hi, everybody. it's stefan molyneux from freedomainradio. hope you're doing well. joining me now from what looks like about the most comfortablejail cell you're ever going to see in your life -- wait, no, actually -- no, i thinkhe's out. i think he's out. ladies and gentlemen, the one, the only adamkokesh. how are you, brother? outstanding. it's an honor to be invited tobe your guest today, stefan.
Sentinel Spectrum For Dogs 51 100 Lbs, thank you. now, we are going to be discussingcivil disobedience, and we ended up deciding to do a sort of video debate. my initial approachto adam was to say, "adam, let's have an arm-wrestle contest." but he ended up screaming i thinklike an anime character. so we ended up hiding under the couch and saying, "please, withyour noodly appendages, do not break my arm."
actually, this is only funny if you know howmuscular adam kokesh really is. and i believe even more so after his time in the big house. so yeah, we're going to talk about civil disobedience,other options or ways in which we can bring the fight for freedom to the future. so thanksagain for your time. adam, for those of my listeners who may notbe aware of you and given how many new ones we've got lately, it might be quite a few,i wonder if you could give us a little background and the story of your recent exciting adventuresinto the non-theoretical world of civil disobedience. thanks for your time. i think that's whatthe judge said after four months in the d.c. system. yeah, it was a very interesting experience,and i'm glad that you've made these wonderful
decisions on our behalf. it's very dictatorialof you. but as long as that's the direction this conversation is going, i'm still in.i'm still in. i engaged in a particularly flagrant, i guessis the only adjective i would take on it for myself, to describe the act of civil disobediencethat i committed on independence day of this year, carrying and loading a shotgun at freedomplaza in washington, d.c. i know, the irony and the symbolism is perfect there, right,freedom plaza, okay, in between the white house and the capitol. and as a result, myhome was raided. i really got to put this out front, you know,just really as i guess a token of humility that it was really kind of naã¯ve and sillyfor me, of all people, to expect that we can
get a straightforward shot through the justicesystem which i never even referred to as a justice system. i like to call it either thecriminal punishment system or the government injustice system. but i expected somethingmore than what i got. it makes me feel really silly in hindsight. and i hate to say hindsight even because i'monly halfway through this thing at least legally speaking. i'm still facing charges in virginiathat's done from the raid. my home was in herndon, virginia. i've since been evicted,and i'm facing charges for possession of drugs and guns with drugs in virginia. and i tooka plea after four months in jail to the charges of marijuana possession and carrying a rifle,a shotgun outside of home or place of business
with unregistered firearm and unregisteredammunition in d.c. it was really tough. i really didn't wantto take a plea knowing that under the second amendment to the constitution, under the naturallaw, under any sense of commonsense that i am innocent of any kind of real crimes thathave victims. so it really was -- it was a tough decision for me. but what really wasnaã¯ve on my part was to think that my home wouldn't be raided, to think that i wouldbe politely arrested and booked and taken -- handheld through the system, and obviouslythat wasn't the case. so just a little background on me, super quick,how i fell into this position. i got started as an activist with iraq veterans againstthe war when i got back from the marines or
when i got out of the marines in late 2006.i was in fallujah with combat tour, with the civil affairs in 2004 and then ran for congressin new mexico. couldn't shut up when the race was over, so i got a radio show that turnedinto a tv show for four months before it was cancelled for political reasons on the russiantelevision network, russia today, based out of d.c. and then decided to go independent. and in many ways taking your lead, stefan,and following your example of how -- well, i guess in your case, the term "intellectual"applies perhaps for me, trouble-making pundit of the internet is somehow more on par. ifstefan gets to be the intellectual -- we got to call a different category altogether forwhat i do. but to be in the same --
i always felt that the word "intellectual"is like the consolation price that you get when people think you aren't that intelligent.you can't say he's intelligent. let's just call him intellectual. in other words, he'sgot big words which he assembles randomly in a word salad. but sorry, go on. or when you can't say professor or bestsellingauthor or television show host anymore, right? you say, oh, intellectual; it's just a nicecatch-all. but to be in the same general line of work as you, stefan, to be in the sameindustry, if you will, of independent liberty media now, i mean there's nowhere else i'drather be. i'm working on -- well, it's my second book, the first one having it to bepublished, so i'm adding to my pile of unpublished
literature. i'm just -- the business of free minds andhelping people out and improve their lives and inspire self-ownership and maybe that'sa really good catch-all for what we do, for what this line of work represents, for whatpeople who i consider myself colleagues with are doing. and it's really an honor to beon your show and a part of this great industry of inspiring self-ownership. yeah. i knew you were talking about what tocall the system. to me it's like the slow-moving gulag conveyor belt that they staple you to,people who don't get involved in this kind of stuff. when you watch it on tv, it's allpretty quick. the guy gets arrested and the
next scene is a court scene. the next sceneis a sentencing or an acquittal scene and so on, the unbelievable frozen trickle natureof the slowness and the mind-occupying headspace that these kinds of systems are a part of.it really is like it is a giant that's blowing up this slow balloon that takes over yourbrain really slowly. and so for people who don't -- now, if youcan, i think you can talk about it and if you can, of course, please feel free not to;but the reports of the actual arrest, i mean it sounded truly nkvd/gestapo style; flashbangs dragging you out in your shorts, throwing you in a frigid cell with bugs and all thatkind of stuff. what was going on there? yeah. i have no problem talking about what'sfactually on the record in terms of the raid
itself and my ensuing kidnapping and confinementbecause that's pretty straightforward, but you're right. and you want to think, well,isn't this america? like, yeah, this is the representation of the police state and thiskind of stuff happens every day. and in a way it's sort of like, "okay, adam,you've been telling these stories. you've been reporting on these kinds of incidentsfor years. it's about time one happened to you." and you go, wow, right up front andpersonal for a non-crime and you go -- this is the depths of it. but, yeah, my door wasknocked down or knocked in rather with a battering ram. the door was destroyed as well as thedoor frame. my dog was responding. i have a hundred poundpit/dane mix, baloo, and the sweetest dog
ever, goes up to the door to investigate thenoise. it's crashing in. and i'm actually really grateful that they threw a flashbanggrenade more or less at him. it landed right at his feet. i'm at the top of the stairscoming out of my bedroom. it lands at his feet and it goes off, enough that i get theeffect of it. and just being in the same -- in closed space with the flashbang grenade, it'senough to get the staggered effect. and i was still maybe 15 feet away from theactual point that the grenade went off because i was up a flight of stairs and it was littleways in front of me, but i got the ears ringing and the impact of it. but my dog, i mean itwas like right at his feet, and i'm so glad that it happened this way because if theyhadn't, if they had forgotten the flashbang
grenade, they would have fought the dog. that'swhat they do, like that's really, really a sick standard common procedure. and if you understand the police mentality,it kind of makes sense, and the status mentality, of course, a dog is an animal, is property.if property is a threat, you destroy the property. and there's no consideration for the valueof that property even under that rubric when it comes to the rights -- property rightsof an individual whose home is being raided. but, fortunately, baloo was frightened enoughthat he ran upstairs and i was able to tell him to go in his crate although i was standingthere with my hands up. and fortunately, my incredible girlfriendkerry, who was in the shower on her period
at the time, was able to get the dog intohis crate. but she was pulled out while undressed and was forced to throw something on and thenwas sitting in her own blood for hours before the police would let her address that. theyhad all of us. there were about eight of us in the house at the time, and they had usseated and handcuffs on the floor. the unprofessionalism was just frightening. and you might have heard this as they werepointing guns at us the entire time. and it's true but it's not necessarily what you wouldthink because, yes, they pointed guns at us when they were getting everybody controlledand in position. and all right, we're going around; we're going to clear the house and"you, all right, you, come sit down here and
you sit down here." yeah, they're actuallypointing guns at people that way in a tactical sense and that's kind of expected. but the unprofessionalism wasn't in that.it was that they were then walking around with their m16s or their ars, their assaultrifles or their m4s -- whatever they were, there was a mix -- slung across their chestwith the barrels pointed down and kind of out. and what they were doing was sort ofjust walking around with these guns pointed at the heads of everybody who's sitting onthe floor around them which is kind of -- it was hard to tell if it was really disturbingincompetence or deliberate casual intimidation. but we were there for five hours while theyransacked the home. and there are photos of
that online of just the house being turnedinside out. i cooperated right away. they asked where the shotgun was and i told themwhere to find it, the shotgun in question from the video, or at least one that lookedlike it. and that didn't stop them from going after everything else that they did whichis very suggestive, and i'm not going to speculate as to what could have been going on. there is certainly evidence, not inconclusivebut evidence to suggest that there was a plant, that there was an infiltrator in my organization,and very strong evidence to suggest that the police were there for other reasons; thatthey were looking for an excuse to arrest me and charge me right then and there, notjust to execute this warrant.
and one of the things that was really interestingabout that is that that warrant said they could seize any documents pertaining to theproduction of the independence day video. and they didn't go for any documents. theydidn't go for any computers. they went for physical incriminating stuff and my life savingsand silver and guns and ammunition. and fortunately, they couldn't get to the bitcoins. but itwas -- really it's crazy to think that there's nowhere safe in america anymore. for me, as a dissident trying to build a life,i know those things are kind of incompatible. where do i save my money? if i want to savemoney to raise kids and start a family or buy a home someday like what do i do? do iput it in a bank account or -- i can't keep
silver in my safe, in my basement. i can'thave physical wealth anymore. i mean unless it's perfectly hidden, there's really nothingyou can do; and we are all that vulnerable. so again, just for the humility side, it wasreally humbling to know that that can happen to anybody, even with the kind of public scrutinythat we have as activists. but then for the first three days, i was in a cell with thelight on 24 hours. i was given a t-shirt and the shorts that i wore when i was arrestedand no mattress and there were ants in a cell. and i was on a starvation diet essentially.i have a sandwich and a carton of milk three times a day. and i caved. i cooperated atthat point because i was being tortured. and i've done things myself when i was in fallujahwith the marines. i get things that crossed
the line, that constituted torture. and inthat sense, that's what this was. when i was arrested in philadelphia in may,i applied the same strategy of non-cooperation and it worked and i was released in a week.and i think this time they decided, "well, we've got more serious charges for you. andwe've got something a little more incriminating. so we can lean on you a lot more and you'renot resistant or your resistance strategy in jail isn't going to work." but i refusedto take the ppd shot. i refused to take a dna test. when you saw me for that mug shot out of fairfax,i was actually handcuffed to a wheelchair which they used to take me in for a videoarraignment for the judge as well. and i kept
it up as long as i could before i realizedthe public pressure wasn't there. if there had been some massive outpouring of the americanpeople behind me and "oh, wow, we can't let the government keep this guy behind bars,"then the strategy really would have worked. but at that point, the support wasn't thereand they had enough of a serious charge. they were going to hold me. so i did two and ahalf weeks of solitary in fairfax and then i was in solitary for two months in d.c. andthen general population in d.c. for two months. wow. i'm incredibly sorry for all that occurredto you. i mean it is a dangerous strategy, of course, if you're going to be on a starvationdiet and not getting enough sleep. i mean at some point that's going to start to damageyour health. people don't i think understand
the degree to which -- it was certainly ashock to me to find out that like 95% or 97% of people arrested on drug charge have toplead down because they're just given ridiculous sentences and then they have to plead down. and when you're not facing that yourself,sometimes people say stay tough and then out of the situation. but when you're lookingat years of your life being dribbled away in a torturous environment, i can certainlyunderstand why people make those difficult choices. and it's very important that you point thatout, stefan. i became uniquely aware of that not just through my own experience. but wheni got to general population talking to other
inmates, it's insane when you have a system.and this alone should be just a sign that something is so terribly, terribly wrong;that there's this kind of subjective in a system. but in terms of time that is threatened againstpeople, in terms of potential time that they would face for charges, my sense is that theaverage inmate really only does 10% to 20% of it. and you might think, "no, adam, that'scrazy. good time, time served, all that. that's only like a small chunk of it." no, i'm talkingabout when the prosecutor can go, "well, all right. well, you were caught with this. thisis what we have on paper. therefore, we can charge you with this felony and that felonyand that felony. oh, and we can get you mandatory
time for this and, oh, if you get convictedof that." and the law is written in such a way becauseit has nothing to do with justice of compensating victims or any kind of real sense of propertyrights. it's a punishment system, and it's very subjective. and it's really scary whenyou're in that system and they go, "well, you could go to trial. and if you lose, it'sa hundred thousand years. but if you win, it's nothing. or you can plea to five years." sounds pretty good all of a sudden to do fiveyears, and you start to understand the real pressure that they can bring to bear on someoneonce they've got their teeth into you. but they can add and subtract charges. they canfabricate charges. i mean they can say, "well,
we have just a shred of evidence on this charge,but it's enough to drag you through the courts for months," which is a sentence in and ofitself. well, and this is one of the things that thegargantuan expansion of the prosecution for victimless crimes is done to the system. thereis no possible way that the amount of criminals that need to be processed through the systemcould ever get any kind of fair trial. like if they said, "no more plea bargains. everyonegets to trial," the system would completely collapse. i mean it's on the verge of collapsingin various places like detroit and so on anyway where even murder charges can take five yearsto get to court, in which case half the witnesses are dead or vanished.
and so the corruption of the system whereinnobody can get their fair day in court is a result of this monstrous expansion of victimlesscrimes. and i don't think people, you know, it would be a pretty bad cop show or a prettybad lawyer show if it was just like, "hey, cop planted something something. they manufacturesome charges and plead down." ooh, it has to be this courtroom thing so that you thinkthat justice is being served. but it's like one in 20 people, less thanone in 20 people who ever get that opportunity and they say, "but we found you guilty." it'slike, no. it's funny; you can't bribe a judge, you can't bribe a district attorney, you can'tbribe a policeman, you can't bribe a lawyer with money, but you can bribe people with10 years of their life and somehow that is
considered acceptable and just. i was asked when i took my plea, "have youbeen threatened in any way?" and i said only in the normal prosecutorial process, yeah.but you're right and it's sick. it's sick how it's come to that. and i met a lot ofguys in jail who were dealing with far worse than what i was and that was a very humblingexperience in itself. but even for the guys who get that day in court, stefan, oftentimesa sentence in and of itself. and there was someone that i met there, glena. smith jr. if anybody wants to look up his case, it's actually the latest video stillon my youtube channel, youtube.com/adamkokesh, about his innocence. and he was actually convictedof a murder that a video exonerated him from
right before facing these rape charges allfrom the same arrest and you look at the way this was processed and handled. he was the first black man to be convictedbased on a white accuser with an all-white jury in d.c. in 15 years. and you see allof the various factors that conspired to put someone in that situation and go, "wow!" isit more -- even for the guy that's convicted of a really heinous rape in jail accordingto what they're saying, is it more likely that he did this? and you look at who he isand you look at his life story, and i got to see a lot of his paperwork. it's far morelikely that this the system bullied a witness into this and cajoled a certain outcome fromthe process in order to meet numbers, in order
to grind up one more body in the machine. but there was another guy on my block, andyou might know his name as an up and coming mma fighter if you are fan of the sport. hisname is matthew maldonado. and he was in jail for ten months on pre-trial confinement beforethe jury found him not guilty. what kind of justice is that? you know, hislife, his career just trashed, ruined. and you're like, how do they get away with this?and i think the libertarian philosophy that you're so good at explaining to people reallyprovides some obvious mechanisms of accountability that you know you would have in any kind ofnonviolent system, unlike what we have with the violent government system where you can'tjust take ten months of a guy's life, decide
that he's not guilty, and let it go with thatand not have any consequences for the people involved. i mean that is insane. we are going let the most important decisionsin our society be made by people who have no accountability for when those decisionsare wrong? i mean what kind of status hell is this? oh, yeah. i mean there was i think a lawyerwho manufactured evidence that resulted in a guy getting 20 years in prison, and i thinkhe basically got 30 days in jail after he was finally caught and after there was a hugeamount of protest. and people also -- i think it's really important for people to understandthat it can happen to just about anyone, right?
so we think, okay, well, so some guy was fingeredby a guy who was caught for drugs. he must have had some negative aspect to his lifeor whatever. it's actually not true, of course, because what happens is they either catchor manufacture someone because they got their quotas to hit and all that kind of stuff.and also, the cops like scaring the criminal population in return for bribes and that kindof stuff. and so they'll grab someone, whether fairlyor not or even according to law is just or not, and then they say, "we'll, we're goingto give you 10 years unless you give up three or four other people." and so the guy is like,"oh, my god! i got kids." i mean i knew this guy, i thought maybe he did something wrong.and then there's this guy i knew in grade
school and then there was this guy upstairswho i didn't like. i just got to give some names because then they're going to give methree months as opposed to 10 years if i don't. so people just cough up names and then that'senough to go and grab those people, and then they just drop charges on those people untilthose people give up names. i mean it's completely insane. i mean it turns, of course, all ofthe livestock against each other; and it has nothing to do with any particular evidenceor any standard of proof or belief. i mean it's just this ripple of constant intimidationand threats. well, if you incriminate three people andthey each incriminate three people, the next thing you know, we'll have 2 million americansin jail.
yeah, yeah, yeah. all right. so again, i'mso sorry that this is occurring for you. i know that i spoke with another liberty activistonce who was not paying taxes and was going to challenge the whole legality of the incometax and prepared this massive defense, had three binders with him, represented himself,and then when he got his day in court, he was never even offered the chance to speakon his own behalf. they just sentenced him. it took about five minutes, and he went tojail for 13 months and had a young daughter at home. so it is a very risky thing. i think it was stephan kinsella who pointedout that even if there are laws that are in your favor, i mean the laws are not magic.they don't compel. it's not like the laws
of physics. they don't compel anyone's behavior.a good man and a bad man jump off a cliff, they both fall down, but the laws are notmagic spells that bind people's behavior. once you're on the other side of that wall,they can pretty much do whatever they want and face almost no repercussion. so the laws are just kind of these -- whatthey are is magic spells to keep people's anxieties about the randomness of governmentinjustice at bay, but they don't actually change anyone's behavior when it comes downto it. and if any of that anxiety is based in therational analysis, it should have no effect whatsoever.
right. okay. so let's have a little chat aboutcivil disobedience as -- wait. i thought -- i didn't expect you'd giveme this long to ramble in the show, how easy it is to be on the same page with the biggerpicture of the criminal injustice system. but this is the part where you're supposedto tell me, "hey, adam, civil disobedience is great but isn't that a silly inefficientway to wake people up? you should be sitting back as the wise bald philosopher making videosand podcasts and spreading awareness and raising your children nonviolently." and i have to say, stefan, i did do my partto catch up and get old and wise and i did start loosing my hair while i was in jail,but that was about it.
did you really? wow. well, that's good becausei have a general theory. can i just go completely off topic for a moment? the more bald you are, the smarter you couldget? well, no, but it's less random than it sounds.so the brain runs on energy and hair is protein. and so my belief is that when your neo-frontalcortex starts getting big and hungry enough, it starts sucking in your hair like you dowith spaghetti when you were a kid, just suck that. and you notice that nobody gets baldaround the back and the sides and that's where the base of the brain, the lower brain is;it can't get really get smarter because that's where our chimpanzee brain is. so i just wantedto point that out. it does happen to young
people so much. it happens when you sort ofget to middle age a lot. anyway, i could probably spend the rest ofthe show on this pathetically defensive theory, but it's good to know that your brain is gettinghungrier. it's not a bald spot. it's a solar panel forsex machine. i thought that's where you're going with that. yeah, philosophy machine. that's right. sono, look, i mean the first thing i want to say is i don't know exactly what the bestcourse of action is. i don't know. it could be civil disobedience; it could be somethingelse. i think there's a case to be made. and so really what i want to do is just get peoplethe opportunity to hear the case for a variety
of possibilities and, of course, make theirown decisions. i certainly -- i mean the amount of courageit takes to do what you do did is prodigious, and i don't know if i am wise or chicken.i don't even know if the two are the separate things. i mean i think as the price, and i'msure this makes it all worth it, as the price for a couple of months in jail, i thoughtmaybe you could go first and make the case for how you think that civil disobedienceis valid and powerful and an effective way of waking people up to where they are. well, considering that the real objectiveof my activism was to get booked on free domain radio, i would say that --
yeah, because that's tough. what a high wallthat is to get over. you just phone me up, "hey, i'm not busy for 20 minutes." "hey,me neither. let's do a show." right, right. sorry, it's really not that -- you don't haveto buy me a dinner. i'm easy. so i'm not here to say that civil disobedienceis the be-all, end-all. and if anything, i'd want to take advantage of this opportunityto have maybe a broader discussion with you than just about civil disobedience becausethe libertarian movement has kind of come to -- i really think the most pressing questionfor the liberty movement right now and i don't mean on the six to one year time scale. imean more on maybe five to ten year time scale. but the most important question right nowis in the how. and if you look back on the
evolution or the development of libertarianthought and philosophy, historically speaking it's still very new. in a sense, it's eternal.it's as old as the human condition. we all want to be free. we all want to live withoutviolence in our lives or without the threat of violence from other human beings. i meanin that sense, the struggle for liberty is eternal. but in the face of human history that is thedevelopment of modern societies and modern governments, the complete libertarian philosophyas a counter to government, if you will, as maybe a more fundamental truth than the falsehoodsof the government racket, it's a relatively new idea and really only codify it even.
and, stefan, as a history major yourself andas someone with a better sense of this than me, maybe you can correct me if i'm wronghere. but to me, it seems like the emergence of the libertarian philosophy as such cannotbe said to have been flourishing for more than the last 50, maybe 100 years at most.and in that sense, it's very, very new. and in that time, this phenomenon of modern institutionalizedbureaucratic government has also grown exponentially. and as this concept of liberty as a framework,as a philosophy, as congealing in the minds of a critical mass of the public, we see theproblem itself just radically changing. and to where it is today and especially withtechnology, i mean things that you want to say, rothbard or mises never could have envisionedor lokert or adam smith even could have imagined
in terms of the potential uses of these technologyfor government, for control and, of course, you and i am sure would be quick to pointout at the same time for enlightenment through the internet and the sharing of informationand the greater connectedness that this technology provides. but the how that came out of the modern libertarianphilosophical development of the '70s and '80s even kind of stopped short at the educationand activism. and of course, it was konkin, sam konkin iii that really developed the ideaof agorism, of economic civil disobedience, of really widespread as a lifestyle of livingoutside of the purview of government, conducting your economic affairs like government doesn'texist. and he predicted that pockets of agorism
would develop and sort of subsume the pocketsof statism that remained or eventually overtakes statism. in a way, we see that happening. i mean withthe rise of bitcoin, of so many other means of barter online. that's technically taxableincome or when you gain something from barter, at least according to the irs, but as youknow it's not enforced and practically enforceable. so we see this and despite the rapid growthof agorism, deliberate and undeliberate, the growth of the black market in general, youwould think that that would do something to check the power of the state but it hasn't.the status continue to grow, the status that, oh, you want to trade with gold and silverdimes and have your little thing at pork fest
once a year? we'll just keep praying for moremoney. screw you. it doesn't matter. and that's almost taking it to the next level.to go back to education and activism, education is so fundamental and so ongoing and reallyis the foundation of the paradigm shift, and i really believe that that is essential. thework that people like you do in developing that framework and winning converts to reallydeep-seated intellectual grasp of libertarianism and philosophy as you do is so important inthat activism. and i don't want to try to parse out specificdefinitions here but anything that you do because there's such an overlap, and we coulddebate that for a couple of hours by itself. but activism is sort of bringing people toeducation or inspiring them to want to embrace
the philosophy. and in that sense, i feellike civil disobedience plays into that. but if people don't live their lives differentlyin terms of agorism and getting to that how, education and activism together are both irrelevant. but i would even go a step further and thisis why, as i'm sure you're aware, i'm running for president in 2020 on the platform of dissolvingthe entire federal government. and i'm not suggesting that that is the how, that thatis the be-all. sorry. i just wanted to mention that i believeit's perfectly legal to suggest that as long as you don't use bath salts because they areclassified i believe now as a drug. just wanted to mention, don't mention bath salts in thedissolution, the perfectly legal and voluntary
dissolution of the federal government. sorry,go ahead. i'm sure there's some really bad breakingbad reference joke in there too where we can talk about the dissolving of a bathtub andthings just sort of falling through. but i don't know, maybe that's too evocative ofgrover norquist. i just want the government to be small enough that i can drown it ina bathtub. but all of these things contribute and ina way -- i read a letter from someone when i was in jail about my civil disobedience,but it was about calculus. and he was saying that -- this supporter of mine was sayingthat sometimes with the development of higher math, you don't know what you're doing. you'rejust trying different things. you're plugging
different numbers, and you're trying to seewhat the results are. and in a way, when you're dealing with something that is as huge andcomplex as the problem of the modern paradigm of statism, we have to be willing to try allthings and know that not everything is going to be easily measured in terms of efficiency. could i have awoken more people up if i didn'tspend four months in jail? quite possibly. i don't know. could i have been more effective?i'm sure there would have been something. and in everything we always do for this cause,there will be a chance to say, "you could have done it better this way. you could havedone it more effectively that way. you could have done it more efficiently that way." andcivil disobedience, like you said, it's a
high cost; it's a high risk. and so the efficiencyquestion really comes into play here. but i see it as a sort of a supporting rolein achieving a free society. civil disobedience, when it's for -- the traditional frameworkof civil disobedience, if you're going to break a law, you're going to do it openly,you're going to make a public spectacle of it as opposed to quiet civil disobediencewhere the point is to disempower the state and your lifestyle. i think that's sort ofjust one method of activism. right. well, just by the by, i think one ofthe challenges of libertarianism as opposed to out and out voluntarism which is, you know,voluntarism or the anarchic position is there's no taming the state. you cannot tame the stateand it is -- i'm sorry?
what's the difference? if i may on an asidehere, stefan, i really think we need to stop trying to cater to everybody that's pervertingthe definition of libertarian to mean anything that is not grounded in self-ownership andnonaggression and coming up with these terms to be, no, no, no, specifically this. it'ssort of like, no, can't it just be libertarian and can't that mean self-ownership or thenonaggression principle? well, of course, if you take the nonaggressionprinciple and apply it universally which is really -- i would argue what ethics are supposedto do, then the moral justification for statism vanishes. and one of the challenges of libertarianismis that it says there's a cure for the state called a constitution or the awareness anddisagreement of the people and so on.
and so my argument is if there is in factno cure for statism, then pretending that there is is only going to fuel the growthof the state. like if people who are smokers think that there's a pill you can pop that'sgoing to cure lung cancer, the odds are they're not going to quit smoking, right? they'rejust going to smoke more and say, "well, i'll just pop that pill," because the growth oflibertarianism as the delusion that you can control the state with paper, it's like sortof saying, "i can take a hand grenade and i can roll it into a tent. but don't worry.i wrapped some paper around it so it's not going to go off." well, sorry, the logic ofviolence outstrips that of ink. sorry, go ahead.
i hope this isn't getting to be a semanticsargument, but when you say that libertarianism is about you can have the government checkedby constitution, i don't think that's libertarianism. i think that's statism to say we're goingto have a constitution that gives the creation of something called the state that is goingto create a violent monopoly. that's not libertarianism. that might be minarchism or constitutionalismor some other form of republicanism, but that's not libertarianism. no, no, but, of course, the common perceptionof people, adam, based upon the platform of the libertarian party is they want a constitutionallylimited republic, right, most people know as a libertarian political party through ronpaul or through other people who have been
associated with libertarian party. you andi know libertarianism probably we can argue was founded on the nonaggression principle,self-ownership, respect for property rights and so on. but to move sort of -- to me it's interestingthat the growth of the state has coincided that i'm not saying is directly caused bythe growth of libertarian philosophy. yes, sir. i feel -- i'm no great with body language,but i feel you have something to add to this. go ahead. i'm willing to be chased off the word libertarian.it seems like people who seek truth always gets chased off of the terminology and arealways looking for new terms to take a stand
and to find what they believe in. i'm notwilling to give up the term libertarian. i think it means what it means. i think if youbelieve in liberty, even if it's defined simply as that, do you believe in liberty? great,then you're a libertarian. wait, i believe in the constitution. oh, so you're not a libertarian.sorry, that's just how it is. it was great when the people who were againstslavery had the term abolitionist because there was no ambiguity in that. there wasno, "well, we kind of want to make slave owning better. we kind of want to take the whipsaway and replace them with jello shots or something." the abolitionists were "we justwant to get rid of slavery as an institution completely." i don't know that there's a greatterm for that.
unfortunately, anarchism means also idiotswho put on balaclavas and throw garbage cans through starbucks because they hate lattesor something. and voluntarism, i don't even know. most people don't even know what thatmeans. and libertarian often means wanting to return to sort of the founding fathers,limited constitutional republic. so i just like to use the word philosophy because ihope that encompasses the exploration of these areas in all rational consistencies, but ialmost feel like you have something else to say. no, no, i'm standing my ground. if you believein liberty, like this is what liberty means. and one of the reasons that the libertariancause in general, i mean historically is not
a problem, or i supposed that the eternalweakness of the concept of liberty is that people don't consider what it actually means.and if you give people this license to say, "look, libertarian can mean, i'm going toaccept -- oh, you're going to say that libertarian means constitutional republic. well, theni'm going to say you're a liar because you don't believe in liberty if that's the casebecause either you believe in liberty or you don't. either it's a moral principle or it'snot." and if you say, "well, no, i believe in someliberty. i believe in the right to life except some people should be murdered." just in general,like i believe in liberty except we should have this monopolistic state over whateverterritory empowered by a constitution. sorry,
you don't believe in liberty. sorry, you'renot a libertarian. to me, yeah, i think what we're arguing foris principles without asterisks. you have one of these contracts and it's like, "thiscar is available to you for $200 a month for 48 months," and then you see this little asterisk.and then you go down and there's like this two-point squint-o-vision type. and it's alwaysthat guy who speaks really quickly on the radio, "this does not apply to pandas. thisdoes not include people from chinese origin. this does not include people who wear umbrellaswhen it's sunny," and all that. and to me it's a consistent principle. it'sjust thou shall not kill. no asterisk. does not count if you're in uniform. does not countif you vote for it. does not count if you're
in the majority. does not count if... andno thou shall not steal. does not count if you're a member of the irs. does not countif you believe in taxation. does not count if you believe that you will help the poor.does not count if you would have a foreign policy that is counter-progressive based uponayn rand's writing, right? so i mean to me, it's like you get rid ofthe asterisk: thou shall not kill, thou shall not steal; no asterisks. if you see an asterisk,you are in the wrong place. it's just liberty. and if you believe in liberty,you can call yourself a libertarian. okay. so i'll just put on a little thing tohelp sort of people understand my perspective. so i came late in life to the libertarianmovement because i'm an extremely slow starter.
you can certainly see that in the morningwhen i'm sort of pouring myself like puddles down the stairs until i get three coffeesin me. but i came to see libertarianism i guess it was in my early 40s or somethinglike that as a sort of movement. i liked it and all that, but i was in the business world. now, when i was in the business world, i dida lot of r&d, did a lot of technical management and wrote a lot of software and stuff. andone of the things that got drilled into me repetitively was know your market, know yourmarket. do the research before you start building stuff. find out what people's capabilitiesare, what their needs are, what the competition is and so on. and i brought all of that andpeople get very confused by my show which
i hope is a plus. but they get confused bymy show because it's like, "man, i love what you have to say about the state, and i lovewhat you have to say about the federal reserve. why are you all talking about spanking andpersonal relationships? what does that have to do with the price of tea in china?" andso on. i'm here to lift the curtain, to reveal what all of that has always been about. so when i was in the business world and youprobably know this from being in the media world a lot more than i have been, peopletalk a good game. "this show is going to be about integrity." oh, wait, we have an advertiser.we can't say that," or whatever it's going to be, right? nobody in business says, "well,we'll bend the truth to make a profit. we'll
shove the client a little bit my misrepresentingourselves." in order to close the deal, people are always like, "we have the highest standardsof integrity." and so in the business world, unfortunatelyi had a habit of listening to what people say rather than what they actually did. andso when i got into the liberty movement and i kind of realized that there was a role forme, i really wanted to get a map of where people were coming from and where they were.and there were a few things that kind of gave me trouble. so obviously, to diminish the power of thestate is going to require that people act against their own immediate economic self-interest.that's natural, right? i mean people are going
to have to give up lucrative contracts withthe military industrial complex if we reduce the military. people are going to have togive up welfare. they're going to have to give up unemployment. they're going to haveto give up subsidies, and they're going to have to give up protective tariff walls andfarmers are going to have to give up subsidies. so we're going to have to require people toact against their own immediate economic self-interest. like if you're a nutritionist and the guysays, "i'm going to eat whatever i want, whenever i want it," it's like, "well, i don't reallythink i can help you because you kind of have to deny yourself some stuff you want if you'regoing to get healthy." and what troubled me and has always troubledme is the degree to which libertarian academics
are still in academia, right? i mean they'reall over the place in academia. you and i have shown that you can make a reasonableliving off the free market by talking to people directly without government protection, governmentunions, government subsidies, wonderful sabbaticals and working three to five hours a week for$150,000 a year as i think some academics have pointed out to their self-satisfaction. so what i got was that -- and these people,all that phds and free market economics and so on, and so my concern was that if we needpeople to act against their own immediate economic self-interest in order to get a betterworld and if the people who openly proclaim their allegiance to nonaggression principleand to voluntary free market, if we can't
get people with a phd in the free market economicsto go against their immediate economic self-interest for the sake of consistency, then i kind ofgot the feeling that expanding knowledge wasn't going to help. even if i could give everyoneor make everyone take a phd in free market economics, they will still going to want theirill-gotten economic gains and come up with some ex post facto justification for it. so my concern was that expanding knowledgeof freedom was not going to work because we already had people who had committed theirwhole lives and had tens or dozens of years invested in this who still weren't givingup their economic ill-gotten gains. so whatever was going to help people gain knowledge aboutlibertarianism, i couldn't see how that was
going to result in people giving up theirunjust economic gains. so i just wanted to get your thoughts on that because that wassomething that was of great concern to me at the beginning. absolutely. well, just to be clear for anynon-libertarians that might be listening right now, he is saying give up your short-termmonetary compensation for the promise of much greater long-term compensation with the freesociety and a free world and a nonviolent life and a chance to raise your kids withoutthe state and yes. it's a short-term sacrifice for a long-term benefit, right? i mean that'sessentially what we're talking about when it comes to giving up the --
yeah, put down the cheesecake; don't get diabetes.put out the cigarette; don't get lung cancer. it's just really that sort of argument. giveup your economic gains for the moment, and you'll end up a lot better off in the longrun. put down the welfare and the ballot and maybewe'd not have to suffer through more wars, for example, right? just put it in short terms.but if that's what you're trying to convince people to do, it's definitely a top sell andyou really have to have a certain amount of, you know, you also have to give them a certainconfidence in that, what does that long-term compensation will look like? hey, you're goingto give up this stuff in the short term and you're going to get this in the long term,and the reality is that it's a long-term uncertainty.
you're asking people to give up a short-termcertain benefit in favor of a long-term uncertainty which is clear to anybody who believes innonviolence as a universal principle that's going to be much better for a society as awhole, but like you cannot promise an individual that your life will be better. it's just theimpossible promise. but the state can promise, "hey, here's 50 bucks and here's another 50bucks and here's another 50 bucks." and the state can do that every single day that theprinting press is operational. they can keep doing that. so i mean i agree that there is that sortof tension. but in a way, what i am actually proposing is the how and the solution overcomesthat a lot. and this is one of the ideas i've
been developing for myself lately and thoughtabout a lot while i was locked up which is the concept of localization. i really believethat the way that we are going to abolish statism is from the top down. a lot of libertarians will suggest, well,we're going to do this and then we're going to do that. we're going to educate. we'regoing to create this great intellectual foundation for the movement. we're going to have mises.org.we're going to have freedomainradio.com. we're going to have lewrockwell.com. we're goingto have all these great repositories for libertarian philosophy and thought and economic treatiesthat explain exactly how things are going to get better and how things are working becausehow it would be now. and we're going to do
activism and we're going to reach out to peopleand we're going to take advantage of every opportunity and we're going to promote agorismand civil disobedience and resistance and tax resistance. and then what? and then what?and then it's going to collapse? no, no, adam, what you don't understand isthat miracle occurs. and in the cloud of miraculous occurrences will emerge like phoenix comingout of an egg, will emerge a free society. and i apologize in the sense for discountingyour ultimate solution of nonviolent parenting which i think is huge. it's a major underpinningto the psychological roots of violence, and it ties in very much at a very primal levelof education. you educate your children in the ways of nonviolence, in the ways of relatingwith reason. and then the next generation
is that much more libertarian and then what?i really believe that there is going to be -- okay. so just before you get on, let me justfinish my second point. i'll try and keep it brief. so my skepticism around educating people aboutlibertarian principles and efficiencies is i think pretty clear. people say why am iinterested in spanking? well, i mean if you haven't done a google search, i think you'llknow. but why spanking a big issue? well, i mean i think that's good, you know -- you have to turn off the google safe searchfunction in order for that joke to work.
all right. whatever you do, don't do that.i'm sure you'll get eyeball exploding stuff. but one of the reasons that i really talkabout spanking, obviously i think there are good scientific reasons that it's going tomake kids smarter; that it's going to make kids less prone to want to involve themselvesin a hierarchy and mentally healthier, and they're not going to become criminals. andso i think there's lots of really good stuff around that. but there was also another reason which ihaven't really discussed at all which is whenever you get involved in a movement, i think there'sa fundamental question you want to ask everyone around the table which is are you guys seriousor not, right? i mean because you don't want
to be like, "hey, we got to charge over thehill." and then you go charging over the hill and everyone just kind of beers off and you'realone. it's like 5 million lasers on your head and so on, right? which for me you maysay a beautiful disco ball. but you really want to think about where the people are -- the question was which one of you who areworking for the government right now? well, that's your question, absolutely. that'sa very important question, or who's been turned with threats of jail time into being an informantand so on, right? these are all -- but to me it was very important to figure out -- wait. stefan, you haven't actually tried toorganize any such cavalry charges yet, have
you? well, i was considering it at the beginning,but really wanted to know whether the people were serious. so if you're a personal trainerand you're talking to someone over the phone, you might want to say, "can you lift fivepounds?" and if the guy says, "yeah, i can lift five pounds." can you lift 10? can youlift 20? you start to understand to design what they can do based upon, you know, youmeet them in person and you know they're fairly fit or whatever. and so the first question i always had was,okay, can you guys lift five pounds? if you can lift five pounds, we get to the next level,but can you lift five pounds? which in business
is can you even sell one of these damn things?if you can sell one, then maybe you can sell more. but if you can't even sell one, we gotto figure something else out. and so when it came to spanking -- was it the question for you, can you reada book? was that something like the first question? no, no, it came to me, "are you people seriousabout your belief system?" so spanking to me is very interesting. hold on, hold on. so you're talking -- becausei kind of go back and forth listening to you. i'm trying to figure out if you're addressingother libertarians or if you're addressing
the general population. no, no, libertarians, other libertarians,other people in the movement, other people who are in the movement. that's who i'm questioning,right? and i think this is a socratic question, the market research to figure out the bestway to do things based upon where you are. now, i think that people who are into thenonaggression principle, if they can apply the nonaggression principle when it is perfectlylegal, then there's a possibility they may attempt to perform it in other situations.but if they cannot perform the nonaggression principle in a perfectly legal situation,then they're not particularly serious about it, right?
now, can they also perform the nonaggressionprinciple when it's perfectly legal, when it's socially sanctioned, in other words,generally approved of and when it results in huge benefits to their lives? now, if theycan't do that, in other words, if they can't fulfill the nonaggression principle when itis perfectly legal, socially sanctioned and provides huge benefit to their lives, thenthey are talking heads with no moral or intellectual substance of any kind. and so when i started talking about spanking,i made very strong cases. people can go to fdrurl.com/bib to see the whole scientificseries, the bomb and the brain, about the effects of violence and how beneficial non-spankingis and so on or better parenting; non-spanking
is just one aspect of it. so i can say look,it provides you enormous benefits. it makes your kid smarter and wiser and more peacefuland better and so on. it makes your parenting experience so much better. so huge, huge advantages. it's socially sanctioned in that there's veryfew people who see you reasoning with the child and say, "you're a complete assholefor not hitting him." i mean most people, you know, it's kind of socially sanctioned,scientifically supported and it's fully inconsistency with -- sorry, inconsistency; that soundslike inconsistent. it's fully in conformity with the nonaggression principle because spankingis a violation of the nonaggression principle for a variety of reasons i've discussed ina variety of articles and shows.
so i thought, okay, if i put this argumentforward, i'm going to see what the libertarian community does with its advantageous, it'sbetter for your kids, it makes you happier, it makes your kids wiser, it's socially sanctioned,and it's perfectly legal to not hit your children. and so my question was, okay, what are theygoing to do with this information? and if they will like, "wow, the fed is really interestingbut i can't do much about that. but, man, i can really get behind the science and theempiricism, the rationality and the virtue of championing this within the community."and i basically drop these arguments. there have been some positive responses, but foryears there was basically like shutting down a well into the dark side of the moon.
so what i got was that for the most part itseems to be intellectual posturing or rent-seeking in terms of "well, i can get paid for talkingabout stuff that i find interesting." but where the rubber really meets the road interms of people acting, political activism is one for sure. are you willing to standwith me at the barricade and do all this kind of stuff? but another was, are you willingto deny the role of violence in your own life and in your own parenting? are you willingto lift the nonaggression principle in your life? people said not so much really and kindof got pissed off at me for bringing up this argument. and the last one which i can do very brieflywas the against-me argument. i still get emails
saying, "oh, i saw that speech you did in'09. that was adam kokesh in the audience. he asked you a question. nobody knew who hewas." back when you had all your liberty and a little less forehead. so i said, okay, with the against-me argumentis if it's true that the government is supported by the allegiance of the people and if it'strue that support of the government results in violations of the nonaggression principle,then your relationship with statists should be in question, right? do you support theuse of violence against me for following my own conscience in a peaceful manner? if theanswer is yes, then you want me thrown in jail for disagreeing with you. if that doesn'tcause any problems in your relationship, then
your allegiance to the nonaggression principleis kind of bullshit. it's like, "well, i really hate racism. i'mjust on my way to a clan barbecue because my uncle serves a great chicken." it justtells people that you're just kind of full of crap when it comes to that sort of stuff.and so this sort of three elements when i wanted to sort of test the intellectual integrityof the community, with some exceptions to be perfectly fair, has gained very littletraction. the expansion of knowledge doesn't seem towork because we've got so many libertarian academics and spanking still remains a veryverboten topic, a non-talk-aboutable topic in the libertarian community, and the against-meargument has fallen largely on deaf ears.
and that tells me that people aren't willingto do that which is uncomfortable and perfectly legal; that they're not willing to changetheir lives in ways that are only emotionally difficult, but don't get you thrown in jail.now, getting throw in jail is both emotionally difficult and, by the way, you get throw injail which is really bad. i don't have to tell you that. and so if people can't lift the five pounds,then expecting them to bench press the 300 of civil disobedience i think is somewhatillusory. but i just want to get your thoughts on that. yeah. well, i also have to remain very humblein my process. you said it wasn't until you
were in your 40s that you really engaged withthe movement and with this particular philosophical perspective as i understand your story went.and it also took me 10 years. it took me 10 years to go from being in high school saying,"well, i don't want to be a republican or a democrat. what are my options? okay. i'llbe a libertarian. yeah, that makes sense" to understand what it meant philosophically,like really 10 years for me to go through that. and that's from 10 years of direct exposure. i really do have to stay very humble in thatsense, thinking about that, dealing with other people and their experiences and what it takes.and i think your frustration is certainly warranted and hearing you articulate the intentof those two themes of your work with which
i am familiar: peaceful parenting and theagainst-me argument, i think your frustrations are certainly warranted. but at the same timeyou don't give yourself enough credit for the impact that you've had on the movement,stefan. i think really the introduction of peacefulparenting, i don't know if it really came from you but certainly most people who callthemselves libertarians today who were even glancingly aware of the implications of peacefulparenting are in debt to you for introducing that idea. in terms of the against-me argument, yourpoint of this is that -- i mean your measurement is not how many people are using argumentbecause you can't really measure that either,
but how many people you see in your senseof the community around you, how many people are applying it to clarify and shake up orshake off their personal relationship with statists. oh, you would put me in jail forx, y and z. you would use violence against me; therefore, i don't want to be friendswith you, right? and i think even there, while that is a verystark extreme measurement, hey, how many people took the against-me argument and actuallytechnically applied it properly to every statist in their life and then disassociated witheveryone that gave the wrong answers. i mean that's a really high standard. and if anything,i would want to give you, stefan, a certain amount of credit for the number of peoplein the movement who today have realized the
power of principle of ostracism in their ownlives. i think that's huge. i think a lot of libertarians are doing that. so i agree that those stand as measurementsof the committedness of libertarians, but it also seems like you're trying to imposetoo high a standard. oh, you want to call yourself a libertarian, oh, you want to believein this, you got to live up to all of your values. you got to live a perfect life basedon your principles. and as you know, that's impossible. in a statist world, the only way to live ofpurely nonviolent lifestyle by which you know you are not supporting or feeding into anyviolence in any way is to live like a monk.
it really is. and i think to go back to whati said about understanding who you're talking to because a lot of those arguments, you couldapply to the population in general. oh, so you want a world that's less violent. willyou raise your children with nonviolence? i mean the idea of peaceful parenting youdon't even have to be a libertarian to understand. so you're a caring and engaged citizen. youcare about making the world a better place for your children. you care about the evilsof the government, even if you're a total statist. are you willing to pay attentionto how you raise your kid because it's going to make them smarter and less violent andthey're going to be happy and more productive people in general? are you willing to justbe a better parent? and even people who are
not libertarians will say, "yeah, absolutely." and this is why on a much bigger timeframe,the technological empowerment of the internet, of the information available in general isgoing to make for a better society. people are going to raise their children less violentlybecause dr. quack said so. and it's going to make their kids smarter not because stefanmolyneux said, "hey, and that's how we're going to defeat government." no, because,hey, point a to point b, i raise my kids like this. they're smarter and happier as adults. so what i want to do though is ask the samequestions that you ask to the movement, when you came into the movement to the generalpopulation because i really believe that people,
you know, everybody is a libertarian. theyjust haven't figured it out yet. and in the universal sense, everybody wants nonviolence.everybody wants their rights to be respected. everybody wants a peaceful world. and i think keeping that in mind and servingthe general population, we don't see -- i mean when you think of the market of libertarianism,when you ask those questions, you said the market and you were referring -- if i mayput some words in your mouth here -- the market of, yeah, please, open wider, open wider -- themarketplace for libertarian ideas and libertarian punditry and entertainment of a libertarianthing. you weren't looking at what is the bigger market for information in the world,in america, or in society or my community
or within human nature itself. and i want to see the state as a competitorand ask the kinds of question like, well, what is it that people get out of the state?they get to vote. ah, yes. they can vote their problems away and they see that that's notworking. but people are willing to vote. 61.8% of the american population came out despitenot having the significant choice in the last election and put obama back in office. theyare willing to engage for a second. perhaps an easier way of achieving this isn'tto say, "well, how do we get the people that are really committed or claim to be reallycommitted to do something relatively difficult and involved, but how do we create the resultsthat we want by making things as easy as possible
for everybody else?" now, that could launch me into an hour rantabout localism and how it brings people together from across a bigger spectrum and puts usin a very, very solid direction towards a truly voluntary stateless society withouteven winning more converts and while making things as easy as possible for others. andi think creating a mechanism like that, seeing the market as bigger than the libertarianmovement, it makes the questions much more relevant. and in that sense i would ask how is it thatyou have grown your audience over the last decade? what is it that you have done to winpeople over, to bring more people in? and
it hasn't been by asking them to do difficultstuff. it's been by showing them how to make their lives better. and for the people thatare intellectual enough to sit and listen to blowhards like you and me for an hour ortwo are completely different audience than the average voter, than the average memberof the american mob or the global status mob. how do you win them over? and i think actually using the system againstitself and i think using the electoral process. and it doesn't have to happen electorally,but using some massive consensus process to say, "hey, can we get rid of this thing now,this federal government? can we at least push it down to the states? can we get rid of thissoviet system? can we at least make government
local? can we do that?" and the idea is that if we get it down fromfederal to state to county to city eventually gets pushed down to the individuals, peoplerealize the virtues of self-governance. you don't have to convince then even of the entirephilosophy, to convince someone that they'd be better if violence was more local and moretailored to suit the needs of the community at worst as opposed to this out of controlcentral authority that we see not just in the united states but in governments all overthe world. and that's the kind of question that i wantto be asking. if anything, when i get my daily production back up, my legal issues are behindme in a couple of months, i really take this
opportunity as a good start for a clean slate;and i want to bring the ideas of nonviolent communication to the liberty movement. butwhat i want to do is do it by not speaking to people who are already converted but reallyspeaking to the general population and being a lot more positive in our message showingpositive solutions. and if anything, my production has only beenabout half of what it could have been for lack of better organization and inconsistentproduction values alone. but how is it that we -- not just even not grow our audiences,but how is it that we provide the mechanisms for the dissolution of that state than areas easy as voting? right. i mean those are all very big questions.and i've always loved that quote which says,
"you can't solve a problem with the same kindof thinking that produced it." and this is why to me, things like political action andeducation and civil disobedience are continuations of the same momentum that has produced theproblem to begin with. so when i sort of looked at how do i wantto change the world for the better? well, i mean you have to sort of start with a blankpage. one of the things that i learned in business is that all -- like if you have ahuge problem, then everything that has been tried before is probably contributing to thatproblem. you know what i mean? it can't be that you have a huge problem and somethingthat you've tried before. everything that you've tried before has togo out the window or at least be open to question.
you start with a blank page. we want to makethe world less violent. and i think that's the goal of all reasonable -- you're right.it's not just limited to libertarianism. libertarianism is sort of the analysis of the political wingof nonviolence. and so if we want to make the world less violent,we have to ask ourselves where does violence come from? and if it's genetic, we're screwed,right? because then we're trying to sort of say let's breed human beings with five armslike the hindu goddess, then we might end up with some cool looking avatars but we'renot going to change the biology of the human species in any fundamental way. but if violence,if the roots of violence can be traced -- go that's the movement i went in and i'm switchingnow.
oh, five arms? can you imagine? you'd neverneed to date again. anyway, at least i would and i'd need six. so that leaves one big joke.it's just not a free domain radio show in any way, shape or form. so you said, "where does violence come from?"and until that question is fundamentally asked, i don't know that we can't really have a movementthat has any kind of coherence or goal. and the roots of violence appear to be quite scientificallyvalidated. it's the early trauma and abandonment issues in childhood create an overactive amygdalaand hypothalamus which produces the fight or flight mechanism which is not interceptedby the neo-frontal cortex and all that kind of stuff and so impulse acting out.
why is it that if you want to change how peoplethink, you first of all have to understand how they think or rather how they don't think?science again is very clear on these issues that most people experience an activationof the -- when confronted with a difficult issue, they experience and activation of thefight or flight mechanism. they acted out and then they will justify it afterwards withreference to the most windy and useless abstractions known to mankind. and so this is sort of where we are and thenthe question is how do we deal with that? well, there's no particular way that i knowof to reverse that. i mean if you didn't get enough food and you grew up to be too short,it's not like eating a lot of food later is
going to make you taller. it's just want youhave to work with. i do know that therapy helps with dealing with the impulse actionproblem by intercepting rational principles between impulse and reaction. so therapy helpsa lot, commitment to nonviolence and parenting and relationship helps a lot and growing humanbeings to be nonviolent is quite well known. the manure that is necessary seems to be convincingof the nonaggression principle. and so that to me seems that would be a logically scientificempirical, rational, moral way to approach the issue. that doesn't seem to be particularlystrong in the libertarian community, but it does seem to be something that has a fairdeal of respect in the outside community particularly on the left which has a particularly strongemphasis on the scientific method, at least
that's what they claim. so to me, just keep hitting the science, keephitting the facts, and keep referencing the ethics, i know it's going to take a long time.i mean there is some impatience for me with some of the hypocrisy in the libertarian movementwell before the nonaggression principle. i can't argue that spanking doesn't violatethe nonaggression principle, but i still won't take a stand against it. that's kind of frustrating.i do know it's a multigenerational process. but i have this alternate history in mind,and i'll just spend two minutes on that and then let you knock down all of my carefullyerected ice sculptures. but i have this sort of alternate history that in sort of the '60swhen the libertarian activists were working
the rothbards and all of that, were workingto sort of figure out how we build a freer society. if they had looked at some of the sciencethat was available even at the time was fairly compelling, if they'd look at the scienceand look at the facts and not said, "well, we have to do political action and education"because that's what you have to do, well, if they'd said, "okay, let's do a blank slate.throw everything out. really think creatively. what is it that we want to do?" and if insteadof founded the libertarian party and end these newsletters about the evils of the fed andthe bad things that foreign policy is doing, if they had said, "okay, what we really wantto do is figure out great parenting," that
stuff we can act on, that stuff that is fullyin conformity with our values and that stuff is going to be really compelling. there's no better sales pitch than incrediblyhappy, successful, well-adjusted children. everybody wants a piece of that, right? andif we, as a community, 50 years ago or 150 years ago if you want to sort of look at classicalliberalism, if we'd said, "well, screw politics, screw academia, screw free market theorizing.it's great to have that knowledge and so on, but we have to really start to really startworking locally in getting things done," we would now have two generations of incrediblysuccessful and accomplished and peaceful and confident and healthy and powerful libertariankids.
there would be millions of libertarian kidsraised peacefully around the world with people who had taken time off from work to stay homewith their kids for the first five years, who'd successfully completed bonding, whohad reasoned with them and brought them up to be ferociously competent and peaceful moralbeings, we would have that sales pitch so to speak. we would have that example of whata peaceful society looks like. and the people would say, "well, how can nonviolencework?" and we'd say, "well, look at these kids. they have an iq 10% above the average.zero percent of them are in prison. zero percent of them are in politics," which is just adifferent prison with the gold pillow, "and zero percent of them have joined the policeforce and zero percent of them have joined
the armed forces and blah, blah, blah. andlook at this; this is what we can show as having worked." now, that didn't happen and you don't wantto cry over spilled milk too much, but what i don't want is this goddamn movement in 50years to still not have millions of kids that have grown up to be incredibly powerful andpeaceful adults to still have those holes in the movement where we're still talkingabout how the federal reserve is bad, and were still answering question about how freedomand peace can work in theoretical examples rather than look at this incredible communityand what we're able to do with our kids and how they grow up. this is how we can showthat it works. i just didn't want that to
be missing in the future. well, it's quite possible that while you sissieswere raising your kids without spanking, i was spanking my kids and teaching them discipline.and now my kids are in charge of society and your kids are in jail. so how do you likethem apples? and i know that's just kind of a bad attempt at a joke, but in a serioussense it's a great thought exercise to think what would have happened if the foundationof the movement was on nonviolent parenting and that would have happened. and i think to parse out the problem herethough, there are two separate problems, almost three, because you said are we dealing withsomething that's genetic? and i would argue
yes. in a certain fundamental level, withoutbeing again too precise to haggle over here, there is a predisposition if there is a tendencyto violence. it is somehow rooted in our genes. i would argue that that is not something thatwe are trying to immediately overcome. then there is the expression of that, thegeneral violence in society. and as you know, we are living in the most peaceful times inhuman history by the measurement of inner personal violence. we live in the most peacefultimes and that's exciting; that's incredible. that's a great thing for us to be proud of,to be a part of. and you say we would have this resume, if you will, to point to as libertarians.we've got all of these children who are that much happy or so on and so forth.
and instead, it's the people that are doingthe work in moving parenting forward, that are getting the credit for that as they shouldbe and they are. and people who are not libertarians are raising smarter and more peaceful childrenoblivious to the implications for the government. and that's great, and i see that as a wonderfulpart of human advancement. and if it wasn't for the fact that we weren't all hunters andgatherers, we wouldn't have the time to read books about parenting or take time off ofwork in the first place to come home and be better parents. and yeah, you can argue inthe state of nature, everybody had more time and was a better parent. sure, but this isa good thing. this is a part of this positive development.
so the third problem that i think you're skippinghere is the problem of institutionalized violence. and i think you're kind of missing that connectionthere, and that connection is in the few that choose to exploit and deceive and manipulateand organize violence. and so back to my bad joke, while you were parenting peacefully,i was raising my kids to be assholes. they have come to dominate society, and they'restill going to screw your kids up. sorry. so i think we've got the sort of two longerterm problems, if you will, of the inherent predisposition to violence which we mightbe evolving out of as we speak which is in and of itself a completely beautiful otherpossibility that i would say i believe is actually happening, perhaps to an insignificantor immeasurable degree. but i would argue
that evolution is still happening and thatthe pressure of society on the human race is still generally favoring cooperation overcoercion over nonviolence over violence. it's pretty easy to substantiate too in that, hey,people that go around beating people up every day don't have a lot of kids or less likelyin today's world to be able to reproduce successfully, and that's great. as for the sort of expression of violence,i think you're absolutely correct that psychological awareness and peaceful parenting are the keyto overcoming that. that still doesn't answer the immediate questions or problems of howwith government. and you could say, "hey, we raised all these kids to be peaceful."let's say it's 90%. how many does it take
to oppress them? if all they know is how tobe peaceful because they've been raised nonviolently, i'm not saying that that's like the only thingthat would come out of this, but if that's all they have hypothetically and 10% of thepopulation is still highly trained killer exploiter statists, you're still going tohave the problem with statism. so that's my only critique is that you'rekind of -- and i guess it's a big critique -- is that you're really missing the shortterm of how, and it's how do you inspire people to raise their children peacefully with theconviction that a lot of libertarians, thanks to you and your work and your example as astay-at-home father, have already really taken on so vigorously raising their -- i am goingto raise my child not just because i am a
happy child or to make me happy, no, becausethis is the right way to do it, this is the moral way to do it, this is going to createa better citizen for a better world. excuse me; maybe citizen is not the right term there. but then we're going to have a better worldwith better people in it because we're raising a better child. and i think there still isa how for the immediate problem of entrenched institutionalized bureaucratic violence ofstatism that has so much momentum. and i would argue that already more people are on ourside than we know even if they're not as ideologically fervent that they would -- if you could say,"would you vote for a more localized government? would you vote for a more voluntary society?"
and i don't believe that the be-all, end-allsolution is in politics. i believe that it's in changing the paradigm. and the paradigmis changed by education, by activism, by peaceful parenting, by people learning from the exampleof agorism. those are really the big large-scale foundations of achieving a sustainable freeand voluntary society. however, on top of all of that, we have the immediate problemof the current institutions of modern, dangerous, violent, oppressive governments. and while i'm all for working for the longterm because i care about the guy that's going to die in war tomorrow, i care about the nextguy who's going to jail for some bogus charges, because i care about the next business thatdoesn't happen, because of some tax or some
regulation, because i care that some kid isgoing to bed hungry because their parents had to pay that much more in fines or feesor that one parking ticket came out to one load of groceries for somebody, i'm sorrybut storming the hills with the banner of peaceful parenting isn't going to do it forthose problems. and i agree with that. i mean when i say peacefulparenting is essential, i don't mean it's the only thing. so i mean i think to supportwhat you're arguing for, not only do we want to produce healthier, more peaceful, morerational, more morally strong children, but we also want to prevent the production oftraumatized children, right? so as, of course, you know from your war experiencesand coming back, a lot of the soldiers who
go over, they come back kind of screwed upto say the least, right? and they have alcohol problems; they have drug abuse problems. andif their fathers, they're going to have anger problems, anger management issues and so on.so by opposing something like that war or wars in general wherever we can make thatcase, if we can stop 10,000 people from going to war, we are going to make the experiencesof the children of those 10,000 people that much better. so i'm fully in accord with you as far asthat goes. that's why i do shows other than peaceful parenting. there is a strategy ofmaking sure that people have as good -- you know, i talked to the unschooling and thehomeschooling movement too because i think
that kids who are at home with functionalparents are going to have a better experience than being trapped in the dog eat dog, lordof the flies, shit storm called public school. so i think that there's a lot that we cando that is not just strategic or long term but is tactical and in the moment that isgoing to improve the quality of children's lives. again, that's not the only thing thatwe do, but i do think that it does have to be not just a one-note orchestra or a one-notesymphony so to speak. but i do feel that it is not as emphasized as it should be. so i hope that people will forgive me wheni overemphasize it just because -- i don't mean to say that it's the only thing thatthis is why i said at the beginning, i don't
know what the final solution is going to be.it's not just going to be droning on about peaceful parenting because the governmentsare producing really traumatized kids all the time right down to the family, singleparenthood, war, welfare, the drug war, ripping fathers away and throwing them in jail fornonviolent offences. all of these things need to be talked about and opposed because thegovernment is cranking out traumatized kids by the hundreds of millions. and you're right. if we can be that tied,then what we do as a community isn't going to be enough. so i think i just got behindand lit several rockets under your argument, but i just really wanted to point out.
that's great. there's still this problem ofnot just the how, but what is it that we do to engage a broader part of the populationon this broader agenda? but how do we get past fighting issue by issue? and you say,"i'm doing shows about other things." even for me, like gun control, talking about guncontrol or my civil disobedience is only a means to an end that contributes to somethingelse. and i get really -- there's still a big missingpiece here because you can say, "well, we wanted to defeat the state. we want to defeatorganized coercion and organized violence, and we're going to fight this policy." andwe could sum up the state as a collection of policies, and then we could fight themone at a time and reduce the impact or the
size of it and then get to it. but it's somethingbigger behind that. so when i fight against a particular law,when i take a stand against gun control, for example, the point is not to defeat this ideaof gun control. it's really nice. you're reducing -- if people had a common sense worldviewabout the use of force in general and gun control wasn't the issue, you'd be avoidingtrauma. you would be creating a more peaceful world eventually in that one little element. but you fight issue by issue. you fight inchby inch, and they take a mile behind your back and they laugh at you while they're doingit. and what is the end run? and it seems like there is this mounting of two divergentforces of all the people that are going towards
freedom, towards a free society that everytime we do some civil disobedience, every time you produce a video and it pulls a newperson out of the matrix and they go, "okay, well, i'm a libertarian now. i'm going tolive in this direction." the state is still going sharper and sharperand it's way away from that, and there's a great divergence there. there's a great divergencelike never before in human history compared to like, say, when we lived under monarchs.and it was like, well, a certain amount of the population was, well, it's this divineright of kings. therefore, we got to go on and get along. if anything, like right nowthere is less people than ever in society going, "yeah, this centralized governmentthing, the way it's going, that's a good idea.
we want to get on board and we want to supportthat." so i feel like there's got to be some other approach. and like you said earlier,it's got to be like something that's never been tried before that gets us to fix thatdivergence to at least solve these incongruities. one of the things that i saw when i was injail and in the military too, but in jail -- i mean there was a guy who came up to me,a guard, a guard who came up to me and said, "hey, man, i like your work." and i was like,"wow! i'm blown away. i got a fan who's keeping me in jail." and it turns out he's a big fanof alex jones. and he was like, "yeah, i heard you talk on alex jones show, and you're reallygood. you're one of the guys who can really talk sense into him. and i like the plansand your reason, your logic."
and i was like, "and you're standing on theother side of this cage door right now. you're handing me a tray full of gmo slop, and you'reworking your wage slave job and how is that?" there's no easy way out for someone like that.they're doing it to support their family. and i can give them all the rational argumentsand say, "okay, so you're providing for your kids. what are you providing them? a moreviolent, dangerous, crime-filled world to grow up in? are you providing them more loveby taking a job, by making it your profession to be an enforcer for the state really? andyou don't think you could sustain your family and do so in a more loving, slightly lessmaterialistic way through some other career choice?"
and if you can't convince someone for that,like how did they get convinced to take on such a bad path in the first place? well,it was presented to them as "all you got to do is vote here and take this paycheck." andthat's what we're up against when we think about those of us who believe, those of uswho see this vision for what a nonviolent society can be or we simply figured it outbecause let's be honest. it's much more mathematical and specific and scientific than that. it's not like we have some crazy vision ofsome utopia, no. we have figured out that a nonviolent society is going to be happieror more prosperous than a violence and coercion-based society. i mean hello. but we want to sharewith people in a practical way. how do we
do that? and the competitor is not the nextliberty pundit or the next politician. the competitor is the state itself. what is itthat the state provides? yeah, and it's a tough question. the firstthing again i will say is i don't know. i think that we as a movement need to keep askingquestion from a blank page and be willing to throw out. we always talk about the creativedestruction of the free market. how about the creative destruction of our movement wherewe don't make assumptions that are based upon prior momentum, or we say, "well, new industriescome along all the time and blow up old industries. well, why do we still have the same thinktanks? why do we still have the same academics? why do we still have the same approaches?"
we need to keep asking the questions and showthat we embrace the creative destruction and willingness to think anew that we pray somuch in the free market. i think that's the first thing. the second thing i think that'simportant is we need to be willing to make sacrifices. this is a word, the objectiveis hear this, "self-sacrifice is candy and it's altruism. it's evil," and all that. andno, i mean it's not. there is an integrity and a conviction thatcomes from making sacrifices for a greater cause that you cannot replicate any otherway, right? i mean i was a software guy making like $160,000 a year plus, plus, plus; andi threw it all away to rant to people on the internet and beg for donations. i was writinglike two books a year. i have barely written
a book since my daughter was born becausei'm spending the time to be a parent and so on. now, this does not make me nail to a crosson calvary. i'm not going to pretend that i'm having my fingernails pulled out or evenliving in a dungeon with ants like you were. but if we're willing to make sacrifices, ifwe're willing to live our values and go through the necessary discomforts and risks of livingour values, we gain a credibility in the world that cannot be replicated any other way. like if you got a great diet and exerciseprogram and you're 300 pounds, nobody is going to believe you. you may have a great dietand exercise program, but if you're not following
it, then nobody is going to believe you. imean if you propose that and said, "well, i want to be the guy who talks about the hairrestoration formula that i've developed that is fantastic and necessary," put my bald asson top of a dvd, people are going to say, "well, this is not even a good joke. that'sjust a bad joke." and so there is an element of sacrifice. academicshould give up their states bonds and positions. people should stop taking government money.people should question politics as a method of getting things done. we should as a movementbe willing to make those sacrifices. then people at least will say, "well, shit. theytake their stuff seriously." no, no. and this is purely rhetorical butis very important i think. sacrifice is the
wrong word. if we can say that it's an investment,it's much more accurate and positive way of looking at it because that's what it is. becausewhen you say that it's a sacrifice, you're giving up something, you know, and sacrificesure can be -- you can say that an investment is a sacrifice, a short-term sacrifice fora long-term gain. but people when they think of sacrifice, they think of it as a completewrite off, as a loss; and that's not we were talking about. we're talking about makingan investment in a long-term payoff because we know that there's going to be a certainpayoff. pitching it that way -- no, no, no, but -- sorry to interrupt. butremember, we have to speak mogul too, right? we have to speak the language of the herd.and in the language of the herd, sacrifice
is a positive thing, right? i mean won't youpraise the life for your sacrifice, for the cause of freedom and your military service?i mean, okay, maybe it's a problematic point but i still think that we need to rememberto give up short-term gains for the sake of long-term credibility. that i think is stillimportant, whatever word we want to give. maybe it's not sacrifice. you could be rightabout that. but i still think that we need to show people that we're serious about whatit is that we're doing. and whatever that means, i still think we live a pretty comfortablelife as activists. sorry, go ahead. live by the example of our values. i meanit's very important, but it's also by the courage of our convictions to know that ifi sacrifice some time from writing books and
instead raise my daughter nonviolently andspend time cultivating her mind, then that's an investment that i would rather have a smartdaughter than another book in a few years. that's not a sacrifice, stefan. stop it. okay. so what is the payoff going to be foryour time in prison? i mean the odds of us bringing down in any appreciable sight legallyreducing the size and power of the state in our lifetimes is fairly small, so what isthe payoff? i agree. my daughter is a higher priority and so on. so tell me what the payoffis for the time in prison. hold on. i would disagree with you there. i'm sorry?
i would disagree there too because we're allgoing to be living a lot longer now, but also i really do believe that what is coming isgoing to happen. and you know as well as i that all of these things, these broader dynamicsare motivated by technology and the technology is increasing exponentially. and i reallybelieve that in the next 50 to 100 years we are going to see the achievement of a voluntarysociety at least. maybe not in every practical sense, but i think we're going to get pastthe paradigm shift in a way that is reflected substantially enough that we will have knownthat we've passed it. but i want to go back because you said likethese questions are hard to answer and they're really not. what does the average citizenget from the state? it's really not that hard
to figure out. now, one of the things obviouslyis a sense of pride and a sense of belonging and in a way that's only going to change inthe psychological health of the population continues to improve as i believe that itis partly through technological perfusion, the wealth perfusion that's driven by that,spare time that's available, access the information on the internet, the way people are able toform communities on the internet based on psychological deficiencies, support groupson the internet, all of these things. but i believe that that's changed, and i believeit already as we see that the development of a more global sense of community, peopleare turning less to the state to get a sense of identity. that tribalism being satisfiedis coming less from the state as people are
able to find more meaningful things from it. as a movement, i don't think we're going toreally be able to do anything to challenge that except what i feel like i'm able to doby incorporating in my message, "hey, you should not be subservient to anybody. youshould be the alpha of your own life. you should be in charge of your own life. youshould not need to have -- you are free, beautiful, independent human being. you don't need tobe a member of the herd in order to give yourself the sense of identity." i think people aregetting that anyways. but to a more practical, what do people getfrom the state? financial security or at least -- and oftentimes we can preface every oneof these answers with the illusion of, right?
but what do people get from the state? well,if you're a state employee, you do get a certain amount of financial security. in a long-termsense, it's an illusion, right? is your pension that's enumerated in dollars going to be worthanything when they switch to another monetary system or the dollar continues to lose value?probably not but who knows. maybe they're going to be able to keep it going with adjustingfor inflation forever. so there is a certain amount of security thatcomes from that. they get a certain psychological gratification for voting. i mean think ofthe power that voting has as a psychological style that people are able to say, "oh, well,i voted for a guy who cares about the environment. therefore, i've done my part to save the environment.i'm going back to my 9:00 to 5:00 job of consumerism.
oh, well, i care about poor people becausei voted for a guy who cares about poor people." it's the illusion of having participated anddone these things. but i looked at what it is that people have to lie about in orderto get elected, i think that's a very positive thing. that's the measurement of what peoplewant. if barack obama had gotten elected saying,"i'm going to write a healthcare plan that is written by the insurance companies. i'mgoing to try to start another war, and i'm going to keep these two wars going as longas i can. and i'm going to increase taxes and regulation. and my administration is goingto be the least transparent in history," people would be like, "uh, i don't think so." butif you got elected on that platform, i'd be
a lot more frightened than i am today. butthe fact that he had to say the opposite of all of those things in order to get electedmakes me go, "well, okay." people really want something else. and what those lies represent,it represents the delusions that people think they're able to get out of government. so when we can address those -- and again,i don't think the philosophy is really going to do it -- i think we're going to win morepeople over with practical policy. i hate to bring it back to plug adam2020.com andtell people that my presidential campaign is going to be it. but i think that some solutionlike that isn't fighting inch by inch that says this how we're going to extricate ourselvesfrom this problem as a whole from modern statism.
this is the way out. this is the how. i really think dismantling governments throughan electoral process from the top down is going to be the way that we get ourselvesout the system because so many people are dependent on it. so many people really doget an illusion or a real financial security of maybe only a short-term payoff out of it.in a way, i don't want to pull the rug out from underneath anybody. if one person, youknow, and i know this really is challenging some libertarian orthodox, if you will, toget it back to this fundamental question because it's often asked, if you could push a buttonand end all coercion in the world today, would you do it? of course. well, your answer isno to that.
no, no, because i mean there are people whohave made significant life choices on the existence of the current system; and thereare some people who would be able to change those life choices, and there are some peoplewho would be unable to change those life choices. and so i think we have to remember that thereare people who have become parasitically attached to the state in a kind of away through nofault of their own. i mean this is the propaganda. this is what they told they deserve. thisis what they told is right. and there are people who would be medicallyuninsurable in a free market who would have a tough time paying for their own healthcarewho may die as a result of this kind of stuff. i don't take that stuff lightly. i don't thinkthat stuff is unimportant at all. and moral
injustices need to be addressed. the transitioncan be very jarring. laying the framework for the american revolution took about 2,300years of philosophy and about 150 years of the renaissance and the enlightenment andthen people were kind of ready. there are lots of people who would benefitand maybe it would be worth it. i don't know. i don't like to make those calculations becausei'm a voluntarist, not a central planner. i think it would be great if people got thearguments and changed. but if there was a switch, i mean it would never exist. but ifthere was a switch, i'm not sure i'd be all over it like the proverbial fat kid on a smartie.i think it would be a very tough decision to make. i don't think it would be immediateor instantaneous.
see, i don't know. this is a kind of questionthat is often at least among the hardcore as kind of a litmus test. if you had the redbutton to end all violence and coercion, would you do it? and i would still fall inside ofyes, i would, and because i know that the benefits would outweigh the consequences.but because there is no such red button, we have to look at what is the actual how. and i've thought about this a lot, exactlyfrom the perspective that you just described of what about these people and this and thatand the immediate human suffering that would result because people become dependent onthe system. and because of that, i think that localization solves that promise. well, youdon't even have to convince those people give
it up. just say, "why don't we do this on a levelwhere you don't have this thick mask of incrusted layer of corruption at the top? why don'twe just cut it down to this local level? why don't we make it a global thing that if you'regoing to have government, there should be no governments larger than, say, a countyarea?" and if you try to create a territorial monopoly bigger than that, your people, yourterritory is going to be cut off from the world market. maybe that's just a fantasy of my particularmechanism. i know it would never quite be that neat. but i do believe that if we givethe libertarian philosophy teeth, if you will,
and the how and that is localization, we dismantlegovernments from the top down, i think we provide a way forward that gives people everythingthey think they're getting from statism that doesn't pull the rug out from underneath anybodyand provides an easy way for people to express a preference for liberty that gives us a transitionmechanism that is peaceful and allows for the least amount of backlash. now, one of the problems, if i may just addressthis very importantly, is the power of vacuum argument; and that's the greatest argumentagainst, "well, let's just overthrow the feds. let's just abolish the federal government,"the push-the-red-button argument, right? well, if you push the red button and get rid ofgovernment, well then you're going to have
tyrannies comes up and you have totalitarianism. and to the extent that i agree is the extentthat we need to fill that vacuum with self-governance. and one way or another, the space has to bethere. the desire for self-governance has to be strong enough that it pulls that powerdown ultimately to the individual. and i think that it's going to go in that way. but steptwo is just underpants; step three is a free society. a lot of people are going to say,"okay, i'm a libertarian. great. i'll try to raise my children less violently. and wheni can get away with it, i'll pay less taxes. good luck with the whole revolution thing." and this is where i think you find your frustrationwith a lot of people in the movement is that
at least with the ron paul campaign, you hadthe how of we're going to elect somebody. we have this massive goal that gets peopleenergized that shows them at least a potential for a tangible change in the immediate future.and when you provide that with people, even if the only benefit is the long-term wealth,we're going to change the paradigm, we're going to win people over, we're going to spreadsome ideas, we're going to inspire some self-ownership, assertion of self-ownership, then great. but without that, i think you end up witha lot of people in the position that you end up frustrated with them over which is, "okay,i get it. now what? all right, fine, stefan. i'll raise my kids nonviolently, and i'llcheck out your videos every now and then.
i'll enjoy your podcast and maybe i'll sharethem with people in my inner circle who are cool enough to answer the questions properlywhen i ask them if they would ever use violence against me through the wonderful against-meargument framework that you put out." but it still is missing the -- i guess just togo back what we described as the immediate short-term problems of statism. well, i mean that made the argument before,but i think that attempting to reform the government from within is like trying to enterthe mafia and turning it into a charity. i mean it's not going to work. i'm sorry? it's not reformative from within. it's destroyingit from within.
well, all right. so listen, we're pushing-- hang on. we're pushing the two-hour mark and given people's patience and occasionalneed to pee. we should i think wrap it up. i think the conversation is very important. i have to pee, isn't it? i'll be here. i'llbe here. sacrifice your bladder for the sake of thecause. sacrifice your seat. but i think that that purpose is we need to keep asking thequestions. i don't claim to have final definitive answers. i don't have a roadmap because ithink such a thing is impossible. i think we need to act with as much integrity as wecan if we're going to take these values seriously. i'm like in for a penny, in for a pound issort of my approach. if you are going to do
something, if you are going to follow my philosophy,then just damn well do it. and life doesn't go on forever and you don't get any pointsfor compromises except in the short run. so i think that we need to keep asking thesequestions as a movement. is there anything, any stone that's been left unturned, any reason,any evidence, any science, any expert opinion that helps us to build a more peaceful worldthat we haven't examined? question everything that has come before. let's not go back tothe default positions of whatever it is. if people believe that peaceful parenting isthe default position, keep requestioning that. we love the free market and how it overturnsthings. let's emulate that within our own movement and never assume that we have thefinal answer. keep on asking the questions.
and i certainly appreciate the contributionsthat you have and that other people have made to the movement, but i think we do sometimesget complacent and think we know how it's going to happen. and i think look like thoselittle -- the cars that's just kind of roll around those little boxes, like up the walls,little toy cars, and i think we really need to keep examining the movement. let's notassume we know this thing is going to happen but stay in conversation about best possiblepractices. so i hope that your show is going to be backon the air soon. i wonder if you can leave my listeners with your vital stats on theweb, how to contact you, what's going on for your soon? and your legal defense fund, ifit's back up and running, people want to contribute
to that and maybe they want to help you outin that practical sense. yes, well, thank you, stefan. i hope thatadam vs the man funds don't go to any more legal causes at this point. and we do have,you know, because money was stolen from me while i was in jail, we had some unique challenges.my operation was sabotaged by the person who stole my money in order to cover his tracks.so the last month has been just getting my life back together one piece at a time, andit's been really challenging. but you know what? if i may take another minutebefore i get in all that, i do want to thank anybody who helped me out while i was in jail,everybody who wrote letters, everybody can made phone calls, everybody who wrote lettersto the judge, everybody who helped spread
the word in the media, everybody who helpedmaximize the impact of my activism because they saw the value in it too by using it asa teachable moment to spread the message, to wake people up, and to get at least someexposure for liberty in the mainstream media. i think it was great. and without everybodywho supports me, my impact would be insignificant. so on that note, i am still raising fundsto help re-launch adam vs the man. we're looking forward to a two-hour live podcast five daysa week starting as soon as mid-february if possible. keep your fingers crossed. thereare some big unanswered questions legally as to whether or not that's going to be possible.so please, adamvstheman.com/invest. all of your funds go to support adam vs the man operationsone way or another. i'm working on my manifesto
right now so promoting and distributing that.it's going to be absolutely essential. and i'm very grateful for everybody who just supportsme, having my voice out there. and i think this book is going to be a really,really valuable outreach tool. i hope that the people are able to put it to good use.and i've got court coming up on january 17th for sentencing in d.c. hopefully,that getsthat half of my legal challenges behind me. it's a great time to be engaged in this. i mean i don't know what else to say, stefan.just being able to talk to you is so much fun, being able to have these conversations.i mean it is such an amazing time to be alive and to be a part of the human experience andto be a part of this conversation. and because
everybody who supports me, i'm just gratefulto be able to do this. so adamvstheman.com/invest. you can find mylitecoin and bitcoin wallet addresses there. i just diversified a little bit into a fewother altcoins if people want to send me other altcoins directly. of course, you can givecash through paypal, through credit card, everything else online. everything is securednow. and you can email me, adam@adamvstheman.com, and sign up for my email list at adamvstheman.com. fantastic. well, i'll be keeping my fingerscrossed across january the 17th. i hope it works out. and thanks again for the time.it's always a real pleasure to chat. i'm sorry we've both been kind of busy over the lastcouple of months, but i'm sure we'll do a
show against soon. and best of luck gettingset up for the new gig. likewise, stefan. so that was two hours now,right? so that means i've got you for like eight interviews on my show later. fair enough, as long as each of those aretwo hours. i inflate my currency too. take care, man. have a great day. bye.
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