Why can't the narcissist say, I'm sorry? Why does he never experience remorse, guilt, shame, regret? Why does he never try to make amends? Why is he always casting himself as the victim or the but of a conspiracy? What are these defenses in the narcissist? Now there's about a million videos online which tackle exactly these questions. They are by self-styled experts, so they don't go too deep. This one, this video that you're about to watch, if you're unfortunate enough, does go deep. My name is Sam Vaknin. I'm the author of Malignant Self-Love, Narcissism Revisited. I'm also a professor of psychology in SEAPS, Center for International Advanced Professional Studies, the Outreach Program of SEAS, the Consortium of Universities. Now a few service announcements before we proceed. I'm going to be in Budapest between the 20th and the 30th. If you want a private counseling session with me, write to me on my email, Sam Vaknin at gmail.com. Same thing, there's a three-day seminar in Gdansk with a symbolic entry fee, I think it's about 20 euros. It's at the end of March, in the beginning of April, I'll post a link in the description to the relevant video which promotes the seminar. The third point is, many people ask me, can you refer us to literature where your work is cited? And you refer us to citations of your work in literature. My work has been cited in well over 5,000, that's unusual, over 5,000 academic articles. And I'm going to post links in the description. So you can click on the link and then proceed from there. Okay, these were the service announcements. The narcissist is never sorry, never apologizes, never makes amends, he is never there for you, he never provides closure, it's as if he revels in your distress. I've had such a fake friend until recently, he is a covert malignant, dysregulated narcissist if I've ever seen one, sitting with envy and aggression. This so-called friend has abused me verbally, bed-mouthed me to absolutely everyone, stole my ideas and my work and my girlfriends, yet he always cast himself as the victim. He was always being manipulated into his wrongdoing. He was always justified. He never, in seven years together, I never heard him once say, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have done this, my apologies, I'm serious, not even once, a month ago I confronted him with some egregious, egregious, extremely immoral behavior on his part. And this is what he had to say in lieu of an apology. He said, I concede the point and then agitated, he immediately proceeded to threaten me with a secession of our collaboration. He said, if you continue to raise this issue, I'm going to cut you off and you need me because you have no one else to talk to. Speaking of grandiose arrogance, okay, that's an example of a narcissist, a covert one in this case, which is even much worse than an overt narcissist. That's an example of a narcissist who simply can't say, I'm sorry, I misbehaved, I made a mistake, innocent or otherwise, I apologize to you, how can I make it up to you? He just couldn't say that, never, ever, not even once. Why is that? What are the sick dynamics behind this inability to experience remorse or regret or just to feel sorry for the other guy? What's behind all this? I want to open with a quote, Ralph Waldo Emerson, we permit all things to ourselves and that which we call seen in others is experiment for us, for there is no crime to the intellect, a narcissistic statement, if I ever read one. Why do narcissists dare, why do they dare to misbehave? Why are they not afraid of the consequences of their own actions, even when they do these kind of things to seriously scary guys like me? Why do they feel that they are immune to the consequences of their misdeeds? Because like children, narcissists have magical thinking, they feel omnipotent, godlike, they feel that there is nothing they couldn't do or achieve had they only really wanted to and applied themselves to it. Narcissists feel omniscient, they rarely admit to ignorance in any field, they believe that they are in possession of all relevant and useful knowledge, they are hotly convinced that introspection is more important and more efficient, not mentioned easier to accomplish as a method of edification than the systematic study of outside sources of information in accordance with strict criteria. In other words, narcissists regard themselves as the exclusive sources of authority, they think all knowledge resides inside them, they don't need to look outside, they just need to consult themselves being godlike in their knowledge. To some extent, narcissists believe, also believe that they are omnipresent because they are either a celebrity or famous somehow or known, they are deeply immersed in delusions of grandeur, they are firmly convinced that their acts have or will have a great influence on mankind, on a certain group of people, a cult like setting, on their firm, country, on others. Having learned to manipulate their human environment, narcissists believe that they will always get away with it. And the sad truth is that narcissists often get away with it, that's a problem, we all need to teach narcissists a lesson. Narcissistic immunity is the narcissists erroneous conviction that he is immune to the consequences of his actions and when I say he is, it of course applies to women as well, female narcissists, he is over. So the narcissists believe, believes that he will never be affected by the outcomes of his own decisions, opinions, beliefs, deeds, misdeeds, acts, inaction, over being a member of certain groups. The narcissists believe that he is above reproach and above punishment. He wants to be sometimes feared or notorious but still always invulnerable. The narcissists convinces himself, in the fantasy that he always inhabits, he convinces himself fantastically that he is protected and will miraculously be saved in the last moment or nothing will ever happen to him. What are the sources of this fantastic appraisal of situations and chains of events? What is the reason for this divorce with reality, in paired reality testing? The first and foremost source, of course, is the false self. The false self is constructed as an infantile, a childlike response to abuse and trauma. The false self is possessed of everything that the child is not. Everything the child wishes that he had in order to retaliate against abuse. The false self has power, has wisdom, has magic and all of them unlimited and instantaneously available at the disposal of the helpless and hopeless child who is being abused. The false self, this Superman, is indifferent to abuse and punishment. It shields the vulnerable true self from the harsh realities experienced by the child. And this artificial, maladaptive separation between a vulnerable but not punishable true self and a punishable but invulnerable false self. That's a very effective mechanism that survives well into adulthood. It isolates the child from the unjust capricious emotionally dangerous environment that he grew up in.  Because I'm not there, I cannot be punished because it's not me, I'm immune because it's another self state. This is one source. The second source is the sense of entitlement possessed by every narcissist, including the friend, the fake friend aforementioned. In his grandiose delusions, the narcissist, his sui generis, his unique, is a gift to humanity, a precious, fragile object. Moreover, the narcissist is convinced both that this uniqueness is immediately discernible, everyone and anyone can see it, and that it gives him special rights and entitlements. The narcissist feels that he is sheltered by some cosmological law pertaining to some kind of extinct or endangered species. The narcissist is convinced that his future contribution to humanity should and does exempt him from the mundane, from daily chores, from boring jobs, from recurrent tasks, from personal exertion, from orderly investment of resources and efforts, even from aging or death and definitely his uniqueness and his mission in life, ordained by some supreme power or by the universe itself, they exempt him from acting morally. The narcissist has no moral compass whatsoever, he has no boundaries, he is unboundary. The narcissist is entitled in his mind to special treatment, high living standards, constant and immediate catering to his ever-shifting needs, the right to poach other people's needs, the avoidance of the mundane and the routine, the right to bed-mouth people with impunity and absolution of the narcissist's sins, fast-track privileges, I don't know, to higher education or in his encounters with bureaucracy, including medical bureaucracy. Punishment, says the narcissist, is for ordinary people, not for me. ordinary people are not a great loss to humanity, I am, I am above any law, including social laws, including the appropriate ways to behave, including boundaries, including codes and mores, I'm above all this, I'm above all this because I am so special, I am once in a generation or once in history, phenomenon. The third source for the narcissist misplaced sense of immunity, because it's unrealistic of course, his sense of immunity is counterfactual, it's not real. Things do catch up with him, he does pay the ultimate price, he makes enemies and some of them are very, very persistent and intent on punishing him severely. So the third source that has to do with the narcissist's immunity is his ability to manipulate his human environment. Narcissists develop their manipulative skills to the level of an art form, because that is the only way they could have survived. They grew up in a poisoned and dangerous childhood. They had to survive by manipulating the adults around them, they used this gift long after its expiry dates. Narcissists are possessed of inordinate abilities to charm, to seduce, to convince, to persuade their gifted orators. In many cases narcissists are intellectually endowed. They put all this to the limited use of obtaining narcissistic supply with startling results. Narcissists become some narcissists, pro-social and communal narcissists. Become pillars of society, members of some upper class or elite. They mostly do get exempted many times by virtue of their standing in society, their charisma or their ability to find willing scapegoats. Even victims of narcissists often justify the narcissists.  Minutes after the narcissists had acted as a predator, his own, his very victims would tend to regard him as a benefactor, as having been of great help. Having got away with it so many times, narcissists develop a theory of personal immunity and may wrestle some kind of societal and even cosmic order of things. Some people, says the narcissists to himself, are so unique that they are not subject to human or social laws. Some people are just above punishment, they are the special ones, they are the endowed and gifted ones and this is the narcissistic hierarchy. And there is a fourth and possibly simpler explanation. The narcissist just does not know what he is doing, he is divorced from his true self, he is unable to empathize, he is unable to understand what it is like to be someone else. He cannot put himself in the place of his victims or the people he is wronged, he cannot grasp that what he is doing hurts people, causes them excruciating pain, reduces them to disintegration, he just can't understand that. He very often mocks this kind of weakness in his victims, he exhorts them to move on and overcome the very consequences of his own immoral, unboundary, egregious misconduct. The narcissist is unwilling to act empathetically, he is unwilling to constrain his actions in accordance with the feelings and needs of others because he, not only because he doesn't care and he doesn't care, but also because he is in a constant dream like state, he is very often dissociative. The narcissist experiences his life like some kind of theatre play or movie autonomously unfolding, guided by a sublime, even divine director. The narcissist is sometimes only an observer, a spectator, he is mildly interested in what he is doing, he is greatly entertained at times, but he doesn't own his actions. He doesn't really feel responsible for his actions or the impact his actions have on others, he is likely to say a sentence like, I cannot be held responsible for the feelings and emotions of other people. The narcissist does not feel emotionally that he has to be punished, he regards punishment as gross injustice, he casts himself constantly as a victim being wronged, he didn't do anything deserving of such mistreatment, he says to himself, he was just being himself. To be a narcissist is to be convinced of a great inevitable personal destiny. The narcissist is preoccupied with ideal love, the construction of brilliant revolutionary theories, the compositional offering of painting which is the greatest work of art.  The narcissist convinces himself that everything he is doing is healing even when it's actually extremely predatory. The narcissist never sets realistic goals to himself, he is forever floating amidst fantasies of uniqueness, record-breaking, breathtaking achievements, positive or negative. The narcissist is so convinced that he stands apart from humanity that he refuses to acknowledge, refuses to accept that he can be wrong and that he can and does hurt people and is subject like every human being to setbacks, failures and punishments. The narcissist regards everything as temporary and casts everything as someone else's errors. The narcissist is likely to say, he made me do it, he manipulated me into doing it, he brainwashed me, he lied to me and consequently I acted this way, is likely to have alloplastic defenses, he always blames other people for the inevitable consequences of his inaction or wrong action, everything is someone else's fault. This is the mythology of the narcissist, his rise to power or his brilliance or his wealth or his ideal love or his help for others, his altruism, they all depend on this mythology where the narcissist is pure as the driven snow. This is of course splitting, it's a defense mechanism, the narcissist is all good, everyone else is all bad. To accept punishment is to divert scarce energy and resources from the all-important task of fulfilling the narcissist's mission in life, it's also an admission. If you accept punishment, you admit to having acted wrongly, and this is something the narcissist will never countenance. The narcissist is pathologically envious of people, he projects his aggression onto people, he's always vigilant, always ready to fend off an imminent attack. When inevitable punishment does come, and I have breaking news for you, overt narcissists and covert narcissists, wherever you may be, punishment is on its way, whenever punishment does come, the narcissist is shocked and irritated by his karma, by this nuisance, being punished also proves to him and validates what he had suspected all along that he's being persecuted unjustly. The narcissist constructs a theory of how evil malevolent people are out to get him, how strong forces are poised and arrayed against him, how people envious of his accomplishments anger at him, out to get him. The narcissist constitutes a threat in his mind to the accepted order. When the narcissist is required to account for his misdeeds, extreme in many cases, he is always disdainful, agitated, bitter, irritated, annoyed. Who are you to demand an accounting of my actions? I am above you and above the law and above society and above any soul searching. Now this feels like Gulliver, a giant chained to the ground by teeming dwarfs by his sole source to the future in which people would recognize his greatness and upload it and him deep behind this facade, because the false self is a kind of facade, deep behind this facade which the narcissist fully identifies with. Actually, the narcissist is always dysphoric. He always feels bad. The narcissist experiences all manner of depressive episodes and lesser dysphoric moods on a constant basis. The narcissist goes through a full panoply of mood disorders and anxiety disorders. Finally, the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual had recognized this in the alternative model of narcissistic personality disorder. NPD is closely linked to mood disorders. The narcissist even experiences panic from time to time. It is a highly unpleasant experience to be a narcissist, but the narcissist has a diminished capacity to empathize with others. So he rarely feels sorry for what he does to others. He almost never puts himself in the shoes of his victims, as I said. He doesn't regard other people as victims at all. It is very common for the narcissist to feel victimized, deprived, discriminated against, hated, I don't know. The narcissist projects his own labile moods, dysregulated emotions, distorted cognitions, and immoral actions on to others. They are to blame. This is blame shifting, victim blaming.  As he gets older, the narcissist keeps comparing himself to others and the outcome is never favorable, frankly. The narcissist's grandiosity is one of the defense mechanisms, a cognitive distortion, that he uses to cover up for this disagreeable realization. But the efficacy of grandiose defenses, grandiose cognitive distortions, the efficacy is partial, it's intermittent. The rest of the time, when grandiosity is not working, when it's being challenged and undermined and under attack, the narcissist is immersed in self-loathing and self-pity. He is under duress and distress, most of his waking life. In a vague way, the narcissist is also sorry for those upon whom he inflicts the consequences of his personality disorder, but not enough to induce in him remorse or regret. Borderlines do experience shame and guilt, however. The narcissist knows that people around him are not happy. He understands that it has something to do with him. But he uses even this to aggrandize himself. He says to himself, poor, inferior people around me. Poor people, inferior people, they can never fully grasp my superiority. They can never utterly understand me. They are so below me on the evolutionary ladder that I'm the next iteration of humanity, and they are left behind. The narcissist is proud of his misconduct, because it proves to him how superior an immunee is to what other people have to go through. His misbehavior creates a kind of right. The narcissist believes that he has an inalienable right to misbehave, and that this creates a corresponding, commensurate obligation in other people to simply tolerate it. They should accept him as he is, my way or the highway in your face, defined, consummations and reckless, immoral, exceedingly hurtful to other people, doing amazingly, sick, wrong things. So the narcissist inhabits this neverland, this twilight zone of dissonance between his personal mythology, the stories, the narrative that he is constructed about himself, and reality, and this is known as the grandiosity gap. Grandiosity gap creates a permanent state of depression akin to dysthymia. The narcissist puts himself at the center of the world. He is the axis around which everyone and everything revolves. He is the pivot, and yet reality keeps challenging this. His misbehavior is in many ways an attempt to regain the limelight, to put himself at the center of action, sometimes even to inflict on himself punishment, it's a self punitive act, in order to self harm and experience alive again. When confronted with major crises, traumatic divorce, financial entitlement, a fight with a former friend, a demotion, the narcissist does experience real excruciating life-threatening pain. This is the narcissist called Turkey, his withdrawal symptoms, his modification. I encourage you to watch my videos on modification. Narcissistic supply is like any other thing, like any other drug. Habit-forming psychologically, the withdrawal of narcissistic supply has broad implications, psychodynamic implications, all of them very, very painful. So this is the background as to why the narcissist misbehaves. The narcissist's misdeeds, his misconduct, they are actually defensive. They are intended to prove to the narcissist that he is unique, he has special rights, he is entitled, he is sui genuiz, he is above the law, he is not subject to social constraints and expectations, he can do anything he wants to anyone and will never ever get punished, he will get away with it. It's fantasy of course, it's a fantasy defense. The narcissist knows right from wrong, is fully aware of all social norms, laws and mores. Acutely aware. But lacking empathy, he simply doesn't care enough about other people to act properly or to refrain from harmful action. So should we hold the narcissist accountable for his actions? Let me elaborate a bit on this. Narcissists of all shades can usually control their behavior and actions. When a narcissist goes to prison, he suspends his narcissism fully for the duration, trust me. So narcissists can change. They can become a lot more human, a lot more empathic, a lot more attuned to their environment, a lot more constrained, a lot more boundaries. Given the right inducements and incentives for a type of fear, the narcissist becomes a different person. But in normal daily life, they simply don't care to make the effort. They regarded as a waste of their precious time, a humiliating chore. The narcissist feels both superior and entitled regardless of his real gifts or accomplishments. Other people are always inferior. They are his slaves, they are there to cater to his needs and make his existence seamless, flowing, smooth, entertaining and fun. He will take unquestioningly from others. He will steal anything from property, to ideas, to mates, mate poaching. He will not hesitate because it's his by right. The narcissist holds himself to be significant, entitled to the conditions needed to realize his talents and successfully complete his missions.  As a result, narcissists are awkward, they're tactless, they're painful, they're abrasive, they're insensitive.  It requires extreme effort, it depletes them. My answer is the narcissist should be held accountable for most of his actions, if not all of them. Even taking it into account is sometimes uncontrollable rage and the backdrop of his grandiose fantasies, narcissists are mentally ill, but not sufficiently mentally ill, in my view at least, to benefit from the insanity defense. Even when you take, for example, rage, admittedly at times the narcissist finds it hard to control his rage, or his self-destructive impulses. But at all times, even during the worst explosive episode, during the worst self-defeating, self-destructive, self-painful behaviors, the narcissist can tell right from wrong and he simply doesn't care about the other person sufficiently to refrain from action that is injurious. The narcissist similarly cannot control his grandiose fantasies, his cognitive distortions. He firmly believes that they constitute an accurate representation of reality, but at all times, he does know that lying is wrong and should not be done. He does know that he should not steal other people's property or ideas or mates. He does know all these things. He simply doesn't care enough about society or about others to refrain from doing this. Narcissists should be held accountable for most of her actions because they can tell right from wrong and they can refrain from acting wrongly. Narcissists simply don't care enough about others to put, to good use these twin abilities. Others are not sufficiently important to dent the narcissist's indifference or to alter his shockingly abusive misconduct.


Hi everyone, it's Shalva with Life is No Yoke. We are live today and I like to start every live demonstration with this magical Vitamix trick, which is steaming hot cashew queso right out of the blender container. So this is one of our most popular recipes, cashews, nutritional yeast, almonds, a red pepper, and it makes this steaming hot cashew queso ready to serve. When I say ready to serve, I should pour it. I should plant it like that next time. All right, ready to serve cashew queso heated up by the friction of the Vitamix blades. So you put the ingredients in, you let it run on the soup setting if you've got a setting on your Vitamix container, or you let it run for five or six minutes and it will heat up ready to serve cashew queso. So why am I here showing you cashew queso today? Because Vitamix is running a big deal starting today. Starting today? Starting today and running all week. And running all week. I've got Lenny here with me to back me up with some of the finer details of this Vitamix deal and also some of the specifics. We've got a very random setup today. We've got a main camera here for our live. Lenny behind an iPad over here on his laptop and a B roll camera down here that we're gonna have to restart every 10 minutes or so. So you're along for the ride. We'll put a QR code up there. And we're gonna put a QR code up here on this video. So if you're ready to get a Vitamix today or if you've got more questions that we can answer for you, the QR code to our website and our links is right here. The QR code probably goes to the actual deal, right? It'll take you to the Vitamix site to get these. You should buy direct to get these deals here. But if you need more information below our links to our website, right? They just wanna see me make food, moving on. Okay, here we go. So the next thing we're gonna make on this A3500 which is part of the deal this week. This is an A3500, so part of the Ascent series. This is the highest end blender that Vitamix sells. You can tell it's special because it's got this digital screen. It's got five preset wash, spreads, soups. That's the one I use for the queso. Frozen dessert, smoothie. So we're gonna make a smoothie. So I am going to make the OMG green smoothie, formerly the Carolyn's smoothie. I'm gonna use one cup of milk of your choice. And then always put the liquid in first. That's a good Vitamix trick.  Half a banana, I'm gonna do half an orange. At least one of my children will eat the other half of this orange. And we're gonna peel it. With lemons you can put the whole lemon peel in but with an orange it's kind of bitter. So we are going to take the peel off of an orange. So an orange, I'm putting my softer ingredients in first. So my liquid and then the orange, the banana. This is kale but you could use any leafy green. That's where the health benefits of this smoothie are. I'm putting in flax about a tablespoon but you can do whatever, seed, hemp, chia, anything like that. And then I've got a cup and a half of frozen mango and that's gonna get us that like thick, smoothie, creamy texture that we're looking for. So because I'm using the A3500, I am going to blend it on the smoothie setting. That's the preset. The recipe for this is on our website, Life is No Yoke. Again it's called the OMG Green Smoothie. Lenny named that smoothie, right? Yes, okay. So I'm pressing the smoothie button. It sets it for 50 seconds. Let's blend it up. 50 seconds. Normally I wouldn't just stand behind my blender and do a little dance because it's a preset. I would be multitasking breakfast for the rest of the family. I would be grabbing toast and peanut butter and all of the things. And that's the magic of a preset is that you can, it's walk away blending. Unless you feel like dancing, you can always stay behind the blender and dance as much as you like. Sometimes you just feel like dancing. So this is the OMG Green Smoothie. Creamy, creamy, luscious, thick, delicious. We make a green juice every morning. This is a green smoothie, just a thicker texture, more satisfyingly filling. A juice is more for nutritional value. And pick me up and a smoothie is more for like filling you up, maybe after a workout or before taking all your kids to school or something like that. So good. We don't make this one as often. And forget how good that one is. One more step. Okay. So the recipe for that one is on our website. Life is No Yoke. Again, there's a deal this week on the Vitamix A3500. They're doing a package. So we're gonna, a bundle is what they like to call it. We're gonna talk about what is in the bundle. In a minute. In a second. What's the next? Well, I wanna make a detox salad, but I need a regular blender container. So is that this one for me? It doesn't work. Okay. All right. So the next thing we're gonna make is our detox salad. So let's see if I can grab all the ingredients here. The ingredients are kale, cauliflower, purple cabbage and carrots, okay? So those are all of my ingredients that I'm gonna use. I need a spatula. My drawers are all locked so that the children cannot get into them. Okay. So what I'm gonna do is use the container that comes with the A3500. Any A3500, any of the ascent models comes with the 64 ounce container, correct? Yeah, really any model can do what we're doing. I was gonna say that. Okay. In the 64 ounce container, I'm going to chop these vegetables. Any full size Vitamix can do this task. The magic of the task is with the tamper. I need the tamper to be able to do this type of chopping. So I am going to put some cauliflower in. My hack is to use the pieces that I wouldn't use in another dish. So something like this or like this. So I'm gonna make cauliflower curry sometime this week. So I took all the pretty pieces that you would see in a nice dinner dish and used those for my curry. And then I used all the pieces that are kind of goofy shaped in my detox salad. So I'm gonna do one ingredient at a time just so that you can see. Cauliflower I think is the funnest one because you can rice cauliflower like this. So what I really am doing for this detox salad for the first step is ricing cauliflower.  So in this case I'm gonna use the pulse feature and I'm just gonna go on level one. Some of them I might go up for two but this is the pulse. This is start, this is pulse. So pulse means I have a lot of control which is awesome if I'm doing something like this or making like a salsa or something if I wanna control the texture. So you see I just had my tamper to kind of wiggle it around in the middle and I have this perfectly riced cauliflower. Should I put it in this camera? Camera one, camera two, camera one, camera two. Okay, I like to pretend like I'm on a big movie set when I'm in the kitchen making rice cauliflower. Okay, so you'll see the texture of that is awesome for other dishes if you want to sub cauliflower for rice. So that's a good one. Then I'm gonna do kale. I did take the big chunky cores off of this kale already because I'm not blending it all the way through. So with that green smoothie I did leave the cores in because it's just gonna blend it all up but with the detox salad because I'm not thoroughly blending it I'm just chopping it, finely chopping it. I don't need to or I do need to take the cores out. So I'm gonna pulse again but this one I might go up to level two just finely chopped. So the recipe for this salad is, I'm gonna go one more, is also on our website, Life is No Yoke. We teach you how to make this salad. I think we've got a really good video on it too on our YouTube channel and we teach you how to make a really fancy dressing made with avocado with it, but to be honest almost always when we eat this we just throw some olive oil and balsamic vinegar on it and it is super delicious and it saves us the steps of making a homemade dressing. Sometimes we get fancy and we make the homemade dressing but more often than not we just make it like this. So the recipe is on LifeIsNoYoke.com for that. Next ingredients, carrots. You can do baby carrots or big carrot. These are the loudest so because they kind of bump around in there but they chop it perfectly. We've got someone in your household that doesn't like vegetables. Sometimes chopping them super small like this helps. I know a lot of people don't like kale because they're like, ah, I'm chewing roughage but if you chop it super small like this it's much more palatable for certain people. So kind of a thing that you could try if you've got a picky eater in your household. Not necessarily a child, could be a spouse, could be a roommate. Whoever it is that needs more vegetables you can always give this a try. And then the last ingredient is purple cabbage. Use less than you think you need for this because it somehow gets huge. And by gets huge I mean you end up with a lot more than you think you're going to from small pieces. We have got perfectly chopped cabbage. So remember that any Vitamix machine can do this. I am using the A3500 which is the highest end luxury model if you will. But if you've got a tamper and you've got a Vitamix it can make chopped salad like this. But, but there's always a but, right? I'm using the traditional container right now to make the salad. Another thing that you can do is you can use the food processor attachment. So we've got this fancy awesome food processor attachment. What's so cool about this is that you have, it's like a streamlined version. So you have this that's the Vitamix base that stays on your counter. You do your smoothies and your soups and your dressings and all that. And then when you have a recipe that you need a food processor for instead of taking out a whole nother appliance you just bring out another container. So this container comes with the traditional food processor blade. Blade. But it also comes with a handful of discs. So we're gonna use the thin sliced disc to show you what this thing can do. So I would use this to make this salad. I would use this, we often make a falafel that we do in here. If you're making like oatmeal protein bites, something like that. This is on backwards Shalva.  Just watching me put it on backwards. You missed it, too much multitasking. Too much multitasking. So what was I saying? Oh, we make falafel in here. You can make hash browns in here. But the thing that I use it the most for is thinly slicing hard vegetables for our lasagna. I use noodles. I'm not subbing zucchini for noodles. You can do that. I like noodles. We eat a lot of noodles around here. But I do like veggies in my lasagna. So that's what I'm gonna show you is how you can thinly slice veggies. And you could make this detox salad. Which again, the recipe is on lifeisnoyoke.com. This is one of the recipes that we came up with years ago. We've been doing this for a really long time. Lenny, how many years have you been working work in the Vitamix beat? Almost 12 years. Almost 12 years, so. I did the math. I think we're talking like 25,000 customers. 25,000 customers, we have helped find the right Vitamix, use the right Vitamix, love their Vitamix, tell their friends about Vitamix. That's a lot of customers. I didn't know that. I mean, I think that's right. That's crazy. Okay, that's a lot of blunders. So I'm gonna go out on the limb and say we're like Vitamix pros. If we've helped that many people buy Vitamixes and use their Vitamix. So this is one of the recipes that people come back for over and over and over again. They're like, oh, you sold me on the detox salad. So you can make it in the traditional blender. You can make it in the food processor. I am going to show you.  Okay, I'm gonna show you how the food processor works. So you have to have a scent model for the food processor to be, to recognize it. So right now it's saying, I don't recognize you. So I just need to tighten something most of the time. It just means you've got something on a little wiggly. Still doesn't like it. We tested this before and it worked perfectly. Now will you work? No. Maybe try the multi-user blade. Sure. You wanna chop like that? Yeah. Chop, chop. Let's see. Technical difficulties. Okay. Did that work? No. Cool. Okay. Live TV folks. Yeah, right. Whatcha get for watching me try to struggle live? Interesting. All right, give me 20 more seconds to try to fix it. And if not, we'll skip that part and figure it out later. We'll come back. Thin slice. Clicky on. So this clicks on, click. Good thing there's high-speed scrubbing on these live feeds. I don't even know what high-speed scrubbing is. Well, you can just skip right past this. Oh yeah. What should I do? I don't know. Can I try? Yeah. We try, we tested this right before. All right, I'm gonna peel sweet potatoes while you try. All right. This is what happens when you call the consultant it'll just work. Right after I said we were Vitamix Pros. Amateur hour. Amateurs. Here's the thing. There is a learning curve on this machine. Yeah. It does take a minute to learn how to use it and to get really good at it. And these recipes that we developed, they're like with so much practice and so many reps of doing them over and over that we can do them by heart. But when you're just starting off with the Vitamix, obviously you have to learn how to use stuff. And sometimes there's a trick. A lot of the containers have. So not really sure what. Did it work that time? Yeah, so there's a lot of safety mechanisms on here to make sure that everything's on and clicked. Nothing holds it onto the base, but it holds itself together. So you have to make sure it's clicked here, here, here and here. And once everything is on tight, then it'll tell you, okay, you're good to go. So that's actually a good teaching moment. It doesn't want you to press on until it's sure that it can be on safely. Which honestly, if you've got kids in your home or older people in your home or pets in your home, that's a really nice feature because you know that it's not gonna turn on. Let's see if it'll go the right way here. Okay, you know it's not gonna turn on when it's not supposed to. And I really like that because I oftentimes have my kids help me in the kitchen and I would like to trust that the machine has my back. Okay, so let's see if we can show you the magic that is the food processor. I'm just gonna press start. It goes at one speed and it should chop the zucchini for me. Perfectly chopped zucchini. I'm gonna do the sweet potato and then I'll take the top off and show you guys what it looks like. All right, what? It's just so quick and satisfying. It's so satisfying. So we kind of joke because Lenny and I didn't grow up in a household with a food processor like and both of our moms cook a lot and we're like, oh my gosh, their lives would have been so much easier. Like I'm thinking of the like holiday dishes and stuff that our parents made that they like hand graded things for that they wouldn't have to do anymore. So you've got a perfectly sliced zucchini and sweet potato.  So you might not be hand layering a beautiful ratatouille casserole but you might wanna throw in vegetables into whatever you're eating and make it easier and more accessible for yourself and this is a really good tool for that. So why am I talking about the food processor? Because it is part of the bundle that is on sale this week. So the bundle is the A3500 in the black graphite. Yeah, so it's the A3500 deluxe smart prep kitchen system. Say that one more time. The A3500 deluxe smart prep kitchen system. This is why Lenny's here because I didn't wanna memorize that one line. Just kidding, he's so useful in every other way. So that bundle comes with this blender base which is the A3500 in the graphite black color. It's black stainless. Black stainless. Why'd you let me say graphite 310? Black stainless color which looks good in most kitchens especially if you have stainless steel appliances and it comes with the food processor attachment and it comes with the 48 ounce container which is this which we're gonna make a frozen dessert in in a minute. So that's the bundle is, I've got a dirty container for you but it is what it is.  I know, we're gonna have a lot of dishes. Well they're used, especially the 48 ounce container. The one you get will be bright and shiny. Yes, obviously you're gonna get a new one. This is ours that we use in our household, family of five so it's been through the ringer but we do have some tips and tricks on how to keep your containers looking fresh and nice on our website, lifeisnoyoke.com because again, we've been doing this for a really long time and we're Vitamix pros and we have tips on how to get turmeric out of your container and how to keep your container from being cloudy and all of that on our site. So this is the bundle what you see here. So the traditional 64 ounce container, the food processor attachment and the 48 ounce container that we're gonna make a frozen dessert in, right? That's the next one, we made a queso, we made juice, we made detox salad, we chopped some veggies for you. Well did you wanna see, oh I showed you the veggies. You guys, I showed you the veggies. Okay, let's do frozen dessert. All right, so the frozen dessert that we are making today is an all fruit frozen dessert and the base is frozen bananas. You can hide vegetables in this frozen dessert if you want. A really good vegetable to hide is cauliflower. It's virtually tasteless once you put fruit on top of it. That's a good one to just kind of like sneak in there. Today we're blending frozen bananas, frozen pineapple, frozen mango. I'm using the 48 ounce container, which means I don't have to blend quite as much as I would need to if I were using the 64 ounce container. The minimum batch size is smaller in something like this. So unless I'm making ice cream for a lot of people, I would use this. I use this container all the time at our house. Many mornings we do like a smoothie bowl and pancake batter or detox salad and dressing. And there's a lot of times where I'm using both, but then there's a lot of times where I just get this one out of the cabinet and I just want to make something smaller. So all of my dressings I would make in here. What else do I use this one for a lot? Ice cream. It's dressings. Yeah, dressings. Small batches of ice cream. Small batches of ice cream. Small batches of nut butter. Nut butter. We use this one a lot for nut butter. Small batches of hummus, the thick stuff. The thick stuff that I don't want a ton of. So if I want a ton of it soup, I'm making that in a big container. I'm not gonna make a little batch of soup for a family of five, but I'm also, I don't want 12 cups of dressing when I'm done making a dressing either.  So I've got a bunch of frozen fruit here. Again, it's frozen bananas, frozen pineapple, frozen mango. And most of the ingredients here are frozen. I do need a little bit of liquid to get this going. So I'm using coconut milk because it's kind of like a tropical theme here. This is canned, like thick coconut milk, but you really could use any milk here. I probably am gonna need my tamper. So let's give that a rinse. I'm gonna have so many dishes to do after this, you guys. When do we have to pick up the kids? 25 minutes. We can do this. Okay. So all I do is press the frozen dessert button here and let the Vitamix do its thing.  Do you need to restart this camera? Are we good? I think we're good. Okay. I'm gonna back it up with the tamper if it needs it and hopefully it comes out with a perfect frozen tamper. Okay. That sounds, sounds scary, but it's okay. It's just the Vitamix working hard.  She's breaking that blender. But I promise you I'm not. Remember, we're Vitamix pros. We've been doing this for a long time. That sound is this fine machine working at its best. When it's on level 10, it kicks into high gear. That's where it wants to be. Like we've used this metaphor a lot, but it's like a race car. Like sure, a race car can go 20 miles down a residential street, but like it is built for speed. It wants to be on high. That's how the Vitamix is too. So that sound is it working its hardest, doing its best to get all these ingredients blended up. And it did it perfectly. A lot of times I think people call customer service and they're like, oh my God, I'm breaking my blender. And they're like, is it making a chugging sound? Yeah, okay, well then it's doing its job. So one of the things when you get a new Vitamix is that you get a little scared to use it, especially on high. Both of our moms, the first time they used their Vitamix, they were like, I've been using it on level four. And we're like, stop it. Like you can buy a blender at the Dollar Tree and use it on level four. If you have a Vitamix, use it on 10. Look at this, perfectly smooth, creamy, mostly frozen ingredients, tropical. Now I want to put like shredded coconut on top. That would be so pretty. Gorgeous. Isn't it? It looks so good. I could have blended for another couple of seconds to get some of these like pineapple chunks out, but I think that that is delicious personally. So that's the frozen dessert in the 48 ounce container. We have lots of recipes for frozen desserts on our website, lifeisnoyoke.com. We're putting a QR code up here to take you to the Vitamix deal that's running this week. We've got links to everything below, every blender that we're featuring today, the deal that we're featuring today. I do want to quickly go through how many minutes do we have? We'll feature three more. 20 minutes before I need to pick up the kids at daycare. So we'll feature three more of the Vitamix that are on special this week. But just a reminder, all the things that we made today, queso, hot cashew queso using the soup setting, detox salad using the pulse feature, frozen dessert using the frozen, where's my drink? Okay, I want just one more sip. The green smoothie that we made and then we chopped these. See if I can get them quickly. I don't want to knock, nevermind.  I didn't want to knock over everything.  And we did all of that with what comes in the bundle, which is the 48 ounce, thank you. The food processor attachment. I didn't want to knock over my coffee. We all know how much I need my coffee. So we chopped these veggies. We also could have made the detox salad in the food processor. So these are all the things that we made with what's available in the gourmet. It's the A3500 Deluxe Smart Prep Kitchen System. Thank you.  It's pretty much like the I Want It All package. Yes, it's the, I have been wanting a Vitamix forever. I'm going to treat myself.  Full kitchen system. Full kitchen system, I know I'm going to use it. But if you want something with tactile controls, if you want something with tactile controls, we'll show you that. So give me one minute. Just bring it in. I will, but I have to move all this stuff. It's in the way. Okay, we'll move this here. I want to go on mute and have a snack. I know everything looks so good. Too bad. More work to do. Okay. We just have a couple more minutes left. Just a couple more minutes. We'll show you what else is on special. Oh, that's heavy. Okay. Okay. Tell them what this one is, Lenny, as I'm moving it. That's the 82500. Okay. It's almost identical to what we just showed you. The 82500 is the one to get if you want tactile controls. So tactile controls meaning everything is, you can feel it click. This is really good for if you're visually impaired. If technology feels overwhelming to you, the tactile controls feel really good.  Yeah. And the other downside is that you can't set a timer like you can on the one we just showed. So I didn't show you on the one. Let's see. I didn't show you that feature, but that, what? Side by side. Side by side. Remember I said walk away blending. One of the things you can do is if you don't use one of the preset settings, but you know that you, I probably need a container on top to make this work. Okay, safety feature again.  Okay, I want this to blend for two and a half minutes and then I can walk away. This one doesn't have that feature. It does have the presets, soup, frozen dessert, smoothie. And of course, variable speed control. And variable speed control, which is this side of the dial. Right? Yep. Okay, so that is the A2500. And the bundle that's on special this week is called the A2500 home chef bundle. Home chef bundle. And in addition to the 64 ounce container, the standard one, it also comes with a 48 ounce stainless steel container. Ooh, should I show them that? It's up in the cabinet if you want, yeah. Might as well. I'm prepared for that one. Yeah, what the heck? It's right here. Okay, so that's the bundle, the stainless steel with the traditional 64 ounce. Stainless steel is really good for hot things and cold things. It's really fun to make like a frozen dessert in here because it frosts up and it's really, really fun. But also for people that want a different material for their container. Or if you are someone that is a household that has different dietary needs, maybe you keep this one separate from this one and this one doesn't use milk products in it. Or this one doesn't have gluten products in it. You can keep them separate. What's really nice about the stainless steel is it doesn't absorb any flavor. So if you're using like aromatics or garlic and onions. Yes, if you're making Indian food or something that has more of a flavor profile that you wouldn't want in your smoothie, garlic and onions and stuff, you could do it in the stainless. And not to over complicated, but there's a handful of other A3500 bundle iterations. One of which is called the food sensitivity bundle. Which is kind of what you were alluding to. It's a 48 ounce container that is blue. A colored. So it's labeled blue. And it's just like a kind of a standard wet 48 ounce container. But it's blue. So it's like a clue to your household. This one is our dairy blender. But we're muddling up the waters. Sorry. We want to just say like, here's the all in A3500. Here's the A3500. Here's the A2500 if you want tactile controls and you don't want the food processor attachment. Now, if you want to save a ton, there's this model, which is very similar to the A25 that we just showed. This is called the Serp. This is a Pro 750. Pro 750. This is kind of the predecessor to what we just talked about. It's a legacy model. It has five programs, tactile controls. The only downside is that it's not compatible with the food processor attachment. But it's a super good deal because it's a certified recondition model. It's going to be in black. And it's a really good pick. Especially if you know someone that has one of these and you're like, I want that one. Yes. This is one that people, like chefs have been using forever. My necklace is stuck in my microphone. Do you think that that's going to make a weird sound? This one, if this is your first Vitamix, you will be beyond impressed with what this can do. It can make all the things we just made. Just doesn't have the technology of the Ascent series. It doesn't have the technology to or ability to run a food processor attachment. And the warranty duration is shorter. It's instead of a 10-year full warranty, it's a five-year full warranty, but the same level of warranty that comes with the brand new model. This is just certified recondition. Yes. And the last one we want to show you. The last one we want to show you. What is keeping me on track? If you just want a Vitamix for under $300, here it is. This is the certified recondition standard. This is the name for a reconditioned 5200. The 5200 is the one that has been around for 15, almost maybe 20 years. This is the one you see on all the tap chef type shows. Any professional kitchen has a 5200 in it. One like it. Or one like it. And it's really good if you're making smoothies only. It's like, if you're making smoothies in shakes, this is a great one. This is a narrow container. So the only downside is that it's probably not gonna fit onto your cabinets. It's too tall. It's three or four or five inches too tall. For standard cabinets. For you to leave on your counter. Some people do this. Yeah, that could maybe work. Well, that's pretty good. Yeah. Also not compatible with the food processor attachment and any future sort of ascent series attachments, but this, if you want to finally get a Vitamix for under $300, five year full warranty, certified rebundition standard. Yeah, we can put this one. If we want to bring the A3500 back, the black stainless and sign off, we'll have a snack. Okay. I'm getting a workout. Okay. Yeah. We'll go. And then we'll take it all down. These? No, we don't. Okay, so. We need it to be the hot soup exercise. Nope. I want it to be pretty. So we've got green. Okay. We've got. Yellow. Yellow. And then we've got. Green or orange. Orange. All right. So again, this is the A3500, the 48 ounce container and the food processor attachment. This is if you are ready to go with your Vitamix and you know you're going to use it and you've got a ton of recipes in mind and you're just so excited to get going. This is the bundle for you. But there are lots of other options that are for a deal this week. Right? Yeah. Okay. Thanks for joining us live. Sorry about the one little technical malfunction but we got it worked out and we made some delicious food and we are here all week to answer any questions that you have. Send us an email, send us a text, comment below and we will get back to you as soon as we can because this deal like everybody makes deal only lasts for as long as these things stay stocked. So once they're sold out, they're sold out. So let us know if you have questions and thanks for joining us. Bye. Who sticks around for the last one minute of a live video? Well, maybe they think there's going to be bloopers at the end like a movie. Something, like give me something hilarious at the end. I don't have any hilarious. Can I have a chip? Yeah, the ice cream's melting. This is delicious. All right, should we sign off? Yeah. Goodbye. Thanks for watching everyone. We appreciate you. We're a small family business. With a big family. With a big family. Okay, goodbye. Thanks guys.


The way that God is going to impact the generations is through your life. You may not feel that, you may not think that, you may doubt it because of your insecurities, because of your past mistakes, and because of what you perceive to be a lack of giftedness. But I'm telling you this right now. It's not a matter of how gifted you are. It's not a matter of how intelligent you are. It's not a matter of how charismatic you are. It's a matter of how surrendered you are to the Holy Spirit. There is no limit to what God can do with a life surrendered to the Holy Spirit.


If we will press in and really keep our eyes on Jesus and stay committed to what God's called us to, I believe we're going to finish the race. We're going to see God again show himself faithful, miraculously, provide for everything that we need, and reach more people and see the glory of God come upon a people, a city, a community, a generation.


Welcome to George H. Smith's Excursions into Libertarian Thought, a production of Libertarianism.org and the Cato Institute. Jean Messlier Jean Messlier, 1664 to 1729, was an obscure and, by all accounts, kindly French priest who would not be remembered today if not for a manuscript he left behind for his parishioners. Commonly known as the Testament of Jean Messlier, this lengthy book, 97 chapters and more than 550 pages in the recent English translation, is an outright and highly polemical defense of atheism. Although the complete French manuscript was not published until 1864, Messlier's Testament exerted a profound influence on French free thinkers during the 18th century, especially Denis Diderot and Baron Dolbach. A more accurate and critical edition came in 2007, followed by the first complete English translation ever in 2009. Messlier reportedly made three copies of his manuscript. In subsequent decades, as other copies were made and circulated, the Testament became a highly prized item in the French Underground or clandestine book market. After Voltaire obtained a copy, he praised Messlier as a good priest and recommended that his book be a constant companion of educated readers. But when Voltaire published his highly abridged extract from the Testament, he added material that made Messlier seem a deist, like Voltaire himself, rather than the atheist he really was. I first became familiar with Messlier's Testament or thought I did, while in high school during the 1960s, when I read a book titled Superstition in All Ages, published by the American free-thought publisher Peter Eckler. Although this book represents itself as a condensed, translated version of Messlier's Testament, it is nothing of the sort. It is in fact a translation of a book, Good Sense by Dolbach, a German atheist, and may be called a condensed version of Holbach's much more extensive two-volume work, The System of Nature, originally published in 1770 under the pseudonym Mirabeau. I have never been able to determine with certitude how far back this conflation of texts goes, but it may have started in the 18th century. The French philosopher and historian of atheism, Michael Onfray, said this of Messlier's Testament, for the first time, but how long will it take us to acknowledge this? In the history of ideas, a philosopher has dedicated a whole book to the question of atheism. He professed it, demonstrated it, arguing and quoting, sharing his reading and his reflections, and seeking confirmation from his own observations of the everyday world. His title sets it out clearly. Memoirs of the thoughts and feelings of Jean Messlier, and so does his subtitle. Clear and evident demonstrations of the vanity and falsity of all religions of the world. The book appeared in 1729 after his death. Messlier had spent the greater part of his life working on it. The history of true atheism had begun. I think it is an exaggeration to say that the history of true atheism began with Messlier. Even a quick perusal of the richly documented study by Alan Charles Coors, atheism in France, 1650 to 1729, Princeton, 1990, should dispel that notion. But the historical significance of the Testament cannot be denied. Its significance goes far beyond its unremitting attacks on Christianity, including the Bible, and supernaturalistic religions generally. The Testament is also important for its strident libertarianism. Although I would not go as far as Anfray does in dubbing Messlier and anarchist, various remarks by Messlier seem to conflict with this characterization. His hatred of governmental oppression, expressed in clear, forceful and unequivocal language, was highly unusual in his day. Since the Testament is unknown to the vast majority of modern libertarians, I devote this and the next several chapters to explaining its ideas. This chapter focuses on Messlier's libertarianism. Exactly what kind of libertarian was Messlier? I discuss that issue in Chapter 21. I provide generous quotations from the Testament in the hope that they will motivate fellow libertarians to read the book for themselves. An especially interesting feature of Messlier's thinking about government is his reliance on the libertarian classic Discourse on Voluntary Servitude by Etienne de la Boisie, 1530 to 1563. Like la Boisie, Messlier insisted that rulers could not maintain their power without the tacit cooperation of the people they ruled. If that cooperation were denied, political power and depression would dissolve of their own accord. The following passage from the Testament is typical. In considering the issue of why so many of the common people of France were desperately poor, Messlier wrote, It is because you and all your fellow men are loaded with all the burdens of the state. You are loaded not only with the burdens of your kings and princes who are your tyrants, but also the burdens of the nobility and clergy, all the monasticism and the courts, all the lackeys and grooms of the rulers and all the servants of others, all the soldiers, the seller rat tax collectors, police assault and tobacco, and finally, all the lazy and useless people in the world, for it is only from the fruit of your hard work that all these people live. By your work, you supply everything necessary for their subsistence and not only what is necessary, but also what they can use for their entertainment and pleasures. What would happen, for example, to the greatest princes and potentates of the earth if the people did not support them? It is only from the people whom they care so little about that they get all their grandeur, riches and power.  They would not have more riches than you if you did not give them yours, and they would not have more power or authority than you if you did not want to submit to their laws and will. Another noteworthy aspect of the testament is found in Messalier's argument for legalizing divorce. He also thought priests and monks should be allowed to marry. Messalier wrote, Likewise, if all men and particularly our Christ cultists did not hold marriages insoluble as they do, and if, on the contrary, they always left their unions and conjugal relationships free among themselves without forcing each other, i.e. either the men or the women to remain inseparably together all their lives against their inclinations, we would certainly not see as many bad marriages and households as there are, and there would not be as much discord and dissension as there is between husbands and wives. Taxes topped Messalier's list of oppressive government measures. He especially detested tax collectors, cellarats he called them, who increased the harshness of such a hateful and detestable yoke. Innocent, hardworking Frenchmen were mistreated every day by a thousand hard and severe money collectors who are normally proud and arrogant men and from whom all people have to suffer all the put-downs, thefts, fraud, misappropriations, and all kinds of other injustices and mistreatments. For here is no officer, tax collector, or clerk so petty, no archer officer of salt and tobacco so vile who, on the pretext of being hired by the king and on the pretext of collecting and hoarding money, does not believe that he has to make them proud as the right to scoff at, mistreat, trample, and tyrannize the poor. The vast extent of French taxes and commercial regulations also incurred Messalier's wrath. On the one hand, these kings levy huge taxes on all kinds of merchandise in order to profit from everything that is bought and sold. They put them on wine and meat, on eau de vie, alcohol and beer, on wool, linen, and lace, on salt and pepper, on paper, tobacco, and all kinds of commodities. They make them pay for rights of entry and exit, for rights of registration, for marriages, baptisms, and burials whenever it seems good to them. They make them pay for liquidations, for relief of communities, for the woods and forests and for the rivers. If they see someone doing business on the lands of their dominion and freely coming and going to buy and sell or only to transport merchandise from one place to another, he must have, as is said in the Apocalypse, the Book of Revelation, the Mark of the Beast, i.e., the Mark of the Tax Collector Rats, and the Permission of the King. He must have credentials, clearance, passes, passports, receipts, and guarantees and other similar letters of permission that are truly what we can call the Mark of the Beast, i.e., the Mark of the Permission of the Tyrant. Without this, if you are unlucky enough to run into and be seized by the Guards or Officers of the said Royal Beast, you run the risk of being ruined and lost because you will be immediately arrested. They will seize, they will confiscate the merchandise, the horses, and wagons. In addition to this, the merchants or drivers are sentenced to large fines, prison, the galleys, and sometimes even to shameful death. So severely is it forbidden to do business or to come and go with merchandise without having, as I said, the Mark of the Beast. And power was given to him that no one could buy or sell except for him who had the Mark or name of the Beast or the number of his name, Revelation 1317. Although there were numerous French critics of Louis XVII in early 18th century France, Messlie's attack was unsurpassed in its vehemence. Messlie, born in 1664, lived 51 years under the reign of Louis, whose rule spanned over 72 years. The supposedly great Sun King was in the front rank of those rapacious monarchs who, on a whim, sought to extend the boundaries of their empires by waging war on their neighbors using whatever vain pretext they could invent. These wars of conquest were always undertaken at the expense of the lives and goods of the poor, who not only served as cannon fodder for the French army, but were also forced to pay for the engine of their own destruction. Moreover, when armies invade enemy territories, they ravage and completely desolate the provinces, burning and bleeding everything. Messlie wrote of Louis XIV, No one has spilled so much blood, killed so many men, caused so many tears of widows and orphans, ravaged and desolated so many cities and provinces as this last late king, Louis XIV, called the Great. Truly not for the great and commendable actions he did, seeing that he did nothing really worthy of his name, but really for the great injustices, the great thefts, the great usurpations, the great desolations, the great rape and carnage of men that he has caused everywhere on land and sea alike. From a libertarian perspective, one of Messlie's most valuable discussions appears in Chapter 58, where he discusses the flatterers of kings and princes. The modern historian, Harry Elmer Barnes, referring to the broader context of rulers in general, expressed the same idea when he criticized those court intellectuals and historians who do whatever is needed to justify the policies and actions of their own governments. Court flatterers, according to Messlie, typically recommend that the sovereign not provide more freedom for his subjects who will only abuse it. The common people are not wise enough to run their own lives, so the sovereign truly acts for the good of the people by telling them what to do. The people need to be kept lowly for their own interest. Court intellectuals do not wish to jeopardize their own positions of power and attendant special privileges. They hope to catch even more financial crumbs as they fall from the sovereign's hands, so they can cock excessive empty praise on their behalf. Thus, we see thousands and thousands of cowardly and villainous flatterers who, in order to get ahead and get more, force themselves to indulge in everything, hiding the flaws and vices of the kings and even turning the vices into virtues, or the little talent and virtue they may have, into a rare and exceptional and even heroic virtue, and they wonderfully exaggerate the little good they happen to do sometimes for some individuals. Magistrates and judges who are tasked with maintaining impartial justice pursue and punish severely the petty criminals.  This point is reminiscent of a famous story told by Diogenes, a leading proponent of the cynic school of moral philosophy in ancient Greece. Observing the arrest of a man who had stolen a bottle, Diogenes quipped, low, the big thieves taking the little one to jail. Messlie charged the French clergy with being among the most eager members of the flattering class. Members of the clergy, according to their own religious doctrines, should be the most zealous defenders of truth and justice, and should be the strongest and most faithful protectors of the people against the unjust vexations and attacks of the princes and kings of the earth. But that is not how they actually behaved. Instead, clerics, especially those in higher offices, were often the ones who flattered rulers the most and who most cowardly and shamefully betray the duties of their ministry. Messlie continued with a passage that could have been written by the likes of Thomas Paine, Lysander Spooner, or Murray Rothbard, with regard to governments in general. Kings and princes are really like ravaging wolves and roaring lions who search for prey. They are always ready to burden or overburden the people with taxes, always ready to set up new ones and increase the old ones, always ready to ignite the fires of war, and consequently, always ready to spill blood and take away men's lives. This has been Excursions into Libertarian Thought, a production of Libertarianism.org and the Cato Institute. To learn more about Libertarian philosophy and history, visit www.libertarianism.org.


What's up everybody? JC here from jasperjayscasebrakes.com. We just sold out 20-20 flawless college football picker team number two randomizer RMB for the Bangles Cowboys Packers Chiefs Chargers Dolphins 49ers, and again for 266.99 10 customers are getting a 10% piece of all of these teams in picker team number two of flawless collegiate And how does it work guys? Everybody gets a random number for the break 0 through 9 and as an example if you get randomized block 3 You will get all cards with teams above being 3 the first number next to the dash on the left side So as an example if you hit a card that is 243 out of 2.99 that would go to block 3 13 out of 99 will go to block 3 3 out of 25 43 out of 49 93 to 99 and so on number 3 block would get that card If there is any redemptions and follows they will go to spot 0 Even if we know it's a one-on-one it'll still go to spot 0 and if in the instance there is any non numbered cards They'll be randomized to the group. So as an example 2 if we pull this Joe Borrell patch on over here 5 out of 5 that would go to block 5 So again only for these teams in this specific break it works for so here's a dice roller Here's a customer names Shawn down to mark these customers bought in straight up and And then Michael filed Dario and mark got those in mosaic blaster number 3 And there's the numbers So let's roll the dice and we got ourselves a one or three four times. Good luck One two Three Four Alex down to mark. So there you go four times one two three four Zero down to eight Alex was zero so you get any of our redemptions Michael with three is Shawn with four Matthew with five last one module Aaron was six Dario you have seven followed with one any one of ones will be yours Ryan with two Matthews with nine and mark with eight So there you go guys and again Coming up next now is the break itself in a separate video Jasky's case breaks.com