Etienne Note: Get your popcorn on for this one and throw this up on the big screen. One of my best presentations ever! It has resulted in a flood of orders for my new book: To See the Cage is to Leave It - 25 Techniques the Few Use to Control the Many from almost 20 countries. If you're looking for the perfect way to share my work with friends or family, this video is it.
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James Corbett: Welcome back, friends. Welcome back to the Corbett Report. I'm James Corbett of CorbettReport.com, coming to you in July of 2025 with another edition of Solutions Watch. And this time, we're going to be following up, in a sense, on a previous conversation that I had here on Solutions Watch that was quite popular at the time. It was from March of 2021, and it was called How to Present Info for Visual Learners. And if you have seen, or even if you want to re-familiarize yourself with that edition of Solutions Watch, I will, of course, put it in the show notes so that you can watch or re-watch it, or listen or re-listen to it, where I talked to author Etienne de la Boetie2, obviously a pen name, about his then current book, “Government” - The Biggest Scam in History…Exposed!
There was a lot of positive feedback to that conversation. In fact, as I understand it, the “Corbett Bump” from that conversation actually overwhelmed his servers and took down his website for a day or two, and he quickly sold out of a print run, if I understand all of that correctly. Well, today we are going to be talking to Etienne de Boetie2 about his new book, called To See the Cage Is to Leave It - 25 Techniques the Few Use to Control the Many, and, of course, the link to this book will be in the show notes for today's conversation. But let's bring him on the program: Etienne de la Boetie2, thank you for joining us again.
Etienne connecting from Memphis, TN to James Corbett in Japan
Etienne de la Boetie2: Hi, it is good to be with you, and your audience once again, James.
James Corbett: Yes, it is good to be here and talking about something that I think is ultimately empowering and powerful. What am I talking about specifically? Not just a book, but, like our last conversation, we were talking about “Government” - The Biggest Scam in History…Exposed! in which you laid out not just the nuts and bolts of the biggest scam in history, but also as we discussed in that conversation, presented that information in a visual style that is bound to get attention and to get people, even the attention-deficit-addled TikTok generation, interested in flipping through the pages. A perfect coffee table book, if you will. Well, here we are, talking about your next book, To See the Cage Is to Leave It. Tell us about this book, what it is, and why you wrote it.
Etienne de la Boetie2: Sure. Well, the full title is To See the Cage Is to Leave It: 25 Techniques the Few Use to Control the Many. And one of the big reveals of the book is that organized crime, government, and their henchmen in the monopoly media are running a variety of unethically manipulative techniques—not just to get the population to go along obediently, but to really indoctrinate the idea of having a government as a religion.
They’re using the same tricks and techniques that an unethically manipulative religion or cult would use on its victims. Many of these are being done surreptitiously and in tricky ways. A lot of things that people may have seen in movies or on television without realizing there was a trick behind them, I’m exposing in this book.
I’m doing so in a very visual way that visual learners can grasp, allowing them to quickly have that moment of insight. I’ve created a kind of picture book that expands the number of people who will engage with it. Unfortunately, with a text-only book, you might get 10 to 15 percent engagement from the population. But what we’ve discovered at the Art of Liberty Foundation is that if you make it visually rich—with lots of memes, visualizations, historical photos, and similar content it dramatically expands the number of people who will engage with it.
This book is designed for your friends, family, colleagues, and loved ones. Once you pick it up, you just can’t put it down, and the information comes at you in a way that’s easily absorbed.
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New book by Etienne de la Boetie2 exposes that the government and Hollywood have been running a multi-generational, trillion-dollar psychological operation on the population to indoctrinate them into accepting a ruling class, confiscatory taxation, and inflationary fractional reserve currency issued by private banks.
The book details 25 unethically manipulative techniques the “government” and monopoly media have been secretly using on the population, ranging from a hidden curriculum in their mandatory schools and scouting to the secret placement of propaganda in over 1,000+ movies and 1,000+ television shows. These techniques include subliminal messages and product placement of the American flag “anchored” to moments of high-positive emotion during the “programming”.
See the Press Release with more details HERE.
Buy the book at SeeTheCage.com
Substack readers can get the book for FREE by “Going Paid” to ANY of the Art of Liberty Foundation’s four Substacks AND get access to all four of those Substacks! Simply “Go Paid” and we will reply with details.
James Corbett: I can attest to that, and hopefully, Broc will be able to show some of the pictures on screen here so that people can get a sense of what this book is like. It is certainly packed with information, but information in a very visually rich style, as you're talking about there.
And I think that's part of what we're talking about here on Solutions Watch. Because, although I would like to think that a lot of my audience is already well-informed about the cage that we are living in although maybe not all of them, I still definitely hear from people who are trapped in the illusion that they're going to vote themselves to freedom.
And don’t worry: “Just vote harder for Trump this time, guys!” And, oh, wait—what's that about Epstein? Oh, I see. So, I am starting to get emails and feedback from people saying, “Oh, I fell for it this time, but I won’t next time,” which is exactly what I heard several years ago the last time people fell for it.
So, I know that a lot of people could benefit from understanding and internalizing this information. But even if you are one of those dedicated Corbett Reporters who knows all about the biggest scam in history and the cage that is surrounding us—your friends don’t. I hear that all the time from people who say, “I'm the only person in the area who knows anything about this. I don’t know anyone in real life. They all think I'm crazy,” etc., etc.
Well, this could be one way of unlocking those people's minds, because, as you say, it is much more likely to get people's attention than an actual words-on-paper kind of text. I mean, that's a hard sell for this smartphone-addicted generation.
So, why don't we start going through the information that's presented in here and how it helps people to leave the cage?
Etienne de la Boetie2: Yeah, absolutely. Let me move to my presentation.
And so, just to kind of make the point, I've taken a lot of the visuals and images from the book so people can understand how impactful they can be.
Just to get started: at the Art of Liberty Foundation, we call it “organized crime theory.” It's not a conspiracy theory; it's an organized crime theory. Government was never really designed to serve and protect. It’s best thought of as a technique of intergenerational organized crime to rob and control society.
Monopolized media and algorithmic censorship of the internet have been controlling the information the population receives, hiding the illegitimacy, the illogical nature, the immorality, and the criminality of government since at least the 1700s in the United States.
And that's some of the history that I break down in the book Government the Biggest Scam in History.
Now, books are the most powerful way to change someone's worldview. Even the intelligence agencies recognize this.
This is a quote from something that came out in the Church Committee hearings in 1976. According to the chief of the Covert Action Staff of the CIA's Clandestine Services Group, he said:
"Books differ from all other propaganda media primarily because one single book can significantly change the reader's attitude and action to an extent unmatched by the impact of any other single medium. This is, of course, not true of all books at all times with all readers, but it is true significantly often enough to make books the most important weapon of strategic (long-range) propaganda.”
And because books are that important—in a previous life, I used to be a productivity expert for Fortune 500 and Fortune 150 companies. So, I understand the way that people learn.
What I did was design the books to appeal specifically to visual learners.
I am purposefully using some techniques to bring people into that moment of insight and also, as I mentioned, to expand the number of people who will engage with any book.
And so, some of the techniques that I'm using and so, just to understand and we covered a little bit of thispropaganda research showing dozens and dozens of ostensibly independent media outlets have their reporters, their producers, and their editors all organized into three organizations: the Bilderberg Group, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Trilateral Commission, where they're meeting on a regular basis in secure facilities around the world.
And so, when you take a look at a large-scale scam like COVID or like 9/11, people frequently say, "Oh, you're saying that all the media is in on it. They couldn't all be in on it." Well, once you see and understand how they're organized, you're like, "Oh, well, I guess they all could be in on it."
Another technique that we use is "revelation of the pattern." This is a visualization from the book where we're describing technique number 14. And human beings are really good pattern-recognition machines. Some of this trick photography and this religious iconography, when it comes by one at a time, people really don't see it, and they really don't understand that it's a trick and that it's artificial. But when you stack up a dozen or two dozen examples of using religious iconography with the presidents, the popes of the artificially indoctrinated religion, the brain says, "Hey, wait a minute. There's a pattern there. They're doing that on purpose." And that revelation of the pattern, you know, reinforces the artificiality.
And then, also, memes are like Molotov cocktails through the Overton window. And so, here's an example of that, you know, on the ridiculousness of the Constitution.
I'm sure many in your educated audience will be familiar with Lysander Spooner. He wrote No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority in 1870, where he absolutely decimated the idea of the legitimacy of the Constitution — that you could be bound by a social contract that you didn't sign, that it could grant powers to the government not possessed by the people supposedly doing the granting — and just absolutely ripped up the idea of the Constitution. But it took him 8,621 words and, depending on which edition of his book you're reading, 70 to 126 pages.
This meme that I've got in the middle: “Sign right here, where it says we give ourselves the power to make up rules and take the wealth of others," is able to just destroy that idea in 21 words.
And I've got another version — the napkin-condensed version of the Constitution:
"I have authority over you because it says so right here on this napkin. Give me your money."
Again, 21 words. And so, memes have that ability to really cut through and be very, very impactful, very, very quickly.
So now, what is the big reveal in To See the Cage is to Leave It?
I mentioned it already, but the belief in government is being secretly and unethically indoctrinated as a religion.
Government is God. Politicians are the prophets. The flag is the artificially indoctrinated holy symbol that is essentially used the same way an idol would be used in other unethically manipulative religions. The laws are the commandments, voting is the equivalent of praying, and taxes are the equivalent of tithes.
And so, you're going to go to the church school, where the teacher — the priest — is going to teach you all about the sacred text of the Constitution. They're going to have you engage in the common prayer of the Pledge of Allegiance here in the United States.
In middle school, you will be taken to Washington, D.C. — Mecca — where they will take you into the cathedral of the Capitol (that looks like the Vatican for a reason), and they will take you to the temples and to the monuments. They will show you the deities of Lincoln and Jefferson, and it will be very, very hushed. And it will be very, very reverent.
And they're going to take children before they're old enough to really understand logic and morality, and they're going to teach them that government is legitimate, desirable, and necessary. And so, if it's OK with you, I'd like to just go through, really quickly, some of the techniques in the book.
And so, technique number one is the mandatory government school system, where children are taught that government is legitimate, desirable, and necessary before they're old enough to evaluate the logic and the morality of the claim. Now, interestingly enough, this was the exact same technique that was used by the organized crime government on the Indians.
And so, after the organized crime government conquered the Native Americans and stole their land, they sent the Indian children to mandatory government schools to turn the once-free Indians into citizens, taxpayers, and soul-diers.
It didn't work on all of them. And I've got a little funny T-shirt there at the bottom that says, "Boarding School Dropout."
The second technique is government-affiliated youth programs. This includes the Cub Scouts, the Weeblos, the Boy Scouts, the Explorers, the JROTC, the ROTC, the Young Marines, and even, I think there are some others I'm forgetting.
Hitler described it best when he said:
"These boys and girls enter our organizations at 10 years of age, and often, for the first time, they get a little air. After four years of the young folk, Cub Scouts, they go on to the Hitler Youth Explorers, where we have them for another four years. Even if they are still not completely National Socialists, Statists, they go on to the Labor Service, AmeriCorps, where they're smoothed out there for another six or seven months. And whatever class consciousness or social status might still be left, the Wehrmacht, the German Armed Forces, will take care of that."
Now, that is describing essentially the exact same program that not only is the United States engaged in, but in the Soviet Union it was called the Young Pioneers and the Komsomol. It's known by different names in different countries, but essentially all of the governments are running the exact same bag of tricks on their populations.
Techniques four and five are military and police training. The book breaks down dozens of unethically manipulative sub-techniques used on the police and the military, including verbal and physical abuse, excessive stress, degradation, humiliation, sleep deprivation, isolation, and the artificial conformity of the uniform. The uniform is the single form and shaved heads, which replace an individual's physical appearance with a group appearance, further reinforcing the artificially created group dynamic.
There are other techniques that I break down in the book, but you can see that all of the doors and the walls have been removed from the stalls in Marine Corps basic training so that recruits never have a moment of private time to reflect on what's happening to them. They're kept in this artificially indoctrinated group dynamic.
You can also see a shot from the movie Full Metal Jacket showing what's popularly known as a "blanket party," where people in basic training, if they're non-conforming, will be held down in their bunks and beaten either with soap bars in a towel or a sock. If they really don't like you, it's a lock. This happened to a friend of mine's son, so I know it goes on today, it's not just in the movies; it's the real deal.
I'm just showing this because, while I go into even more techniques in the book, these are just a few of the ones being used on the police and the military.
Technique #7 is particularly interesting because many people have seen this in movies, and perhaps you've attended a funeral or service for a service member and didn't understand what was happening. The government is manipulatively weaving the flag into the burial ceremony of the deceased, which is a trick to get the participants to associate the memory of their beloved deceased with the flag and with the government.
Technique #8 is paid-for flag worship woven into stadium events. This is a form of a marketing technique called anchoring. If you've ever been to a football game, a baseball game, or a hockey game in the United States, frequently at halftime or before the game, there's some kind of flag-worship event.
What they're doing is this: while everybody is outside, having a feel-good moment, maybe they've got a beer or two in them, maybe they're enjoying fun stadium food, there's the energy of the crowd, the excitement of the game. They're anchoring that excitement of the game, that excitement of being outside, and the exhilaration of the event itself to the flag.
Sometimes they do it trickily. For example, in the bottom right-hand corner, there's actually an image from the 2025 Super Bowl halftime show. Instead of doing a flag ceremony, they had Kendrick Lamar's backup dancers in red, white, and blue, forming the flag again, anchoring the excitement of the Super Bowl to the flag. Meanwhile, in the upper right-hand corner, Mustard, the other rapper in the duo, had American flags prominently displayed on his jacket.
Now, technique number nine is: the government is the hero in movies and TV because the government is paying for it. New and improved in this book, in the EPUB version, you can just click on this image in the book. If you're in the print version, you can scan this QR code, and it will screen-pop a two-minute trailer that breaks down the basics of a highly recommended documentary called Theaters of War.
This documentary exposes how the CIA and the Department of Defense have direct involvement in over 1,000 major movies and over 1,000 television shows, Argo, Zero Dark Thirty, and others that shape a false paradigm of the legitimacy and desirability of the government. They're making the government the hero, whether it's Mulder and Scully, the FBI agents saving the world; Tom Cruise as Top Gun Maverick; Tom Cruise as CIA agent Ethan Hunt; or the President of the United States flying fighter jets to save the planet from invading aliens.
They're running “game” on the population by controlling the information they receive about government in movies and television shows.
Technique number 10 is subliminal programming. Again, you can click on this short video in the EPUB or scan this QR code. In this short clip, what you're going to learn especially for younger viewers is that, in the old days, television wasn't 24/7, 365. At the end of the broadcast day, all of the major networks would run something called a sign-off message.
This is a sign-off message from, I think, the 1970s. As the words "O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave" are being sung during the national anthem with all the religious religiosity of the video, these words are scrolling off the screen. And for just an instant, it flashes text such as:
TRUST THE US GOVERNMENT
GOD IS REAL GOD IS WATCHING
BELIEVE IN GOVERNMENT GOD
REBELLION WILL NOT BE TOLERATED
OBEY CONSUME OBEY CONSUME
BUY ULTRA BUY NAOMI
WORSHIP CONSUME OBEY BELIEVE
DO NOT QUESTION GOVERNMENT
It only appears for a split second, but your brain registers it. This is another example of how the government is tricking, chumping, and running game on the population.
Now, technique 11 is anchoring the flag to moments of high positive emotion. Again, this is something you might not have noticed is happening, but what they're doing is using the same anchoring technique I mentioned in the stadium events. They're doing it in movies and television shows.
The movie will build the audience up to a moment of high positive emotion, Rocky's win, Superman carrying the flag around the United States and it will be at that exact moment of high positive emotion that the film hits you with the flag. Boom they show you the flag. Then they show you the flag. And then, again, they show you the flag.
Now, technique number 13 is: the flag is woven into sexually appealing advertising. In the case of the GQ example, the GQ cover on the left, there's even a little subliminal message where it says, "God, this is a great country."
Technique number 16 is exploiting behavioral psychology to satisfy most people's biological desire for a leader or a father figure. You mentioned Trump as we got started, but there's actually some science behind why people are so religiously attached to the idea of having a leader.
It's called evolutionary leadership theory, and it posits that most humans have an innate biological desire for a leader as an evolutionary survival mechanism from our tribal past. It was actually a survival trait for the tribe to have a strong leader. And so, what the government has done is create an artificial tribe.
The United States is essentially an artificial tribe, and they're offering the population the choice of two potential puppet leaders: a blue government leader marketed to appeal to urban liberals, and a red government leader designed to appeal to rural conservatives. Many people fall for this fake “Hobson's Choice” and begin to self-identify with their preferred leader, even if it's obvious that he's tricking them, even if he's obviously caught in lies, even if he's obviously not doing what he said he would do.
Whether it's not releasing the Epstein tapes or whatever the lie of the day is, people will overlook it because they are biologically and almost religiously attached to having a leader, even if there isn't a real difference between the leaders.
This is a meme that really breaks it down: whether it's Biden or Trump, both of them are 100% in lockstep on all the issues that matter to the ruling class behind the scenes. They're 100% in lockstep on not releasing the Epstein files. They're 100% in lockstep on COVID. They're 100% in lockstep on forcing unnecessary vaccines. They're 100% in lockstep on fractional reserve banking. They're 100% in lockstep on multi-trillion-dollar bailouts to private banks and companies.
I could go on and on, but I think your audience gets the idea: there really isn't a difference when it comes to what truly matters to the rulers behind the scenes.
And the big surprise is that these techniques create a cult. I don't use that word lightly, and I know it offends many, but that's the stone-cold truth of the situation: the belief in and support for government easily meets the definition of a cult.
In the book, I actually break this down by taking the textbook definition of what an unethically manipulative cult is, and I analyze it phrase by phrase to really drive home how they've indoctrinated a belief system into the population — one that is unhealthy, against your interests, and ultimately harmful.
Most of your viewers, and most people in general, if they really think about it and look around at some of the behavior of the victims, will see that they are exhibiting classic textbook cult behavior.
This is another screenshot from the book where I break down the suspension of individuality. Everyone's an American, it's been decided for you.
Also, the police and the military the shaved heads and the uniforms, are absolutely identical to other cults: Hare Krishnas, Rajneeshpuram members, Heaven's Gate, Jim Jones' People's Temple members, and the Unification Church (Moonies), as well as other organizations that ask their adherents to suspend their individuality and either shave their heads or assume the uniform.
You can look around you and see very obvious cult-like behavior among the victims, even though they're wearing the flag of the organization that is stealing half their income through overt taxes, covert taxes, and inflation.
I just want to pause there because that really covers all of the techniques. And then I know you wanted to get into some solutions, so I thought, before we dive into that, I'd give you a chance to comment on anything I just said.
James Corbett: Well, you do not have to convince me of most of the things you're talking about here. I am, unfortunately, all too well aware of them. Nor do you have to guess that, unfortunately, people are more than a thousand times more likely to spend three hours a day scrolling than they are to spend that same amount of time reading books.
So, of course, we're not here to be sorry or disappointed; instead, let's stop lamenting that fact. We can either sit there and complain about it, or we can actually do something about it use people's natural inclinations and what they have, at the very least, been programmed into, to hopefully deprogram them and steer them toward books like No Treason. Because there will always be people who still read and who will be interested in that.
So, I think this is a valuable idea. Let me ask you two related questions, then:
What is your intention with this book? What would you like to happen as a result of it?
Can you share any experiences or feedback that you've had in successfully unlocking people's minds through information like this?
Etienne de la Boetie2: Oh, yeah, absolutely. So number one, my goal with the book is I want to be the guy that widely exposes the illegitimacy and the criminality of government by making a book that goes viral. and wakes up a significant enough amount of the population that we're able to impact the legitimacy of government on a wide scale, you know, on a wide scale, not just in the United States, but globally. And so that's what we're trying to do at the Art of Liberty Foundation. That's why I wrote my book, “Government” - The Biggest Scam in History. And that's why I keep sharpening the edge with this book. This one, I think, is even more impactful than the first. And the first one is already sold 7,000 plus copies, 25 countries. It's been the best selling book at two dozen plus Liberty Conferences events. We've had 30,000 plus digital downloads. And that was before, you know, I really figured out how to sell books. And so now I'm trying to figure—now I'm getting it into bookstores. Now it's available for the first time on Amazon.com. And so I'm getting better at getting the message across. And so—but I want to be the guy that widely exposes the illegitimacy and the criminality of government. And then, what kind of success? Well, I've had a tremendous amount of success, and I get testimonials from people all the time. Some of those you can read on the first two pages of Government, The Biggest Scam in History. I'll tell you, one of my favorites was Monica Perez, the host of Deep Dives with Monica Perez.
I sent a copy to her. It's hard to be a prophet in your own land. And so she had a, I think it was a teenage daughter, and the teenage daughter thought mom was kind of crazy. And then she gave the book to the teenage daughter, and my book woke her teenage daughter up as one example.
Even if you're Monica Perez, you might be having trouble convincing your own kids or family members about what's going on. And so that's one, you know, one of the testimonials that I'm proudest of the most.
Another success that I had with “Government”- The Biggest Scam in History, is I was in a gym in Dripping Springs, Texas, and I was in the sauna after my workout, and there's a couple of 18-year-old kids in there that were talking about how they're going. they were going to be joining the military in the next two weeks, and they were talking about their plans and everything like that, and I said, hey guys, listen, I don't think that's a good idea. And I explained that I was an author, and I gave him a copy of my book, and I ran into one of them about a week later, and he just laughed, and he's like, we're not going in the military anymore. And I kept some kids out of the military's meat grinder.
And so those are just a couple. But like I said, I've got even more testimonials of people that have taken down their flags and have just given up on the religion of statism 100 percent. And I really think it's because, you know, I'm exposing that the government is running these unethically manipulative tricks. And once people realize, oh, wait a minute, they're doing that on purpose. They're trying to trick me. Well, nobody likes to get tricked. Nobody likes to get chomped. And so that's one of the things that I do different for most people, and I think is very, very effective, is I expose how the magician does the trick, and you can't get fooled if you understand how the magician does the trick.
James Corbett: It's a very important point, one that I've made a number of times. For example, one of the successes that we could point to with something like the 9-11 Truth Movement is just introducing people to the concept of false flag terrorism, because it is much harder to pull off once people know that that technique exists. So I very much applaud your efforts and getting the feedback that you have helped save some people's children from the military meat grinder must be some of the most, most gratifying feedback that you can receive. I am racking my brain. I don't think I've ever received that specific feedback. So if there is anyone out there who has been dissuaded from the military because of the court report, I would be very interested to hear about it.
But having said that, I can also attest to the power of your communicative ability, because I remember seeing you at Anarchapulco, I believe it was 2020 right before the madness, this pandemic madness. And I remember watching your presentation and then watching about a quarter of the audience leave after you left so they could go talk to you and corner you down in the hall because they wanted to hear more about the book. I know this is a popular message, I know it resonates with people, but let's just use our imagination a bit. This is Solutions Watch, so we are working towards some sort of goal here, assuming the goal is to really wake people up and get them to at least realize and start questioning, at least seeing the cage, so that they can then leave it. And once they realize, they've been indoctrinated into a cult. What does the world look like at that point? Once a significant number of people realize the conditioning they've been under and break that spell, what can humanity achieve?
Etienne de la Boetie2: Well, I think it's real freedom. And one of the, I think kind of the good news message of both my books is that the populations in the world have been measured. They've been measured by the Cato Institute, Fraser Institute in Canada, based on the amount of personal and economic freedom that they have. And one of the things that we know across the board is that the more freedom you have, the wealthier and the healthier that you are as a society.
And so what I'm looking to do is I call it real freedom. And when I sign my books, I write "REAL" in capitals, underline it, and bold it. to differentiate it for the fake freedom that is taught in the government school systems, but I actually believe that society will flourish once you have real freedom. When the government isn't stealing the value out of the money using fractional reserve banking or quantitative easing or digital dollar creation, Everyone would be dramatically, dramatically wealthier.
They would be able to afford the kind of education they want for their kids. They would be able to afford a much more dynamic economy because everybody would be able to buy more things. You would have much more economic choice if the organized crime banks at the top of the pyramid of power weren't taking the digital dollars that they have and providing unlimited capital to a certain number of corporations to monopolize their own corner of the economy. So there'd be much more, much greater opportunities and much more vibrant economy.
More people wouldn't have to work so that the people that did have to work would be paid much more because there would be, you know, you wouldn't have the confiscatory taxes of estate taxes and all of the hidden taxes that everybody pays on everything from cell phone bills to cable television, to gasoline, to beer, to cigarettes, to you name it, whatever it is, there's a hidden tax on it, airline tickets. And so everybody would be dramatically wealthier.
And also society would be much more harmonious. because we wouldn't have to be fighting at the ballot box over the school board because you would be able to afford, you know, whatever kind of school that you have. You don't have to fight at the school board level where right now there's kind of a knife fight where if you lose at the school board level, you know, in San Francisco, you may get LGBTQ+, you know, theory. If you lose in another city, you may get critical race. If you lose in Michigan, you might get Islamic studies. And so right now, there's all this kind of disharmony caused by government. And so I think people would be much more harmonious. And so those are some of the things that I think you would see with real freedom. You asked me to bring some solutions. Do you wanna talk about those right now?
James Corbett: Let's do it, yes.
Etienne de la Boetie2: All right, let's roll on. And so number one, the number one solution is for, and really I dedicated the book to good people trapped in a bad system, OK? And so number one, whether you're a government employee or whether you're just a regular, you know, tax—quote, unquote, you know, taxpayer, tax slave, You've got to get it through your head that government is illegitimate on its face.
It is impossible to have a moral, logical, legitimate government. I am amazed at how often I explain this to somebody, that it's absolutely impossible to have a moral, legitimate government, that you can't have an island of 10 people, Six people can't vote to rob the other six, and right after I get them to agree with everything that I said and see the logic of that, they're like, but we just gotta have some kind of government, or we just have to have like a smaller government, or maybe if we had this kind of government or that kind of government, and then I bang my head on the table, but hopefully, you know, one of the things that I try and do is I try and break it down in visualizations and images that it is absolutely impossible to have a legitimate government, so we have to do something else.
Now, the other thing that I do in the book is there's a little bit of a tough love message for those government employees, because they absolutely positively have to understand that government is organized crime. and that government employees aren't paying any taxes and they're living off money stolen at the point of a gun. I have a Frederick Bastiat quote, I think he said it best:
When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society.They create for themselves in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.
And that's what the monopoly media is trying to do in the government schools and all the ways the government is controlling the information people receive. But you've really got to understand that the government in Washington, D.C. is being run as a criminal enterprise. It is stealing trillions of dollars. It's all going out the back door. for weapons systems that we don't need to fight wars based on lies and manufactured intelligence. It's going to banks for quote-unquote bailouts and stimulus.
It's going to vaccine manufacturers for mandatory vaccines that are going to hurt your kids and in dozens of other ways. that the organized crime government in Washington, D.C. is stealing money from the population and sliding it out the back door.
And, you know, the other kind of tough love message for the government employees is it's not fair that we're all paying taxes and the government employees aren't. And so I break it down this meme right here that taxes is the money stolen by the government from individuals in the private sector providing goods and services to the world. Those are the taxes. That's the pile of taxes, okay? Government employees don't contribute to that pile. They receive the taxes stolen from others. They are not taxpayers, they are tax receivers.
They're just receiving less taxes. And that hurts when you think about it, but we've got to quit pretending that this isn't organized crime and that this isn't what's going on. And so there is like a little bit of a tough love message for the troop, for the government employees that have been tricked into serving organized crime.
Now, luckily, and again, the kind of the good news message on the solution side is there's something known as voluntaryism, which is the common sense idea that all human association should be voluntary with the assertion that any act of violence other than self-defense, whether by an individual organization or government, is illegitimate or unlawful.
There's a little bit, it recognizes the world as a self-organizing system that produces spontaneous order, and everything the government does would be better provided by the free market, mutual aid societies, non-profits, and real charities. So the good news message is that we really don't need government and there is a movement that is gathering steam and is moving and is starting to coalesce around these ideas called voluntarism.
And so one of the things I'm doing is I've got a number of different visualizations that break it down. This is one of them from the book. And so what your teacher told you about the political spectrum is that you've got dirty commies on the far left and bad fascists on the far right. And in between that, you've got Democrats, moderates and Republicans.
But that's really not an adequate way to understand the political spectrum or the world. And so here's another way to think about it is you've got commies and fascists on the far left. And that's complete tyranny, that's 100% government control. And then as you move to the right, you gain more and more freedom. So you go through socialists, liberals, moderates, conservatives, libertarians, until you get to volunteerism, which is real freedom.
And like I mentioned earlier, Because freedom produces the goods, because freedom makes everybody wealthier, and freedom produces more harmony in society, that's a good thing. Why don't we maximize freedom? Why don't we make the goal the maximum amount of freedom as humanly possible? And then good things will happen because of that. Now, this one is another, is something else from the book.
This is something that we developed at the Art of Liberty Foundation. We call it a privatition, and we recommend if you're voting and you have to vote defensively, okay, and there are places that it makes sense. I'm a big supporter of the Free State Project in New Hampshire.
I don't believe in voting to rob and redistribute. But I do think in certain cases where you've got, you know, where you have the opportunity for a dedicated minority that's building steam and voting defensively to vote. Now, how do you know who to vote for? And so what we did is we set a standard, we call it a “privatician”
And a privatician is a person running to be an elected official who doesn't believe that government is legitimate, desirable or necessary, but is committed to help their community by serving as an honest steward and a community servant, privatizing everything that can be privatized and focusing on just protecting life, liberty and property. And privaticians have pledged to never vote to redistribute, but only to vote defensively to protect civil and economic liberties.
We've got a little, a pledge there. And if your politician doesn't understand the illegitimacy of government, or isn't being honest about it, then how can they be trusted? And so it really is, you know, we're offering the world as a yardstick with which to measure, you know, potential elected representatives.
Solutions for the military, again, kind of like the tough love for the military is that until you're kicking in the doors of corrupt politicians, you're not defending our freedom. Mostly what you're doing is you're serving in armies of occupation around the world in wars that are being waged for resources.
You're not defending the United States, you're participating in the exact same foreign wars that supposedly our forefathers warned us about. But here are some actionable things that the military should be doing. And number one is don't kill anybody that isn't actually attacking somebody in the United States. And so if you're abroad and they're trying to have you wage a war for resources or something else, just don't do it. Don't take the karma. Don't take the negativity. Shoot above their heads.
Don't murder anybody. for this organized crime government, because murder is still murder regardless of what they told you or the costume that you wear.
I recommend the documentary Sir No Sir, which we have on our uncensorable companion flash drive, The Liberator, to understand how the GIs in the Vietnam era got organized and stopped that war. and then get your buddies organized to say no to murder for hire.
Something else is you've got to realize that you aren't bound by the oath you took to the Constitution due to a well-recognized legal principle called fraudulent inducement or fraud in the inducement. And because the organized crime government lied to you, because they ran these unethically manipulative indoctrination and propaganda techniques on you, and because government is illegitimate or immoral on its face, you are not bound by any oath you took because there was fraud in the inducement. And then finally, don't get mad at the messenger. They had me hook, line, and sinker.
I was a Boy Scout. I hate to be the one that has to bring this message to the world. It's caused strife and harmony in my own family. Get angry with the organized crime system that ran game on you with the movies and the television shows and the social media and the video games and tricked you into shaving your head and putting on the uniform.
Finally, as we wrap it all up, everything in the book is backed up by a 64GB flash drive that we call: The Liberator and Dropboxes, that we make it available for free at Government-Scam.com/Liberator So if you wanted to get some of these memes, if you wanted to get some of these things, you can do so for free. They're in drop boxes at Government-Scam.com/Liberator. You can get the book at seethecage.com. You can get “Government” - The Biggest Scam in History at Government-Scam.com.
My organization is called the Art of Liberty Foundation.
We are a startup public policy organization. We want to be a think tank with the same power of a Cato Institute or Heritage Foundation, but coming at our problems from a principled, voluntarist perspective… That the government is illegitimate on its face.
And the other thing that sets us apart is that we are focused on the government being run as a criminal enterprise. Washington, D.C., the government today is being run at a criminal enterprise. And we're exposing that at artofliberty.org. We're exposing that on Substack at ArtOfLiberty.substack.com. And that is all that I have to say about that.
James Corbett: That is quite a download of information. But speaking of downloads, I hope people will take you up on The Liberator, either the flash drive or the Dropbox so that they can start spreading this information and hopefully unlocking some more minds. Although I must say, Etienne, I think we need to collaborate more on our work because when you read the up-down politics essay in my reportage book, you'll see I also talk about that fake phony political spectrum versus the reality of the libertarian authoritarian spectrum. But I posit them in essentially perpendicular to each other to create a grid. However, mine is all in words. Maybe I need the handy dandy infographic to go along with it to help explain what it is I'm trying to articulate there. And I think that is the point. Again, we can lament the fact that people tend to be visual learners who learn more from pictures than they do from words. But why lament it when you can actually make use of it to help unlock people's minds?
Etienne de la Boetie2: I will do so. I want to point this out. So I noticed that in the book, and I was so impressed with Reportage that I bought copies for each of my sons.
James Corbett: Excellent. Well, thank you for that. Let me know what your sons think about them. I would be interested in that feedback.
Etienne de la Boetie2:: I will do so. I will get that for you.
James Corbett: All right. Excellent. All right. Well, thank you for that. Um, I think there's so much to talk about so much to bite off and chew here, but I think this is a lot for people to cogitate on. So I think we'll leave it here and allow people to discover more about this book in their own time. Give people the website once again, where they should, where they can get the book.
Etienne de la Boetie2: SeeTheCage.com
James Corbett: Simple enough. Easy to remember. All the links will be in the show notes. And I have a feeling we'll probably be talking about this and related subjects again in the future. But in the meantime, Etienne de la Boetie2. Thank you for your time.
Etienne de la Boetie2:It's been a pleasure.
