My thanks to Feedomain Radio (FDR) for releasing this video. It's the closest thing I've seen to a concise null hypothesis, so I'm going to treat it as such. And successfully satisfy it. Meanwhile, I invite Stef or anybody pro-voting to address the null hypotheses I've put forward here. In the context of this video, I'd like to add the null hypotheses that the US isn't necessarily representative of "western values" and that being a fraction of "the west," has not the power to entirely steer it. The UN has spoken out against the excess of US police brutality, multiple nations are lining up to stand against the dying empire, banks are abandoning the collapsing US dollar... It's been marginalized on the world stage significantly; All that remains is the twitch of a corpse that the Trumpillary distractionary circus is meant to mislead us into believing is still vibrant and relevant.
Anyways, on to the video. First things first, there's no effort here to define what "western values" are or why they're hot shit compared to "eastern values." Since presumably those values include a perceived legitimacy of government, who is to say that western values are ideal, even if they were accepted as superior to eastern values? Maybe it's time for an understanding that people own themselves and therefore cannot exist in different, opposing moral categories. That assaulting children primes them for both inflicting and welcoming violence, and that immoral acts in the name of the State are still immoral. This has been Stef's platform for a VERY long time, and he was right there. Let's call this northern values, since it's a higher level of consciousness.
The irony here is that there have been people in history who have shared these ideas before. They were largely marginalized BECAUSE of State power's capability to forcibly silence others. If this is the pivotal time to act as Stef asserts, then turning to the State is asking that these liberating ideas by quashed in the name of the familiar yet again. This clinging to tradition is one definition of culture, which Stef has pointed out numerous times is antithetical to philosophy. Here, "northern values" would be an example of creative destruction; Just as the automobile rendered the horse draw carriage obsolete, northern values have rendered western values largely inferior.
In the video, Stef mentioned that a death of western civilization would mean a death of our freedoms. What freedoms? Since I have found FDR, the US has given its enforcer class carte blanche, destroyed "free speech" in repeated, transparent, and unapologetic ways up to and including demonizing whistle blowers rather than the monsters they expose, perpetuated drone warfare, which even if it were just, has an abysmal accuracy rate and wreaks nothing but collateral damage in the extreme, put more people into jail for victimless crimes than there were slaves in the US's infancy.... The list goes on.
More importantly, freedom is not something that is handed out by your masters. Freedom comes from within. The acceptance that you own yourself. I have put forth a great deal of effort to speak out against political voting precisely for the ways in which political voting is a demonstration of the lack of one's freedom even in their own head. Many thanks to Larken Rose to verbalizing this idea/perspective.
People are already waking up in droves to the fact that government is invalid. Were government (even under Trump) to continue to add to the perverse evidence of as much, it would only serve to reinforce the acceptance of this truth; Bring us closer to the flash point where the majority grasp the truth and it is no longer fashionable to support institutionalized violence. It will be tumultuous, but it has to happen if mankind is ever to achieve freedom. I think it is arrogant and irresponsible to try and put such an event off for the sake of comfort in the now. Particularly when that comfort isn't even here in the now.
In the video, Stef says, "Now is the time to step up. Now is the time to get involved. Now is the time to get people motivated. Now is the time to get people to go and vote." Previously, Stef has pointed out that the first step to wisdom is to call things by their proper names. Taxation is theft for example. What is political voting? Well, people cannot own other people. Therefore, the act of pretending to transfer the ownership of hundreds of millions of people (voting) is an act of make believe. It is pure fantasy. As such, this quote is self-detonating. It's putting out a call to action to get people to sink their efforts into doing nothing while pretending to do something (anti-accomplishment). Meanwhile, this very article IS the involvement that's being called for!
He also says, "I have given you the gift of knowledge and the great curse and blessing of responsibility." I agree with the idea that he puts forth here. I for one unapologetically speak the truth, even where I know it will be rejected and only lead to my own personal social discomfort. Because even if somebody rejects the truth, they will no longer be able to claim they didn't know any better. Responsibility is THE greatest gift you can give to anybody. It is unfortunate that he is claiming to be the source of the knowledge while asking you to squander it...
It is true that because of Stefan Molyneux's work, I have walked a path that has shown me happiness and heights I never thought possible. It's facilitated the opportunity to meet ME, and to shape that person into a paragon of virtue, in spite of all my abusers' successful efforts to the contrary. It's actually a result of this that the RESPONSIBILITY that I have now is to use my understanding to point out the ways in which political voting is self-contradictory, is anti-accomplishment, that the president of the United States doesn't have the capability of saving/destroying western civilization, and that western civilization is inferior to the "northern civilization" we actually have available to us today.