 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is the Iran Book Show. Alright everybody, welcome to Iran Book Show on a Sunday night. Everybody's having a great weekend and looking forward to a fantastic week. A week of productive activity. Always great to start off a show with Jonathan Hoding making a contribution. Jonathan is here and Ryan, thank you Ryan. So this is great. Today we're going to talk about conservatives. I'll tell you a little bit about how I got to this topic in a little bit. And then I will do a review today of Idiocracy. I don't know how you guys convinced me to watch this movie. I know Shazabat gave me an out, but so many people said, oh I should really watch it, it's really good. It's really interesting, it's really this, it's really that, so I actually watch it with my wife. I'm not sure she's going to forgive me Shazabat, but we did watch it last night, or the night before last. And in anticipation of this, so we will be, I'll be doing a review of Idiocracy. Daniel, really appreciate it, thank you, friend Hopper, thank you. I mean if everybody who listened live would just do two, four dollars. Yeah, we would make the goal, you know, most nights. So if only, if only. All right, let's see. Catherine's in the house, that's always good. Catherine always makes the raising of the Super Chat money much, much easier. So it's Catherine's job now to bug you guys. And you know, it's rare, very, very rare that you guys disappoint Catherine. So that is good. All right, so an anonymous user, thank you. So let's see, we're going to talk about conservatism. Yes, Michael's already got another. Nick, thank you, really appreciate that. So wow, a bunch of people just piling in with stickers. Really, really appreciate the support guys, thank you. So before we get started, quick, yeah, let's just start. So I, as you know, Alex Epstein was on Jordan Peterson. It was just released, I think, three days ago. So if you haven't seen Alex on Jordan, you should. And so it's on Jordan Peterson's channel. So I was on Jordan Peterson's channel and I have to say, because I was on Jordan Peterson's channel, I got distracted and I've actually watched Alex, but I'm sure Alex did phenomenally well. So Alex is very, very good at these interviews and I think Jordan is a good interviewer, so he would let, and he agrees with Alex on the policy while not agreeing with him on the philosophy. So I'm still going to watch it because I'm curious how Jordan handles it. And I'm curious what kind of philosophical issues they get into, if at all. But so I'm on Jordan Peterson's channel anyway. And I'm looking, because he's doing this, these really, really high quality interviews, right? Really beautifully made. He's obviously sending a camera crew. It looks like to the person he's interviewing, at least that's what it looks like, because all these interviews have multiple angles or he's sending them cameras. I don't know. But these are these are really very, very well produced interviews. A lot of the interviews turn out to be Jordan talking to himself. That is, he's, and I found, you know, so I started looking at who are the people he's doing interviews in. He's done a lot of interviews recently with conservatives and there seems to be a kind of a common theme to all the interviews. That is the common theme is to all the interviews is how do we inspire young people? How do we, what is the vision for conservatives? What should conservatives be about? And so I said, okay. And then on top of that he's also doing a series with Dennis Prager and a bunch of other people. I don't know who these other people are, but a bunch of other people sitting around a big conference table basically going over the book of Genesis and kind of pontificating over the book of Genesis. And I found, I listened to a little bit of that and that was interesting. And so I landed up listening to a bunch of these, to some of these, not a bunch of these. And I fast forward, I don't listen to everything, but I land up listening to them. And then it resonated, what was going on resonated with the debate I did, not really debate, more discussion should have been a debate, but it wasn't. That I did at the University of Texas in Austin a couple of weeks ago on, you know, the C.S. Lewis versus Leyn Rand kind of debate. And it's, you know, so it all kind of connected as to what the conservatives agenda deep town really is. What it is they're really, really struggling with, because I tried to approach this from the perspective of, let's assume that these are basically good people that are struggling to figure out the truth and to figure out the world and to figure out a certain agenda. Let's even assume that some of these political conservatives are pro founding fathers, pro liberty in some sense, right? What is it? Where is the rubber hitting the road? Where is the problem? And, you know, I wanted to listen to a few of these, so I listened to three, I've got three examples for you here, although I listened to more than that. And I'm not using the Dennis Prager stuff, although the stuff that came out from the Dennis Prager was very similar to this. And it strikes me that the challenges they're all facing, in particular, we're going to use a bit out of Newt Gingrich's interview and a bit out of Josh Hawley's interview, but we've also got an interview with one other, with a Republican congressman, Mike Johnson, who's also a conservative. I think John Peterson has this issue. I think we're going to see this repeatedly, so I'm going to show you the videos. I think we're going to see this repeatedly, and that is struggling to figure out where, if there's no God, struggling to figure out where morality comes from, where rights come from, where truth comes from, because for them, for all of them, and this is true of Sirius Lewis, what they are really upset about, what they're really rejecting is the kind of, what they see is the kind of subjectivism of the left, the arbitraryness of that subjectivism. John Peterson certainly gets that it's driven by whim, that it's short-term, that it's self-destructive, that subjectivism can't work. Subjectivism is a failed strategy. It's bad, it's wrong, it's not morality, and it can't function, it can't give you principles to actually live your life, so there's nothing, there's no there, there. And it results in a lot of psychological issues, but also in John Peterson's view, but also political pathologies, political pathologies, whether it's the welfare state, or whether it's identity politics, or whether it's the RT or whatever, all of the problems that we all know that the left, the welfare state holds, they view as kind of pathologies that a result from this subjectivism. And the only alternative they can think of for there not to be, for there to be a truth, to be a moral truth, and therefore a kind of a reason for individual rights, kind of a justification of rights of individual rights. The only justification, and look, I'm being super benevolent here, because I don't think this is actually how it works. I'm trying to make the best case for the conservatives possible, because I actually don't think this is the path they go, but maybe this is how Jordan Peterson goes. I'm going to give him, because he's more intellectual, and because I think he started from a secular place and found himself where he is today. So if it's not whims, then what can it be? Where do we find truth, morality, rights, and political rights? Well, it has to be out there somewhere, because that's the common dichotomy that exists in philosophy since Plato. It's either emotion, it's either just whatever, it's either primacy of consciousness you're making it up, or it's out there somewhere. Truth, morality is out there somewhere, and our job, consciousness, consciousness's job is to find it, to discover it, but it's there. It's somewhere, so C. S. Lewis, when he's trying to be non-Christian, when he's trying to be more appealing to a secular audience, it's a feature of reality, it's something out there, just like a chair, just like a rock that we have to find, we have to discover. It's in the nature of things, and the way, and we discover it through some process of revelation, and for most of us, we just have to accept tradition because that's worked out revelation. That's how it's being discovered. C. S. Lewis has this notion of Tao, which is kind of, in a sense, the truth that's out there that is represented for human beings as the accumulated knowledge of all the different traditions, the commonality, the overlapping moral codes of all these different moralities that exist out there, from Eastern religions to Christianity, to Judaism, to Islam, to all of them. They all share, have some kind of common ideas, principles, and this is the alternative to subjectivism. So it's either anything goes, or they say there's something real, there's something in their terms objective, in our terms, in Einstein's terms, there's something intrinsic in nature. It's not about human beings using their reason to form their values, to discover which values contribute to their life, to discover their own nature, and therefore discover the values that further human life, that lead to human success, that lead to human survival, which is Einstein's approach, right? We need to survive. We don't have encoded in us how to do it. We need to discover in a way through kind of a scientific method as applied to the problem of human survival. What is it? And if we do that with a reason, you'll notice that in every single one of these interviews, every single one of these interviews, I found it striking. Now I didn't listen to every single moment, so maybe I missed it. But in not one of these interviews is reason, man as a rational being, or any kind of sense of a rational being discussed. Zero. There's the emotionalism of the left and the revelation. And to them, religion is inescapable. In a sense, they're afraid of abandoning religion because if they ban a religion, they're stuck with wind worship. And they know wind worship's right, bad. Now, you know, I will argue, you might argue, many of us would argue, that at the end of the day, religion is wind worship, right? That at the end of the day, since Morales is not out there written on a tablet that we can read, it's not out there that we discover through some kind of process of revelation. It's not in the traditions of all people. There might be some ideas that are in the traditions that are not bad ideas, but they don't constitute a livable moral code. They indeed constitute a vast contradiction. But to them, what they're afraid of is that they give up on the tradition. If they give up on religion, if they give up on revelation, they're stuck with their own emotions. Now, we know that those revelations are themselves just made up because there is no revealed truth. There is no morality out there that imprints itself on our consciousness. Notice how passive that makes our consciousness. We just are there to just be hit by. James says there's a paywall for Jordan Peterson's interview with Alex, where he discusses me and working for ARI. I don't know where the paywall is. How do you get to the paywall? Maybe you can write something, James, just to give us some guidance on how to get to that. I might pay just to go see it and then end my subscription because I am curious. Now you got me curious. So since reality doesn't, or the truth of this, the moral truth don't just implant in ourselves and they're not in our genetic code, then what is left? What is revelation at the end of the day? It's somebody's subjective views. It's somebody's opinion. And if they're not willing to give us a reason explanation for why that opinion holds, then it's just their subjective views, which they convey to us as revelation. And therefore it becomes intrinsic. But there is no such thing since there is no intrinsic knowledge in reality. Knowledge is something we gain by interacting with reality. Then anything that is said to be intrinsic ultimately is a form of subjectivism. Alright, so I want to show you how this in a sense plays out and how desperate they are in a sense to, and how uniform they are and how they talk about this. So, you know, there used to be, I don't know, well, let me just say I was going to say there used to be like more secular conservatives like Barry Goldwater. But think about even Barry Goldwater. I mean, what did I criticize Barry Goldwater for? She criticized Barry Goldwater for the fact that the best he could do in a sense of defending capitalism was to defend him in the context of religion and to bring up a religious context for capitalism. And she said, you can't win that way. You're not going to convince anybody. We'll see if the arguments today made any better. Of course, Goldwater was a giant as I think in comparison to some of these people. But it's interesting to note how they all revert to the same thing. They all go in the same direction and how central and how essential religion is to all of them. Now, I said before I'm trying to be benevolent because I don't think they come at it as, well, we could be secular. We could give up God. But no, I think particularly these guys, it may be with exception of Jordan, come up with it as, we're religious. We believe in God. And the only alternative to that is to be a complete nihilistic, hedonistic, leftist, wind worshipper. That's kind of that. But they start with God. Maybe Jordan is a little different. Maybe he's argued himself into God. But I certainly think these others all start with that. They can conceive of anything different. But you can see how they can. This is it. This duality exists. And it's dominating this duality. You've noticed there's a theme across many Iran book shows over many years about arguing against these dualities. There's only two options. And in a sense, there are only two options. There's no left and right. Because there are other people here that are neither left nor right. But the real duality, and there is a duality, black and white, there is a duality, collectivist, individualist. Subjectivist, intrinsicist, is the rich claiming that those are the only two options. The subjective say, well, there's nothing out there in a sense of truth. So it must be all made up here. And the intrinsicist says, well, it can be all made up in here because that's ridiculous. Clearly that's a failure. Clearly that can't lead to anything substantive. Then it must be out there. And what they're ignoring is human consciousness. What they're ignoring is our ability to learn reality and discover truth through a process of reasoning. Not that the truth is out there and we just need to find it behind that rock, but that we need to discover it in an active process of thinking and experimenting and hypothesizing and figuring it out. And this duality collapses because in the end the intrinsicist and the subjectivist are both subjectivists. And the real alternative is to be objective. It says objective and here there's subjective and intrinsic together just like there's left and right, collectivism, and then there's individualism. So in the end there is only two alternatives, black and white. But the two alternatives that are presented to us by the culture are both wrong. Both wrong. Wow, Michael just did a $300 question out of nowhere. Wow. Michael usually does lots and lots and lots of $20, sometimes $100. I think this is in my memory at least recently, the biggest conspiracy, the biggest super chat he's done. Okay. When we get to the super chat, yours is first and it'll definitely be before we do idiocracy. But let's get to these videos because you know, those of you who know me and have watched the show for a while know that every five seconds of video that I show you, you know, I have like five minutes of commentary. So we're going to have, I'm going to bring on, we're going to start doing interviews. I think every Thursday night will be an interview. We'll see if we can start this week, but we'll bring on a philosopher. I want one of the objectives, philosophers, to really chew for you, really dig in and really chew for you because I think this is crucial and I'll benefit from it too. I want to really chew this idea of subjective intrinsic objective and the differences between them and what objective actually means and how it is applied both epistemologically and then importantly how it applies morally, what it means morally. But objectivism is the only philosophy really that views, I mean the only philosophy today that anybody takes seriously, views the mind as an active thing, an active process that requires engagement, requires effort, requires looking out there and through an understanding of what's out there coming up with values, objective values because they're based on observing and understanding the causal relationships within reality. Animals can't do that. Animals can just take what they've already got programmed and pursue whatever it is that the program tells them their values are encoded in them. They can't adapt, they can't change, they can't figure it out as they go. Human beings do not have the values encoded, not even the value to survive. That's why we're probably the only species that actually commit suicide. We don't even have the value to survive and that's why not only because we don't have that encoded in us can we now in a sense be super creative about surviving and therefore do it better than any other species so we can survive at the very very basic level, maybe even for tens of thousands of years as a species but then as we learn, as we progress, as we learn about reality, I mean if it was all revealed we should have an industrial revolution right off the bat but if we slowly build on it our knowledge builds as we discover, as we understand, as we understand causality as we discover the ability to ask big questions, discover the ability to explain the world knowledge therefore grows and develops and human beings make life better and survival becomes amazing, right? Survival becomes survival as this conceptual, thriving, spiritual and material being that is just blowing through it all. Alright, let's take a look. So this is, let's see, alright hopefully I'm not going to sit on Newt Gingrich's head but this is Newt Gingrich. I think everybody knows Newt Gingrich. I speak of the house during the 1990s, during a period when I did my history of America I think during kind of peak geopolitical influence for America, peak economy in many ways for America and I think Republicans under Newt in opposition maybe Republicans at their best as an opposition party once they get into power they lose it but at their best kind of reigning in Clinton advocating for an agenda that's kind of okay, not too destructive but Newt is more than that, what makes him interesting is he's quite intellectual he's written a lot of books, he has his own kind of think tank foundation, communication strategy, whatever a firm and he's a, you know, within the conservative movement he's one of the thinkers relatively speaking. So let's see, and you'll notice the question and answer that comes, the media question and answer it's a good, he gives a really good answer, he gives the answer that conservatives would have given in the 1990s, no more but this is a 1990s conservative answer to Jordan Peterson's question. All right, let's see if this works. Mr. Ron, so what do you think that would be most appropriate for conservatives on the visionary side let's say to be offering to young people as we move forward with the new House and the new Senate? Freedom. Now do you think any conservative today would say freedom? Now we'll get to what he means by freedom and how they conceptualize freedom or at least how they don't conceptualize freedom but it is interesting that he says freedom and I don't think you'll see Trump would not say freedom but Josh Hawley is not going to say freedom. Any one of these guys, you know, I don't know which of the Republicans today would actually say freedom. Now again, they don't maybe understand it but he's at least has that maybe Reagan, maybe Goldwater kind of spirit of what conservatism used to be about at its best and has betrayed it consistently and therefore failed consistently. You talked about work. Freedom. Freedom. I think because freedom leads to responsibility and work. I just did a seminar with a bunch of people including Dennis Prager on the first half of Exodus in Miami. We're going to release that November 26th. And you mentioned freedom and that's what made it spring to mind. So when God tells Moses to address the pharaoh, he tells him to let my people go and that's a famous line. He let my people go but that's not the line actually interestingly enough and it's repeated. I believe it's repeated nine times might be 10 times just to make sure that the listener gets it. The line is let my people go so that they may serve me in the wilderness. So it's interesting that, you know, the Judeo-Christian tradition is basically goes back to the biblical story of the Exodus of Exodus. Of course, he was talking to Dennis Prager and they talked about this quite a bit and freedom means freedom from slavery. But wait a minute, wait a minute. Is there anything in the Old Testament against slavery? I mean, when Moses says let my people go, it's his people and by extension it's God's people. It's not all people. It's let the Jews go. He's not, you know, asking the Egyptians to let all slaves go. And he later on in a further book in the Bible, in the Old Testament, God actually tells the Jews how to treat their slaves. So there's nothing in the story that suggests that God is anti-slavery or for any sense of freedom. And now, note the freedom to do what? Because you see, John Peterson realizes the freedom is a tricky word. Because once you let people be free, they might do things you don't like. They might do things that are harmful to themselves, even. And, you know, this is a foundational story that everybody takes as a foundation to the West of civilization. So if we're going to refer to these stories and we're going to refer to them as the foundation of the civilization, we're going to know what they actually say, what they actually mean. Not what we want them to believe to mean from a 21st century perspective, but what they actually say and what they actually mean. And there is no freedom in the sense that we understand it in the Old Testament. And John Peterson goes on to say, freedom to do what? Because God forbid it would be freedom to, I don't know, change your sex. God forbid it would be freedom to be gay. God forbid it would be freedom to get a divorce. One of the deadly sins, I think, in Jordan Peterson's world. No, it's the freedom to serve God. The freedom to serve God. That's what freedom means. It's the opportunity, the choice to serve God. And what does God do to people who choose not to serve Him? What does God do to people who choose not to serve Him? Once they are free. So let's go back to Old Testament. I love the Old Testament. You know, I know a little bit of it, enough to be dangerous, I guess, enough to argue with these guys. But what does God do to people who disagree with Him? So the Jews ultimately leave Egypt after, by the way, God who values human life so much and views it so sacred. I mean, He really views this as sacred. And, you know, all men are created in His image. So in order to free the Jews, the best magic that God can come up with is basically to kill the first male child of every Egyptian. Literally every Egyptian first male child is murdered, killed. They're not responsible for the enslavement of the Jews. These are children. And He kills them all, even though they were made in His image, in order to let His people go. I mean, you think that there are other like magical tricks that God can do that doesn't involve the slaughter of every male child in Egypt. So the Jews escape, they get out, they leave, and they're wandering around the Sinai and, you know, without going into too much detail. During one of the episodes in Sinai, you know, Moses goes up to Mount Sinai and he gets the Ten Commandments and he comes down and when he comes down, there are people worshiping a golden calf, which is a violation of the first commandment. And, you know, they are no longer free. They are no longer free. Why are they no longer free? Because they are no longer serving God. And given that they are no longer free, it is okay for Moses and his brother and the men affiliated with them to slaughter. I can't remember how many. Is it 30,000 people that day? Something like that. They kill. Everybody was worshiping the golden calf. Now let's not confuse freedom with freedom of speech. There is no freedom of speech if freedom is for the purpose, sole purpose of serving God. If your speech does not serve God, it is inappropriate. Alright, so that's freedom. Biblical freedom. This is what they're talking about. And it's interesting. They never interviewed somebody who would actually challenge them on this and it never goes in that direction. You know, if you challenge Jordan, then he'll start you on a road, an epistemological road and try to catch you at some contradiction. You know, he'll get very abstract, very complex in epistemology. But he's not going to actually deal with the foundation that he finds in morality. And the same with Newt. So let's listen to a little bit more of this. And what's fascinating about that is that the vision of freedom that's put forward, which is the spirit, let's say, that's calling to the Israelites to emerge from their slavery and to the tyrannical pharaoh to release his tyrannical grip on them isn't the freedom of whim. It's the freedom to pursue the proper goals. It's not freedom of whim. It's the freedom to pursue the proper goals. Indeed, that is right. I agree with Jordan on that. Freedom is not about the ability to pursue your whims, although under freedom some people will. Freedom is about the pursuit of the proper goals. And a big question now is, what are those proper goals and where do they come from? And that's the whole issue. Where do those goals come from? To serve God. So you give up whims and you replace them with God. Whereas the way we formulate it, freedom is that state in which you get to use your judgment, your rational judgment in pursuit of rational values. That's freedom. Free of coercion, of force, of authority. But you have to have reason, rational values, as the basis for proper goals. Otherwise, where do proper goals come from? It's true that the freedom to follow your whims, just for the sake of, if that was the purpose of freedom, then we wouldn't be for freedom. If the alternative was freedom to follow your whims or something else, then something else is almost always going to be better. Following your whims is a total disaster for everybody involved. Total chaos, total anarchy. No accident, anarchy. To pursue the highest goals. And so it's the freedom that comes with the voluntary adoption of responsibility and not the freedom that leads to a nihilistic hedonism. Right, but there's a difference between liberty and liberty. And I think that the challenge is, and this is, I think, very difficult to have a serious public conversation about it, although Dennis Prager does his good job as anybody. I mean, I think this is really important. This is where it boils down to in the end, in terms of where they have to go and where Newt Gingrich has to go. Right, so this is the vision of one of the more, I don't know, you would consider one of the more reasonable conservatives of the past 40 years. This is where he has to take it. Ultimately, the health of the West requires a profound revival. I mean, ultimately, God has to be at the center of our freedom. When we say in our Declaration of Independence that you are endowed by your creator with certain unalienable rights, if you don't think there's a creator, then the whole rest of it makes no sense. You see, they can't make any sense of the whole enlatement project. They can't make any sense of rights. They can't make any sense of America. They can't make any sense of freedom. They can't make any sense of any of it without God. As soon as you take out God, it's gone. And the worst thing, Len, you say, I am my creator, you are. But the worst thing to them is this idea that you are your creator. They think that's the most absurd, ridiculous thing. And they associate with that, well, that means you can just decide on what gender you are. You can just decide on, you're not a human, you're a rock or whatever, you're a zebra or whatever. And what's missing from your creator is reason and rationality and your own nature. God, what's happening today? All right. And it's striking that they can't think themselves out of a paper bag in a sense. They get stuck on that terminology in the founding, and that demands the key. And I think of all the words the founders could have used, creator is the least committal religious-wise, and I think that's why they used it. They didn't use God. They didn't use Christian God. They didn't use creator, which is as neutral as it can get. And yes, they were religious, more religious than I would have liked. Okay. But they can't even conceive of anything, any alternative. And it's probably, and it might be, I mean, I think the founders could. Being men of reason, I think they could. I think if you pushed them and said, well, what if there's no God? What if there is no God? What if I could prove that to you? Are there rights? I think the founders would have said yes. I think somebody like Jefferson would have been able to articulate something about rights. I think even if you pushed Locke, I think if you pushed a lot of these people, if you push these guys, there's no, there's mayhem. There's the two options. So this is Josh Hawley talks about this. Two options. Either rights are given to you by God or rights are given to you by government. That's it. And God, you know, it's obviously awful if rights are given to you, given to you by government, then what are the options there is? Then if we're going to hold on to rights, then we have to adopt religion. So even if you took the perspective of some of these conservatives, value rights, value freedom, value the founders, you know, value human life in some sense, and they look and they, and the secular world, they reject completely because it leads to everything opposed to these things, then they're stuck with their religion even if they want to give it up. Now, I don't, again, I don't think that's most of them. I think most of them are committed religionists, but I think that's certainly some of them. It's interesting that I think Newt Gingrich, like most, most is an exaggeration, like many of modern conservatives, Newt Gingrich converted to Catholicism. I'm pretty sure that's true at some point. And Catholicism, almost all the conservative intellectuals today, particularly the ones that are most antagonistic to a secular view of the world, are Catholic because Catholicism is the most intellectual of the Christian religions. Is that the right way to say it? On the other hand, if you believe that your rights come from God and your right includes the right to pursue happiness, which in the sense of the 18th century enlightenment actually meant virtue and wisdom. Happiness did not mean hedonism. So know it again. Another dichotomy, right? And I've noticed this, I've noticed this among conservatives because they have a problem with the pursuit of happiness. It's problematic, right? So it's, they have to make it wisdom and virtue. And there's a sense of which that's true, but there's a sense in which the founders understood the purpose of virtue, the secular founders, the more secular, the more so, understood the purpose of virtue, the purpose of wisdom as attaining a state of being called happiness, a state of satisfaction with much life, a state of joy, a state of contentment. But the alternative to this, oh, they were just seeking wisdom and virtue, not happiness. You can only contrast this with hedonism. It's either hedonism or wisdom and virtue. What about people who struggle with, you know, maybe Anata's intellectual, Anata's smart to achieve wisdom? Is virtue enough? And notice that the hedonism stuff is all going to be material stuff, so we can dismiss that. We're going to stick with wisdom and virtue, intellectual stuff. But that's all they can think about. Secular, subjective, hedonist, nihilist. So we have to go to religion, but then we have to dismiss happiness, because it's about service. Then the pursuit, I always try to make two points to people. The pursuit of happiness, first of all, is an active phrase, which gets us back to the work ethic. It doesn't say you're going to, you know, it doesn't say we'll have happiness stamps or we need a federal department of happiness. It says you have been endowed by God with the right to pursue happiness. And second, by that grant, God has also imposed upon you the obligation that you should pursue happiness. Where does that obligation come from? He just made that up. Again, happiness in the sense of wisdom and virtue. And all of that only makes sense if you understand that you are subordinate to a supreme being. It's a little bit like Alcoholics Anonymous. I laugh, because, you know, you have a right to your life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. Happiness is about your pursuit of wisdom and virtue, which I think is right because those do lead to happiness in its sense, if you understand them correctly. But all of this is made possible because you understand that you are, well, not a slave, a subservient to a higher power, to a God, to someone up there, that you are nothing. And your wisdom is what? Subordinate, sorry, subordinate, not subservient, subordinate. You are subordinate. And you are subordinate because if all truth comes from God, then you're just there to gain the wisdom that he imposed, it provides you. You're not creating anything. You're not discovering anything. You're just passively waiting for God to, or you're praying or you're doing something that does not involve thinking so that God can just, you know, provide you with the revelation of what you should be doing. I had a good friend who had been very high up in the Reagan administration and who was an alcoholic and ultimately went to Alcoholics Anonymous, wanted to be enormously helpful. And ultimately, you get to a key step. You have to start by recognizing you have a problem and recognizing that you can't solve the problem yourself. But then you get to the key step. You have to recognize that there is a supreme being, a higher power. And so he found himself talking one day to a federal official and he was explaining the impact of Alcoholics Anonymous and this federal official said, you know, if we could skip that one step, we could fund it. And he said, I don't think you understand. That's the step that makes the rest of it work. And I think in that sense, all of us are caught in an Alcoholics Anonymous moment. All of us are weakened by the fact that we don't live in a culture which makes it normal and obvious that your freedom is a freedom within God's belief and God's control. It's not a freedom against God or a freedom in an atheistic world. It's good to know I have no freedom. It's good to know you guys, most of you I think, have no freedom. It's not a freedom in an atheistic world. It's not freedom for atheists. Yeah, you know, this is the conservatives. This is the conservative movement. Okay, I want to play just let's see if I can do a short segment of this guy. Just to show you, this is not just one guy. And then I want to do a short segment from Josh Hawley and then talk about the implications of some of this. I believe it's impossible, by the way, to divorce it from a religious worldview, let's say. The Judeo-Christian worldview, for example, because that is where we find Armenian. I think what you just described is God's created order for things, for the individual, for the family, for society. I think we are made in the image of God. The founders of this country believe that. And in fact, indeed, in our declaration, they proclaimed it to be a self-evident truth, something that you cannot not know. That wasn't what they said was a self-evident truth, not that anyway. Yeah, I mean, God's order, everything around us. We're living in a world that is God's, that is ordained by God. It is the way it is and we need to function appropriately. And without religion, we cannot. That God is the one that created us and he gives us all the same rights. This is a congressman, by the way, Congressman Mike Johnson. And God created us to serve. That's perfect. God created us to serve. So here you also get the element of altruism. I want to say a positive word about Jordan Peterson, which I find interesting because I don't know how this exactly happened and what the intellectual move got him to where it is. But Jordan actually has a much better view of what self-interested is today than he did a few years ago. So if you remember a few years ago, I actually did a show on this. There is no self-interest. There's no such thing as self-interest with self. We have today, tomorrow. Self is a meaningless concept and he talked about, you know, so he dismissed self-interest completely. Now he has a much better view of self-interest and that is the self-interest is something to be attained over time, that it's long-term, say it incorporates this idea of the different selves and different time zones, I guess. And that what involves the rejection of self-interest is women worshipping. So women worshipping is anti-self-interest, but self-interest really is this projection of a lifetime and what your actions and what your ideas are going to do and what impact they have over a lifetime and not as a whim, not in a moment. And that's a significant improvement. But note that Congressman Mike Johnson immediately goes to the idea of service and remember, the reason to be free is to serve God. And this is, of course, the basis of altruism, not the altruism, the conventional altruism. Not the conventional altruism of, in a sense, the way we view it, of service to your neighbor, but the origins in a sense of altruism, which is the sacrifice of yourself to something other than you. And that is in Christianity, fundamentally, it's not the poor, it's not the meek, it's fundamentally God. It's all about service to God. You don't matter. What matters is God and the service you provide to God, for God. And the only reason to be free is that you can serve God in God's purpose. And how do you know what God's purpose is? Somebody has it revealed and tells you or you get the revelation yourself. Find our greatest meaning. The Bible is filled with this admonition that if you are to be great, you are to serve. And the greatest is the greatest servant and so that's where you find your value. The greatest is to serve, the greatest is the greatest servant. This is how you find your value. You find your value for serving others, whether it's God or whether it's the others. This is altruism coded into Christianity and every aspect of Christianity, this is the foundation. At least these people get it. So we're not getting any mealy mouth. No, we're not really for altruism. Christianity is really about self-interest. No, this is what it's about. It's about serving the other. Let me just see how long we're going to take this. He intended the family to be, for obvious reasons, the first unit. How do we know that? How do we know that he intended the family to be the first unit? I mean, again, and I'm not, you know, I'm not, I am quibbling here because, again, this is, I'm an Old Testament guy, not a New Testament guy. And in the Old Testament, Abraham, the first monotheist supposedly, the first Jew, has three wives. I don't know if that's a family. And then Jacob, Jacob, Abraham's son, he blesses one of his sons and curses the other one. And the son who is blessed is the one who tricks the other one, says trickery involved, right? I mean, there's nothing in the Old Testament. And God lets them all get away with this and they're not penalized for it. You know, David sleeps with pretty much everybody. The more them area, there's no family in the Old Testament. You know, people accuse Ayn Rand of not talking about family. But where's their family in the Old Testament? Solomon has 2,000 wives in concubines. Who knows how many children? I can't remember that passage in the Bible. But I remember the 2,000 because as a kid, I was very impressed. I have to say, very impressed by Solomon's ability to have 2,000 wives in concubines. And David's sleeping around. I mean, it was part of Bible class to highlight all these kind of scenes in these kind of non-controversy. You know, where does this family even come from? I mean, Cain kills Abel, right? Doesn't Cain kill Abel, right? That's his brother. This is family stuff, beautiful family stuff. I don't know. I mean, I don't know, conservatives come up with this stuff. They decide a family is important and then they go back to the Bible and find it there. Where is it? I mean, it's... Of community. And upon that, we build a healthy and vibrant society. You know, I listed human... Yeah, so it's all about community, service, services is the essence. These are your conservatives. These are the Republicans you just elected to House Majority, Congress and Mike Johnson. Now, the left is awful and evil and bad. But this is the right. Awful and evil and bad. Now, isn't this subjectivism? He just gave us a whole list. Did he provide a reason for it? Did he provide a basis for it? Did he provide a rational explanation for why it holds? It strikes me as subjective. All right. My favorite conservatives you might know today. I think the most dangerous conservative today is Josh Hawley, partially because he's super bright, very articulate. He's got a bit of a baby face. I think that's going to prevent him from running for president anytime soon. He's going to have to, I don't know, maybe go some white. Maybe he'll have to color his hair a little white or maybe do something, something else with regard to it. Or maybe get some lines or something. He just looks too baby-faced to be president. But anyway, maybe that's what we need after Geoiatric, guys. He is a real piece of work. He is, of course, a Yale graduate, Yale Law School graduate, most presidents in modern times have been Yale graduates. And interesting, he's very articulate, very smart, obviously. I just want to do this on rights. And then we'll talk about the implications without showing you any more video because we're already an hour in. Right. When it comes to the subject of rights, I think the left and the right have a fundamentally different view about rights. The right says that what the Declaration of Independence says is true, that our rights come to us by virtue of the fact that we're made in the image of God. Our rights come to us because they are given by God. And our rights, by the way, point us toward our responsibilities. So, staying conservatives, right? So, you get rights because of the creator, that one word in the Declaration of Independence, the gods are given to us by rights, they're given to us by virtue of the, we're created by God and all that. Again, there's nothing in the Old Testament, nothing. Zero zilch in the Old Testament to suggest that individuals have rights. The slaves that the Jews had didn't have rights. The Jews in the Old Testament, God commands them to slaughter, don't have rights, they just defend God. The people who worshiped the Golden Calf didn't have rights. Rights, you know, do not come from the Old Testament, at least. Now, they are kind of rationalistically derived from certain passage in the Bible, but there's no evidence to them in the holy books. There's no evidence. There's no link. As much as the Founders tried, as much as Locke tried, there's no link between those rights and God. Now, I know there's a huge natural law tradition in classical liberalism that tries to imbue rights into us, right? They're in there. God put them in there somewhere. Again, this is the intrinsicism. It's revealed knowledge that we have rights from God. Although I think Locke does, and the Founders do a much better job than just this garbage, just saying that, right? They just say it. They actually try to reason it through and try to make, I mean, Locke talks much more about kind of a nature-based argument for rights, not just God gave it to them, imbued us with them. But this is, again, they can't conceive of anything else. Now, rights as a necessity for human survival, rights as derived from the standing of what allows human beings to survive, the use of their mind, and therefore they must be free and rights as protecting freedom, none of that, none of that is there. And then, of course, then they come up with rights involved responsibilities. Where's that in the Declaration of Independence? Where is that? There's no subsection, like, and these rights imply these responsibilities. None of that is there. So if we're going to use the document as kind of the evidence, then the responsibility part is not there. I mean, rights do imply responsibility, but in a much, much deeper sense than any of these people imply. That is, if you ever write the life of freedom to live your life based on your judgment in pursuit of your values, what is the responsibility? The responsibility is to choose to use your mind to the best of your ability to choose your values, to use your judgment, to choose a path, to make decisions about action, to make decisions about what to pursue. But that's not the sense in which they mean responsibility. They mean responsibility to, to the state, to God, to others, to the poor, to someone. But it's you, that's the responsibility, that if you have a right to life, you now live it, and living it takes work, thought, effort, focus, thinking. That's sense there's responsibility. We have rights that open up to us fields of action where we're supposed to serve. We have the right to follow our conscience, for example. It's all about serving. Rights are there so we can go serve. Rights are there so we can go serve. What is that really? Well, that says that we're obligated to follow the truth and that as we feel, as we understand the truth, I like that. His first view, his first slip was right. How we feel. How is he different than the left? And then he realizes that feel is the wrong world. Feel is, puts him in the trap of subjectivism. How we understand. We have a responsibility to follow the truth. But where is that truth? That truth lies in religion in God. What was it Lincoln said? I will follow the right as God gives me to see the right. That is, it is a right, but it is also responsibility. That's the rights view, our view, conservative view of responsibility, of rights rather. The left view is actually rights are entitlements that come to you from the state. And so therefore the state needs to expand its power for you to have more rights. And the problem with that Jordan is the real message to individuals is you're weak and in need of help from the state. You know, you're fundamentally weak. The state needs to help you by giving you all of these things, by taking care of you, by giving you these rights. The conservative message needs to be, you're not weak. You are strong. You have the capacity in yourself to do something to change the world, to contribute to society. Let's get up and do it. Let's go do something together. Let's get up there and actually give ourselves to a cause greater than ourselves. I don't think Marx would have disagreed with any of that final statement. You are strong. You can change the world. Let's get together and all fight for a goal for cause greater than ourselves. I mean this is the modern right. The modern right is a religious right. Its entire ideology is rooted in religion. Even when they come up with policy proclamations that seem moderately okay or good even intellectual foundation of everything that they stand for is religion is this epistemology epistemological view of intrinsic values intrinsic knowledge morality for them is revelation it is tradition and they have to evade huge quantities of information about the past, huge quantities of information about tradition huge quantities of information about their own holy book in order to stand by this. At the end of the day the morality is a morality 100% altruistic 100% about service every all three of them talked about freedom for what freedom to serve that's all they have I mean and look the policy implications of this are obvious and Josh Hawley in the interview you should watch it, I encourage you to watch Josh Hawley's interview because he is the future of the Republican Party so you should watch it. He is at every national conservative conference, he is at the integralist conferences he is cultivating all the new right intellectual corners, he is getting an army of intellectuals that support these ideas as his backbone there is now for the first time I think ever for conservatives a real intellectual movement around using the state to impose their morality on all of us for the first time conservatives used to in the past at least have a certain sense of liberty, of freedom now the conservatives want to impose their traditions on you whether you like it or not and you know that comes across but just from economics perspective you know Josh Hawley comes out during this interview we need to bring all the jobs home we need to use tariffs, we need to trade policy, we need to do whatever we can to bring the job home and he has a bunch of economic garbage about lost wages and lost income and the middle class and he misses completely, he has no concept of the middle class he has no understanding of the middle class and no understanding of economics he rails against of course big tech and monopoly power and monopoly power because of globalization what we need is to crush globalization it's just a statist prescription it's a statist answer to the problems but of course that's what you'd expect so one might be subjectivist and one might be intrinsicist, one might think rights are subjective phenomena and I think he makes a character of the left's view of rights the left's view of rights is more sophisticated than that if they even acknowledge rights the leftists don't even acknowledge the concept of rights they don't think it exists most people on the right don't, I mean the sophisticated people on the right don't think rights exist, I mean I've told you this before but Scalia, Anthony Scalia the great conservative judge thought rights were nonsense on stilts where he's quoting, he's quoting their Jeremy Bentham so many on both sides don't believe in rights the more intellectual they are the less they believe in rights and the ones that do believe in rights one thing it's in the state, one thing it's from God or all get it wrong but the essential is if the purpose is service the purpose is community then it's all collectivism all the time and then if you do get into power you're going to use the power of the state to do is to try to create some form of common good public interest and then it's just a matter of who's and where's and Josh Hawley values the working class much more highly than he values computer programmers I guess an elite that he doesn't like maybe because they vote democratic so he's going to gear all economic policies towards the so called working class working class means physical labor because we non blue collar workers don't actually work so we're not working class it's fascinating to me this is pure Marxism, this is pure labor theory of value, labor meaning muscle theory of value, programmers because it's a service industry don't count don't count so whole industries don't count and this is why they get such a perverse they count the number of people doing manual labors and it's gone down and the fact is manual labor is going to go down robots are going to take manual labor's jobs by their millions, no by the hundreds of millions what are they going to do then in the robots they'll crush the robots I don't know but it's they have a Marxist view of labor these are the conservatives these are the choices we have this is the world we have they have no conception of freedom what it actually means because they have no conception of the human mind they have no conception of reason and rationality and they have no conception of objective values and the ability of the human mind to discover and create in a sense you know creates the wrong word you know use your reason to figure out what your value should be figure out in that sense create not by whim but by reason they can't even comprehend that that is beyond their comprehension completely alright thank you everybody we've blown away you know the the what do you call it the goal today superchat goal primarily because of Dave and Michael so with double the usual so it was $1300 already so I you know let's just put that aside and go on so thank you thank you for all the superchatters thank you for making this such a successful show from a superchat perspective I really really appreciate it and yeah it's exciting it's exciting to see the enthusiasm by you guys alright let's jump in we've got a $500 question from Dave Goodman so let's do that what makes Ayn Rand a better psychologist than JP is her understanding that good psychology comes from introspection if you're honest with yourself and your own motivations you can see it in other people people are identifying their own motivations and what's going on in their own mind they don't know what's going on with anyone else so I guess there's no real question that it's Dave's statement I think that's true but I think there's something much more fundamental here that I think that I think there's there's something much more fundamental in terms of Rand's grasp and in terms of Rand's view and that is the Rand doesn't approach any of these topics psychological topics from the perspective of from the perspective of human beings are just without an image of what human beings are and could and should be I mean in that sense she approaches psychology from an artist's perspective so she thinks what are human beings what's the essential nature of human beings what characterizes human nature because I need to write about this I need characters who act in the world what's motivating them so Rand has the idea that man is a rational animal and then for her she has a very deep understanding what rational means and then because she understands irrationality is something to achieve that requires effort that requires focus requires will requires choice that not everybody has it not everybody is rational not everybody makes the effort you can't understand human psychology I don't think if you just view human beings as deterministic animals or if you view the alternative is between whim and worshiping God but if you understand what human beings are capable of and what they have to do in order to survive is use that capability and then what happens to them when they only use it sometimes and don't use it other times and they compartmentalize and the conflict that that creates and then also be able to introspect and identify it within yourself but that's an aspect of it you have to have to be a great psychologist you have to have some kind of theory about human nature and empirical evidence to suggest that that theory is true but you have to understand all of reason in human life you have to understand all of thinking of rationality of that effort to make it an only and that is the context in which you introspect to what extent am I living up to that this is a problem I feel these emotions don't make any sense but what makes sense what's the standard of making sense how do we think about these things you have to start with man as a rational being or man as capable of rationality and what happens when you default on that rationality without those aspects how do you do psychology you do it like Jordan Peterson it becomes it's not as meaningful and useful because it doesn't have you know and he uses all kind of alternative terminologies in order to kind of get to that right make your bed, be responsible things like that that are kind of getting to the idea that you have to engage with your life and you have to use your mind in order to have a path but if you don't have the concept of reason, reason is man's basic means of survival I don't know how you can be a really good psychologist you have to have it implicit at the very least Rand has an explicit that's what makes a psychological observation so meaningful is because she has the standard and JP doesn't have a standard not the right standard I hope that's helpful Dave thank you Dave that was very generous Michael 300 dollars wow Michael says you think the nihilists are confused as to why we're not Venezuela yet why their strategies have failed or are they playing the long game they know it worked in Germany if they keep chopping away at our institutions eventually they will get the destruction they yearn for can nihilists think long range no and the whole conception of nihilism in this sense I don't think is right it's not that nihilists sit there and say okay here's the plan to destroy America here's the plan to make America more equal it's not how they think they have to rationalize to themselves that there's a positive goal we're going to make America more equal we're going to achieve egalitarianism in this work egalitarianism equality is a beautiful thing and in the back of their mind there's this pecking thing that says yeah but that's what the Cameroos wanted and you got Popat and they say yeah but that's not me it's the evasion so the results are nihilistic and destructive and they know it at some level but they suppress that there are very few people in the world who sit there saying I just can't wait to destroy everything when they destroy stuff they get a little adrenaline rush they get a little smile in their face but even that they never explain oh yes destruction I love it they usually rationalize it yeah the man is suffering the bad guys are suffering even though it really gets them as the joy of being destructive it's there are no Dr. evils there are no people out there I mean even Elzert Tui who is the most conscious evil person ever portrayed in literature I think I don't know that Elzert Tui is possible in Atlas Shrugged James Taggart when he discovers how evil he is he goes crazy when he discovers that his real motivation remember this engulfs torture the rationalization is always we're torturing him in order to better mankind solve the economic problems of the world do something positive but when James Taggart discovers that no actually I just want him to suffer I just want him destroyed I just want to see it all burn he goes mad he can't handle that fact about himself and I think that's true of all of this they can't handle it they completely suppress it they evade it constantly and it's work because reality keeps Venice rather oh no no no they did it wrong that's not what we're striving towards right so they're wanting to burn it down is held deep inside they don't let it completely bubble to the surface alright wow Vadim we're going this by dollar amount Vadim is $100 and we've still got to do the idiocracy review is it possible to attempt and succeed at several different career goals at the same time given that life is so short indeed I mean to achieve a state of chronic happiness I love this term by way as I and Rand expressed it in tonight show well you're asking the wrong person because I am constantly trying to do exactly that I don't think I've ever had in my adult life one career goal I've always had at least one or two on the side or two very important ones running at the same time I can tell you it's super hard and it's super stressful and and you know I think I succeed in achieving happiness, chronic happiness that's a tough one but it's you know the reality is that it's very very difficult so I'm the kind of person who you know has always done it because I've had lots of things that interested me and lots of passions and easily distracted and for the most part I can juggle it all so I think I can't say it's not possible because here I am but I'd say it's not recommended in particular and it's not for everybody it's very very difficult for most people so having one career and being really good at it and you know really really good at it excelling at it is hard enough I'd say for 99.9% of the people focus on that whoops alright Andrew, $50 is the culture's ethical code mainly in line with the second half of the objective's principle of not sacrificing others to oneself if objectiveism mainly agrees with such principles as they are shall not steal do we disagree on why and does it matter no, of course it of course the culture's ethics cross that line I mean the culture's full of sacrificing others to oneself full of it all the time the mother who demands the child do what she wants him to do ala Peter Keating she's sacrificing her child to her own whim the welfare recipient who demands the state increases welfare payment is sacrificing other people to himself other people who pay into the system so there is constant demand for sacrifice of some to others and indeed and from others who want your sacrifice so sacrificing other to oneself happens all the time sacrificing others to oneself doesn't really mean slavery or stealing it just means the mall demand to give to me that's sacrificing others to self so don't don't assume the sacrifice of others to self in both coercion and of course it does all the time it's called tax policy it's called we sacrifice businessmen all the time to someone someone's power lust I mean that's all government does is demand your sacrifice your sacrifice for somebody else's benefit so it's you know the culture's ethical cult is not in line not in line with any aspect of objectivism now people behave somewhat self interested a lot of the time because otherwise they couldn't survive but that's not objectivist ethics objectivist ethics is not sometimes a little bit human there and people are being sacrificed constantly all the time thinking of the soldiers sent for stupid wars and give up their life for what for nothing well they're sacrificed for the power lusters to someone to the Muslims to the bad guys always everywhere every aspect of our culture somebody is being sacrificed to someone now if objectivism he agrees with such principles that shall not shall not steal do we disagree on why does it matter yes for lots of different reasons it matters to you because just following commandment is one thing and understanding why you're not doing something is a completely different thing from your perspective your happiness but even from the culture perspective what does stealing mean that shall not steal unless it's from rich people that shall not steal unless we vote on it nobody believes in that shall not steal not in the sense that we mean it that shall not steal but it's for the common good it's for the public interest who cares about it's just intellectual property so no there's no relationship and if somebody has a commandment that shall not steal he's open to the gazillions of interpretations of that commandment I mean how did a Christian square taxation taxes and they shall not steal a vote somehow supersedes the word of God but the word of God is meaningless it's a statement that then you get to interpret by any way you want to interpret it in order to attain your goals and it's the witch doctors taking a cue from Einwands for the intellectual it's the witch doctors responsible to figure out how to make the two consistent it's not stealing because it's the will of the people fundamentally we enslave we we make doctors do our bidding at the price that we decide kind of like enslaving right social life medicine is that not sacrificing some to others is that not stealing people's lives people's time no no no no alright let's see what do we want to do now I've got a ton we're going to go, I don't know how many hours we're going to go today let's do the idiocracy review so let's do this because I it's been a while since Shahzabad did it I know by the way that all you guys a bunch of music reviews songs albums I promise I will get to that haven't got it I'll try to do them all next weekend cover them all unless I get new ones today but idiocracy I assume you guys have seen the movie it's a movie about basically the the essential theme of it is you know stupid people have lots of kids smart people don't have kids very few kids that means and since stupidity and smarts IQ I guess intelligence gets passed on down through the genes soon through a reverse evolutionary process all the mankind is stupid all the mankind is stupid and somehow surviving but stupid and the idea is this this army guy who's chosen because he's super average completely average right he gets a girl who's also average he's a prostitute so maybe below average they get frozen for a scientific experiment they think it's going to be one year but they'd last for 500 years and they wake up and it's 2,500 at 2,500 and they are in this world where they are by far the smartest people in the world and everybody else is stupid and stupid 500 years ago is that everybody is like people in other movies about stupid people made in the 21st century like Dumb and Dumber and all the other stupid movies Valley Goal stupid you know just Pothead stupid just what is it Beavis and Butthead stupid no accident the director of this is also the creator and director of Beavis and Butthead Beavis and Butthead stupid you got a world of Beavis and Buttheads and then you've got these two people a prostitute an average guy from the military who land up there and they turn out to be the smartest people in the world and their adventures dealing with the fact that everybody about them is just stupid now it's right the fact that they're stupid they still manage to build machines and run machines, some machines and some stuff they still manage to have some kind of broadcasting capability they still have weapons, they still have all this stuff I don't know how that is but they have it all and I guess the movie is making fun of stupidity which is like the lamest thing in the world you know I just I don't get it it wasn't funny in my view I didn't laugh maybe once or twice um it was just stupid it was a whole movie everything about it I don't think the acting was very good I don't think that I don't think anything about it was good and I mean I saw the whole thing if I hadn't kind of promised you guys that I'd watch it I would I would basically have turned it off after 10 minutes I mean if you want a good movie if you want a funny movie about somebody who wakes up hundreds of years in the future then watch Sleeper Sleeper which is I think hysterical movie really funny deals with sex I mean this is all about butt this, butt that watching butts, hearing butts, listening I mean it's just infantile and it's not even like it's not even clear people like you behave like this I mean the fact is people behave like this people behave like this are usually pretty smart but and then somebody says if I watch Hot Fuzz yeah I've watched Hot Fuzz Hot Fuzz is like I don't know super intelligent so I don't know if you guys see in it I know it makes fun of people worthy of making fun of but they're so worthy of making fun of it seems like a waste of time to make fun of them I didn't enjoy anything about it there was no sophistication I mean really go watch Woody Allen Sleeper I mean generally Woody Allen early Woody Allen is brilliant is super funny really well books in early Woody Allen that's my recommend if you want comedies watch the producers watch 12 chairs watch Woody Allen's Sleeper and what's the other one you made during the same period of time I forget it and then you made the Manhattan the neurotic ones but I don't it's just and I knew from the name because I looked and so was my judge I don't like anything my judges ever made I mean beaver some butt head is beaver some butt head it's stupid and I don't know man on a hill king of the hill stupid the whole thing is a celebration of human stupidity take the money and run is really funny take the money and run bananas it's clever it's social commentary you have to know something about what was going on at the time so it's hard it probably doesn't stand the test of time I'm not a big fan of Blazing Saddles because Blazing Saddles makes fun of a genre I love which is Weston's generally what Mel books became is kind of the guy who made fun of all the good movies I think is two best movies two best movies by far are his two first movies that is 12 Chairs which nobody has seen but is brilliant and a real critique of communism it's an anti-communist movie made in Hollywood in the 60's 70's early 70's so 12 Chairs and the producers those are two brilliant comedies that I mean 12 Chairs the guy is kind of stupid but it doesn't celebrate stupidity and give it world's class status which we're now going to critique in some way by an average guy who doesn't really stand really for anything and is discovering a purpose in life because of the stupidity around him it's just empty empty empty nonsense sorry sorry Shahzad I should have gone with the 7 Samurais because you mentioned it watch the 7 Samurais again because I haven't seen them in years that is a great movie it deals with real values the other thing I like about movies is when they have real characters when there's effort and thought put into characterization into building up characters and 7 Samurais does that every one of the Samurais is a character somebody you get to know you understand their motives they're doing why they're doing it and of course there's this conflict which is exciting yeah that's great movie making but anyway I'm going to watch that anyway Love and Death was very good Woody Allen's making fun of Love and Peace by Tolstoy I thought was one of his best movies yeah that was really good yeah I'm not a short story called Idiocracy I'm done with Idiocracy sorry alright Liam says Alex did a fantastic interview with Jordan Peterson Jordan seemed extremely impressed with Alex's breakdown he should have been have you asked Alex about contacting Jordan Peterson about having you on his show I have not because Alex I suppose somebody else said that Alex did mention me on Jordan Peterson's show yes it's behind the firewall so I was mentioned there no because Alex knows and Alex needs to navigate his relationship with Jordan Peterson the way he sees fit whether he wants to recommend me to Jordan Peterson or not is his business it sounds like he did so good for Alex but I don't like it when people you know I'm going to suggest you when it's right time when it's appropriate given my relationship with whoever it is so I have good for Alex for doing a great interview with Jordan Peterson and that's great exposure great exposure and Alex has a particularly good epistemological way of delivering content which I think goes against everything the religionists believe in in spite of the fact that Jordan Peterson needs to grab on to it but that is going to convey a completely different way of viewing the world to Jordan Peterson's audience and ultimately a way that Jordan will struggle with even if in the interview he really goes along with it so I think it's great that Alex did it oh here's another Alex one Alex did awesome at the end of the interview dancing around JP's original sin discussion and Alex contrasts it to raw optimistic objectivism I didn't watch half hour behind paywall when Alex goes further yeah so I'd like to I'd really like to hear the further he goes the more explicitly he becomes but I'm really glad that he I hope he didn't just dance around from what you're saying he actually took it on directly this original sin argument great if they're undermined that's where Jordan Peterson really needs to be undermined and really questioned let me just see so big worm says subjectivism's folly as you're describing it is shown in real time in the twitter files you see individuals slowly allowing their whims to let them rationalize new behavior emotions rather than principal thoughts yeah I mean I agree with that I think the problem at twitter and this is what the twitter files are showing is that there are no objective standards there are no clear objective guidelines the guidelines are purposely written in ambiguous ways that allow people to let their emotions kind of dictate it and once you're committed to a particular course of action then you just rationalize and paper over it and justify it in a variety of different emotionalistic ways but that's from a lack of objectivity you see the alternative to that is this well I have commandments and then you're stuck with those commandments and you can't negotiate them and you can't think of context and you can't what you need is an objective set of guidelines and you need people who can deal with those guidelines and deal with people's behavior objectively and that's tough because we're going to find those people and this is why I think it's very very difficult I've always said there has to be content moderation content moderation is very very difficult to do well to do well from a business perspective remember Twitter is a business from a business perspective how do you do it well and then Elon Musk is the same thing at the end of the day what you see with Elon Musk is whims because he has no standards there are no objective standards again so what's left I'm going to let everybody on except the people I really don't like I don't know Alex Jones and then oh yeah well Kanye Swastikas you can't have that Swastikas is over the limit why by what standard where the standards previous tweets okay but Swastika not where do you where's the line nothing zero zilch no answer right so now we've got the Twitter file showing Wim on the left and now we've got Elon Musk expressing his whim in his moderating policies no I mean there's a difference but not on principle James says since we were not ideologically committed to more freedom what made a shift to more rule of law free market direction in the 80s and 90s and will we see that shift again even without objectives and becoming dominant I think I think what happened is that there were certain forces in the culture that were committed to freedom they just weren't coming necessarily from the traditionalist religious conservatives but there were there were there were sources of impact both here and in England that impacted both Ronald Reagan going all the way back remember Ronald Reagan by the time he became president is influenced by a lot of different forces and actually he's Ronald Reagan is much better much better as a thinker as a speaker as a principled spokesman in 1964 than he is in 1980 I mean you guys go listen to his 1964 speech that he did in several occasions in support of the very Goldwater campaign you'll see very little religion you'll see a strong advocacy for individual liberty you'll see rejection of Medicare on a kind of a moral and a practical basis it's brilliant so those ideas were in the culture at the time and they were in the culture because I think they were the enlightenment still had more of an impact so the ideas of the founding fathers were still more impactful they were in the culture because of the because of the work that people like Mises and Ein Rand and Milton Friedman were doing and I think the 70s were the peak influence in politics of Friedman Rand Hayek Mises Hayek had a huge impact as critical as we are of Hayek he's not a religionist and he's and he's got a better conception of freedom than Newt Gingrich or any of these guys have Hayek was a strong influence on Margaret Thatcher we know that she studied with him at the IEA Institute of Economic Affairs and Milton Friedman Ein Rand was super influential I think in the United States in advocating for at least economic liberty that's the level of which people understood Ein Rand they didn't go deeper so there were ideas the ideas were there and then you know Ronald Reagan took them and he embraced religion at the same time and by doing that he set it in motion for the 80s and 90s to be better but he also created what would undermine it he created what would crush it he created compassionate conservatism which is where it went and of course Trump and then and now religiosity everywhere you look so Reagan undermined his own success by being in the moral majority and it's why Ein Rand wouldn't vote for him because he brought in the moral majority so can we see that shift even without objectiveism becoming dominant if there was another voice out there there was pro-liberty another enlightenment voice if there were more Milton Friedman if there was a Ronald Reagan somewhere but I don't see it I don't see the founding fathers ideas if I look at the intellectuals on the right I don't see anybody, any one of them who is a true student of enlightenment I don't see any one of them who's truly a founding fathers figure only one of them is committed for example to economic liberty not a single one of them so I don't know where it would come from if not from objectiveism Adam Campbell says you're on bible study back by popular demand I mean anytime I'm happy to talk bible Jordan Peterson I think brings it out in me because he's so obsessed with the bible I'm gonna watch him and Prager do their you know theatrics around trying to find in the bible the values that they think are important Max says do you think do you feel like you've learned anything of your value from Jordan Peterson his lectures or his philosophical view personally I find his murky thinking and needless convoluted views and objective truth insufferable yeah I mean I don't know that I've learned anything I've enjoyed some of his videos I think some of his observations are true and interesting particularly the older stuff so I like the stuff he did on Pinocchio I think his class that he does in front of students on lying why lying is bad is excellent not that I learn anything from it I don't think so I mean he didn't say anything I didn't know but I thought he did it really well and I was impressed by it and it was impactful so some of the way he thinks about certain issues I find interesting I've learned something from him about the way these people think about the way religionists think and the way religionists paint themselves into a corner and have no way out because they reject whim and then but then what so I find him interesting but I agree I don't think I've learned much and I find much of his thinking mooky insufferable it's hard for me to watch and particularly when I think people actually think they're learning something here people actually getting something important here that's so disappointing as compared to Iron Man or Leonard Peacock that this guy has this kind of audience it's just super disappointing Michael says people have a sense that something is eating away at the fabric of society yes they're looking for answers Jordan Peterson yes and looking for someone to blame the Jews, the Mexicans, the Chinese whatever yes there's no reason objectivism can't fill this void there is and that is that they don't want objectivism to fill the void they don't want it it's too demanding or they're not exposed to it yet but yeah we fill our minds right so as many of you as possible one mind at a time one mind at a time all right Harpa Campbell one major weakness at ARI is they don't have enough physicists objectivism needs to break down the Kantianism which dominates modern physics physics is the last fox or mystic hide into launch attacks against reason yeah we need more physicists we need more quite a few I'd also like to see some biologists take apart you know things like evolutionary psychology and things like that so I'd like people to actually explain evolution properly which is not easy friend Harpa says PSA creating Christ is now a documentary all right thank you friend Harpa Richard says caught YBS live what are Iran's favorite Christmas movies not a Christmas themed show but I've been getting into a TV drama called extraordinary attorney woo I think it's a very positive portrayal of autism yeah I think I saw the first episode or part of the first episode it looked kind of cute my favorite Christmas movie is God shop around the corner shop around the corner by my favorite comedy director of all time Ernst Lubitsch so if you want to see real genius at work in comedy in movies Ernst Lubitsch is your guy now some of his movies all of his movies are black and white some of his movies are actually first movies I think are silent but shop around the corner is brilliant it's an amazing story the reason because it's an amazing story remade you've got mail is a remake of shop around the corner it's considered a Christmas movie it's in English so it doesn't need to be subtitled it is with with God I don't know famous actor in the 30s he was very young and the woman is the same woman who loves letters God, pathetic my ability to bring forward names is just ridiculous same guy plays and it's a wonderful life Jimmy Stewart thank you so Jimmy Stewart isn't it and thank you so Jim Stewart and it's a fabulous movie it's one of the best Christmas movies I know of it's a fantastic love story and it's just the benevolence and the beauty and the fun of good filmmaking values of re-ended filmmaking and everything Lubech touched is fantastic, magnificent just funny even as making fun of the Nazis is really funny in spite of the fact that we shouldn't be laughing alright we've done the $20 plus questions we've got a bunch of 5-10 ones which I'll do fast but before we go on to those I just want to remind people to like the show before you leave please we've got 146, we've had over 150 people watching live 105 likes it really helps with the algorithm it helps get the show more visibility it helps get us out there please if you can come back and write a comment more comments, more visibility more algorithm help all of that is good so let's get that like button up to 150 also if you want to support the show trade a principle, value for value the best way to do it particularly for those of you who don't watch the show live is through some kind of monthly contribution on your onbookshow.com Patreon, subscribe star, locals we can even use Venmo or PayPal or whatever you want become a monthly contributor that would be fantastic and that will really support the show also want to remind you that tomorrow morning I think we're doing the show at 11 o'clock eastern time but I'm not committing to that I'm just saying I think that will be the time 11 o'clock eastern time tomorrow morning we'll be doing a runbook a YBS news update so we'll do that we'll talk about some of the headlines from the news from the weekend and from tomorrow morning and other than that evening shows on Tuesday and Thursday at 7 o'clock east coast time and a morning show every day this week I'm going to try to do them all at 11 a.m. east coast time but I'm not going to guarantee that alright that's my spiel let's go Michael asks if a publicans gave up the abortion issue would they win every election no it's not just a boy they didn't lose because of abortion they lost because they stand for nothing so no Alex Epstein for president yeah he was born in America he could be president come on Alex step up alright James says in an objectivist world would nations still have different cultures would Italians still talk with their hands and Scandinavians still be stiff and repressed I think to a large extent yes at least for a few hundred years and at some point I think a lot of that will go away at some point we'll all be much we'll all have integrated both genetically and culturally you know so I think that a lot of the cultural similarities will have gone away I think we'll all be human beings and we'll all talk with our hands because that's the natural way to talk and we won't be repressed anymore and Scandinavians will have liberated themselves from their ancient prudish repression and yeah you know so I think I think a lot of the differences will be subdued I think they're going to be differences because of weather and because of geography and other things that are going to have a reflection in the culture but I think in every significant way they were going on and already are I mean yes they might be they might talk with their hands they might not talk with their hands but both Italians and Scandinavians love opera and love Beethoven and a huge supporters of science so on the important cultural issues there are no different cultures there's basically one culture a culture that loves achievement Hoppe Campbell on these secular leftist cities that have a lot of entrepreneurship and ambition closer to an objective world and religious passive middle America yes yes I've always said that we won't win unless we can win in Silicon Valley so yes I have much more respect for those supposed leftist engineers in Silicon Valley building the startup that will change the world tomorrow than I do about front porch, conservative sitting on his porch doing nothing and you know and living his life in mediocrity Hoppe Campbell how fast was the car going when you jumped out prior to getting sexually assaulted were you confident you could survive the fall and retrieve your knife from your sock how fast I don't know not very fast he was slowing down for a variety of reasons his hands were occupied but probably I don't know 10 miles an hour I'm not sure but he was definitely slowing down quite a bit and as soon as I got out of the car he slammed on the accelerator because he wanted to get out of there because he was afraid I would be injured and coming after him I don't think I I can't remember about the knife sock I don't remember Michael asks how come no other country has a Hollywood industry like the US do European crushing taxes prevent that kind of capital formation or because America think big and are more optimistic I think Americans think big and think more optimistic but Italy has a great movie industry so does France they put on a lot of movies a lot of them are very good a lot of them are bad they're different than Hollywood movies in the sense that they're less big and less optimistic they have all types of movies but there's some very good Italian and French movies and the Chinese industry is really picking up and look at the Koreans look at the industry that they're creating and Bollywood is massive that's right thanks for reminding me Bollywood in India is a massive film industry so Hollywood reflects the American ethos and also reflects the fact that there's a lot of capital in the US a lot more capital here than anywhere else in the world Harper Campbell asks is Kanye West Nick Fuentes' mouthpiece a vice versa I think neither I think they're both both kind of anti-semitic authoritarian not jobs I mean with Kanye it might be real and with Nick he's a not job he's just a bad human being but I don't think they're each other's mouthpieces I think they just share a bunch of values and they're for their friends just remind people to like the show before you leave we're still only at 119 likes we can do better than that Liam says would you vote for Newt Gingrich today seems smarter, more passionate thoughtful than most others on the way he got a lot of legislation passed in the 90s he did some of it bad some of it not so bad but would I vote for him yeah probably given the alternatives would I be excited about voting for him no Fenblows says finally caught a show live I'm in schools I can't give much fell in love recently she moves like Dominique Franklin oh wow that's amazing I couldn't have handled handled her if I hadn't read The Fountainhead thank you Ron that's great enjoy all I can say Cook says God teaches Moses how to properly treat slaves right after 10 Commandments in Exodus 21 including permitting selling your daughter into slavery that one I don't remember I need to look at the original selling your daughter into slavery yeah there's a passage in which he tells them when they come back from war to take the young girls they've just captured a bunch of young girls they were supposed to kill them but they've captured them and he says okay you can keep them as your sex slaves basic make them your slaves and sex what do you do with them God there's nothing anti-slave in the Old Testament Ryan says this holier than now guy cheated on his wife while going after Clinton yes that's right he's divorced only after that with a new wife did he become a Catholic yes Hopper Campbell says if Jordan Peterson ever smiled his face with crack maybe James Taylor says evil preachers preachers tolerance until it is dominant then it tries to silence good yes absolutely James says in the Bible God wants a man to kill his son to show obedience yes powerful powerful powerful story God asking Abraham to kill his son under communism family member turns on each other constantly so Talitarianism is just one big Bible story absolutely Bible and religion generally embeds in us the epistemology of totalitarianism they have the truth we must follow their commandments that's religion that's authoritarianism anonymous anonymous Stardust says you're the best you are and thank you for what you do that's a great way to end the show thank you anonymous user thank you all this is a great you know super chat day a night and it's getting late over here so I am going to hit the bed hit the bed go to bed wind down a little bit first and then go to bed thank you for all the support I'll see you all tomorrow morning have a great rest of your weekend and have a great week coming up