 Okay. I'm going to show you this video. It's by a guy named Destiny. He plays video games online and makes a lot of money playing video games online. And you know, this video was watched, I don't know, I can tell you in a minute. Once I find the video, I'll tell you exactly how many times it was watched. And it was watched 150,000 times. And he's got, you know, he's got 262,000 followers. And this is the guy. And he's talking here about violence against conservatives. So here's his argument. Oops, let me put on headphones because I need to hear it too. What is the moral argument? Sure. So the moral argument is that conservatives in the United States are already enacting violence on large groups of people and that for them to respond with violence and kind is something that most people would see as a defensive measure. So the idea is conservatives vote for certain policies that he construes as violence. And as a consequence, if somebody attacks conservatives, it is an act of self-defense and they deserve it because they voted for people who enact policies that are inherently violent. Think that through for a second. So somebody votes for politician. The politician then infringes on somebody's rights. It's okay then to attack the person who voted for that politician because he voted for the infringement of rights. So he's saying it's just self-defense. So for instance, let's say that you were one of the 800,000 DACA people that were facing deportation potentially under conservative rule. That would be a violent action by the government trying to remove you from where you live. Or let's say that you're somebody that's going to lose the health insurance because of the repeal of the mandate for healthcare. That might be something that you look at a conservative like, what the fuck, you're literally voting me to die. I think that these are people or people that support these groups of people could have like justifiable qualms or justifiable retaliations against people that are in favor of these types of policies in the U.S. So put aside the specifics, right? Put aside the specific arguments. Here it's DACA, you know, which I'm sympathetic to the people in DACA and its health insurance, which obviously, you know, if the government is taking away my health insurance, or in other words, not taking away your health insurance, if the government is not providing me with free, quote, healthcare, then it's violating my rights and I have a right to be violent against those people who voted to enact those things. I mean, think about what kind of world that leads to. The government takes my money every month. It literally steals my money every month. Is that a justification for me to attack violently? Everybody who voted Democratic or Republican because they all afford taxes. It's clearly stealing. So can I be violent against people who are supporting legitimization of theft? Some government does some injustice towards you. Does that justify you taking violent action against the government? Now, at some point it does, right? Because at some point it's violating your right to such an extent that you have to. How do we differentiate those? And what is the action that constitutes? That constitutes, you know, what is the action for the government that constitutes such a threat that it's legitimate for you to take up violence and against whom then? Are you being violent? So imagine if any of us could decide like he is advocating. Oh, no, the government is now, you know, the government is now violating my rights. Therefore, it's legitimate for me to use violence against them and the people who voted for them. What kind of world would we live in? What is the name of the kind of society that that leads to? Well, that leads to a society that is anarchist. Everybody has a gun. Everybody's shooting everybody based on their political opinion. It's complete subjectivism. What's the standard by which we define one as a real violation of individual rights? And that everybody gets to pick and choose when his rights are being violated. What's the standard by which? What standard did they provide for what constitutes a violation of rights and what is not? They don't. It's just whatever they. Their particular political leaning suggests whether on the far right or on the far left. Now, the far left has the audacity to try to justify this intellectually. Here's a Clemson University intellectually in academia. Here's a Clemson University professor that says, I admire anyone who stands up against white supremacy, violent or nonviolent. He's the one who used the hashtag often punch Nazis, right? Or in more recent time, the same professor has used a hashtag ACAB, which is all cops are bastards and bone it down. Professor at a university arguing that boning it down is legitimate. Another professor, Oberlin College, right? He writes, protests even when there is violence. Can make it a more salient issue and provide greater pressure on elected officials and candidates. So this is a pragmatic view, right? When we see the destruction of buildings, when we see violence, either by police or by protesters themselves, we actually see greater response by elected officials. So some pragmatic response. You know, nobody takes it seriously. So we have to burn some buildings, maybe shoot some people, maybe, you know, maybe loot some stores that'll get some attention. And since the cause is a good cause, then it's justified. Of course, they wouldn't defend it if the cause was not a, quote, good cause. Or a Texas A&M associate professor of philosophy. In order to be equal, in order to be liberated, some white people might have to die. Or a Dometh University professor who has written extensively defending Antifa. Why? Again, because their cause is a good cause. They're just trying to act in self-defense against fascists. The name, it says anti-fascists. And again, I see the same thing on the right. You remember when that caravan of immigrants was coming in from Central America? I mean, there were people saying, you know, we should just shoot them down. Just shoot them all. And indeed, many people called it an invasion. Which means a war. Which means shoot them. Much of the motivation behind the Pittsburgh synagogue motor and the El Paso motors were motivated by hatred of immigrants as invaders. It was a good cause. Now, these things don't get academic defenses. The defense on hidden places on the web. But I'm sure there are people out there defending it. So when is violence justified in a civilized country? And when does the country become so uncivilized that, you know, violence is justified because it's no longer civilized? So first, we still consider America a free country. If we still consider the country we live in free, then violence cannot be justified. You don't like the policies. Then you vote against them. You speak against them. You argue against them. Violence is only a last resort when reason in a civilized place. When either your life is at stake, your life of property directly at stake by a thug who's breaking the law, or if it's the government, violence is only justified when you can no longer speak your mind. Or we can no longer vote the bastards out. As long as we're voting, we don't have a one party system. As long as we have free speech, which is violence cannot be justified because once you accept it, then it becomes anarchy. You abandoned, you abandoned any semblance of objectivity about what defines what violating rights and what is not. I mean, that's at the end of the day the job of government, even though it defaults on that responsibility. The only context in which violence against government officials, people who vote in a particular way, the only context in which that is justified is revolution. And it certainly is justified when the violations of rights are such that one has no other recourse but to raise arms and go against the government. You know, people, this guy, destiny in his, in his video, he talks about the fact that, look, the country was founded on political violence. Yes, it was founded in revolution. And if you're calling for the revolution, then have the balls to call for a revolution and organize one and set one out. But short of revolution, there is no justification, no justification for politically motivated violence. And to the extent that people engage in it, they should be condemned, they should be prosecuted, they should have to suffer, you know, their fate, the rule of law should be fully enforced. They don't get a free pass because they're fighting for some cause. They don't get a free pass because somehow, you know, the, the cause that they're fighting for is justifies the violence. It doesn't. Again, unless the cause that you're fighting for is true, is freedom, unless the cause you're fighting for is individual rights and you are in an insurrection, you are in literally a revolution. And then it's war. And you have to recognize it's war and don't be surprised when they start lobbing bombs at you. So you can't escape the consequences either way of embracing violence. Either way, you are going to have the state come after you. You know, there's no, there's no way out of that. And there are consequences to that. But we live in a culture today where so many people now are convinced of the righteousness of their cause and convinced that the only way they can fight for their cause is by the use of violence. We live in a culture where reason is a means of persuasion. Is irrelevant because both far left and far right have given up on reason. If they have given up means they advocated for the left and some on the right in the past have advocated for reason. But now the far left and far right have given up completely on reason. Reason is not a tool. Reason is not a means. That's why they're against free speech. It's why they don't want to hear certain points of view on campus, why they don't want to see certain points of view on Twitter or on Facebook or on any way and published any way. If you give up on free speech, if you give up on reason, if you give up on argumentation, if you give up on your ability to persuade, if you give up on their ability to convince the other side with facts and evidence and data and arguments, and you're convinced that your cause is just and moral and good, then what are you left with? You're left with violence. When you give up on reason, all you have is force. And unfortunately we're seeing, we're seeing an intellectual landscape today, which has given up and is giving up on reason. And when you give up on reason, you got feelings. And when you have feelings, your emotions drive you. And when your emotions drive you, you're far more susceptible to violence. And we're seeing that in the streets of America right now. These are children. These are children of an educational system that has not equipped them to think, has not equipped them with reason, has not equipped them to be rational, has abandoned them to their emotions and then encouraged them, encouraged them to cultivate those emotions, to celebrate those emotions. God forbid you should control it. And to some extent today, as a consequence of this, we're in a brink of a kind of a civil war. We have people on the right who are yelling and screaming emotionally, without argument. And you've got people on the left yelling and screaming emotionally without argument. And you've got a president and an opposition party that are basically threatening and suggesting that they will not recognize an election. You've got supposedly this meeting of leftist activists getting together, talking about demonstrations and riots and occupying space after the election, immediately after the election, unless Biden wins in a landslide. I'm sure there are groups on the right having similar debates and similar discussions about how to rally around Trump. If he seems to be losing by a small margin. We are on the brink of potential real violence on a significant scale in American streets. Something I think many others would have thought unthinkable even a year ago. I know people who thought Obama would never leave the White House. So they were already ready back then. But just unthinkable that in America, we would like in, I guess like in, well, not exactly like, but like in Belarus, we would, there's even a possibility that the president or the challenger would not recognize the outcome of an election and would actually send their people out into the streets to fight over this. Michael asked me, have you seen Clockwood Orange? If you have, I'll ask a $300 question. That's how you get my attention. Yes, I have seen a Clockwood Orange. So I'm looking forward to the 300 question. I don't know. We live in scary times. Politically, you know, in so many ways unthinkably scary times. And don't get caught up in this. Don't get caught up in the justification for violence. Now, you know, there might come a time where we will have to declare a revolution. But let's hope it's not soon because if we did, we would lose big time. So it'd be better if we, you know, if we wait until we have kind of the strength and the numbers to have a shot at winning it. What we need today, what I call the new intellectual, would be any man or woman who is willing to think. Meaning any man or woman who knows that man's life must be guided by reason, by the intellect, not by feelings, wishes, whims or mystic revelations. Any man or woman who values his life and who does not want to give in to today's cult of despair, cynicism and impotence and does not intend to give up the world to the dark ages and to the role of the collectivist brought. All right, before we go on, reminder, please like the show. 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