 Alright Freedom Fiends, welcome back to Freedom Fiends Live! It is our Sunday show. I'm Neema Vidadi, we've also got Michael W. Dean out there in Wyoming. How are you doing, Michael? This is Mr. Michael Dean broadcasting live and worldwide from a windowless bunker at an undisclosed location in the rural wild mountain west in the occupied states of America. Ah, yes. And we would like to welcome a new affiliate today. WPBQ, 12.40am in Jackson, Mississippi. We really appreciate it and are excited to be on the radio out there in good ol' Mississippi. I like Jackson. Jackson's a party town. I played there with my band Bomb and right next door to the club we played was a tattoo. And after soundcheck I went and got a tattoo. And I'm not going to say what the tattoo is because this is radio and tattoos can be private, man. I'm sure the FBI has a picture of my tattoo somewhere, somehow. That's going to be the new policy whenever you go to a tattoo parlor. They'll have to take pictures so they can identify you later. Well, that I wouldn't be surprised. We also got some, talk about the pink pistols. They heard us yesterday and thanked us but they had a couple corrections on what we said. Go ahead. Right. The pink pistols says they are not San Francisco based but they do have a chapter there. San Francisco chapter is San Francisco based but the national organization is run from Philly, Philadelphia area. And they say they do pencil, pencil, no close. But while they appreciate the sentiment because we did say, hey, you know, put your money where your mouth is if you're a gun advocate and think the self the right to self defense is a good thing. Why not throw some money to the pink pistols just to show that you're for freedom for everyone, you know, gun freedom for everyone. The pink pistols say they actually don't take donations. Wow. They just prefer that people think well of them and buy some ammo, a gun or some training. That is so cool. I mean, how many organizations don't ask for money? I'd say none other than the pink pistols, man. And, you know, really what does it cost to run a website based information group these days? It takes your time and that's it. And kudos to the pink pistols for not having their hand out. Now, the fiends do have our hand out and we'll talk about that later. But we want to introduce our guest. We have a very, very special guest today. It's a Stefan Kinsella and he is a rockstar level libertarian. And this is going to be the macho libertarian flash interview with him. He's an intellectual prop an intellectual property attorney. And every interview he does is very stately and scholarly and is usually about intellectual property law. And we just want to talk macho libertarian flash with him. But let me give his intro here. His legal works are published by Oxford University Press. Oxford University Press and I told my wife that and she said, Well, la di poo also published by Thompson Reuters. Thompson publishes my is one of my publishers to about the division that publishes my books. I just found out filed for bankruptcy, which was what I woke up to his work on libertarian and anarcho capitalist theory is primarily published on his blog. We have a blog and my publications and websites associated with the Ludwig von Mises Institute and this is he's like a libertarian adjunct professor. This is going to be more today like getting drunk after class with your cool professor. How are you doing there, Stefan? I am doing fantastic. I'm glad to be here, guys, and I will keep it as lowbrow as you like. Are you drunk? I would like to be so let me go grab a gin and garlic. Okay. Did you have some cough syrup? No, I'm actually, I do have a cold right now. So I'm on day quill. So I don't know what that does drink a bunch more of it. Okay. Well, I mean, I can't recommend. I don't know if that's legal in your municipality, but it would public of Texas. I'm not sure. You never know. It's Sunday morning. So we have blue laws. Ah, I think as long as it's not fun, I think it's legal in Texas. That's true. Well, this isn't fun. So but I'm looking forward to talking to you guys. Yeah. So, Neema, get a word in edgewise. Get a word in edgewise. Well, Stefan Kinsella, have you ever partied with other libertarian rock stars like Jeff Tucker? I know he wrote a book called Bourbon for Breakfast. Do you guys do some little hair of the dog there or what? Yeah, Jeff and I are good buddies and he actually introduced me to my current favorite drink, which is the Negroni, you know, it's like a... Negroni? I can't really ingredients, but it's kind of kind of a rose color and tastes good. Does it give you a rose colored view of the world like status think libertarians have? Absolutely. I mean, Jeff and I compare drink notes all the time. We'll talk at seven or eight in the morning and talk about how our wives are bitching at us because we're getting drunk too early, that kind of thing. Did you drink absinthe and shoot crocodile with Murray Rothbard? I did not, but I did try absinthe recently a year ago. I bought that stuff with the cat's eyes on it when it became re-legalized back in the U.S. It's got wormwood or something in it, but it just doesn't do it for me. So let's take licorice and liquor together. I just take the straight liquor. Well, did you know Rothbard? Murray Rothbard? I met Rothbard one time in 1994, November. I went to the John Randolph Society meeting. I was living in Philadelphia at the time. You guys just mentioned Philly and the commercial, I think. And I drove down to meet... Nice segue, man. Hey, well, I'm paying attention. What can I say? So I did meet him one time. We had a nice long chat, and then he died in January of 1995. So I met him right before he died, and it was a pleasure. But I didn't know him that well, unfortunately. Do you think libertarians have more fun? No. No, straight up. Well, Nima and I are both sober, so we're trying to live vicariously through you. Tell more drinking stories. Well, you know what? This morning I was walking... I did a little walk this morning. I'm getting older, so I have to exercise. And I actually re-listened to Nima's I Own Me song. Did it pump you up? It did pump me up. I was kind of strutting to Nima's rap there. It was great. Now, are you the guy that blogged that somewhere? I did. I blogged it on Lou Rockwell or somewhere back in 2009. You are the reason the freedom fiends exist. Yeah, he kind of is. I met Nima because of that. You blogged that, and somebody re-blogged it on the Free State Wyoming Forum. And I went and listened to it, and I was like, this is great. I want to write this guy. And I looked on his MySpace. That's how long ago this was. You know, I recently saw an ad for MySpace. They're trying to like, pimp it again and make it cool. I'm like, really? I went and found Nima. And I thought he lived like, you know, on the other side of my state. And it turns out he lived in my town, and we had him come over. And we've basically done art every day since, for like four years, whether we're in the same room or not. We did that Guns N' Weed movie, and now we do the Freedom Fiends cast, and we've done music. Yeah, so it's your fault, man. Thank you. Well, you're welcome. And I will say, I mean, in recent years, I've been re-thinking some of the basic libertarian concepts and ways to restate them. And one thing Nima's song reminded me of, and not to be petty or abhorrent, but this concept of self-ownership or meat ownership is correct as far as it goes. But I think to be precise, we need to say body ownership, because the self is a... What is me? What is the self? What does it mean to own yourself? Freedom of ingestion. Exactly. So I think maybe body ownership would be the right way to put it, but it wouldn't be as catchy. I think that is. Why body ownership? It seems like just a part of it to me, yeah. The mind is such an important thing, too. Because the only disputes are over scarce resources, right? All disputes are violence and use of physical force over physical resources, and the body is what is the sort of the locus of yourself, but yourself, you know, everyone has a different conception of what your self is. You have to get kind of crazy about this. So the problem is when you say you believe in self-ownership, you have these atheist libertarians of which I'm one, but they get kind of strident, and they go, oh, so you believe in a soul? And what do you... I mean, they go crazy, you know? They say, I don't believe in self-ownership. And I'm like, well, do you believe in slavery? Because it's really pretty much one or the other, right? I mean, it's not really that complicated. But if you want to be precise, I think the dispute is always over material, scarce, tangible things to fight over. I disagree, because statists not only want your body, they want your mind too. They try to take your mind. Yeah, but they can't get your mind without your body, right? I mean, if they leave your body alone, then that would be pretty much good enough. Like, I mean, I could have a compromise with the statists. Like, you can win the battle of ideas if you leave my physical stuff alone. Then you can go around prancing and training and acting like you won. That's perfectly fine with me. Well, I don't know. Leave my physical stuff alone. If they left your physical stuff alone, but then erected giant loudspeakers outside your house, broadcasting status propaganda really loud 24-7, I guess that would be affecting your body, because it would be hitting your ears. But I think it would be affecting your mind too. I think they'd be leaving your body mostly alone and grabbing your mind. I guess I just think that the statement, I own me, is so inclusive. And trying to say it's all about the body is, you know, like one-third or one-quarter of that. I think what he means is the disputes, like you said, are over-natural resources. And we need those for our body. Our body is the vessel that our mind is in. So that's how we interact with each other is through our body. And even the stuff with the mind, I mean, you use your mouth to talk and your ears to hear. Those are parts of your body. Well, think about this way. These guys, when they try to enforce intellectual property rights or any kind of their socialistic welfare rights, they really always want to use the physical force of some state court against your body or other tangible or material things that you own. Like, if someone sues me for copyright infringement, they might couch it in moral terms, like, oh, you violated my moral integrity or my artistic work. But really, they want your money, right? Or they want a court order against you to put you in jail or to take, to tell you you can't act in a certain way. So it's really always comes down to force about physical, tangible things. And thanks for defending me, Nima. I appreciate that. Well, okay. Well, it makes sense because they can complain about you all. You want to say, well, you're not allowed to say this. They can say that to their blue in the face, but until they come take your microphone away or take you physically away and lock you up to where you can't get to your microphone or your computer, then it's pointless. All their force has to manifest in the physical realm before it affects you. Well, and that's the thing. The libertarian idea is, I mean, we are perfectly fine with people having the right to complain. I mean, I would love to live in a free society where we had a few socialists running around whining about the fact that they don't get to tax us. I mean, I'm perfectly happy to take that deal. Give us freedom to stop taxing us and you get to complain about it. But now we have the opposite, right? We have the opposite where they get to tax us and if we complain about being taxed, they call us bigots or anti-Semites or intolerant or non-progressive or whatever. So they actually want to have it both ways. They want to take our money from us and they want to have us shut up about it. So, you know, the liberal or the leftist is similar to the conservative because the conservative is if you don't like America, get the hell out. How do you get out? Yeah, my retort is, well, first of all, you won't let us get out because you're going to charge an exit fee. And second of all, if you don't like the fact that temporarily here in this quasi-fascist United States of America, I have the right to complain about the fact that you're stealing from me without too much political persecution. You get the hell out, you know? I mean... Right, right. Why should we have to leave? You're the one who is... Well, I guess I can't say that on radio. We'll be back. We'll be back from the market in just a little bit. On the freedom fiends with Stephan Cansella. Yeah. Uh-huh. Five centuries after the first space flight, the stars remain beyond humanity's reach. So a mad scientist enlists the aid of a young technician, Nicole Orem, as they travel through the solar system, encountering the hazards of space and human treachery. Quantum Vibe, volume one, Nicole collects the first 400 strips of the epic sci-fi webcomic series, available now from the major online bookstores or direct from bigheadpress.com. You've read books, attended lectures, and you know the Constitution well enough to know it's a well-crafted blueprint to create an ever-increasing federal empire. But there's still one thing missing. Buttons! Freedom Fiends now has buttons. You'll get state speech as hate speech, guns and weed, buy sheep or sheep on sheep, and two designs for the Freedom Fiends wear them with pride. Use them to start conversations with statists. It's only $10 for five buttons, including shipping. Go to freedomfiends.com and click on the link at the top that says buttons. A science fiction comic adventure from Big Head Press. Quantum Vibe! It's year 2523. There are colonies on Venus, Mars and Mercury. People travel in bubbles, fly at hyper-speed with brain implants and artificial gravity. A scientific genius and his clever assistant set out on an adventure through the solar system on a secret mission to find the key to access new frontiers and save liberty. There's a robot that's made with genetically engineered features and free opportunity. A scientific genius and his clever assistant set out on an adventure through the solar system on a secret mission- Alright, we're back on Freedom Fiends Live! This is Nima Vadati. We've also got Michael W. Dean out there in rural Wyoming. And with us today, we've got another Texan here, although from H-Town, not the ATX. We've got Stefan Kinsella. Can you hear us, Stefan? I can hear you, Nima. How are you doing? Ah, I'm doing well. So this is sort of our Macho Libertarian Flash episode. That first segment, we were just sort of throwing jabs, trying to feel everything out. But now, I think I want to try something. Stefan, if you could, attempt to give your best Macho Libertarian Flash, you know, kind of scare away all the status, the socialists, the Democrats, the Republicans, all that mess. Actually. Try to sort of scare them, but keep them radio safe. Before we do that, I think we need to define Macho Libertarian Flash. Not everyone knows what it is. Can you define it there, Stefan? Well, so this guy, Michael Cloud, had this article about the Libertarian Macho Flash, I think in the 70s or the 80s, and he was talking about the tendency of some radical libertarians, like, you know, you're at the dinner table with your girlfriend's family and someone mentions something pretty innocuous, and you go all the way. You put the pedal to the metal, right? You take it where it shouldn't be taken right. So in a way, he's talking about being inappropriate and being socially awkward and being so obsessed with your political ideas and ideology that you just want to make everyone talk about it all the time, which we sometimes suffer from. A lot of us, at least I do. So I think a good example of the Libertarian Macho Flash would be if the typical person talks about antitrust law, let's say, or drug legalization. So your typical argument for moderating the antitrust laws and allowing more competition in society and reducing the scope of the antitrust law is that, you know, without the monopoly laws, we would still have competition and the cartels really don't do a good job, and so it's not really a big danger, okay? But like Ayn Rand would say, for example, and this was her Libertarian Macho Flash, even if two CEOs of two competing companies like Apple and Microsoft or Apple and Samsung, even if they meet in the bathroom at a conference and they want to try to set prices together, right? They have the right to do so. So the Macho Flash is that, yeah, I don't know if it would be likely or not and I don't really care, but even if it happens, I would defend it to the death. In a way, this is what the ACLU does with free speech. They say that I don't agree with your pornography or your obscenity or your anti-Semitism or whatever, but I defend to the death your right to say it. So in a way, the Macho Flash is saying, listen, I don't need to see this film to decide whether it's pornographic or not because even if I had thought it was pornographic, I would not be in favor of laws to outlaw it, right? So you have the same kind of reasoning by libertarians for the drug war, for anti-trust law, for pornography and things like this. And even for like conscription, you say, well, if America can't get a volunteer army to defend itself from an attack by some crazy outside threat, then we don't deserve to exist. We should just die then. That's the libertarian Macho Flash and that turns off a lot of people because they want to hear, no, realistically, what's going to happen? What's the system that you're proposing? They want to hear that. And we're thinking, we're not proposing a system. We're talking about right and wrong, damn it. Right. I think it's a valuable thing and I believe that Michael Cloud's original usage of the term was asking libertarians to temper that, right? Yes, I think it was. Yeah, I read his, there's an article by him that somebody has typed under the internet at some point that basically warns against it. And I think it's absolutely, I mean, I think it's the right place to go. You know, if you say, you know, the conservative libertarian, and I don't mean politically conservative, I mean like verbally conservative libertarian, would say, well, anybody should be able to get a concealed carry permit if they haven't committed any violent crimes. And, you know, the Macho Libertarian Flash person, Flasher, like us, would say, well, I think machine guns should be available in vending machines as long as the vending machines are privately owned and operated. Now, the interesting thing is in my part of the country, in the Mountain West, there are a lot of people who believe that about guns. I mean, they think, that's basically what a gun show is, a gun show, there's not machine guns, but, you know, most gun, a lot of gun owners are very against any background checks and so am I. But those same people will be like, oh, we can't legalize pot though, there'd be, everyone, no one would go to work, nothing would get done and those people listen to music I don't like. You know, so I really, a thing that the fiends say, we say that there's no such thing as half free, which basically means if you're a gun person and you believe 100% in gun freedom and you do not smoke pot, you still have to defend the pot guy and his freedom because all freedoms are interrelated and if governments can go after one thing, they can go after everything. We'll be back with more on the freedom fiends with Stefan Kinsella after we go to the market. What's the problem officer? Today many cops who enforce pot laws do so only because it provides them with cushy jobs, good benefits and a chance to push people around. I was an undercover narcotics officer. The drug war is nothing but a farce. The second amendment says you got to keep you and you get intact. DVD available now at gunsandweed.com or on Amazon. That's gunsandweed.com Makes the perfect gift. Remember, that's gunsandweed.com You can pay a little less elsewhere but you'll pull out your hair dealing with anyone else. Hostgator has great service and unlimited tech support only a phone call away 24-7-365. Hostgator is where pros like the fiends host because we know how to do it right. Go to freedomfiends.com and click on the Hostgator affiliate link on the right sidebar to sign up today. Yeah. Yo, it's the Freedom Fiends Live. Thank you for joining us after we went to the market. Now, we are going to continue our little chat with Professor Stefan Kinsella. He's our Liberty Professor today and we're sort of partying with the prof. Are you there, Stefan? Can you hear us? I am here. I can hear you fine. Cool. Do you have a macho-libertarian flash rant ready for the people? Oh, my God. I don't know. Buster Freestyle. Yo, I don't know. I can't do Neema V. Neema V is much better than me. Oh, I just rhymed another time. Oh, you did it. Wow. I know. I know I did it. I don't know. Trayvon stuff is really getting on my nerves. Everyone will know your opinion about Trayvon and I'm like, Jesus Christ, can we let it rest? It's just one incident. That was my thought on it. Why is this such a huge deal? Aren't there self-defense shootings every day where people call into question whether or not it was legitimate self-defense? What about all the cops that shoot people every day, especially young black men? No, I know. You have hundreds of thousands or millions of black guys in jail right now for innocuous activities, drug violations, whatever, and we're whining about this one case of an actual thug who apparently got, you know, sacked. I mean, there was an article in Slade or Salon by two lesbian white women in New England who have a black foster or adopted child and they don't know what to tell their kid about Trayvon. And I'm like, I mean, seriously, is this really the discourse about this issue? How about tell them, you know, don't go, don't go getting in trouble? I don't know. I mean, I don't think Trayvon was a saint. I don't think that Zimmerman's a saint, but this whole issue making it like it's some kind of social indicator is insane. I mean, I was thinking that Zimmerman should write a book called If I Did It, you know, like OJ, you know. If I killed Trayvon maliciously, here's how I would have done it. And I guess he could sell that book. Well, okay, so in sort of a stateless society or in lib pair, as we call it on Freedom Fiends Radio, how would this situation, you know, given the facts we know right now, which I guess we'll never know exactly what happened, but how do you think this would have played out? Would it have been a big hubbub? Would there have been lots of media coverage? What do you think would have happened? What's the appropriate libertarian stance on that? I think that's a great question. I think that I think we have to say would this even have happened in a libertarian society, right? If we imagine that we've somehow evolved and creeped towards a more libertarian society where everyone is progressive and individualist and respecting each other's rights, I mean, I think the prevalence of crime and the suspicion that collectivist groups have of each other would be radically minimized, right? So I think these kinds of things would happen a lot less often. In other words, in this utopia that we dream about, you would have crime would be much less prevalent. Well, I also don't think you'd have a neighborhood watch guy calling somebody and saying, I think this kid's on drugs. No, exactly. And so today we have like a bifurcation. We have the government takes over security and does a terrible job. So you have private groups try to kind of fill up the gaps. So in a private society, you would just have one thing. It would be one group that would do a good job of it. You wouldn't have to have neighborhood groups. You wouldn't have, you know, war of all against all. So I don't think it would happen in the first place. But do you think you'd have one group or would you have multiple groups competing? Maybe you just have one group for that specific area or one group for that specific house or park or what do you think? Honestly, I think that in a free society we would all be so much more wealthy. We would all be so wealthy that crime would almost have no meaning. I mean, what would be the motivation to steal? If you could get money just by working a job very easily, right? Or just by asking for it from charity. Then the motivation to steal would be much diminished. So I think that all these things would radically change. But so if you want to ask a theoretical question, Libertarian Macho Flash, I mean I used to believe and I still do believe theoretically, you know, if someone commits murder or some kind of violent crime, they deserve to be punished. But there's a problem of knowing who is really to blame and to know for sure that someone committed the crime. And it's hard for me to imagine a private group that is really in charge of protecting people's property rights like an insurance company or whatever. Actually having a group of people designed to torture and to kill and to jail people that they've determined they think have committed a crime. Because you could be wrong, right? And if you're wrong, then you're basically committing crime yourself against someone. So I believe in a free society, you would have a widespread resort to ostracism and reputation and just get, you know, listen. People are going to be exiled unless they comply with certain rules. So I think you'd have a large resort to voluntary restitution and ostracism. I know that's not satisfying to a lot of people and on occasion you'd have some father of some victim or some husband of some victim go crazy and just execute or kill the guy they think was responsible and maybe society would turn to blind eye. But it's hard to imagine that becoming an institutional way of dealing with things. It's too expensive. It doesn't produce anything really of use. And it's too error-prone. So I think in this case you would see, of course the drug war would disappear, you know, and you wouldn't see the black community devastated like it's been by the combined effects of minimum wage and the drug war and the welfare system and the military and the business cycle and all things the government does to it. So these kinds of problems would be much more minimized. And plus I think you'd see a more individualized, progressive, you know, rationalist society where people don't count race as much. Although on occasion, if you count race, you know, it's okay. Like if you prefer to date a black girl, if you're black or you're white or whatever, that's your personal preference and no one would freak out about it because they don't think you're going to put your preferences into law. It wouldn't have the power that it has now. And that's the thing now of like trying to punish thought. You know, if somebody is retarded enough to have racist ideas, now they want to put you in a cage for it. But in a free society, you would just be, oh, that dumb guy who has racist thoughts and it wouldn't have any power. No, he wouldn't be dangerous either because he would just be some guy that's not progressive. And you know, he might be productive in society to a certain degree, but he just would be, you could ignore him. What's the big deal? You're the only libertarian progressive, I was just going to say, you're the only libertarian I've ever heard use that term in a positive light. I can see maybe where you're going, but can you define that and explain it? Well, I mean, look, I view myself and I view the libertarian ideal as a form of what I say cosmopolitanism or progressivism. We are individualist oriented. We believe in rationality. We believe that we are united because of our rationality as humans. And so all these differences between us are incidental, but might matter in personal preference terms. But ultimately, we are in favor of reason and rationality and getting along with each other because we can agree on certain things. And so progressive means, listen, we are all in favor of the human project. And not just the human project. I mean, who knows what other species might be sentient or sapient someday, right? I mean, maybe artificial intelligence, maybe alien species, maybe dolphins or apes if we can engineer them some days. Who knows? I mean, the point is if you can have a rational being that you can communicate with, deal with, we can all relate to each other and profit from dealing with each other. So I think that the ultimate, I mean, libertarianism to me is the ultimate progressivism and a cosmopolitan view of dealing with each other as individuals. I mean, look, when I go to libertarian meetings, I've noticed this for the last 20 years. I've always been stunned by the fact that I'll go to, say, Auburn and, you know, Auburn for the Mises Institute or other events. And there are people from the Netherlands and Africa and, you know, the North, the South, America, everywhere, and no one cares about where you're from. Everyone talks about ideas and they respect each other's individuals and I've always loved that. They don't deny that there are differences, but they don't make it the focus of their interaction, you know? And, you know, if a European criticizes Franklin Roosevelt or Lincoln or Reagan, you know, the Americans don't freak out. If an American criticizes the socialistic aspect of Europe, the Europeans don't freak out because they're there for the truth. So I think that the hallmark of the progressive and the individualist is a focus on truth and on substance and on individualism and treating each other as fellow members of the human community, which I think is progressive. And I think the Liberals try to claim this mantle for themselves, but of course they're complete hypocrites and liars. I mean, the libertarians are the ones that are best positioned to really take the mantle in this regard. So at these meetings, if somebody from Europe... If somebody from Europe says something correctly critical of something about the United States, you don't hear people saying, go back to France, hippie. No, honestly, I've never heard that. Maybe I'm isolated, but no, I've never heard that in my life in these kinds of meetings because everyone is sort of united by a common love for liberty and individualism in the human spirit. We sort of respect each other's strengths and weaknesses, right? I mean, the American Revolution has certain... I mean, there's a reason the libertarian movement has a locus here in the U.S. It's because of the American Foundation and it's sort of culmination of the Enlightenment ideas. But there are certain things that we've missed or gotten wrong and the Europeans have strengths over us or others, even the West, even the East. And I've never seen any problems with people communicating with each other in the movement meetings I've been to. I was going to ask, I am wondering, what do you use, what kind of tactic or rhetorical strategy do you use for people who just don't get that and they think that the blame lies on why do the Muslims want to kill us? Why do they all want to kill us? Or even the people that maybe break it down a little bit more and say, well, they don't all want to kill us, but a lot of them do. They just want to come over here and install Sharia law and we've got to be scared of that. Or those immigrants, they're going to come and take our jobs and suck up our welfare and take our resources. The people who blame large swaths of people and don't think of everybody as an individual, because a lot of times these are a part of the political discourse. What kind of rhetorical strategies or tactics can you use or do you use when at a party, a dinner party or in public talking to somebody who's bringing up these thoughts? Well, I mean, it's probably the same things you guys do which are obvious, but you talk to people on their language. Your resort to common ideas that you share, right, fairness, consistency is the main thing in my opinion. You say, listen, this doesn't make sense to say this guy's bad, but this guy's not. Right, and they will usually admit that. I'm concerned with privacy on the internet. The electronic police state is strangling our previous protections and the central scrutinizer is trying to squint into all areas of our lives. That's why smart people surf the net with a VPN or virtual private network. I use a VPN from BolaVPN. BolaVPN has your utmost security in mind and will allow you to surf, email and do other computing tasks without leading a trail of breadcrumbs across the internet. Unlike many other VPN providers, BolaVPN doesn't log traffic. With BolaVPN, you can change your apparent location or disappear completely. BolaVPN has been around since 2007, which is OG in the VPN world. BolaVPN is easy to install and configure. Best of all, it can be had for less than 25 cents a day, which is a small price to pay for this much security. And if you open a support ticket saying you heard about them through the Freedom Teens, they'll add three extra days free. That's BolaVPN at B-O-L-E-H-V-P-N dot net. Freedom Teens live. Last segment of hour one, I'm Neema Vidati. We are also here with Michael W. Dean and Stefan Kinsella joining us from H-Town. Stefan, I asked you a really long rambling question before the last segment and you didn't get a chance to finish it up, so I'll ask it short and you can answer it short as well. How do you tell collectivists they're wrong, that people are individuals? I mean, it's a tough one. It depends upon where they're coming from, right? If they're outright collectivists, I encounter pretty rarely, it's difficult because they're basically totalitarians. But if they're your average, you know, liberal soccer mom, you focus on something that they are decent about and you try to make them see that they're inconsistent if they favor, you know, something else. So you say, look, why would you... You don't believe in imposing your personal views upon other people, right? But why would you want to make me pay for X, Y, and Z? Do you want your son to go to be conscripted for the military? Do you believe in the war? So I just try to find examples of inconsistencies and, I mean, honestly, half the time I get someone to say, yeah, you have a good point. But they can't go further than that. They admit that they're inconsistent, they know that doesn't make sense and they just sort of stop there. But I mean, I'm not to say I want to shut them up, but it shuts them up for a while. They sort of think about it. So I don't know if I had a lot of luck converting your average person, although, you know, I'm 47 years old, I've been doing this for 25 years and I think you see a gradual progression among your friends and family members and people that you talk to when they know you're a decent person, you're not insincere, you're honest, you know, they gradually start adopting your positions because they see that it's permissible. I don't know if there's a magic bullet, but that's what I've seen in my experience. Well, what do you think about the thought that there are some people that are just unconvincible that will never be convinced? Do you think that there are people like that or do you think that anybody can get it? No, I do think that there are people that will never be convinced and I think that that's, I mean, that's the libertarian mentality, right? The notion is that you can divide people into two different, at least two different classes, right? People that are basically with us, they're pro-reason, pro-individualism, pro-justice, pro-fairness, and they're potentially reachable by reason. And then there are people that don't really care. They're either mouthpieces or they're willing to violate your rights if they have to do it to get their way. And my point of view is that we have to view those people, the latter people, as basically threats like animals. This is part of humanity, right? I mean, there's always criminals and these people are like a species of criminal to go Libertarian Macho Flash on you, which you asked for, right? I actually said that there are two different species of humans or subspecies. There are homo-libertitis and homo-parasitis. Well, I agree with that. Yeah, no, I think that's right. I think you can divide people into threats and potentially cooperative members of the same human class and you have to, you know, there's this old joke that my friend Walter Block tells, like, you know, you ask someone, can you tell the difference between a kitchen and a bathroom? Or what's the difference? And they say, I don't know. And you say, well, I'm not going to invite you to my house for dinner party, you know. And to extend that to like something else, I think that if someone will not acknowledge your right to your body and to exist and to peaceful activities to a certain degree, they're basically declaring themselves to be an enemy. And so all you can do is keep your eye on them and you have to say, listen, this person is a dangerous, statist animal and all we can do is treat them as what Hoppe calls a technical problem. Now, how do you treat technical problems? That's a technical solution. So that's a Libertary Macho Flash issue and I do think that people are amenable to reason, but at a certain point you have the right to defend yourself and if you can do it, you should do it. Sounds good. What do you think that point is? Yeah. I think it depends upon each person's situation, but, you know, nowadays to go, I mean, let's take Adam Cooke. She's a friend of mine. Adam has sacrificed his situation for the cause. Do that. Yeah, he's kind of the king of Macho Libertarian Flash, which is what we like about him. Yep. Great guy. You can sum it up in the next 10 seconds. You have 10 seconds. Do we have 10 seconds? Well, we'll be back. I hope he teaches people a lesson. I think he will, but he is basically using some of his life forces, his life to try to teach people a lesson. Yep. And we'll have more on the freedom fiends with guest Stefan Kinsella after we go to the market. Need to talk to people in a secure manner? Liberty Private Network sells phones that will work over any good internet connection and give you military grade encryption for calls that cannot be tapped. Great for lawyers and clients, business people with trade secrets, or just ordinary folk who don't want their love talk spied on by some scumbag from the central scrutinizer. Call 516-TLKSAFE on your non-secure phone and tell them the freedom fiends sent you. That's 516-TLKsafe. Freedom fiends. This is Mr. Michael Dean. And this is Neema Badati. Mr. Neema Badati. And we've got a special guest today. We've got Stefan Kinsella. How are you doing there, Stefan? I'm good. How are you guys doing? You youngster. I'm about a year and a half older than you. You're a youngster. You kids. Oh yeah, not 50 yet. You darn kids. So we were talking before the break about Linux and how two-thirds of the people who originally came up with the idea and spearheaded it are communists and one of them is a straight-up libertarian gun guy, Eric S. Raymond. But we're talking about down the break about how prevalent it is for people to be an expert in one narrow field, you know, a PhD in blank, whatever, some kind of scientist or scholar. But thank you know how to run the world. I've heard so many people who, you know, let's see, they're software engineers or they are, you know, DNA scientists who also think they know how much gun control there should be because they know they're really smart in one thing. They think they're really smart in everything else, unlike the three people who are talking today who are experts in how the world should be run. And we know our limitations. Yeah, we do. So have you encountered that? And what do you think about that? Well, actually, you hit upon something that's one of my pet peeves. I'm an engineer by background and I love engineers in some ways, but I will confess that I am totally upset by the tendency of too many engineers to be what I call scientific. So they basically know almost nothing about economics or political philosophy or philosophy. And rightfully, they disregard it because they've been brought up, you know, in engineering and science, which makes sense and which works. And so they basically disregard the humanities and the liberal arts. So then they start thinking that the only thing that makes sense is the empirical sciences, what makes sense. So then they get this grandiose idea that what works for me as an engineer or a scientist is the only way of truth. So they start dismissing philosophy and economics and coming up with their own pet theories, which are usually amateur and what I call monistic. In other words, they do not recognize the difference between studying causality, which is the causal realm, which is, you know, how things work in the real material world and the teleological, you know, realm, which is the consequences of human action, like purpose, means, ends, values, things like this. These are different disciplines and you have to recognize this and you cannot do it from a purely engineering scientific mentality. So it drives me bonkers when engineers try to take over all of human life with one simple perspective. So, you know, I'm a pro engineer guy and pro science, but I think that these guys need to have a broader perspective. Did you have some direct dealings with Richard Stallman, the guy who invented the Linux kernel? Yeah, he and I have exchanged emails and, you know, like a lot of people that are either leftist or a scientist, you know, I've been frustrated in trying to communicate with these guys because they take for granted the current state apparatus. They take for granted, for example, the idea that law is what the government or the state issues are decrees, right? They don't think in terms of natural law because they're used to making fun of the Catholic church, let's say, or the idea that you have to wear condoms when you have sex. So this is their mentality. I'm not saying this is true of Stallman himself, but, you know, Robert Anton Wilson, for example, had a book called Don't Put a Rubber on Your Willy. That was his attack on natural law, right? That he basically attacked the Catholic church and the ideas of contraception. Now, this is not a good attack on the idea of natural right and natural law, natural rights. So you get these guys like Stallman that are totally, I mean, completely unequipped to deal with any normative thinking whatsoever. They are just used to thinking with their intuitions or with science. And they fold everything into that mentality. And I think that leads them astray. I'm not saying that we need to be natural law thinkers or religious or whatever, but you do need to open your mind to realizing that there's another way of analyzing phenomena in the world other than the scientific method. Yeah, we call people like that experts in things that are wrong. And what I say is that, you know, a second grader who understands Austrian economics at a second grade level is smarter than someone who has a PhD in the other kind of economics that is wrong. And that's the economics that runs America, the Kinsey and Tide. No, I agree with that. And I mean, I have a 10-year-old, 9-year-old, and I've taught him a lot of the basic ideas and he can immediately see the flaws in some of these mainstream ideas. Yeah, and we'll have some on childrearing. That's a good segue when we get back from the market on the freedom fiends. We're listening to freedom fiends with Nima V and Michael Dean. Not your dad's talk radio. You can buy our movies on Amazon and IMDb. You can rate and review the freedom fiends and our songs on iTunes. That really helps a lot. You can buy our movies and share them with friends or give them out as gifts. And one of the best ways to spread liberty is to buy a bunch of freedom fiends' buttons and give them out as gifts. Wholesale prices are available and you can also comment on our site or better yet, comment about us on other sites. And please email the site link to all your friends. Thanks for helping spread the fiends message worldwide to as many Liberty people as you can, especially to those who don't yet get it. You rock. We'll see you next time. All right, it's Freedom Fiends Live. I'm Nima Vdati here in Austin, Texas. We've got Michael W. Dean in Wyoming. And we've also got Steffen Kinsella here with us in Houston. And now I found out on Thursday that my wife and I are going to be having a little girl. So I don't know, maybe we'll call her Lillian Vdati. If you've got name suggestions. I'm not doing that. Not going to be named Pencil Tucky at all. But I'm not going to be named Pencil Tucky. I'm not going to be named Pencil Tucky. At all. But yeah, if you have suggestions, go ahead and send me a Facebook message or an email. But that brings us to our next topic. Steffen Moldenew is a big proponent of what he calls peaceful parenting, I believe. And applying the non-aggression principle also universally because you don't get to ignore the non-aggression principle just because the person you're addressing against is of a different age than you. So, some nice consistency there. And Steffen Kinsella, I've actually heard an interview with you and Steffen sort of discussing parenting and how that works. And during the break, you told me a little bit about your thoughts on that, that there's stuff to build on. This doesn't necessarily just have to be a reactionary thing against public schools or the current thoughts on parenting from a more status-light or beating your kids or any of that. Can you expand on your thoughts when you were raising your kids? Yeah, absolutely. And if people want back up on this and some links, I have an article on Montessori and Peace. It's at my website, SteffenKinsella.com and I have a lot of links to some of the books I read that helped me which are not libertarian really, but they basically dovetailed with my approach and my burgeoning approach. Look, I was a regular kid and I was spanked a couple of times when I was younger. As a young male, I always thought that these people whining about spanking were just whiners, right? Like, there's nothing wrong with spanking and carrying them. And you'll hear people say, well, I was spanked and I turned out okay, but if you think about it, that actually might be true, but that's not a good argument for spanking, right? I mean, even if you turn out, I mean, some people are robbed that doesn't mean it's justified. So the question is, what is justified as a libertarian and what is the best way to discipline your children? And I've come to the view as a libertarian and as a parent and as an inherent, an increasing inherent of the Montessori philosophy, which I would encourage people to look into, that, you know, you have to view a child as a full human, as a young person. They have different capacities, they need help and you owe them that help. But that doesn't mean that you actually physically threaten this young person that is in your charge with physical violence if they don't do what you say. I mean, I think Stefan Malinu has a good illustration in some of his talks where he talks about, let's suppose you have an 85-year-old or 90-year-old father who's in a wheelchair and he's declining, and if he does something that you don't like, would you actually spank him or physically threaten him? It's crazy. And children are on the other end of the spectrum, they're developing people, you brought them into this world. So my view is that children are young people with full rights. I mean, my son is 9, he's almost 10, he's pretty libertarian. I've told him from the beginning that he has complete full human rights from the moment he can understand what I'm telling him. But that doesn't mean that he is a complete human adult with capacity to do everything, but I'm in his charge, he's in my charge but that doesn't mean I can abuse him. That means I can make certain decisions for him on his behalf. So I think you have to treat children with respect, realize they're burgeoning adults, and psychologically the best way to teach them is by example. With love, you know? You said I'm in his charge, he's in my charge. Was that first part a mistake or did you mean? Yeah, the first part's a mistake but it's partly true metaphorically but yeah, I mean I'm in charge of I have an obligation to take care of him because I brought him into the world as a dependent sentient or sapient human being. Right? And so this libertarian view that there are no positive obligations, I actually reject that. I think there are positive obligations. There are just positive obligations that you voluntarily incur. So the libertarian view is that you shouldn't have a positive obligation unless you voluntarily assume it. But when you have a child, I think you voluntarily assume an obligation to take care of this young human life because you intentionally brought into being a rights-bearing entity that has certain dependent needs because of human nature. You see nothing libertarian whatsoever about the idea that you have an obligation as a parent, a father or a mother to take care of and to train and rear in love and take care of this young child that you brought into being. Now, what do you say to critics who might say things like, well good luck with that. How are you going to raise your kids without discipline and getting tough on them and you know, you kind of hear that thing when I tell, you know, members of family or friends that, yeah, I plan on negotiating and explaining things to my kid is the primary way of teaching him. People, I don't know if they get offended but they kind of roll their eyes. Well, I guess there's I guess two or three types of people you can talk to. There's people that have never had children and to be honest, not to be I mean look, people that haven't experienced some things, they just can't understand certain things. Okay, so they're younger, they'll see when they get there. And then with parents, either they have been reared in a certain mentality or they have learned things when they've raised their children. I mean, I had that mentality myself when I was a younger guy, I thought, if I have a kid if he cries, I'll just lock him in a room and let him, let him cry until he shuts up. You know, but when you have a kid, then you start changing your mentality because you have a relationship with this child and you realize that your vision was simplistic. The other thing is, it actually works a positive discipline approach like Jane Nelson teaches or Catherine Kvoles, K-V-O-L-S actually works almost for the same reason that you know, behaviorism works for animals because you feed to the child what makes sense for their stage of development. And I mean, I found that it works fine and you will see that early on, look, I mean my kid is not a genius, okay, I have good genes maybe but my kid learned to read at two years old or even earlier because I taught him by reading a couple of books. But it's not because I was a genius or he was a genius, it's because there's a potential there, the human potential and you can teach your kid all kinds of things early on. You can have conversations with your child at three, four, five years old and explain to them, I'm your father I'm your parent, here's what's going on here's what your role is here's what you need to know and it actually works so I don't really see what the the problem is you can do it. Isn't that sort of in the nature of humans I mean throughout history isn't that how kids learned was by watching, keeping a very close intent eye on their parents and the adults that they were around and that's sort of how they absorbed everything that they knew. So it doesn't seem to be inconsistent with natural law or anything like that. It's not consistent. Stephen Monu actually speaking to him, he has a really good point in one of his talks and he says that you know these people and families where like the husband yells at the wife and the wife yells at the husband and the parents yell at the kids and vice versa. He says you know actually if you're going to have certain norms or morals or manners between people wouldn't you want to be the most polite to your your spouse or your children? I mean if you're going to have any manners whatsoever you want to treat your children and your spouse the best because that's who you love the most and it's a really good point and I think if you keep that in mind then you'll see you should treat your children the best and you don't spank strangers right? How would you spank your children? Michael does but that's a voluntary thing that's the libertarian hyper macho flash there right so what about education you know in the libertarian or the anarcho capitalist community there's a lot said for homeschooling and a lot said against public schooling do your kids are they homeschooled are they private schooled what are your thoughts on methods that are consistent with the non aggression principle to educate your children well you know I think we all agree politically on what ideally would be the right system would be to have no government schools and everyone takes care of their children but if you raise a child today then you have a choice you can have you know and say in the western American or western culture you can have your child homeschooled as they call it sometimes or I think you go to private schools or public schools or government schools and I don't have strong opinions on what the right thing to do that's a prudential choice my child goes to a private Montessori my view from what I've seen is that among the alternatives available if I had to rank them I would say that the best choice is a private Montessori the second choice would be really a homeschooled environment and the third would be the last would be public schools depending upon where you live what about private church schools that's what I did and look how I turned out well that's private right yeah so I mean honestly I guess the parents have the right to tell their kids what their spiritual beliefs are I personally as a sort of ex-random atheist insane crazy guy I mean honestly I almost think it's child abuse to tell your kid there's a Santa Claus and a Tooth Fairy and Jesus and all this and for them only to be disappointed later when they realize the truth but I don't think it rises to the level of child abuse in the law I just think it's not the right way to do it but I do think that the state society and the community should stay out of it and let the parents make the decision yeah so Nima yeah any follow ups short ones what does that mean you don't own a printer you don't own a printer so you don't have the show clock so I have to tell you you have about a minute and ten seconds before I break yeah well I don't have a question that I could have Stefan answer so succinctly is Stefan or Stefan it's Stefan are you coming back after the break or are we bidding you a deal yes you are Stefan do you use Linux what kind of computers do you use I'm a Mac guy for the last three or four years but I'm open to experimentation now are you a Mac guy do you define yourself that way I just say I use PC's I don't really feel like it's the way people feel I just feel like yeah well when you have a wife and a child you maintenance for the whole household you want one thing right so I've got to maintain everyone's OS for the whole household so OS is easier for me right now Mac OS yep absolutely we'll be back on the Freedom Fiends after the break you're listening to Freedom Fiends with Nima V and Michael Dean tasing you with Liberty since 2011 you want to contribute to Liberty but short on cash you can help the Freedom Fiends without even spending a post 1964 dime download U-Torrent and start seeding Fiends episodes and DVDs to help keep us drone proof there's a Torrent Club link at the top of FreedomFiends.com there you'll find our Torrent RSS feed and instructions to grab past episodes and automatically download new ones even while you're away from the computer also get special episodes of the Fiends and Anarchy Gumbo days or even weeks before regular podcast subscribers who aren't Torrenting leave your computer on seeding the Torrents while you're at work or asleep the more people seeding the Fiends the more drone proof will be when the boot comes down Creamy Radio Audio Want caviar sound on a cat food budget? Creamy Radio Audio by the Freedom Fiends has great free tips so you can sound like a pro without spending like one the most powerful form of human communication is one person speaking to another but if people have to suffer through your sound they'll change the channel and miss your message with articles on microphones preamps, recorders mastering, recording remotely over the internet, doing a podcast even getting a show on actual radio the Freedom Fiends show you what they use and where to get it whether you're a talk show host, voiceover artist podcaster, evangelist or just want to record your loved ones for the ages at Creamy Radio Audio the Freedom Fiends will help you make the most of your sound Creamy Radio Audio will help you speak to the world with sound that will make people want to keep listening check out CreamyRadioAudio.com that's CreamyRadioAudio.com It's the Freedom Fiends Thank you for sticking with us this is the last segment of our live Sunday show I'm Neema Vadadi here with Michael W. Dean and Stefan Kinsella and usually we like to do at least some redemption in the last act if not a recap but I think we're going to go with you know it was supposed to be sort of a libertarian machismo flash the whole episode we never really got to why people shouldn't be scared of that what's so great about libertarianism there's those memes on Facebook that said run for your lives libertarians want to take over and leave you alone sort of a tongue in cheek kind of a thing why should people Chris Christie said it's dangerous and he's really in fear of this strain of libertarianism in what he called both parties which I can't really see that why shouldn't people be afraid of these libertarian concepts well I recently read Chris Christie's you know comments about this and he he seemed to say that the problem is consistency right people that are too consistent or they have principles right or he conflates being pragmatic like we're all in favor of results I mean look even if you're pragmatic or common sense oriented as some people say libertarian idea is the only one that makes sense from that perspective right we believe in almost every person you talk to will admit that they believe in freedom and justice and fairness and consistency and logic and truth and if you admit these things then the only result is that you say that listen we all have to find a way to live together libertarian answer is that the way to live together is we respect each other's property rights you have your body I have my body let's leave each other alone and if I find something and transform it then I have the right to it and you can't take it from me so we're all against theft we're all against rape and robbery and murder and if you just basically follow these simple concepts it's almost like the kindergarten books right everything I learned I learned in kindergarten so I don't really see that the libertarian idea is that radical it's just basically consistent application of what common sense morals imply for almost every person in the world do you think people will get it I mean are you an optimist are you at least a long-term optimist because it is consistent and eventually enough people will figure it out well I'm not like a libertarian because I believe that in 10 years or 15 years that we're all going to have utopia right if that was my viewpoint I would give up because I don't think in 10 to 15 years my tax rate will be 17% lower than it is now but I do believe that it's worth fighting the fight it's worth fighting the truth it's worth fighting for freedom and I do believe that we pose an impediment to the state and the encroachment of the state and I do believe that eventually you know the logic of the state will implode I do think that the logic of freedom will outrun the state I mean look you have you have freedom you have people that are living their lives now without any ideological guidance and they are just outstepping the state every step of the way so the state is a slow lumbering beast and I do believe that you know we can outperform it the free market outperforms it freedom outperforms control so I'm hopeful in that sense but I do think that people that are living in today you know you have to say can I live my life without 100% freedom and there's a way to do that so you have to be realistic and you have to be optimistic at the same time Excellent and for people who want to hear more Steffen Kinsella where do they go SteffenKinsella.com S-T-E-P-H-A-N Kinsella-K-I-N-S-E-L-L-A.com Excellent man it's been good having you thanks for partying with the freedom fiends I enjoyed it doing some heavy drank say worms man worms worms worms alright freedom fiends it's been a good one go ahead and catch us mid week for our off radio podcast when we can really let everything out and let it all fly and again join us next weekend same fiend time same fiend stations good night and good luck worms thank you for listening to freedom fiends with Neema V and Michael Dean