorry, go ahead.
No, you're right.
And uh we fully fund and um yeah.
But when you're I'm sorry, are you fully funded sorry?
You're breaking up a little bit.
Do you say you you fully fully funded college?
Yeah, college was fully funded.
So you know, um, but when you're unemployed for 31 months, it's it's a chapter even more savings.
So over the time that you were unemployed, and that's that's tough.
I'm not gonna brush past that like that's nothing.
But over the time that you were unemployed, did you get close, closer to your children?
I assume you did, right?
Yeah.
I would even go and read it at school and do stuff like that.
And that's what my shock was when the grades uh look like they were A's in one place or translating into C's at the next.
So you're you were home with your kids, unemployed, and I know you're looking for work and all of that, but you're home with your kids, and then you just kind of vanish because you go from being home with your kids for over two and a half years to spending 10 years working 80 hours a week, right?
Easy like that.
Okay, so did your kids say, Dad, we never see you, we miss you.
What's like we miss you?
Um I don't I don't remember having those with my youngest, probably more, but uh no, I don't remember those types of um.
Did your wife say it's not good for you to be working this hard because it's it's bad for me.
I miss you as your wife, and your kids miss you as kids.
We have to figure out some way to have you be home more.
Really?
Why do you think she didn't say that?
I think she knew it was important for me to reestablish myself in terms of uh my have having a job, being productive and yeah, but not for 10 years, bro.
No, no, no, not for 10 years.
Hang on, reestablish, okay.
Maybe you got a new job, you're unemployed for a while, so you put extra hours in at the beginning, but not 10 years.
Not for a tenth of what you used to make.
How was it okay for your wife and your kids that you were gone?
I don't have an answer for you.
What do you think the answer is?
I'm just trying to like I'm putting myself in your shoes.
Like if I if I said to my wife, oh yeah, I'm gonna spend 10 years working 80 hours a week, what do you think she'd say to me?
They'd be worth it.
No, she'd say, you're not doing that, by the way.
Because I didn't get married for a recently vacated warm spot on the bed.
I got married to spend time with my husband.
And I know you gotta work, but no, you're not doing 80 hours a week because your family needs you and I need you and I love you, and I'd rather we had less money and more you.
So why didn't she say that?
Um I don't know.
I Are you close with your wife, would you say?
We've had our ups and downs.
We're trying to, you know, I would say since uh 10 years ago and the way the election went, it's been uh it's been a challenge.
Um, you know, we see things differently.
And you know, it's it's it's tough.
Okay.
Who is supposed to be the spiritual leader in your household?
Well, uh a lot of a lot of what I spiritually believe uh my wife rejects.
Is she a Christian woman?
No.
Oh, she oh you m you married a non-Christian.
Yes.
Now, did you marry her when you weren't a Christian or she was a Christian?
I mean, how did you end up in a marriage with a non-Christian?
Um sort of an opposite attract thing, probably.
Well, no, because if you were that attracted to each other, she'd never surrender you for 80 hours a week to a job.
Great point.
So women in general, maybe specific to your case, may not be, I don't know, right?
But women in general except their husbands being workaholics when they don't want their husbands around that much.
So what was going on that she'd rather you be out of the house and away from your kids?
I don't necessarily think anything was necessarily going on as much as you know, she had her view of the world and her interests, and I had mine.
Um, we we had challenges.
Um she's been living with cancer for 20 years.
Um that actu and you know, incident actually brought us much closer together.
We were, you know, having challenges before that.
Um that kind of sorry, when you say living with cancer, you mean she's had cancer or she's been in remission?
Um yeah, I guess I don't know if it's technically remission, but well, no, I mean she's cute, right?
Not a hundred percent.
So she still has cancer.
It's a load's blood cancer.
It's a manageable blood cancer.
Okay, got it.
Yeah, I don't know that that made the relationship.
I don't know that that makes the marriage bad.
As you say, it can bring you closer together.
Now, did you miss her when you were working 80 hours a week for 10 years?
Did you Okay, so you missed her and you missed your kids.
So you wanted to work less, I assume, right?
Oh yeah.
So why not?
Yeah, gotta put food on the table somehow.
Oh, come on, man.
If you were able to make half a million dollars a year, there's no way that you have to work 80 hours a week for 50k or whatever it was, right?
40, 400, 80, 800, whatever it is, right?
There's no way that you have to work 80 hours a week to put food on the table.
If you have skills.
Well, it turned out to be that was the case.
I don't know if my skill set was um I was in a media situation, and you know, I don't know if my um I I don't know the the full reason, but for whatever reason it was very, very tough getting rehired in my industry, and I had to take a you know, major step down, and uh I feel like there may have been politics involved.
I don't know.
Um don't want to.
Oh, you mean if you're a conservative?
Oh yeah.
Okay.
Um, yeah, I I don't know.
Jane Trifield is don't how to take positive steps.
like my wife and I had a very productive chat um just yesterday.
And one of the things I was just trying to get to the the bottom of is good and evil.
And she doesn't believe in evil.
She believes there's a right and a wrong.
And I try to use some of the things I've learned from you, picking up our use kind of framed things, you know, trying to get her to define it a little bit more.
Um and just trying to understand, like, well, is there a you know for our child's A safety and for her future, I don't want her making some of the mistakes that we've seen some of these other folks making um that's gonna make them unemployable going forward.
So how best to reach out um and then what steps to take in terms of the approach that that might be productive and might be healing at whatever level for for all of us.
Was your wife involved in the moral education of your daughter?
I would say so, yeah.
I think they're so um from I think there was I wanted her to be involved, and it was no no no no no, she's gonna decide later.
I'm sorry, I you you broke up there the what's stuff?
Force it on her so I'm sorry, you're you're you're you I don't know if you can even hear me.
You're you're you're cutting up too much for me to follow what you're saying.
Yeah, I don't know if you can hear me or not, but you're gonna have to try and repeat it slower because I can't hear what you're saying.
I'll lose you.
Uh well, I'm still here.
Okay.
Yeah, you need to repeat what you said.
As far as the moral formation, I think my wife is more involved and more influential.
Okay.
And so your wife approves of the things that your daughter was taught or your kids were taught and you weren't around enough to push back or you didn't get involved enough to push back, or or anything like that.
Because I mean, basically you were gone throughout most of your kids' teenage years.
If you're working 80 hours a week, you're just kind of gone.
And it's kind of tough to try and take moral leadership now, since you kind of abandoned them just to some degree to be raised by your wife whose values you disagree with, to be raised by teachers whose values you disagree with, and the media and peers.
Right?
So in in the teenage years, there's a battle between parents and peers.
And parents certainly need to have a united front, which you don't have with your wife, because you have different values.
Um if you were gone for most of your kids' teenage years, then they got raised by teachers and peers and your wife.
And you stepped away from that for job security, for money, for whatever, right?
I mean so if you step away from moral leadership, then other people are gonna raise your kids.
And you know as well as I do that teachers are woke, uh especially government teachers, and it's even the case in the private school as a whole.
So teachers are woke, your wife is a leftist, and the media is leftist, and if your girl is hanging around with other girls, then girls have moved deadily to the left over the past 10, 15 years.
So I think what you need to do is find some way to apologize to your kids for not being there for them when they were teenagers because you were working so much.
Now, I genuinely can't believe that you had to work eighty hours a week to put food on the table uh if you used to make a lot of money.
I mean, and e even if you did have to work a lot, then you just spend less money.
I mean, if you had enough money to put your kids full freight through universities, then you had enough money to work less.
Now, why you'd want to send your kids to an arts degree In the modern world is incomprehensible to me.
I I cannot understand why you would want to send your kids to go get programmed by a bunch of crazy leftists in university and have them exposed to all of the drugs, the sex, the, you know, the there's terrible stuff that goes on at university these days, uh, that's just not a good plan.
So, you know, the mystery is not great as to why your kids have ended up in this kind of situation.
Absent male, and it could be female, could be the other way around, but sort of the typical example is that men tend to be more conservative, men tend to be uh smaller government, men tend to be higher responsibility, men tend to be less over empathetic, which can lead to being manipulated, and men tend to follow principles more than people and women a little bit more the uh the other way.
So if you have not been a uh moral leader within your family, and if you have abandoned your kids in a way to be raised in the increasingly leftist, semi-hysterical feminine uh path, and then you hand them over to crazy leftists in university, I don't think it's a single conversation that's going to fix it.
I think you have to look in your own heart and say, why did you abandon your kids to some degree?
Obviously, not 100%, but why did you abandon your kids and their moral education?
My guess, and I'm sorry our connection is so bad, you can of course always book a call-in show if you want at freedomain.com slash call.
But my guess would be something like this that you and your wife have a tenuous relationship, both because of differences in values and also because you were working a lot.
So you have a tenuous relationship.
And I think what happened is because of that tenuous relationship, you didn't want to get into conflicts about how to raise the children.
And so you withdrew from putting your values into the raising of your children so that you wouldn't get into conflict with your wife about the values the children were learning.
And so you went to work rather than teach your children your not yours, but the understanding that you accept of good and evil, right and wrong, moral and immoral.
And so because you have a tenuous relationship with your wife, you didn't want to get divorced, and in the scarce time that you had with your family, you didn't want to have a lot of conflict.
So you just withdrew.
And this is not a criticism, I'm just tra tracing the possible causality here.
You withdrew from being a moral leader in your family because you were afraid of getting divorced, you're afraid of getting into fights with your wife, and you were afraid of alienating your children, and you were afraid of having the little time you had with your family turn into conflict.
And so you withdrew from that.
And now the consequences of that failure of leadership or that withdrawal from leadership are showing up.
to try and reestablish that leadership now is tricky to say the least.
And I think it needs to be acknowledged, though, that you did turn over your kids to be raised by people whose values you don't agree with.
And I don't know how much you heard of that, if if that makes any sense.
No, I heard all of it.
I heard all of it.
And I I think there's a lot of uh Well, I'm sorry, uh he's uh he's just gone all robot on us, so I'm afraid I'll have to stop the conversation here.
But yeah, just in general, I mean, um I I hope that you can um repair recover things with your family, but it's uh tough to be gone.
And uh yeah, it's uh it's too too coming and going.
So I think I'll have to to end the call here, but I really do appreciate your time and and listen, I I love the fact that people are able to call in and talk about such a wide variety of topics.
It really does mean the world to me, and I I hope I do right with everyone's uh confidences and and secrets and all of that, and if there's anything I can do better, obviously please please let me know if there's anything I can do better uh or improve in the way that I communicate with people or the value that I provide, I'd love to hear from you.
And you can email me at support at freedomain.com if you can help out the show at free domain.com slash donate, I would really appreciate it.
And uh you can check me out on YouTube and love you guys.
Thank you for these great conversations.
Stay peaceful, stay honest, stay open, stay strong, and I'll talk to you soon.
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