Ep. 231 Thaddeus Russell Repeatedly Lied to Michael Malice
In a recent episode of the podcast “Your Welcome,” Michael Malice had Thaddeus Russell on to explain the controversy that had erupted over an interview Russell did with philosophy professor Stephen Kershnar, where the two academics had defended adult-child sexual relations. Bob documents that Russell’s explanations to Malice don’t stand up to the record of his own written and spoken remarks.
Mentioned in the Episode and Other Links of Interest:
- Michael Malice’s recent interview of Thaddeus Russell on ep. 193 of Your Welcome.
- Thaddeus Russell’s controversial interview of Stephen Kershnar back in December 2020.
- BMS ep. 180, the original critique of Thad’s interview of Kershnar.
- Thad on Liberty Lockdown in summer of 2021.
- Thad’s 2009 Daily Beast article on Roman Polanski.
- Help support the Bob Murphy Show.
The audio production for this episode was provided by Podsworth Media.
About the author, Robert
Christian and economist, Chief Economist at infineo, and Senior Fellow with the Mises Institute.
Agreed on all points. My take:
Thaddeus was likely abused as a child and suffers from the downstream consequences, I suspect it’s not just his desire to appear rebellious. He seems to have attractions that are unhealthy, though he manages them, except when they leak out. He knows it’s wrong.
Great episode Bob. Excellent calling-out Russell for “being Thad”.
His “personally I would kill pedophiles” and “pedophiles should be put in camps” outbursts on Malice’s show were classic motte-and-bailey fallacy. He keep trying to push these arguments supporting child-adult sex (weak “baily” arguments), then when he faces backlash he reverts to claiming he doesn’t support pedophilia and wants pedophiles kill or put in camps (the strong “motte” argument).
Thad was indeed being evasive/dishonest, but Bob is wrong about the issue – sexuality is not necessarily automatically wrong or harmful with large age gaps.
I don’t know who’s worse, the guy who says morality doesn’t exist, or the guy who’s wrong about morality. (In the show Bob (incorrectly) states that early sexuality is EVIL, if it’s with an older person, but maybe in every other case too — he was also evasive about it — too scared to even do a very basic google search on the topic. Smh.)
It’s not the age gap per se that’s immoral. If a 60yo has sex with a 40yo, I don’t think anyone’s getting outraged.
It’s that people aren’t usually fully matured yet until around 20 or so, and big age gaps that give one person a large advantage in maturity over another is (rightfully, in my opinion) seen as taking advantage.
This Thad guy is just such a dishonest scumbag. His is one of the few episodes of the BMS that I turned off.
Like you say, what do you expect from somebody who openly disavows the concept of truth? Just a scam snake-oil salesman like Molyneux.
That being said, I did not know of Desmond the Amazing.
Bob says it’s wrong to just take $20 from a random child, and this implies that children have rights. Not so fast. If you see $20 sitting in a car, is it OK to take the $20 from the car? Do cars have rights?
by this logic, you could also just take the car.
Russell is not interested in self-correctness. He just wants attention.
He doesn’t care that he contradicts himself, or that he lies.
There are many people like this.