• 2 years ago
https://freedomain.com/freedomain_books/the-future/

Centuries in the future, an old man awakes from cryogenic sleep to face the judgement of a utopian society that barely survived his past abuses of power. In the vein of 'Atlas Shrugged, philosophy, philosopher Stefan Molyneux has created a compelling and powerful work of imagination. He vividly describes the wonderful future that mankind can achieve - and the barriers to getting there - and all that we need to leave behind to finally live in peace...

Transcript
00:00 "The Future" by Stéphane Molyneux Chapter 41
00:07 I debated whether to let myself sleep the night before the trial. Looking tired and
00:12 haggard can be advantageous when being judged, but rested and refreshed has a good look too.
00:19 It really depends on the mood of the jury and the nature of the charges. Cornelius had
00:25 warned me that the trial was being broadcast around the world with literally hundreds of
00:30 millions of people watching. I glowed at the prospect. I always did my best work center
00:38 stage.
00:41 I was fairly certain that my son was being kept in the same hospital, but of course we
00:46 had no chance to meet or talk, since he was going to be used as a witness against me.
00:51 I had little concern about his testimony, though. Apparently he had pushed the world
00:56 into these cataclysms, so I didn't imagine his moral authority carried much weight.
01:04 Again and again I glowed with good fortune that this silly and sentimental age cared
01:12 more about me disciplining my son than invading a sovereign nation.
01:20 Rhythm for the wind!
01:24 The purpose of a parent is to train his children to thrive in the world that is, not to point
01:34 them at some imaginary utopia. I didn't invent the world, I didn't invent the rules,
01:41 but I would be damned if my children would not find their way to the top of the crap
01:45 heap known as society.
01:49 Trying to make your children better than the world guarantees their failure.
01:59 Cornelius tried to prepare me for my cross-examination, but I didn't care and wouldn't take any coaching.
02:06 I wasn't even sure I would be taking the stand. I said that to myself, but of course resisting
02:11 the spotlight has never been my strong suit.
02:14 "You're going to be hit by arguments you've never even considered," he insisted. "I do
02:20 my best work on the fly."
02:24 I had to sign a document specifying that I was rejecting the advice of counsel. No worries,
02:32 I wanted to be the tail that wagged the dog of this ridiculous society.
02:38 There were still a few sane statist countries left in the world. For them, if not for me,
02:43 I had to make my case.
02:49 I demanded, and got, a human barber for a haircut and a close shave.
02:56 I always had a secret love of being pampered. I pretended it was for efficiency, but it
03:04 was all just making up for my lonely crib and the rotating rows of female heads that
03:08 first greeted my resurrection.
03:17 Cornelius and I did agree on one thing. I needed clothes from even before my time. We
03:24 pushed the time frame back on sartorial splendor as far as possible, almost to my grandfather's
03:30 wardrobe, since the further back in time I appeared, the less likely I was to be strictly
03:35 held to modern standards. Hell, I would have shown up in a caveman's bearskin to beat these
03:40 stupid charges.
03:45 On the night before the trial, I decided to only give myself a nap. Being tired didn't
03:52 make me fuzzy-headed, but it did slow me down, which I thought might be helpful in the coming
03:57 trial. Answering too quickly was always a mistake.
04:04 My respect for Cornelius dipped somewhat when he showed up with a deeply serious mask of
04:10 gravitas on his face.
04:12 I can't even count how many times I've been investigated and cross-examined. My political
04:21 enemies were always dragging me up the shredder on one pretext or another. When you don't
04:26 have good policy rebuttals, you just launch legal attacks. It's part of the game. No worries.
04:34 "Are you ready?" he said in a low voice.
04:37 I shrugged. Would it matter if I wasn't?
04:41 He didn't laugh.
04:44 In the taxi, Cornelius pointed at the foreboding clouds ahead and asked, "Over or under?"
04:53 I grinned. "Always. Through. Always!"
04:59 He nodded, and within a few minutes we were sailing in perfect serenity through the heart
05:03 of a thundercloud. Birds and the occasional butterfly flashed past the force field keeping
05:11 the elements at bay, and I laughed in delight, remembering the view from an airplane window
05:16 when I was a child, watching the lightning arc through the clouds far below, and wishing
05:21 I could stand in the midst of that storm and now my childhood dream had come true.
05:29 Maybe this new world isn't so bad after all.
05:34 There were thousands of taxis floating outside the massive white building that served as
05:39 the courthouse. I half expected it to have classical architecture and Doric columns as
05:46 a nod to past culture, but then of course I remembered that this world had cut the past
05:51 out of its heart completely and viewed everything that went before as corrupt and evil.
05:59 So much for conservatism.
06:03 Everything was annoyingly clean. I suppose robots scoured every surface at night, and
06:09 it reminded me once more of a simulation.
06:13 My grandson had explained to me once that putting dirt on virtual surfaces consumed
06:20 computing power, so everything looked like it had been constructed from unblemished eggshells.
06:26 Wouldn't it be wild if all of this turned out to be just my dying thoughts, my brain
06:36 scrambling for redemption as I slid into the great good night?
06:40 So what if it did?
06:44 Life had been little more than a game. Perhaps death was as well.
06:52 Everyone was hooked up with tiny cameras, and I suppose various divine favors had been
06:57 handed out for the few thousand seats in the enormous white amphitheater inside.
07:04 I had thought long and hard about my entrance. You don't want to stride in too confident
07:11 because that looks arrogant. I wasn't entirely sure of this society's relationship to arrogance.
07:19 My political opponents generally had to win the votes of those who screamed at pretend
07:22 wrestling, so they could be as arrogant as hell, but I had to feign feminine humility
07:29 because I knew my base very well. They were arrogant, of course, but you could never say
07:34 that out loud. It would have taken away all their power.
07:40 I found it interesting that the white-haired judge was not seated at a higher level than
07:45 the accused, than me. I always found that old trick of the old world to be quite annoying,
07:50 mostly because it was so effective at making people feel small.
07:57 The judge leaned forward, quite unnecessary since his voice was amplified in some invisible
08:03 manner, and addressed the waiting masses, the world, and the cloud of tiny cameras.
08:14 Good morning, everyone. My name is Judge Skye Peters, and I welcome you to the trial of
08:20 a truly remarkable and singular individual. His name is Lewis Staten, and he stands before
08:29 you in clothes that must look quite old-fashioned to you, but which are both comfortable and
08:33 appropriate to him. Of course, we are not here to judge his choice of attire, but rather
08:40 his treatment of his children, or child – in particular, his eldest son, Jake. In the same
08:48 way that Mr. Staten's clothes are comfortable and appropriate to him and his time, in some
08:54 ways his parenting style was also both comfortable and appropriate to him in his time.
09:02 The questions of justice, integrity, and consistency have puzzled and confounded our species since
09:10 our inception. Justice requires the punishment of those who harm others by deviating from
09:17 universal moral standards. Integrity requires that we either follow our own stated moral
09:24 principles or inform others of a coming deviation. Consistency requires that our universal moral
09:33 standards be followed independent of time and place.
09:41 Universality is that standard which allows us to claim a universal right to forcefully
09:47 impose our will upon others. Criminals regularly forcefully impose their will on others, but
09:56 they do not claim a moral right to do so. In this, they are in the category of animal
10:02 predation.
10:06 Any standard which claims universality must be logically consistent, since logic is universal,
10:16 and achievable independent of time and location. Mathematics and science claim universality,
10:25 and thus propositions and conjectures in these fields must be logically consistent, and hold
10:31 true independent of time and place.
10:38 Morality is often perceived outside the civ as a cultural standard which holds true only
10:47 for those who believe in local customs. The hypocrisy of the outside world is easily revealed
10:55 by the fact that parents teach their children moral absolutes, but when those children grow
11:01 up to question moral contradictions on the part of their parents, those same parents
11:07 take refuge in moral relativism.
11:14 Our standard for morality – universally preferable behavior – holds true for all
11:21 people in all locations at all times. It is the exact same standard that parents have
11:29 always imposed on their children throughout history. Parents have always instructed their
11:35 children not to hit others, and this commandment has always been universal and absolute. They
11:43 do not tell their children that it is immoral to hit another child on a Monday, but perfectly
11:48 moral to hit on a Tuesday. They do not say that violence is wrong in the kitchen, but
11:53 perfectly permissible in the living room. No. They instruct their children on the absolute
12:03 morality of the two moral pillars of universally preferable behavior. "Thou shalt not initiate
12:11 violence, and thou shalt respect property." In other words, don't hit, don't steal.
12:26 We would not expect people from the old world to understand the science behind our modern
12:32 technology for obvious reasons. We cannot expect Mr. Staten to wake up among us and
12:40 understand every nuance and complexity of our modern voluntary social structures. However,
12:50 ignorance of the law is no excuse when you have imposed that law. A judge who has punished
13:00 criminals for corruption can have no possible excuse if he himself is found to be corrupt.
13:09 A parent who has imposed the rules of the non-aggression principle and a respect for
13:14 property rights on his children has no right to claim that he has no knowledge of these
13:19 rules or no capacity to follow them. Parents cannot claim that they cannot possibly follow
13:27 rules which they violently inflict upon a two-year-old. This would be like a mother
13:33 punishing a toddler for failing to lift a weight which she herself cannot budge.
13:43 Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you have been charged with determining the moral guilt
13:50 of Louis Staten, the former president of this landmass. For reasons which I am sure the
13:59 prosecution will explain, his potential political and military crimes have remained outside
14:06 the scope of this trial. Perhaps it is possible that a man from the old world might gain some
14:17 forgiveness for failing to apply the ethics he inflicted on his children on his society
14:23 as a whole. However, we cannot claim ignorance of that which we teach. A woman who teaches
14:33 Japanese cannot claim to be ignorant of the Japanese language. A father cannot claim to
14:41 be ignorant of the non-aggression principle if he has enforced said principle on his child.
14:52 Child abuse in the civ is virtually non-existent, but it still remains the habit and norm in
14:59 the rest of the world. It is an important question to ask. Why are we prosecuting potential
15:09 evils from almost six hundred years ago? This question is common to all jurisprudence, since
15:17 we cannot ever change the past. But justice is not about the past, but the future. We
15:26 punish horse thieves so that horses are less likely to be stolen in the future.
15:36 Those of us, the hundreds of millions of parents across the civ, we all love, protect and treasure
15:45 our own children. But I dare say that scarcely a day goes by when we do not spare an agonized
15:53 thought to the countless children across the rest of the world still being verbally abused,
15:59 beaten, assaulted and bullied on a daily basis.
16:05 This trial is not about the past, but the future. As a middle-aged man – though old
16:15 by the standards of his time – Lewis Staten may still have children. Even over the course
16:21 of this trial, millions of children will be born to parents who will be following the
16:25 course and content of these arguments.
16:30 Whatever moral arguments you apply to Mr. Staten more than half a millennia ago, certainly
16:36 apply to parents in the present.
16:42 Judge Peters paused for a long moment, his face unutterably sad.
16:48 God, they were so even-handed! My heart soared! So careful to be right, to be accurate, to
16:59 be moral, that they were like conscientious boxers warming up against an opponent happy
17:05 to call in an airstrike.
17:07 Back in the day, we fed lies to the leftist press – the press, really – and they just
17:17 burbled and published without question. My opponents couldn't do the same, because
17:23 everyone else in the media had to fact-check and get it right and be responsible. So they
17:29 lost.
17:33 Judge Peters said, "I now call for opening statements from the prosecution."
17:40 A woman who looked like a girl, impossibly young, rose and smoothed her skirt. "I recognize
17:53 the sandy-haired man sitting in a front row. They just loved these white pews, didn't
17:59 they? Whose eyes glowed with the pride of a father. David his name was."
18:07 The woman said, "My name is Alice Bartholomew, and I will be leading the prosecution against
18:15 Louis Staten, formerly President of the United States of America. Since the modern world
18:21 no longer recognizes his title, I will simply be referring to him as Mr. Staten."
18:30 Judge Morning, this is an unprecedented case in the history of jurisprudence, although
18:38 the legal theories are well established. We have constantly gathered together as a society
18:45 to sit in judgment of the past. Indeed, if we never judge the past, we can never build
18:50 a better future. Whether I judge my own actions from yesterday, or Mr. Staten's actions
18:57 from half a millennia ago, does not matter with regards to universal morality.
19:06 Of course, the question first arises as to whether we can hold Mr. Staten to modern moral
19:13 standards. Morality is a form of technology, and we cannot condemn people without access
19:19 to that technology for failing to use it. We might as well call a man foolish for not
19:23 using a SkyTaxi before it was invented. However, the philosophical quandary at the
19:33 crux of this prosecution is this. Morality has always claimed to be universal. That is
19:41 how it is judged to be enforceable. Mere aesthetics are not enforceable on others. Morality, most
19:50 specifically and emphatically, is.
19:55 Alice gestured at me.
19:59 Mr. Staten enforced moral standards not only within his own country, the United States
20:05 of America, but also around the world. He threatened old Russia for the international
20:11 war crime of aggression, but he himself invaded – Cornelius jumped up – these arguments
20:16 are unrelated to the central charge. The judge nodded. "Withdrawn," said Alice.
20:24 The question remains as to whether we can justly judge a man for his primitive morality
20:30 when he lived in a primitive time.
20:36 Another question must be resolved before we can start, which is whether we can prosecute
20:41 a man in the absence of any available witnesses.
20:46 I will confess that my office was preparing to charge Mr. Staten with various war crimes
20:51 – and I apologise for allowing an earlier draft of my opening statement to bleed into
20:56 the present – when we discovered another person from his time who had elected to undergo
21:03 cryogenic freezing. It was really quite remarkable. The facility that housed these people had
21:10 been placed underground in an extraordinarily remote location. It was solar-powered, but
21:15 many of the panels had been wrecked over the centuries. Only two people remained intact
21:20 out of many hundreds. One, of course, was Mr. Staten. The other turned out to be his
21:28 son – his eldest son, Jake. It took quite a while to trace the wiring and find him alive.
21:38 With our new access to Jake Staten, we were able to pierce the fog of time and resurrect
21:47 an eyewitness to the crimes for which we have charged Mr. Staten.
21:54 Alice smiled sadly.
21:57 Now I do try to avoid endless feedback from the world, because my relationship is to universally
22:03 preferable behaviour and justice itself, but of course I could not help but notice how
22:08 rapidly fascinated the world is by this case as a whole. I feel the pressure of hundreds
22:16 of millions of eyes upon us, and also feel the pressure of knowing that everything I
22:22 say, every statement I make and piece of evidence I bring to bear, will be examined and turned
22:28 over in endless detail for endless years. This is like the trial of Socrates, but with
22:36 more details and hopefully more justice.
22:42 For those who are watching, who live in statist societies, I am aware that you find this all
22:50 quite ridiculous. For those of you who live in the geographical region once decimated
22:57 by Mr. Staten's invasions, I apologise for not bringing him to account on your behalf.
23:07 The judge warned her, and Alice paused.
23:11 I do need to address the perceived foolishness of the charges against Mr. Staten. With all
23:21 that he did, and all that led to the cataclysms, charging him with child abuse seems an
23:27 insult to the billions who suffered and died. I could see everyone finishing the silent
23:32 end to her sentence as a result of his actions.
23:36 I laughed idly. It reminded me of Jane's funeral, and everything that was hinted at that brute
23:45 power restrained from being simply spoken.
23:50 Alice opened her mouth to continue, so earnest.
23:55 For those who do not know the foundation of the modern free world, a brief explanation
24:02 is in order.
24:05 All societies before the modern sieve were built on the backs of broken children.
24:14 I hope you will forgive my poetry, but there is no clearer or cleaner way to put it.
24:23 The democracy or republic that Mr. Staten presided over specifically ignored the voices
24:31 and perspectives and preferences of children in the formulation of its public policies.
24:38 Adults were free to choose their own occupations. Children were forced into government indoctrination
24:45 facilities, the closest most of them came to prison in their lives.
24:51 Parents could not hit other adults, but were allowed to hit children.
24:58 Children were not allowed to vote, which meant that no politician had to focus on what was
25:03 best for children.
25:06 Alice raised her hand. Of course, I am not saying that the solution would have been to
25:11 have children vote, because that would have just given the parents extra votes, so to
25:16 speak, since they would have just bullied their children into voting for whoever the
25:20 parents preferred.
25:22 But a society that fails to focus on what is best for its children cannot survive, will
25:30 not survive, and historically has never survived.
25:39 Politicians such as Mr. Staten had no problem pillaging the future tax revenues of the young
25:43 in order to pay for – Cornelius jumped up again, and I actually appreciated his agility
25:48 – she cannot testify as to my client's state of mind.
25:54 Judge Peters agreed, and Alice apologized again.
26:01 I speak not so much to the past as to the various scattered places in the present where
26:07 governments still hold sway.
26:11 To those societies I say, the children in your world have no voice, no rights, no respect.
26:21 You have built a system that exploits them, beats them, indoctrinates them, keeps them
26:27 silent – and all who mistreat children will be destroyed by moral decay.
26:38 Society can only expect the allegiance of children if it provides those children security
26:46 and opportunity.
26:49 Governments do not add value to the economy.
26:53 The only way they can pretend to provide anything is to take, print or borrow.
27:00 Borrowing against children creates resentment when they grow up.
27:05 That resentment is generally leveraged by hostile actors, both foreign and domestic,
27:11 into undermining and eventually destroying the society that exploits them.
27:17 Cornelius said, "The prosecutor is making speeches."
27:21 Alice said, "I am setting the stage for the charges."
27:25 The judge nodded, but asked her to hurry it along.
27:32 The most foundational moral question, which is the only question that matters for any
27:39 society to ask, is this.
27:42 Why are adults excluded from the moral rules they impose on children?
27:51 Alice turned to Cornelius.
27:52 "I assume this is on target enough for you?"
27:57 The judge admonished her, and she continued.
28:00 Alice waved her hand.
28:02 There are still countless millions of parents around the world who still hit their children
28:09 while commanding their children not to hit people.
28:14 There are still millions of you who take objects from your children while commanding those
28:19 children not to steal.
28:22 Even those of you who consider yourself enlightened still confine your children to timeouts, which
28:29 you would never imagine doing at work, or with your wife, or your friends, or your adult
28:34 relations.
28:40 Child Abuse
28:44 Violations of the Non-Aggression Principle and Property Rights
28:48 Take an average of 20 years away from a person's lifespan.
28:55 Stress, cancer, ischemic heart disease, addiction, promiscuity – these all result from the
29:04 toxins that are released in the body through the stress of child abuse.
29:10 If a man were to administer a poison to a child that caused endless anxiety and health
29:14 issues and killed that child 20 years before her time, we would punish him as a slow-motion
29:21 murderer.
29:22 It doesn't matter if your poison takes decades to kill, you are still a killer.
29:31 These facts were all known in Mr. Staten's day in his time.
29:36 The scientific experiments had been run decades before the results were clear.
29:41 Child abuse literally poisons minds and bodies.
29:49 Mr. Staten may claim to be ignorant of the studies of these basic medical facts, but
29:55 that doesn't matter at all by his own admission and standards.
30:02 His government presided over the prosecution of people who claimed to be ignorant of the
30:06 law, but ignorance of the law was no excuse by the cliché and rule of his time.
30:15 Mr. Staten voluntarily chose to become a parent, chose to keep his child, his children, which
30:26 means that he was responsible for raising them well.
30:33 I don't have to learn how to fly a plane unless I plan to get behind the controls of
30:39 a plane.
30:43 Mr. Staten doubtless decided to have children some time before they were conceived, and
30:49 therefore had at least nine months from the time of conception to educate himself on the
30:54 science and ethics of parenting.
31:01 Given what we will hear from his son, his parenting was abusive even by the standards
31:09 of his day.
31:12 And Jake will further testify that his father never attacked him publicly.
31:19 All the abuse happened in private, which begs the question, if he thought his behavior was
31:26 acceptable, why did he hide it?
31:33 We do not judge Mr. Staten by our modern standards.
31:39 We do not judge him even by the standards of his day.
31:43 We judge him by his own standards.
31:48 We shall establish that he assaulted his son on many occasions and swore his son to secrecy.
32:00 And we will also show that he never once assaulted his son in public.
32:06 Mr. Staten knew that what he was doing was illegal by the standards of his day, and he
32:14 also knew that he would be roundly condemned should his assault against his child come
32:20 to light.
32:24 Now it might be argued, and doubtless will be, that Mr. Staten was himself abused as
32:33 a child, and therefore had no capacity, no practical ability, to restrain his aggression.
32:42 However, the basic fact that he never once assaulted his child in public shows that he
32:49 was completely able to restrain his aggression.
32:54 If his aggression were a form of involuntary epilepsy, then he would not be able to control it.
33:02 The fact that Mr. Staten would threaten his child to "wait until we get home" clearly
33:08 shows that he was able to postpone his own violence.
33:14 Since he could restrain himself in public, he was equally responsible for failing to
33:20 restrain himself in private.
33:26 Now we can all agree that Mr. Staten himself was doubtless abused as a child, and while
33:35 that gives us some sympathy for his suffering, justice demands that we universalize his own
33:43 morality and apply it back to him.
33:48 Historical records clearly demonstrate that Mr. Staten regularly demonized his own political
33:53 opponents – or supported the media doing the same – without ever once acknowledging
33:59 that they were doubtless raised by parents who indoctrinated their children in those
34:04 beliefs.
34:06 If a man had bigoted beliefs because he was raised by racists, he gained no sympathy in
34:11 the society that Mr. Staten presided over.
34:14 He was simply called a racist and destroyed.
34:18 Mr. Staten himself showed no sympathy for the victims of childhood indoctrination, but
34:23 rather judged adults as if everyone chose their own beliefs without compulsion.
34:33 Removing a man from his history and judging him in the present as a completely independent
34:40 moral actor was Mr. Staten's consistent habit.
34:45 Again, we cannot judge him according to modern morality.
34:51 We cannot even judge him according to the morality of his day.
34:55 But we can judge him according to his own moral standards.
35:03 Since he inflicted his own morality on others, it is entirely just to inflict it on him.
35:09 If a doctor prescribes a treatment for a certain illness, but then rails against that treatment
35:16 for himself should he get that illness, we know he is a bad doctor, regardless of technology
35:25 or circumstances.
35:27 I stifled a yawn.
35:33 God, I'm so boring.
35:37 Everyone knows that losers cite facts and logic because they lack power.
35:43 Arguments are a death warrant to getting what you want.
35:50 Alice went on.
35:54 Mr. Staten always treated his children gently while in public.
36:00 He never sought help for his violence against his children.
36:05 He treated other people's children with thoughtful consideration.
36:12 And if the court will allow me to wax philosophical for just a moment or two, I will tell you
36:20 why we are prosecuting him for child abuse.
36:26 It is my belief that violence against children is a test of morality and empathy.
36:38 If a man commits violence against his children, and society lets him get away with it, then
36:46 the path is clear for him to commit violence against others, adults, both domestically
36:55 and overseas.
36:59 Violence against children is a kind of test run for violence against adults.
37:06 A society that fails to protect its children is fundamentally failing to protect itself
37:12 as well.
37:16 In other words, the reason that Mr. Staten, when he was president, was able to commit
37:23 such egregious acts of violence against others, again, both domestically and internationally,
37:30 was because society let him get away with beating his children, his child, as far as
37:38 we can determine.
37:43 All the most abstract levels of violence arise from the most personal aggressions.
37:52 Power results from child abuse.
37:57 Dictatorship results from child abuse.
38:01 The cataclysms resulted from child abuse.
38:08 Every member of every society in the old world made a decision every day, every moment of
38:16 every day, to let child abusers continue their dark deeds.
38:24 People did not intervene.
38:26 They did not ask children about their experiences or did not listen to their answers.
38:31 And they let this continue in most households, on most streets, in most cities and countries.
38:41 They failed to confront the abusers.
38:45 They failed to confront their own capacity for abuse.
38:49 And as a result, the children grew up to hate their own societies and failed to respect
38:58 any of the rules those societies wished to impose.
39:02 Why should I obey the laws of a society that failed to protect me as a child?
39:08 Why should I listen to your prohibitions on violence when you let me be beaten and neglected
39:13 as a child?
39:15 Why should I listen to your respect for property when you let the government, you voted for
39:21 the government that plunged me into debt to buy your vote?
39:27 Why should I respect any moral commandments you wish to inflict on me when you preferred
39:31 social ease and the companionship of evildoers rather than confronting my abusers and saving
39:39 my life?
39:44 And even those who tried to help the children who promoted peaceful parenting, those people
39:50 were torn apart by society.
39:55 Society not only failed to protect its own offspring, as anti-natural a situation as
40:00 could be conceived of, but it also attacked anyone who tried to help the children.
40:09 The children saw all of this.
40:12 After the rise of the old Internet, for the first time in human history, children could
40:16 see the undoing of their protectors in real time, and they grew up with nothing but contempt
40:25 for their elders.
40:28 Since their elders were moral hypocrites of the first order, most of the children gave
40:32 up on morality as a whole.
40:36 A feral age was thus born, where modern technology fueled the spread of ancient hedonism.
40:49 Live for today, live for power, live for status, live for sex and food, but never live for
40:55 morality because morality is hypocrisy and is only ever used to control you.
41:02 Morality is a mechanism of confinement and subjugation, and it is the mark of a slave
41:07 to be moral because morality never applies to the rulers, to the slave owners, to the
41:11 fat farmers of the tax cattle.
41:17 Morality became humiliation.
41:21 Morality became subjugation, and the natural animal desire for success and control and
41:28 power was channeled away from self-mastery and compassion for suffering, and instead
41:36 flowed into the State, into power, into violent control over others.
41:47 And who could blame these children in general, not specific to this case?
41:53 Because they were taught that morality is a mere convenient justification for abuses
41:57 of power, and all who are moral are slaves.
42:04 This was the tipping point into the cataclysms, the failure of morality to restrain greed.
42:19 The death of morality is the birth of tyranny.
42:24 If citizens refuse to restrain themselves, they will be restrained by those in power.
42:32 Morality was divided into those desperately clinging to the remnants of the good and those
42:40 who used that desperation to subjugate, humiliate and control them.
42:47 Greed swelled, debt, the economies collapsed, government power grew until the inevitable
42:57 chaotic rebellion or abject subjugation.
43:01 Disaster reimposed restraint through disaster, since it had been abandoned through immorality.
43:13 Alice turned and pointed at me.
43:17 And while this man cannot be justly held up as a scapegoat for the disasters that consumed
43:23 the lives of billions, we can learn, we can still teach the statist regents of the world
43:30 that how you treat your children is how your future will treat you.
43:36 Control them with false morality and they will grow to abandon morality and control
43:41 you with brute force.
43:47 We cannot resurrect the billions who died in the cataclysms.
43:53 We cannot go back in time and change the endless moral cowardice of every moment.
43:59 But history, circumstance and coincidence has resurrected one man for us to judge.
44:12 Alice's voice softened.
44:16 Like most of you, I have a family tree on my wall as a reminder.
44:24 And I gazed at my family tree every night as I prepared for this case and wondered what
44:30 they would want me to say.
44:33 What would give them some peace?
44:38 Billions of people, perhaps unconsciously, I doubt it though, earned their own deaths
44:46 by failing to protect children.
44:50 We have one of them here before us.
44:54 The fact that he was a president is irrelevant.
44:57 The fact that he was a parent, still is a parent as we shall see, is everything.
45:07 Because Mr. Staten failed to protect his son, beat his own son and participated in the endless
45:16 cover-ups of crimes against children in his environment, in his family, in his community
45:21 and his country.
45:23 That is why his invasions were possible, why his predations and exploitations and indebtedness
45:30 were possible.
45:33 If you will not protect your own children, will you stand up for the children of unknown
45:38 foreigners?
45:43 This let the question hang for a long moment.
45:47 To me, it had a silly noose around its neck.
45:52 However, I could see the effects of her words on the people leaning forward in their white
45:59 pews.
46:02 Her syllables were striking hearts, most solidly, and I began to feel some real unease.
46:10 Dear God, alive!
46:14 What if she really is convincing?
46:20 Alice continued, her voice changing to reflect the power of generalities, and an explanation
46:27 for the suffering that billions had gone through, that I had apparently set in motion and slept
46:32 through.
46:37 In the past, everyone believed that heroism was charging up a beach with a gun in your
46:43 hand or pulling a man from a burning building.
46:47 This allowed them to reserve their courage for situations they would never face.
46:56 The courage of the everyday, the courage to ask children how they are doing and really
47:03 listen to the answers, the courage to protect children, to build a secure future by securing
47:11 the vulnerable in the here and now – that courage was never discussed, never encouraged.
47:20 What passed for art was all superhero movies and cartoon villainy.
47:27 The everyday heroism necessary to confront the very real villains in your environment,
47:31 in your family, in your own heart, was always avoided.
47:37 Evil ran the world, and everyone cried out at their perceived helplessness while studiously
47:45 avoiding the very real actions they could take to save themselves, save the future,
47:53 save the world.
47:56 That is not how we live now.
48:03 Now we protect the children.
48:08 Many of you were surprised to hear that child abuse is the most serious crime in our society,
48:14 for the simple reason that child abuse is the source of all other crimes – and we
48:21 are far more focused on prevention than cure.
48:26 Millions upon millions of children are still being abused in the world today as I speak,
48:33 as you listen.
48:37 Hundreds of millions of you are turning in here to watch this trial, which is one of
48:41 the reasons – Alice changed her mind.
48:48 And defense of the children in the world is defense of our society, our freedoms, our
48:59 civilization.
49:03 Children who are beaten, assaulted and abused, and neglected, will often grow up to hate
49:11 our free societies as a utopia they are barred from, and they may attack us, undermine us,
49:18 just as they were attacked and undermined.
49:23 The defense of children is the self-defense of civilization itself.
49:31 Through our collective judgment of Mr. Staten, we invite everyone across the entire world
49:39 to judge themselves by their own moral standards, by how they behave in public, by the sentimentality
49:47 of the soft stories they tell their children.
49:51 And ask yourself, are you a good parent?
49:58 Are you teaching your children morality, reason, negotiation and peace?
50:06 Are you hitting your children, yelling at your children, infecting them with the mind
50:13 virus of verbal abuse?
50:16 Are you neglecting your children in pursuit of money, glory and fame, all empty vessels
50:26 to stuff into the hollow heart of your own past suffering?
50:36 I remind you, as all moralists have throughout history, that the moral is the practical.
50:47 Defending children is the same as defending yourself.
50:54 Violence against children will destroy your society.
51:00 Failing to protect children will raise the beasts who will consume you, and us too, if
51:07 we are not careful.
51:12 Alice finished almost panting.
51:16 "Do you want to continue?" asked the judge.
51:24 Alice shook her head.
51:26 My heart was pounding.
51:30 I could see the tears in the eyes of the audience, the crackling electric charge of her words
51:36 flowing across the world.
51:41 I almost shook.
51:49 I almost shot an apologetic look at Cornelius for failing to take his advice to prepare,
51:55 but my pride closed my eyes.
52:02 I felt nothing.
52:05 To me, her words were like tiny ripples on the bow of a great battleship, parting without
52:11 a tremor.
52:15 To be fair, I wanted to behead her, but mostly for entertainment purposes.
52:24 My face ached, and I tasted the salt.
52:31 God, my father would have known how to deal with her.
52:38 Cornelius rose.
52:41 [BLANK_AUDIO]