December 17, 2025 • 28 mins
Today we're dismantling 5 of the most dangerous liberal lies almost every conservative – probably including yourself – believes. From democracy to our idea of liberty to equality itself, we'll destroy the most sacred dogmas of America's bipartisan liberal religion.
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Episode Transcript
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SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
The degree to which liberal radicalism has colonized
Americans' minds, includingconservatives' minds, is
shocking.
The very ideas held up as thecore principles of conservatism
and the foundation of thiscountry.
From democracy to equality toseparation of church and state
(00:23):
are the very ideas responsiblefor the collapse of our
civilization.
Today, we're going to dismantlefive of these dangerous liberal
lies that almost everyconservative, probably including
yourself, believes.
So make sure you stick around tothe very end, because each lie
(00:44):
we're debunking getsexponentially more taboo and
more dangerous until we reachlie number one, which may make
you rethink your entirepolitical worldview.
You're listening to theconservative rebel.
(01:16):
Almost everyone agrees thatliberty is a sacred American
dogma, which is why it's soalarming that almost everyone,
including conservatives, has aradical liberal view of liberty
that inevitably leads to moralchaos and societal collapse.
Most people think liberty meansI get to do whatever I want,
(01:40):
whenever I want, for howeverlong as I want, and no one can
stop me unless I start punchingpeople.
We've all seen tons of people,even those who are appalled at
the wickedness in our culture,throw up their hands in the air
and say, Well, this is America.
They should have the freedom todo that.
They should have the freedom todo drugs and parade their
(02:04):
depravity in front of children,and pretend they're married as
two men and kill their own babyin the womb.
They should have the freedom totransform my culture and my
country, the country my childrenwill have to grow up in, into a
godless cesspool of unparalleledmoral degeneracy.
(02:24):
But that isn't freedom, and thatisn't liberty.
In fact, that's the opposite ofliberty.
Doing whatever you want isn'ttrue freedom, it's the tyranny
of license.
License is the absence ofrestraint.
License is the emancipation ofmankind from all his moral
(02:46):
obligations and from allaccountability to anyone other
than himself.
License means you get to live inyour own little bubble of
egomania and self-worship,pursuing whatever fleeting
animal pleasure or perversedesire happens to be dangled in
front of you like a carrot infront of a donkey.
(03:09):
But liberty, as the greatBritish statesman Lord Acton
said, is not the power of doingwhat we like, but the right to
do what we ought.
Liberty can't exist without someform of restraint.
It's not a value-neutralcondition.
It has to be ordered toward thegood.
(03:31):
It is not an end, it is a meansto an end.
And just as the government has amoral obligation to protect the
lives and property rights of itscitizens in order for a free
society to exist, it also has anobligation to defend religion
and morality.
(03:51):
It has to order our valuelessanarchic license toward the
good.
As the great conservative EdmundBurke argued in his Reflections
on the Revolution in France,liberty must be limited in order
to be possessed.
It's only when our license islimited that it can become true
(04:13):
liberty.
Think of driving.
If there were no traffic laws,no speed limits, no lanes, no
right of way, what do you thinkwould happen?
Our entire road system woulddevolve into chaos.
Tens of thousands of lives wouldbe lost.
Crashes would be constant,resulting in massive pile-ups,
(04:36):
and you would be playing Russianroulette with your life and the
lives of your family every timeyou drove anywhere.
The liberty of having a driver'slicense would be gone.
Removing the limits on yourlicense didn't give you more
liberty.
It destroyed the liberty youhad.
(04:57):
And by the way, if you want tohear a deeper dive on the
difference between liberty andlicense, I did a whole episode
on that topic, if you want to gocheck that out.
Lie number four.
(05:20):
The government school systempropagandized generations of
Christian pupils into thinkingthat, under the Constitution,
church and state must beseparated and the government
must be secular.
And today, most Christiansaccept this without question.
But if the Founding Fatherssupported separation of church
(05:41):
and state, someone must haveforgotten to tell the Founding
Fathers.
Because it's an incontestablehistorical fact that our country
was not founded with a seculargovernment, with separation of
church and state as its coreprinciple.
Your teacher lied to you.
The United States was founded asa federation of openly and
(06:04):
explicitly Christiangovernments, with established
state churches funded bytaxpayers, with religious
qualifications for anyone whowanted to hold public office,
with government enforcement ofChristian morality, and even
anti-blasphemy laws.
Now, what does having anestablished state church mean?
(06:27):
Well, that meant that in nine ofthe thirteen states, a specific
Christian denomination was theofficial denomination of that
state.
That meant it was at leastpartially subsidized by taxes
from the citizens of that state,and that office holders were
required to have churchmembership in that denomination.
(06:50):
In some states that establishedchurch was something more
traditionalist and high churchlike Anglicanism, in others it
was something likeCongregationalism.
But even the least strictstates, like Pennsylvania, still
required, at bare minimum,belief in God and the Bible's
authority.
(07:10):
And yet not one soul in thefederal government breathed a
word of protest about any ofthis.
No one was marching in thestreets denouncing this as an
unconstitutional violation ofthe First Amendment.
No one took any of these statesto the Supreme Court, because it
wasn't a violation of theConstitution.
(07:33):
All the First Amendment saysregarding religion is that
Congress shall make no lawrespecting an establishment of
religion.
In other words, Congress can'tjust decide that Anglicanism or
Catholicism or Presbyterianismis the official church of
(07:54):
America and start forcing you totithe to it.
The federal government has tolet the states have their own
state churches and leave thedecision of which Christian
denomination to join to yourconscience or to the discretion
of the state governments.
So by the left's own standards,every state in the early
(08:18):
republic was a Christiannationalist theocracy.
That means that by the left'sstandards, Christian nationalism
and theocracy are precisely whatthe founding fathers intended.
So the next time a leftistthrows separation of church and
state at you and claims you'reviolating the First Amendment,
(08:42):
remember who actually foundedthis country.
If you're interested inexploring this topic further,
check out my recent podcast onChristian nationalism.
And real quick, if you'relearning something, please
follow the show on your podcastapp and smash that download
button.
It helps great content like thisreach more people.
(09:03):
Now let's get back into it.
Lie number three.
(09:25):
As if that's some self-evident,inarguable fact.
But it's not.
In fact, it's such a badargument that it refutes itself.
Anyone who says, you can't forceyour morality on me, is a
hypocrite.
Just by saying that, he'sforcing his moral belief that
(09:48):
it's wrong to force moralbeliefs on others on you.
He doesn't actually think youcan't impose morality on other
people, he just thinks he shouldbe the only one in the world
who's allowed to do it, andpeople who agree with him should
be the only people who areallowed to do it.
So that falls apart prettyquickly.
(10:09):
But we shouldn't just imposeChristian morality in our
personal lives, we should do itwith the force of law.
That might sound shocking andradical, but almost every single
person agrees with this, theyagree that we should impose
morality with the force of law,whether they realize it or not.
If you think any laws at allshould exist, you agree with me
(10:34):
because all laws force moralityon people who disagree with that
code of morality.
Why is murder illegal?
Think about that for a second.
What gives us the right to notonly indefinitely imprison but
actually kill people who refuseto abide by our morality of thou
(10:58):
shalt not murder?
We all know the answer to thatquestion.
Murder is illegal because it ismorally wrong.
And if murderers disagree withthat, if their values don't
align with ours, guess what?
We still get to force ourmorality on them and ruin their
lives forever if they don'tcooperate with it.
(11:20):
And it's not just laws againstmurder that are like that.
Laws against theft, assault,drug trafficking, they all force
moral beliefs on people whovehemently and violently
disagree with those moralbeliefs.
In short, either we can andshould force morality on others,
or we should abolish all lawswithout exception.
(11:45):
Now, you could argue, banningmurder is justified, but
banning, say, gay marriage orsome non-violent immorality
isn't okay because murder isviolent and gay marriage is not
violent.
But what reason do we have todraw the line at violence?
Because enforcing moralitybeyond that is controversial?
(12:07):
Because people will call you abigot for it because it makes
your tummy hurt?
The idea that we can only outlawone type of immorality and not
another is ultimately arbitrary.
The only reason violence couldever justify outlawing something
is because violence is morallywrong.
(12:28):
Either legislating morality isinherently wrong or it isn't.
And if it is inherently wrong,then banning violent immorality
is also inherently wrong.
And once again, you've arrivedat the conclusions of left-wing
anarchism.
Now you could say that peoplehave a right to live the way
(12:50):
they want if it weren't for theinconvenient fact that that
right is nowhere found in theConstitution or any of our laws.
Which means that leftists, assecularists, must appeal to a
universally binding,all-powerful authority higher
than any government, superior toany constitution, that vested
(13:13):
them with specific, objective,discernible rights, in other
words, God.
They have to argue that God gavethem the inalienable moral right
to live a life of moraldegeneracy God explicitly
condemns.
In short, all the arguments fallapart.
(13:35):
It's either fine to enforcecontroversial moral beliefs on
other people against their will,or we should abolish all laws
and all government and run thewhole country like an inner city
hellhole.
Those are the only logicaloptions.
Moral beliefs will belegislated.
The right just has to decidewhether it will be our moral
(13:58):
code or the left's moral code.
Lie number two.
Democracy is the best form ofgovernment.
To fully debunk the lie ofdemocracy, we need to begin by
clearing a few things up,starting with the nature of
government.
A government or a state is anorganization with a monopoly on
(14:21):
the use of force over itsterritory.
All non-state organizations,private businesses, private
charities, etc., have toconvince you to voluntarily do
what they want, to buy theirproducts, to donate to them, to
cooperate with them.
The state just says, doeverything we tell you to do, or
(14:45):
we'll send people with guns toyour door to throw you in a cage
or kill you.
If you think I'm exaggerating,try not paying your taxes.
Sooner or later, the people withguns will come after you.
That's just the nature ofgovernment, but unfortunately
it's inevitable.
If one state gives up itsmonopoly on force, criminal
(15:09):
gangs or warlords will gladlytake that monopoly on force
within the territory that theoriginal state decides to stop
enforcing its laws.
So democracy can't be the bestform of government because there
is no best form of government.
They're all based on violence,they're all fundamentally
(15:30):
coercive, they're all evilproducts of man's fallen nature,
even if they are all inevitablefacts of life.
So the state doesn't by natureprotect our rights or protect
the good, but it can berestrained and ordered toward
those ends.
You can chain down theLeviathan, but you can't kill
(15:53):
it.
For this reason, democracy, likeany form of government, is evil
and unjust, but good insofar asit chains down the monster and
orders its power towards thegood.
And now that we understand thevery limited sense in which any
(16:13):
form of government can be good,let's attack democracy
specifically.
The case against democracy isthreefold.
It's bad in theory, worse inpractice, and inferior to
alternative systems.
Let's start with the theory.
According to the cartoon versionof politics you were taught in
school, democracy is rule of thepeople, by the people, for the
(16:37):
people.
But there's one small problem.
The word people is neverdefined.
It's nothing more than a uselessabstraction that's used because
it sounds nobler than themajority or the mob, which is
the real truth of the situation.
Democracy, pure and simple, isthe idea that the majority of
(16:59):
people deserve to get whateverthey want, whenever they want
it, and to hell with anyone whodisagrees with them.
Dissidents will be flattened bythe bulldozer of government
force.
Their rights and liberties areforfeit.
If the mob wants it, the mobgets it.
This is a fundamentally lawlessand nihilistic system of might
(17:22):
makes right.
Democracy can be refuted withfour simple words.
Sometimes people are wrong.
I'll repeat that because it'simportant to remember.
Sometimes people are wrong.
In fact, 90% of people inGermany were wrong in 1934, when
(17:46):
they democratically voted togive Adolf Hitler absolute
power.
So unless you actually believethat the government has a moral
obligation to commit moral evilsin any case when the majority of
voters demand it, unless youthink Hitler's regime was
legitimate, you're forced toadmit that democracy is
(18:09):
fundamentally flawed and shouldbe strictly limited.
Because the idea that any groupof people ever have a moral duty
to do something morally wrong iscontradictory, it makes zero
sense at all, but that's theidea that is central to
democracy.
Moving on to our second point,democracy is even worse in
(18:31):
practice.
The age of democracy hasn't beenan age of liberty and
enlightenment, sorry.
It has produced the largest,most centralized, and most
intrusive states in history,with tyrannical powers that the
most ambitious kings couldn'teven have imagined.
(18:52):
The most obvious example istaxes.
Americans have gone from paying1% of our income in random, dumb
taxes under King George, toliterally spending half our
adult lives working as taxslaves.
That's true, and it's onlygetting worse.
But we could spend all day onexamples like this.
(19:15):
The point is that democraticregimes tax more, regulate more,
and interfere more in the dailylives of their people than any
medieval monarchy ever did.
These modern democratic regimeswe live in have unprecedented
power, stemming from masssurveillance, digital
(19:36):
censorship, tyrannicalintelligence agencies,
centralized banks, fiatcurrencies, modern militaries,
and I could go on and on.
Our current government inAmerica, the alleged land of the
free, is by all accounts themost powerful state in the
history of the world.
(19:56):
It exceeds the Roman and BritishEmpire.
In power and authority.
And once you add to thisequation, once you add to the
results of democracy, theunprecedented moral degeneracy
that dominates modern democraticstates, a very clear picture
(20:16):
emerges.
By every metric, moderncentralized democracy has been
far worse for liberty than thevillainized European monarchies
were.
Alternative systems likeconstitutional monarchies,
aristocracies, and even justrestricted and decentralized
popular governments like ourcountry, America, originally
(20:40):
was, just 6% of people couldvote in the first election, in
case you didn't know that.
Those alternatives are farsuperior to democracy, and it's
not even close.
Though imperfect, they keepgovernment far more limited, far
more moral, and far more boundby religion, tradition, and all
(21:02):
those types of things.
Ironically, they produce betteroutcomes for the majority of
people than democracy'sunlimited majority rule ever
could.
And if you want to learn moreabout this, see episodes 7 and
20 of this podcast, where wedive deeper into voting rights
and the fatal flaws ofdemocracy.
(21:25):
Lie number one.
The assumption of equality iswhat underlies all the other
lies we discussed.
The idea that all lifestyles,all beliefs, all religions
(21:47):
should be treated equally, isthe basis of the first three
lies we debunked.
The idea that everyone shouldhave equal privileges, equal
authority, and equal say in howthe country is run, is the basis
of democracy, even if it doesn'tproduce that result in practice.
And equality isn't just thefoundation of those four lies,
(22:09):
it's the foundation of theliberal ideology that destroyed
the West.
To most, questioning it is alittle short of political
heresy.
But this show isn't called theConservative Rebel for Nothing.
We like to question orthodoxieson this show, so let's get into
it.
Let's start by definingequality.
(22:31):
The word equal means the same.
1 plus 1 equals 2 because 1 plus1 is the same quantity as 2.
So to determine whether everyoneis equal, we need to ask
ourselves a very simplequestion.
Is everyone the same?
(22:51):
The answer is obvious.
Not only is everyone not thesame, everyone is wildly
different in almost everyconceivable respect.
We're not equal in wisdom, invirtue, in intelligence, in
strength, in will, in worldview,in circumstances, in interests,
(23:13):
in personality, or in nearly anyother respect.
The only way in which humanbeings are equal is in terms of
moral worth.
We were all created asimage-bearers of God, and when
we die, we will all faceimpartial judgment as individual
people for the things we did asindividuals in this life.
(23:36):
It's only in that very specificmoral sense that we're all
equal, or the same.
In every other respect, thedifferences between people is
vast.
As Edmund Burke said in hisReflections on the Revolution in
France, seek and recognize thathappiness that is to be found by
(23:58):
virtue in all conditions, inwhich consists the true moral
equality of mankind, and not inthat monstrous fiction, which by
inspiring false ideas and vainexpectations serves only to
aggravate and embitter that realinequality, which it never can
(24:20):
remove.
As the great conservative Josephde Maestri said along that note,
inequality is the law of nature.
This is the classicalconservative position.
Inequality is just a reality,whether we're comfortable with
it or not.
And a sane society, instead ofignoring realities that might
(24:42):
hurt some people's feelings,will work in the context of
reality because disaster happenswhen you work in rebellion
against reality.
A sane society identifies thedifferences that do exist
between individuals and actsaccordingly.
As Alexander Hamilton said, itis vain to expect that men will
(25:06):
be equal in their talents, theirvirtues, or their possessions.
Political systems must recognizethe natural distinctions among
men if order is to prevail.
Just because you have the samemoral worth as someone else does
not mean you are entitled to thesame privileges and authority as
(25:29):
everyone else.
Just because two siblings with avast age gap between them are
morally equal as human beings,does not mean that those two
siblings should be given equalprivileges.
The older child's parents willgive him more independence,
they'll let him take walks byhimself, stay up later, watch
(25:50):
movies his younger siblingcan't, and things like that.
Is this an injustice thatscreams to high heaven for
vengeance?
Of course not.
Though the siblings are morallyequal, they are distinct in a
very important way, namely ageand maturity.
The parents, the authorityfigures, recognize that
(26:11):
distinction and act on it bydiscriminating, or in other
words, differentiating, betweentheir two children.
Burke said, quote, Allgovernment, indeed every human
institution, must be foundedupon discernment of differences.
To level men to the same planeis to destroy distinction,
(26:35):
honor, and the very moral fabricof society.
Our founders knew this, which iswhy they only let the most
mature, competent, virtuous,self-sufficient six percent of
the population, aged 21 orabove, the so-called natural
aristocracy of talent andvirtue, to have the privilege of
(26:57):
voting.
They didn't just let anyone whohappened to be above the age of
18 vote like we do, withcatastrophic results today.
All conservatives recognize thatthe modern leftist idea of
state-enforced equality, orcultural and economic communism,
is dangerous and totalitarian.
(27:19):
You'll often hear conservativessay that we want equality, not
equity.
But as the great conservativeswho came before us knew,
equality isn't the answer.
The way to fight communism isn'twith the liberalism that created
it.
The solution to 1984 isn't 1789.
(27:42):
You can't defend America bypromoting the ideology that led
to its downfall.
You can't defend the West bydefending the ideas that
destroyed it.
Which is why every conservativeshould reject the lie of
equality, along with all theother lies we went through
(28:03):
today.
Thanks for listening to today'sepisode of The Conservative
Rebel.
If you enjoyed it, if youlearned something, please hit
that follow button, hit thatdownload button, and share it
with anyone else you think mightlike it.
I'll see you next time.
The degree to which liberal radicalism has colonized
Americans' minds, includingconservatives' minds, is
shocking.
The very ideas held up as thecore principles of conservatism
and the foundation of thiscountry.
From democracy to equality toseparation of church and state
(00:23):
are the very ideas responsiblefor the collapse of our
civilization.
Today, we're going to dismantlefive of these dangerous liberal
lies that almost everyconservative, probably including
yourself, believes.
So make sure you stick around tothe very end, because each lie
(00:44):
we're debunking getsexponentially more taboo and
more dangerous until we reachlie number one, which may make
you rethink your entirepolitical worldview.
You're listening to theconservative rebel.
(01:16):
Almost everyone agrees thatliberty is a sacred American
dogma, which is why it's soalarming that almost everyone,
including conservatives, has aradical liberal view of liberty
that inevitably leads to moralchaos and societal collapse.
Most people think liberty meansI get to do whatever I want,
(01:40):
whenever I want, for howeverlong as I want, and no one can
stop me unless I start punchingpeople.
We've all seen tons of people,even those who are appalled at
the wickedness in our culture,throw up their hands in the air
and say, Well, this is America.
They should have the freedom todo that.
They should have the freedom todo drugs and parade their
(02:04):
depravity in front of children,and pretend they're married as
two men and kill their own babyin the womb.
They should have the freedom totransform my culture and my
country, the country my childrenwill have to grow up in, into a
godless cesspool of unparalleledmoral degeneracy.
(02:24):
But that isn't freedom, and thatisn't liberty.
In fact, that's the opposite ofliberty.
Doing whatever you want isn'ttrue freedom, it's the tyranny
of license.
License is the absence ofrestraint.
License is the emancipation ofmankind from all his moral
(02:46):
obligations and from allaccountability to anyone other
than himself.
License means you get to live inyour own little bubble of
egomania and self-worship,pursuing whatever fleeting
animal pleasure or perversedesire happens to be dangled in
front of you like a carrot infront of a donkey.
(03:09):
But liberty, as the greatBritish statesman Lord Acton
said, is not the power of doingwhat we like, but the right to
do what we ought.
Liberty can't exist without someform of restraint.
It's not a value-neutralcondition.
It has to be ordered toward thegood.
(03:31):
It is not an end, it is a meansto an end.
And just as the government has amoral obligation to protect the
lives and property rights of itscitizens in order for a free
society to exist, it also has anobligation to defend religion
and morality.
(03:51):
It has to order our valuelessanarchic license toward the
good.
As the great conservative EdmundBurke argued in his Reflections
on the Revolution in France,liberty must be limited in order
to be possessed.
It's only when our license islimited that it can become true
(04:13):
liberty.
Think of driving.
If there were no traffic laws,no speed limits, no lanes, no
right of way, what do you thinkwould happen?
Our entire road system woulddevolve into chaos.
Tens of thousands of lives wouldbe lost.
Crashes would be constant,resulting in massive pile-ups,
(04:36):
and you would be playing Russianroulette with your life and the
lives of your family every timeyou drove anywhere.
The liberty of having a driver'slicense would be gone.
Removing the limits on yourlicense didn't give you more
liberty.
It destroyed the liberty youhad.
(04:57):
And by the way, if you want tohear a deeper dive on the
difference between liberty andlicense, I did a whole episode
on that topic, if you want to gocheck that out.
Lie number four.
(05:20):
The government school systempropagandized generations of
Christian pupils into thinkingthat, under the Constitution,
church and state must beseparated and the government
must be secular.
And today, most Christiansaccept this without question.
But if the Founding Fatherssupported separation of church
(05:41):
and state, someone must haveforgotten to tell the Founding
Fathers.
Because it's an incontestablehistorical fact that our country
was not founded with a seculargovernment, with separation of
church and state as its coreprinciple.
Your teacher lied to you.
The United States was founded asa federation of openly and
(06:04):
explicitly Christiangovernments, with established
state churches funded bytaxpayers, with religious
qualifications for anyone whowanted to hold public office,
with government enforcement ofChristian morality, and even
anti-blasphemy laws.
Now, what does having anestablished state church mean?
(06:27):
Well, that meant that in nine ofthe thirteen states, a specific
Christian denomination was theofficial denomination of that
state.
That meant it was at leastpartially subsidized by taxes
from the citizens of that state,and that office holders were
required to have churchmembership in that denomination.
(06:50):
In some states that establishedchurch was something more
traditionalist and high churchlike Anglicanism, in others it
was something likeCongregationalism.
But even the least strictstates, like Pennsylvania, still
required, at bare minimum,belief in God and the Bible's
authority.
(07:10):
And yet not one soul in thefederal government breathed a
word of protest about any ofthis.
No one was marching in thestreets denouncing this as an
unconstitutional violation ofthe First Amendment.
No one took any of these statesto the Supreme Court, because it
wasn't a violation of theConstitution.
(07:33):
All the First Amendment saysregarding religion is that
Congress shall make no lawrespecting an establishment of
religion.
In other words, Congress can'tjust decide that Anglicanism or
Catholicism or Presbyterianismis the official church of
(07:54):
America and start forcing you totithe to it.
The federal government has tolet the states have their own
state churches and leave thedecision of which Christian
denomination to join to yourconscience or to the discretion
of the state governments.
So by the left's own standards,every state in the early
(08:18):
republic was a Christiannationalist theocracy.
That means that by the left'sstandards, Christian nationalism
and theocracy are precisely whatthe founding fathers intended.
So the next time a leftistthrows separation of church and
state at you and claims you'reviolating the First Amendment,
(08:42):
remember who actually foundedthis country.
If you're interested inexploring this topic further,
check out my recent podcast onChristian nationalism.
And real quick, if you'relearning something, please
follow the show on your podcastapp and smash that download
button.
It helps great content like thisreach more people.
(09:03):
Now let's get back into it.
Lie number three.
(09:25):
As if that's some self-evident,inarguable fact.
But it's not.
In fact, it's such a badargument that it refutes itself.
Anyone who says, you can't forceyour morality on me, is a
hypocrite.
Just by saying that, he'sforcing his moral belief that
(09:48):
it's wrong to force moralbeliefs on others on you.
He doesn't actually think youcan't impose morality on other
people, he just thinks he shouldbe the only one in the world
who's allowed to do it, andpeople who agree with him should
be the only people who areallowed to do it.
So that falls apart prettyquickly.
(10:09):
But we shouldn't just imposeChristian morality in our
personal lives, we should do itwith the force of law.
That might sound shocking andradical, but almost every single
person agrees with this, theyagree that we should impose
morality with the force of law,whether they realize it or not.
If you think any laws at allshould exist, you agree with me
(10:34):
because all laws force moralityon people who disagree with that
code of morality.
Why is murder illegal?
Think about that for a second.
What gives us the right to notonly indefinitely imprison but
actually kill people who refuseto abide by our morality of thou
(10:58):
shalt not murder?
We all know the answer to thatquestion.
Murder is illegal because it ismorally wrong.
And if murderers disagree withthat, if their values don't
align with ours, guess what?
We still get to force ourmorality on them and ruin their
lives forever if they don'tcooperate with it.
(11:20):
And it's not just laws againstmurder that are like that.
Laws against theft, assault,drug trafficking, they all force
moral beliefs on people whovehemently and violently
disagree with those moralbeliefs.
In short, either we can andshould force morality on others,
or we should abolish all lawswithout exception.
(11:45):
Now, you could argue, banningmurder is justified, but
banning, say, gay marriage orsome non-violent immorality
isn't okay because murder isviolent and gay marriage is not
violent.
But what reason do we have todraw the line at violence?
Because enforcing moralitybeyond that is controversial?
(12:07):
Because people will call you abigot for it because it makes
your tummy hurt?
The idea that we can only outlawone type of immorality and not
another is ultimately arbitrary.
The only reason violence couldever justify outlawing something
is because violence is morallywrong.
(12:28):
Either legislating morality isinherently wrong or it isn't.
And if it is inherently wrong,then banning violent immorality
is also inherently wrong.
And once again, you've arrivedat the conclusions of left-wing
anarchism.
Now you could say that peoplehave a right to live the way
(12:50):
they want if it weren't for theinconvenient fact that that
right is nowhere found in theConstitution or any of our laws.
Which means that leftists, assecularists, must appeal to a
universally binding,all-powerful authority higher
than any government, superior toany constitution, that vested
(13:13):
them with specific, objective,discernible rights, in other
words, God.
They have to argue that God gavethem the inalienable moral right
to live a life of moraldegeneracy God explicitly
condemns.
In short, all the arguments fallapart.
(13:35):
It's either fine to enforcecontroversial moral beliefs on
other people against their will,or we should abolish all laws
and all government and run thewhole country like an inner city
hellhole.
Those are the only logicaloptions.
Moral beliefs will belegislated.
The right just has to decidewhether it will be our moral
(13:58):
code or the left's moral code.
Lie number two.
Democracy is the best form ofgovernment.
To fully debunk the lie ofdemocracy, we need to begin by
clearing a few things up,starting with the nature of
government.
A government or a state is anorganization with a monopoly on
(14:21):
the use of force over itsterritory.
All non-state organizations,private businesses, private
charities, etc., have toconvince you to voluntarily do
what they want, to buy theirproducts, to donate to them, to
cooperate with them.
The state just says, doeverything we tell you to do, or
(14:45):
we'll send people with guns toyour door to throw you in a cage
or kill you.
If you think I'm exaggerating,try not paying your taxes.
Sooner or later, the people withguns will come after you.
That's just the nature ofgovernment, but unfortunately
it's inevitable.
If one state gives up itsmonopoly on force, criminal
(15:09):
gangs or warlords will gladlytake that monopoly on force
within the territory that theoriginal state decides to stop
enforcing its laws.
So democracy can't be the bestform of government because there
is no best form of government.
They're all based on violence,they're all fundamentally
(15:30):
coercive, they're all evilproducts of man's fallen nature,
even if they are all inevitablefacts of life.
So the state doesn't by natureprotect our rights or protect
the good, but it can berestrained and ordered toward
those ends.
You can chain down theLeviathan, but you can't kill
(15:53):
it.
For this reason, democracy, likeany form of government, is evil
and unjust, but good insofar asit chains down the monster and
orders its power towards thegood.
And now that we understand thevery limited sense in which any
(16:13):
form of government can be good,let's attack democracy
specifically.
The case against democracy isthreefold.
It's bad in theory, worse inpractice, and inferior to
alternative systems.
Let's start with the theory.
According to the cartoon versionof politics you were taught in
school, democracy is rule of thepeople, by the people, for the
(16:37):
people.
But there's one small problem.
The word people is neverdefined.
It's nothing more than a uselessabstraction that's used because
it sounds nobler than themajority or the mob, which is
the real truth of the situation.
Democracy, pure and simple, isthe idea that the majority of
(16:59):
people deserve to get whateverthey want, whenever they want
it, and to hell with anyone whodisagrees with them.
Dissidents will be flattened bythe bulldozer of government
force.
Their rights and liberties areforfeit.
If the mob wants it, the mobgets it.
This is a fundamentally lawlessand nihilistic system of might
(17:22):
makes right.
Democracy can be refuted withfour simple words.
Sometimes people are wrong.
I'll repeat that because it'simportant to remember.
Sometimes people are wrong.
In fact, 90% of people inGermany were wrong in 1934, when
(17:46):
they democratically voted togive Adolf Hitler absolute
power.
So unless you actually believethat the government has a moral
obligation to commit moral evilsin any case when the majority of
voters demand it, unless youthink Hitler's regime was
legitimate, you're forced toadmit that democracy is
(18:09):
fundamentally flawed and shouldbe strictly limited.
Because the idea that any groupof people ever have a moral duty
to do something morally wrong iscontradictory, it makes zero
sense at all, but that's theidea that is central to
democracy.
Moving on to our second point,democracy is even worse in
(18:31):
practice.
The age of democracy hasn't beenan age of liberty and
enlightenment, sorry.
It has produced the largest,most centralized, and most
intrusive states in history,with tyrannical powers that the
most ambitious kings couldn'teven have imagined.
(18:52):
The most obvious example istaxes.
Americans have gone from paying1% of our income in random, dumb
taxes under King George, toliterally spending half our
adult lives working as taxslaves.
That's true, and it's onlygetting worse.
But we could spend all day onexamples like this.
(19:15):
The point is that democraticregimes tax more, regulate more,
and interfere more in the dailylives of their people than any
medieval monarchy ever did.
These modern democratic regimeswe live in have unprecedented
power, stemming from masssurveillance, digital
(19:36):
censorship, tyrannicalintelligence agencies,
centralized banks, fiatcurrencies, modern militaries,
and I could go on and on.
Our current government inAmerica, the alleged land of the
free, is by all accounts themost powerful state in the
history of the world.
(19:56):
It exceeds the Roman and BritishEmpire.
In power and authority.
And once you add to thisequation, once you add to the
results of democracy, theunprecedented moral degeneracy
that dominates modern democraticstates, a very clear picture
(20:16):
emerges.
By every metric, moderncentralized democracy has been
far worse for liberty than thevillainized European monarchies
were.
Alternative systems likeconstitutional monarchies,
aristocracies, and even justrestricted and decentralized
popular governments like ourcountry, America, originally
(20:40):
was, just 6% of people couldvote in the first election, in
case you didn't know that.
Those alternatives are farsuperior to democracy, and it's
not even close.
Though imperfect, they keepgovernment far more limited, far
more moral, and far more boundby religion, tradition, and all
(21:02):
those types of things.
Ironically, they produce betteroutcomes for the majority of
people than democracy'sunlimited majority rule ever
could.
And if you want to learn moreabout this, see episodes 7 and
20 of this podcast, where wedive deeper into voting rights
and the fatal flaws ofdemocracy.
(21:25):
Lie number one.
The assumption of equality iswhat underlies all the other
lies we discussed.
The idea that all lifestyles,all beliefs, all religions
(21:47):
should be treated equally, isthe basis of the first three
lies we debunked.
The idea that everyone shouldhave equal privileges, equal
authority, and equal say in howthe country is run, is the basis
of democracy, even if it doesn'tproduce that result in practice.
And equality isn't just thefoundation of those four lies,
(22:09):
it's the foundation of theliberal ideology that destroyed
the West.
To most, questioning it is alittle short of political
heresy.
But this show isn't called theConservative Rebel for Nothing.
We like to question orthodoxieson this show, so let's get into
it.
Let's start by definingequality.
(22:31):
The word equal means the same.
1 plus 1 equals 2 because 1 plus1 is the same quantity as 2.
So to determine whether everyoneis equal, we need to ask
ourselves a very simplequestion.
Is everyone the same?
(22:51):
The answer is obvious.
Not only is everyone not thesame, everyone is wildly
different in almost everyconceivable respect.
We're not equal in wisdom, invirtue, in intelligence, in
strength, in will, in worldview,in circumstances, in interests,
(23:13):
in personality, or in nearly anyother respect.
The only way in which humanbeings are equal is in terms of
moral worth.
We were all created asimage-bearers of God, and when
we die, we will all faceimpartial judgment as individual
people for the things we did asindividuals in this life.
(23:36):
It's only in that very specificmoral sense that we're all
equal, or the same.
In every other respect, thedifferences between people is
vast.
As Edmund Burke said in hisReflections on the Revolution in
France, seek and recognize thathappiness that is to be found by
(23:58):
virtue in all conditions, inwhich consists the true moral
equality of mankind, and not inthat monstrous fiction, which by
inspiring false ideas and vainexpectations serves only to
aggravate and embitter that realinequality, which it never can
(24:20):
remove.
As the great conservative Josephde Maestri said along that note,
inequality is the law of nature.
This is the classicalconservative position.
Inequality is just a reality,whether we're comfortable with
it or not.
And a sane society, instead ofignoring realities that might
(24:42):
hurt some people's feelings,will work in the context of
reality because disaster happenswhen you work in rebellion
against reality.
A sane society identifies thedifferences that do exist
between individuals and actsaccordingly.
As Alexander Hamilton said, itis vain to expect that men will
(25:06):
be equal in their talents, theirvirtues, or their possessions.
Political systems must recognizethe natural distinctions among
men if order is to prevail.
Just because you have the samemoral worth as someone else does
not mean you are entitled to thesame privileges and authority as
(25:29):
everyone else.
Just because two siblings with avast age gap between them are
morally equal as human beings,does not mean that those two
siblings should be given equalprivileges.
The older child's parents willgive him more independence,
they'll let him take walks byhimself, stay up later, watch
(25:50):
movies his younger siblingcan't, and things like that.
Is this an injustice thatscreams to high heaven for
vengeance?
Of course not.
Though the siblings are morallyequal, they are distinct in a
very important way, namely ageand maturity.
The parents, the authorityfigures, recognize that
(26:11):
distinction and act on it bydiscriminating, or in other
words, differentiating, betweentheir two children.
Burke said, quote, Allgovernment, indeed every human
institution, must be foundedupon discernment of differences.
To level men to the same planeis to destroy distinction,
(26:35):
honor, and the very moral fabricof society.
Our founders knew this, which iswhy they only let the most
mature, competent, virtuous,self-sufficient six percent of
the population, aged 21 orabove, the so-called natural
aristocracy of talent andvirtue, to have the privilege of
(26:57):
voting.
They didn't just let anyone whohappened to be above the age of
18 vote like we do, withcatastrophic results today.
All conservatives recognize thatthe modern leftist idea of
state-enforced equality, orcultural and economic communism,
is dangerous and totalitarian.
(27:19):
You'll often hear conservativessay that we want equality, not
equity.
But as the great conservativeswho came before us knew,
equality isn't the answer.
The way to fight communism isn'twith the liberalism that created
it.
The solution to 1984 isn't 1789.
(27:42):
You can't defend America bypromoting the ideology that led
to its downfall.
You can't defend the West bydefending the ideas that
destroyed it.
Which is why every conservativeshould reject the lie of
equality, along with all theother lies we went through
(28:03):
today.
Thanks for listening to today'sepisode of The Conservative
Rebel.
If you enjoyed it, if youlearned something, please hit
that follow button, hit thatdownload button, and share it
with anyone else you think mightlike it.
I'll see you next time.
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