openpolitics.com

The state needs division.  It needs people to make enemies.

yeah and i think i think murray would
13:15
would say that that’s actually the
13:19
sort of the purpose of politics
13:21
yeah i mean like as we know politics as
13:24
we know them yes um
13:27
which involves the state and the state
13:30
the state needs to keep us all in a
13:33
frenzy of
13:34
a fear yes and um
13:38
and there has to be some way to divide
13:40
people because naturally in a market
13:43
we all get a lot right which right like
13:46
i hope people don’t forget like in 2019
13:49
you could walk down the streets of any
13:50
commercial district and any city in the
13:52
world and have
13:54
friends all around you and
13:57
and really enjoy your life and and meet
13:59
strangers
14:00
that are from a different place you’re
14:02
so fascinated like where you’re from
14:04
kind of thing you know
14:06
that that was the the marketplace it was
14:08
the agora you know under which we we
14:11
encountered people not like ourselves
14:13
but we found value in them and dignity
14:16
and we realized
14:17
something very important which is that
14:19
their existence helps me and my
14:21
existence helps abstain
14:23
we had a cooperative relationship but
14:26
politics doesn’t like that right
14:28
politics like something else
14:30
uh politics likes division and friends
14:33
and enemies
14:34
and it likes hatred
14:36
and it likes killing and likes blood
14:39
who likes death
14:40
um anything to keep the regime alive
14:44
the regime has to live
14:46
and and how
14:49
it lives is through division
14:51
and death
14:54
and and um
14:56
and i think this is why murray hated the
14:59
state ultimately
15:01
i’m going to turn this stuff i’m so
15:02
sorry
15:04
um that’s why he hated the state because
15:06
it divided people from each other you
15:08
know like we’re naturally as benjamin
15:11
constance used to say we have a natural
15:13
interest in getting along with each
15:14
other
15:16
but the state
15:17
doesn’t want that
15:19
you know the state doesn’t want us to
15:20
get along the state wants us to to hate
15:23
and we turn against our neighbors and
15:25
then we
15:27
return to
15:28
uh uh state managers to help us um a lot
15:32
of my my influences here are really
15:35
um
15:36
due to this book i read called the um
15:40
it was by carl schmidt it’s written in
15:42
like 1931
15:44
um
15:46
called uh something of politics the
15:49
essence of politics or something like
15:50
that and he hated liberalism in the old
15:52
classical sense and he said look life
15:55
without politics is boring and dreadful
15:57
all you do all you do
15:59
is you know have barbara backyard
16:01
barbecues and and baseball and and
16:04
surfing
16:05
and um one day flows into the next and
16:07
you get along with others and you said
16:09
look nobody wants to live that kind of
16:10
life nobody wants to live like that you
16:12
really want
16:14
you want big things to happen to you
16:15
something dramatic you want upheavals
16:19
the only way we can um really achieve
16:21
that is through through politics through
16:23
hatred through bloodshed and i don’t
16:26
mean just like symbolic enemies
16:29
i want
16:30
blood to flow in the streets he said
16:32
that’s
16:33
that’s where you find meaning that’s how
16:35
you find meaning in life that’s how you
16:38
know your life matters it says kashmir
16:40
now he was a huge of course nazi uh
16:43
eventually
16:44
he was put on the nurburgring trials and
16:46
they they uh eventually exonerated him
16:48
on grounds that he was just crazy
16:50
intellectuals so therefore didn’t kill
16:51
anybody but he killed a lot of people
16:53
actually with these views
16:55
um
16:57
but that’s what he said it’s like
16:59
our lives have to mean something
17:02
and and and
17:04
bourgeois capitalism does not give us
17:06
meaning it just gives us
17:09
abundance and peace and abundance and
17:13
peace is boring
17:15
so politics gives us something gives us
17:17
turmoil because it’s difficult because
17:19
the struggle gives us heroes
17:21
uh gives us enemies um
17:24
but he has this other weird comment in
17:26
there he’s like
17:28
so who is the enemy
17:30
and his answer is it doesn’t
17:34
matter
17:36
the enemy is whomever the state
17:39
decides is the enemy
17:43
the the point of enemy-ness is that it
17:46
exists
17:47
it’s not the who is the what
17:50
so
17:51
um so so there are there are people out
17:54
there who believe this you know
17:56
and so long as states exist there will
17:58
be somebody who’s a
18:01
um
18:02
a convert to schmitty in view
18:05
now if you read machiavelli it’s the
18:06
same
18:07
uh very similar sort of thing so i think
18:09
we’re being manipulated
18:12
by forces very much outside of our
18:14
control um shouldn’t be but they are
18:17
um we we have the potential as humanity
18:20
all to get along
18:22
through which we find meaning we should
18:24
we should find meaning for ourselves
18:27
like you have to do this i have to do
18:28
this we have to find
18:30
find out what makes our lives meaningful
18:32
meaningful but meaning cannot come
18:34
through violence it can’t come through
18:36
destruction it can’t come through
18:38
bloodshed
18:40
um
18:41
we tried that
18:42
in the 20th century and
18:45
and we found it uh ghastly and and awful
18:48
um i’ve finished my soliloquy with the
18:50

Jeffrey A. Tucker joins me for a conversation about his beautiful written work titled “The Purges Have Begun,” covering the preciousness of human freedom and the fortitude necessary to protect it in this “post-modern” world.

Be sure to check out NYDIG, one of the most important companies in Bitcoin: https://nydig.com/

GUEST
Jeffrey’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jeffreyatucker
Jeffrey’s Written Work: https://jeffreytucker.me/
“The Purges Have Begun”: https://brownstone.org/articles/the-p…

PODCAST
Podcast Website: https://whatismoneypodcast.com/
Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast…
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/25LPvm8EewBGyfQQ1abIsE?si=wgVuY16XR0io4NLNo0A11A&nd=1
RSS Feed: https://feeds.simplecast.com/MLdpYXYI
Transcript:

OUTLINE
00:00:00 “What is Money?” Intro
00:00:08 The Purges Have Begun
00:07:07 March 2020: The Inflection Point
00:11:46 Taxation as Societal Bifurcation
00:15:39 “A Life Without Politics is Boring”
00:22:58 We Don’t Study History to Learn Lessons
00:27:54 NYDIG
00:29:03 Bitcoin Never Blinked
00:33:32 A Beautiful Anarchy
00:36:43 Radical Deprivation in 2022?
00:40:00 The “Regime” Cannot Compete
00:45:30 What Happens When the State Becomes Irrelevant?
00:51:25 Failure of The State