Philip DeFranco Entertains Idea Taxes Are Theft

Jan Helfeld corners DeFranco and hammers him with logic.

DeFranco, a comedian commentator, runs one of the largest subscriber channels on YouTube.

Awesome interview:


By the end of the interview, you can see DeFranco squirming in his chair as Helfeld pins him to the mat with logical reasoning. In a way I feel for DeFranco. It’s not fun having your entire world view trashed.

The emotional turmoil DeFranco is feeling is called cognitive dissonance.

Cognitive dissonance is the term used in modern psychology to describe the state of holding two or more conflicting cognitions (e.g., ideas, beliefs, values, emotional reactions) simultaneously. In a state of dissonance, people may sometimes feel surprise, dread, guilt, anger, or embarrassment. The theory of cognitive dissonance in social psychology proposes that people have a motivational drive to reduce dissonance by altering existing cognitions, adding new ones to create a consistent belief system, or alternatively by reducing the importance of any one of the dissonant elements. An example of this would be the conflict between wanting to smoke and knowing that smoking is unhealthy; a person may try to change their feelings about the odds that they will actually suffer the consequences, or they might add the consonant element that the short term benefits of smoking outweigh the long term harm. The need to avoid cognitive dissonance may bias one towards a certain decision even though other factors favour an alternative.

DeFranco has been programmed his whole life to believe that the state is a good and necessary institution. When confronted with logic that shows what the state really is, it manifests a psychological overload that creates an enormous amount of discomfort.