Stefan Molyneux: "We Who Reason Demand Freedom"

Stefan Molyneux celebrates his philosophy talk show, Freedomain Radio, for passing 100 million views on YouTube, and delivers a call to arms for freedom of expression.



Partial transcript:





STEFAN MOLYNEUX: Do you ever get those moments, where you go from juggling each little grain of sand to zooming out to see the whole beach, the whole world?



Yeah, I'm going to turn 50 this year, which is great – as a cancer survivor, there's no such thing as a bad birthday – but also (and this kind of crept up on me) my philosophy show Freedomain Radio just passed 100 million views on YouTube...



Here I stand, currently delivering around 10 million philosophy injections to a hungry world every single month.



I honestly believe that never before in the history of human thought has the hidden appetite for reason and evidence been so well-served and satisfied as what we are doing here. Today. Together.



When I started ten years ago, I thought we had more time. I used to talk about multi-generational change, but the sand in that hourglass has run out.



-- There has been a massive escalation of government debt and power.



-- Endless migrations of countless people.



-- The crashing and washing of often-hostile tribes of humanity back and forth across borders historically considered to be the last defense against a dangerous world.



-- The rise of shockingly necessary nationalism.



-- The hysteria and the cry-bully tactics of the hard left combined with the leapfrogging of the New Right over the endless bipartisan betrayals of the Old Right.



-- Demographic decay in Europe.



-- The staggeringly self-destructive failures of Western leadership.



-- Captive and silenced populations.



All these and more bring the need for philosophy, for data, facts, reason, arguments and evidence to its highest point in human history. Because at the end of a series of escalating falsehoods, lies either the end of all we cherish and hold dear, or a new future free from manipulative fantasies.



The ascendancy and prejudice of totalitarianism and bullying, hypersensitivity, the fascism of mere feelings must be challenged and opposed and ended. The whim-worshipping religion of superstitious emotions -- always the enemy of rational and empirical philosophy must be brought to heel behind the twin giants of reason and evidence.



Okay, emotions have their necessary place in our personal lives but they can not be allowed to dominate public discourse about facts, policies, cultural compatibilities, and the role of state power.



We must tear aside the acidic fogs of satisfy the moment sentimentality and reorient ourselves like lost ghosts finding a sudden compass with simple facts, objective principles, and basic reality.



The fantasy that our societal resources are infinite and we can pretend to bribe and bully our way out of every conceivable social difficulty must be confronted and cast down.



All human desires are infinite, but all human resources are very, very finite. And we have no right to waste the accumulated capital of prior generations in mad windmill-tilting quests of endless social engineering.



What we need, what we demand, and what we shall achieve together is to be free. Free of coersion, free of control, free of manipulation, free of the self-serving lies of those in charge.



(Not free of consequences, merely of coersion.)



We who reason demand freedom, which our forefathers created, our fathers in general squandered, and which we wish to secure again today. Once and for all.



***



In the past, gatekeepers constantly blocked honest and empirical conversations in society. You know, the publishers, the academics, the media as a whole. They determined what may be said and what must be buried. Now that is all in the past.



Now, we can finally reason directly with each other. We can, at last, unravel the thorny lies of our manufactured histories.



There are now no obfuscating barriers to our gathering strength. Our strength is reason and language and courage and clarity. The simple compass of bare facts and clear arguments is all that can guide us to a free future.



I do ask for your help, I'm only one man. I'm only one voice, one mind. I need your support, I need your attention, I need you to share what I do -- Not because I am right, but because I raise questions. It doesn't matter whether you agree with me, in fact I would prefer that you never think of it in those terms, it matters that you think, and what I do helps people to think.



Clear thinking is the only way out of this ghastly and darkening swamp, and I do deliver that.



There is a phrase called: The Red Pill.



It comes from the movie The Matrix, it is very similar to Plato's Allegory of the Cave, or awakening from manipulative lies, to see clear eyed and frozen hearted the true world that was stolen from you by those who prefer you to die in their nightmares than to live in our common reality.



The world and the powers who run it prefer you to be isolated in lies, rather than to connect in reality. For reality is the only place we can truly meet each other. All else is isolating manipulation.



Freedomain Radio is a red pill. Perhaps the greatest red pill. A red pill so large that it seems like Mars crashing into and liberating the dungeons of the modern populations. Mars, of course, is the god of war. And I do invite you to combat as all good souls must do, in these dangerous times.



But there is still time to win with language and courage and committment and clarity. If we do not fight, if we do not commit, than that time will pass, and other, less verbose warriors will take our places.



To avoid this, philosophy needs your support. You can support me at Free Domain Radio, you can like, subscribe and share what I do.



You can join me on this hail-struck mountaintop and ignite the sky with facts and passion, but for Gods' sake, do something.



Evil triumphs through inertia, deferral and appeasement, it is like a black tide that can override anything and everything -- except a willed barrier. Act with courage, and the glory ouf your courage will leap like electricity from pole to pole to soul. Will you be condemned? Will you be hated? Will you be lied about and scorned? I bloody well hope so. Better to be hated by evil in the present, than condemned by the last vestige of virture in a dying future.



It has been an amazing decade, and we as a community have done great, great good in the world.



It all comes down to the next few years, the greatest fork in the road in history, we can rise to heights unimaginable, or we can descend to depths from which there may be no recoery. There is no inevitability in human history if you are willing to make a choice. Blind determinism results from the avoidance of choice, it is not wound into the nature of matter and energy.



So, make a choice. Speak your mind. Live passionately, for rationality and leave your mark on the world. Do not fail the future, as those in the past did not fail you.



Let the next hero you see not be on the screen, or in a book, but in the mirror. 200 million views and downloads. 200 million points of blazing light in a formerly darkened sky. Do you think that is impressive? I certainly do. But it is nothing compared to what can be achieved if you help me. Help me and you will see.

Molyneux's thoughts on raising children using the principle of non-aggression and his efforts to debunk untruths about many popular issues of the day are particularly notable.