Spanking Debate: Community Feedback! Twitter/X Space
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Yeah, I guess it makes sense to put the mic on.
Sorry about that.
Yes, I am just doing a little bit of a post-debate review analysis on iHypocrite channel.
I debated with Malcolm about peaceful parenting and spanking.
And I suppose it turned into anarcho-capitalism.
So if you could let me know what you think, strengths and weaknesses, mostly the weaknesses would be the most helpful to get a hold of.
I would love to hear what it is that you have to say.
And James, I was going to say, if you wanted to jump up front here and let me know what you think, can you chime in?
And yeah, I'd love to sort of hear what you have to say.
Yeah, it was an interesting debate.
It never quite goes the way that you think it's going to go as a whole.
There we go.
All right, James from the outside.
What were your thoughts?
Hey, so yeah, I thought that was really interesting.
And I'm not sure if I have too much in the way of weaknesses, but man, you've really got him hysterical at one point.
It was just, I mean, not like you got him, but like he got really unhinged at one point.
That was just like.
Well, I mean, that's around the family stuff, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, I mean, that's where all the whole thing, like this, not, I thought what was really good was it, you know, not judging, sorry, forgiving his parents, but not forgiving his kids.
And, you know, he just couldn't keep his composure, which was, yeah, like you said, all around the family stuff.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And of course, the idea is that if you accept violence within the family, you can't conceive of not needing violence in society as a whole.
And I think that one certainly seemed to like it's really fascinating to see the theories, at least for me, sort of manifest in that way.
Yeah.
And yeah, so that's exactly what you would expect from that.
And so see it sort of come to life in that kind of way that, well, you want to use violence in the home.
And look at that.
You then need also violence in society as a whole.
And you can't even conceive of how you can't conceive of how your individual family could run in the absence of coercion.
And you can't imagine how society could run in the absence of coercion.
And yeah, just seeing how that sort of plays out is pretty interesting.
I didn't understand some of his, like there was a lot of straw manning.
Yeah.
And that's, it's fascinating to see that happen in real time because normally there's, you know, in Twitter and all of that, there's these sort of time delayed and all of that.
But, you know, it seems like, or you appear to be, or like you could see this, this straw manning just kicking in right away.
And this lack of listening is so, it makes debate virtually impossible when people just can make up whatever they want from what you're saying.
And how can you respond to that?
I don't know, other than pointing out that it's happening.
Yeah, yeah, I'm not sure.
I mean, I guess if there was any kind of, I don't know what to say other than you mentioning that if there's a weakness, then you're finding a way to address that.
But again, I don't have any particular suggestions.
Like I said, like to point it out, because how do you get someone to respond to you when they're not responding to you?
I'm not really sure.
Yeah, I mean, I certainly didn't say that he seems like a pretty good dad.
There was a, and so he was interviewed by The Guardian.
I don't, I guess you know some of this stuff.
He was interviewed by The Guardian, and his two-year-old son was in the restaurant where he was being interviewed, and his son was, I think, rocking on his chair or something.
And he turned and smacked his son across the face and say loud enough that it could be heard on the recording.
It's like, well, recorders are pretty sensitive, so I don't know how much that means.
But is it dangerous?
Is it necessarily wise to bring your children to an interview with a reporter?
Yeah, well, I mean, I put that into the research as well.
And I mean, I saw, like, I saw the stuff about his upbringing and just sort of this really, really brutal kind of like, you know, basically imprisoned by the state, essentially.
And anyway, in the course of that article, I did have a thought.
I did put this into the research itself, but I had the thought later.
It's like, yeah, I mean, the reporter in writing the story was kind of like a fainting violet about it.
You know, so it seems, I guess it's illegal in Pennsylvania or something like that.
But it's like, I don't think she would have said the same thing if it was like a brown Muslim that did it.
You know, I don't get seriously.
Oh, no, no, yeah, of course.
I get that.
Yeah, that makes sense.
And did you, were you following any of the comments?
Because I was just in there.
I think it was in StreamYard, so I didn't get to see any of the comments that were kicking around.
But of course, nice to see a lot of people from New Hampshire there.
Not too shocking or too surprising.
Yeah.
The New Hampshire comments were funny.
So there's a good number of people who like, like in a lot of these things, there's people that aren't going to be convinced.
But I didn't track to see if anyone became convinced through the course of the debate because I didn't realize, you know, there's a lot of comments going past.
But there were people that are definitely like, you know, libertarian boomer, which you've seen before, I'm sure, you know, it's like, you know, like they're not interested in the NAP or anything like that.
And some people were saying we got really off track when talking about the free society stuff.
But, and I was trying to remember, track back how that got into that part of the conversation.
And I think was it you, you had said something about this sort of this cycle.
Aren't you tired of the cycle?
But was there something before that?
Yes.
Because he's like, well, you know, at the beginning of societies, they're harsh on their kids.
And it's like, yeah.
And then later in their societies, they neglect their kids, which makes the kids neurotic.
And like, aren't you tired of this cycle that no civilization could last more than 250 years before it collapses because of violations of the non-aggression principle?
How about something else?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
You know what?
And actually, because I was, because I started to see the comments and started people sort of doing that little sort of sniping, you know, not sniping stuff.
It's like, oh, it's off track.
It's like, but no, you know, that it's not, not at all, because Malcolm is making his justifications for hitting his kids on this basis.
Yeah.
Sorry?
He's Roman from my novel, right?
I mean, obviously, but slightly more fake glasses.
But yeah, he's he's Roman from my novel, which is, well, the world is tough.
So you gotta, you gotta, you gotta be rough on your kids.
And it's like, well, no, the world is rough because you're rough on your kids, right?
It's this ended cycle, right?
And this idea that, you know, well, I, you know, there's a lot of growing criminality in the world, so I got to teach my kids how to fight.
It's like, go tell that to Daniel Penny, right?
That's not, that's not, that's not going to be a thing that they're going to be able to do.
They just try and avoid that kind of stuff because there's no good outcome from that kind of stuff because the state is generally siding with the criminals.
So yeah, so I found that.
I mean, listen, good for him for having a bunch of kids.
And again, he seems like a good dad in many ways, but oof, this thing with the parents is, I mean, I can't conceive of hating the woman I had a bunch of kids with so much that I'd rather my kid go to government child jail Then do better.
And yeah, because he's like, well, but they grew up in the 60s and 70s, like, hello, so did I.
It's not a right.
So this determinism is really interesting that his parents aren't to blame because everything's deterministic, but his kids need to be punished for bad behavior or wrong behavior or whatever.
I couldn't quite figure out what it was a real slippery, gassy, kind of goofy thing that was going on right at the center there.
Because, like, why was he just hitting his kids because they were doing stuff that was dangerous?
Or was he hitting his kids because they were doing stuff that was wrong?
Or like, I couldn't quite figure it out.
Well, because it's not moral instruction.
Is he just training it like you train a dog?
Sorry, go ahead.
No, no, that's totally fine.
When I looked, when I was looking through this, you know, sort of digging.
Oh, by the way, did you get a chance to look through the research?
And was that good stuff?
Oh, it was great.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Very appreciative.
Good, good.
So I didn't see why, I mean, other than the obvious sort of, it's obvious to us, like emotional sort of drivers for this, you know, forgiving his parents and then inflicting it on his kids.
I don't know what was between him and his wife that said, well, we should start hitting our kids because they gave an example of having been on a safari and watching how tigers were sort of lions with a lions lions and tigers.
Yeah, these big cats, essentially, giving immediate quote-unquote feedback.
And he makes this evolutionary case.
Yeah.
Which is it's not because I understand from our perspective, like, well, I mean, you're making, you're telling these kids to make different choices.
So that's all about free will, but everything's deterministic.
But there's a kind of deterministic through line if you're like, well, this is the evolutionary path.
Right.
So it's not, obviously, there's a contradiction in there because it's like, well, you got to, you got to hit your kids because otherwise, you know, they're just going to, well, no, that's not quite it.
But it's like, it's like, there's this, you know, this, this, this is how things should be, but this is how we got here.
What you mean?
Sorry, man.
Hang on.
I, you lost me here.
What do you mean, things?
What should be?
I get the evolutionary thing, but what's the should be?
Oh, um, I don't know if I, I don't know if I can make the case for it.
I think that's what he's trying to say, which is like, we are, no, actually, you know, I don't know.
You know, I'll take, I'll take, I'll take a, I'll just say, I'll just confess ignorance of that because I don't know enough about what he talks about and the sort of things he talks about to say what he is trying to do, except for to find a way to bring his, like, create a culture that his kids will pass on.
But yeah, just sort of like, this is the way things have been, but not like, like, there's a big old leap to should be.
And I don't know how to bridge that.
So, yeah.
And what's the should be do you think that he was working with?
Let me see.
Let me see.
Well, I mean, from what he said in the debate, he said this at least once, probably think more than once, about people should be afraid of his kids.
Yeah.
And I don't know that I've read this anywhere.
So this is, I don't think he said this in debate, but it kind of like we should return to a more direct and essentially brutal kind of parenting.
But that's not necessarily prescriptive of like where we want to go.
That's just sort of like his, you know.
It's a kind of naturalistic fallacy, right?
Which is, and I understand that because, of course, you know, the communists say that we can somehow reinvent human beings so that they don't care about profit and will work as hard no matter whether they get benefit or not.
And we say, well, that's not natural.
And so his argument, I think, goes something like, well, we were raised with being cuffed around and hit and bopped as he calls it.
And so we can't drift too far from our origin.
And I get, so it's a naturalistic fallacy, which is to say, this is how we evolved, right?
And therefore, dot, dot, dot, right?
And so this is why I said, okay, so then if it's naturalistic, then, you know, Genghis Khan or rapists, they're spreading their genes.
He says, no, no, no, no, it's more about culture.
And I should have, of course, have replied that Genghis Khan is still on the Mongolian currency.
So he's still quite a strong effect on their culture.
But that point escaped me at the time.
That's what I was trying to understand is that is it genetic?
Because it's like, well, no, because if you die out, then, you know, it doesn't matter, which, of course, we can certainly agree with.
But is it genetic?
Is it cultural?
He seemed to lean more towards the cultural side of things, but there's no moral content to the culture that you're spreading, right?
Which is why I said, well, but the Aztecs, the thousands and thousands of years.
And he's like, well, yeah, but then they fell to the conquistadors or whatever.
It's like, well, yeah, but still thousands and thousands of years, they were sacrificing children and that helped them.
Because, you know, once you're into the circumcision thing, circumcision is good if it helps replicate your culture.
It's very Nietzschean.
It's Nietzschean and Darwinian.
It's Darwinian, but more along the lines of whatever brutality helps perpetuate your culture is good.
Because if you can't perpetuate your culture, you die out or something like that, if that makes sense.
Isn't it fair to say it's like dark triad?
Like Machiavellian, maybe?
It is an amoral kind of whatever wins.
And that's why I say it's sort of Nietzschean.
It's like the will of power, right?
So if something is beneficial to your standard, then it's the good.
We think of good as moral, but it's good for.
So if it's good for the culture to circumcise, and of course you can say, well, the Jews, you know, 5,000 years or whatever, right?
6,000 years.
And they're circumcising.
So you say, ah, and this is why he wanted to, I think, bring the Jewish question in, right?
Which is that he says, look, they circumcised their kids.
Their cultures lasted a long time.
And so it only matters in the long run if your culture survives and flourishes.
And whatever you have to do to your kids to have it survive and flourish is really the only thing that matters.
Because if you go below your replacement rates and you just get taken over, then your standards don't matter, which of course is quite a strong argument in that this is Roman's argument, right?
Which is that you can be as nice as you want, but nature is cruel and you're just setting yourself up for failure.
And so, I mean, it's an argument from practicality that makes sense from a long-term standpoint, that if you have a brutal tribe and you have a tribe that's super nice to its children, and the brutal tribe, because it breeds a lot of sociopaths, takes over your tribe, then your niceness just gets weeded out.
And what was the point?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Which again is Roman's argument from my novel, The Future.
So I get all of that, but that's my wheelhouse is not what may be memetically survivable over thousands of years based upon violations of the non-aggression principle.
That is not my wheelhouse.
It's sort of like a doctor.
And you say, oh, yes, well, you know, in some sort of horrible eugenics argument, which I would completely disagree with, you say, oh, you know, but you're intervening too much and you're letting the weak die off.
Right.
And the doctor says, look, I'm not an agent of Darwinian evolution.
I'm a doctor.
I'm supposed to keep people healthy.
That's my job.
And I am a moralist.
So I have to deal with good and evil, right and wrong, virtuous, non-virtuous.
I can't deal with, or I won't deal with evolutionary meme warfare or culture survival, because then there's no such thing as morality.
And this is what it was interesting because I couldn't get him to, you know, he said, well, I have my morality, but I can't convince anyone of my morality, which is sort of odd because if he can't convince anyone, then his morality fails by definition.
Sorry, because it dies with him, right?
It dies with him.
Well, he can't convince his kids either, which if he can't convince his kids, yeah.
So that's why he's got to hit him.
I mean, it is again, I enjoyed the debate.
I thought it was fun and I thought it was rambunctious, which was enjoyable.
And, you know, it's been a while since I've done the sort of ANCAP 101 stuff.
So I thought that was interesting.
And it's, and he says, no, no, no, I've studied all of this stuff.
And I'm like, really?
Because you're asking the most basic questions.
You can't say that you studied Japanese and then ask what the word for a house is.
Like, it doesn't really make much sense.
So I wasn't sure that that was the most upfront thing.
But, you know, my, and I've thought about this, you know, like, should I just throw my lot in and try and work to maintain and whatever's going on.
But for me, it's like, you know, if our society can't become good, I mean, does it really deserve to last?
You know, if virtue is abandoned by the society for the sake of convenience, I mean, I can make my case for the virtuous stuff.
But if, you know, if he's right and, you know, this, you know, the society that is isn't going to make it, I'm not going to, you know, beat up my kid for the sake of maybe that help society down the road because I don't believe it would.
And, you know, if we don't make it in this cycle of history, at least the ideas and the arguments are there for the next cycle of history, which is, of course, a very long view of things.
But I just, I cannot get to the place where I'm like, well, let's just start doing evil for the sake of genetics and culture or whatever it is, because then now and then we're no different from the Aztecs.
And what's the point of any of this been?
And you brought in the slavery analogy, which is like basically you tie it, look at what Malthus was going on about.
And he was talking about not being able to feed people in the age of slavery just when I mean, he was in the mid-19s, right?
So that was after agricultural revolution started, but it just started to pick up, right?
Yeah, it certainly was not, certainly it was nowhere near the productivity that we have now.
Right.
Right.
But I'm trying to remember.
Did Malcolm himself even have a response to you mentioning slavery like as a moral sort of approach?
Or like, like, he seemed to dodge that one.
Although I tell you, I thought they had me by the short curlies at one moment, which was when I said, you know, how peaceful it was growing up in London.
Ah, but they were beating their kids, right?
And I was like, you know what?
That is really, hang on a sec.
I know it's not right, but I don't know how.
And you just, what you have to do is just wait for that.
You just have to wait.
Like if you're squeezing an orange and suddenly something comes out the top, I just have to let the question squeeze me until my brain panics and spicks up something helpful.
Because it's not the kind of thing that I can sort of reason through in the moment.
But, you know, my, my, I wouldn't say my faith, but my belief in the value and validity of the non-aggression principle is so strong and so validated over so many decades that I'm like, okay, I know it's got to do with the violations of the non-aggression principle.
And it's true that things were pretty brutal in families back then.
Oh, yes, that's right.
Because they were beating people.
It leads to faith in the government.
Faith in the government leads to the disruption of society and the decay of the family.
Ah, there we go.
So it's like, so I was, I thought that I thought I was like the guy in pulp fiction, Samuel L. Jackson, just gets shot all around, but doesn't actually hit him.
Like, hey, did I, I gotta have a hole in me somewhere here?
What's going on?
You were not kidding about him being like him being a Roman, essentially, being Roman.
Yeah, yeah, which is funny because I always thought that, you know, I mean, my image of Roman is like this really gruff, tough guy.
And this guy looks like a stiff breeze would blow him off a mountainside.
But, you know, obviously a good debater and kind of knows what he's doing and very passionate about things and all of that.
And, you know, the fact that he's got a bunch of kids is great.
Yeah.
And, you know, the fact that he wrestles with the sun is great.
And of course, I do wonder, and I'll never know directly if I have grandkids, maybe, but what it's going to be like.
And Mike Cernovich talks about this quite a bit, that having kids is like a completely different animal, so to speak, right?
They're just wild.
Like my daughter would not climb bookcases, but clamber monkeys, right, boys will do that kind of stuff.
And maybe I'll find out with grandkids, but it is also a big question.
I'll never know.
It's like, well, what if I'd had a son or a boy and a girl?
Or, you know, I'm like five myself, but that wasn't in the cards.
But yeah, it's interesting to imagine.
Again, I know Mike Cernovich is talking about like, it's just wild how different the boys are from the girls.
And I certainly believe that.
And I accept that for sure.
But so yeah, he seems like a pretty good guy.
But I guess at some point, the amorality, I think, is going to be a problem for the kids.
Because they're going to say, why?
And he's going to say, well, you can do, like, logically, he's going to have to say, you can do what you want if it maintains and spreads the culture.
And it enhances the spread of the culture.
That is a very tricky standard to give to kids because it's pretty subjective, right?
I mean, you can say just about anything that you could do that would be kind of wrong.
You can say, oh, no, but it spreads the culture.
Don't worry, Dad.
It's going to spread the culture.
And that's not a pretty good standard to have for kids.
And, you know, a point that I didn't get to, which I guess I can discharge here, although I think I'll go over the research that I did maybe on a show, maybe tomorrow.
But what I wanted to get to was: adults can't agree on morality.
How dare we inflict it on two-year-olds?
You know, like one of the reasons that I worked so hard on UPB was like, I want to become a dad.
And wanting to become a dad means I'm going to have to explain morality to my kids.
And so UPB was like, I can't explain, like, if you can get a PhD in ethics and still not know very clearly what virtue is, right?
Then how on earth is it possible for us to say, oh, yeah, we should totally inflict this on kids.
Yeah, yeah, kids have got to know what right and wrong is to the point where we'll hit them.
When you give an adult a trolley problem and they just get a thousand-yard stare.
You know, like we're, oh, yes, but, you know, what if somebody's starving and they want the loaf of bread?
And what if what if someone's wife is dying and copyright and right, there's some medicine and do they steal from like adults can't even figure out what right and wrong is.
What's the balance between compassion and property right?
Like we can't figure out what the hell morality is.
And then we'd sit there and hit kids for not doing the right thing.
It's like, then it's the line from Hamlet, you know, if every man is treated after his just desserts, there's none that will escape the whipping or something like that.
So, you know, I was going to point out that, you know, I was kind of hypocritical at a show the other day when I was crabbing at some guy for being passive-aggressive about the collecting thing when I called collecting kind of fake and gay.
And it's like, yeah, okay, that's or gay and retarded or something, something that was that was kind of a goofy off-the-cuff comment.
And he's like, man, I had to say, yeah, you know what?
You're right.
I'm sorry.
That was that's fair play.
So, even I was being not even I, I was being kind of hypocritical at that point, taking offense when I'd been giving offense, as if I hadn't been giving offense.
So, do I get hit now?
Because even after all of this time studying philosophy, I can still do something goofy and hypocritical.
Well, no, right?
So, and the free speech thing I thought was interesting as well.
The free speech was very interesting because he's like, Well, making people feel bad is worse than hitting them.
So, honesty that results in people's feelings being hurt is worse than hitting them.
Verbal violence is bad or worse than physical violence.
And then he had the nerve to call me sounding like a progressive, like, bro.
Anyway, right.
All right.
Does anybody else have thoughts?
Again, happy to get your feedback if there's anything I can do better or different.
Did you think that the level of decent humor, but also being quite assertive and all of that?
I think I did ask you to come as tits once when he was just sort of yelling at the top off at the top of his lungs about things.
You absolutely did.
Yeah, I was just like, bro, come on.
You're supposed to be, you're supposed to be a Spartan tough guy and you're getting like upset about an argument.
Like, where's this, where's this incredible spark-like certainty and rigor and strength from your tough childhood, right?
Why are you getting all hysterical, it seemed like to me, over an argument and all of that.
And that did seem but like, you know, if somebody's going to say, you know, my tough childhood made me tough and we got to be tough, like the founders of Rome.
And it's like, your argument is making me hysterical.
It doesn't seem to quite track as far as I can see.
And I don't know if people notice that in terms of like, if you're going to say that adversity makes you tough, then you should be able to handle an argument without kind of half losing your shit, right?
But anyway, that's neither here nor there.
And also, it seems it's like a debating style.
And maybe I do it too.
I don't know, right?
It's hard to see from the outside, but this bit was like your little utopia, you know, that kind of stuff, just these little digs, you know, like, well, I have to deal with human children.
It's like, yeah, yeah, okay, we're dealing with human beings.
I think that's understood.
Like, just that kind of stuff.
That is, it's almost, it feels like it's more now even than it used to be.
But this sort of bitchy passive aggressive stuff is, you know, because I, you know, I said, hey, man, you've got the best of intentions.
You're a good dad.
I'm not including you in the abuse.
Your children.
I never said your children are traumatized.
I'm sort of trying to be positive.
And that's sort of stuff that I really do believe.
But just this, these little digs that just constantly flowing in.
It's really tough because, you know, it puts you, at least for me, kind of puts me in a difficult situation because I either keep pointing them out, which looks petty, or I let them roll by, in which case, I look weak.
But speaking of passive aggression, I'm just kidding.
Jared, if you want to unmute, what's on your mind?
Can you hear me?
All right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
Awesome.
I don't have too, too much to add, just my praise.
I thought it was an awesome debate.
I can really tell that you're not trying to, you're trying to find new arguments, new ways to approach these problems.
And not just that, but a new, but different approaches to the debate themselves.
This was, to me, a mix of like fun, warm, serious with these topics as well, but you got the points across.
You were playful at times.
You were, you know, stern, authoritative at times.
Magnificent, man.
Just, I've said it before, it's great to see you at your craft.
And you're just, you're awesome at it.
And I really, really appreciate it.
It was a great, great debate.
I love all around the place.
Like, whenever he was getting hysterical, you're like, oh, my dad.
I'm like, oh, oh, it's wonderful.
And oftentimes you could laugh and joke with him.
And the uh, oh, something that didn't get brought up yet is I know when the moderator stepped in to bring up some points, which I it didn't bother me.
It was interesting to see.
I'm glad to see you answer those questions for the audience, for the world.
Um, so yeah, that's generally what I got is just praise for the debate.
I think it was awesome.
Oh, yes, so I'm up here in New Hampshire.
Got the there's uh the LPH, the libertarians up here, and um, of the they know that I'm very much like Freedom Ain't like libertarians.
I'm like, it's a coin toss.
What kind of libertarian?
Um, but they know me, they know I'm in the freedom world, and I had uh of your content, the things you do.
This is one of those moments where people were scheduling uh like watch parties to do that.
I didn't go to it, but I saw that they were organizing that, you know, to have conversations and debates around it.
And then people that I know in the sphere, like the person who was uh doing the New Hampshire messages, was messaging me, and we were joking about that back and forth.
And uh, yeah, joking about what uh he had to like try to promoting uh I think they call it like peaceful breeders here in New Hampshire or something like that.
It's a bit too hidden for my phrasing, but I like the principle, right?
Right.
Yeah, I was, I had a good joke, I completely forgot to use it.
Something about you can't claim spanking is self-defense from the initiation of the use of force against children unless you count stepping on Legos and hurting your feet to be the initiation of the use of force on the part of your children.
Uh, so that was the only other thing that I kind of forgot to get across.
And yeah, the amount of research I did, just in case we were going to go into studies and all of that, but yeah, sort of what I said: look, if there's a peaceful alternative, wouldn't that be better?
And he couldn't answer that.
And that's why I went through all of this stuff.
Like, I did quite a bit of the latest research, like 90% improvement, 90 plus percent improvement in these behaviors without spanking and better, way better than spanking.
So, so that's interesting, right?
Because that's the big question: is okay, if you can do it peacefully and it's it works according to the latest studies, why wouldn't you?
Because you're Roman and you've got to uh you've got to keep that that keep that going on, you know, like this guy, like you mentioned earlier, like he was uh the stereotypical, like you nailed it.
Like, you know, we say, like, um, as a non-NPC, I can simulate an NPC.
And so, not to put this guy down, he's thought about his stuff, thought about these things a lot, but uh, for these particular things that I think people are ultimately wrong about, they fall into just kind of like an NPC automation, whatever, trauma response, whatever it is.
And um, like you nailed Roman with this guy, and vice versa.
Well, I think if I were to put on my cheap psychologizing hat, which is probably nonsense, but the sort to sort of roll it around in my head that I might as well discharge and see if they're of any value.
It's that this guy can't have moral principles because that would condemn his parents.
So, he has to say what's valuable is the continuity of the line because that's what his parents did by having so many kids.
So, whatever my parents did is the good.
And if my parents hit me, I have to hit.
If my parents yelled at me or whatever, right?
And so, because his parents had so many kids, then he's defined the expansion and continuation of the line as the key good thing because that's what his parents did.
And I can't imagine at 13 being handed over to the state by two parents because to like, like, how can you, how can you deal with that?
How can you process that your parents would be so selfish and destructive that they would rather hand you over to the state than stop abusing each other verbally through lawyers in some sort of horrible divorce?
Like they're both saying each other are unfit parents.
And then I'm sure that, you know, I obviously said these are public records.
I haven't read them, but I'm sure that it wasn't just the judge who said, that's it.
I'm taking the kids and putting them in kid jail, right?
I think it was like, look, if you guys can't come to a resolution, if you keep slinging all this mud at each other, then the net net is going to be your kid's going to go into a juvenile facility.
Now, it seemed like Foster, I wasn't sure if it was because like kid jail because of because he was acting out in some manner or something like that.
But I assume that the judge said to his parents, you have to work to resolve this, or I'm putting your kid in this system, this pretty awful system.
And the parents would not back down.
And they were told, I'm sure they were told by the judge, you've got to stop attacking each other in this ferocious way because I can't give the kid to either of you because parental alienation is going to happen for sure.
And so if you can't come to a resolution, your kids go into kid jail.
And they were like, yep, okay, off he goes.
Like, that's wild to me.
I, I, I can't even express, you know, the contempt that I would have for that kind of perspective because, you know, parents do have to put their egos aside and do what is best for their kids.
And this is like, wow, that is really, really digging into hating on each other to the point where your kid at the age of 13 gets naked from the family structure and dumped in some government system.
It's like, wow.
And to not criticize that at all, to not, I mean, he could not take the moral judgment.
That to me is a real shattering of bond.
And you can't get to principles if, and it also says to me that the parents still can't handle criticism because I think that's why people, I mean, people don't want to criticize others if it's going to result in some absolute disaster.
Now, he could say, look, what I've learned from my parents is you don't criticize people.
It's like, but he was criticizing me a lot.
Some of it, you know, some of it was just sort of pulled out of thin air, right?
And that's fine.
It's like, I'm not made of glass.
I don't mind the criticism.
That's fine.
But it's just kind of funny where me advocating for peaceful parenting is someone that he's going to call like bad and wrong or whatever.
But his parents who put him in kid jail at 13 are great.
Like, I don't know how people hold those opposing thoughts in their head.
Sorry for the this guy is interesting in an aspect of he's he's very unabashed, very direct.
And sometimes I'm like, oh, this could be really interesting because he seems like he possibly was maybe really curious about moral positions and things like that.
But no, he has thought about this a lot.
It means very much.
I mean, you kind of very honest and directed that it, like will to power Nietzschean, whatever, like, you know, evolutionary ends justifies the means in terms of like, you know, where morality doesn't matter if your species is gone, you know, kind of thing.
I'm of the side that I believe peaceful parenting, philosophy, principles, all of these things produce a far more robust individual and society, you know, family sharing, all that stuff.
Like, I think this is the better evolutionary path.
But I once you've given away to, well, if I can see my lion dying, then anything's on the table.
Like, where's the boundary of that?
What's the line to that?
And like, we've seen this so many times with people that if they don't have some kind of principle to go by, and I can't accept that as a principle that, like, if I perceive enough threat, anything's on the table.
You know, or is that like you're, to me, I can't see anything different between that and like, that's the root of a leftist.
Like whatever gets me the power, whatever, you know, gets whatever gets me the end.
And then at the same time, I personally, I just categorize that with evil.
I can't see a difference when I look at it, you know, broadly enough.
So, sorry, yeah, a bit of a bit of a ramble rant there, but this guy is interesting in that in that way.
Like, he's a very modern, to me, like Wilde-Power Nietzsche.
And like, he could say, he says he's moral, but I don't see any moral principle.
Like, as soon as he perceives enough threat, the principles can go out the window.
You know?
Well, and the leftists, of course, ally themselves with those who've done demonstrable wrong and against those who are arguing for something better.
Right.
And so, and so he's like, his parents, like, I'm not saying they're stone evil, I don't know, but this is not great parenting to be so dysfunctional in your divorce and so hostile and full of hatred to each other that the government takes your children from both of you.
That's that's not good.
That's that's pretty bad.
But that he can forgive.
But, but heaven forbid, I talk about a stateless society, right?
Like that's that's bad and wrong.
And, you know, I'm wrong.
And right.
So he can oppose me, but he can't oppose his parents.
And that to me is that that's the kind of inversal of moral values that I find I find pretty wild.
Yeah.
Did you notice how just before he got ostensibly offended and you called him out on this?
And then he called you out later on, or he's getting ostensibly offended where he framed you as causing his trauma or something, something along those lines.
Sorry, I'm not going to make the exact details.
Sorry, Jared, you're kind of fading in and out.
Oh, sorry.
Can you hear me better now?
Yeah, go ahead.
So he seemed offended or was kind of calling you out on framing it as he was causing trauma to his kids.
And of course, you corrected him.
But then as soon as you described how you would never punish your daughter, he got like the most pearl clutchiest face on.
Like, oh, oh, that's, I wouldn't, I don't think that's a good idea, you know.
Well, no, he said people, and that's, that's a sad argument.
There's a lot.
There's few people who would think that's a good idea.
It's like, and like face and body language, he got pro clutchy.
I was like, oh, Palm.
They're like, you're just getting like a bit out of shape about the impression that he might, that Steph might say that, you know, hitting is causing your kids trauma, which you didn't say, you know, there.
Well, it's certainly, it's designed to be unpleasant for the child.
So it's negative, but I wouldn't say that the children are traumatized.
You know, I mean, it's not ideal, but so was the other, the other thought.
No, punish.
Yeah, don't punish.
Yeah, I mean, that was sort of my point.
It's like, if it's my job to work on keeping my daughter safe, and if there's a problem, I first have to look in the mirror.
Oh, yeah.
The other thing was that it's interesting how I kept saying, here's all the ways I had, I thought it was a pretty good argument.
Of course, tell me if you think it's not.
But I thought it was a pretty good case to say that we don't deal with fist fights usually as adults.
We have to deal with things like disappointment and rejection and hostility and physical pain and illness and so on.
Right.
And so when I was saying, look, hitting my child is inflicting a negative consequence that they're not going to have to deal with as adults.
People that go around, at least not in my neighborhood, don't go around punching each other.
So letting her experience negative consequences like physical pain and disapproval and so on and rejection.
This is preparing her for adulthood because those are the kind of things we need to deal with as adults, which I thought was a pretty good argument.
But he kept flipping back to, and this is the not listening stuff that drives me kind of baddie.
You know, like you've heard this a million times on my show where I somebody I ask someone a question, they go on a tangent and I say, Well, what was the question I just asked you?
And they have no idea.
Like, it's very, very bizarre.
Uh, because I tried to, I listen kind of half-obsessively and I make lots of notes and so on.
But he kept saying, Well, you know, your children have to learn how to experience negative consequences.
And I'm like, Yes, I just said that's like I gave all of the examples of the negative consequences, you know, that that and it's like, Yeah, but but but but still they have to be able to experience negative consequences.
That's just kind of a broken record thing, which I think actually obviously not to psychoanalyze the guy I don't know him.
And again, I'm very glad to have had the debate.
Seems like a pretty good dad in most regards, but that's just a trauma response where you just you cannot get out of the groove.
You know, well, the only negative consequence is that your kids need negative consequences.
The only ones that you can really have your kids experience is hitting them because disapproving of them is worse.
And it's like, what?
But people are going to disapprove of them over the course of their life.
So how if you don't give them disapproval, but you only give them hitting, and then they grow up in a situation where they're not being hit, but being disapproved of, you're not preparing them for adulthood.
Right.
That makes sense.
You know, I absolutely think that is a good argument.
To expand on that, it's like, and to like to come across his point of like this evolutionary thing.
What kind of society and interactions, what kind of peers are you raising your kids to accept and expect?
If it's people that knock each other around when they, you know, have problems or to expect like that's the way they may have to solve their problems, that kind of stuff.
What groups in society are you training your kids to tolerate?
Pretty much expect, you know?
Well, I mean, you know, your kids need to learn how to deal with being hit.
And it's like, and then I want to move them to rural Pennsylvania.
It's like, I don't know much about rural Pennsylvania, but I don't think it's a knockdown slot out slug fest of a society.
I'm sure it's pretty rural and people look out for each other and it's the same way that they do in New Hampshire.
I mean, well, let me ask you this, Jared.
When was the last time you got into a full-on fist fight?
Oh, full-on fist fight.
Oh, man, that would have been.
Nothing comes to mind beyond like my first job where this one guy had a problem with me and basically just kind of got it, got in my face.
I didn't back down and we got to blows.
Yeah.
And how long ago was that?
I was 19.
I'm 42.
Right.
And how many fist fights would you say you've got into in the course of your life?
Oh, man.
Public school.
As an adult.
I mean, I wouldn't say as a kid, it doesn't really matter.
Yeah.
I can only think of that one.
Okay.
So one, right?
Have you ever been rejected or disappointed?
Oh, yes.
Right.
A little bit more than once, right?
Quick question.
For those of you who don't know, Jared has a fetish, a calling, an obsession around handiwork.
Good question.
As a handyman, have you ever injured yourself?
Yes.
Never maimed, but you did say injured.
Not maimed.
Not maimed.
Good.
Good.
Well, you know, goals.
Yes.
If you would say goals.
Yeah, but okay.
So roughly, would you say how many times have you hit your thumb with the hammer or stuff like that?
I could even hazard a guess.
Hundreds probably over the decades.
Yeah, like knocked my head on something, you know, got a little bit too close.
I take the safety stuff off of my tools because they get in the way.
And so, yeah, yeah, yeah, this has happened.
Well, and we're not even talking about the even worse injuries, which is when I put the echo on the karaoke machine, but that's perhaps a topic for another time.
But so, yeah, so you have to deal with rejection, with disappointment, with sometimes loneliness and physical pain from injuries and things like.
So, to me, letting your kids experience those things in a sort of relatively controlled format and so on is preparing them for adulthood.
I'm not sure that hitting them is.
So, and you want your kids to grow up with reasoning skills, not with obedience to pain skills.
And look, again, I'm not saying that Malcolm, that's all he's doing.
I'm sure he reasons with his kids.
And he says, by the age of six, it is largely done with and so on.
So, I think he's saying that reasoning is better.
And he didn't also didn't address the fact that I did have.
And, you know, it's kind of funny, all the coincidences in my life, right?
So, yes, I have only one child, but I did have, I spent years working with 25 to 15 to 25 to 30 kids age five to 10 for, you know, eight, nine hours a day sometimes, and never needed to use force and never had any particular issues and so on.
But they had to, you know, I remember telling them the story of the Silmarillion.
I mean, obviously, I made up about 50% of it because nobody knows what the hell that story is about.
But I'd have them sort of, you know, stay close as we went through the park so they could hear the story, you know, just things like that and try to keep it entertaining for the older and not too incomprehensible for the younger.
So if you're interesting and if they like you and you have something of value to offer them, they're not going to go run into the lake.
Like it's just not, it'd be like, you know, you're on a great date and you're like, hey, I got to run into traffic.
It's like, you might to get away from a bad date, maybe, but not a good date.
Yeah.
But yeah, there wasn't much response to that, if that makes sense.
I definitely noticed that where you brought that up.
And there was just, yeah, it was, it was deadpan.
But at some point, he got to be where he was broken record, constant kind of like interrupting hysteria, like just kind of repeating the same points you had already addressed.
And so it was.
Wow.
But I also think, you know, to his credit, I think he did a very good job in many ways because, you know, he was vague when needed, right?
So he clearly wasn't a principled guy, right?
So his was all arguments from effect and arguments from anxiety.
Well, the world's getting dangerous.
You got to hit your kids, kind of stuff like that.
I'm sort of simplifying a little bit.
Or if hitting your kids or even, you know, sawing off their foreskin helps transmit culture, then it's good, right?
Because if it doesn't transmit culture, who cares?
So he's, you know, an amoral argument from effect guy and wouldn't engage to my memory.
And again, I know it's a little chaotic when you're sort of making notes and listening and talking, but he wouldn't engage in how the violations of the non-aggression principle are leading to the circumstances that he views as negative, right?
So the father absence and so on, right?
And so he didn't want to deal with that.
Because my argument is, you know, violence in the home leads to violence in society.
If you have to have violence to run the home, of course, you have to have violence around societies.
And so I think the violence or whatever, I'm not sure him with violence.
I don't know much about his childhood other than the few of the highlight, highlight bad parts.
But if there was that kind of aggression in his household, then he's not going to be able to grapple with it at a social level because he has to justify it in his parents.
Therefore, he can't identify or condemn it at a social or political level.
And it was really, to me, it was really fascinating to see that theory come so vividly to life.
Yeah.
Yeah.
James, I saw you unmuted.
Did you want to?
Yeah.
So James, stop interrupting.
Yeah.
No.
Oh, gosh.
What was it now?
Oh, yeah.
He had put into the kid jail when he was 13 and he also mentioned on the in the course of the debate that he plans on, you know, putting his kids it sound like, put them in the woods to fend for themselves for a couple of months.
So very much like you know, if I, if i'm not remembering correctly, correct me.
But uh yeah, he not only not forgiven, or sorry, he's forgiven his parents, he sort of like approved of it in in some level.
See now, I don't necessarily I don't think that that's abusive as a whole.
I mean i'm certainly happy to hear the case well, but no, maybe not okay, maybe not abusive, but it was a bit like I mean, wouldn't you have loved to try that?
I mean, obviously you know you wouldn't just be dumped there and picked up again a month or two later.
But I mean wouldn't that be kind of cool to give that a shot as a kid?
You know, obviously you know 14 or whatever, right like uh to to have a shot at.
You know planning, let's say, a week in the woods or something like that.
I mean I remember when I was 15 my friends and I went hiking for a week in Algonquin Park and it was a complete disaster of a trip.
So we had a guy who was so macho he refused to take what, he refused to use water purification tablets, was kind of half drinking out of moose tracks and then very predictably got quite ill.
It was a complete disaster of a trip, but we all made it right.
So I don't know, I mean, maybe a couple of months might be a little bit long, but I mean I I do think that some of the uh overprotection of of kids, I mean to me it would have been pretty, pretty exciting to plan that and give that a shot, maybe not for months, but at least try a week or something.
I would have been down for that absolutely yeah yeah, I think that would have been kind of interesting.
But but I know that James needs his hair jail and because, you know, i'm i'm really not sure at the age of 14 or 13 because i've never been much of an outdoorsy guy but at the same time could have been fun, I don't know.
Uh well, it would just be an interesting challenge, right?
I mean yeah yeah, it would be.
I mean uh, Charles Murray has his.
Like you know, you become an adult and just go fly to some foreign country with a couple of hundred bucks in your pocket and see what you can make work.
And uh, I think that's, you know he, he says that's a, that's a big plus and uh, you know he's, he's keen on that.
And again, I mean, I know that's older but I don't know.
I think I sort of think of the Huckleberry Fin stuff or the Tom Sawyer stuff from Mark Twain and obviously again, a bit young and a bit chaotic.
But I think that kids can have adventures uh, a little sooner, especially now with cell phones and all.
You just dump in the woods and pick them up in a month.
But I think it would be interesting to have that kind of challenge.
And again, I was sort of 15, tried to do a week in Algonquin with friends and we lasted a couple of days, but I was fine.
I was fine, but uh um, I think I think it was I, I think it was the couple of months thing.
That kind of was like oh, but yeah, I mean that may be a little off yeah, but you know what I mean as as like hey, you know I mean and, and obviously uh oh, maybe not obviously, I was gonna say obviously if they're down.
If the kids are down with it.
I mean, maybe you sort of nudge them and say hey, you know, give it a shot, you know see, see what you can do, you know.
Well, I think you'd also step them up to it right, you'd say try, Try a day, try a couple of days, try a week.
You know, I wouldn't just say, Yeah, I'll come pick you up at three months.
Good luck with the wolves.
Right.
I think you'd need you need to.
And, you know, I'm sure he was talking about maybe stepping up in some way, but I think the kids are just a lot more competent and resourceful.
And because you remember, you know, kids used to start working with machinery and so on and dangerous stuff, sort of five, six, seven, eight years old, and the chimney sweeps, and they went and explored and all of that.
So I think the kids can generally do a lot, have a lot more adventures than parents think of these days.
But with the rise of sort of the somewhat neurotic mom thing, it's like, oh, okay, play video games because at least I know where you are.
At least I know that you're safe.
And it's like, yeah, but it's not the best kind of safety.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, you know what?
That's that's very, I take that.
I take that entirely.
You know, I don't want to be unfair to him in that particular way.
I mean, I hear what you're saying in the couple of months seems a bit surprising.
And I'm sure that some of that was hyperbole, but I kind of get where he's coming from in that, you know, this thing online where people say, is it true that in like the 80s, you just roamed around the neighborhood all day?
And it's like, yeah, that's what we did.
I mean, I did when I wasn't working, there was not much to do at home.
There were no, there's no internet, no video games, nothing really on TV.
You roamed.
You just roamed.
And, you know, we had no money and we had, you know, the bikes are seven colors and we just bike around and we go garbage picking and we'd go, you know, scrounge together a bottle of dented beans and go cook it in the woods.
And, you know, we just do stuff and try and find a way to make it work.
And that's, I think, that's largely incomprehensible.
And it's also partly just because the video games have become so absorbing for people that it is tough to compete.
Like the mere outdoors just can't compete.
But I think it would be pretty wild to try and make it in the woods as in your sort of mid-teens.
All right.
We have somebody who wants to jump in.
Sorry, go ahead.
Compared to meet finally, one other thing, which is it was interesting.
He's talking about, I mean, he's talking about like getting his kids to sort of carry forward a culture, but it wasn't the culture that his parents created, was it?
Or was it?
I don't know because I don't think that he wants his kids to go to government jail.
Right.
So his son is six.
So in seven years, he doesn't want his kid going to government jail.
So I think what he's saying is, I'm a better person because of my hardships.
Therefore, the hardships are good, right?
Which is I was sort of saying, like, if you end up in a wheelchair, you get significant amounts of upper body strength, but that's not the best way to get it.
And you can get good things out of bad things.
That doesn't make the bad things good.
Otherwise, we would just, you know, beat the hell out of everyone and assume that then.
And of course, some people get broken by these negative experiences.
And obviously, he's pretty robust, and that's good.
Sorry, compared to, if you wanted to unmute, happy to hear your thoughts.
Oh, I think you did great.
I just wish you mentioned New Hampshire a little bit more.
Well, that wasn't really up to me, but we did it at the end.
Yeah.
I really appreciated the part.
It wasn't a very large part of the debate, but I really appreciated the part where you had started talking about within the different ages for the different capacities that kids will have on average during those ages,
how you can approach problem solving if a kid is losing their temper in a situation or if they are going after a dangerous object.
Right.
Yeah.
So that was, you mean when I was sort of, I was reading off some of the research about how you can handle these situations without hitting?
Yes.
And I thought that was, that was great.
That was practical.
That was meaningful.
I hope that there, I don't know that there were, but I hope that there were listeners out there who heard you talk about those different things and are able to take that back with them as alternatives they have to, I don't know, hitting their kids to get compliance or something.
Yeah, and it really does work.
I mean, it works very well statistically as a whole to take those approaches.
So, yeah, it really does.
It does work out very well.
And so, yeah, but he didn't, it's interesting, right?
Because he didn't really seem to be super keen on that sort of information.
Because that, I think, would, that goes into the criticism of his own parents, I think.
Yeah, that's well.
And this is something you've definitely talked about many times and written about the, I don't know, the awkwardness, the difficulty of confronting if my parents could have done better, why did they not?
Or asking them, like, if they had, because sometimes it's like, oh, I didn't know any better.
It's like, well, why didn't you know any better?
And so it's like, like confronting that is difficult.
And I don't mean that your suggestions were there to like put parents in the audience on the back foot of like, oh, well, these are somewhat obvious or things that you could have done.
Or now that I've told you these things, if you don't do that, that's like additional, you know, there's additional there where it's like, if they are confronted by their kids in the future and they ask them, well, why did you hit me if you knew specifically these ideas of exactly how you could have done better and did you try them?
That it just definitely solidifies moral culpability there where they can't hide.
Yeah, yeah.
If you don't know, if you've never studied it, you can't be held quite as much responsible for it.
And this is something that I think this is true.
I never know, of course, because it's got to do with reporters.
But I was sort of struck that this is what the reporter wrote about Malcolm in 2024.
Again, whether it's true or not, who knows, right?
But she wrote, in the car on the way to the restaurant, Malcolm tells me how much he doesn't like babies.
And he says, quote, objectively, they are trying and they're aggravating.
They're gross.
This little bomb that goes off crying in this big explosion of poo and mucus every 30, 40 minutes, and it doesn't have a personality, really.
But once the kid enters the goof patrol, as we call it, I love them to death.
They're amazing.
They're so happy.
They're so full of life.
And I don't know about that.
I mean, it doesn't sound like there's a lot of pair bonding going on.
You can't obviously pair bond with the baby if you really dislike the baby and consider it gross.
And I wonder if maybe the lack of pair bonding that might come out of the child getting really positive, the baby getting really positive responses from you when they're babies, if that leads to more disobedience later on.
Like if you have this kind of revulsion about babies, what does that mean in terms of how much they're going to want to listen to you later on?
And that's, you know, maybe that's a bit of a stretch, but I wouldn't be surprised at all if that had some relationship in the same way that his forgiveness of his parents and his aggression towards his children are related.
I mean, if he's justifying his parents' aggression towards him or indifference towards him or lack of concern or care for his motives, then of course he's going to end up reproducing that.
Like what we justify, we reproduce.
Whatever we excuse, we repeat.
All right.
Any other thoughts, people, questions, issues, challenges, problems?
Really do appreciate the feedback.
And thank you to those who helped me refine the arguments.
Gosh, was that today?
Earlier today?
I think it was.
But yeah, no, was it yesterday?
Anyway, it was some point.
But I really do appreciate people's help.
And if there's anything that crosses your mind, you can always email support at freedomain.com.
And don't forget to support the show, freedomain.com/slash donate, and shop.freedomain.com to pick up your merch and peacefulparentingbook.com to get your copy.
It's running out of time if you want to get it for Christmas.
So I hope you will check that out.
And thanks to James again for all the great research.