“You get innovation on every level by competition and trial and error. And that’s what debate is; debate is trial and error. It’s me saying, ‘I think this is right,’ you’re saying, ‘I think this is right,’ and we try the ideas against each other to see which one wins. The one that wins, hopefully, is the more rational one, and we’re improved by that. We’re not made worse off by dissension. Liberty is protected by dissension.”
“I don’t like everyone saying, ‘we should all be unified, let’s all be together.’ Fuck off! That’s not how we’re going to find the truth. That’s how we’re going to help one another. It’s not how we’re going to grow and be smarter; we’re going to be smarter by dissension. By me saying, ‘this is right,’ and you saying, ‘this is right,’ and seeing which idea wins.”
“What makes me the most mad is that people on either side of the political aisle think there’s a difference between the two of them, and there’s not! The differences are non-essential. Okay, the right wants to crush this group, the left wants to crush this group, the right wants to promote this group, the left wants to promote that group. But nobody’s talking about the individual’s right to his own life and happiness. Nobody!”
“Sometimes the libertarians do, but they do it in such a fucked up off-putting way that they’re never going to get any purchase in an intelligent culture. And I like a lot of libertarians; I don’t mean to insult them. I listen to a lot of them, I read a lot of their books, but their fundamental ideas are just so off.”
“So what makes me mad is that there’s no difference between two people acting as if there’s a huge difference between the two of them, and there’s not. And then the idea that they’re shouting at each other and not taking the time to listen, but arguing and listening as if they’re right when they really shouldn’t.”
“I believe in that ‘argue as if you’re right, listen as if you’re wrong’ type of way of doing things, and nobody in the political establishment is doing that at the moment.”
Source: Mark Pellegrino on The Chrissie Mayr Podcast #102