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669 Dr No - Friend or Foe?
Summary:
Summary here.
Transcript:
Good afternoon everybody, hope you’re doing well. It is Stef, it is just past 6:00, March 05, 2007. The question of the afternoon, wisely and interestingly posed on the boards this afternoon today, is this: Doctor No, friend or foe? Doctor Ron Paul, Republican of Texas and a proto-libertarian: friend or foe of freedom? Fascinating question.
I’m going to take a shot at it, and of course I can’t prove it, I’m just going with my thoughts here. I’ll try and start with a metaphor and see if it works for you. What I’d like to do is talk metaphorically. This is nothing to do with Ron Paul the individual, I’m sure he’s a fine, upstanding member of the citizenry. He walks his dog, bathes his cat, he’s a fine, upstanding member of the local chamber of commerce, or whatever he does outside of politics. This has nothing to do with Ron Paul the individual. This is just the principle of participating in this kind of statism, and whether or not it is beneficial or negative toward people’s perceptions of and abilities to achieve or work towards freedom. Nothing about Ron Paul, I’m sure he’s a nice enough fellow, but let’s have a look and see logically, or at least metaphorically, whether what he’s doing is productive or not.
Let’s start with a metaphor, and you can let me know what you think. You and I are in cages, and we’re outdoors. If you’ve watched Lost, they lock these guys up in a cage out in the jungle. So you’re in a cage and I’m in a cage, and we’re pretty hungry. We’re not getting fed much. You say to me one night, you whisper, “Hey, Stef!” And I say, “What?” You say, “Hey, I’m so thin here” – and you pinch the little non-rolls on your belly and you say – “I think I’m so thin by now, I think I can squeeze through these bars. It’s gonna hurt like hell, and I might crack a rib, but I think I can squeeze through these bars. Then I can try and get some help, I can try and waylay the guard and get the keys, I can do a whole bunch of things. I’m getting thin, but I’m getting kinda weak. I haven’t had much to eat, and I’m getting really hungry. So I’m kinda weak, and I’m kinda thin, but I think, I’m pretty sure, that I’m thin enough now that I can squeeze through these bars. It’s gonna hurt like hell, but I think I can do it.”
And I say, “Y’know, I gotta tell you, I think that’s a really bad idea. I know, for a fact, that we’re gonna be freed. So here’s the problem with what you’re suggesting – you can do with you want, but in maybe two, 2.5 days, someone’s going to come along. I know it. I mean, I know it for real, I got a message that someone’s gonna come along and is gonna unlock us. So if I were you, I would not go through the painful, difficult, rib-cracking exercise of squeezing my way out of the bars of my own cage; I would do what I would consider the logical thing, and I would just wait for help to arrive. Not only are you going to crack your ribs and this and that, but you are going to get enormously punished if you are caught and you are found out. Let’s say you even get away, and what’s gonna happen? You’re going to be stuck in the jungle, you’re going to be weak. And the guy who’s coming is gonna free us, and he’s gonna give us food, and water, and we’re gonna get a chance to build our strength up. He’s going to get us medical care, take care of our teeth, and all this and that. Help’s on the way, so there’s really no need to try and do this horrible breakout scenario that Houdini would probably have some difficulty with. So I would not do it.”
Obviously you’d question me – “How do you know help is coming?” Because if help IS coming in a day or two, then it really doesn’t make any sense to try and break out of the prison. If help is coming, why would you bother trying to break out of the prison, and go through the risk of getting shot, and cracking your ribs, and being stuck in the jungle with these wild beasts – I think you get the idea. It really wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense to take that approach and try to get out if you think that food is coming, that help is coming, that freedom is coming.
So a day or two pass, we’re still not getting fed, and you’re getting weaker and weaker. You’re like, “Hey, Stef, I gotta tell you. I’m getting really weak here. I got a feeling, I’m seized by this feverous panic. It’s now or never. I’ve got to go. If I’m going to go, I’ve got to go now. I’m a little thinner, I don’t think I’m gonna crack my ribs. But another day or two without food, I’m just not going to have the strength to do what I need to do. I’m going to be too weak. And then, if your guy doesn’t come to help, what the hell am I gonna do? If I’m too weak to help myself, what the hell am I gonna do? So are you SURE your guy is coming? Are you SURE your guy is coming to save me? If he’s not, I’m going on my own. Even if there’s a chance that he’s not coming, even if there’s a decent chance that he’s not coming, then I’m going, because I can’t risk it. I’m getting too weak. Right now, I can make it, get some mango, feed my strength, get some water. But if I keep waiting, I’m just not gonna have the strength to get through the bars.”
And I say, “It’s for sure that help is coming. This is the approach. Someone’s coming tomorrow. I’m not asking you to wait for days. You’ve got to trust me. I’m doing this for your own good. Help is on its way. This is going to work. Things are gonna get better. This guy’s coming to help, so there’s zero point, it’s totally counterproductive, for you to try and get through these bars, maybe get shot. And now that you’re weaker, you’re going to be even more at risk in the jungle for getting eaten or whatever. So now that you’re even weaker, given that a day has passed and you’re even weaker, it’s even more of a bad idea to try and get out through the bars and into the jungle.”
So you, of course, question me very closely. “Are you SURE that this guy is coming? This is it, do or die.”
Anyway, long story short (believe it or not), I convince you that this guy is coming. So you don’t decide to leave. You decide to stick it out and wait for help to come, for help to arrive. And, of course, the next day, still no food, you’re weaker. The next day, still no food, you’re weaker. Then, of course, no help has come, and you’re too weak to escape. And you say to me, “Well, what the hell was that?! Now I’m gonna die, no one is going to come, and even if they do come it’s going to be too late. So what the hell am I supposed to do now? I just don’t have the strength to leave. I don’t have the strength to do it anymore. So what was the point of that?”
Basically, I could say to you, “The problem, you see, is that you assumed I was a prisoner. You assumed that I was a prisoner, and that kept you in your cage. Your assumption, that I was a fellow prisoner with your best interests at heart, kept you in your cage as surely as if it had been impossible for you to squeeze through the bars and make it on your own.”
So how would I be indistinguishable from a jailer? How would I, in the creation of hope, in the defusing of potentially saving action, in the counseling of inertia and patience and “wait for salvation,” how am I different, fundamentally, from a jailer? How an I different from a lock? How am I different from having you bound and gagged and in a straightjacket? How is the effect of my counseling patience and resignation and waiting for help, how is that different from being a jailor?
Logically, it’s not. Logically, a very effective way of keeping people in jail is not to worry so much about the security, but to have people in jail, and pay them to be there, to counsel obedience. This is part of religion as well, and all that kind of stuff. So now that you know the truth, and I can tell you the truth, you’re too weak to do anything about it. Now I can tell you the truth. If I’m sadistic, then I keep you enslaved through words until you are enslaved through reality through my words, and then I can tell you the truth. This is the false self thing. Once you’re too weak to escape, then you learn the truth. That’s why bad people’s old age tends to be so embittering to them.
This, I think, is an important thing to understand about libertarianism. Now I love libertarianism in a way, I really do. I have a great deal of respect for the stepping stone that was both Objectivism and libertarianism for me. But not only have they failed catastrophically – I mean, not even close to their stated objectives, not even a little bit close. I mean, they haven’t even gotten close to reducing the size of the growth of government. Complete and total disasters. And since we are supposed to be scientific and rational in our thinking here, I think it would behoove us to examine why these experiments failed so completely and utterly.
I would also wonder, and not to a small degree, whether or not part of the failure that has accrued to the libertarian movement is not, in fact, due to the libertarian movement. In other words, if we must slip through the bars of the cage in order to escape, and if that is a painful and difficult process, and we have to do it when we are already in want; i.e. already hungry and made thin through starvation, but not so hungry that we lack the energy, so we can’t be fully content unless we free ourselves from the corruption of the world. Otherwise, if we were fully content, we would not feel the corruption of the world. But we cannot wait until what hits us is nihilism and misery, because that will not help us free ourselves from the world, because then we don’t believe that it’s possible to free ourselves from the world. So the people who counsel waiting, the people who counsel cynicism, the people who counsel working in the system, the people who counsel the benevolence of people like Ron Paul: in my view, it’s possible, and of course metaphor is not proof, it’s just a way of looking at it, of starting to approach the problem, I think, in my heart of hearts, that libertarianism has been a complete disaster for the freedom movement.
I think it has been a complete disaster because it’s not philosophical in nature; it’s political in nature. And because it’s political in nature, it talks about economics, and it talks about the argument from effect, and it talks about the Founding Fathers, and it talks about the Republic and the Constitution and things like that. All of which is the purest nonsense when it comes to true freedom. It’s not about a piece of paper, it’s not about history, it’s not about politics, it is simply getting rid of the gun in the room. That is personal freedom in a political context, relative to politics. Personal freedom, as far as defooing and getting bad people out of your life, that’s all separate. In terms of politics, the libertarian movement has been a complete disaster. I’m not saying it’s causal, but it certainly is coincidental that the rise of libertarianism coincided with the rise of the growth of the power of the state in its really hyperaccelerated, asymptotic kind of manner that occurred in the mid-60s through to the present time. So the past 30 or 40 years have seen both the expansion of libertarianism and a simultaneous massive expansion in the size and power of the state. I’m not saying it’s causal, I don’t know enough about it to know whether or not it’s causal, but it certainly is correlated: these two things happened at the same time. Now was the state growing and therefore you could have a libertarian expansion because the power of the state was so great and blah blah blah, or was it that libertarianism was counseling people to wait and to hope and was providing a large amount of positive language that politicians could speak that lulled people into false sense of security? “I don’t need to achieve freedom, I don’t need to fight for freedom, because Ronald Reagan says the government is the problem, and not the solution. I don’t need to fight for freedom, I don’t need to squeeze out through the bars, because Bill Clinton is promising to end welfare as we know it. I don’t need to fight for freedom, I don’t need to crack my ribs squeezing through the bars of the cage because, now that the Soviet Union has fallen, the Cold War is over, and government will shrink of it’s own accord,” and so on, and so on, and so on.
I wonder, and not to a small degree, whether or not libertarianism is the “prisoner” in the next cage whispering for us to work within the system, whispering to us that help is coming, whispering to us that voting will set us free, whispering to us that reformation is possible, whispering to us that we can shrink this beast of government, whispering to us that we can compromise with violence and walk away without blood. And I don’t believe that it’s true. I don’t believe that it’s true, and empirically, it is absolutely not true. Empirically, in terms of what libertarianism has achieved, it is absolutely not true. And the “why” is interesting, and we can go into that perhaps another time, but when you look at people like Ron Paul, the basics of what you see is people who are telling you that help is coming. Ron Paul is obviously in Congress because – well, actually, I shouldn’t say; I have absolutely no idea what Ron Paul’s actual motives are. His words and his speeches obviously have something to do with the belief or at least the appearance of the belief that he can use his power to shrink government, that he can use the violence that his office gives him access to to oppose the violence that 430-odd other people’s offices gives them access to. And I just don’t think that it seems to be working.
I also think that having Ron Paul in office is a very good thing for the state. If the Ku Klux Klan wishes to hide its bigotry, then it lets two black men in. Then the Ku Klux Klan can say, with a nod and a wink, “See, we’re not about bigotry.” And Ron Paul is, of course, safely embedded in the power structure of the Republican Party. There’s a lot of eye-rolling and a lot of embarrassed silences when Ron Paul makes his speeches, because it has nothing to do with what everyone else is there for, which is to rape and pillage the body politic, to point the guns at everyone they can point their guns at. That’s what everyone else is there for, so Ron Paul talking about this, that, and the other, is quaint, and foolish, and he might as well be dressed up as Mark Twain and spouting Olde English as far as relevance to what’s going on occurs.
But what DOES Ron Paul do, in his essence, is he says that the system can be saved. He says that violence can be saved from itself, that violence can be used to fight violence, because the taxes that fund his office, the taxes that fund his salary and his initiatives and so on are all coerced through violence. The legislation that he opposes continues to roll past his minor opposition, which does nothing. It continues to roll along and do all the violence and attack all the innocent that it needs to attack in order to enrich the fat and politically connected. And he’s doing nothing to stop it.
This is the gambit that libertarianism is taking, which I, obviously, am not comfortable with. I really don’t like these odds, but this is the risk, the gamble that libertarianism is taking. Everything that you do in life has opportunity costs. If I do a podcast, I can’t listen to an audiobook. If I listen to an audiobook, I can’t do a podcast. If I pick my nose, I can’t do a videocast – well, I can, but it’d be gross. So everything we do in life has opportunity costs.
Now libertarians of the political persuasion, whether they’re statists or minarchists or whatever, they are pouring all of their energies into reforming the state, but they’re not willing to go to a stateless society. They’re not willing to oppose violence on principle. They’re just willing to oppose certain kinds of violence in excess in practice against their grain. “Shoot my neighbor in the kneecap, not both of us in the chest” is not a rallying cry towards freedom and liberation and independence and joy and peace and the beauty of virtue. “Shoot the guy down the street in the toe” is not much of a step forward. So all of the energy that people put into libertarian circles, into trying to run for office, into raising money, into getting ballot access laws and so on all tucked away and squared off. All the energy that people are putting into volunteering for Ron Paul’s campaign or whatever other campaign is going on, or moving to New Hampshire and all of this, all of that massive amount of energy, millions of person-years invested into the libertarian movement, into other kinds of movements.
What has it cost the world? If they’re wrong, if the state can never be reformed into something civilized, then attempting to reform it is deadly. You are moving in exactly the wrong direction. Libertarianism, at its core, as is minarchism, as is statism, at its core, is saying, “Violence can be used better than it’s being used right now. Give me the gun!” they say. “Give ME the gun! I’ll do it right! Those people who have the gun, they’re doing it wrong. You give ME the gun, I’ll do it right. We just need the right finger on the trigger, and we just need to grab the gun and point it at the right people, and everything will be great. Give ME the gun!” they say. “Gimmee gimmee gimmee! I want the gun!” Well . . . how’s that working? If you say that the gun can be used for good, then you are absolving the gun. You are more than absolving the gun, you’re praising the gun, the gun in the room, the state.
If you’re saying that the gun can be used for good, that a monopoly of violence can be used for good, and that virtue is impossible without the gun, that peace and pacifism and property and virtue is impossible without the gun – “Just give ME the gun and I’ll make it all right, I’ll make it great” – well it’s the first and final temptation of power. This is the constant hurly burly turnover of those who want THE GUN. “Give me the gun and I’ll make it great!” What if there was no gun? “Oh, no no no. There’s got to be a gun. There’s got to be a gun, we’ve just got to get it away from the people who have it now so WE can have the gun. So WE can use it. WE can have the fucking gun!” Why does there have to be a gun? Why is there always, always, always a gun? Well, of course, we’ve talked about that before, I’m sure we’ll talk about it again, and there’s a lively debate going on about that on the boards at the moment.
And really, that’s the fundamental answer that anarcho-capitalism provides. There’s no need for a gun. In fact, a gun is always evil. (I’m not talking about a private gun, I’m talking about a public gun. I’m talking about a state, and an army, and police force, and law courts. I’m talking about that stuff. All the apparatus of hegemonic power.) So libertarians are like, “Give Ron Paul the gun! Give ol’ Ronnie the gun! He’ll know what to do! He’ll save us, with the gun! We love the gun, we just want Ron to have it! Give Ron the gun. Not Newt – Ron! Once Ron’s hand curls over that holster, once his finger curls over that trigger – my God, it will be perfect. It will be just great! Give Harry Browne the gun! Give someone the gun who knows how to use it. Things will be – muah! Lov-er-ly!”
I don’t think it’s true. I think that the pursuit of trying to find the right person to give the gun to, the philosopher king of the Republic – trying to find the right person to give the gun to is not only a fool’s quest, but it says that the gun can be used for good. “Don’t worry, someone is coming, you don’t need to get out of the cage.” If you’re waiting at a bus stop, keep getting a phone call from the bus driver saying, “I’ll be there in five minutes, three minutes, two minutes, one minute.” Are you going to walk? Of course not. You’re going to freeze to death. By the time your toes are frozen, you can’t walk and you die. “Someone’s coming! Someone can use this gun! Someone can make this gun good! Someone can make this violence virtuous. Someone, some savior immune to drowning in blood, some godlike man who can wield the power of violence over millions of people and flourish, and be virtuous, and bring about a new Jerusalem, a new Renaissance, a new Enlightenment. Just give the gun to the right person, and the gun becomes golden.”
And still we dream, and still we wait, and still we believe, and still we hope, and still we have faith, and still we work, and still we vote, and still we donate, and still we move, and still we join the Free State Project, and still we phone into talk radio shows to talk about smaller government, and still we hope and we pray and we dream for this square circle of a good gun. Still we say, over and over, “Less gun is a better gun, but no gun is a terrible gun. Less violence is better violence, but no violence is bad violence.” Over and over and over, still, we stay orbiting this deadly sun. We can’t break out. And what is worse: to not know that violence is wrong, or to know that violence is wrong and approve of it? Who’s more corrupt? An out-and-out big welfare-warfare statist, who just says that the government is great, and everything it does is right, and taxation is the price we pay for a civilized society, and blah blah blah, never even comprehends, can’t even grasp on a conscious level that government is violence. Isn’t there an admirable amount of integrity, no matter how weird, in all of that? Sure, at least to me. But the libertarian who says that taxation is evil, and government is wrong, and welfare is wrong, and warfare state is wrong: they get it. They get it, that violence is wrong, violence is evil, the nonaggression principle and so on.
Who is more corrupt: the person who says slavery is moral, or the person who says, “Slavery is evil so we should just have a little less of it. Or we should have different slave owners. Or the slaves should be only slaves on weekends. Or the slaves should be slaves, but they should get to own a certain amount of property. Or that slaves should be slaves, but raping them is still wrong”? Who is more corrupt? I have an opinion, I’m not saying I’m proving it but I have an opinion. This is the challenge that I have with libertarianism, and of course with Objectivism even more so than libertarianism. Objectivism went further in so many ways.
What do you do when you see the gun? Seeing the gun is the root of libertarianism and Objectivism. You see the gun in the room as violence, it’s monopolistic, hegemonic violence. It’s disarming the taxpayers by pointing guns that you forced the taxpayers to pay for with the money you extort from them because they’re forced, because you can enforce your will over them. You pay the policemen who point guns at the taxpayers who pay the money who let you pay the policemen. That is understood by Objectivists and libertarians. That is understood, that is not argued about, that is not debated, whether government is coercion. They just want different people – maybe fewer people, sure, but different people holding the gun. Fewer people, different people, doesn’t really matter. It’s the size of the gun, it’s who it’s pointed at that’s the problem.
And isn’t it, to some degree, a thwarted power lust? The excluded, those who don’t have power, who try to create a narrative wherein they can grab power? And who takes over that narrative? Well, people like Ronald Reagan, who leans against the Berlin Wall, it falls over, and everyone says he’s the strongest man in history – he pushed over a whole wall. Who takes the narrative? Who takes over the narrative? Who promises the people that government will be restrained? Well, the Republicans, and to some degree the Democrats in certain areas, like defense spending. In welfare, it’s the Republicans.
Who takes over the narrative that the libertarians create? The libertarians say that smaller government is better government. The government that governs least is the government that governs best. Well great! I’ve got a government that governs not at all. There is no government – “well that’s bad. That’s wrong. That’s bad. That, we cannot allow. That, we cannot accept. We can’t have anarchy – ANARCHY, for God’s sake!!!” (as if we don’t.)
The story that government is good if it’s different, government is good if it’s smaller, government is good if it’s focused on XYZ. That narrative, what to people hear? “Government is good if.” “Rape is good if.” “Slavery is good if.”
Well great! So there’s nothing innately evil about rape, you’ve just got to rape less. There’s nothing innately evil about rape, you’ve just got to bring some flowers. Nothing innately evil about rape, just call the girl afterwards, for god’s sake! Spend a little quality time with her later. Nothing innately evil about murder, just put the right costume on, then you get a medal. There’s nothing innately evil about these things, it’s all just circumstantial. It’s all just relative to intention, it’s all relative to the words on the page of the Constitution. It’s all relative. There’s nothing right or wrong in any of this. There’s no evil in violence, it’s just got to be reconfigured!
What do people hear? “There’s no evil in violence. The state is not evil. Violence is not evil. Monopoly of coercive power is not evil.” And ‘round and ‘round the wheel goes. And we never break out of this orbit. Is Ron Paul friend or foe? Well, foe. Not because he’s an evil guy, I don’t know the guy. I’m just talking about the principles of what’s going on. “Violence is good if. If you define it right. If it’s smaller, if it’s lesser, if it’s minimized. Violence is good if.”
Well, violence is not good. Violence is always evil, rape is always evil. There is no “if,” there is no “maybe,” there is no “perhaps,” there is none of that. I hope that this has been helpful, at least in terms of getting my perspective out. Thank you for listening, and I will talk to you soon.
Summary here.
Transcript:
Good afternoon everybody, hope you’re doing well. It is Stef, it is just past 6:00, March 05, 2007. The question of the afternoon, wisely and interestingly posed on the boards this afternoon today, is this: Doctor No, friend or foe? Doctor Ron Paul, Republican of Texas and a proto-libertarian: friend or foe of freedom? Fascinating question.
I’m going to take a shot at it, and of course I can’t prove it, I’m just going with my thoughts here. I’ll try and start with a metaphor and see if it works for you. What I’d like to do is talk metaphorically. This is nothing to do with Ron Paul the individual, I’m sure he’s a fine, upstanding member of the citizenry. He walks his dog, bathes his cat, he’s a fine, upstanding member of the local chamber of commerce, or whatever he does outside of politics. This has nothing to do with Ron Paul the individual. This is just the principle of participating in this kind of statism, and whether or not it is beneficial or negative toward people’s perceptions of and abilities to achieve or work towards freedom. Nothing about Ron Paul, I’m sure he’s a nice enough fellow, but let’s have a look and see logically, or at least metaphorically, whether what he’s doing is productive or not.
Let’s start with a metaphor, and you can let me know what you think. You and I are in cages, and we’re outdoors. If you’ve watched Lost, they lock these guys up in a cage out in the jungle. So you’re in a cage and I’m in a cage, and we’re pretty hungry. We’re not getting fed much. You say to me one night, you whisper, “Hey, Stef!” And I say, “What?” You say, “Hey, I’m so thin here” – and you pinch the little non-rolls on your belly and you say – “I think I’m so thin by now, I think I can squeeze through these bars. It’s gonna hurt like hell, and I might crack a rib, but I think I can squeeze through these bars. Then I can try and get some help, I can try and waylay the guard and get the keys, I can do a whole bunch of things. I’m getting thin, but I’m getting kinda weak. I haven’t had much to eat, and I’m getting really hungry. So I’m kinda weak, and I’m kinda thin, but I think, I’m pretty sure, that I’m thin enough now that I can squeeze through these bars. It’s gonna hurt like hell, but I think I can do it.”
And I say, “Y’know, I gotta tell you, I think that’s a really bad idea. I know, for a fact, that we’re gonna be freed. So here’s the problem with what you’re suggesting – you can do with you want, but in maybe two, 2.5 days, someone’s going to come along. I know it. I mean, I know it for real, I got a message that someone’s gonna come along and is gonna unlock us. So if I were you, I would not go through the painful, difficult, rib-cracking exercise of squeezing my way out of the bars of my own cage; I would do what I would consider the logical thing, and I would just wait for help to arrive. Not only are you going to crack your ribs and this and that, but you are going to get enormously punished if you are caught and you are found out. Let’s say you even get away, and what’s gonna happen? You’re going to be stuck in the jungle, you’re going to be weak. And the guy who’s coming is gonna free us, and he’s gonna give us food, and water, and we’re gonna get a chance to build our strength up. He’s going to get us medical care, take care of our teeth, and all this and that. Help’s on the way, so there’s really no need to try and do this horrible breakout scenario that Houdini would probably have some difficulty with. So I would not do it.”
Obviously you’d question me – “How do you know help is coming?” Because if help IS coming in a day or two, then it really doesn’t make any sense to try and break out of the prison. If help is coming, why would you bother trying to break out of the prison, and go through the risk of getting shot, and cracking your ribs, and being stuck in the jungle with these wild beasts – I think you get the idea. It really wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense to take that approach and try to get out if you think that food is coming, that help is coming, that freedom is coming.
So a day or two pass, we’re still not getting fed, and you’re getting weaker and weaker. You’re like, “Hey, Stef, I gotta tell you. I’m getting really weak here. I got a feeling, I’m seized by this feverous panic. It’s now or never. I’ve got to go. If I’m going to go, I’ve got to go now. I’m a little thinner, I don’t think I’m gonna crack my ribs. But another day or two without food, I’m just not going to have the strength to do what I need to do. I’m going to be too weak. And then, if your guy doesn’t come to help, what the hell am I gonna do? If I’m too weak to help myself, what the hell am I gonna do? So are you SURE your guy is coming? Are you SURE your guy is coming to save me? If he’s not, I’m going on my own. Even if there’s a chance that he’s not coming, even if there’s a decent chance that he’s not coming, then I’m going, because I can’t risk it. I’m getting too weak. Right now, I can make it, get some mango, feed my strength, get some water. But if I keep waiting, I’m just not gonna have the strength to get through the bars.”
And I say, “It’s for sure that help is coming. This is the approach. Someone’s coming tomorrow. I’m not asking you to wait for days. You’ve got to trust me. I’m doing this for your own good. Help is on its way. This is going to work. Things are gonna get better. This guy’s coming to help, so there’s zero point, it’s totally counterproductive, for you to try and get through these bars, maybe get shot. And now that you’re weaker, you’re going to be even more at risk in the jungle for getting eaten or whatever. So now that you’re even weaker, given that a day has passed and you’re even weaker, it’s even more of a bad idea to try and get out through the bars and into the jungle.”
So you, of course, question me very closely. “Are you SURE that this guy is coming? This is it, do or die.”
Anyway, long story short (believe it or not), I convince you that this guy is coming. So you don’t decide to leave. You decide to stick it out and wait for help to come, for help to arrive. And, of course, the next day, still no food, you’re weaker. The next day, still no food, you’re weaker. Then, of course, no help has come, and you’re too weak to escape. And you say to me, “Well, what the hell was that?! Now I’m gonna die, no one is going to come, and even if they do come it’s going to be too late. So what the hell am I supposed to do now? I just don’t have the strength to leave. I don’t have the strength to do it anymore. So what was the point of that?”
Basically, I could say to you, “The problem, you see, is that you assumed I was a prisoner. You assumed that I was a prisoner, and that kept you in your cage. Your assumption, that I was a fellow prisoner with your best interests at heart, kept you in your cage as surely as if it had been impossible for you to squeeze through the bars and make it on your own.”
So how would I be indistinguishable from a jailer? How would I, in the creation of hope, in the defusing of potentially saving action, in the counseling of inertia and patience and “wait for salvation,” how am I different, fundamentally, from a jailer? How an I different from a lock? How am I different from having you bound and gagged and in a straightjacket? How is the effect of my counseling patience and resignation and waiting for help, how is that different from being a jailor?
Logically, it’s not. Logically, a very effective way of keeping people in jail is not to worry so much about the security, but to have people in jail, and pay them to be there, to counsel obedience. This is part of religion as well, and all that kind of stuff. So now that you know the truth, and I can tell you the truth, you’re too weak to do anything about it. Now I can tell you the truth. If I’m sadistic, then I keep you enslaved through words until you are enslaved through reality through my words, and then I can tell you the truth. This is the false self thing. Once you’re too weak to escape, then you learn the truth. That’s why bad people’s old age tends to be so embittering to them.
This, I think, is an important thing to understand about libertarianism. Now I love libertarianism in a way, I really do. I have a great deal of respect for the stepping stone that was both Objectivism and libertarianism for me. But not only have they failed catastrophically – I mean, not even close to their stated objectives, not even a little bit close. I mean, they haven’t even gotten close to reducing the size of the growth of government. Complete and total disasters. And since we are supposed to be scientific and rational in our thinking here, I think it would behoove us to examine why these experiments failed so completely and utterly.
I would also wonder, and not to a small degree, whether or not part of the failure that has accrued to the libertarian movement is not, in fact, due to the libertarian movement. In other words, if we must slip through the bars of the cage in order to escape, and if that is a painful and difficult process, and we have to do it when we are already in want; i.e. already hungry and made thin through starvation, but not so hungry that we lack the energy, so we can’t be fully content unless we free ourselves from the corruption of the world. Otherwise, if we were fully content, we would not feel the corruption of the world. But we cannot wait until what hits us is nihilism and misery, because that will not help us free ourselves from the world, because then we don’t believe that it’s possible to free ourselves from the world. So the people who counsel waiting, the people who counsel cynicism, the people who counsel working in the system, the people who counsel the benevolence of people like Ron Paul: in my view, it’s possible, and of course metaphor is not proof, it’s just a way of looking at it, of starting to approach the problem, I think, in my heart of hearts, that libertarianism has been a complete disaster for the freedom movement.
I think it has been a complete disaster because it’s not philosophical in nature; it’s political in nature. And because it’s political in nature, it talks about economics, and it talks about the argument from effect, and it talks about the Founding Fathers, and it talks about the Republic and the Constitution and things like that. All of which is the purest nonsense when it comes to true freedom. It’s not about a piece of paper, it’s not about history, it’s not about politics, it is simply getting rid of the gun in the room. That is personal freedom in a political context, relative to politics. Personal freedom, as far as defooing and getting bad people out of your life, that’s all separate. In terms of politics, the libertarian movement has been a complete disaster. I’m not saying it’s causal, but it certainly is coincidental that the rise of libertarianism coincided with the rise of the growth of the power of the state in its really hyperaccelerated, asymptotic kind of manner that occurred in the mid-60s through to the present time. So the past 30 or 40 years have seen both the expansion of libertarianism and a simultaneous massive expansion in the size and power of the state. I’m not saying it’s causal, I don’t know enough about it to know whether or not it’s causal, but it certainly is correlated: these two things happened at the same time. Now was the state growing and therefore you could have a libertarian expansion because the power of the state was so great and blah blah blah, or was it that libertarianism was counseling people to wait and to hope and was providing a large amount of positive language that politicians could speak that lulled people into false sense of security? “I don’t need to achieve freedom, I don’t need to fight for freedom, because Ronald Reagan says the government is the problem, and not the solution. I don’t need to fight for freedom, I don’t need to squeeze out through the bars, because Bill Clinton is promising to end welfare as we know it. I don’t need to fight for freedom, I don’t need to crack my ribs squeezing through the bars of the cage because, now that the Soviet Union has fallen, the Cold War is over, and government will shrink of it’s own accord,” and so on, and so on, and so on.
I wonder, and not to a small degree, whether or not libertarianism is the “prisoner” in the next cage whispering for us to work within the system, whispering to us that help is coming, whispering to us that voting will set us free, whispering to us that reformation is possible, whispering to us that we can shrink this beast of government, whispering to us that we can compromise with violence and walk away without blood. And I don’t believe that it’s true. I don’t believe that it’s true, and empirically, it is absolutely not true. Empirically, in terms of what libertarianism has achieved, it is absolutely not true. And the “why” is interesting, and we can go into that perhaps another time, but when you look at people like Ron Paul, the basics of what you see is people who are telling you that help is coming. Ron Paul is obviously in Congress because – well, actually, I shouldn’t say; I have absolutely no idea what Ron Paul’s actual motives are. His words and his speeches obviously have something to do with the belief or at least the appearance of the belief that he can use his power to shrink government, that he can use the violence that his office gives him access to to oppose the violence that 430-odd other people’s offices gives them access to. And I just don’t think that it seems to be working.
I also think that having Ron Paul in office is a very good thing for the state. If the Ku Klux Klan wishes to hide its bigotry, then it lets two black men in. Then the Ku Klux Klan can say, with a nod and a wink, “See, we’re not about bigotry.” And Ron Paul is, of course, safely embedded in the power structure of the Republican Party. There’s a lot of eye-rolling and a lot of embarrassed silences when Ron Paul makes his speeches, because it has nothing to do with what everyone else is there for, which is to rape and pillage the body politic, to point the guns at everyone they can point their guns at. That’s what everyone else is there for, so Ron Paul talking about this, that, and the other, is quaint, and foolish, and he might as well be dressed up as Mark Twain and spouting Olde English as far as relevance to what’s going on occurs.
But what DOES Ron Paul do, in his essence, is he says that the system can be saved. He says that violence can be saved from itself, that violence can be used to fight violence, because the taxes that fund his office, the taxes that fund his salary and his initiatives and so on are all coerced through violence. The legislation that he opposes continues to roll past his minor opposition, which does nothing. It continues to roll along and do all the violence and attack all the innocent that it needs to attack in order to enrich the fat and politically connected. And he’s doing nothing to stop it.
This is the gambit that libertarianism is taking, which I, obviously, am not comfortable with. I really don’t like these odds, but this is the risk, the gamble that libertarianism is taking. Everything that you do in life has opportunity costs. If I do a podcast, I can’t listen to an audiobook. If I listen to an audiobook, I can’t do a podcast. If I pick my nose, I can’t do a videocast – well, I can, but it’d be gross. So everything we do in life has opportunity costs.
Now libertarians of the political persuasion, whether they’re statists or minarchists or whatever, they are pouring all of their energies into reforming the state, but they’re not willing to go to a stateless society. They’re not willing to oppose violence on principle. They’re just willing to oppose certain kinds of violence in excess in practice against their grain. “Shoot my neighbor in the kneecap, not both of us in the chest” is not a rallying cry towards freedom and liberation and independence and joy and peace and the beauty of virtue. “Shoot the guy down the street in the toe” is not much of a step forward. So all of the energy that people put into libertarian circles, into trying to run for office, into raising money, into getting ballot access laws and so on all tucked away and squared off. All the energy that people are putting into volunteering for Ron Paul’s campaign or whatever other campaign is going on, or moving to New Hampshire and all of this, all of that massive amount of energy, millions of person-years invested into the libertarian movement, into other kinds of movements.
What has it cost the world? If they’re wrong, if the state can never be reformed into something civilized, then attempting to reform it is deadly. You are moving in exactly the wrong direction. Libertarianism, at its core, as is minarchism, as is statism, at its core, is saying, “Violence can be used better than it’s being used right now. Give me the gun!” they say. “Give ME the gun! I’ll do it right! Those people who have the gun, they’re doing it wrong. You give ME the gun, I’ll do it right. We just need the right finger on the trigger, and we just need to grab the gun and point it at the right people, and everything will be great. Give ME the gun!” they say. “Gimmee gimmee gimmee! I want the gun!” Well . . . how’s that working? If you say that the gun can be used for good, then you are absolving the gun. You are more than absolving the gun, you’re praising the gun, the gun in the room, the state.
If you’re saying that the gun can be used for good, that a monopoly of violence can be used for good, and that virtue is impossible without the gun, that peace and pacifism and property and virtue is impossible without the gun – “Just give ME the gun and I’ll make it all right, I’ll make it great” – well it’s the first and final temptation of power. This is the constant hurly burly turnover of those who want THE GUN. “Give me the gun and I’ll make it great!” What if there was no gun? “Oh, no no no. There’s got to be a gun. There’s got to be a gun, we’ve just got to get it away from the people who have it now so WE can have the gun. So WE can use it. WE can have the fucking gun!” Why does there have to be a gun? Why is there always, always, always a gun? Well, of course, we’ve talked about that before, I’m sure we’ll talk about it again, and there’s a lively debate going on about that on the boards at the moment.
And really, that’s the fundamental answer that anarcho-capitalism provides. There’s no need for a gun. In fact, a gun is always evil. (I’m not talking about a private gun, I’m talking about a public gun. I’m talking about a state, and an army, and police force, and law courts. I’m talking about that stuff. All the apparatus of hegemonic power.) So libertarians are like, “Give Ron Paul the gun! Give ol’ Ronnie the gun! He’ll know what to do! He’ll save us, with the gun! We love the gun, we just want Ron to have it! Give Ron the gun. Not Newt – Ron! Once Ron’s hand curls over that holster, once his finger curls over that trigger – my God, it will be perfect. It will be just great! Give Harry Browne the gun! Give someone the gun who knows how to use it. Things will be – muah! Lov-er-ly!”
I don’t think it’s true. I think that the pursuit of trying to find the right person to give the gun to, the philosopher king of the Republic – trying to find the right person to give the gun to is not only a fool’s quest, but it says that the gun can be used for good. “Don’t worry, someone is coming, you don’t need to get out of the cage.” If you’re waiting at a bus stop, keep getting a phone call from the bus driver saying, “I’ll be there in five minutes, three minutes, two minutes, one minute.” Are you going to walk? Of course not. You’re going to freeze to death. By the time your toes are frozen, you can’t walk and you die. “Someone’s coming! Someone can use this gun! Someone can make this gun good! Someone can make this violence virtuous. Someone, some savior immune to drowning in blood, some godlike man who can wield the power of violence over millions of people and flourish, and be virtuous, and bring about a new Jerusalem, a new Renaissance, a new Enlightenment. Just give the gun to the right person, and the gun becomes golden.”
And still we dream, and still we wait, and still we believe, and still we hope, and still we have faith, and still we work, and still we vote, and still we donate, and still we move, and still we join the Free State Project, and still we phone into talk radio shows to talk about smaller government, and still we hope and we pray and we dream for this square circle of a good gun. Still we say, over and over, “Less gun is a better gun, but no gun is a terrible gun. Less violence is better violence, but no violence is bad violence.” Over and over and over, still, we stay orbiting this deadly sun. We can’t break out. And what is worse: to not know that violence is wrong, or to know that violence is wrong and approve of it? Who’s more corrupt? An out-and-out big welfare-warfare statist, who just says that the government is great, and everything it does is right, and taxation is the price we pay for a civilized society, and blah blah blah, never even comprehends, can’t even grasp on a conscious level that government is violence. Isn’t there an admirable amount of integrity, no matter how weird, in all of that? Sure, at least to me. But the libertarian who says that taxation is evil, and government is wrong, and welfare is wrong, and warfare state is wrong: they get it. They get it, that violence is wrong, violence is evil, the nonaggression principle and so on.
Who is more corrupt: the person who says slavery is moral, or the person who says, “Slavery is evil so we should just have a little less of it. Or we should have different slave owners. Or the slaves should be only slaves on weekends. Or the slaves should be slaves, but they should get to own a certain amount of property. Or that slaves should be slaves, but raping them is still wrong”? Who is more corrupt? I have an opinion, I’m not saying I’m proving it but I have an opinion. This is the challenge that I have with libertarianism, and of course with Objectivism even more so than libertarianism. Objectivism went further in so many ways.
What do you do when you see the gun? Seeing the gun is the root of libertarianism and Objectivism. You see the gun in the room as violence, it’s monopolistic, hegemonic violence. It’s disarming the taxpayers by pointing guns that you forced the taxpayers to pay for with the money you extort from them because they’re forced, because you can enforce your will over them. You pay the policemen who point guns at the taxpayers who pay the money who let you pay the policemen. That is understood by Objectivists and libertarians. That is understood, that is not argued about, that is not debated, whether government is coercion. They just want different people – maybe fewer people, sure, but different people holding the gun. Fewer people, different people, doesn’t really matter. It’s the size of the gun, it’s who it’s pointed at that’s the problem.
And isn’t it, to some degree, a thwarted power lust? The excluded, those who don’t have power, who try to create a narrative wherein they can grab power? And who takes over that narrative? Well, people like Ronald Reagan, who leans against the Berlin Wall, it falls over, and everyone says he’s the strongest man in history – he pushed over a whole wall. Who takes the narrative? Who takes over the narrative? Who promises the people that government will be restrained? Well, the Republicans, and to some degree the Democrats in certain areas, like defense spending. In welfare, it’s the Republicans.
Who takes over the narrative that the libertarians create? The libertarians say that smaller government is better government. The government that governs least is the government that governs best. Well great! I’ve got a government that governs not at all. There is no government – “well that’s bad. That’s wrong. That’s bad. That, we cannot allow. That, we cannot accept. We can’t have anarchy – ANARCHY, for God’s sake!!!” (as if we don’t.)
The story that government is good if it’s different, government is good if it’s smaller, government is good if it’s focused on XYZ. That narrative, what to people hear? “Government is good if.” “Rape is good if.” “Slavery is good if.”
Well great! So there’s nothing innately evil about rape, you’ve just got to rape less. There’s nothing innately evil about rape, you’ve just got to bring some flowers. Nothing innately evil about rape, just call the girl afterwards, for god’s sake! Spend a little quality time with her later. Nothing innately evil about murder, just put the right costume on, then you get a medal. There’s nothing innately evil about these things, it’s all just circumstantial. It’s all just relative to intention, it’s all relative to the words on the page of the Constitution. It’s all relative. There’s nothing right or wrong in any of this. There’s no evil in violence, it’s just got to be reconfigured!
What do people hear? “There’s no evil in violence. The state is not evil. Violence is not evil. Monopoly of coercive power is not evil.” And ‘round and ‘round the wheel goes. And we never break out of this orbit. Is Ron Paul friend or foe? Well, foe. Not because he’s an evil guy, I don’t know the guy. I’m just talking about the principles of what’s going on. “Violence is good if. If you define it right. If it’s smaller, if it’s lesser, if it’s minimized. Violence is good if.”
Well, violence is not good. Violence is always evil, rape is always evil. There is no “if,” there is no “maybe,” there is no “perhaps,” there is none of that. I hope that this has been helpful, at least in terms of getting my perspective out. Thank you for listening, and I will talk to you soon.
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