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The show you're about to listen to that you've just downloaded was kind of an interesting show, a different show. And the feedback from it, a lot of people hated it and very violent in their feedback about how it was just a terrible show. So that's fine. I'm going to leave it here as an existent show for you.

But I thought it might be helpful at least. Maybe I wasn't clear when introducing it. Maybe I should have done it differently. If you want to hear me go back and forth on whatever, listen to episode 183 and you'll hear me kind of questioning. Maybe I don't know if I did it effectively or not.

But just a quick intro for you. The number one question I'm trying to answer is I'm trying to demonstrate the long ranging impact of certain worldviews and certain long ranging goals and the impact on society. There are many things that are happening in modern life that are part of just a long term plan.

And oftentimes, however, and a lot of them are related to finance, and I want to get into a lot of those financial issues. But the first question that you have to face with financial issues is how on earth do I actually figure out what's going on? The problem is most of the long range things have gone far beyond my lifetime, my own lifetime.

And so it's hard for me to look at a financial issue and say, "Well, here's what's happened in 1931 and here's how that's played out over the last almost 100 years." It's hard for me. There are a bunch of financial things that I could do. And it's hard to see because the financial stuff is boring, it's impenetrable, you can never actually see it unless you look carefully for the clues.

So I wanted to convey this thought to you. And as I thought about it, I thought, "Why don't I use social issues?" Because social issues are not generally based upon the analysis of a pie chart or the analysis of a balance sheet of a country or the analysis of a trade deal.

All that stuff has detailed numbers and most people put them to sleep. Social issues are things that we all have opinions on and that we all look at and say, "Ah, here, I know what's going on," or "Here's what I think should happen." Now, most of us, we all disagree with each other, but the point is social issues happen.

And you're going to hear me in this show talk about social issues. And I guess what was frustrating to me is I tried to present this in the most straightforward way possible, and still, most people hated it. But I tried to do this fairly and as objectively as I could.

So I read an extensive amount from some specific documents. And my purpose in reading these documents was, A, to fairly present the position, since I'm generally in opposition to much of the position, trying to fairly present it, trying to present it to you in a way that didn't involve me just twisting it and pulling things out of context.

And I said, "Well, I'll do this in a straightforward way." And then to just simply give you some information so that you can look in the day and time in which we live and see what's happening and see how it's happening. Because in decades to come, we've got a lot of work to do with specific financial things.

Now, the almost universal feedback from this show is that it just didn't do its job and made more people angry than I guess that it helped. So I guess it was a failure from that perspective. But if you listen through those years, my hope is that you'll at least give it a shot and you'll learn something.

Feel free to disagree with me. If you want to hear some more additional comment from me, listen to 183 after the show before you get mad and write me an email. But feel free to disagree with me. That's no big deal. I just want you to be aware of some information that for me was incredibly helpful.

And as you'll hear that develop in this show. The only other comment I make real quick is simply that this show I've marked it as explicit because A, it deals with very adult topics. It deals with very unpleasant topics that we don't generally like to talk about. These are not topics that are mainstream in American society and American discourse.

They're things that are distasteful to most of us. And we don't quite know how to deal with them. We don't quite know how to deal with the history and we don't quite know how to deal with the future. We're all caught in this question of how do we integrate these things in these facts of life and what's right and what's wrong.

And this is very emotionally charged. You'll also hear some words that are quite ugly. Just to be clear, because I thought it was clear, they're not my words. I'm just reading from specific documents from a specific position point. So don't get mad at me about the words that are used.

I decided that it was more important for me not to try to censor the documents that I'm reading from but rather just to present them without comment in a fair and objective way. So there's your warning. Enjoy the show. I hope you gain from it. If you feel frustrated by it, fine.

Feel free to skip it. It doesn't matter. I mean, it does matter. I wouldn't have done it if I didn't think it mattered. But there's the warning to it. So hopefully, you'll have a better listening experience than the majority of the people who heard it when it first came out.

Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you soon. Do you gain direct monetary and other value to your life from radical personal finance? Would you like to continue to be able to listen to the show without the interruption of advertisements? If so, I'd ask you to consider going to radicalpersonalfinance.com/patron and supporting the show directly.

I've created a number of benefit packages to incentivize you to do so. All the details can be found at radicalpersonalfinance.com/patron. Today, let's talk about the intersection of politics, religion, philosophy, and finance. And here's the case I'm going to make to you. We actually need more politics, religion, philosophy, and ethics in finance, not less.

Give me a shot and let's see if you agree with me at the end of today's show. Welcome to the Radical Personal Finance Podcast. My name is Joshua Sheets, and I'm your host. Today, I bring you episode 181. And that's quite a provocative statement, why we need more politics, religion, and philosophy in finance.

It goes directly against some of the feedback that I hear on the show. But I'll bet if you give me some time today, I might be able to convince you of my point. I'll be interested to hear what you say. I like to pay careful attention to the reviews that I get on the show.

And I get some reviews publicly on the iTunes reviews. And thank you for those of you who leave those. I get some reviews in other places on the web. And thank you to those of you who leave reviews there. In fact, if you haven't done that, please do that.

That means a lot. It helps a lot. It's not the only thing that makes a difference in public rankings, but it is a big thing that makes a difference in public rankings, which is why you'll often hear podcasters request those reviews. And thank you for those of you who do it.

Some of you might want to wait until after hearing today's show, so you can leave me a nasty review, which that's fine, too. But I like to read those reviews. And I also pay attention to a lot of the email feedback that I get from listeners, email feedback, social media feedback, etc.

And one of the themes that I sometimes hear is that, "Well, I like Joshua's stuff. I like his content, but he gets into politics a little bit too much." And this can be a real double-edged sword. If I were a beautiful, brilliant marketer, I would actually focus on always being political or always being specialized.

And the reason for that is it allows a controversy is good for selling ideas and selling things. And then it brings around you the people who are kind of the true believers, so to speak. This is why you have such polarized opinions oftentimes in national media. People aren't looking for consensus or ways to work together.

They're looking to be intentionally offensive. Because attention, all attention is good attention. That's often what you see in today's modern world. This is why you see many times celebrities will just be so off the wall, just so extreme with their personalities. And instead of acting like a normal person, they just take on this extreme persona, well, extreme selves in so many ways.

Well, I actually don't do that myself, partly because I don't like controversy. I'm an introvert and I'm a peace lover. I really like to just get along with people and not, you know, I don't like to be offensive. I don't like to be difficult. I personally am far happier just, you know, getting along with everyone going with the flow.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, whatever, I find myself in the position of sometimes taking stands against certain things that I believe are wrong. And I also believe that there comes a time in your life when you've got to take a stand for what's right. So much evil has happened throughout history when people haven't taken a stand for what's right.

Sometimes that comes in as politics, sometimes that comes in as religion, sometimes that comes in as ethics. And I've just simply made the commitment to myself that I wasn't going to stand aside and go with the flow. I was going to just simply be me. And those of you who know me or who have ever had the chance to talk to me, I mean, any of you listen to the show at this point know who I am.

I'm very clear. I'm the same person all the time, or at least I try to be. Maybe sometimes I make mistakes, but it's important to me to be a consistent person. So the question comes into when you bring in politics, do I bring it in too much? So some of the reviews that I have gotten from time to time on iTunes say, you know, "I like Joshua, but he gets into politics too much," which is a fair review.

A public forum like that is your opportunity as a listener to leave a review of any kind that you like. What surprises me, I haven't gotten the review of too much religion. And since I often talk about Christianity, I often talk about biblical principles, I often talk about those types of things, that surprises me, because usually I would expect more negative feedback on religion.

We in our modern U.S. American culture are more okay with talking about politics than we are with talking about religion. But I'm sure those reviews will come, and that's fine. But I haven't gotten many comments about that, but I got a lot of comments about politics. And I've been wanting to do this show for a little while, and I have some questions that I'll actually be – one of them I'll be covering on tomorrow's show – that bring out the need for me to release this episode as a standalone episode.

Because here's my conviction. You cannot disconnect politics, religion, or philosophy from your finances. It is not possible to do. Simply not possible to do. And I'm going to make that case and I'm going to describe to you my reasons, but it's not possible to do. You might like to blunder along thinking that, "Well, I can just talk about finance and not talk about politics and religion and philosophy," but it's not possible.

Our lives are fully integrated in every way. It's not possible. Let me give you a few examples. All of you who are listening to this show are in some way or another working. You're paying taxes. And your taxes are funding the state. Some of you, that's the United States of America.

Some of you, that is the state of Germany or the state of England or Great Britain or the state of Australia. But you're working and you're paying taxes and your taxes are funding the state. And you have some type of relationship with the state. Perhaps you are poor and so you are a recipient of the state.

Perhaps you are not poor and so you're a donor to the state. Well, what that actually means if you're a recipient of the state is you're not a recipient of the state. There's no such thing as a state. There's just your fellow citizens. And so what happens is a man with a badge and a gun comes and proverbially speaking, sticks that gun in the ribs of a lot of your fellow citizens and says, "Give us your money." Then that man decides that the money is going to come to you.

That's what tax is. So it's either coming to you or coming from you, but that's how it works. So you can't be disconnected with that system. You're either paying in or you're getting money out. And politics influence tax and many other aspects of life. I'm going to just go with tax for a moment and just show a couple of examples, but we'll talk about this and how this affects every area of life.

In my state, the state of Florida, yesterday, Monday, April 20 was Tax Freedom Day. Nationally, it's April 24th, this Friday. April 24th is Tax Freedom Day. What that means is that according to the Tax Foundation, which I will put a link to their article on this topic in the show notes, but according to the Tax Foundation on a national basis from January 1 to April 24 in the United States of America, you have been working for this first four months to pay your taxes.

So after this Friday, for the rest of the year now, you can finally go ahead and put a little bit of money into your pocket. And you can go ahead and start to put a little bit of money into your own personal support, the food that you eat, the clothing that your family needs, the housing to cover your head.

And then perhaps you might be able to save a little bit of it. Now, I hope that you listening to the show that your Tax Freedom Day was much sooner than April 24. I hope that I've been able to teach you enough to be able to move that day up substantially.

But on a national basis, that's the calculation. So just think about that for a moment. Think back to the first of January and how much you've worked since then. Where were you on New Year's Day 2015? Or where were you whenever you're listening to this podcast? And think about the last four months of work, almost five months.

The last months of work have been used purely to pay various taxes. As a nation in the United States of America, we collectively pay more for taxes than we do on food, clothing, and housing combined. In some other nations where listeners are listening to the show, it's far higher.

The US tax burden is, depending on your place in society, is actually relatively low on an international scale. Now, here's what's even worse. According to the Tax Foundation, if you include federal borrowing in the Tax Freedom Day number to represent future taxes owed that simply are being borrowed for, then instead of April 24 being your Tax Freedom Day, that goes out to May 8 of borrowing.

Now, they at the Tax Foundation don't include these numbers, but I say if we included the cost of the unfunded liabilities of the federal social programs of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, my guess is that you would probably not be earning any money for yourself after Uncle Sam extracts his pound of flesh from your side.

Now, I don't know what the actual number is on that. That's just a guess. But when you compare the current $18.2 trillion of official debt outstanding with the over $200 trillion of unfunded costs of these programs, then you'll see the long-term problem. So politics matter. They matter big time.

So I can teach you individually how to avoid some of that tax burden. I can also teach you how to evade that tax burden. But we focus primarily on this show about avoiding the tax burden. But you also need to look at the core problem and say, "What is it in our society which allows this to happen?" Because you see, depending on your system of ethics or your system of philosophy or your system of religion or essentially your worldview, you should or should not be doing anything that I teach you.

Think about it. If you see paying tax as something that's a moral social good and you're avoiding paying extra tax when you could pay less, maybe you're compromising your system of ethics. Personally, I'm not compromising mine because I view the majority of taxation as theft. And so I'm minimizing the theft from my pocket and from your pocket.

I'm sticking up for you and for me. But many people don't see taxation as theft. Now, I would need to qualify that statement. I'm not going to go into detail there because the discussion is what level of taxation is theft. Big conversation, not for today. But you should think through that for yourself and develop a worldview on that issue.

I get personally, I'm sure quite shocking to those of you who regularly listen to the show, but I get very frustrated when people try to say, "Well, I'm going to go ahead and increase taxes on everybody else, but I haven't voluntarily paid any extra for mine." I think that in the same way that the political campaigns are waged to say to a presidential nominee or whomever, "Release your tax returns." I think anytime anybody is making a statement of saying, "We should provide an additional level of taxation," then we should ask for that person to demonstrate their voluntary contributions to the US Treasury.

But that goes back to my worldview and my system of ethics, and that's extremely unpopular. Now, what's interesting is let's just stick with the core aspects of the core CFP board five financial planning areas. And let's think about how a system of ethics and a system and a philosophy or a religion would play a role in each of these areas.

What about insurance planning? With insurance planning, let's talk about life insurance. I've been doing this life insurance series. I maintain that you have a moral obligation to care for your family, and one effective way to do that is through the use of insurance products. That's my personal opinion at the moment.

But what if your worldview doesn't place any particular emphasis on the role of the family? What if instead your worldview places an emphasis on the role of society and you say, "Well, it's not my responsibility to provide for my family. Rather, it's society's responsibility to provide for my family." Incidentally, this is exactly what the US American Society has decided.

Although you're encouraged to buy life insurance, theoretically, the Social Security Administration has a widows and orphans benefit where if you have attained a currently or fully insured status with the Social Security Administration and you die, your qualifying widows and qualifying orphans will receive money from the state. That's money that all of your fellow citizens have chipped in and are continuing to pay in to provide and support your family.

What about something like insurance, other aspects of insurance, health insurance? In the US, there was a major debate over the last few years about health insurance and about the role that health insurance has and it's deemed to be a societal need. The United Nations deems it a fundamental human right.

Is that true? What about if we get into the aspects of investing? Are you investing in a way that is in line with your morality and your ethics and your general philosophy? I don't think I've mentioned this on the show but oddly, I've hinted at it in months past when I was wrestling with the decision but I no longer, at this moment anyway, I no longer own any publicly traded securities.

The reason that I no longer own any publicly traded securities is I decided that I cannot stand to have blood money in my account. Since the predominant way that in the past I have invested my money is through the use of mutual funds, I have no ability over that fund manager to choose and select their investments.

I'm simply not willing to stand by anymore and profit from the evil that many of these corporations are perpetrating on the world. I don't necessarily expect you to agree with my statement but I got to the point where I simply could not own and I could not profit from the activities of some of these corporations.

Many of the major corporations in the Fortune 500, the largest corporations in the United States of America are involved in what I consider to be pure evil. Although for – let's see. So I'm almost 30 and I started investing in mutual funds at 18. So for the past 12 years, that has not bothered me.

At this point, it has come to bother me and I can no longer do it. So I'm now in the process of formulating a new personal investment plan for my funds and my family's funds that will permit that. That will permit – that will allow for the moral issues that I have with many of the large corporations and their actions.

What about you? How are you investing your money? What about tax? We covered tax. What about estate planning? That's another area, a key area of planning for the CFP board's subject areas. The topic of estate planning, who says that you have the right to leave your money behind to the person to whom you desire to leave it to.

Why not have all assets that are remaining at the point of death confiscated? We do that to rich people. That's why we have estate taxes and I can share with you several books that would strongly advocate for an increasing level of federal estate taxes. The idea is we've got to keep the money out of the hands of large families and we've got to move the money into the society in general.

So that's the whole fundamental – and it's a moral argument, moral premise of why we need an egalitarian society. Now, I would maintain that it's not somebody else's responsibility what happens with your money when you die. That's due to my worldview. What's your view on that subject? You can't get away from having a view.

You have a view. Just the challenge is that most of us have not effectively articulated that viewpoint. You have to effectively articulate your viewpoint to understand what you believe. I'll skip the other areas of the CFP board's topic areas and I meant to mention at the beginning of the show – I am 18 minutes in.

This is going to be a long show and I fully expect that. But I'm going to deal with it in one individual episode that is comprehensive rather than breaking it apart. It's important that you get this as an overall theme. But this is going to be a long show.

If you look at the philosophy that's behind each of these things, you have to then look at what are the actions. So for example, the reason we need more politics is you start studying politics and you find that – well, wait a second. This politician is on one side saying we need to use taxes to extract more wealth from the rich.

But then you look and you realize that the fundamental tactic and tool used by the rich to control society is the use of a tax-exempt foundation and that all they need to do is make a 100% contribution to a tax-exempt foundation and they can continue to control the public discourse, continue to control policy from far beyond the grave.

Yet now it's completely done out of the tax space. I'll teach you how to do that and I'll expose that. I'm just briefly covering it today. You've got to see through and actually understand. Then you've got to take that and line it up with your worldview. Now, I'm a total amateur on all of these things.

I'm an amateur on worldviews. I'm an amateur on philosophy. I'm just an interested student and there may be things that I say in today's show that are simply wrong. Feel free to come by and correct me. I'd be happy to learn. But here's why – here's my philosophy that I have on the show, especially when questions are asked of me, which is usually where these topics come in.

I believe never answer a question that isn't asked of you. I've found in my lifetime that it's foolish for me to spend any time answering people's questions if they're not asking them. Very few people ask me in common life about anything related to financial planning. It might be surprising, but how many of you ask people that are knowledgeable in your life specific questions?

Very few people ask me and I never answer financial planning questions unless I'm asked. But when I'm asked a question, I believe always answer the actual question that's asked of you and answer it in a clear and direct manner. I think we should always answer the questions that are asked of us and we should actually focus on what is most effective.

We should point out when people are asking an unfocused question, are asking a question that won't actually solve their problem. An example would be this. "Joshua, what should I invest my 401(k) in?" That's usually a bad question because if I answered it directly and just said, "Well, you should invest your 401(k) in a broadly built portfolio of publicly traded companies.

Here are some mutual funds. Let me talk to you about expense ratios," I'm probably shortchanging the person. So that's why we back up to the fundamental question of why do you have a 401(k). What are your long-term financial goals? Where are you today? What are your overall best investment opportunities?

What is your overall plan to wealth? So I don't answer the question of what should I invest my 401(k) in because the times that I have answered the question, and I'll probably do it again against my own better judgment, then often the person blindly does what I say and they never actually achieve their goal.

They just have a little bit of money in their 401(k) and it may or may not be invested in an ideal manner, but it never achieves the goal of retirement and that's where most people are in our society. They're completely flat broke at 65 with maybe $30,000 piled up in a 401(k) that was intelligently invested, but they never sat down and actually built a retirement plan.

So many of you who are listening in this audience enjoy it when I clarify that on specific financial topics, but many people get upset at me when the topics go into politics or religion, but it's the same philosophy that I have in every area of life. Ask the question that's actually being asked and focus on the solution that actually makes the difference.

So, example, when I talk about college, it's not the idea that college is bad. The problem is the idea that college is simply not a magic ticket to the good life of your student. So the core idea that leads to wealth and worldly success is having a deep love of education and frankly learning to be an autodidact, a self-learner.

So we can cultivate that with college or without. So let's stop focusing on all the nonsense about the college argument that happens in our debate and focus on education. Well, wait a second. If you focus on education, then you got to back up and say, "Well, why do so many people who are going to college not actually care about education?" So then you got to break apart the schooling system as I've done on the show and all of a sudden you find out that the purpose of school has never been about education but about societal control and about indoctrination.

Huh. Well, now we can actually focus on something that's a little bit more effective and we can stop wasting time and years of focus and effort on schooling and we can focus on education. It's a radically different approach, but it's also more effective. So today I want to talk to you about worldview.

I want to ask you, what is your worldview? Now, this is not something that most people in modern US American society are accustomed to discussing. It's possible – I come from a biblical Christian worldview. That's the worldview that I've built for myself. But it's possible that maybe if you come from a religious background or from a Christian background, you might be slightly more accustomed to discussing it than some other people simply because you're used to being on the fringe of society.

So that's my experience. I'm comfortable being on the fringe of society. I'm comfortable with debate because most of the opinions and the viewpoints that I hold are in the vast minority of mainstream society. So I'm comfortable with it. So I always discuss worldview, but many people are not comfortable and they haven't searched out a worldview.

Now, what is a worldview? Here's the Wikipedia definition. "A comprehensive worldview is the fundamental cognitive orientation of an individual or society encompassing the entirety of the individual or society's knowledge and point of view. A worldview can include natural philosophy, fundamental, existential, and normative postulates or themes, values, emotions, and ethics." Basically, a worldview is how do you see the world?

What are the lenses that are on your face that when you look at a bit of data and look at a little bit of information, how do you see that? All worldviews are in the process of being developed, changed, modified, adapted. I'm constantly in the process of clarifying my own worldview, testing assumptions, throwing out things that are wrong.

There have been massive changes in my life over the past decade. Again, I'm almost 30. I wasn't born again as a Christian until I was in my junior year of college. That was when I was 20. So I basically had 10 years to try to build a consistent worldview that's based on biblical truth.

That's not an easy process. It requires you going through and looking at various beliefs that you have and testing them. It's certainly not over. It's just, I'm just getting started. But the process of going through and building and developing a worldview is incredibly important. You have to do it for yourself.

Now, I'm actually not going to talk much today about a biblical Christian worldview. That is the worldview that I hold to and maintain, and there are many reasons for some of which I've covered in the past shows, but it's the only one that I've found to be intellectually defensible.

So you'll consistently hear me reference it throughout the course of the show. But I'm not actually going to talk about it today, because that's what I talk about a lot of the other times. But I am going to give you a foil for it, what I often think about, that in my mind I can continually go back and forth and I compare a biblical Christian worldview with a secular humanist worldview.

So that's usually the comparison that you'll hear me describe. And most of you listening, my guess, is most of you hold to a worldview of secular humanism. Now, you may or may not have adopted this consciously, so I'm going to talk about it. Because once you understand the differences between these two worldviews, and there are many other worldviews, this is just for me, these are the two worldviews that I'm most familiar with, because we have the predominant worldview in the US American culture of secular humanism, and then my own worldview of biblical Christianity, and I'm not familiar with every single aspect.

I don't know how a Hindu, someone coming from a Hindu worldview, would say, "Well, my religion applies to the situation. I'm not an expert on that. It is not a major factor in my life around me. I'm not surrounded by Hindus. If I were, I would spend a lot more time focusing on understanding what the worldview is from that perspective." I don't think about Sufism.

I don't know any people who practice the Sufi religion, so I just don't think about it much. But I do think about secular humanism and biblical Christianity. So, I'll share with you a little bit, because if you understand the worldview of secular humanism, it will start to make sense.

You'll start to understand a lot more of the things that are happening in the world around us and in our society and culture at large. Let's start with the definition. According to Wikipedia, "The philosophy of secular humanism embraces human reason, ethics, and philosophical naturalism while specifically rejecting religious dogma, supernaturalism, and superstition as the basis of morality and decision-making.

Secular humanism posits that human beings are capable of being ethical and moral without religion or a god." One of the leading humanist organizations is called the American Humanist Association, and their motto is "Good without a God." Now, I'm going to read you the Humanist Manifesto from 1973. The first humanist manifesto that they published was actually in 1933, which is interesting, because if you trace the development of the secular humanist worldview, you find that it was substantially slowed by World War II.

So, they published their first manifesto in 1933, the second manifesto in 1973, and then a third one in 2003. The uniqueness of those dates is that there's 40 years in between. Now, the third one is actually the shortest, but I'm going to read you the second one, because once you understand what the Humanist Manifesto of 1973 says, then you'll be able to look at society at large, and you'll be able to look at the culture around you, and you'll be able to look at your daily newspaper or daily yahoo.com, wherever you intake your news, and you'll be able to understand what's happening in society around.

And I also want you to think about applying this as a system of ethics to financial questions, because this is the background of the system of ethics that is, for the most part, being applied to financial topics. I'll read this to you in its entirety. I may or may not comment.

It's going to take a little bit of time, but just think about this. And again, if you agree with this worldview, great. Hopefully, you've read this before. If you have this worldview, hopefully, you've read it. It's about as sad as, I mean, it's like, if you haven't read this, but you hold to a secular humanist worldview, that's about as sad as many Christians who, it's also sad, and it's very true, many Christians who say, "I'm a Christian and never bothered to open a Bible and see what the Bible actually says about what is Christianity." On all worldviews, there are bastardizations of the worldview and various interpretations, and some of them are worth arguing about, and some of them are just plain ignorant.

But if you don't agree with this worldview, then let me ask you why not. So I'll share this with you. Now, again, as I read this, I want you to hold three things in your mind. Number one, I'm reading you the Manifesto from 1973, not the one from 2003, which is shorter.

And the reason is I want you to see what has changed from 1973 until 2015 when this is being recorded. Number two, pay attention to the general themes of this, and then think about the general themes of the stories and the news and the articles and all of the debate happening in the world.

And number three, pay attention to its impact on finance, especially on personal finance. So here we go. First, in the best sense, there's a little bit of preamble, but this launches right into the actual text that is outlining the ideas. The best sense outlining the ideas. First, in the best sense, religion may inspire dedication to the highest ethical ideals.

The cultivation of moral devotion and creative imagination is an expression of genuine spiritual experience and aspiration. We believe, however, that traditional dogmatic or authoritarian religions that place revelation, God, ritual, or creed above human needs and experience do a disservice to the human species. Any account of nature should pass the tests of scientific evidence in our judgment.

The dogmas and myths of traditional religions do not do so. Even at this late date in human history, certain elementary facts based upon the critical use of scientific reason have to be restated. We find insufficient evidence for belief in the existence of a supernatural. It is either meaningless or irrelevant to the question of survival and fulfillment of the human race.

As non-theists, we begin with humans, not God. Nature, not deity. Nature may indeed be broader and deeper than we now know. Any new discoveries, however, will but enlarge our knowledge of the natural. Some humanists believe we should reinterpret traditional religions and reinvest them with meanings appropriate to the current situation.

Such redefinitions, however, often perpetuate old dependencies and escapisms. They easily become obscurantist, impeding the free use of the intellect. We need, instead, radically new human purposes and goals. We appreciate the need to preserve the best ethical teachings in the religious traditions of humankind, many of which we share in common.

But we reject those features of traditional religious morality that deny humans a full appreciation of their own potentialities and responsibilities. Traditional religions often offer solace to humans, but as often, they inhibit humans from helping themselves or experiencing their full potentialities. Such institutions, creeds, and rituals often impede the will to serve others.

Too often, traditional faiths encourage dependence rather than independence, obedience rather than affirmation, fear rather than courage. More recently, they have generated concerned social action, with many signs of relevance appearing in the wake of the "God is Dead" theologies. But we can discover no divine purpose or providence for the human species.

While there is much that we do not know, humans are responsible for what we are or will become. No deity will save us. We must save ourselves. Second, promises of immortal salvation or fear of eternal damnation are both illusory and harmful. They distract humans from present concerns, from self-actualization, and from rectifying social injustices.

Modern science discredits such historic concepts as the "ghost in the machine" and the "separable soul." Rather, science affirms that the human species is an emergence from natural evolutionary forces. As far as we know, the total personality is a function of the biological organism transacting in a social and cultural context.

There is no credible evidence that life survives the death of the body. We continue to exist in our progeny and in the way that our lives have influenced others in our culture. Traditional religions are surely not the only obstacles to human progress. Other ideologies also impede human advance. Some forms of political doctrine, for instance, function religiously, reflecting the worst features of orthodoxy and authoritarianism, especially when they sacrifice individuals on the altar of utopian promises.

Purely economic and political viewpoints, whether capitalist or communist, often function as religious and ideological dogma. Although humans undoubtedly need economic and political goals, they also need creative values by which to live. Ethics Third, we affirm that moral values derive their source from human experience. Ethics is autonomous and situational, needing no theological or ideological sanction.

Ethics stem from human need and interest. To deny this distorts the whole basis of life. Human life has meaning because we create and develop our futures. Happiness and the creative realization of human needs and desires, individually and in shared enjoyment, are continuous themes of humanism. We strive for the good life, here and now.

The goal is to pursue life's enrichment despite debasing forces of vulgarization, commercialization, and dehumanization. Fourth, reason and intelligence are the most effective instruments that humankind possesses. There is no substitute. Neither faith nor passion suffices in itself. The controlled use of scientific methods, which have transformed the natural and social sciences since the Renaissance, must be extended further in the solution of human problems.

But reason must be tempered by humility, since no group has a monopoly of wisdom or virtue. Nor is there any guarantee that all problems can be solved or all questions answered. Yet critical intelligence, infused by a sense of human caring, is the best method that humanity has for resolving problems.

Reason should be balanced with compassion and empathy, and the whole person fulfilled. Thus, we are not advocating the use of scientific intelligence independent of or in opposition to emotion, for we believe in the cultivation of feeling and love. As science pushes back the boundary of the known, humankind's sense of wonder is continually renewed, and art, poetry, and music find their places along with religion and ethics.

The Individual Fifth, the preciousness and dignity of the individual person is a central humanist value. Individuals should be encouraged to realize their own creative talents and desires. We reject all religious, ideological, or moral codes that denigrate the individual, suppress freedom, dull intellect, dehumanize personality. We believe in maximum individual autonomy, consonant with social responsibility.

Although science can account for the causes of behavior, the possibilities of individual freedom of choice exist in human life and should be increased. Sixth, in the area of sexuality, we believe that intolerant attitudes, often cultivated by orthodox religions and puritanical cultures, unduly repress sexual conduct. The right to birth control, abortion, and divorce should be recognized.

While we do not approve of exploitive, denigrating forms of sexual expression, neither do we wish to prohibit by law or social sanction sexual behavior between consenting adults. The many varieties of sexual exploration should not in themselves be considered evil. Without countenancing mindless permissiveness or unbridled promiscuity, a civilized society should be a tolerant one.

Short of harming others or compelling them to do likewise, individuals should be permitted to express their sexual proclivities and pursue their lifestyles as they desire. We wish to cultivate the development of a responsible attitude toward sexuality, in which humans are not exploited as sexual objects, and in which intimacy, sensitivity, respect, and honesty in interpersonal relations are encouraged.

Moral education for children and adults is an important way of developing awareness and sexual maturity. Democratic Society Seventh, to enhance freedom and dignity, the individual must experience a full range of civil liberties in all societies. This includes freedom of speech and the press, political democracy, the legal right of opposition to governmental policies, fair judicial process, religious liberty, freedom of association, and artistic, scientific, and cultural freedom.

It also includes a recognition of an individual's right to die with dignity, euthanasia, and the right to suicide. We oppose the increasing invasion of privacy by whatever means in both totalitarian and democratic societies. We would safeguard, extend, and implement the principles of human freedom evolved from the Magna Carta to the Bill of Rights, the Rights of Man, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Eighth, we are committed to an open and democratic society. We must extend participatory democracy in its true sense to the economy, the school, the family, the workplace, and voluntary associations. Decision-making must be decentralized to include widespread involvement of people at all levels, social, political, and economic. All persons should have a voice in developing the values and goals that determine their lives.

Institutions should be responsive to express desires and needs. The conditions of work, education, devotion, and play should be humanized. Alienating forces should be modified or eradicated, and bureaucratic structures should be held to a minimum. People are more important than decalogues, rules, proscriptions, or regulations. Ninth, the separation of church and state and the separation of ideology and state are imperatives.

The state should encourage maximum freedom for different moral, political, religious, and social values in society. It should not favor any particular religious bodies through the use of public monies, nor espouse a single ideology and function thereby as an instrument of propaganda or oppression, particularly against dissenters. Tenth, humane societies should evaluate economic systems not by rhetoric or ideology, but by whether or not they increase economic well-being for all individuals and groups, minimize poverty and hardship, increase the sum of human satisfaction, and enhance the quality of life.

Hence, the door is open to alternative economic systems. We need to democratize the economy and judge it by its responsiveness to human needs, testing results in terms of the common good. Eleventh, the principle of moral equality must be furthered through elimination of all discrimination based upon race, religion, sex, age, or national origin.

This means equality of opportunity and recognition of talent and merit. Individuals should be encouraged to contribute to their own betterment. If unable, then society should provide means to satisfy their basic economic, health, and cultural needs, including, wherever resources make possible, a minimum guaranteed annual income. We are concerned for the welfare of the aged, the infirm, the disadvantaged, and also for the outcasts, the mentally retarded, abandoned, or abused children, the handicapped, prisoners, and addicts, for all who are neglected or ignored by society.

Practicing humanists should make it their vocation to humanize personal relations. We believe in the right to universal education. Everyone has a right to the cultural opportunity to fulfill his or her unique capacities and talents. The schools should foster satisfying and productive living. They should be open at all levels to any and all.

The achievement of excellence should be encouraged. Innovative and experimental forms of education are to be welcomed. The energy and idealism of the young deserve to be appreciated and channeled to constructive purposes. We deplore racial, religious, ethnic, or class antagonisms. Although we believe in cultural diversity and encourage racial and ethnic pride, we reject separations which promote alienation and set people and groups against each other.

We envision an integrated community where people have a maximum opportunity for free and voluntary association. We are critical of sexism or sexual chauvinism, male or female. We believe in equal rights for both women and men to fulfill their unique careers and potentialities as they see fit, free of invidious discrimination.

World Community. Twelfth, we deplore the division of humankind on nationalistic grounds. We have reached a turning point in human history where the best option is to transcend the limits of national sovereignty and to move toward the building of a world community in which all sectors of the human family can participate.

Thus, we look to the development of a system of world law and a world order based upon transnational federal government. This would appreciate cultural pluralism and diversity. It would not exclude pride in national origins and accomplishments, nor the handling of regional problems on a regional basis. Human progress, however, can no longer be achieved by focusing on one section of the world, western or eastern, developed or undeveloped.

For the first time in human history, no part of humankind can be isolated from any other. Each person's future is in some way linked to all. We thus reaffirm a commitment to the building of world community, at the same time recognizing that this commits us to some hard choices.

Thirteenth, the world community must renounce the resort to violence and force as a method of solving international disputes. We believe in the peaceful adjudication of differences by international courts and by the development of the arts of negotiation and compromise. War is obsolete. So is the use of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons.

It is a planetary imperative to reduce the level of military expenditures and turn these savings to peaceful and people-oriented uses. Fourteenth, the world community must engage in cooperative planning concerning the use of rapidly depleting resources. The planet Earth must be considered a single ecosystem. Ecological damage, resource depletion, and "excessive population growth" must be checked by international concord.

The cultivation and conservation of nature is a moral value. We should perceive ourselves as integral to the sources of our being in nature. We must free our world from needless pollution and waste, responsibly guarding and creating wealth, both natural and human. Exploitation of natural resources, uncurbed by social conscience, must end.

Fifteenth, the problems of economic growth and development can no longer be resolved by one nation alone. They are worldwide in scope. It is the moral obligation of the developed nations to provide, through an international authority that safeguards human rights, massive technical, agricultural, medical, and economic assistance, including birth control techniques, to the developing portions of the world—excuse me, developing portions of the globe.

World poverty must cease. Hence, extreme disproportions in wealth, income, and economic growth should be reduced on a worldwide basis. Sixteenth, technology is a vital key to human progress and development. We deplore any neo-romantic efforts to condemn indiscriminately all technology and science, or to counsel retreat from its further extension and use for the good of humankind.

We would resist any moves to censor basic scientific research on moral, political, or social grounds. Technology must, however, be carefully judged by the consequences of its use. Harmful and destructive changes should be avoided. We are particularly disturbed when technology and bureaucracy control, manipulate, or modify human beings without their consent.

Technological feasibility does not imply social or cultural desirability. Seventeenth, we must expand communication and transportation across frontiers. Travel restrictions must cease. The world must be open to diverse political, ideological, and moral viewpoints, and evolve a worldwide system of television and radio for information and education. We thus call for full international cooperation in culture, science, the arts, and technology across ideological borders.

We must learn to live openly together, or we shall perish together. Humanity as a whole. In closing, the world cannot wait for a reconciliation of competing political or economic systems to solve its problems. These are the times for men and women of goodwill to further the building of a peaceful and prosperous world.

We urge that parochial loyalties and inflexible moral and religious ideologies be transcended. We urge recognition of the common humanity of all people. We further urge the use of reason and compassion to produce the kind of world we want, a world in which peace, prosperity, freedom, and happiness are widely shared.

Let us not abandon that vision in despair or cowardice. We are responsible for what we are or will be. Let us work together for a humane world by means commensurate with humane ends. Destructive ideological differences among communism, capitalism, socialism, conservatism, liberalism, and radicalism should be overcome. Let us call for an end to terror and hatred.

We will survive and prosper only in a world of shared humane values. We can initiate new directions for humankind. Ancient rivalries can be superseded by broad-based cooperative efforts. The commitment to tolerance, understanding, and peaceful negotiation does not necessitate acquiescence to the status quo, nor the damning up of dynamic and revolutionary forces.

The true revolution is occurring and can continue in countless nonviolent adjustments. But this entails the willingness to step forward onto new and expanding plateaus. At the present juncture of history, commitment to all humankind is the highest commitment of which we are capable. It transcends the narrow allegiances of church, state, party, class, or race in moving toward a wider vision of human potentiality.

What more daring a goal for humankind than for each person to become, in ideal as well as practice, a citizen of a world community? It is a classical vision. We can now give it new vitality. Humanism, thus interpreted, is a moral force that has time on its side. We believe that humankind has the potential, intelligence, goodwill, and cooperative skill to implement this commitment in the decades ahead.

Again, that's Humanist Manifesto Number Two, published in 1973. Now, I read you the second—that document instead of the Humanist Manifesto Number Three for a couple of reasons. Feel free to go and read Humanist Manifesto Number Three. That one was six pages. The Humanist Manifesto Number Three is just over one page, much smaller and shorter.

But this philosophy has developed and emerged over time with changes. But it's important that you understand that was what was set out in 1973. Now, think back—and I'll post a link in the show notes so you can read it—but think back or take time when you're in front of a computer and you can look through and look at each of the issues that are promoted in that document.

Many of the ideas and ideals set forth in that document have been achieved. Many. Not all. All of them are in progress, but many of them have been achieved. The growth of the international community, the establishment of an international court, the—I won't go through them. You go through them and do a little bit of homework.

So if that's your worldview, you should be happy and proud of that to be read. If that's not your worldview, why is it not your worldview? Now, why do I go into worldview to such an extent? Well, it's impossible to be neutral on your worldview. There is no neutrality at all.

It is not possible for that worldview to be consistent in any way, shape, or form by any person of, for example, Christian faith. I don't know about every religion. Perhaps some religions of the world could concede with that. But it is impossible for a Christian to go along with secular humanism as a viable worldview.

And thus, we get into the current war of worldviews that exists in our culture. Now, interestingly, it exists at every aspect of culture. For example, the first humanist manifesto from 1933 didn't necessarily use the term "secular humanism," but rather used the term in the manifesto of "religious humanism." But specifically in that document stated that, "We are convinced that the time has passed for theism, deism, modernism, and the several varieties of new thought." And many of the original signers of the manifesto from 1933 were involved with so-called churches.

Primarily, they were liberal Unitarian churches. But you can see then in the transition 40 years later to secular humanism. Now, unfortunately, most people haven't consciously gone through, constructed, and adopted a worldview for themselves. Most of us have been indoctrinated by the government school system in our country of origin.

In the United States, the takeover of the government school system is almost 100% complete and has been for many, many decades. The school system in the United States is almost entirely secular humanist in its approach. There's a famous, famous quote that's bandied about in these debates. I'll cite it simply as an illustration of my point, but it's probably the most famous quote in these, quoted thousands of times in this war.

It's from a 1983 essay by a humanist named John Dunphy. And this essay was titled "A Religion for a New Age." But one specific quote he wrote is this, "I am convinced that the battle for humankind's future must be waged and won in the public school classroom by teachers that correctly perceive their role as proselytizers of a new faith, a religion of humanity that recognizes and respects the spark of what theologians call divinity in every human being.

The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and new, the rotting corpse of Christianity together with all its adjacent evils and misery, and the new faith of humanism, resplendent with the promise of a world in which the never real is the real. The new faith of humanity is the new faith of the realized Christian ideal of love thy neighbor will finally be achieved." That's just one illustrative quote that's incredibly famous that gives the background of the US government school system.

And again, the war in that arena has been, in my opinion, convincingly won by the secular humanists. The problem is that in the post-school culture, the war is not won. The battle lines are still drawn because there are enough artifacts of a, in the United States, a biblical Christian worldview that you see the battle happening in modern culture.

So unless you've consciously constructed a worldview for yourself, you're left with this confusing potpourri of opinions. And these opinions touch every aspect of your life. Every story you see on the news is argued based on worldview. Every decision is based on worldview. And we're all engaged in the struggle for the supremacy of our own unique worldview.

So how do you approach this and apply this to a system of ethics? Well, with the mindset of secular humanism, then your major guiding principles are twofold. Your personal happiness is one consideration. And then there's a more general concept of collective human rights and collective human dignity. Now, you need to understand that these two things might or might not be at odds, and you have to pick, depending on your flavor of secular humanism, you have to pick which one is more important.

Let's talk about personal happiness for just a moment. You need to carefully understand the marked difference between worldviews and the concept of personal happiness. Within the secular humanist worldview, personal happiness is a primary motivator. In a biblical Christian worldview, happiness is not relevant. Christians, in fact, are promised a lifetime of suffering and persecution.

In fact, in our worldview, if you're not suffering persecution, you're probably out of line with what the Bible actually teaches. You see this throughout the world today, because the largest and most popular movements labeled as Christianity are selling happiness in this lifetime and holiness in the next. That's not biblical.

It's a popular message that leads to the personal enrichment and popularization of preachers and teachers, but it's not biblical. The Bible teaches holiness in this lifetime, or righteousness would be a word that maybe would be easier to access than the word holiness. Holiness in this lifetime and happiness in the next.

So there's a major difference. You'll often hear this emerge in my answering of questions, that I will always discount the role of personal happiness in answering the question of what you should do and emphasize the need to live righteously, because that's consistent with my worldview. You must do that in my worldview.

But that's directly at odds with the secular humanist worldview that teaches personal happiness as triumph. Now, what about community ethics? This one is interesting because the secular humanist system of ethics assumes a dignity of human life, but there's no background or proof for it. The best proof that can come up with is almost a corporate sense of altruism, a sense of community spirit, kind of an evolved community spirit that somehow if human beings have evolved, then they've learned that this serves their common good.

But the problem is when you remove God from the equation, man is accident, happenstance. And problematically, we're all engaged in the primal survival of the fittest war. Now, it's whitewashed, but that's the underlying philosophy. And so this provides justification for many evil things. And by the way, I lay plenty of blame at those who argue for evil under the banner of God, Christian duty.

Many evil things have been perpetuated on people in the name of God. That's what's so sad. But there is actually a cogent and well-developed system of thought and a system of ethics behind the philosophy of secular humanism. The problem is that it's very difficult to find people who are actually willing to be clear in their thoughts and convey the system of ethics accurately.

In my study, most people who publicly represent this viewpoint in the system of ethics are, in my opinion, cowards because they don't declare their actual system of thinking. Now, you say, "Cowards? That's a strong allegation." And anytime somebody makes a statement like that, you should ask for proof. And I'll share a little bit of – although I wouldn't necessarily call it proof.

I'll share a little bit of evidence with you in just a moment. But let me tie this back in again to finance because almost everything in that secular humanist manifesto connects back to some aspect of finance. For example, there's a massive push towards an internationalization of global systems of government.

Well, how is that funded? It's funded with your dollars or your pounds or your euros or your Australian dollars or your – I don't know – shekels, your lira – well, not lira anymore. That one is – your yen, your yuan, your renminbi. That's what funds it. That's what funds the global systems of government.

And you and I are the ones who fund the global systems of control. You and I are the ones who participate in modern monetary systems. You and I are the ones who participate in the central banking system. You and I are the ones who participate in public equity markets.

So we have a responsibility in it. But the problem is, at least for me, is I've tried to study the influence of these things on finance, that the history and the research always seem so distant. It's hard to wrap my mind around. And in the world of finance, there are plenty of theories and plenty of theories of conspiracy and control and manipulation.

But trying to sort out fact from fiction is incredibly challenging to me. Simple example. I don't have any clue what the actual impact was of the abolishment of the gold standard on American society because I wasn't there. And it's very difficult for me to actually conceive of the long reaching arc of history.

It's very tough for me to understand how our populations moved, how our populations controlled, how do people exert influence and psychological influence over a society. That has been a major challenge for me to actually put together until I found something that was actually within my lifetime. That's what I'm going to share with you next.

If you want to understand the way that psychological and sociological battles are waged and won, frankly, then the best example that I have ever come up with – and if you know of a better one, tell me. I'd like to study it. But the best example that I've ever come up with is to look at the promotion of homosexual culture in the broader US American culture.

I believe that no matter which side of this issue you personally stand on, you should be very interested in this battle. Now, the current battle in US American society is over the concept of homosexual marriage. It's my best guess that this June, the Supreme Court will release a ruling which will effectively overturn the last few remaining state bans on the concept of homosexual marriage.

This has been a major influence in financial planning because traditionally in financial planning, there was an area of specialty of working with same-sex couples and there was a unique area of planning because of the lack of continuity in the laws for same-sex couples versus heterosexual couples. So there was a unique area of study.

This will be changing. My best guess in June, I don't see any way that the court will not rule on the side of striking down these state bans. I could be wrong. We'll see. It would be interesting to find out. But that ruling that is expected this June will be a major, major milestone in the promotion of the homosexual lifestyle in modern culture.

The reason that I'm highlighting this issue is because it's one of the fastest massive cultural changes that I'm aware of. One of the most fundamental transformations of a culture has occurred within my lifetime and I'm not yet 30. Here's how fast the actual legal transition has occurred. Reading from Wikipedia, "In the 1950s, all states had some form of law criminalizing sodomy," interrupting Wikipedia, sodomy referring to homosexual sex, but there are various definitions of that.

But it's a general term that has different legal definitions depending on the jurisdiction that you're in, primarily understood to be homosexual sex, especially among males. "In the 1950s, all states had some form of law criminalizing sodomy. And in 1986, the United States Supreme Court ruled that nothing in the United States Constitution bars a state from prohibiting sodomy." I was born in 1985.

"1986, the United States Supreme Court ruled that nothing in the United States Constitution bars a state from prohibiting sodomy. However, state legislators and state courts had started to repeal or overturn their sodomy laws, beginning with Illinois in 1961. And thus, in 2003, only 10 states had laws prohibiting all sodomy, with penalties ranging from one to 15 years imprisonment.

Additionally, four other states had laws that specifically prohibited same-sex sodomy. On June 26, 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision in Lawrence v. Texas, struck down the Texas same-sex sodomy law ruling that this private sexual conduct is protected by the liberty rights implicit in the due process clause of the United States Constitution, with Sandra Day O'Connor's concurring opinion arguing that they violated equal protection.

This decision invalidated all state sodomy laws insofar as they applied to non-commercial conduct in private between consenting civilians and overruled its 1986 ruling in Bowers v. Hardwick, which upheld Georgia's sodomy law. Now, if you want to actually understand the strategy behind cultural change, then you need to study this movement.

And we're going to start with an essay that I'm going to read you called The Overhauling of Straight America, and then a subsequent book which was entitled After the Ball, How America Will Conquer Its Fear and Hatred of Gays in the '90s. That book was published in 1989 by two men, one named Marshall Kirk and one named Hunter Madsen, both men brilliant in their respective fields of study.

Kirk was a researcher in neuropsychiatry, a logician, a poet, and a genealogist. And Madsen was an expert in public persuasion tactics and social marketing, and he designed commercial advertising on Madison Avenue. Both men were Harvard graduates. Now, I have not yet read After the Ball. It's hard to find, and it costs basically $50 to $100 to buy a used copy of it online, and I haven't been willing to pay the $50 to $100 to buy it.

Incidentally, if any of you own a copy of the book, I'd like to read the actual book. So feel free to get in touch with me, email me or contact me, and you can send it to me, and I'll read it and send it back. But I've read enough detailed outlines with extensive quotations from the book that I feel confident they have an accurate understanding of the content.

And I've read enough critiques and analysis of it that I feel like I understand what's in the book. But again, there could be something that I don't know in that. But you can get the gist of it by reading the original essay called The Overhauling of Straight America, which is what I'm going to read you, because this essay clearly lays out the plan for this transformation of culture.

And I want you to be aware of the language and of the plan, because you've got to – depending on your worldview, again, if you are on the side that promotes homosexual culture and modern culture, then you should be referencing this as a major milestone of massive success of societal transformation.

And if you're on the opposite side of the issue, then you should be understanding this to understand the war of ideas and how it's waged. And the reason that I'm using this in a podcast on finance is you need to understand how culture works, because the same type of plan is being laid out over a longer period of time on many significant issues.

And that's what we're constantly working through as individual people, individual citizens, trying to figure out what's happening in our own jurisdictions of government, what's actually happening with the various agendas that are being waged in which we are pawns, we are useful pawns on a chessboard. So as I read this, pay careful attention to your memory of the past, say, 20 years, and how this strategy has been affected in the culture in which you've been a participant.

This essay was published in November 1987 in Guide magazine. It's entitled The Overhauling of Straight America. The byline here is Marshall Kirk. And in this article, it was – Hunter Madsen went by the pen name of Erastus Pill. The first order of business is desensitization of the American public concerning gays and gay rights.

To desensitize the public is to help it view homosexuality with indifference instead of with keen emotion. Ideally, we would have straights register differences in sexual preference the way they register different tastes for ice cream or sports games. She likes strawberry and I like vanilla. He follows baseball and I follow football.

No big deal. At least in the beginning, we are seeking public desensitization and nothing more. We do not need and cannot expect a full appreciation or understanding of homosexuality from the average American. You can forget about trying to persuade the masses that homosexuality is a good thing. But if only you can get them to think that it is just another thing with a shrug of their shoulders, then your battle for legal and social rights is virtually won.

And to get to the shoulder shrug stage, gays as a class must cease to appear mysterious, alien, loathsome, and contrary. A large-scale media campaign will be required in order to change the image of gays in America. And any campaign to accomplish this turnaround should do six things. One, talk about gays and gayness as loudly and as often as possible.

The principle behind this advice is simple. Almost any behavior begins to look normal if you are exposed to enough of it at close quarters and among your acquaintances. The acceptability of the new behavior will ultimately hinge on the number of one's fellows doing it or accepting it. One may be offended by its novelty at first.

Many in times past were momentarily scandalized by streaking, eating goldfish, and premarital sex. But as long as Joe Six-Pack feels little pressure to perform likewise, and as long as the behavior in question presents little threat to his physical and financial security, he soon gets used to it and life goes on.

The skeptic may still shake his head and think, "People are crazy these days," but over time his objections are likely to become more reflective, more philosophical, less emotional. The way to benumb raw sensitivities about homosexuality is to have a lot of people talk a great deal about the subject in a neutral or supportive way.

Open and frank talk makes the subject seem less furtive, alien, and sinful, more above board. Constant talk builds the impression that public opinion is at least divided on the subject, and that a sizable segment accepts or even practices homosexuality. Even rancorous debates between opponents and defenders serve the purpose of desensitization so long as respectable gays are front and center to make their own pitch.

The main thing is to talk about gayness until the issue becomes thoroughly tiresome. And when we say talk about homosexuality, we mean just that. In the early stages of any campaign to reach straight America, the masses should not be shocked and repelled by premature exposure to homosexual behavior itself.

Instead, the imagery of sex should be downplayed, and gay rights should be reduced to an abstract social question as much as possible. First, let the camel get his nose inside the tent. Only later, his unsightly derriere. Where we talk is important. The visual media, film, and television are plainly the most powerful image makers in Western civilization.

The average American household watches over seven hours of TV daily. Those hours open up a gateway into the private world of straights, through which a Trojan horse might be passed. As far as desensitization is concerned, the medium is the message of normalcy. So far, gay Hollywood has provided our best covert weapon in the battle to desensitize the mainstream.

Bit by bit over the past 10 years, gay characters and gay themes have been introduced into TV programs and films, though often this has been done to achieve comedic and ridiculous effects. On the whole, the impact has been encouraging. The prime time presentation of consenting adults on a major network in 1985 is but one high-water mark in favorable media exposure of gay issues.

But this should be just the beginning of a major publicity blitz by gay America. Would a desensitizing campaign of open and sustained talk about gay issues reach every rabid opponent of homosexuality? Of course not. While public opinion is one primary source of mainstream values, religious authority is the other.

When conservative churches condemn gays, there are only two things we can do to confound the homophobia of true believers. First, we can use talk to muddy the moral waters. This means publicizing support for gays by more moderate churches, raising theological objections of our own about conservative interpretations of biblical teachings, and exposing hatred and inconsistency.

Second, we can undermine the moral authority of homophobic churches by portraying them as antiquated backwaters, badly out of step with the times and with the latest findings of psychology. Against the mighty pull of institutional religion, one must set the mightier draw of science and public opinion, the shield and sword of that accursed "secular humanism." Such an unholy alliance has worked well against churches before on such topics as divorce and abortion.

With enough open talk about the prevalence and acceptability of homosexuality, that alliance can work again here. Two, portray gays as victims, not as aggressive challengers. In any campaign to win over the public, gays must be cast as victims in need of protection, so the straights will be inclined by reflex to assume the role of protector.

If gays are presented instead as a strong and prideful tribe promoting a rigidly nonconformist and deviant lifestyle, they are more likely to be seen as a public menace that justifies resistance and oppression. For that reason, we must forego the temptation to strut our gay pride publicly when it conflicts with the gay victim image, and we must walk the fine line between impressing straights with our great numbers on the one hand and sparking their hostile paranoia there all around us on the other.

A media campaign to promote the gay victim image should make use of symbols which reduce the mainstream's sense of threat, which lower its guard and which enhance the plausibility of victimization. In practical terms, this means that jaunty mustachioed musclemen would keep very low profile in gay commercials and other public presentations, while sympathetic figures of nice young people, old people, and attractive women would be featured.

It almost goes without saying that groups on the farthest margin of acceptability such as NAMBLA, editor's note, the North American Man-Boy Love Association, must play no part at all in such a campaign. Suspected child molesters will never look like victims. Now, there are two different messages about the gay victim that are worth communicating.

First, the mainstream should be told that gays are victims of fate, in the sense that most never had a choice to accept or reject their sexual preference. The message must read, "As far as gays can tell, they were born gay, just as you were born heterosexual or white or black or bright or athletic.

Nobody ever tricked or seduced them. They never made a choice and are not morally blameworthy. What they do isn't willfully contrary. It's only natural for them. This twist of fate could as easily have happened to you." Straight viewers must be able to identify with gays as victims. Mr. and Mrs.

Public must be given no extra excuses to say, "They are not like us." To this end, the persons featured in the public campaign should be decent and upright, appealing and admirable by straight standards, completely unexceptionable in appearance. In a word, they should be indistinguishable from the straights we would like to reach.

To return to the terms we have used in previous articles, spokesmen for our cause must be R-type straight gays rather than Q-type homosexuals on display. Only under such conditions will the message be read correctly. These folks are victims of a fate that could have happened to me. By the way, we realize that many gays will question an advertising technique, which might threaten to make homosexuality look like some dreadful disease, which strikes fated victims.

But the plain fact is that the gay community is weak and must manipulate the powers of the weak, including the play for sympathy. In any case, we compensate for the negative aspects of this gay victim appeal under principle four below. The second message would portray gays as victims of society.

The straight majority does not recognize the suffering it brings to the lives of gays and must be shown. Graphic pictures of brutalized gays, dramatizations of job and housing insecurity, loss of child custody and public humiliation, and the dismal list goes on. "In any campaign to win over the public, gays must be cast as victims in need of protection so that straights will be inclined by reflex to assume the role of protector." Three, give protectors a just cause.

A media campaign that casts gays as society's victims and encourages straights to be their protectors must make it easier for those to respond, to assert, and explain their new protectiveness. Few straight women, and even fewer straight men, will want to defend homosexuality boldly as such. Most would rather attach their awakened protective impulse to some principle of justice or law, to some general desire for consistent and fair treatment in society.

Our campaign should not demand direct support for homosexual practices, should instead take anti-discrimination as its theme, the right to free speech, freedom of beliefs, freedom of association, due process, and equal protection of laws. These should be the concerns brought to mind by our campaign. It is especially important for the gay movement to hitch its cause to accepted standards of law and justice because its straight supporters must have at hand a cogent reply to the moral arguments of its enemies.

The homophobes clothe their emotional revulsion in the daunting robes of religious dogma, so defenders of gay rights must be ready to counter dogma with principle. Four, make gays look good. In order to make a gay victim sympathetic to straights, you have to portray him as every man. But an additional theme of the campaign should be more aggressive and upbeat to offset the increasingly bad press that these times have brought to homosexual men and women.

The campaign should paint gays as superior pillars of society. Yes, yes, we know, this trick is so old it creaks. Other minorities use it all the time in ads that announce proudly, "Did you know that this great man or woman was blank?" But the message is vital for all those straights who still picture gays as queer people, shadowy, lonesome, fail, drunken, suicidal, child-snatching misfits.

The honor roll of prominent gay or bisexual men and women is truly eye-popping. From Socrates to Shakespeare, from Alexander the Great to Alexander Hamilton, from Michelangelo to Walt Whitman, from Sappho to Gertrude Stein, the list is old hat to us, but shocking news to heterosexual America. In no time, a skillful and clever media campaign could have the gay community looking like the veritable fairy godmother to Western civilization.

Along the same lines, we shouldn't overlook the celebrity endorsement. The celebrities can be straight—God bless you, Ed Asner, wherever you are—or gay. 5. Make the victimizers look bad. At a later stage of the media campaign for gay rights, long after other gay ads have become commonplace, it will be time to get tough with remaining opponents.

To be blunt, they must be vilified. This will be all the more necessary because by that time, the entrenched enemy will have quadrupled its output of vitriol and disinformation. Our goal is here is twofold. First, we seek to replace the mainstream's self-righteous pride about its homophobia with shame and guilt.

Second, we intend to make the anti-gays look so nasty that average Americans will want to disassociate themselves from such types. The public should be shown images of ranting homophobes whose secondary traits and beliefs disgust Middle America. These images might include the Ku Klux Klan demanding that gays be burned alive or castrated, bigoted Southern ministers drooling with hysterical hatred to a degree that looks both comical and deranged, menacing punks, thugs, and convicts speaking coolly about the "fags" they have killed or would like to kill, a tour of Nazi concentration camps where homosexuals were tortured and gassed.

A campaign to vilify the victimizers is going to enrage our most fervid enemies, of course. But what else can we say? The shoe fits, and we should make them try it on for size, with all of America watching. Six, solicit funds. The buck stops here. Any massive campaign of this kind would require unprecedented expenditures for months or even years, an unprecedented fundraising drive.

Effective advertising is a costly proposition. Several million dollars would get the ball rolling. There are 10 to 15 million primarily homosexual adults in this country. If each one of them donated just two dollars to the campaign, its war chest would actually rival that of its most vocal enemies. And because those gays not supporting families usually have more discretionary income than average, they could afford to contribute much more.

"We intend to make the anti-gays look so nasty that average Americans will want to dissociate themselves from such types." But would they? Or is the gay community as feckless, selfish, uncommitted, and short-sighted as its critics claim? We will never know unless the new campaign simultaneously launches a concerted nationwide appeal for funding support from both known and anonymous donors.

The appeal should be directed both at gays and at straights who care about social justice. In the beginning, for reasons to be explained in a moment, the appeal for funds may have to be launched exclusively through the gay press, national magazines, local newspapers, flyers at bars, notices in glossy skin magazines.

Funds could also come through the outreach of local gay organizations on campuses and in metropolitan areas. Eventually, donations would be solicited directly alongside advertisements in the major straight media. There would be no parallel to such an effort in the history of the gay community in America. If it failed to generate the needed capital to get started, there would be little hope for the campaign and little hope for major progress toward gay rights in the near future.

For the moment, let us suppose that gays could see how donations would greatly serve their long-term interest and that sufficient funds could be raised. An heroic assumption. Getting on the air, or you can't get there from here. Without access to TV, radio, and the mainstream press, there will be no campaign.

This is a tricky problem because many impresarios of the media simply refuse to accept what they call "issue advertising." Persuasive advertising can provoke a storm of resentment from the public and from sponsors, which is bad for business. The courts have confirmed the broadcaster's right to refuse any "issue advertising" he dislikes.

What exactly constitutes "issue advertising"? It evidently does not include platitudinous appeals to the virtues of family unity, courtesy of the Mormons. Neither does it include tirades against perfidious Albion courtesy of Lyndon LaRouche. Neither does it include reminders that "a mind is a terrible thing to waste" courtesy of the United Negro College Fund.

Neither does it include religious shows which condemn gay sinners. Neither does it include condemnations of nuclear war or race discrimination, at least not in Massachusetts. Some guys get all the breaks. What "issue advertising" does include these days is almost any communique presented openly by a homosexual organization. The words "gay" and "homosexual" are considered controversial whenever they appear.

Because most straightforward appeals are impossible, the National Gay Task Force has had to cultivate quiet backroom liaisons with broadcast companies and newsrooms in order to make sure that issues important to the gay community receive some coverage. But such an arrangement is hardly ideal, of course, because it means that the gay community's image is controlled by the latest news event instead of by careful design.

And recently, most of the news about gays has been negative. So what can be done to crash the gates of the major media? Several things, advanced in several stages. Start with the fine print. Newspapers and magazines may very well be hungrier for gay advertising dollars than television and radio are, and the cost of ads in print is generally lower.

But remember that the press, for the most part, is only read by better-educated Americans, many of who are already more accepting of homosexuality in any case. So to get more impact for our dollars, we should skip the New Republic and new left review readers and head for Time, People, and The National Enquirer.

Of course, the gay community may have to establish itself as a regular advertising presence in more sophisticated forums first before it is accepted into the mass press. While we're storming the battlements with salvos of ink, we should also warm the mainstream up a bit with a subtle national campaign on highway billboards.

In simple bold print on dark backgrounds, a series of unobjectionable messages should be introduced. "In Russia, they tell you what to be. In America, we have the freedom to be ourselves and to be the best." Or, "People helping instead of hating, that's what America is all about." And so on.

Each sign will tap patriotic sentiment. Each message will drill a seemingly agreeable proposition into mainstream heads, a public service message suited to our purposes. And, if heir owners will permit it, each billboard will be signed in slightly smaller letters, courtesy of the National Gay Task Force, to build positive associations and get the public used to seeing such sponsorship.

Visual Stage 1. You Really Ought to Be in Pictures As for television and radio, a more elaborate plan may be needed to break the ice. For openers, naturally, we must continue to encourage the appearance of favorable gay characters in films and TV shows. Daytime talk shows also remain a useful avenue for exposure.

But to speed things up, we might consider a bold stratagem to gain media attention. The scheme we have in mind would require careful preparations, yet it would save expense even while it elevated the visibility and stature of the gay movement overnight. Well before the next elections for national office, we might lay careful plans to run symbolic gay candidates for every high political office in this country.

Such plans would have to deal somehow with the tricky problem of inducing gays and straights to sign enough endorsement petitions to get us on the ballot. Our 50 to 250 candidates would participate in such debates as they could, run gay-themed advertisements coordinated at our national headquarters, and demand equal time on the air.

They could then graciously pull out of the races before the actual elections, while formally endorsing more viable straight contenders. With malicious humor, perhaps, in some states, we could endorse our most rabid opponents. It is essential not to ask people actually to vote "yay" or "nay" on the gay issue at this early stage.

Such action would end up committing most to the "nay" position, and would only tally huge and visible defeats for our cause. Through such a political campaign, the mainstream would get over the initial shock of seeing gay ads, and the acceptability of such ads would be fortified by the most creditable context possible.

And all this would be accomplished before non-electoral advertising was attempted by the gay community. During the campaign, all hell would break loose, but if we behaved courageously and respectable, our drive would gain legitimacy in and case, and might even become a cause celebre. It's probably pronounced a cause celebre.

If all went as planned, the somewhat desensitized public and the major networks themselves would be "readied" for the next step of our program. Visual Stage 2. Peekaboo Advertising. At this point, the gay community has its foot in the door, and it is time to ask the networks to accept gay sponsorship of certain ads and shows.

Timing is critical. The request must be made immediately after our national political ads disappear. Failing that, we should request sponsorship the next time one of the networks struts its broad-mindedness by televising a film or show with gay characters or themes. If they wish to look consistent instead of hypocritical, we'll have them on the spot.

But the networks would still be forced to say no unless we made their resistance look patently unreasonable and possibly illegal. We'd do just that by proposing "gay ads" patterned exactly after those currently sponsored by the Mormons and others. As usual, viewers would be treated to squeak-clean skits on the importance of family harmony and understanding.

This time, the narrator would end by saying "this message was brought to you by the National Gay Task Force." All very quiet and subdued. Remember, exposure is everything, and the medium is the message. "Exposure is everything and the medium is the message." The gay community should join forces with other civil liberties groups of respectable caste to promote bland messages about America the melting pot, always ending with an explicit reference to the task force of some other gay organization.

Making the best of a bad situation, we can also propose sympathetic media appeals for gifts and donations to fund AIDS research. If Jerry Lewis and the March of Dimes can do it, so can we. Our next indirect step will be to advertise locally on behalf of support groups peripheral to the gay community.

Frowsy straight moms and dads announcing phone numbers and meeting times for parents of gays or similar gatherings. Can't you just see how such ads now presented between messages from the disabled vets and the postal workers union? Visual Stage 3. Roll out the big guns. By this point, our salami tactics will have carved out, slice by slice, a large portion of access to the mainstream media.

So what then? It would finally be time to bring gay ads out of the closet. The messages of such ads should directly address lingering public fears about homosexuals as loathsome and contrary aliens. For example, the following are possible formats for TV or radio commercials designed to chip away at chronic misperceptions.

Format A for Familiarization. The Testimonial. To make gays seem less mysterious, present a series of short spots featuring the boy or girl next door, fresh and appealing, or warm and lovable grandma/grandpa types. Seated in homey surroundings, they respond to an off-camera interviewer with assurance, good nature, and charm. Their comments bring out three social facts.

1. There is someone special in their life, a long-term relationship. To stress gay stability, monogamy, and commitment. 2. Their families are very important to them and are supportive of them. To stress that gays are not anti-family and that families need not be anti-gay. 3. As far as they can remember, they have always been gay and were probably born gay.

They certainly never decided on a preference one way or the other, stressing that gays are doing what is natural for them and are not being willfully contrary. The subjects should be interviewed alone, not with their lovers or children, for to include others in the picture would unwisely raise disturbing questions about the complexities of gay social relations, which these commercials could not explain.

It is best instead to take one thing at a time. Format B for Positive Associations. The Celebrity Spot. While it might be useful to present celebrity endorsements by currently popular gay figures and straight sympathizers, Johnny Mathis, Marlo Thomas, the homophobia climate of America would make such brash endorsements unlikely in the near future.

So early celebrity spots will instead identify historical gay or bisexual personalities who are illustrious and dignified and dead. The ads could be sardonic and indirect. For example, over regal music and a portrait or two, a narrator might announce simply, "Michelangelo, an art class. Tchaikovsky, a music class. Tennessee Williams, a drama class," etc.

Format C for Victim Sympathy. Our Campaign to Stop Child Abuse. As we said earlier, there are many ways to portray gays as victims of discrimination, images of brutality, tales of job loss and family separation, and so on. But we think something like the following 30-second commercials would get to the heart of the matter best of all.

The camera slowly moves in on a middle-class teenager sitting alone in his semi-darkened bedroom. The boy is pleasing and unexceptional in appearance, except that he has been roughed up and is staring silently, pensively, with evident distress. As the camera gradually focuses in on his face, a narrator comments, "It will happen to one in every ten sons.

As he grows up, he will realize that he feels differently about things than most of his friends. If he lets it show, he'll be an outsider, made fun of, humiliated, attacked. If he confides in his parents, they may throw him out of the house, onto the streets. Some will say he is anti-family.

Nobody will let him be himself. So he will have to hide from his friends, his family, and that's hard. It's tough enough to be a kid these days, but to be the one in ten." A message from the National Gay Task Force. What is nice about such an ad is that it would economically portray gays as innocent and vulnerable, victimized and misunderstood, surprisingly numerous, yet not menacing.

It also renders the anti-family charge absurd and hypocritical. Format D for identification with victims, the old switcheroo. The mainstream will identify better with the plight of gays if straights can, once in a while, walk a mile in gay shoes. A humorous television or radio ad to help them do this might involve a brief animated or dramatized scenario as follows.

The camera approaches the mighty oak door of the boss's office, which swings open, and the camera, which represents you, the viewer, enters the room. Behind the oversized desk sits a fat and scowling old curmudgeon chomping on a cigar. He looks up at the camera, i.e. at the viewer and snarls, "So it's you, Smithers.

Well, you're fired." The voice of a younger man is heard to reply with astonishment, "B-b-b-but Mr. Thornburg, I've been with your company for ten years. I thought you liked my work." The boss responds with a tone of disgust, "Yes, yes, Smithers, your work is quite adequate, but I've heard rumors that you've been seen around town with some kind of girlfriend.

A girlfriend. Frankly, I'm shocked. We're not about to start hiring any heterosexuals in this company. Now get out." The younger man speaks once more, "But boss, that's just not fair. What if it were you?" The boss glowers back as the camera pulls quickly out of the room and the big door slams shut.

Printed on the door, a message from the National Gay Task Force. One can easily imagine similar episodes involving housing or other discrimination. Format E for vilification of victimizers, "Damn the torpedoes." We have already indicated some of the images which might be damaging to the homophobic vendetta. Ranting and hateful religious extremists, neo-Nazis, and Ku Klux Klansmen made to look evil and ridiculous.

Hardly a difficult task. These images should be combined with those of their gay victims by a method propagandists call the bracket technique. For example, for a few seconds, an unctuous, beady-eyed Southern preacher is seen pounding the pulpit in rage about those "those sick, abominable creatures." While his tirade continues over the soundtrack, the picture switches to pathetic photos of gays who look decent, harmless, and likable.

And then we cut back to the poisonous face of the preacher and so forth. The contrast speaks for itself. The effect is devastating. "It would portray gays as innocent and vulnerable, victimized and misunderstood, surprisingly numerous, yet not menacing." Format F for funds, SOS. Alongside or during these other persuasive advertisements, we would have to solicit donation so that the campaign might continue.

Direct appeals from celebrities, preferably living, preferable living ones, thank you, might be useful here. All appeals must stress that money can be given anonymously, e.g. via money orders, and that all donations are confidential. "We can't help unless you help," and all that. The time is now. We have sketched out here a blueprint for transforming the social values of straight America.

At the core of our program is a media campaign to change the way the average citizen views homosexuality. It is quite easy to fall in fault with such a campaign. We have tried to be practical and specific here, but the proposals may still have a visionary sheen. There are 100 reasons why the campaign could not be done or would be risky, but there are at least 20 million good reasons why some such program must be tried in the coming years.

The welfare and happiness of every gay man and woman in this country demand it. As the last large, legally oppressed minority in American society, it is high time that gays took effective measures to rejoin the mainstream in pride and strength. We believe that, like it or not, such a campaign is the only way of doing so anytime soon.

And let us repeat, time may be running out. The AIDS epidemic is sparking anger and fear in the heartland of straight America. As the virus leaks out of homosexual circles and into the rest of society, we need have no illusions about who is receiving the blame. The 10 years ahead may decide for the next 40 whether gays claim their liberty and equality or are driven back once again as America's cast of detested untouchables.

It's more than a quip. Speak now, or forever hold your peace. That's the close of the article, again, published November 1987. Now, there's a reason why I read you that article. That is the most effective social movement in modern society that I'm aware of. And there you have – so 1987 would be 27 years ago.

There you have the blueprint that was laid out 27 years ago. And I expect in a couple of months that the US Supreme Court will overturn the final homosexual marriage bans in American society. The reason why I've emphasized that and I'm presenting it to you – I presented it to you without comment, not a single stop, not a single – everything that you just heard was presented without comment.

You need to understand the movement and how people desire to move in different causes and effects, in different situations. Because although that – the homosexual movement is on the periphery of finance, the real only – the only application to the world of finance would be in changing the role of financial planning for homosexual couples.

That's a role that's changing. But that's on the periphery of finance. But it's an example of social movements, planned social movements and propaganda and how those function in modern society. Once you understand the tactics and tools of propaganda, then you might be able to develop some deeper critical thinking skills to protect yourself against the ways that they are used against you in financial topics.

So there's one thing that wasn't covered in there that I think is important from the subsequent book of that article. That article is essentially the outline of the book. But then they developed it into the book After the Ball, How America Will Conquer Its Fear and Hatred of the Gays in the 1990s.

That one I believe was published in 1989 if memory is correct. So I'm going to read you a couple of short sections. It's a large book. I will link to this – these notes. There's a system of notes that I found on a website. It's a PDF that I found on a website called comingoutstraight.com.

It was compiled by a man named Richard Cohen. And these notes are his in-detailed notes from the book After the Ball. But I want to pull some lessons from this because this is the one thing that's missing in the article that was in the book. First, from page two of his notes, page 10 and 11 of the book, he quotes this.

"Homosexuality must be" – and these are not direct quotes. These are – because I'm not sure in his notes exactly what's a direct quote and what's not. So these are accurate but I don't want you to believe that these are direct quotes because I'm not sure if they are or not.

I don't have the book. "Homosexuality needs to be portrayed as either a one permanent condition or two temporary problem that can be fixed or can be portrayed as either – homosexuality portrayed as either a one permanent condition or two temporary problem that can be fixed. This distinction between problem and condition is crucial to the way straights think about homosexuality.

A problem has a solution. A condition doesn't need to be fixed. It is simply an aspect of life that must be accommodated. It requires permanent tolerance and you must come to terms with it psychologically, practically, and morally. Must change public opinion from problem to condition." That's from pages 10 to 11.

If you think about that, that's the concept of – I pull from that a concept called framing where anytime you can frame the debate in a subject, then you're going to basically present the options and you're going to be the one who is in control of the different potential options.

In many ways, I'm doing that on my show right now. I'm the one who is framing this discussion. I'm choosing the topics that I am presenting to you. I'm choosing the information that I'm presenting to you and I'm essentially presenting one side or the other. I am using the dichotomy of contrasting and worldviews and I do this on the show.

I'm presenting to you. The contrast between biblical Christianity and secular humanism. And so I'm basically using that debate. But you need to be careful anytime you are considering a subject because not all subjects are either one or the other. Now in this case, the homosexual movement and the homosexual activists have succeeded completely in framing that debate.

Is it a problem or is it a condition? And essentially, they have hammered on that theme over the past 30 years of the public relations campaign until it's commonly accepted in society and almost every aspect of society with a few small groups that believe differently that homosexuality is an inborn characteristic.

That it's not based upon external factors. And there are very few, very broadly criticized segments of society that don't hold to that claim. But the mainstream view is that homosexuality is an inborn, unchangeable problem. That perception was not always thus. That perception has been changed over the last 30 years based upon the success of this outline, this guide for changing the perception of Americans and the success of these authors with designing their plan.

Now the one thing that was covered in the book that I want to read from these notes here is what do you do when the conversation happens? This is important because as you think back over the last three years of your observation of public – excuse me, 30 years of your observation of public media, you should be able to understand and look and see various things – various aspects of this happening.

And it's important to know as these authors put it here what their strategy was. And this is specifically under I think they're chapter 16 or they're section 16 where it's how to halt, derail and/or reverse the engine of prejudice. That's how they – this is the tools they give in the book for how to overcome prejudice and bigotry toward homosexuals.

And these are the techniques. These are the same techniques that are applied in financial spaces and financial spheres. But I don't have an equivalent campaign that – or at least with public documents that I can point to because these things go much farther than our generational lifetime. But you need to learn to be able to insulate yourself and protect yourself from the propaganda.

So I'm reading here from page seven of these notes that are compiled and these are this man Richard Cohen's notes pulled together of this book. So quote from page 146 of the book, "First you get your foot in the door by being as similar as possible. Then and only then when your one little difference is finally accepted, can you start dragging in your other peculiarities one by one.

You hammer in the wedge narrow end first. As the saying goes, allow the camel's nose beneath your tent and his whole body will soon follow." How to halt, derail and/or reverse the engine of prejudice. Step one, desensitization. Prejudice is an alerting signal. Warns tribal mammals that a potential alien mammal is in the vicinity and should be fought or fled.

Two things can happen. One, strong or weak stimulus. Fight it or flee from it. And two, low-grade stimulus. Don't take action against it. Irrelevancy. Get used to it. If homosexuals present themselves as different and threatening, then straights go on alert and fight against them. To desensitize straights, homosexuals inundate them with conscious flood of homosexual-related advertising, presented in the least offensive fashion.

If straights can't shut the shower off, they may at least eventually get used to being wet. Stage two, jamming. Insertion of incompatible emotion into the preexisting system, like sprinkling sand into a pocket watch. Jamming is more active and aggressive than desensitization. Jamming uses the rules of associative conditioning. When two things are repeatedly juxtaposed, one's feelings about one thing are transferred to the other, and direct emotional modeling, the inborn tendency of human beings to feel what they perceive others to be feeling.

Consequent internal confusion has two effects. Unpleasant or emotional dissonance will tend to result in an alteration of previous beliefs and feelings, so as to resolve the internal conflict. And second, the internal dissonance will tend to inhibit overexpression of the prejudicial emotion, which is in itself useful and relieving. All normal people feel shame when they perceive that they are not thinking, feeling, or acting like one of the pack.

The trick is to get the bigot into the position of feeling a conflicting twinge of shame, along with his reward, whenever his homo-hatred surfaces, so that his reward will be diluted or spoiled. Quick note from Joshua here. This next paragraph has a few unpleasant words. I'm going to read them directly, but if you need to skip forward 30 seconds to skip a few unpleasant words for your children, duly noted.

Next, "Propagandistic advertising can depict homophobic and homo-hating bigots as crude loudmouths and assholes, people who say not only 'faggot' but 'nigger,' 'kike,' and other shameful epithets who are 'not Christian.' It can show them being criticized, hated, shunned. It can depict homosexuals experiencing horrific suffering as the direct result of homo-hatred, suffering of which even most bigots would be ashamed to be the cause.

It can, in short, link homo-hating bigotry with all sorts of attributes the bigot would be ashamed to possess, and with social consequences he would find unpleasant and scary. The attack, therefore, is on self-image and on the pleasure in hating. When our ads show a bigot, just like the members of the target audience, being criticized, hated, and shunned, we make use of direct emotional modeling as well.

Remember, a bigot seeks approval and liking from his crowd. When he sees someone like himself being disapproved of and disliked by ordinary Joes, direct emotional modeling ensures that he will feel just what they feel and transfer it to himself. This wrinkle effectively elicits shame and doubt, jamming any pleasure he might normally feel.

In a very real sense, every time a bigot sees such things, he is unlearning a little bit of the lessons of prejudice taught him by his parents and peers. Effective jamming is achieved without reference to facts, logic, or proof. Through repeated infrological emotional conditioning, his bigotry can be alloyed in exactly the same way, whether he is conscious of the attack or not.

Indeed, the more he is distracted by any incidental, even specious, surface arguments, the less conscious he'll be of the true nature of the process, which is all to the good. I'm going to read that paragraph again because it's important that you understand this, especially as related to financial topics.

"The effective jamming is achieved without reference to facts, logic, or proof. Through repeated infrological emotional conditioning, his bigotry can be alloyed in exactly the same way, whether he is conscious of the attack or not. Indeed, the more he is distracted by any incidental, even specious, surface arguments, the less conscious he'll be of the true nature of the process, which is all to the good.

In short, jamming succeeds insofar as it inserts even a slight frision of doubt and shame into the previously unalloyed self-righteous pleasure. You need massive public exposure of the message to succeed." And then stage three, the first stage was desensitization. Stage two is jamming, and stage three here is conversion.

"Desensitization aims at lowering the intensity of anti-homosexual emotional reactions to a level approximating sheer indifference. Jamming attempts to blockade or counteract the rewarding 'pride and prejudice' by attaching to homo-hatred a pre-existing and punishing sense of shame in being a bigot, a horse's ass, and a beater and murderer. Both of these techniques are preludes to our highest, though necessarily very long-range goal, which is conversion.

Conversion of the average American's emotions, mind, and will through a planned psychological attack in the form of propaganda fed to the nation via the media. We mean subverting the mechanism of prejudice to our own ends, using the very process that made America hate us to turn their hatred into warm regard, whether they like it or not.

If desensitization lets the watch run down and jamming throws sand in the works, conversion reverses the spring so that the hands run backward. In conversion, the bigot who holds a very negative stereotypic picture is repeatedly exposed to literal picture and label pairs in magazines and on billboards and TV of homosexuals, explicitly labeled as such, who not only don't look like his picture of homosexuals, but are carefully selected to look either like the bigot and his friends or like any of his other stereotypes of all right guys, the kind of people he already likes and admires.

This image must, of necessity, be carefully tailored to be free of absolutely every element of the widely held stereotypes of how faggots look, dress, and sound. He or she must not be too well or fashionably dressed, must not be too handsome, that is, mustn't look like a model or well-groomed.

The image must be that of an icon or normality. A good beginning would be to take a long look at Coors Beer and Three Musketeers candy commercials. Subsequent ads can branch out from that solid basis to include really adorable athletic teenagers, kindly grandmothers, avuncular policemen ad infinitum. But it makes no difference that the ads are lies, not to us, because we're using them to ethically good effect, to counter negative stereotypes that are every bit as much lies and far more wicked ones, not be bigots, because the ads will have their effect on them whether they believe them or not.

I need to read that paragraph again to emphasize it. But it makes no difference that the ads are lies, not to us, because we're using them to ethically good effect, to counter negative stereotypes that are every bit as much lies and far more wicked ones, not be bigots, because the ads will have their effect on them whether they believe them or not.

When a bigot is presented with an image of the sort of person of whom he already has a positive stereotype, he experiences an involuntary rush of positive emotion, of good feeling. He's been conditioned to experience it. But here the good picture has the bad label, homosexual. The ad may say something rather like "Buregaard Smith, beer drinker, good old boy, pillar of the community, 100% American, and homosexual as a mongoose." The bigot will feel two incompatible emotions, a good response to the picture, a bad response to the label.

At worst, the two will cancel one another, and we will have successfully jammed as above. At best, associative conditioning will, to however small an extent, transfer the positive emotion associated with the picture to the label itself, not immediately replacing the negative response, but definitely weakening it. You may wonder why the transfer wouldn't proceed in the opposite direction.

The reason is simple. Pictures are stronger than words and evoke emotional responses more powerfully. The bigot is presented with an actual picture. Its label will evoke in his mind his own stereotypic picture. What he sees in his mind's eye will be weaker than what he actually sees in front of him with the eyes in his face.

The more carefully selected the advertising image is to reflect his ideal of the sort of person who just couldn't be homosexual, the more effective it will be. Moreover, he will, by virtue of logical necessity, see the positive picture in the ad before it can arouse his negative picture, and first impressions have an advantage over second.

In conversion, we mimic the natural process of stereotype learning with the following effect. We take the bigot's good feelings about all right guys and attach them to the label "gay," either weakening or eventually replacing his bad feelings toward the label and the prior stereotype. Understanding direct emotional modeling, you'll readily foresee its application to conversion.

Whereas in jamming, the target is shown a bigot being rejected by his crowd for his prejudice against homosexuals, in conversion, the target is shown his crowd actually associating with homosexuals in good fellowship. Once again, it's very difficult for the average person, who by nature and training almost invariably feels what he sees his fellows feeling, not to respond in this knee-jerk fashion to a sufficiently calculated advertisement.

In a way, most advertisement is founded upon an answer of "yes, definitely." To Mother's sarcastic question, I suppose if all the other kids jumped off a bridge and killed themselves, you would too? Success depends on flooding the media, and that in turn means money, man hours, and unifying the homosexual community for a concerted effort.

Pay attention to this section here. Learn from Madison Avenue to roll out the big guns. Homosexuals must launch a large-scale campaign. We've called it the "waging peace campaign" to reach straights through the mainstream media. We're talking about propaganda. The term propaganda applies to any deliberate attempt to persuade the masses via public communications media.

Its function is not to perpetrate, but to propagate. To propagate, that is, to spread new ideas and feelings or reinforce old ones, which may themselves be either evil or good depending on their purpose and effect. The purpose and effect of pro-gay propaganda is to promote a climate of increased tolerance for homosexuals.

Three characteristics distinguish propaganda from other modes of communication and contribute to its sinister reputation. 1. Relies on emotional manipulation through desensitization, jamming, and conversion. 2. Use lies. And 3. Subjective and one-sided. Tell our side of the story as movingly as possible. In the battle for hearts and minds, effective propaganda knows enough to put its best foot forward.

This is what our own media campaign must do. We must train leaders, national workshops for full acceptance in America, begin a national positive images campaign. Recognition is dawning that anti-gay discrimination begins, like war, in the minds of men and must be stopped there with the help of propaganda. The principal goal of the campaign is to gain tolerance and acceptance by the straight community.

Show in the media that homosexual community lives by an ethical code in order to achieve our goal of tolerance and acceptance. Publicly come out to desensitize, jam, and convert straight America. Jamming means interrupting the smooth workings of bigotry by inducing inconsistent feelings in the bigot. Extreme bigots become less confident that their incitements will generate applause and are further inhibited by the majority of mild bigots, who now become uneasy that a fagslur might provoke an unpleasant scene.

Once these dynamics get going, displays of homo hatred suddenly become off color and boorish. Thus, when homosexuals come out, they help transform the social climate from one that supports prejudice to one that shuts homo haters up. Coming out is critical catalyst for the all important conversion process. To make straights actually like and accept homosexuals as a group, enabling straights to identify with them, coming out is the key to sociopolitical empowerment, the ability of the gay community to control its own destiny.

The coming out process is too slow, so we also need a national media campaign. After meeting enough likable homosexuals on TV, Jane Doe may begin to feel she knows homosexuals as a group, even if none has ever introduced himself to her personally. Thwart bigotry. Carefully crafted, repeatedly displayed mass media images of homosexuals could conceivably do even more to reverse negative stereotypes than could the incremental coming out of one person to another.

The wide range of favorably sanitized images that might be shown in the media could eventually have a far more positive impact on the homosexual stereotype than could exposure to homosexual friends. Since straights will otherwise generalize a suboptimal impression of gays from the idiosyncratic admixture of good and bad traits possessed by their one or two homosexual acquaintances.

Portray only the most favorable side of gays, thereby counterbalancing the already unfairly negative stereotype in the public's mind. The media campaign will work well in tandem with the everyone comes out strategy because it is actually a catalyst to coming out. And the final, well, excuse me, the final part of this section here.

There are two different avenues to gay liberation. Education, i.e. propaganda, and politics. Politicians must be responsive to public sentiment on sensational issues if they value their careers. But this often happens in politics, especially on the homosexual issue where, as Yeasts would say, "The best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity." Our political success would be greatly advanced by media campaign conducted prior to or simultaneously with political initiatives.

And then I'm skipping a section here and I've got one more page here of skipping to a different principle. And again, if you'd like to read these notes, what I'm trying to point out to you is how there can be a concerted propaganda pressure to adjust public sentiment and public opinion.

And this will apply directly to many financial topics. But here are a couple of additional things. So from page 12 of these notes, which are pulling from pages, page 178 of After the Ball, is under a principle called keep talking where you need to keep discussing all of these issues continually until people get desensitized to them.

Quote, "In the early stages of the campaign, the public should not be shocked and repelled by premature exposure to homosexual behavior itself. Instead, the imagery of sex per se should be downplayed and the issue of gay rights reduced as far as possible to an abstract social question." Close quote.

That was from page 178. Quote, "As it happens, the AIDS epidemic, ever a course and boon for the gay movement, provides ample opportunity to emphasize the civil rights and discrimination side of things. But unfortunately, it also permits our enemies to draw attention to gay sex habits that provoke revulsion." Close quote from page 178.

Accused religious people, quote, "Gays can use talk to muddy the moral waters, that is, to undercut the rationalizations that justify religious bigotry and to jam some of its psychic rewards. Portray such institutions as antiquated backwaters, badly out of step with the times and with the latest findings of psychology." It's from page 179.

Finally, some quotes from the author's principle five, which is to portray gays as victims, not as aggressive challengers. Quote, "Gays must be portrayed as victims in need of protection. So the straights will be inclined by reflex to adopt the role of protector. If gays present themselves instead as a strong and arrogant tribe promoting a defiantly nonconformist lifestyle, they are most likely to be seen as a public menace that warrants resistance and oppression." From page 183.

Key point, quote, "The purpose of victim imagery is to make straights feel very uncomfortable. That is to jam with shame the self-righteous pride that would ordinarily accompany and reward their anti-gay belligerence and to lay the groundwork for the process of conversion by helping straights identify with gays and sympathize with their underdog status." Close quote from page 183.

Quote, "Persons featured in media campaigns should be wholesome and admirable by straight standards and completely unexceptional in appearance. In a word, they should be indistinguishable from the straights we'd like to reach." Close quote, 183. Quote, "Conventional young people, middle-aged women, and older folks of all races would be featured, not to mention the parents and straight friends of gays.

One could also argue that lesbians should be featured more prominently than gay men in the early stages of the media campaign." Close quote from 183 to 184. Finally here, two different messages about gay victims. The public persuaded that gays are victims of circumstance, that they no more choose their sexual orientation than they did, say, their height, skin color, talents, or limitations.

Quote, "To suggest in public that homosexuality might be chosen is to open the can of worms labeled 'moral choice' and 'sin' and give the religious intransigence a stick to beat us with. Straights must be taught that it is as natural for some persons to be homosexual as it is for others to be heterosexual.

Wickedness and seduction have nothing to do with it, and since no choice is involved, gayness can be no more blameworthy than straightness. In fact, it is simply a matter of the odds, one in ten, as to who turns out gay and who's straight. Each heterosexual must be led to realize that he might easily have been born homosexual himself." Page 184.

"Gays should be portrayed as victims of prejudice. Straights don't fully realize the suffering they bring upon gays and must be shown graphic pictures of brutalized gays, dramatizations of job and housing insecurity, loss of child custody, public humiliation, etc." Page 184. Finally, this section, "Help straights become homosexual protectors, play for sympathy and tolerance, march if you must, but don't parade.

Look good for the camera and newspaper. Look ordinary, not disenfranchised drag queens, bull dykes, exotic elements of the gay community. Desensitization works gradually or not at all." Page 186. If you look at that content and you clearly understand the tools and methodologies used, and you use that combined with some study of logic and logical fallacies, and then you start looking at the world around you, I believe you'll be able to see through a lot of the propaganda because propaganda is not only used in the furtherance of the homosexual movement.

It's used in every area of life. It's used in tons and tons of aspects of finance. And we're going to get into many more of those aspects in future episodes. The challenge is simply that I sometimes struggle with knowing how to work through things. I find information, some of which I brought on the show and some of which I'll bring in the future, but I find information and you struggle and you say, "Wow, can this be true?

Is this true? How does this work?" The biggest, probably the most immediately apparent one where I've connected this with actual financial topics is the discussion of retirement. Well, that makes a big difference in your life, how you view retirement planning. It makes a big difference. So it's difficult and challenging to work through this with the financial aspects because most of this stuff goes far beyond my lifetime, probably far beyond your lifetime.

But we, as a radical personal finance community, we need to continue to develop our critical thinking skills. And we need to continually develop our knowledge and our research skills. And we need to look at the society around us and hone our skills of discernment to understand what's actually happening in society around us.

When I finally was able to look at those documents that I just read to you in detail, and I was able to understand the tools and the tactics presented by Kirk and Madsen on how they planned, brilliantly planned to achieve their objective. And then I thought back over the course of my lifetime and I thought through all the different things that I've been exposed to, TV programs, the debates, the social commentary, the newspaper articles, the personal conversations.

I just thought, I can see every single one of their tactics applied to modern society. And it has led to an almost absolute complete transformation of modern society. It's incredible. It's incredible the power of propaganda techniques. Now, those techniques can be used and employed for good or for bad.

And your perspective on good and bad will be driven by your worldview, which is why you need to spend a lot of time thinking about it and constructing it. It's very easy to see these techniques in modern social issues. I'll give you an example. Take the discussion very clearly presented by Kirk and Madsen on leading with the camel's nose, just leading with the simple camel's nose.

Look at a modern social issue that is constantly in the forefront of societal debate, for example, abortion. So in our modern, in 2015, the battle in our society in general is over abortion in general. So we're at the stage in the discussion where we publicly argue about the ethics of killing a preborn baby, but we argue about it whether or not it's right because it's conceived because of rape or incest.

We don't really argue about the uglier side of abortion, which is the concept of, "This baby is simply inconvenient to me," abortions. We don't argue about the possibility of sex-selective abortion, like is somewhat common in China as a result of their one-child policy. We don't know about the fact that in China, there are unmarked vans with sonograph equipment to offer illegal gender identification ultrasounds to pregnant mothers so they can determine the gender of their baby prior to birth.

We certainly don't talk about disability-selective abortion. We don't talk about the fact that 90% of the babies that are diagnosed with Down syndrome via fetal genetic testing are ultimately aborted and killed. It's not polite to bring that up in our society. It's too graphic, too grating. It's not a polite conversation.

We certainly would never talk about the massive disparity in race among abortion. We wouldn't talk about the massive number of black babies that are aborted. In a culture of featuring the hashtag of #BlackLivesMatter, we talk about police brutality, and we should, but we don't dare talk about the fact that the number one killer of black lives in the United States is abortion.

It's fascinating. If you total up all the causes of death for blacks in the United States for HIV, homicide, diabetes, accidents, cancer, and heart disease, you wind up with 285,522 annual deaths. In the meantime, 363,000, almost 80,000 more, 360,000 more babies, excuse me, 363,000 total babies were aborted. That's a worldview issue.

So you got to think about and understand your worldview and your ethical framework, and you need to effectively articulate it for yourself, for your family, and for your community. Neutrality is not an option. You cannot be neutral on it. On a situation like that, most people, the lie of the abortion propaganda is that you can be neutral.

And this is where we go back to the topic of cowardice. I have a very difficult time having effective conversations with people who are vaguely religious and with people who are vaguely humanist. I personally prefer you to understand your worldview clearly and advocate confidently for your positions. Now, obviously, we're all in the process of assembling and disassembling and repairing and adjusting and modifying our respective worldviews.

No matter where you are as a person in your life's development, you're effectively constantly adjusting to new information, new content, new learning. I get that. That's the whole point of why I'm trying to do this show, to help you and give you information so that you can understand what you believe and why.

But in order to do that, somebody needs to be clear about what they believe and why. I'm not scared of a good debate. I hope you aren't either. A good debate is useful, but we can't lie to each other about what our positions are and have an effective debate.

And that's what makes me so angry about much of modern-day propaganda. And this show – I'm hoping that I'm clear with my content here. This show is not about finance. This show is about propaganda and worldview and systems and codes of morality and ethics. And then for the forthcoming future of this show, we're going to apply it to financial topics.

But you need this background of how do we think about worldview. The debate is important as long as we effectively articulate our position and our framework and our worldview, and as long as we're consistent with it. Let me give you an example. Let me tell you about a man that I admire.

The man is named Peter Singer. Now, the reason that I admire him is simply because he's not a coward and he's intellectually consistent. I can hardly imagine somebody who is farther away from me on a continuum of issues, especially social issues. But at least he's consistent with his own philosophy.

So that way I can actually understand and articulate his philosophy. He says what he believes. He doesn't hide behind ridiculous propaganda marketing messages. He says what he believes so that I can actually think about that and say, "Hmm, do I believe what he says? Do I believe what I say?

Or do I believe somewhere in the middle?" And I can wrestle with my worldview and I can wrestle with my issues. Let me give you some examples from his Wikipedia article. So this is from Wikipedia. "Peter Albert David Singer, born 6th of July 1946, is an Australian moral philosopher.

He is currently the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and a Laureate Professor at the Center for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the University of Melbourne. He specializes in applied ethics and approaches ethical issues from a secular utilitarian perspective." Interestingly, he's not a secular humanist.

He's a secular utilitarian. I'll clarify that in a moment, but to continue on, he's close enough for the discussion for right now. "He is known in particular for his book Animal Liberation, 1975, a canonical text in animal rights and liberation theory. For most of his career, he supported preference utilitarianism, but in his later years became a classical or hedonistic utilitarian when co-authoring The Point of View of the Universe with Catarzyna de Lazari-Radek.

On two occasions, Singer served as Chair of the Philosophy Department at Monash University, where he founded its Center for Human Bioethics. In 1996, he stood unsuccessfully as a Greens candidate for the Australian Senate. In 2004, he was recognized as the Australian Humanist of the Year by the Council of Australian Humanist Societies, and in June 2012 was named a Companion of the Order of Australia for his services to philosophy and bioethics.

He serves on the Advisory Board of Incentives for Global Health, the NGO formed to develop the Health Impact Fund proposal. He has voted one of Australia's 10 most influential public intellectuals in 2006. Singer currently serves on the Advisory Board of Academic Stand Against Poverty." We'll get to that in a moment.

Now, let's talk about some of his ideas. This is important, and here's a man who's not a coward, who's actually consistent with his philosophy, consistent with his moral, ethical, and intellectual framework, and applies it. Here are some of his positions directly from his Wikipedia page. Applied Ethics. "Singer's most comprehensive work, Practical Ethics, from 1979, analyzes in detail why and how living beings' interests should be weighed.

His principle of equal consideration of interests does not dictate equal treatment of all those with interests, since different interests warrant different treatment. All have an interest in avoiding pain, for instance, but relatively few have an interest in cultivating their abilities. Not only does his principle justify different treatment for different interests, but it allows different treatment for the same interest when diminishing marginal utility is a factor.

For example, this approach would privilege a starving person's interest in food over the same interest of someone who is only slightly hungry. Among the more important human interests are those in avoiding pain, in developing one's abilities, in satisfying basic needs for food and shelter, in enjoying warm, personal relationships, in being free to pursue one's projects without interference and many others.

The fundamental interest that entitles a being to equal consideration is the capacity for suffering and/or enjoyment or happiness." That's important. "Singer holds that a being's interest should always be weighed according to that being's concrete properties. He favors a journey model of life, which measures the wrongness of taking a life by the degree to which doing so frustrates a life journey's goals.

The journey model is tolerant of some frustrated desire and explains why persons who have embarked on their journeys are not replaceable. Only a personal interest in continuing to live brings the journey model into play. This model also explains the priority that Singer attaches to interests over trivial desires and pleasures.

Singer's ideas require the concept of an impartial standpoint from which to compare interests. He has wavered about whether the precise aim is the total amount of satisfied interests or the most satisfied interests among those beings who already exist prior to the decision making. The second edition of Practical Ethics disavows the first edition's suggestion that the total and prior existence views should be combined.

The second edition asserts that the preference satisfaction utilitarianism incorporating the journey model applies without invoking the first edition's suggestions about the total view. The details are fuzzy, however, and Singer admits that he is not entirely satisfied with his treatment. Ethical conduct is justifiable by reasons that go beyond prudence to something bigger than the individual, addressing a larger audience.

Singer thinks this going beyond identifies moral reasons as somehow universal, specifically in the adjunction to "love thy neighbor as thyself" interpreted by him as demanding that one give the same weight to the interests of others as one gives to one's own interests. This universalizing step, which Singer traces from Kant to Hare, is crucial and sets him apart from those moral theorists from Hobbes to David Gauthier who tie morality to prudence.

Universalization leads directly to utilitarianism, Singer argues, on the strength of the thought that one's own interests cannot count for more than the interests of others. Taking these into account, one must weigh them up and adopt the course of action that is most likely to maximize the interests of those affected.

Utilitarianism has been arrived at. Singer's universalizing step applies to interests without reference to who has them, whereas a Kantian's applies to the judgments of rational agents in Kant's Kingdom of Ends, or Rawls' original position, etc. Singer regards Kantian universalization as unjust to animals. As for the Hobbesians, Singer attempts a response in the final chapter of Practical Ethics, arguing that self-interested reasons support adoption of the moral point of view, such as the paradox of hedonism, which counts—okay, I'm going to quit now.

So the point is that here is Peter Singer, and he's saying, "Here is my worldview." He's not a secular humanist, but he's close enough. I'll cover that in a moment. "Here's my worldview, and here's its application, and it's clear and it's consistent. You should think about it and see if you agree with it.

I don't, but you should." Now, remember I just talked about abortion, and I said, "Speak clearly on the issue." The problem is that we in our modern era are engaged in a constant war of propaganda for minds, and we've been so crippled by our inability to actually think and to think critically about the underlying worldviews and philosophies that we argue about whether or not we should abort babies that are due to incest and rape.

Instead of talking about abortion as a moral agreement. So here is Singer's position on abortion. In Singer's view, the central argument against abortion may be stated as the following syllogism. "It is wrong to kill an innocent human being. A human fetus is an innocent human being. Therefore, it is wrong to kill a human fetus." In his book, "Rethinking Life and Death," as well as in "Practical Ethics," Singer asserts that if we take the premises at face value, the argument is deductively valid.

Singer comments that defenders of abortion attack the second premise, suggesting that the fetus becomes a human or alive at some point after conception. However, Singer finds this argument flawed in that human development is a gradual process, and it is nearly impossible to mark a particular moment in time as the moment at which life begins.

Singer's argument for abortion differs from many other proponents of abortion, then, rather than attacking the second premise of the anti-abortion argument, Singer attacks the first premise, denying that it is necessarily wrong to take innocent human life. Notice that. Denying that it is necessarily wrong to take innocent human life.

The argument that a fetus is not alive is a resort to a convenient fiction that turns an evidently living being into one that legally is not alive. Instead of accepting such fictions, we should recognize that the fact that a being is human and alive does not in itself tell us whether it is wrong to take that being's life.

Singer states that arguments for or against abortion should be based on utilitarian calculation, which compares the preferences of a woman against the preferences of the fetus. In his view, a preference is anything sought to be obtained or avoided. All forms of benefit or harm caused to a being correspond directly with the satisfaction or frustration of one or more of its preferences.

Since the capacity to achieve the sensations of suffering or satisfaction is a prerequisite to having any preferences at all, add a fetus up to around 18 weeks, says Singer, who has no capacity to suffer or feel satisfaction. It is not possible for such a fetus to hold any preferences at all.

In a utilitarian calculation, there is nothing to weigh against a woman's preferences to have an abortion. Therefore, abortion is morally permissible. Singer's book, Rethinking Life or Death, The Collapse of Our Traditional Ethics, offer further examination of the ethical dilemmas concerning the advances of medicine. He covers the value of human life and the quality of life ethics in addition to abortion and other controversial ethical questions.

So do you see why this is important? I believe that argument is a valid argument between, as an example, the biblical Christian worldview and the secular humanist worldview. That's a consistent argument. His preference utilitarian argument makes far more sense than arguing over rape and incest. But that doesn't work in popular society.

So we have to engage in propaganda instead of actually arguing the reality of it. This is why in 2012, in the Journal of Medical Ethics, a philosopher and a bioethicist jointly proposed that infanticide be legalized, calling it after-birth abortion and claiming that both the fetus and the newborn are potential persons.

That's also from a separate Wikipedia article on infanticide. That would be consistent with a different worldview. There's nothing magical that happens at birth as far as the baby, except the first breath. But a baby that's prior to birth and a baby that's at birth, they're practically the same thing.

They just haven't come out. So you have all these arguments in the United States that are based upon these different worldviews, but very few people are clear about it. Let's talk about euthanasia and let's hear what Singer says on this, euthanasia and infanticide. Consistent with his general ethical theory, Singer holds that the right to life is essentially tied to a being's capacity to hold preferences, which in turn is essentially tied to a being's capacity to feel pain and pleasure.

Similar to his argument for abortion, Singer argues that newborns lack the essential characteristics of personhood, rationality, autonomy, and self-consciousness, and therefore killing a newborn baby is never equivalent to killing a person. That is a being who wants to go on living. Let's talk about a couple other social issues and then we're going to get into how this applies to world poverty, because we can apply exactly the same mindset and philosophy to something like world poverty.

Speciesism. Published in 1975, Animal Liberation has been cited as a formative influence on leaders of the modern animal liberation movement. The central argument of the book is an expansion of the utilitarian idea that the greatest good or the greatest number is the only measure of good or ethical behavior.

Singer believes that there is no reason not to apply this to other animals, arguing that the boundary between human and animal is completely arbitrary. There are more differences between a grape ape, great ape, and an oyster, for example, than between a human and a great ape, and yet the former two are lumped together as animals whilst we are human.

In particular, he argues that while animals show lower intelligence than the average human, many severely intellectually challenged humans show equally diminished, if not lower, mental capacity, and that some animals have displayed signs of intelligence sometimes on par with that of human children. Singer therefore argues intelligence does not provide a basis for providing non-human animals any less consideration than such intellectually challenged humans.

He popularized the term speciesism. That is a consistent worldview. If you believe that human beings are the result of accidental biological process, then speciesism is a rational social justice issue for you to argue for. As much as racism and ageism and bigotry, you should be arguing for speciesism. Have you ever thought about that?

Now, obviously, I don't expect any of you to agree with Peter Singer. There's always people in every movement with whom we all disagree. I could sit and argue with tons of Christian theologians left and right, but I'm saying, have you thought your worldview through? His worldview is fairly extreme, but I think it's consistent.

He goes on and talks about personism, and that's what he prefers over and above the concept of secular humanism. What about something like bestiality, sex between humans and animals? In a 2001 review of Midas Decker's Dearest Pet on bestiality, Singer argues that sexual activities between humans and animals that result in harm to the animal should remain illegal, but that "sex with animals does not always involve cruelty" and that "mutually satisfying activities" of a sexual nature may sometimes occur between humans and animals, and that writer Otto Sojka would condone such activities.

That's a consistent scenario because if you believe in evolutionary biology and you believe that human beings are only just slightly more of farther along in their evolutionary stage than animals, then why would you be repulsed by the idea of bestiality? Why is it illegal in all 50 United States?

I think it's illegal in all 50 United States. Why is it illegal at all? That's an important worldview issue for you to think about. Don't just skip past it because you're unfamiliar with it. I'm not arguing for the extreme. I'm illustrating a consistent application of a worldview. Now, let's apply this to financial issues.

What would Singer's response be to world poverty? Because remember, you and I are involved in this. If you're a US American taxpayer, the US government takes some amount of your money and sends it overseas to fight world poverty. The US government takes some amount of your money and sends it back into our society to deal with US-based poverty.

How would Singer discuss this? Well, in Famine, Affluence, and Morality, one of Singer's best-known philosophical essays, he argues that some people living in abundance while others starve is morally indefensible. Singer proposes that anyone able to help the poor should donate part of their income to aid poverty relief and similar efforts.

Singer reasons that when one is already living comfortably, a further purchase to increase comfort will lack the same moral importance as saving another person's life. Singer himself reports that he donates around 33% of his salary to a variety of cost-effective charities, and he is a member of Giving What We Can, an international society for the promotion of poverty relief inspired by Singer's arguments.

In Rich and Poor, the version of the aforementioned article that appears in the second edition of Practical Ethics, his main argument is presented as follows. "If we can prevent something bad without sacrificing anything of comparable significance, we ought to do it. Absolute poverty is bad. There is some poverty we can prevent without sacrificing anything of comparable moral significance.

Therefore, we ought to prevent some absolute poverty." Singer's most recent book, The Life You Can Save, makes the argument that it is a clear-cut moral imperative for citizens of developed countries to give more to charitable causes that help the poor. While Singer acknowledges that there are problems with ensuring that money goes where it is most needed and that it is used effectively, he does not think that these practical difficulties undermine his original conclusion, that people should make a much greater effort to reduce poverty.

Now, to wrap this up, oh, one more important back on the social aspect that I want to comment on, and then we'll be wrapped up. But obviously, Singer's just one person. He doesn't, again, he doesn't speak for the majority of secular humanists any more than the Westboro Baptist Church or the Pope speak for Christians.

Every sociological grouping has factions. Now, interestingly, I promised to mention, he doesn't actually call himself a secular humanist. From Wikipedia, "Although he has expressed admiration for many of the values promoted by secular humanism, Singer believes to be incomplete and promotes a preference utilitarian view he calls personism instead." So I won't go into preference utilitarianism or personism any further.

But feel free to spend some time on Wikipedia and you should be able to easily understand them. My point with all of this is that you need to watch carefully the transitions in society because they will affect you. And my reason for going into in depth the background of the homosexual movement is so that you can understand the tools and tactics and strategies that were part of that movement and apply them and watch them being applied to other social and financial movements and political movements.

I want to read you one more essay that was quite in the news back in October 2014 in the New York Times. I'm reading these things to you. I hope you can at least appreciate whether you agree with my perspective or not. I hope you can at least appreciate that I'm trying to present these to you as comprehensive pieces of evidence that stand on their own.

I'm not necessarily trying to make a commentary on them. I am commenting on them, but I'm not trying to tear them apart necessarily. I'm trying to present them to you and allow you to consider them. So I hope that's helpful to you. But I want to read you an essay from the New York Times.

This is relatively short, from October 6, 2014, titled Pedophilia, a Disorder, Not a Crime by Margot Kaplan. Think back to your first childhood crush. Maybe it was a classmate or a friend next door. Most likely through school and into adulthood, your affections continue to focus on others in your approximate age group.

But imagine if they did not. By some estimates, 1% of the male population continues long after puberty to find themselves attracted to prepubescent children. These people are living with pedophilia, a sexual attraction to prepubescence that often constitutes a mental illness. Unfortunately, our laws are failing them and consequently ignoring opportunities to prevent child abuse.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders defines pedophilia as an intense and recurrent sexual interest in prepubescent children and a disorder if it causes a person "marked distress or interpersonal difficulty" or if the person "acts on his interests." Yet our laws ignore pedophilia until after the commission of a sexual offense, emphasizing punishment, not prevention.

Part of this failure stems from the misconception that pedophilia is the same as child molestation. One can live with pedophilia and not act on it. Sites like Virtuous Pedophiles provide support for pedophiles who do not molest children and believe that sex with children is wrong. It is not that these individuals are inactive or non-practicing pedophiles, but rather that pedophilia is a status and not an act.

In fact, research shows about half of all child molesters are not sexually attracted to their victims. A second misconception is that pedophilia is a choice. Recent research, while often limited to sex offenders because of the stigma of pedophilia, suggests that the disorder may have neurological origins. Pedophilia could result from a failure in the brain to identify which environmental stimuli should provoke a sexual response.

MRIs of sex offenders with pedophilia show fewer of the neural pathways known as white matter in their brains. Men with pedophilia are three times more likely to be left-handed or ambidextrous, a finding that strongly suggests a neurological cause. Some findings also suggest that disturbances in neurodevelopment in utero or early childhood increase the risk of pedophilia.

Studies have also shown that men with pedophilia have, on average, lower scores on tests of visual spatial ability and verbal memory. The Virtuous Pedophiles website is full of testimonials of people who vow never to touch a child and yet live in terror. They must hide their disorder from everyone they know or risk losing educational and job opportunities and face the prospect of harassment and even violence.

Many feel isolated. Some contemplate suicide. The psychologist Jesse Bering, author of "Perv, the Sexual Deviant in All of Us," writes that people with pedophilia "aren't living their lives in the closet. They're eternally hunkered down in a panic room." While treatment cannot eliminate a pedophile's sexual interests, a combination of cognitive behavioral therapy and medication can help him to manage urges and avoid committing crimes.

But the reason we don't know enough about effective treatment is because research has usually been limited to those who have committed crimes. Our current law is inconsistent and irrational. For example, federal law in 20 states allow courts to issue a civil order committing a sex offender, particularly one with a diagnosis of pedophilia, to a mental health facility immediately after the completion of a sentence under standards that are much more lax than for ordinary civil commitment for people with mental illness.

And yet when it comes to public policies that might help people with pedophilia to come forward and seek treatment before they offend, the law omits pedophilia from protection. The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 prohibit discrimination against otherwise qualified individuals with mental disabilities in areas such as employment, education, and medical care.

Congress, however, explicitly excluded pedophilia from protection under these two crucial laws. It's time to revisit these categorical exclusions. Without legal protection, a pedophile cannot risk seeking treatment or disclosing his status to anyone for support. He could lose his job and future job prospects if he is seen at a group therapy session, asks for a reasonable accommodation to take medication or see a psychiatrist, or requests a limit in his interaction with children.

Isolating individuals from appropriate employment and treatment only increases their risks of committing a crime. There is no question that the extension of civil rights protections to people with pedophilia must be weighed against the health and safety needs of others, especially kids. It stands to reason that a pedophile should not be hired as a grade school teacher.

Both the ADA and the Rehabilitation Act contain exemptions for people who are not otherwise qualified for a job or who pose "a direct threat to the health and safety of others" that can't be eliminated by a reasonable accommodation. This is why employers don't have to hire blind bus drivers or mentally unstable security guards.

The direct threat analysis rejects the idea that the employers can rely on generalizations. They must assess the specific case and rely on evidence, not presuppositions. Those who worry that employers would be compelled to hire dangerous pedophiles should look to HIV case law, where for years courts were highly conservative, erring on the side of finding a direct threat.

Even into the late 1990s, when medical authorities were in agreement that people with HIV could work safely in, for example, food services. Removing the pedophile exclusion would not undermine criminal justice or its role in responding to child abuse. It would not make it easier, for example, for someone accused of child molestation to plead not guilty by reason of insanity.

A pedophile should be held responsible for his conduct, but not for the underlying attraction. Arguing for the rights of scorned and misunderstood groups is never popular, particularly when they are associated with real harm. But the fact that pedophilia is so despised is precisely why our responses to it in criminal justice and mental health have been so inconsistent and counterproductive.

Acknowledging that pedophiles have a mental disorder and removing the obstacles to their coming forward and seeking help is not only the right thing to do, but it would also advance efforts to protect children from harm. Margo Kaplan is an assistant professor at Rutgers School of Law in Camden, New Jersey.

Interesting, huh? So what do you think? Do you agree with it? Now, I'll make one point here, and I'll make a couple of points. And depending on your worldview, you... Again, I'm grossly generalizing. But depending on your worldview, you may see this as, "Finally, it's time to help other people." Or you may see this as, "I can't believe it." Me personally, what I notice about it is that this essay makes a big difference between sexual attraction and the sexual act.

Now, the homosexual movement would deny that in their movement, but here Margo talks about personal responsibility. And the only commentary I'll give on the question is that, interestingly, Margo Kaplan and I agree. Now, I don't know what her perspective is. I don't know if she would agree with the Christian teaching on sexual attraction or not.

But in the Christian teaching on sexual attraction, sexual attraction happens. But you're responsible for your actions. So I have sexual attraction to women other than my wife. I am responsible to not act on that attraction. But the key is, the question is, you have to look at this, and you have to watch this over coming decades.

Is this a discussion, and is this kind of just the camel's nose under the tent? Or is this a... And is that what she's promoting? Where it's a movement to the interaction of sexual relations with minors? Or what is it? You have to deal with it in your worldview.

If you're interested, go and you can read the North American Man-Boy Love Association website, which vigorously... Which goes much farther than Margo Kaplan does, and vigorously defends the right of minors to have... Minor children, especially boys, to have sexual relations with men, adult men. There's nothing new about any of this.

If you study history, you start to find that all of these issues have been around forever. If you study Greek and Roman societies, you find that pederasty was an integral part of their society. I'll read you one last thing on this, just on this in case you're not aware, because most people have never studied this.

But what is pederasty? Okay, from Wikipedia. "Pederasty is a usually erotic homosexual relationship between an adult male and a pubescent or adolescent male. The word pederasty derives from Greek for the love of boys, a compound derived from pei, peis, which is child or boy, and erastes, which is lover.

In French, however, pederasty has been used as a synonym for homosexuality between adult males. Historically, pederasty has existed as a variety of customs and practices within different cultures. The status of pederasty has changed over the course of history, at times considered an ideal and at other times a crime.

In the history of Europe, its most structured cultural manifestation was Athenian pederasty and became most prominent in the 6th century BC. Greek pederasty's various forms were the subject of philosophic debates, in which the purely carnal type was unfavorably compared with erotic friendships and moderate forms. Anthropologists proposed three subdivisions of homosexuality as age-structured, egalitarian, and gender-structured.

Pederasty is the archetypal example of male age-structured homosexuality. Geoffrey Gorer and others distinguished pederasty from pedophilia, which he defined as a separate, fourth type that he described as "grossly pathological in all societies of which we have record." According to Gorer, the main characteristic of homosexual pederasty is the age difference, either of generation or age group between the partners.

In his study of native cultures, pederasty appears typically as a passing stage in which the adolescent is the beloved of an older male, remains as such until he reaches a certain development threshold, after which he in turn takes on an adolescent beloved of his own. This model is judged by Gorer as "socially viable," i.e., not likely to give rise to psychological discomfort or neuroses for all or most males.

He adds that in many societies, pederasty has been the main subject of the arts and the main source of tender and elevated emotions. Pederastic practices have been utilized for the purpose of coming-of-age rituals, the acquisition of virility and manly virtue, education and development of military skill and ethics. These were often paralleled by the commercial use of boys for sexual gratification, going so far as enslavement and castration.

The evanescent beauty of adolescent boys has been a topos in poetry and art, from classical times to the Middle East, the Near East and Central Asia, Imperial China, pre-modern Japan, and the European Renaissance and into modern times. What is the age range? Some modern observers restrict the age of the younger partner to "generally between 12 and 17," though historically the spread was somewhat greater.

The younger partner must, in some sense, not be fully mature. This could include young men in their late teens or early twenties. While relationships in ancient Greece involved boys from 12 to about 17 or 18, in Renaissance Italy they typically involved boys between 14 and 19, and in Japan the younger member ranged in age from 11 to about 19.

I'm done with the social issue commentary. I'm appealing to social issues because they often evoke a more emotional response in our hearts and in our minds. I believe that if you've listened to this entire thing, you probably have found a number of points of agreement with something I've said and a number of points of disagreement with something I've said.

Why? Why do you agree or disagree? You need to understand that and you need to be able to articulate it. You cannot divorce your worldview from these social issues. If you believe that pederasty was an improper social practice, which was practiced throughout much of human history, why? And if you believe that it was not, why not?

If you articulate your worldview and you can clearly understand it, that worldview will have application to almost everything in finance. Here's some things that come to the top of my mind. Should I pay taxes? What's an appropriate rate of taxation or amount of taxation to pay? Should it be voluntary or involuntary?

What should we do with the tax money? Should we subsidize farmers? Should we subsidize certain organizations that have a tax exemption? Should we support needy families? Should we support specific companies or industries with the tax money? Do we have a societal obligation to support the poor and provide a guaranteed income, as the humanist manifesto number two states?

Do we have a societal obligation to take from the rich because they have more than is needed for their utilitarian uses, as Peter Singer says? Should we finance health insurance the way that we do with Medicaid and Medicare? Should we transition from the system that we have in the US government and the US economy from the transition of voluntary, so-called, but forced voluntary insurance to a system of corporate insurance?

Should we incentivize certain courses of action through the tax code, like saving for retirement or buying houses? How should we run a monetary system? Who should be allowed to create monetary? What should be our monetary policy and why? What should be our fiscal policy and why? Should there be privacy in your financial transactions?

Should bankruptcy be permitted? Under what conditions? Who should be permitted to discharge their debts? Should certain assets be protected from bankruptcy? Should we confiscate the assets of criminals? Should we pay money to keep people in prison for the rest of their life, or should we execute all criminals? Or should we have shortened criminal sentences, no execution, like they have what was in Denmark, where the guy that killed was a 70-something people and the maximum prison sentence is 24 years, I think, something like that?

We all have to have and develop a coherent, cogent, logical, reasonable, and rational system of thinking. We need a system of ethics and morality that can be applied to each question that we face. My own system is incomplete, and I dare say yours is too. I'm developing that. But don't listen to my show for what you agree with or what you disagree with.

Be challenged by what I say and take it back and consider your own thoughts. I'll tell you, and this is not meant to be offensive to those of you who have written this to me, but just simply as a point of commentary, I know that this is a social nicety, but I'll tell you one of the things that bugs me.

When people write to me and say, "I don't agree with everything you say," of course you don't agree with everything I say. I probably don't agree with everything I say, myself. Sometimes I'll express a thought and then wait to see if it's challenged. Now, I don't do that very much on the show here because I don't think that's practical.

I try to only speak about topics that I feel confident in, that I feel I know something about. But I'm not interested in agreement or disagreement. I often talk with my wife or with my friends and share something I'm thinking, and we're looking for a challenge. That's what we need is we need to be challenged.

You're welcome to disagree with me. It doesn't bother me a bit. I probably disagree with something I said a year ago, because we're all in this process of clarifying and formulating a worldview. If you find trouble in disagreeing with me on something, ask yourself why, and ask if that isn't a little bit of social conditioning, that instead of being taught to educate yourself, which is a process of going and searching for things that are true, that you've been schooled, which means you've been told what is true.

I welcome disagreement. It doesn't bother me. I just beg of you one thing. Don't hide behind cowardice and political popularity. In my opinion, Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen were manipulative cowards. They would not say they were. They would say we were doing what was effective. But I despise what they did.

Now, unfortunately, their worldview allows and permits them to do what they did, allows them to hide behind the nose of the camel going under the tent so that we can get the whole thing under there. I despise that. My worldview doesn't allow me to do that. Now, that's a chink in my armor.

But if you like listening to the show, it's probably because, well, one of the factors, there's no way in the world that someone could listen to what is 180 episodes of the show like some of you have if you didn't appreciate somebody being clear. In their worldview, the ends justify the means.

In mine, they don't. I'll never hide behind unpopular ideas and lie to you about, well, this is unpopular. Truth should stand on its own. It may be unpopular. But for me, I prefer to be unpopular and stand on the side of truth than to be popular and to be a liar.

Of course, you're free to choose your own path. So I'm going to continue over the course of this show to work on exposing and understanding the ideas that affect finance. Some of these things are very simple. Some of the things are so incredibly complex that I cannot seem to wrap my head around them.

Sometimes you'll hear me say something I'm very confident in. Sometimes you'll hear me say something that I'm still working out. When I say in the disclaimer that I play on every show that feel free to come by and correct me, I mean it. And my goal is that those of you who are listening will value this type of approach and that together we can continue on to create a better future.

That's ultimately one of the things that will ally someone like me, a biblical Christian, with a secular humanist, is that we're all working to create a different future. We have radically different worldviews on how that's done. We in many ways have similar goals. So I'll keep on doing my job to expose and understand the ideas that affect finance.

Hope this is a useful show for you to clarify and understand the importance of worldview. I thought a lot about this show. I don't know whether it was successful or not. I know that I took a risk with going into such unusual subjects. If it was ineffective, feel free to just toss it aside as ineffective.

But as I learn and become a better teacher, I see constantly every day financial propaganda. It's absurd. And so much of it is the nose under the tent analogy. And as I've looked and looked and looked over the years to try to figure out how can I demonstrate or where can I see, first of all, is this the nose under the tent?

Because what happens is when you see the camel nose come under the tent and you say to the people in the tent, "Look, there's a camel nose. The coal camel's coming in. He wants to get into the tent." Then people often say, "Are you kidding? Come on, that's a camel nose.

It's just a tiny little thing." And so in so much of past history, I've struggled to see and understand actually in my life. And when I found those documents and that book and the resources on the homosexual movement, I for the first time was able to see in my lifetime, my short lifetime, the development of an idea and the massive transformation of society.

It's incredible, incredible. So now I've taken those lessons that I've learned from studying, how did they do it? How did Kirk and Madsen set it out? What was their plan? Now you apply it to banking. You apply it to monetary systems. You apply it to government. You apply it to taxes.

You apply it to progressivism. You apply it to libertarianism. And I can start to see the impact. And that for me has been helpful. That's why I took this approach. So if it seems disconnected, that's just due to my poor lack of skill as a teacher. But I'm trying, these are such deeply held beliefs and very few of us have assessed them and worked them out in a way that is consistent.

And so this is my best effort at it. And I'd love your feedback. If you thought this was at least provocative and useful, I'd love your feedback. If you hated it, I'm happy to hear from you. I'm learning as we go and trying to learn how to more effectively present and teach things.

But I try, with this show, I'm trying to address things that I've always hated. I always hate when people misrepresent their opponent's philosophy. So that's why I read so extensively from those essays and from the manifesto and from the essay by Kirk and Madsen. I don't like people to misrepresent me.

I'd rather they hear it in totality. And so then you can understand. But that's unusual in today's soundbite culture. So I recognize that I'm taking a risk and very few people actually listen to this, but at least you have a little bit more accurate information. I'm not gonna tell you what to think, but think.

That's good. That'll be my new tagline. I don't tell you what to think, but think critically and comprehensively, and we'll all learn together. That's it for today's show. I thank you very much for listening. Another three hour show, but at least this one, I don't feel like I rambled around.

I feel like I was just going to accurately present my different perspectives and viewpoints. So if this was beneficial for you, I'd be happy to hear from you. RadicalPersonalFinance.com/patron. And you know what? Today with it being show, I'm gonna pull the music out and let's start the disclaimer and I'm out of here.

Cheers, y'all. Thank you for listening to today's show. If you'd like to contact me personally, my email address is joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com. You can also connect with the show on Twitter @radicalpf and at facebook.com/radicalpersonalfinance. This show is intended to provide entertainment, education, and financial enlightenment, but your situation is unique and I cannot deliver any actionable advice without knowing anything about you.

Please, develop a team of professional advisors who you find to be caring, competent, and trustworthy, and consult them because they are the ones who can understand your specific needs, your specific goals, and provide specific answers to your questions. I've done my absolute best to be clear and accurate in today's show, but I'm one person and I make mistakes.

If you spot a mistake in something I've said, please help me by coming to the show page and commenting so we can all- Get the perfect gift for the wine lover in your life at wineenthusiast.com. Personalized wine openers? Wineenthusiast.com. Cheese boards? Wineenthusiast.com. Glassware? Wineenthusiast.com. A 500-bottle wine fridge? Yep.

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