 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Book Show. All right, everybody. Welcome to Iran Book Show on this evening. Thanks for joining me. I hope everybody's having a great week. Things are going well. All right. Today, we're going to do a quick update on Justin Trudeau's ongoing flotation with full-on authoritarianism. We'll talk about a few lessons learned from COVID restrictions or lessons unlearned or lessons not learned from COVID restrictions. So we'll talk a little bit about that. There was a good article in Barry Weiss' sub-stack by an epidemiologist on this. And I think it's worth reviewing. A lot of stuff that I've said many, many times in the past and Amish has been saying from the beginning. And then we'll talk about what's going on in San Francisco and New York. I think some really interesting stuff. Positive, kind of positive. At least nowhere near as negative as what is going on in certain parts of the world. So thanks, everybody. Thanks for joining. Remember. So we'll review all that. Remember, we fund the show thanks to your super chat. Don't forget to ask questions or just use the super chat to support the show either way. And we will get on to it. M-M-T-M-S, S26S. Do you have any need for a moderator or any private job? Not right now. So unfortunately, not right now. M-M-T-M-S-S is looking, asking for a job. You sent me an email. I apologize for not applying to it yet. But maybe at some point, but not at this point, I'm not looking to hire anybody. We have to grow the business first before we start hiring more people. Alicia, I'm stunned at all the hate-regarding Super Bowl halftime show. Oh my god, that's right. I haven't talked about my views on the Super Bowl halftime show. You might get some more hate, Alicia. I thought it was terrible, the Super Bowl halftime show. But I don't like rap. I don't like anything about rap. I don't like the whole attitude of rap. I don't like the dance moves. I don't like the content. I don't like the music. Nothing about it appeals to me. So I think the halftime show was a good illustration of the pretty low nature of American pop culture, which is pretty bleak. So sorry, Alicia, but you didn't ask for this. But I'm just going to join in on my negative views of it. I haven't liked it. I don't think a lot of halftime shows are not very good. But this one, I just don't get the whole culture and the culture that venerates this show, not my thing. And musically, I think, I stepped back from music from 20, 30, 40 years ago. All right, let's see. Ryan, thank you for the support. I appreciate it. OK, so let's talk about Justin Trudeau. So yesterday, we talked a little bit about these emergency provisions that he's put in place. I mean, it's just more and more movement towards authoritarianism. As I mentioned yesterday, I'm critical of this when Oban does it in Hungary, although Oban is, of course, as much worse than Trudeau, even though the right loves him. But today, I heard the Canadian finance minister talking. And basically what these emergency measures give them the right to do is freeze people accounts, confiscate their money, blacklist them with no warrants, no due process, just based on, I don't know, suspicion, based on what they suspect them of being or doing. And then what is the crime? Now, again, you know, I'm not a big fan of protests. I'm not a big fan of blocking traffic and doing all that stuff. But what are they doing? I mean, is what they're doing justifies throwing out all their rights, taking their bank accounts, not allowing them any privacy, denying any privacy rights, denying any financial rights, just walking all over them? I mean, there is such a thing as proportionality in law. So I mean, and of course, the flip side is imagine if this was a group of Occupy Wall Street people that were blocking the streets and everything and they were doing it all as to denounce Wall Street and denounce capitalism, like they did, right? You remember, they had 10 encampments all over the United States, all over the United States in front of Wall Street, in front of state houses, in front of banks. They had these campments. Did anybody's bank accounts get frozen? For that matter, during the BLM riots, did anybody's bank accounts get frozen? Did anybody's privacy get ignored? Was the assumption that it was a free fall? You could go after them. You could do anything you wanted to them? So one of the things these protests are probably going to bring out, which might be a good thing, is just how deeply corrupt, if you needed more evidence of that, the political class is, just how deeply corrupt this Canadian government is. And today, the economist was reporting that the next step in these emergency laws is that the Canadian parliament is looking at passing two laws. Or I'm not sure if these are laws or if these provisions of the Emergency Act wasn't clear from the article. But this is the Economist magazine, so it's not some conspiracy theory laid in place. And this is what they're claiming the Canadian government is looking at. Just think about this. One new law would allow Canada's human rights tribunal. I mean, just the fact that Canada has a human rights tribunal is despicable and disgusting and just horrific and scary, particularly if you're in Canada, Ryan, we've got a few Canadians here. But this would allow Canada's human rights tribunal to impose large fines on those it deems to have used hateful language, hateful language. It has in the past taken an expan- This is the Economist writing this. It has in the past taken an expansive view of what counts as hateful. And defendants would enjoy fewer safeguards than they do under criminal law. So now, it's not enough they're going to go after their bank accounts. It's not enough that they're going to go after their livelihood. They're going to go after this speech. And we know that in the world in which we live right now, hateful is anything the authorities don't like. Hateful, indeed, is anything that somebody somewhere in the world might be offended at some point from. I mean, that is, you know, I gave you the criteria for when we get to authoritarianism. And of course, a big part of that is censorship. And this is censorship. Now, Canada already doesn't really have free speech and already has this human rights tribunal, which is already scary, but now you're going to give it even more power, even more ability to control. So it's just truly unbelievable how bad the Canadians are and how this trucker demonstration is bringing out the worst, the very worst, in the authoritarian instincts of the Canadian government. Now, how does this end? I have no idea. But if Justin Trudeau is going to impose these kind of draconian measures, if he's going to start using force against the truckers, if he's going to, then this is going to be an unmitigated disaster for Canada. It's going to be unmitigated disaster for both sides. Nobody's going to win from this. The other proposed change, the other proposed change, would let individuals file legal complaints against people preemptively. You file a complaint. If they fear that they may be about to say something hateful, so you can sue them, you can file a legal complaint about somebody, not because they've said something hateful towards you, but before they say. Now, provisions like this make this about as close to tyranny as one could get, because this is clearly eliminating one's free speech. And once they pass laws like this, they can implement it at any time. And this law against hateful language, I mean, a lot of countries have hate speech laws. This is more draconian. But this is the end of free speech in Canada. Now, if these laws are passed, if they go after free speech in this kind of way, then much bigger demonstrations should be engaged in. Then you're talking about this is tyranny. This is the limit. I don't know if there's any way to recall a prime minister. I don't know if there's any way to, like in California, you can recall a governor. In the, of course, in the US, you can impeach a president. Canada has a parliamentary system, so I guess you'd have to convince enough the parliament to vote against Trudeau and to offer a vote of no confidence, whether anybody would do that, who knows. But how do you rid of laws like this? And of course, once they're in place, how do you get rid of them? Who's ever going to repeal these? Because one of the challenges is that once you put laws like this in place, once you put laws like this in place, no politician wants to get rid of them because it gives them enormous power, enormous power. So you can't call an election unless there's a vote on our confidence in the government. It's the premier who calls the election. So there is no entity that calls an election as long as the government has a majority in the parliament, which I assume Trudeau has in the Canadian parliament. So as I've always said, I mean, a big major criteria for moving into tyranny, moving into authoritarianism, one key pillar of a free society, even a limited free society is speech. And once that's gone, the other pillars will go as well. Once that's gone, then you're not that far from one party rule and political prisoners, of course, speech is used to restrict the speech of your political opponents. And the problem is we just had a Canadian election, so there's not going to be a Canadian election for almost five years unless there's some vote of no confidence in the current government, right? Because there was just an election last year, Trudeau won. That's the tragedy. Well, the sad thing is that Trudeau won. In spite of all the COVID restrictions, in spite of how pathetic his government has been, he won, I think, by us, correct me if you're Canadian, but I think by a smaller majority, right? Ryan says, oh, Trudeau has a minority parliament. The problem with Trudeau government is that a minority parliament, they are propped up by the new Democrats. They truly left his collectivist party. The government hinges on pandering to the authoritarians. Yeah, and the question is who within Trudeau's government or who within his coalition is willing to betray him over this? And if these are the kind of laws he's proposing, I mean, this is the frustration, right? And I've expressed this in the past. It's getting to the point, at least in some places, under certain circumstances, where an outright revolution is justified. But the problem with that is there's nobody to revolt. That is that the people who would engage in the revolution are not that much better than the people who you're revolting against. They're marginally better. But they're not that much better. And this is partially the problem with the truckers having such limited demands that they're not advocates for freedom. They're not advocates for free speech. They're not advocates for freedom. They want certain mandates eliminated, which I'm all for, eliminate all those mandates. But what you need if you get engaged in a revolution, cultural revolution, political revolution, philosophical revolution, armed revolution, what you need is a set of alternative ideas to replace the existing ideas. What you need is a set of ideas that actually can replace the existing ideas. What you need is something to stand for. I was talking to, I was communicating by email with Amkar, and he reminded me of the Tea Party and the demonstrations I was a part of as part of the Tea Party, and how disappointed I am in the Tea Party, how much effort, resources, hope, passion. I, certainly personally, and I think a lot of us put into the Tea Party in the hope that something really good would come of this. They had a broad agenda of what seemed like political liberty and freedom, limited government, certainly politically. And I think early on, there were a lot of people who want that political, who got involved because they really felt the country was going in the wrong direction, and they wanted to do something, and they wanted to stand for something, and they wanted to coalesce around something. And they were passionate about it. And then when they didn't win quickly, when they didn't get results quickly, even though in the 2010 elections, they got a lot of the candidates elected. But when those candidates landed up not doing that much, and then when Obama won in 2012, the Tea Party basically gave up completely, was captured completely by religion and by the Republican Party, and then became completely enamored with Trump, completely enamored with Trump. Because Trump promised action. And it's what they had wanted all these years. They'd wanted action all these years, and they didn't get it. And then Trump came along and said, I'll do it. I will act. I'm not going to be like these pretend. And of course, as part of acting, he gave up on all the good principles that were part of the Tea Party. Anything that was positive about the Tea Party, he threw out, but they all adored him, and they all backed him, and they all supported him. Because he was going to act. And because he stood up to the left. And because he didn't demand, he didn't expect them to be more ideological. But the frustration he was, yes, OK, we hate Trudeau. We hate the mandates. But what are we for? And how many people are with us on what we are for? And how many of the people who are with us on, let's say, eliminating the mandates? And COVID are also with us on freedom in other areas of life, in Canada or in the US. How many of them are truly for freedom? How many of the Tea Party people who rallied in hundreds of thousands, millions overall? How many of them are rallied around freedom and repeal Obamacare and true freedom and all this stuff? How many of them actually in that stayed committed to the cause of freedom and expanded the cause of freedom beyond a few narrow issues that they cared about? They gave up on Obamacare, clearly. They gave up on private health care, suddenly. And that's the, I mean, I don't know. People want action. I get that people want action. People are frustrating with me because all I do is talk. But what action do you want? What action would lead to a solution? What action would actually move us in the direction of more freedom? Again, we saw the Tea Party. I think the Tea Party was as good as it's gotten in the last 40, 50 years in terms of movement. And it went nowhere. Went nowhere. It fizzled out. I went to the Tea Party. I spoke to the Tea Party. Dozens and dozens of times, large audiences, half a million here in Washington, DC, in the mall, thousands in other events, big auditoriums, small rooms. I gave dozens of Tea Party talks. I told them what they should be about. I told them what the ideological origin, I gave them an agenda of what they should be arguing for. And what good did they do? Nothing, zilch, zero. And what would they do with the truckers? Nada, zero, zilch. That's the frustration. Is that the culture's not ready for revolution. It's not ready for people actually standing up. Tomorrow, these same truckers might support an authoritarian from another direction. I'm not saying they will. I'm saying they might. Because they don't have a grounding. And when you try to provide it to them, at least my experience with the Tea Party, it doesn't go anywhere. They give you a standing ovation at the time. And then a week later, another speaker comes in, says pretty much the opposite of what you said, and they give him a standing ovation as well. Yeah, I get it, this time it's simple. But because it's simple, it's not interesting. Because it's simple, it's not a big change. Because it's simple, it's not gonna achieve much, either way. So, you just gotta keep doing the work. There are no shortcuts. At the end of the day, there's just no shortcuts. Ryan says again from Canada, our culture is so bad that I laughed at the, I am laughed at for promoting Americanism. This is in Canada. There is no concept of individualism taught in schools. Well, there's no concept of individualism taught in any schools, anyway. We are trained to bow to authority from a young age. So what are you gonna achieve? Okay, so COVID restrictions go away. COVID restrictions, by the way, are going away. Almost all of the mandates are going away. As I said yesterday, they're going away in New York, they're going away in California, they're going away in Canada. In many of the provinces, they're already gone. Not many of the provinces, some of the provinces. But it's growing. They're going away, they're gone in Scandinavia. They're gone in Spain, they're going in Spain. They're gone in the UK. They're gone, where else are they gone? What else did I read, they're gone. Anyway, Northern Europe, primarily against Scandinavia, they're gone. Not only Sweden, but Denmark and Norway and Finland, they're gone, no restrictions. So the restrictions are going way too late, way too late. Though if you're fighting restrictions, I think there are much better ways to fight them without alienating so many people and without creating a situation like we have today. So I don't know how this ends. It doesn't end good for Canada, no matter what happens. I don't think Trudeau is gonna back down. I don't see how he can. He's put himself into a corner. I don't see how the track is back down, unless they hurt them so badly financially that they have no place to go. In the meantime, Canada increases the infringement in individual rights, restrict speech, restricts banking transactions, uses the banks, that's part of the evil of this. They use the banks as their agents. They don't actually go after you. They use the banks, the banks freeze your account, the banks do all this stuff. What if the bank is wrong? Well, whatever they do, they're wrong. But why are you now using private institutions? Private institutions are not law enforcement agents. And yet that's how they use them. This is fascism. So what I would suggest is that the United States offer anybody in Canada wants to move to the U.S. citizenship. Give them a green card. Get the Canadians over here. Yeah, one of the women says there's a shortage of truckers in the U.S. There is actually a shortage of truckers in the U.S. Let's bring them over. You're not gonna have a civil war. Are you gonna have a civil war in Canada? Canada's not gonna engage in civil war. They're not enough people on the side of the truckers. They're not gonna go on a civil war over COVID mandates. And who's gonna win that one? But again, if you're gonna have a war, then you better know what you're fighting for. And you better have a positive agenda for what comes after. So I agree with all the truckers' demands. I just don't think this is gonna be effective. I don't think this is the way to go around doing it. Ryan says, thanks, Iran. Don't tell my wife about my contributions. I will get in trouble. Your shows have changed my life and given me the confidence to educate my kids on liberty and freedom. Thanks, Ryan. I really appreciate that. That's 70 Canadian bucks. I appreciate it. That's fantastic. It's rough. I mean, it's rough being a Canadian. It's been rough being an Australian and New Zealander, horribly rough. And it's rough being an American. It's from political perspective. It's rough living in the world in which we live. It's very, very difficult because our politicians are getting ever more bolder in their willingness and eagerness to violate our rights and fringe on our freedoms. And ever more wackier. That's right. Gail reminds me that this is not new in Canada. That's right. That should have been a trucker protest, but of course, they're not gonna protest about things like that, but she reminds me that in, what was it, 10 years ago, 12 years ago, that Canada hauled the Ezra Levant in front of a kangaroo court. I think it was the human rights whatever commission for reprinting the Mohammed cartoons after the Mohammed cartoon issue. The whole thing put it on YouTube and it cost him a fortune. But yeah, that's how much Canadians value free speech. And I don't think it was, I don't remember who was prime minister then. I mean, this wasn't crazy leftist prime minister at the time, but Canada has been for a long time. Significantly anti free speech and just horrible, just horrible. So you can find the proceedings against Ezra on YouTube. I haven't heard of Ezra Levant in a long time. I wonder how much that destroyed it's ability to do what he does. Val-Valdemar, Christensen says, when one visits a country, you must in some way be sanctioning the country. How does one determine which country is the moral to sanction? I'm looking for both general advice and specifically your thoughts about UAE. God. I mean, I think one has to make an assessment of unbalance to what extent does this country unfree? To what extent is this country an enemy of civilization? To what extent is the extra dollars that you are contributing here going to causes that are harmful to you and to people you value? And it's very hard in the world in which we live. A country like UAE, you unavoidably are buying the oil and natural gas, you are interacting with them in one way or another, whether you like it or not because of an integrated part of the world economy. And it's very difficult to segregate it out. Do you go to a country like China in spite of what you think about Putin? Do you go to a country like China, given what they are doing and given the, you know. I mean, my criteria is different than yours because I'm an intellectual, I'm a speaker. My criteria is I will pretty much go to any country that allows me to criticize it. Any country that allows me to actually stand up and say, and I said this in St. Petersburg, Putin is a thug, your government is a bad government. Now, if I can do that and not be poisoned, haven't been yet, and I don't know if I'd go back to Russia because of that, then I'm willing to do that. I did that in China for many, many years because I criticized the government. I could criticize the government because I was promoting freedom. They didn't stop me. They didn't censor me. They didn't limit what I said. Would I go today? Probably not. Probably not because I think that it was, I wouldn't be allowed to say what I want to say. And I would be supporting this particular regime doing the horrible things that they do right now. I wouldn't go, I mean, I wouldn't go to the UAE because I couldn't criticize Islam in the UAE. I wouldn't go to Dubai. I wouldn't go to Saudi Arabia. I wouldn't go for them. I wouldn't go to any Muslim countries. I'm hesitant even to go to Turkey because if I gave a talk and I criticized Islam, what would happen? It's just not safe. It's just not, and it's a sanction. It's a sanction of that prohibition, which I'm not willing to do. So it's partially a question of what are they limiting you from doing? And in what way is it gonna attack your values? And I don't think there's a rule that's exactly the same for everybody. It depends on the context of your visit, of your work, why you're going, it depends on, I wouldn't go to UAE. I wouldn't do business with UAE. But I wouldn't go there. Would I do business? Would I take their investment? That's a good question. But it's a very difficult in the mixed world in which we live. But authoritarian places where people are, like places that criminalize different opinions, like Saudi Arabia, you can go to jail for a long time, for, I don't know, being an atheist, how, I couldn't go to a place like that. I couldn't go to a place like that. And I think it's wrong to support a regime like that. So I'd say if it's a tyranny, if it's a place that has political prisoners, if it's a place where you can't speak your mind, if it's a place that we can't speak your mind where you have political prisoners, yeah, free speech that has one party political rule, I won't go. So there's a few countries like that in the world that I won't go to. All right, let's see, we got a couple of $50 and then we'll get back to you because we'll get back to the topics I have in mind. Let's see, DWNLogic asks, is it racist to be more sexually attracted to people of certain ethnic types? I definitely have a specific type, skin color, hair, height, body type, et cetera. I never hear anyone complaining about these racial search categories on porn sites as being racist. No, I don't think so. You know, first of all, what you're attracted to is not, you know, first of all, if all you go by in terms of your relationship with other people is how they look, it's problematic. So how they look is just a first estimate in terms of sexual attractiveness. And we are all because of the environment we grow up in, because of the culture we grow up in, we might find certain things beautiful and certain things attractive, certain things unattractive, unbeautiful because of the context in which we grew up in because of all kinds of things, some of them that we don't even know because they have to do with certain conclusions we came to about when children. So you don't control explicitly your sexual attraction. So I don't have a problem with that in terms of attraction. You're not denying somebody a value because of their skin color. You're not attracted to them. That doesn't deny them anything. Yeah, some people are attracted to opposites. I'm mostly attracted to opposites. You know, so I am mostly attracted to women who don't look, come from the same part of the world necessarily as I do. I like the exotic. So an exotic can be a wide variety. I think as you grow, as you grow, as you travel, as you see the world, as you get more diversity in your values, at least in your optional values, I think your attraction also changes. As you learn more about people, as you talk more to people, what attracts you changes? So yeah, I don't find blondes attractive, for example, right? It's hard to analyze why we like what we like and why we're attracted to what we're attracted, all right? Okay, I'll take this question and then we'll go on to the topics and then I'll come back to some of these others later. Ali says, how are we going to repair the damage caused by communist schools? I work with people from communist country and they are like a machine. They lack individualism and what comes with it from empathy to thinking to somebody else, it's really sad. It really is sad. But it's amazing how people can recover from that to some extent, right? So we had communist schools in Eastern Europe and in the Soviet Union for a very long time and yet at some point they rebelled against their communist regimes. They walked away, they shrugged, they rejected it. Now they didn't go all the way to individualism because that's hard and there's nothing in the culture that moves them in that direction. But the existence of communist schools doesn't doom you completely. It means it requires much more work on people like us, people who believe in individualism, people who are trying to educate people about individualism. For us, it becomes much, much harder because it's a steeper learning curve. There's a lot more you have to do, there's a lot more you have to try to teach people. Let's see, I'll do three more of the $20 questions and then I'll go on. Adam says, imagine if a government reactor like this on Tifa and BLM. Yeah, I mean they wouldn't. Not even Trump dared to send in federal troops or anything like that, right? He did a little bit in Portland, but in Portland they were burning down the city and nothing was done, right? They weren't just blocking the streets, they were literally burning down the city and the authorities in Portland just said, nah, fine, let them burn it down. I mean they did nothing, zero, zilch. It's only when the left is tired of burning the city did the whole thing go away. So it's truly unbelievable. And the hypocrisy, but the hypocrisy, you can point out hypocrisy a million times, nobody cares. Dave says, New York and San Francisco are where rich people live like they're poor. It's not worth it. As soon as I can start working remotely, I'm gone. You keep threatening to leave New York, Dave. It's about time you do it. It's about time you do it. I don't know, I don't think the rich people in New York live like poor. I mean really, they've got big apartments, they have drivers who pick them up. They, anyway, I don't think they live like they're poor, but it's not fun anymore. They're not the great, amazing, stunning places to live as they have been in the past. Although there are some minor attempts to change that. We'll talk about that in a few minutes. Gayle writes, I worry about any revolutionaries in Canada today as they are disintegrated and mostly altruistic. Maybe more authoritarian than Trudeau regime. The protestors mostly like Trump. I mean, I fear that you're right. I fear that you're right. I fear that, and this is my big problem, and this is why I say, what do you do about a revolution? Where do you go? Because the people who would be on your side to overthrow the left are the people who would impose authoritarian standards from the right. So there's no, there's no out here. There's no solution. There's certainly no nothing in politics right now to suggest a solution. There's nobody to vote for. There's nobody to vote for. And there is, there's no movement out there that inspires any kind of confidence or any kind of passion or interest or understanding of freedom, nothing. And indeed, the movements that exist out there, the activists, the active movements, the places that are really engaged in building movements are the authoritarians. The authoritarians on the left are building their networks and the authoritarians on the right, the authoritarians on the right are building their networks, mostly through churches are building their networks. And when you read about it, it's truly scary, truly scary. And there's no network of, I mean, I'm often encouraged by sub-stacks like Barry Weises and others that are building some network of intellectuals who are anti the authoritarian left and to some extent, the authoritarian right. But it's not a mass movement. There's no following. There's not a lot of people here. The mass movements, the movements that are attracting people right now are the movements of authoritarianism. Are the movements of authoritarism on the left and right. And you read on some of what is going on in Pentecostal churches, it's a little scary. But yeah, and again, I don't know about Canada, but this is true in the United States and in Europe the same thing, you just don't get it. Gale once said, dissolve the monarchy in Canada. Yeah, I mean, we should dissolve the monarchy in the UK, in England. Imagine what people would flip out if you wanted to dissolve the monarchy. But that's, and that's trivial. That's not a substance of change. There's no movement. And whatever movements they are, whatever good people they are, are not generating movements and they're not consistent. And this is the problem is, consistency is a challenge. Because the bottom line is, if we're gonna go fight and gonna go try to change the world, is what are we changing the world to? What are we trying to make it into? What are the positive values we uphold? And what positive values does, I don't know, somebody mentioned Joe Rogan here. What are the positive values that Joe Rogan uphold? Sometimes he's for Bernie Sanders. Sometimes he votes libertarian. Sometimes he's vaxed. Sometimes he anti-vaxed. Sometimes he, you know, I don't know, he takes off. He's all over the place. What is he? What does he stand for? What does he really believe in? He just had a great interview, Joe Rogan, with a climate alarmist denier, I guess they called him, right? Somebody who is not an alarmist about climate. Who actually, and in the interview, the guy actually mentioned Alex Epstein. So that was a great interview. But that does not a movement build. He's an entertainer. He's not an intellectual, that's right. That's a, and it's a problem. We need entertainers, yes. We need entertainers that are more consistent, yes. But we need intellectuals, and without the intellectuals, we go nowhere. We have nothing. You can make fun of me for just being the guy who talks. No action, just talks. But what you need are intellectuals, what you need are talkers, what you need are people who can actually change minds. I forget the name of the guy who, the scientist who was on Rogan's show. I think it was the last show he did recently. And I can't, but I can't remember the guy's name. Can't remember the guy's name. He did, but he did mention Alex Epstein while he was there. All right, Lowy, thank you. That's very generous, $50 from Lowy to get us to 330. So we're inching our way towards our goal of 600. All right, let's start quickly about, well, not so quickly, I don't think, COVID restrictions. Look, COVID has been an unmitigated governmental disaster. Everything the government basically has done from the beginning of COVID, from the beginning has been a disaster, both the Trump administration and the Biden administration and the Trudeau administration and the Johnson administration. Everybody has been a disaster. Even Sweden didn't quite get it right. And it truly is sickening looking back on just the degrees and the levels and the number of errors that have been made. And the number of people who have died for no reason. And the number of people whose lives have been turned upside down for no reasons. And the number of kids whose development has been retarded for no reason. So there's this article in Barry Weiss' stup stack about it says how to save science from COVID politics. Well, I can tell you how to save science from COVID politics. It's to separate science from politics. And the article points out all the ways in which COVID was politicized. Yes, but that's what happens when you have the government-involved in science. It's what happens when you have the government-involved in medicine. It's inevitable. It cannot not happen. It has to happen. When government is involved in medicine. When government decides how many hospital beds are okay to have. When government decides what drugs they're gonna pay for and what drugs they're not gonna pay for. When government decides what should get emergency authorization, what shouldn't get emergency authorization. And what is an okay drug and what isn't an okay drug. When government decides these things, bad stuff is going to happen. Instead of letting scientific knowledge develop, be judged, be evaluated by scientists and then by the marketplace, you get politicians deciding. Or you get scientists to become politicians because that's how they keep their jobs. And that's how they get prestige. And that's how they get on Fox News, on CNN News, on New York Times, or whatever you want to call it. So everywhere, everywhere, that government has touched this virus from the beginning. It has made it a disaster. So what are the lessons learned? So this is what, these are the lessons learned from this doctor, I guess, Dr. Vinay Prasad who wrote this article for Barry Weiss's sub-stack, I recommend it. Let me do this like I've been doing recently, we'll put this up. There it is, you know, oops. How do I fix that one second? Fix that, we'll put that there. How to save science of COVID politics? 10 crucial lessons from Dr. Vinay Prasad. So let's look at these lessons because the funny thing is almost all of them are things that we talked about in 2020. So first, identify the most vulnerable. From the beginning, from the first data that came out of China in February, March of 2020, it was understood completely and then reaffirmed. There's more and more and more and more data came that this was a truly unique disease, a disease like we had never seen before. In that, it affected the old in the kind of proportions that just haven't been seen. An 88 year old has 8,700 times the risk of death as compared to an 80 year old, 8,700 times. The rational thing to have done, even with a government involved in healthcare, is to protect the vulnerable, is to focus in on who's vulnerable, who can die and protect them and not do anything to those who are not vulnerable, who are not gonna die from this, who are not gonna go to hospitals, which means the young. So it was obvious from the beginning that, I mean, this graph is pretty amazing. I mean, hospitalization, right, zero to four years of age. There's just, nothing happens to them here. But look at the differences. Once you get to the 85 plus, that's where the action is. 65 you could argue. But if you're under 20 years old, this virus was never an issue. And yet we shut down schools. We force kids to wear masks. We give them vaccines and then we boost them. None of which is necessary. None of which is necessary. I mean, maybe giving some of them vaccines, not a lot of harm, but then boosting them, what for? It's just a waste. But even vaccines, I'm not convinced of for kids. Now, the US government hasn't authorized vaccines for under five, yeah, because they're unnecessary. What are they protecting them from? They don't go to hospital, they don't die. So identify the most vulnerable, old people. Protect the most vulnerable. That's easy. Put in whatever you need to do to protect old people. And if the government's gonna spend gazillion, and I said this in April, May, June, July of 2020, if the government's gonna spend billions of dollars to spend them on getting meals, old people, so they don't have to go out doors, whatever it needed to keep them isolated. But instead, the great governor of the great state of New York, Andrew Cuomo, sends old people with COVID back to nursing homes where they kill the rest of the people in the nursing home. And still to this day, nobody seems to realize the extent of that evil. Johnson in London did the same thing. I think they did the same thing in New Jersey. It's just unbelievable, just unbelievable. And no consequences. I mean, Cuomo is gone, but he's not gone because of this. He's gone because of sexual harassment allegations that might or not might, you know, probably true, but who knows? This is the real crime he committed. This is the thing he should have suffered in hell for. That nobody cares because we live in egalitarian, you know, we don't wanna treat people differently. And we don't care. People don't care. People actually don't care that people are dying from COVID, unfortunately. And then of course, Cuomo tried to cover it up and lie about it afterwards. And then when the vaccines came out, instead of the US government going, oh, get everybody vaccinated, everybody vaccinated, get 12 year olds vaccinated, the only group that it was important to get vaccinated, that, you know, resources, again, given that the government is involved, resources should be deployed at getting them vaccinated to old people, right? It's still true that in the United States, 12% of Americans are now vaccinated in the 65 and older group. And 43 are now unboosted. It's because we're too busy thinking about kids and vaccinating kids who don't need the vaccine. And then we're boosting young kids. And almost nobody thinks, well, I shouldn't say that. Significant number of doctors don't think that's necessary. I see, I think it's ridiculous. And then once you identify and protect the vulnerable, leave everybody else alone. Or the way he puts it in the article is, liberate the least vulnerable. College kids, school kids, students of all types. Remember, we saw those pictures of them going to the beach at Florida? Good. I mean, make sure they don't go back to their grandparents. Isolate the grandparents. But let the kids live in the same way as they did. It says here that the risk of a person ages 15 to 24, dying of COVID or even with COVID. Now, this is for a healthy vaccinated college kids. If you're not healthy, protect yourself. But this is for a healthy vaccinated college kid. The risk of a person of age 15 to 25 dying of COVID if you're vaccinated is 0.001%. Not 0.1%. Not 0.01%, 0.001%. It's absurd. And as I said from the beginning, this is sacrificing the young to the old. This is egalitarianism run amok. This is paternalism of the old, wanting to feel like everybody's in it with them, I guess. But it's parents and it's some young people. I mean, as I've told you many times, I've been to college campuses where outdoors, kids are walking around with masks, voluntarily they don't have to. And it tells you something about the culture of fear that we live in. A culture that is taught kids from when they're very young to fear the world, to fear reality, to fear life. And as a consequence, they can't handle. They cannot handle any of this. By the way, the risk of side effects from COVID for that age population is still lower than the risk, still lower than the risk of dying from, risk of a severe case of COVID. Indeed, you know, what do you call it, the inflamed heart that you get, that younger people get when they take the mRNA vaccine. The risk of them getting it from the vaccine is actually lower than the risk of them getting it when they get COVID. So the vaccines don't, is unbelievably safe. But the probability that something bad is gonna happen to these people, even these kids, even unvaccinated is very low. Very, very, very, very, very low. And to mandate it, myocarditis, myocarditis, yes. To mandate it, to not allow them to go to school unless they have it, then to mandate that they wear masks, have their wear masks in class, have their wear masks while they're going to school, it's just sickening, just sickening. All in the name of some form of sick egalitarianism. When we know it's old people, but we don't wanna treat old people and young people differently somehow. Children, young children, this is the fight for normalcy, particularly for children. Children, you know, from pre-K, pre-kindergarten, having to wear masks in school, not being able to enjoy other people's faces, to be able to communicate with other people, people say, children are resilient. No, they're not, how do you know that? Resilient to what? Yeah, they'll live with it, but is it good? And why? Who are we helping? Who are we saving here? They've had two years of school canceled, disrupted education, and they have to wear these stupid masks all the time. It's just absurd when the risk, again, is minimal. And if you're worried about the parents, then the parents should get vaccinated, and the parents should take care of themselves. And in some occasions, the parents could keep the kids home. But you penalize an entire generation of children because you care about some parents, let the parents figure it out. You know, you can learn from other countries. Sweden did a lot of things right. Something's wrong. It didn't protect its old. So it had very high death rates relative to other Scandinavian countries. But all because of, you know, they didn't protect their old and they managed to COVID spread in the, again in the old age, various old age facilities. It spread there. They didn't pay attention to that. They didn't test the caregivers. And that's how they got high death rates. But again, among young people, among healthy people, among people who were outside without masks, going to restaurants, going all over the place, nothing happened. Sweden was a model. Now, Sweden also got their vaccinations. Very high rate of vaccinations. A lot of countries are now vaccinating kids under 12 at all, right? Some are not giving second doses to adolescents who might be susceptible to my... I always, I can't pronounce these words. Myocarditis. So they're only getting one dose because it's a second dose that causes the swelling of the heart. One dose is better than nothing. No way to stop testing kids completely for mild symptoms and only keeps them out of school if they feel sick. Just like you always have. You've always kept kids out of school when they feel sick. So go back to normal. He argues about running randomized trials, writing different things and different things. I think it's way too status to do that. It's still a way too status to approach. But I can understand from his perspective, which is the status collectivist perspective, why that makes sense, right? Don't promote shoddy studies on all sides. We got a lot of shoddy science during COVID. We got a lot. And the CDC was responsible for quite a bit of it. Trying to scare people. Anything that scared people, they approved, even though it was shoddy science. Anything that relieved people's fears they didn't like, even if it was good science. You know, lesson learned. Only growing convenient facts. That's a lesson for life, right? A lesson for living, a lesson for reasoning. Don't ignore the science. For example, the fact that people who had COVID have some immunity against it. Maybe they only need one dose of the vaccine. Maybe they don't need any doses of the vaccine. Look at the science. Again, everybody needs two doses and a booster. No, they don't. My wife, who had COVID, early doesn't need two doses and a booster. Now she's got them because it's the only way she can travel freely and actually get into places and live her life and the vaccines are not too scary. But why do it? Because you have to treat everybody the same. You have to treat everybody the same. Tell with the facts, tell with reality. I mean, this has been done. This is what happens when government is involved in science. Government is involved in these kinds of decisions. Of course, natural immunity is real. Nobody denies natural immunity. It's just a question of how efficacious is it? And natural immunity plus one dose of the vaccine is better than just natural immunity and better than two doses of the vaccine. Why won't they allow that? Why can't we make decisions based on a case-by-case basis? Why does it have to be a one-size-fit-all? And the reason it has to be a one-size-fit-all is because you don't have to think. You don't have to treat people like individuals. It can just treat everybody the same. You can be a real egalitarian that way. Don't stifle debate. That's a big one. Because one thing we saw is a trampling on debate. Inability to suggest different ideas, suggest different proposals, suggest different lines of research, suggest. But you post stuff on Facebook, it disappears. You post stuff on Twitter. Joe Rogan stuff disappears off of, takes down off of Spotify. A lot of the stuff that was posted was junk. A lot of the stuff that was posted was misinformation. A lot of it was false. But who gets to decide those things? I mean, yes, science in the end. But a lot of the stuff is not clear-cut. And a lot of this is going to be decided by people, by people making choices. And if you think something's misinformation, argue against it. Present the facts. Present an alternative. Present the research. Show that it's wrong. The weapon against misinformation is good information. Always. The weapon against false speech is truth. It's reality. The weapon against bad science is good science. So at the end of the day, all of this is stuff that we've been saying for two years now. All of it. And Amish Adulja has been saying that all of that since March of last year. Every single item on there. He's been arguing since last year. Cocooning old people, letting young people live, letting people make choices based on their values, all what he advocated for in March and April of last year. It's good to see people standing up. It's good people realizing this. I mean, this is just a little bit of the problems that government created. We're not even talking about all the testing problems, the vaccine distribution problems, all the distortions. These are just a little bit of the issues. The facts is risk-free. Basically risk-free. If you're in your late teens, early 20s, there's a small risk. Myocarditis. But it's a small risk. Amish was absolutely right in his support for the vaccines. March of two years ago, yes, two years ago. It's hard to believe. It's two years. Right now, during February, I was in London, in Chinatown, in London. My hotel was in Chinatown in London, and I could already see everybody wearing masks and covering up. Myocarditis is a small risk. It's a very small risk. And as soon as it was clear that myocarditis is what, a small risk, Amish recognized that and talked about it. So, I mean, you don't know what you don't know. But even then, it's a small risk. Before you know stuff, you can't know. And it wasn't a big risk. Very few people. Yeah, it turns out that myocarditis is more prevalent in physically fit, active people. Once you discover the risk, it's a risk. And then it's a question of how big of a risk? And it was never a big risk. It was a risk, but not a big one. And look, the safety of the vaccines, it's just absurd to even think about it, right? How many vaccines have been given to date? I looked it up the other day. It's in the billions, billions, billions of doses of vaccines have been given to date. We know exactly how safe we are. We know exactly what the outcome is of. We know how much myocarditis is being. We know exactly how many people have suffered side effects. We know how many people have potentially died with or from the vaccines, if any. We have all that data. And it's very, very clear that the vaccines are some of the most safest medicine we've ever come up with. Long-term effects won't be known until long term. That assumes that's the problem. That assumes that we don't know anything about how the vaccines function, what they do, how they affect cells, how they affect the immune system. But we know a lot about that. And the immune response that they stimulate and everything else, the likelihood of long-term effects is that they're not going to be any. But you can randomly say they're going to be long-term effects or anything. You make a judgment based on the best science you have and the best knowledge you have and the best scientists that we have in the world who've looked at this, who understand mRNAs and understand how they function and how it affects the human body, have said the probability of long-term negative effects is basically zero. That's the best you can do. You can speculate. You can imagine. You can pretend. But that's not cognition. That's not knowledge. Since when are we part of the precautionary principle? It might do harm. Let's not do it. It might be scary. Let's not do it. They might be long-term effects. Don't do it. God, this is why we don't have nuclear power. This is why we don't have flying cars. This is why we don't have gazillion technologies. Because the left typically always says, don't do it. It might be. That's exactly the opposite mentality. The opposite mentality. And it's clear with the mutations of COVID that the vaccines are not preventing you from getting COVID, but they're certainly preventing you from getting really sick, going to hospital, dying. That, again, the numbers through the roof in terms of the differences. It's flat-out wrong to mandate vaccines. That doesn't make the vaccines any less efficacious. It doesn't make it any less right to get a vaccine. You have to be able to separate the two. It's wrong for them to mandate it. Which, by the way, in America, they're not mandated because Biden tried to mandate it for pushing the population, and it was ruled unconstitutional. And in Puerto Rico, I'm involved in a lawsuit where we're suing the governor here in federal court against a mandate that you have to show the vaccines to get into a restaurant. And that's going to go to court, I think, any day now. So hopefully, we'll get a ruling that makes it unconstitutional for them to mandate that restaurants have to check your vaccine status. But you have to be able to separate the two issues. There's an issue of mandate, and there's the issue of the vaccine, and they're not the same thing. It's wrong for them to mandate to take aspirin. Are you going to stop taking aspirin when you get a headache because they mandated it? It's wrong that they mandate anything that involves your behavior that does not violate other people's rights. But the question of efficacy, the question of risk, the question is a separate question. It's a different question. You have to be able to hold two things at the same time. Sorry. So no reason to think vaccines have long-term harm, and that's an important question. It's an important question. All right, let's see. Vaccines lower spread, but they don't stop the spread. And it doesn't matter, even if they did stop the spread. It's not warranted. It's not the only time that government has any right to stop you from doing something as if you're spreading it, if they know you're spreading it. But they can't mandate you to take a vaccine either way. Man, government should not have special powers for special situations. Government should not have special powers. It only has one power, the power to protect. What did I do to that? Andrew Trigga, I think I deleted, unfortunately, see if I can. Oh, I found it. OK, no problem. All right, it's a quick one on New York and San Francisco. Just some good news. So I've talked about in the past, the District Attorney of New York not wanting to prosecute crimes, not wanting people to go to jail on robbery, not being an offense that he was going to ask for jail time for. Pretty spooky, ridiculous stuff. Mugging was not going to be an offense that they were going to ask for jail time for. This guy was a product of the nutty left. The mayor of New York is not, is a former cop. He's much more rational when it comes to law enforcement. He's much better when it comes to issues of crime. He has basically overwritten the District Attorney, put him into a corner, and it looks like we'll have a saner situation in New York than what we thought. It looks much better than the worst case scenario. People don't want the nuttiness. They don't want it. When they faced actually with it, they don't want it. They might want it in theory. They might think it sounds nice. It might appease their guilt. It might make them feel a little bit better, but they don't actually want to live it. And then what happened today in San Francisco is very exciting. So I don't know if you remember we did the story on the show, I don't know, about a year ago, that in the midst of COVID, with the school shut down and the hysteria in San Francisco about COVID, San Francisco not only shut down at schools, but decided to rename them. They didn't want schools named after racists like Lincoln or, you know, what's her name, the senator from California, Feinstein. They didn't want schools named after these people because they were beyond the pale. Now you could make the argument that Feinstein was beyond the pale, but not by their standards. They had 50 schools they wanted to rename their names. Then they decided that they were going to shut down or not shut down, change. There were two schools in San Francisco that accept students based on merit. And the school board decided that they were going to basically stop accepting students by merit and have a lottery. And this infuriated Asian parents in particular because I think three quarters of the kids in those schools are Asian. So over the last year, parents have organized and they organized a recall, a recall movement to recall three of the members of the school board, the president, the vice president, and one other woman. And they succeeded. They voted them out. The recall won. They're out. The mayor, who supported the recall, the mayor of San Francisco, who's the leftist herself, supported the recall because even she realized that this was insane. Oh, she realized that her constituency thought it was insane. And the fact is that if you add this up to what happened in November and you add this up to other aspects, what you see is a rejection of the crazy lefts educational agenda. What you see is parents rising up to fight these leftists, to reject them, to kick them out of positions of power. And I think this vote, a recall, which is pretty rare. This recall in California is really, really good news. So we've got a popular uprising, electoral uprising against the worst elements in our educational system. And I think as a consequence, the schools are not going to be renamed. And more importantly, I think even than the renaming, the two schools that function based on merit today will continue to function based on merit. They will not be shifted to a lottery system. And yes, there's still a lot of work to be done, particularly in a place like San Francisco. But these little steps matter, particularly when it comes to education, the most important place where we have to have change. So yes. All right, let's see. Let's see. We've got super chat questions. We don't have a lot. We've got just a few. We're pretty far from our goal. We're at, I don't know, what do we have? $345 maybe? So if you want to see us reach to $600, I don't want Catherine here today to really pump you up and get you all excited. So maybe that's why we're not reaching our goals. But we do have Valdrin, who is at least helping here to keep track of the money coming in. So I have a sense of where we are and how far we are from the goal. Oh, Catherine is here. She's so late. Well, Catherine, you've got a lot of work to do. We've got about $255 still to raise, right? And it's still time. I've got a few questions. They're all kind of $5 questions. So no more $5 questions. All questions now are going to be $20 or more. We need quite a few of those because we got $260 to raise. So $13, $20 questions will do it. Let's hope somebody comes up with $50 or $100 so that we don't have to go through all of those $20 questions. But however you want to do it will work with me, fine. But let's not make this the exception of the month or the exception of the last couple of months. Let's try to get it to where it needs to be. All right. Oops, I answered that already. Alan asked, swear, jaw, saying, Justin Trudeau these days is like swearing. No, you can't do that. All right, so he gave me $5 for swearing. I don't know. Some of you like me swearing. So Justin Trudeau, Justin Trudeau, Justin Trudeau. That's $15 just there. I can say it so many times that we can get to $600 like that. I wonder if that'll work. OK, Andrew, there's a danger of psychologically leaping from liking the truckers more than Trudeau to exaggerating their virtue. I think that's right. But I like the truckers more than Trudeau because Trudeau is so unlikable. It's easy. And because the actual demands that they're making, and now they've narrowed the demands. Yesterday they came out with a statement that clearly narrowed the demands, the two demands, which is basically getting rid of the mandates. I agree with. And look, and I said this on the first show about the truckers. I get the frustration. I agree with the sentiment. I agree with the goal. I just don't think this is the right way to go around it. About it, sorry, about it. But to the extent that it's bringing out the true nature of Trudeau's authoritarianism, if Trudeau passes all this stuff, I'm on the trucker's side. I mean, he becomes at that point a true authoritarian and everybody, all bets are off at that point. Ed Kalski, how do you feel about term limits? I don't like them. You know, California has term limits. They haven't worked. They never work. Look, the battle is about ideas. It's not about how many years a politician spends in office. What happens with term limits is they rotate through different jobs and different political institutions, and they become lobbyists faster, and so on. What you should have done is I said it on the other show. Yesterday and two or three days ago, when the lockdowns happened, everybody should have left their home, should have left their home, walked outside. Restaurants that were ordered to close should have opened. It happened in Orange County, California. In Orange County, California, a bunch of restaurants refused to close. Nobody prosecuted them in the end. It wasn't the only way. There were lots and lots of things you could have done early on, many, many times over, that would have been, I think, more effective, more powerful, would have got more people on your side, would have got more people engaged, and I think the main thing is civil disobedience. It's to disobey the law. It's to say no. We're not going to shut down our businesses. You know, do what a law in Musk did in California. He said, I'm opening. You want me to shut down, send the goons in, and shut us down physically. Now, imagine if thousands of businesses around Canada had said that when the lockdowns happened, or in the United States, or in Australia, or any country. Imagine if they'd done that. What could Trudeau or anybody have done? Nothing. Imagine if people just walked out and said, arrest me. I'm going to the park, and I'm not wearing a mask, and I'm going to walk around the park for an hour, and then maybe I'll go home. So there are a million things that can be done, but the main thing is just to disobey the government. Just disobey it. Doesn't mean to block roads and to honk in the middle of the night, or to block a bridge. That means disobey. Don't do what they tell us, because what they tell us is so unreasonable, so ridiculous, so rights violating that I refuse to participate in this egregious activity. I'm not wearing a mask. Come get me, come arrest me. And if thousands of people go out into the street not wearing a mask, what are they going to do? And the reason nobody did it, the reason nobody did it, is two things. One, weren't enough people who were willing to stand up for the government, weren't enough people. And two, it was in the midst of COVID, and people were too afraid. But that's when it should have been done. Most of the restrictions now are going away anyway. All right, let's see. James, wow, thank you, a hundred bucks. Really appreciate that. I asked you a $5 question today. Yeah, I see it. Here you go, your show keeps me going in life and business. Because of this show, it enables me to see clearly where to move next. Another thing you helped me is all the suburbs are pretty similar. The big difference is the cities and culture. Yep. Yep. Yeah, suburbia is pretty much the same everywhere. Cities are different, culture is different. All right, we're at $474, so we're about $125 short. So everybody give two to five bucks and we'll make it, right? Easily, with 136 life people, we'll make it way beyond that. So not even everybody has to give. Well, maybe I'm doing the math wrong, but yeah, we'd make it easily. All right, James, this actual question. What do you think will be the long-term impact of minorities in San Francisco, New York City, LA, Chicago, Twin Cities, and other big cities moving to the southern states? Yeah, I mean, what is happening is minorities are leaving these cities because they're unpleasant to live in. They are the victims of the crime. So many of these minorities are the victims of crime. So they don't want to stay. I read an article about whole neighborhoods in Chicago. Minority neighborhoods, Hispanic, black, are just packing up and people are leaving. They're leaving either to suburbs or they're going to elsewhere. They're going primarily because beneficiaries are southern cities. So, you know, you're going to see a lot of empty neighborhoods, a lot of decay in those neighborhoods. I think the worst elements stay, the better people leave, the more ambitious people leave, the more peaceful people leave. I don't think it does any good for these cities. I think it does them harm. Because again, the worst elements stay and the best elements leave. It makes worker shortages in these cities more acute, across the board. You don't have enough people. I mean, look what happened to Detroit when everybody left. It'll become more and more like Detroit. So, yeah, it's not a good sign for the culture, the emptying of these great Americans in cities. I mean, the greatest cities ever that the world has seen, San Francisco, New York, LA, Chicago, all right. All right, 125 bucks, guys. You've got, I've got four questions before we get there and then it's done. Gail says, Canada should dump the monarchy and stand its own. Yes, but of all the things that Canada should do, I just don't see that as a priority. I mean, there's so many things that the monarchy has no real influence in Canada. It's more symbolic. You know, Canada needs much stronger free speech laws. It needs much stronger property rights laws. It needs a much more rights-respecting political system, which it doesn't have. And the most important thing Canada could do is get rid of socialized healthcare. So that's the real focus. Gail Ulster says Canada should embrace its own declaration of independence and enshrined property, private property rights, yeah. But, you know, that's a big leap. That is real radicalism and that's what I think most Canadians are not willing to do. I don't think Americans would embrace the declaration of independence and enshrined property rights today. Luckily, they had founding fathers who wrote a constitution that for the most part or at least partially has survived all these years. Otherwise, I don't know where we'd be because we wouldn't do it today. We wouldn't create that today. There's no where is the energy to create a document that the declaration of independence. Americans don't believe in that document anymore. They just don't. Free trade asks, I am in my opinion a widely dispersed pandemic caused for a laissez-fait government approach where individuals make their own decisions regarding risk-taking. Yes, I said that from the beginning. The government's only job is to make sure that people who are infected, in a free society, in a laissez-fait society, the only job is to make sure that people who are infected stay isolated. They don't go out purposefully and infect other people. That's it. In a world today, it's a little bit more complicated because the government is responsible for hospitals, the government is responsible for healthcare, whatever the hell that means, particularly in European countries. But, and it's responsible for medical information. So it shouldn't be responsible for any of those. The government should get out of all of those. But it hasn't. It's still there. So what do you do in a mixed economy when you have a pandemic? Well, you should be as laissez-fait as possible. And the rest of the time, you have to be objective, for example, help old people isolate because you've destroyed the private market mechanisms to do that. For example, insurance companies. Or giving their, old age homes having their capacity, or hospitals being autonomous. Since you've destroyed their capacity to deal with the pandemic, you have to supplement it. One way to supplement it is by stepping in and doing certain things. And so certain things can be done. In a completely free market, the government has almost no role. Very, very, very limited role. Very, very limited role. But in a mixed economy, there's no way for it not to have a role. Because it's so immersed, enmeshed, immersed, enmeshed in the healthcare system. In the system that is supposed to respond to such an emergency. All right. Last, really, one question, one question, one comment. We're at 487. 487, 491. Sorry. Somebody's not doing the math right. Either me or Catherine are wrong. But let's say 491. Let's go with Catherine because she's probably right and I'm probably wrong. So 492. So, God, 108 bucks. I wonder if there's somebody out there who's willing to do 108 bucks and get us over the 600. Ryan says, everyone give two to five bucks for this awesome show today. And give a movie or book recommendation with a donation to Iran. That'd be great. And that'll get us the 100 bucks that we need in order to get to the $600 goal. But Doug, this is the last question. So this is it, guys. It's now or never. Doug says, I work with some unironic communists. I don't know what unironic means. Unironic. I have no idea. Communists, we are engineers all earning six figures and they think a communist revolution would consider them proletarian. How do I convince them otherwise? I don't think you can convince communists of anything. If they're communists in the 21st century then they're evading on a massive scale. What are you going to convince them of? What is it that you know that they don't know or it's not available for them easily to know? It's right there in front of their noses. What happened in Soviet Union, what happened in every communist country, never mind every socialist country. Even if they're treated as proletariat their life is significantly worse than it is today. They don't value their free speech. They don't value their autonomy. They don't value their ability to switch jobs. They don't value their ability to have a say, hopefully, in the education of their kids. So no, I have no tolerance for communists today because there's just no excuse. There's no argument. There's no fact you can give them that it's not right there in front of their face they're even right at them and they're choosing to ignore it. And by choosing to ignore it they go outside of the realm of available for argument. All right, Frank has a question. Thank you, Frank. Floyd Ferris, why do you think you think seems a lot like our D'Angelo, white fragility, like you're a racist if you say you don't see color? Yeah, I think a lot of Inran's villains are very, very, very similar to our modern day intellectuals who embrace contradictions and who just immerse themselves in those contradictions and who don't care about reality who are completely primacy of consciousness. I mean, I don't think Inran could have imagined an D'Angelo, the white fragility. I mean, her ideas are so crazy and are so sickening in so many respects that I don't think she could have imagined that level of irrationality and the thing that really is scary is how many people buy into it, how many people accept it and how many people are willing to tolerate it and to embrace it. But it's the fundamental of embracing contradictions which she saw as a crucial part of what evil is and what evil intellectuals do and her villains are all that way. Richard Seng says, what two other top five movies besides this line of mine, God, I wish I had, I don't have my list. But I love the movie. What's the movie about the girl who is born without most of her senses? Blind and I think deaf. Somebody is going to tell me that movie. It's a great, great, great movie. Miracle Worker, thank you. Miracle Worker is one of my top five. It's just such a powerful movie and it's so well done and it's so well acted and it's so powerful that it's definitely a top five movie. High Noon is not a top five movie. High Noon is a good movie. I like High Noon. But High Noon is not a top five movie partially because, I mean it doesn't have a plot. So partially because it doesn't have a plot. Now I'm not sure Miracle Worker has a plot but High Noon is, yeah, it's one of my favorite movies, yes. The Miracle Worker, what else? I'm thinking of old movies because they're the ones you've never seen or watched and partially because I prefer old movies. But I'd say Queen Christina, if you've never seen Queen Christina, Queen Christina is Greta Garbo. It's a fabulous, fabulous movie. So I'd say Queen Christina. Greta Garbo is so magnificent in it and it's so different that, oh, Catherine is helping to get the goal that Catherine has. Thank you, Catherine. That's very generous of you. $30 towards the goal. So all we have left is what? You know, about 50 bucks. So somebody should step in here not to make Catherine look so bad. Paul, thank you. So I'd say those two, Queen Christina and the Miracle Worker. I love other people's money, but it's not a top five. Scarlet Pimpernel, I love the Scarlet Pimpernel. Not a top five. What else do we see here? I'm looking at other movies. Yeah, Scarlet Pimpernel is a great movie. Some music is a great movie. I mean, there are lots of great movies. I've given you top movies in different fields and different, everything else. Linda, thank you. I appreciate that. Catherine, thank you. Paul says, can you comment on the government buying and controlling distribution of vaccines? Yeah, I mean, it's a travesty. I've said this from day one. Vaccines should have been privately distributed. They should be purchased. They shouldn't have been free. They should have been purchased by employers. They should have been purchased by insurance companies. They should have been purchased by hospitals. They should have been purchased by individuals. They should have been purchased by charities. Maybe the government could have subsidized some of them for poor people. But we should have had a robust private market. They should have been distributed by FedEx and UPS through CVS and Walgreens and any other lab that was willing to do it. But I think a big part of it should have been employers and insurance companies and in hospitals vaccinating their staff. So there's a why... There are so many... That would have opened so many different avenues. For getting the vaccines out there, I think it would have reduced the suspicion. It would reduce the hesitancy because anything involving the government is automatically suspect. I don't think it's true that the vaccines would have never been produced if not for operation warp speed. I think plenty of insurance companies would have guaranteed to buy them if they were successful. Plenty of... The only justification I could think of for warp speed is that you have to go through the FDA and warp speed gave the companies the money to deal with the government bureaucracy. So that's a justification. I would have started distributing the vaccines in June of last year when they were already shown to be safe on a completely voluntary basis. I wouldn't have had the government give them what do you call it, a waiver of liability, but I would have asked people when they get the vaccine to sign a waiver of liability and in a sense do a massive trial for millions of people who ever was willing to get vaccinated. I would have been vaccinated in June of last year. So, you know, that would have been a private market response to this is let private companies buy the vaccine, let private individuals buy the vaccine and let the drug companies distribute the vaccines whenever they wanted to as soon as they showed that they were safe without showing efficaciousness. Just safety should have been enough to get them distributed so that these individuals could have made the decision of whether we want to take the vaccine or not. James has given a lot of money today. What do you think will be the top five cities to live in the United States in the next five years? Do you think cities like Phoenix, Dallas, Atlanta, and Charlotte will replace New York, Chicago, L.A., Boston, and San Francisco? These are very difficult questions to answer because it depends on your values. What are the top five cities to live in America for whom? What age? What profession? Under what circumstances? I mean, New York seems to be at least a somewhat coming back. We'll see if crime stops that. I don't know how Chicago survives. I don't know why people live there. It really has been bad for a long time. I've never liked L.A. I wouldn't live there, if you're an actor, director, if you want to be on stage, if you want to do anything in entertainment, how could you not be in L.A.? If you're in computers, if you want to start up, do a start-up, you're most likely to be in the Bay Area. Yeah, on the other hand, Phoenix, Dallas, Atlanta, Charlotte, Austin, Texas, don't forget Austin, Texas, and one of the fastest growing cities in the country, they're all going to continue to grow. They're all going to continue to be more successful. They're all going to continue to be places where people go to. Naples is a place people go when they retire. Naples isn't a place you live. Naples is a place you retire to. But in your productive life, you don't go to Naples. You go to Phoenix, Dallas, Atlanta, Charlotte, Austin, Houston. There are a lot of other cities, small and medium-sized, primarily in the... some parts of the Southeast, but primarily in the South and Southwest. Arizona, Texas. But also, Boise, Idaho is growing like crazy. Denver, Colorado is a great city. There's lots, lots of places to live in this country. Lots of places to live in this country. And I think people are discovering them. And I think you're going to see more exit from those big places. Provo, Utah. I wouldn't live in Provo, Utah, but Provo, Utah. Mormons freak me out. I couldn't live in a place dominated by Mormons. They're too freaky. All right, we're $13 short. $13, we can do that. Travis asks, have you seen Dorian to Summer, a Japanese movie? I have not. I thought it was very good, good sense of life, nice characters, evil portrayed as incompetent. That's always good. I'll look for that Dorian to Summer. Why is it not copying, pasting? All right, nobody wants to do $13. But here we are. All right, thanks everybody. As Katherine said, it's $13.03 left to go. Somebody should do it just to allow Katherine to have a good night's sleep. And Katherine herself put $30 in just to get you to this point. We have 143 people watching right now, 144. There are 86 likes. Please like the show before you leave. Liking is probably the thing the algorithm looks at most in terms of promoting the show. I think a lot of the chat helps a lot. The interaction is something the algorithm likes a lot. And who's going to protest until the $13 come in? Should I? I'll have a sign. I'm on strike. Let's see, what else did I want to cover? Yes, don't forget to share the short videos. By the way, subscriptions, views, all the rest is going up nicely. N, BN, whatever, I can't pronounce, whatever it is. Thank you. Pity cash. It's good to have pity cash. I thought it was petty cash, but pity cash. People are pitying me, don't pity me. Shaw's bot, so people are hearing this different times and they're jumping in with the amounts of money in different times, so we're going to go over 600. Thank you guys. Thank you for all the superchatters. We really appreciate it. Even though there were not that many whales today, we still made it, although there was James who gave $100, we still made it to the 600. Colt Savitt says, as a North Carolina resident, which would you rather live? The research triangle of Raleigh Durham and Chapel Hill are Charlotte. By the way, the triad is pretty cool as well. Probably the research triangle, but I don't know enough about it. I like Charlotte. Charlotte is a cool city, so I like Charlotte, but probably the research triangle, just because I think it has the most going on. It's the most vibrant, I think, because of the universities and the culture that that brings to a place like that. But again, I've been to Charlotte many times, and I like Charlotte. All right. Thank you, Florida. Nick and Amir says, are you upset with the interaction of libertarians? Since I'm asking if you think libertarians allowed for the weakness of the state of party now, and what do you think libertarians need to do to change it? I don't quite understand your question. In a sense, I'm asking if you think libertarians allowed for the weakness of the state of the party now. State of the party. You mean the libertarian party? Yeah, I mean, disappointed in libertarians. I'm disappointed in action libertarians. I'm disappointed in the lack of voices out of the libertarian world over COVID, over what, before COVID, over the lockdowns, but over, you know, I was upset because I didn't hear that much out of libertarians when the financial crisis happened and they didn't speak up enough to defend capitalism. And, you know, what else was I upset at? You know, I'm upset that they're not philosophical enough. I'm upset that they don't take Ayn Rand seriously enough. I'm upset that they don't have the energy, but they don't have the philosophy of one of the moral fire. And they're too focused on economics. And they're not willing to discuss the ethical moral issues and ethical moral questions. And they don't have the fire, and maybe that's why they don't have the fire, because they don't have the philosophical foundation. But the problem with libertarians fundamentally is they don't have the philosophy. And without philosophy, it's hard to know where to go and it's hard to know what to do. And it's not an accident that the political party flounders because it has no unity. The libertarian party is a big tent with hugely opposing forces within it. And it's just too big. The tent is too big. There's nothing to unify the tent. David asks thoughts on Pedro Rourke. I mean, Pedro Rourke was very funny. I thought he was, you know, often cut to the essentials, caught the ridiculousness of certain positions. He was too conservative for my liking, but as good as they come, I think a better part of the conservative movement for the most part, particularly about 20 years ago when I think he was at his peak. I thought he was brilliant and funny and entertaining. I don't think he was one of the good guys overall. And it was sad. I think he passed away yesterday or the day before and he was sad that he passed away. His books, and I forget the names of the books, there's some really funny passages in it and he was a very clever, parliament of whores was pretty good. He was a very clever political satirist. So, yep. All right. Thanks guys. We blew this 600 mark easily, 660. See, sometimes just asking makes a difference. All right guys, I will see you all on Saturday. No show tomorrow. No show Friday. But I will see you on Saturday and we'll do a show on Saturday and Sunday and then probably on Tuesday. Have a great rest of your week. If I don't see you on Saturday, you don't show up on Saturday. Have a great weekend. Thank you again. Don't forget to like the show. We should be well over 100 days. Don't forget to like the show before you leave. Don't forget to share. Don't forget to support me on youronbookshow.com slash support Patreon or subscribe star any of those other cool places. Oh, I forgot. God. All right. From this weekend, we will start having a sponsorship. We now have a sponsorship from... But I'm not going to tell you because I don't want you to go there and buy their products before I give you the link and so we'll wait until then. I know I've said this in the past and you guys have written me and then I didn't follow up and it's all falling apart. But if you're interested in me... If you're sponsoring The Iran Book Show, you're a business and you'd like to sponsor The Iran Book Show and you'd be willing to pay me something for the sponsorship, then write to me at youron at youronbookshow.com and we'll talk about it. And if you've already submitted an idea for a sponsorship, just remind me that you did it and we'll get to it. I know I've got a Star Trek review. I've got a Kite Kiki Kite Flyer review and I've got one other one... One other one that was one other one... The Bronx Tale review. So I've got three reviews that I owe you guys. I know I apologize. I'm late. I'm slow. But I will get to it. I promise. Bye everybody. I'll see you on Saturday. Thank you.