FDR Liberated

Archive for the ‘Foundations’ Category

I’m gonna trick ya.

But play along, won’t you? Maybe you’ll find it interesting.

Here we go!

For months, I’ve been very interested in the tools Molyneux uses to guide his followers down a path that starts with the typical ambivalence young people feel about their families and ends with total rejection of both families and friends. Molyneux’s own writings, podcasts, and personal encouragement are part of it, to be sure. And there is, of course, Christina’s authority as a “trained psychologist.”

Alice Miller and the abused children of FDR

But if you spend any time on the FDR site, it won’t be long before you hear about the writings of psychologist Alice Miller. Miller began writing books about childhood abuse in 1979. Her central teaching is that childhood abuse is far more pervasive than we admit, the number of behaviors that fall into the “abuse” category are far greater than we know, and our current treatment paradigm for abuse victims can be far more damaging than the original abuse itself.

Heady stuff.

I’m not quite sure what to make of her as a psychologist. I certainly don’t think she’s in the same crackpot camp as some of Molyneux’s other psychology influences, but I get the impression her work has been used to do as much harm as good.

For example, there is a psychology triangulation of sorts going on at FDR. If the subtleties of Molyneux’s absolutist “first principles”-based discarding of your parents are lost on you, or you don’t quite grasp the deep “insight” of Christina’s “it all starts with the family” theories, then perhaps a world-renowned psychologist can be used to convince you that yes, oh yes, you were very badly abused.

The two things that concern me about Miller are her zealotry and her attempt to popularize her ideas. Perhaps the latter is the result of the former–you see, despite the fact that her work has been around for decades, her theories still haven’t made a significant impact on mainstream psychology. In fact, from my limited perspective, she hasn’t seemed to warrant enough attention from psychologists even to refute her theories–she seems to be mostly disregarded.

Perhaps Miller was so overzealous in stating her case–even when she didn’t have true clinical research to back it up–that mainstream psychology became leery of her. So she began writing books for the public. Who knows? I’m just speculating.

Despite all that, it really is too bad Miller hasn’t been given more credit for the awareness she has raised. I’ve come to believe that a great thing happened in the 80s when society began coming to terms with formerly hidden abuse–childhood, spousal, etc. I think Alice Miller’s dogged determination to enlighten everyone is part of the reason why. One cannot question her courage.

But seriously…everybody has been abused?!

Daphne Merkin of the New York Times wrote an informative and compelling review regarding the good-idea-taken-to-extremes tendencies of Miller. The review is entitled If Only Hitler’s Father Had Been Nicer and is an examination of The Truth Will Set You Free, one of Miller’s books.

All of Miller’s popular works fit nicely into the post-Freudian/pop psychology zeitgeist of the 80s when “all families were deemed dysfunctional until proved otherwise,” as Merkin puts it.

Merkin describes some of Miller’s dabbling in psychohistory (incidentally, another concept favored by Molyneux which, as a result of theorists like Lloyd deMause, also frequently veers into crackpot-ism) and Miller’s sometimes overreaching claims, which tend to suggest that nearly everyone is an abuse victim.

Merkin sums up the good and bad of Miller’s work this way:

The pity of it is that we end up dismissing the message along with the messenger. Miller’s excesses–the bombast and imperiousness, the fanatic refusal to make distinctions along a continuum of harmful child-rearing–have served to diminish her perspective to one of easily parodied alarmism.

The problem I have with Miller popularizing her work instead of working within the scientific community is that (in addition to sidestepping true research) she uses marketing to make it sound almost enviable to be an abuse victim. Consider. Her seminal book Drama of the Gifted Child was originally published with the title Prisoners of Childhood.

["Prisoners of Childhood" interactive game: Quickly download a copy of Molyneux's "On Truth" and count the number of times he uses the word "prison" to describe childhood. Stop either when you get to 100 or begin to wonder how many of Molyneux's "original" psychology ideas were lifted from Miller. Then come back here.]

Why did Miller change the title? Simple. Because it sucks to be a prisoner and it’s awesome to be gifted. As one reviewer put it, anyone looking in a bookstore for help with their troubled life would see that new title and say “That’s me! I’m gifted. I have drama!”

Merkin captures that impulse this way:

What self-respecting narcissist of a reader wouldn’t want to be a member of a club predicated on a rarefied sort of victim status, in which underlying depression was warded off by ”increased displays of brilliance”?

The perfect victimhood soufflé

So now the average visitor to FDR–typically, a very bright young person going through the nearly always difficult process of individuating from his/her family–is served a perfect soufflé of Stefan’s theories, his wife’s theories, and the theories of a justifiably famous psychologist. Discovering that you’re the gifted victim and hating your parents for it never felt so…right.

New members are so busy focusing on their own giftedness and the revelation of the true, miserable drama of their own families, they barely have time to notice that all FDR members are being served exactly the same soufflé and every family has committed more or less exactly the same crimes against children.

So, if you are a recently defooed parent and you’re trying to understand out how Alice Miller figures into all this, that’s pretty much it in a nutshell.

In fact, here’s what one parent posted–as she was searching the forum for answers–about the negative impact of this soufflé on her family.

Can anyone tell me about Alice Miller? Her books are being used to make the cult members realize what parents do is always wrong. Early on is when Molyneux gets them to start blaming the parents for their own problems.

That is how he initially gets them away from family and friends. Alice Miller’s books makes you hate your parents…. it is so generally written that it can be applied to anyone that reads it. Someone with problems will find fault in their parents by reading her books. Stop blaming yourself, but blame the parents….. That is the message I get…..

Even when I read her book I started to question my mother, grandmother, just about anybody that raised me….. I am not denying that some have an abusive upbringing and go through a lot during growing up. But us “normal” parents, or those with “normal” parents that try to do the best we/they can, in the best interest of the child, get put down and accused of emotionally abusing our kids….

Yeah…..looking back, I know that my parents tried their best, I felt unloved at times (who doesn’t?) was mad because she ignored me and went to work instead of playing with me (!)….….my mom is not a psychiatrist; she did the best she can. I will not blame her for my problems. I think love for others is helping in that matter. I love my parents, grandparents, with that love I have in me, I can forgive and understand.”

Sound familiar?

Well, if it did, then I succeeded in my attempt to trick you!

You see, the parent who wrote that particular troubled post wasn’t talking about Molyneux at all!

This person was actually talking about a suspected cult leader named Wayne Allen Geis. Where the original poster wrote the name “Geis,” I simply replaced it with “Molyneux.” You’ll find the verbatim quote in this thread on a forum completely unrelated to libertarianism or Molyneux.

Why did I try to trick you? To demonstrate just how easy it is for gurus who may have an ulterier motive to (mis)use Miller’s theories for their own ends. You can see the danger more clearly when you consider how two widely differing “friendly advisors” such as Molyneux and Geis can both use the work of Miller in amazingly similar ways to achieve their desired result (which is always, of course, to convince you that you must separate from your family).

Geis’s and Molyneux’s “communities” have many differences. Geis claims to run an acting school and he uses a method called “The Process” to help his followers “grow” as actors. Since his community has nothing to do with logic, philosophy, and ethics, etc., the thinking is spiritual and a lot fuzzier than you’ll find on FDR.

On the other hand, Geis ends up sleeping with a lot of his victims, which means he’s probably having a lot more fun than Molyneux.

So there’s that.

Cult expert Joe Szimhart looked into Geis’s operation and detailed his findings here. Geis’s essential ploy is this:

Bait: Each one of the students approached Geis for personal instruction in acting, singing, and theater arts.

Switch: Geis quickly maneuvered each one into a therapeutic relationship that included his diagnoses based on the diagnostic manual used by psychiatry. Each one came to believe that it was necessary for Geis to help purge them of all the negative influences in their lives from family, other schools and society. Each one felt compelled to confess or otherwise reveal their innermost feelings, memories, and secrets to him and the group if he so directed. Each one came to believe that Geis had their best interests in mind even if it required total submission and giving more money than they first imagined. A few believed that having sex with Geis would, as he promised, somehow improve their enlightened status as performers.

Different dog. Same fleas.

In the thread I linked to above, you’ll also find a Joe Szimhart comment on how Geis exploits Miller’s work:

As for why Geis or anyone else who lives through malignant narcissim finds Miller’s book useful, it is a way to legitimize selfish needs to feel important. Of course, only the naive and manipulated would think that Gies truly understands Miller’s intent. Geis and JZ* live in a world apart, insulated from peer review and reality testing by grandiosity. Miller earned her reputation among peers in the field of mental health professionals…Miller’s powerfully written book can easily mislead the self-diagnosing reader.

* JZ Knight is a leader of yet another suspected cult.


Do Szimhart’s words have a similar application to Molyneux?

As you’ve seen in this article, I do struggle with my own ambivalence about Alice Miller. Her work is of inestimable value in revealing the tremendous impact a child’s perception of their upbringing can have in their later lives. Still, as one reviewer put it:

‘The Drama of the Gifted Child’ is a powerful book and it is worth reading even after 20 years. It is not a scientific book in the sense that it contains testable findings, it presents a practitioner’s conclusions gained from personal experience. You may call it an informed speculation, or an interim report from ‘the search for the true self’ as it is subtitled.

When Miller’s work is treated as true science by someone trying to self-diagnose, the outcome is unpredictable at best.

When it is rapaciously plundered by self-styled gurus with no clinical training, it can destroy lives.

Want to know what Miller thinks about gurus?

You can and it’s pretty interesting. She wrote a section called “Gurus and Cult Leaders, How They Function” in her book Paths of Life.

I offered the opinion in an earlier post that if FDR is indeed a cult, it is probably not by Molyneux’s design or wishes. Moreover, I suspected that Molyneux (and leaders like him) gain control not by intentional manipulation but as an indirect result of their fervent, unshakeable reverence for their own beliefs. (Surely you must see that the world operates exactly as Molyneux says. How could you not, unless there were something…wrong with you?)

I was unaware that Miller had figured all of this out a decade ago.

In the following passage, Miller describes the internal processes of gurus. It makes me a little uncomfortable, as she starts by referring to the “unconscious manipulation” of parents, an assertion that often takes her over-the-top in her theories. There is an element of truth, however, in that we all unconsciously try to influence each other at one time or another.

But the passage is fruitful because it points out how gurus fall into the same pattern. Does it apply to Molyneux? I’ll leave that to you but, if so, I’m struck by the strange reciprocity at work here here–Miller’s theories on gurus may actually apply to those gurus who use her other theories to control their groups!

The thing that concerns me most about cult groups is the unconscious manipulation that I have described in detail in my work. It is the way in which the repressed and unreflected childhood biographies of parents and therapists influence the lives of children and patients entrusted to their care without anyone involved actually realizing it. At first glance, it may seem as if what goes on in cult and cultlike therapy groups takes place on a diffferent level from the unconscious manipulation of children by their parents. We assume that in the former instance we are in the presence of an intentional, carefully planned, and organized form of manipulation aimed at exploiting the specific predicament of individuals.

In my view, however, this allegedly conscious exploitation can also be traced back to unconscious motives, Terrible as the consequences were, I do not believe, for example, that the two initiates of “feeling therapy” discussed earlier actually set out to establish a totalitarian regime. It was the power they gained over their adherents that made them into gurus. And this is what I have in mind when I refer to the unconscious aspects of manipulation. In the end they themselves became the victims of a process with an inexorable logic of its own, a process they were unaware of because they had never given it any thought.

Thus they sparked off a conflagration they were unable to control, much less extinguish. First, they learned how to reduce people to the emotional state of a helpless child. Once they had achieved that, they also learned how to use unconscious regression to exercise total control over their victims. From then on, what they did seemed to come automatically, in accordance with the child-rearing patterns instilled into them in their own childhood.

Regardless of how you classify FDR, Miller is suggesting (and I believe her) that Molyneux may have been swept up into FreeDomain Radio as much as any of his True Believers. The most ardent first member of the “community” is probably Molyneux himself.

And Alice Miller remains one of his most powerful tools.

Click below to e-mail or DIGG, etc., this article! As always, I welcome your comments!

This is where it all begins.

This article will prove to you the essential truth about FreeDomainRadio.

In the shortest possible terms, FDR is based on this:

• People reject anarcho-capitalism for psychological reasons.
• Their psychology is messed up because they were victimized by their parents.
• Nearly all parents are child abusers.

In a nutshell, that’s it. That is what FDR stands for.

As proof, I submit the following little-known essay written by Molyneux. I don’t even need to analyze it since the meaning is crystal clear.

Anyone who still thinks–after reading what follows–that FreeDomain Radio is not about discarding parents and family can only be delusional.

Before Molyneux created the profit-generating enterprise known as FreeDomain Radio, before the pressure from the media and public exposure began forcing him to use wordplay to avoid revealing the truth, he was simply Stefan Molyneux, philosopher.

He had a rock-solid foundational belief–the three points I listed above–which he still maintains today. He wrote essays about it, for example: Are People Just Stupid? In the essay, Molyneux tries to answer the question, “Why on earth are people so blind to the tyrannies that rule them?” By “tyranny,” he means any form of government. Let’s be clear–I’m not criticizing anarcho-capitalism itself; there are too many brilliant arguments in favor of it. I’m focusing on Molyneux’s belief that if you aren’t an anarcho-capitalist, it’s because your parents abused you.

It’s an important essay. It’s Molyneux unplugged. Molyneux unguarded. You don’t have to use any logic or decipher any slippery obfuscation. It’s also important because Molyneux claims in the essay that he and his wife (who runs a family therapy clinic, of all things) believe the same thing. In fact, he says, she partly inspired it.

You can read the whole thing, but the essence is in the excerpt below. All of what is FreeDomain Radio today is built on this belief.

Therapists generally consider that a patient who is terminating a multitude of long-term relationships is acting in an impulsive and self-destructive manner. In particular, breaking off relationships with family members is considered only a last resort, usually reserved for physically abusive parents or spouses. Everything else is supposed to be ‘worked out.’

Of course, quite the opposite is true. Of all the relationships in your life, your relationship with your parents and siblings is by far the most likely to be completely screwed up. Not only that, but you also have absolutely no power to improve these relationships.

Harsh? Not at all. Merely logical.

When raising children, parents have absolutely no idea what they’re doing. Why should children obey them? Because parents are right? Hell no – ask parents why they hold their beliefs, they don’t have a clue. How could they? The last competent philosopher was probably John Locke, over three hundred years ago. The general social stream of ideas is just muck and confusion, designed by evil people to baffle and paralyze any good souls that accidentally emerge from the sick swamps of modern thought.

Average parents can no more reinvent morality from scratch than they can build a Space Shuttle in their backyards. Still, they have to get their children to obey them – how do they do it?

Oh, the usual suspects. Guilt, shame, withdrawal, criticism, bribery, bullying, manipulation – the usual crap that has passed for parenting throughout history. Guilt, shame and bullying always rush to fill the void when logical morality loses favour, because children must be taught, and if no carrots are to be found, sticks will always just have to do.

So face it: your parents were bullies, or weak curriers of favour, or manipulative emotional infants themselves. You have no respect for them, for respect requires courage, and courage requires logical morality. You do not love them, since love demands virtue, and manipulating children into blind obedience is not at all virtuous. There are only a few possible responses to modern parents:

- Contempt
- Indifference
- Boredom
- Hatred
- Empty conformity

These are usually mixed into an over-stimulating frappe of conflicting emotions, leaving family gatherings fraught with tension, alienation, dissociation and emptiness.

You are told to repair things with your parents, but that is an impossible task – a complete waste of time that will also make you crazy. Since they hurt you when you were young, you cannot fix the relationship. To make the point with an extreme example, if you are raped by a man, you cannot cure him of his desire to rape. Maybe someone else can, but you cannot. Since your parents bullied or bribed you into blind obedience, you cannot help them become better people. Maybe someone else can. A therapist perhaps. But not you. You have no hope, since their guilt about how they treated you will always muck up any attempt at honest communication.

And really, it is impossible to forgive someone who has bullied a child. Forgiveness is for repairable events, like being distracted or breaking a vase. A bad childhood cannot be repaired or returned intact. Where restitution is impossible, forgiveness is impossible. Don’t even try.

Does this sound too radical? Do you think it extreme for me to say that almost all parents are horribly bad? Perhaps it is. However, if you look at the state of the world – the general blindness and the slow death of our liberties – the challenge you take on by disagreeing with me is this: if it’s not the parents, what is it?

Either the world is not sick, or parents are. Because, as my wife says, it all starts with the family. If you want to perform the greatest service for political liberty, all you have to do is turf all of your unsatisfying relationships. Parents, siblings, spouse, it doesn’t matter.

Got it? All parents bad. Siblings, spouses. Whatever. Family relationships are bad and can’t be repaired. If you think you love them, you’re sick. They all have to go.

(Extra credit if you noticed the first glimmer of The Philosphy of (un)Forgiveness!)

Since the essay speaks for itself, I’ll leave you with two final thoughts.

Every day, young people come to FreeDomain Radio believing it is “safe haven” to discuss family problems. Tragically so–whether they knew it or not, any young person who has ever called Molyneux to seek objective advice on his or her parents received counseling by a man who sincerely believes anyone’s best solution is to “turf” their family.

Second, I ask you to consider this. Why is it a little-known essay? You can clearly see it is his foundational exposition. So why isn’t it on the front page at FDR? Why isn’t it the first thing you see? Why isn’t every new member told to read the essay before posting? Why is it highly likely that first time you’ve seen or heard of this essay is on here on FDRliberated even though the entire structure of FDR is based upon it?

I’ll leave those questions with you.

Click below to e-mail or DIGG, etc., this article! As always, I welcome your comments!

This is Part 2 of my “Foundation” series about FreeDomain Radio.

Part 1, The Foundation of FDR, talked about the essential “idea” of FDR (virtually all parents are bullies). This article is about how that idea became an enterprise.

Even though some outside observers immediately understand the goal of FDR—to help separate members from their families, most new members are unaware of it. Surprisingly, however, Molyneux has at times been very transparent about stating his purpose. You just have to dig a little to find it.

So, without further preamble, here we go.

In 2005, Stefan Molyneux’s popularity was growing, although slowly, as a teacher and explainer of anarcho-capitalist ideas. He had written some essays and had a growing audience of people listening to his FDR podcasts.

Podcasts were and remain the perfect forum for Molyneux—he’s an engaging speaker with a convincing style borne of years of training in acting and public debate. So even when Molyneux’s logic fails (which it sometimes does), his delivery sounds so right.

Molyneux’s popularity based on those two outlets would make most philosophers deliriously happy. But over the next couple of years Molyneux went on to create something no philosopher before had—an on-line enterprise with a comprehensive forum, chatroom, skype conferences—all accessible based on the level of donations members were willing to make. He made modest attempts at advertising, including YouTube videos, all with the stated purpose of luring people to join his FreeDomain Radio enterprise.

He calls it a “community” when he’s among trusted followers, but “it’s just a Web site” when he’s criticized by outsiders.

The next step came when Molyneux began having “convos” with individual members, usually ending with a critique of their parents. He began recording and releasing these conversations in his series of podcasts.

In Molyneux’s community, it seemed to make perfect sense to his 20-something (and occasionally younger) members that a 40+ year-old-man (who claimed only to be a philosopher) would talk to them individually about their problems with parents and family. Molyneux claims the conversations aren’t therapy, although the parental critiques are universally caustic, riddled with psychological observations, and sometimes mention a word coined by Molyneux and his wife—defooing.

What was it that took Molyneux from libertarian essayist to the leader of a for-profit enterprise that has upended so many families?

It was all part of a plan.

The absolute truth

Molyneux’s own words show that FreeDomain Radio was an idea developed by Stefan and his wife, Christina, to pry young adults away from their belief in the assumed virtue of their parents. In January 2007, Molyneux released Podcast #589 (Cracking the Family). In it, Molyneux explains:

7:42 It was through the suggestions of my wife that I really began to feel that I had something new and unique to offer and, believe it or not, this is all related to this initial question of children of parental obligations and fundamentally the great challenge of how to reach the kiddies, how to reach the children and the challenges of all of this.

What exactly was “new and unique?” Molyneux believed he had a way “to reach the kiddies.” He stayed current on internet slang. He stayed current with music that 20-somethings were listening to. He was a gamer and would sometimes play on-line with his members. He could be accepted by them as a peer and leader at the same time.

And his main point of personal connection with his followers would be FreeDomain Radio.

Now let’s recap what he means by “this initial question of children of parental obligations.” In the stated views of Molyneux and his wife, it is people’s blind belief in the “inherent value” of family that prepares them for subjugation to religion and ultimately the state.

This is a challenging idea, but certainly not destructive. Molyneux has said that he doesn’t believe we should assume that a family has “inherent virtue” simply because it exists. He believes that “all relationships are voluntary.” And what’s wrong with rejecting the idea that you must stay in a relationship that is bad for you, anyway? To be clear, I agree with him on that point.

So, in Molyneux’s own words, FreeDomain Radio is specifically designed to target “the kiddies” at the most beneficial age, when they are young adults ready to leave home but not yet established in the same “destructive” lifestyles as their parents.

But there’s a problem. Listen to Molyneux long enough and you begin to realize that Molyneux’s disdain of parents goes far deeper than “inherent” virtue. Molyneux and his wife actually doubt the actual virtue of all parents. It’s one thing to say you should examine your parents with an open mind; quite another to engage in relentless, systematic “proof” of their evil.

What turned Molyneux’s good idea sour? It has to do with the remainder of his philosophy. Molyneux is an absolutist in his theories about love, virtue, relationships, and family. It doesn’t take long to realize that to him there is no difference between inherent and actual. Which is why he is on the record as saying nearly all parents are “horribly bad.” His absolutist views lead him there. So, if you’re running a community targeting young people and you already believe that all relationships are voluntary and your logic tells you that nearly all parental relationships are bad–guess what kind of message you’ll deliver to the “kiddies” once you’ve reached them?

And FDR was the delivery system.

The absolute truth

What do I mean when I say “Molyneux is an absolutist”? Molyneux clearly states that all his relationship ideas are derived from “first principles.” As a result, there is no possible room for equivocation. Molyneux has frequently published and written about the “corruption” that occurs from associating with statists or people of faith. Typically, he couches his arguments in very careful rhetoric so that casual readers/listeners don’t immediately connect the dots. But every once in a while he lays it all out. When a new FDR member named Tyler asked if–in Molyneux’s view–he could have a loving relationship with his Christian parents, Molyneux immediately responded with:

I do have a few problems with Christians, since their book – OT and NT – tells them that it is moral to murder me…

So to me, Christians look sort of like the KKK does to a black person, if that makes any sense.

I’m not saying that your parents want to kill me of course, but that’s the club they support…

When Tyler responded that his parents were typical loving parents, Molyneux responded:

…I do apologize once more for being so blunt, but this is a site devoted to rational philosophy and ethics, and I was faced in particular with the following proposition from you:

1. My parents are happy, positive and loving people.

2. My parents are Christians.

3. Christianity is an irrational and superstitious belief system that commands the murder of others.

4. Therefore it is possible to be both happy, positive and loving, and subscribe to an irrational belief system that advocates murder, rape and genocide.

Of course, if your parents do not subscribe to any of the violence and evil in the Bible, then they are not Christians of course — if they do, then they are not moral, as I’m sure you would agree.

It’s nothing personal against your parents, of course, but as a philosopher, it is very important for me to resolve these contradictions in some manner.

My approach has always been that reason = virtue = happiness – if irrationality is placed at the beginning of that equation, I cannot see how you can get virtue and happiness out the other end.

That just didn’t make sense to Tyler, who was close to his parents (even though he didn’t share their beliefs). He continued to press the issue and was quickly banned from FDR.

So, we’re not talking about abusive, demeaning, manipulative parents above. Just ones who happen to believe in religion. Molyneux’s argument against people who believe in the state is the same. They advocate violence against him, therefore there is no way to get virtue and happiness from a relationship with them, either.

Another example. The following passage is his reply to a recent question “Does Stef advocate dissociating with statists and theists?”

I do think that it is important to talk to a statist patiently and with curiosity, and help him to understand that when he wishes to use government to achieve his ends, he is advocating the initiation of force against you.

In the same way, a Christian or Jew or Muslim all worship the morals in a holy book that commands death to unbelievers, promotes slavery and rape and other heinous crimes.

If people are willing to reject the use of violence in dealing with others, I think that is wonderful!

I don’t think that it is particularly honorable to remain ‘friends’ with someone who is unwilling to renounce the use of violence against you, but that is everyone’s decision to make of course…

You have to read this carefully because Molyneux is using slippery rhetoric to throw one by you. Once you examine it, however, the meaning is clear. The “patient and curious” conversation you are supposed to have must end with your friends renouncing religion and the state. You could remain friends with them but then you would be, at minimum, dishonorable in Molyneux’s eyes. When he says above: “If people are willing to reject the use of violence in dealing with others, I think that is wonderful!” He means “if people are willing to reject their beliefs in religion or the state.” If not, then they believe in violence. Against him.

Of course, nearly all of the parents in the world today believe in some kind of state and/or some kind of Higher Power. From the passages above, it is an inescapable conclusion that he believes nearly all parents abuse their children, if not physically, then morally and intellectually.

Well, you don’t even need to conclude that. He spells it all out in his book “On Truth–the Tyranny of Illusion”, where he describes the “virtue” of parents :

The moment you realize that your parents, priests, teachers, politicians-–your elders in general-–only used morality to control you, to subjugate you-–-as a tool of abuse-–-your life will never be the same again.

The terrifying fact that your elders knew the power of virtue, but used that power to control, corrupt, bully and exploit you, reveals the genuine sadism that lies at the core of culture-–-it reveals the awful “cult” in culture.

A doctor who fakes his credentials is bad enough-–-how would any sane person judge a doctor who studies the human body not to heal it, but to more effectively cause pain?

A fraud is still better than a sadist.

What can we say, then, about parents and other authority figures who know all there is to know about the power and effectiveness of using moral arguments to control the actions and thoughts of children-–who respect the power of virtue––and then use that power to destroy any capacity for moral integrity in their children?

As you can see, the frequently expressed notion that FDR members defoo “only abusive parents” is only more slippery wordplay since, by Molyneux’s definition, nearly all of them are. In fact, you can be a parent who finds Molyneux’s insights quite compelling, introduce your son to FreeDomain Radio, appear in an FDR podcast as a Molyneux-certified “good parent” and still be defooed! (That sad story is right here.)

Absolute FDR

Molyneux and his wife look forward to a world unencumbered by bloodthirsty governments, but believe that states will always exist as long as such “abusive” parents do. FDR is the fruit of their ideas on how to help achieve a peaceful, stateless planet–by directly assaulting the idea of family.

The entire Podcast #589 is an explanation of how FDR came to be, who it is targeted to, and what it is supposed to achieve. (On the FDR Web site, the title is listed as “Examining the Family.” If you download it, however, you will see that the original title was “Cracking the Family,” a little less scholarly sounding, but more accurate.) In this passage, Molyneux talks about how hard it is to give up on a belief in the state. In his view, as long as you believe your parents were good, you can’t escape it:

26:26 Obligation to the state is a mere shadow of obligation to the parents. You can take away obligation to the state in a conceptual way, but it’s always going to come back if you are obligated to your parents. Because your parents did a lot more for you than the state did–even mine.

If you get rid of the obligation to the parents, who is going to take an obligation to a state seriousy? Or to a god?

But if you don’t take away the obligation to the parents, those other things, though you may push them back, are going to roll back in like a fog down a hill. Inevitiably. Inexorably.

And that’s the only way I know to inject some air—to widen these cracks. To take a hack at the root—the virtue of parents.

That’s the only way that I know, that hasn’t been tried, that I think is the fundamental…it is the fundamental underpinning of hierarchical or hegemonic, top-down power.

Certainly, opposing the state doesn’t matter. And opposing the state if we’re still obligated to our parents still doesn’t make us a whole lot more free. Our parents our older; people in the state are usually older. “Parents” is not a chosen relationship; the state is not a chosen relationship. Parents do a whole bunch of stuff for you; the state does a whole bunch of stuff for you. It’s all…you can relate this to religion as well…it’s all the same nonsense, but, it really is fundamentally all wrapped up in the assumed virtue of the parents.

And we all know how frightening this is, and how horrifying it is, and how painful it is—to question and act against that assumed virtue. Those who are doing it are magnificent.

Are magnificent!…

…in their courage and in what they’re doing, what they’re actually doing, what they’re actually doing to make the world a more free place.

Ranting about Prison Planet is fun. Doesn’t do a damn thing. Writing articles in Mises.org–fun, interesting, stimulating. Won’t do a damn thing and hasn’t done a damn thing for the past 80 years since Mises first wrote.

But I think—I really do think—that working at the root of the family absolutes, the family corruption, that is the keystone to the archway, that is the lynchpin that will set us free.

(Someone needs to let the folks at Mises.org know that they are failures, so they can delete all that stuff and put up a celebrity gossip site or some other profitable enterprise.)

At any rate, here you see the entire premise. People are simply not going to accept the “truth” of anarcho-capitalism as long as they feel some sense of “obligation” to their parents. And the members of FDR who have given up that assumed virtue are “magnificent.” (He’s talking, of course, about the defooers.) But wait—they’ve done more than give up the notion of the assumed virtue of parents, haven’t they? They’ve completely discarded their entire families and friends. What makes that magnificent, when we’re only talking about concepts and ideals here?

Because in the absence of any ability to love these creatures we call parents—especially when we realize they knowingly used morality to abuse you, that they were genuinely sadistic—there is little other choice but to defoo. The defooers are the ones who have followed Molyneux’s absolute logic all the way home.

When love is reduced to logic, there is no middle ground.

Molyneux has boldly taken on the task of freeing the world from all of its hypocrisy, myths, and ethical quaqmires. In that same podcast, he explains that he wants to share with his listeners the joy he felt from defooing his family, in hopes they can experience it, too:

2:14 I really did wrack my my mind about how to approach this question of freeing the world. Because that’s what I wanted to spend my time doing; that’s what means the most to me. I have experienced both the depths of enslavement within my family and the heights, yay! Almost the giddy heights of freedom that I currently enjoy. And really feeling the difference between the two, and feeling just what a tiny person I was when I was enslaved. Just what a tiny, tiny, tiny person I was when I was enslaved and how that sad that is—for all of us, all of our potential and our intelligence and our creativity and our wonder, and the beauty of the world, the curiosity, the joy. All of it, pounded into a tiny little nugget of a black hole of nothing stored in this invisible core at the heart of emptiness.

And having felt, really, the difference between the two, it’s just a joy I wanted to share.

FDR simply wants to share the joy. Continuing the excerpt from “Cracking the Family” that I used earlier in this article:

7:42 It was through the suggestions of my wife that I really began to feel that I had something new and unique to offer and, believe it or not, this is all related to this initial question of children of parental obligations and fundamentally the great challenge of how to reach the kiddies, how to reach the children and the challenges of all of this.

And this is sort of something that I’ve tried to contribute that I think is sort of new–at least certainly new in terms of the stuff I’ve read. Not just about personal freedom, but I’m trying to slip a javelin into the black, obsidian biosphere of the family. And that is a very, very hard thing to do. That is a real jailbreak. That is a real Houdini trick.

The incredible thing about the family is that it is this absolute obsidian, perfect, diamond-hard biosphere through with almost nothing, almost no idea, almost nothing can pierce.

10:13 It became very clear to me that you cannot slip truth under the door of a family home and have it reach the kids. The parents will always intercept it; the parents will always attack it; the parents will always reject it.

13:48 …99.999% of the time, children live in a truly anarchic society, in a truly lawless society. The parent’s whim is law. And parents can make your life intolerable as a child without lifting a finger—they can withhold food and treats, they can lock you in your room, they can do lots of things that aren’t violent but make life intolerable and unbearable.

14:42 ….and reason and ethics and virtue and philosophy and truth and objectivity and science—you might as well be throwing leaves of grass at a tank.

15:13 …the family is the ultimate WMD.

But to whom should FDR be targeted? With whom do you share the truth that their family is the ultimate WMD? Children? Middle-aged folks? 30-somethings? Molyneux continues:

15:22 And so, I felt, when I was working out the approach to FreeDomain Radio, I felt that I could not speak to the children directly, it’s possible to speak to teenagers I think…

16:44 …and so, how do you do it? How do you do it. How do you break the habits of 100,000 years? How do you break the oldest dictatorship? And really, that’s why there’s been this defooing thing. And this is why—although the hardest thing other than defooing is talking to people about defooing—I think it’s something that, it’s important to do because people don’t even know that they can (laughs). They don’t even know it’s an option.

And, it’s going to be a slow–at least one generation. But, people who have defooed or at least have heard about defooing, they can at least know that their authority as parents is not an absolute.

I think the parents of those who have defooed have kept it even more a guilty secret than those who have defood—it’s a very hard thing to talk about. It’s like saying, “hey, here’s my porn collection, let me spread it out over the dinner table while we’re dining out in this fine restaurant.” It feels sometimes like that to talk about defooing with people.

But the moment that we do talk about defooing with people—yes, of course, there’ll be lots of horrified looks and people simply won’t want to talk to us a lot of times–but, there is something out there, which is that it can happen. And if it can happen, that’s a crack in the family.

That’s the only crack in the biosphere I’ve been can think of. Maybe there are others I’ve never been able to consider but…This defooing is the only way that I know to get a crack in the biosphere, widen this horrible cyst-like abcess of history—the family—and get some air into the biodome, get some leverage, right? Wedge a couple of crowbars through the cracks and see what can’t be worked out from the inside.

(Obviously, this podcast was recorded while FreeDomain Radio was under the radar–before the media articles, before family members began posting on Liberating Minds, and before some parents began to get organized and angry. Hmm…they certainly don’t seem to be acting like they have a guilty secret.)

The Molyneux plan is to stick the crowbar into the family to pry out young adults at the point of individuation. To reveal parent’s corruption to children any younger would be too cruel. To wait until they become established adults like their parents would be too late.

Great. But then there’s the next problem. How does one get young adults to realize the liberating truth that their entire lives have been subjugation to an amoral environment?

The Prying Game

Well, as you’ve seen from the snippet I quoted earlier, you can certainly get the ball rolling with “On Truth–the Tyranny of Illusion.” It is a primary recruitment tool for FDR: 72 pages of proof that your childhood was a prison. Another way is through gentle persuasion in the FDR chatroom. Here is how Molyneux coaches his followers to treat new members who enter the FDR chatroom (from his post “Notes about the chat room…”):

As a given, or as a bare minimum, we can thoroughly expect people who come here to honestly believe the following:
1. Some sort of God exists somewhere
2. The government is necessary for social order
3. The police and the military defend the rights of the citizens
4. Morality is relative
5. Truth is relative
6. Parents, reformers, Christians and so on all have “good intentions”
7. etc etc etc

Now, while we know these positions to be false, I do consider it entirely rude to flatly contradict those people who come to FDR with those positions. Is not their fault that they have been taught by public schools and statist universities; it’s not their fault that all of their irrational ideas have been constantly reinforced by corrupt culture – anymore that it was our fault to be ignorant and incorrect before we discovered the joys of philosophy.

If you want to help people discover the truth, just contradicting their honestly held opinions will not work, and will only drive them away. We need to respect people’s reasoning skills enough — and with good reason I believe — to accept that if we build a case from first principles, step by step, with positivity and good humor, they will at least be open to what we are saying.

Thus, if you do wish to debate ideas with a newcomer, remember that it is not about you, it’s not about you being right, and it is certainly not about you feeling some sort of superiority for having learned or been taught something about philosophy.

It is about effectively exciting other people about the truth. Remember when you first discovered Freedomain Radio, how my passion and excitement or philosophy ignited your desire for the truth…

Think about how much philosophy has brought to your life, the clarity, the certainty, the joy of truth,

Then, dedicate yourself to bringing that same joy to others – not by flatly contradicting them, or lecturing them, or being impatient with them, or feeling “superior” and “wiser,” or rolling your eyes – but by being curious, persistent, and entirely focused on their enjoyment of the conversation.

I have been dropping into the chat window for the last week or so as a guest, just to see how I am treated — I will continue to do that, as a quality control measure. If I am treated with rudeness or abruptness or condescension, I will not be happy, because that completely interferes with and undermines my goals with this site, and what I have dedicated my life to, which is to spread the joy and power off philosophy to as many people as I can before I die.

If I find that people in the chat room are persistently interfering with my goals, I will ask them to take a break From the chat room until they figure out how they can approach people positively.

Thanks so much!

Prying them loose is a matter of slow persuasion. As Molyneux says here, he expects his followers (under threat of banning them from the chatroom) to slowly and carefully convince new members that their parents and others do not have the best intentions (in the same way he did to his followers). And he’ll be watching from the wings to make sure they do.

One of Molyneux’s followers described his ability to convince new members’ of his beliefs as “ninja-like elegance.” The reason that the Tyler thread quoted previously stands out is because it is one in which Molyneux is uncharacteristically blunt, to the point that even some of his followers at the time (some of whom have since left FDR), questioned his tactics. Molyneux was offended at the challenges and, on the 5th page in the thread, declined to participate any further in the conversation.

That “ninja-like elegance” is the slow persuasion of FDR members that can often happen while they are still living at home, among family members who are unaware of their growing involvement with FDR. When the defoo happens, it happens suddenly–sometimes without warning or explanation. But the persuasion has occurred over months.

For example, when the media was introduced to Tom through the UK Guardian, there was a brief flurry of debate whether Tom fled a home of nonstop abuse or if he was persuaded to by Molyneux. Months before Tom defooed, he stated the following in his very first post on FDR:

Since first listening to the FDR podcasts in the summer, I have unearthed a great deal of understanding about my parents. I have recently realised a few clues regarding my current personality and the choices i have made in the past to build up a picture of how i was raised as a child.

Long before the newspaper articles and the famous podcast–the final persuasion—in which Molyneux compared Tom to a “rape victim” and revealed to him that he was no more than “a vessel for his parents to vomit their feelings into,” Tom spent months listening to podcasts and engaging in FDR conversation that encouraged him to carefully sift through his past like an archeologist, until he could link every aspect of his personality that he disdained and every choice he regretted to some parental influence. When Catholics seek absolution, they go to confession. FreeDomainers apparently blame their parents and defoo.

FDR members would claim that Tom was simply “waking up” to his situation.

I think it was all part of the prying game.

And now, a word from reality

Astoundingly….gob-smackingly….this all seems to make sense to Molyneux and his followers. As if FreeDomain Radio invented teenage rebellion and is the sole province where it exists. As if young adults who “crack out” of their families to live their own lives and ideals are as rare as blue diamonds.

Which is, of course, a profoundly ridiculous notion. The process of individuation naturally includes examining the values of one’s parents and deciding which values you want to share and which should be set aside. It’s at the heart of virtually every “coming of age” story I’ve ever read or seen. I think that’s all as it should be, including the difficult internal conflict that happens at the very age Molyneux targets.

The idea that Molyneux promulgates—that all young adults (except the blessed few who share the joy of FreeDomain Radio) are automatons who unquestioningly repeat the lives of their parents is utterly without merit. Challenging parent’s values occupies about 90% of a young adult’s time!

Like nearly everyone, I think some of my parents’ values are dead wrong. There are values I admire. There are things they did raising me that I have vowed never to repeat with any kids I might have. There are even a couple things they did that I’m still really, really pissed about. There are other things I hope I can do nearly as well as they did. I’m satisfied with the relationship I now have with them, despite the fact they “disapprove” of some choices I’ve made.

The reality—the true “guilty secret”—is that despite Molyneux’s grandiose goal, FDR doesn’t create dissatisfaction with parents. It simply capitalizes on it.

A few more concluding observations:

• The biggest blind spot in Molyneux’s logic is he pretends that all of our worldviews crawled out of the primordial swamp along with humanity, and he is the lone heretic. Of course not. Every great idea in the world today began as a heresy. None of them required “Cracking the Family,” including the evil Christianity (which destroyed a few states of its own)—that Molyneux contends against.

  When these “heresies” became “great ideas” that changed states and societies, it was because the ideas captured people’s imaginations and they were delivered by spokespersons who captured people’s attention. Molyneux’s message was not getting out, so he has blamed all of the families around the world. If I were troubleshooting the problem, before I’d blame the world, I’d take a good look at the messenger. Just my opinion.

• Also, if Molyneux wants to bring freedom to the world, as he states in “Cracking the Family,” I haven’t figured out how that is achieved by creating an insular community that cannot associate with the rest of the corrupt world. He started FDR because his truth wasn’t being adopted quickly enough. Personally, I’d guess that not being able to associate with outsiders would tend to slow things up a bit more, wouldn’t it? That whole John Galt thing is a romantic notion that only works in Ayn Rand novels.

  Doubtless there is a podcast that addresses this problem, but I haven’t found it yet.

• Finally, this part of Molyneux’s logic escapes me entirely. His goal is to solve the problem of a lack of people accepting the idea of anarcho-capitalism. As I understand his rationale, it’s something like, “wow, getting this difficult notion across is really hard. How can I make it easier? I know, I’ll start by destroying another notion that is so deeply ingrained that it’s probably part of human DNA. That should be much easier.” What logic would conclude that the best way to achieve a difficult task is select a nearly impossible one as a first step? To me, that’s like saying “I know I can prove that air travel is safe, but first I must learn to levitate.” I’m not nearly as brilliant as Molyneux, but that one completely escapes me.

  (After I initially posted this article, several people pointed out that since Molyneux’s stated notion that there is no “inherent virtue” in families is actually quite supportable, one could argue that Molyneux’s logic stated above does make sense. Getting young adults (or anyone for that matter) to re-examine their families from a voluntary perspective isn’t necessarily impossible and can only be a good thing. But, again, I’m referring to the belief Molyneux keeps carefully hidden–a blanket belief that families are inherently bad. In an FDR podcast that I’ll be discussing in a future article, Molyneux states “Let’s just say that you had a bad family because you, say, have a pulse…” And he means it. If you came from a family, it was a bad one. I don’t think that notion has any merit at all and he has no chance of getting traction on it. If he had simply stayed with the voluntary message, he would have been in safe harbor.)

That’s the purpose of FDR in a nutshell. If it doesn’t make sense, it’s because you weren’t supposed to hear it in a nutshell. These things take time.

The FreeDomain Radio forum is the crowbar designed to pry you away from your false belief that your statist/religious friends and family have good intentions, so that you can more freely embrace anarcho-capitalism. After that, you should literally separate from friends and family, unless of course, you want to live a dishonorable life. After enough time, persuasion, and podcasts, Molyneux hopes you’ll start to think it makes sense after all.

Given the absolutist logic that Molyneux applies to relationships, how could you rationally defend yourself having a loving relationship with people who want you dead?

But you don’t have to answer that now. It’s not like me to pry.

Don’t forget to click below if you feel like e-mailing or DIGGing this article and, as always, I welcome your comments!