 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Brookshow. All right, everybody. Welcome to Iran Brookshow on this Tuesday morning. Hope everybody's having a fantastic week. All right, let's jump into it. Although a quick reminder, there will be a show tonight, 7 p.m. Eastern Time. There will also be, I've moved the Thursday show to Wednesday. So tomorrow, I'll be interviewing Jonathan Honing on the value of having pets, or the value pets represent for you, a lot of material from Lena Pekoff, a lot of material from Ayn Rand herself. We'll be talking about Leonard's love for his dog and Ayn Rand's love for her cats. This is all in context of a new book that Jonathan has coming out about pets and about pets that has a lot of material in it from Lena Pekoff and Ayn Rand. So that should be fun tomorrow. It's, as I told you before, a topic I know nothing about. But I'm sure a lot of you do have pets. And interested, so it'll be fun to talk to Jonathan, get his insights, and talk about Ayn Rand's and Lena Pekoff's approach to the issue. So that'll be 7 p.m. tomorrow night. Tomorrow night, Eastern Time. And yes, no show on Thursday night. All right, let's see. As usual, tons to talk about. OK, let's start with the most controversial topic on our list. And that is immigration. So there is clearly this crazy situation going on in the southern border of the United States. It's been going on for years. But it seems to only get worse over time. And that is that thousands of people every day, hundreds of thousands by the month, are showing up at the southern border of the United States. They're not even trying to come in illegally and escape detection. They're coming in and basically announcing that they're asylum seekers. And they want asylum in the United States. They, I guess, get registered, which is consuming massive amounts of resources, huge amount of paperwork and everything else. And then they get sent somewhere. Some of the southern states are sending them over to New York and Chicago and other places, some of them in the state. And basically, they're sent somewhere to basically await for a decision about their asylum status with the hope that they get accepted. But even if they don't, their assumption is that it'll take years to hear, because there's so many people coming across in this context. There's so many people coming across that the immigration courts have no way to keep up with this. There's no way for them to keep track of this issue. So their assumption really is that they'll just be here until the courts decide one way or the other if the courts decide against them. They'll try to stay illegally if the courts decide for them. And only a small fraction of them, the courts are actually going to decide for them. The courts are pretty stingy when it comes to asylum. So it's not like all of these hundreds of thousands of people are going to get asylum in the United States. That's just not going to happen. So they figure they're going to stick around until then. And why not? And the absurdity of it is that at the same time as the administration is letting them in, they cannot work because they're not legally in the United States as legal residents. They're here in the status of waiting around for the decision to be made on their asylum status. So they are basically recipients of welfare. So the United States provides welfare. I mean, the United States has become like Germany and Sweden. Come over here. You know, and we'll give you a check, and we'll give you a housing, and we'll take care of you. Now, this is nuts. This is exactly what Milton Friedman talked about when he said open immigration and welfare. But here it's even more absurd because it's not like they even have the option to work. They don't. They're being brought in here or they're coming in here with no ability to work. And they have to be. The only way to survive is to be dependent on the state. And of course, they don't want to be dependent on the state. They're coming to the United States not so they can be dirt poor in the United States and live off of government handouts. They're coming to the United States, they can work, and they can make a living, and they can be better off. But we don't allow them that. We don't make that possible. So you've got a crazy, nutty situation where we're bringing hundreds of thousands of people into the country who are not allowed to work and who now have to live on welfare. And of course, this is going to cause resentment. And of course, this is going to cause problems in the cities where they live in. And of course, we penalize employers for having illegal immigrants, which is nuts, right? We also burden employers with the responsibility of figuring out whether somebody is legal or illegal, which I think right there is unconstitutional and wrong. And it's a completely, utterly broken system, completely. And yeah, there is an immigration crisis. There's a border crisis. There's a massive immigration crisis. We're not allowing in enough people who actually want to come here to work and facilitating their ability to work. And we're bringing in people who are going to be welfare recipients. And by definition, we don't allow them to work. So the only way to solve this is A, to abolish the asylum-seeking, the whole asylum-seeking mechanism, which is built on pure altruism, which has nothing to do with any kind of legitimate immigration policy. And to base immigration 100% on employment and to allow into the United States anybody who has a job in the United States who can find a job in the United States. I'm fine with even making it a requirement that they find the job before they enter the US. All they need to do is get an employment agency to say or find an employer to say that they are willing to employ this person. And they should be let in automatically. Now, I think many of the people at the border right now would come in because I think many of the people at the border right now could find employment in the US. There's massive shortages of all kinds, high-end, all the way to low-end. I've talked about the fact that there's massive shortage in America of construction workers, just workers to build homes. Well, imagine if contractors who were building homes could travel down to Guatemala, travel down to Venezuela, travel down to Mexico, travel down to these various countries and offer people employment contracts to come into work. And they could just come into the United States, maybe even given a little stipend so they could fly in rather than walking to the border. Or imagine if the employers just set up booths right at the Mexican border on the Mexican side and sign people up to jobs. There is about 10 million unfilled jobs, vacancies, right now in the United States, they're not being milled. So absolutely bring them in. Is there going to impact? Should there be an impact? There's always been an impact. Immigrants always impact the society in which they come in. Stop being cowards. Stop being afraid of that impact. And shape that impact to make it a good impact, not a negative impact. But the United States needs hundreds of thousands, millions of people. And of course, the more people come, the more jobs will be created. The more people come, the more immigrants you will need. So let's shift from a pretend closed border, asylum seeking system that doesn't allow qualified people to come in for work to a system, a comprehensive immigration system that allows in anybody who wants to work. All the other proposals are just absurd and ridiculous and will not solve the problem. A wall will not solve the problem. Putting troops on the border will not really solve the problem. It might reduce the number of immigrants, but it certainly won't solve the issue that immigration is trying to solve both on both sides and a massive violation of rights. So immigration is the logic of how this country was built. Immigration is necessary for the country to continue rapid economic growth. Immigration will only make this country better, stronger. But it has to be immigration around actual employment, not immigration around welfare, which is what immigration is today. Or at least a portion of immigration is today, that portion, large portion, that constitute what's going on in the South. I mean, it's better not to register them. It's better to allow them in as illegal immigrants than it is to register them as asylum seekers, because illegal immigrants cannot get welfare, so illegal immigrants actually have to work. And that makes them productive residents of the United States, which is much better than asylum seekers who come into the country and who get welfare automatically, immediately. It really is an insane system. Nobody's proposing the right thing. And the negotiations between the Republicans and the Biden administration continue about trying to, quote, solve the problem at the border, which neither side has any idea how to do, and in order to free up aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan as if those issues are related. But that's politics. That's the host trading that goes on with politics today. And that is what is going on in DC. No compromise has been reached yet, probably won't be reached until after the Christmas break when our politicians decide that they want to come back to Washington. Actually, it's better if they don't. But they want to come back to Washington after the holidays and resume the negotiations, which I can almost guarantee will result in not much better than the outcome that we have right now. It is truly insane that there is no discussion of rights. There's no discussion of the rights of the immigrants. There is no discussion of the rights of Americans. Nobody cares about individual rights. I mean, even the people here on my chat who object, individual rights are not an issue. I mean, we have become a world of pragmatists. The reality is that immigrants have individual rights. They have a right. A border doesn't eviscerate their right. They haven't offended anybody. They haven't hurt anybody. They haven't violated anybody's rights. And yet, they are treated as criminals. Americans have rights. They have a right to employ whoever they want. They have a right to invite to stay at their house anybody they want. They have a right to invite anybody they want. Nobody talks about rights. Even among so-called friends of ours here on the chat, the issue of individual rights never comes up. Every individual rights are universal principle. And the founding fathers understood rights to be universal principle. Rights don't end at your border. Rights don't end at your border. It's just a question of whether your government has an obligation at the border to protect those rights or not. I am right now in the context of the world right now, as I've said over and over again, I support a work-based immigration policy. And I understand that rights are going to be violated, but I just don't see how in the context of the world in which we have right now, we are going to be able to pass anything better than that. In an ideal society where rights are protected, I'm sure I'm for open borders, absolutely. Open borders that screen for criminals and terrorists and infectious diseases, but absolutely I'm for open borders in ideal society. But in the world in which we live today, I recognize that in the world in which we live today, we violate rights all the time, sadly. But I want to minimize the violation of rights. And the way to minimize the violation of rights is to free up immigration as much as possible, as much as possible and to constrain it only to the extent that we don't allow people to come in just to take welfare and in that sense exploit other Americans that's violating the rights. If they come here to work, you have no basis to exclude them. Talk about immigration and attitudes towards immigrants. You know, Donald Trump seems to exceed himself with every cycle and of course exceed himself in his nastiness, obnoxiousness and irrationality on an ongoing basis. But that is what ultimately makes him appealing to many of his voters. This is why people vote for him. They vote for him because he's willing to say things like that a lot of people believe, things like poisoning the immigrants, poisoning the blood of our country. Immigrants poisoning the blood of our country. Which as many people have already mentioned in the press is almost that they're a quote from Hitler in terms of Jews poisoning the blood of the country. It is a disgusting, xenophobic, horrible statement. Horrible statement. Of somehow mixing the blood of Americans with immigrants. I am as an immigrant, I'm an immigrant. I guess I'm poisoning the blood or my kids are. I'm probably not gonna have any kids with a non-immigrant. My wife's an immigrant too. So maybe my kids, there's children of an immigrant is gonna poison the blood of whom. It truly is despicable that an American president, former president with some high probability future president speaks this way, talks this way and what is happening to his popularity? It's going up. He's more popular now than a month ago. His polling numbers keep improving, particularly relative to the Republican field. He dominates, what do you call it? Nikki Haley, he dominates DeSantis. He is, unless he goes to jail, unless something, unless he drops dead, he is the Republican nominee for president of the United States. I mean, it is stunning. I keep saying this, but it's worth repeating constantly how stunning it is that a despicable moron like Donald Trump is going to be the nominee of the Republican Party again, again. And that the things that he says, the stuff that he does has zero impact, zero impact on his support among voters, on his support, it's just stunning. And again, we're not yet at the point of comparing him to Biden, we'll get there probably. We're at the point of comparing each other Republicans and yet he's still got his support. It's truly a symptom of the fact that the Republican Party, per se, and the Democratic Party, but in this context, the Republican Party is a completely bankrupt, empty, meaningless, shallow political party. It is an entity that should disappear. It should be eradicated as a political force in this country. It is time for the Republicans came out of the wigs, and the wigs disappeared. The same thing has to happen to the Republican Party. He really needs to go away if this guy represents for them the be-all, end-all of what a president should look like. Talk about Trump. As you know, he continues to try to get his trials postponed. He continues to try to make the argument that he had immunity. This argument got a significant setback. Again, another setback, it keeps getting setbacks, but another setbacks just yesterday when Mark Meadows, his chief of staff, found out that his attempt to move the trial from a state court, the trial in Georgia from a state court to a federal court was turned down. He based his argument on the idea that everything he did vis-a-vis the election, he was working for Donald Trump, who was president, and therefore was part of his function as a federal employee, and therefore it should be tried in federal court. He was asking the same thing Trump was asking, i.e. federal immunity as part of the presidential immunity. And in that sense, by turning it down, and by the way, the judge who wrote the opinion that turned him down, a federal judge, is considered one of the most conservative judges on the bench anyway, a close ally of Thomas. And he wrote a scathing rebuke, basically saying no. Basically, there's no implied immunity here. This is, he was not doing this under his responsibility to the president of the United States. He was doing this under his responsibility to Donald Trump, a candidate in an election, and therefore he returned this to the state court. Again, the one chance Republicans have to save themselves is if Donald Trump goes to jail and somehow withdraws from the election or cuts a deal in order to avoid jail, or something like that. That is the only chance Republicans have to somehow redeem themselves from the disgrace, I mean, disgrace of choosing Donald Trump as their candidate. So, and then of course, in the context of the Georgia thing, Rudy Giuliani was just found guilty of defamation and he has to pay 146 million dollars which I have to admit, you know, as I think it's well known how much I despise Rudy Giuliani. So I can't say I feel bad about that one. All right, let's see. All right, before we get to that, let me just remind everybody Super Chat is available. You can ask questions, you can make comments. The stickers are available, you can support the show. We also have a poll going on, a poll that is quite surprising. Favourite economist, Mises Hayek Friedman-A-Soul. I mean, at least for anybody who is an advocate of liberty, this should be really easy and it's surprising how uneasy it is. But you know, I'll get to why I think it should be easy in a little while, but it is a little surprising from my listeners that this is how the poll is bending. Okay, but it is surprising. I didn't write best or most important. I wrote favourites and maybe that is it. All right, let's see. As usual, you know, people like, you know, you guys distort what I say and pivot what I say, you know, I have not said anything negative about anybody voting for Trump in a general election. Haven't said that, didn't say a word about that. I talked about it in the context of a primary, talked about it in the context of this is the best guy, that this is the guy that the Republican Party can nominate. I talked about it in the context of the primary and in the context of the Republican Party. In a context between Trump and Biden, I have an opinion about who you should vote for, but we haven't talked about that yet. And I haven't said anything about people voting for one or the other as anything negative or otherwise. All right, let's see, what else did I wanna say? Yes, I wanted to say that tonight there'll be a show, 7 p.m. East Coast time. And then I wanna talk about, yeah, so we'll talk about that. And then tomorrow, we've got Jonathan Honing on the show, an interview with Jonathan Honing about loving pets. Pets, yes. So a topic I know nothing about, I don't have pets and I have had back pets. And anyway, we will see. So that's the plan for tonight and tomorrow. Of course, there'll be news roundup shows every day, I think, this week unless something happens. All right, and let's see. We talked quite a bit since October 7th about kind of the rise in anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic views in the United States. The tragedy of this is how widespread this is, how widespread it is, particularly among young people. I mean, young people are dominantly, overwhelmingly pro-the Palestinians in the current conflict in Israel. Young people are, in a sense, you know, abandoning Biden. Biden's gonna have a real problem getting young people to vote for him because of his position on Israel, which is of all things to attack Biden on, this is the thing they choose to. But it's shocking what's going on at the universities, the extent, the more educated they are, the more likely they've been to universities, the more pro-Palestinian they are. And, you know, I just saw this post that yesterday there was a pro-Israeli event hosted by, I guess, the Jewish community in New York City, had three speakers, including the Israeli mother of the 19-year-old who was raped and held captive by Hamas, right? And this was gonna be in New York. The consequence of this event in New York City, there was massive number of protesters. They started banking on the event facility, would not let the event go forward, chanted, sneered, banged on the doors. You know, and they were doing this so violently that the NYPD had to be called. All the guests had to be escorted from the premise in a NYPD van, and the van had to be canceled and everybody moved. It's fascinating is that, and as you see, video after video after video of this, everybody among the protesters, most of the protesters, have their faces covered. They are masked in one way or another, face masks, all of them, shouting just the most hateful stuff and sneering as if they have some kind of moral superiority. Moral superiority. I mean, this is just, this is New York City. In New York City today, for Jews to assemble, to do an event, they need protection. And indeed, the protection is so weak that these Jews can't even, can't even have the event. The event needs to be canceled because everybody is so intimidated by thugs, pro-Palestinian thugs who are now dominating the debate, dominating discussions and dominating New York streets. It is shocking and disturbing and horrific, but it should not be a mystery. There is an excellent article today on free press. This is Barry Weiss's free press about the fact that anti-Semitism and anti-Israel sentiments are being taught in American kindergartens all the way up to high schools. And I'm not talking about private Muslim schools where I don't know the Islamic community or whatever. I'm talking about public schools. On the public dime, you know, in one Midtown Manhattan school, they did this whole project about why do people have different noses? With a clear anti-Semitic theme to this, this is a teacher who's won prizes and got the highest distinction, the Big Apple Award, the highest distinction for a city teacher for being, quote, liberation-inspired educator. Now, you know what liberation-inspired means. This is a woman who her education mission is centering Arab narratives the way my schooling never did. Or, you know, she shares collective action guides on how to, quote, speak with your child about Palestine and how to, quote, colonize your teaching. She, on October 9th, stated, we stand with those tearing down border walls, ambiguous enough, right, on October 9th. We show solidarity with those still fighting to free their stolen land. She talks about a philosophy for educating kids. Our work of decolonizing education begins in preschool. It is very much already a political practice in preschool. But this continues. I mean, this is high schools in California, which are now under the new Ethnic Studies model curriculum. And where there are mandated lessons on the marginalization of black, Hispanic, Native Americans and Asian-American people. And of course, the whole Palestinian issue is a natural for that to go right in there. More than a million secondary school students in all 50 states are learning about the history of the Middle East from a Brown University choices program which openly accepts funding from Qatar. It's a pro-Palestinian curriculum which according to multiple lesson describes Israel as a Zionist enterprise in Palestine and a Pothide State, a settler colony and a military occupier. In New York public school system, which educates more than one million students, they're indoctrinated with anti-Israel and to a large extent anti-Semitic propaganda. So we have our universities dominated by post-modernist, anti-Israeli, anti-Jewish, anti-Zionist, and the focus has been on the universities. But really if you focus on the universities, it's too late. The real challenge is in schools, in public schools. Public schools that are now forced in the curriculum to talk about intersectionality. They don't call it that, but by emphasizing and talking about and reiterating the focus on oppressed groups, that's really what they're talking about. So we now have a whole program from kindergarten all the way through our universities indoctrinating our kids with an anti-Semitic view an anti-Semitic view of the world, a distorted, perverted view of the history of what happened in Israel and of the current struggle that exists in Israel. And it is not surprising that while the American people broadly in polls support Israel, young people, those under 30 overwhelmingly support the Palestinians. These are the kids who have gone through the school system and have been indoctrinated. Highly encourage you to read this article in the Free Press, Barry Weiss's publication. It's called, How US Schools Teach Anti-Semitism by Francesca Block. It came out today in Barry Weiss' upstack. So highly encourage you guys to check that out. Read the whole poll. I don't understand what the whole poll is. What are you talking about? I don't know what you're talking about, wonderful human. Which poll? People are blaming TikTok, so it is interesting. TikTok, of course, is being blamed for this, but this is far deeper than TikTok. Kids are primed for TikTok. They're primed for the ideas in TikTok. They're primed for the ideas in TikTok off of this. What do you mean we read the whole poll? I don't know which poll you're talking about, but I've seen many polls, several polls, that have been clear about the attitude towards Israel and the Palestinians. Read the whole poll for what? I mean, I'm not sure what the relevance is. It is interesting that the New York Times is reporting how much Biden is losing voters among young people for being too pro-Israel. So do you approve of President Biden's handling of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? 57% disapprove among college students. Indeed, many of those who disapprove of Biden's handling of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict actually claim they would vote for Trump because they think that he would be less supportive of Israel. All right, okay, Ryan asked a question relevant to this. What percentage of young people to support Palestine are actually philosophically corrupt versus being misled about the history? The history I was taught it would be impossible to support Israel? Yeah, I mean, I think a big chunk of them, a big chunk of them, it's because they've been misled by the history. But the teachers are clearly motivated philosophically. So I don't think that it's necessarily that the students are philosophically corrupt, although they could do a little bit of research and they could stop chanting chants where they don't even understand the words. They don't know what they refer to, like river to the stein, they can't name the river into fada and they don't know what intifada is and they don't know when the last intifada was and what it refers to. So you can't blame them for not being, not investigating what they're chanting, not being curious about what is going on, accepting the teachers blindly. But yes, the whole point of what I just said was that these kids are being taught bogus history, they're being taught wrong history, they're being taught it from kindergarten. And it's not just history, right? They're also taught that the oppressed are to be admired, are to be taken care of, are always have virtue on their side. And that is very much embedded in Christianity and it's very much embedded in woke culture. So it's very easy for that idea, right? It's very easy for that idea to be picked up by young people because it's everywhere. Who questions altruism? And this is just an application of altruism, just an application of altruism. All right, let me, let me, let's continue and then I'll go back to questions. All right. Yeah, the United States yesterday announced that they've established a coalition and international mission to counter attacks on the commercial vessels in the Red Sea. It includes 10 countries, noticeably absence from the list of some key countries that are relevant to this. So the 10 countries in the United States, obviously United Kingdom, Bahrain, which is the only Arab country, Canada, France, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, the shells, which is fascinating. What the hell does the shells have to contribute in Spain? Not clear what this coalition is going to do, not clear how this coalition is gonna respond to attacks on the shipping, not clear if this coalition is gonna take any kind of action against the Houthis directly or just be defensive. None of this is clear. So it'll be interesting what actually happens. The Houthis, it seems like I've already backtracked a little bit out of fear for this or maybe the Iranian overloads have told them to back off. And it said they'll only attack Israeli ships. It'll be interesting, does this international coalition then defend Israeli ships in addition to international shipping? Missing from this coalition, of course, is Israel. Notice that whenever there's an international coalition to do something, they never invite Israel in order to appease the Arabs. This is the United States, typical. It was in 91, the coalition to beat back Saram Hussein from Kuwait. It was before the, after 9-11, the coalition of the willing or whatever, Israel was not invited. So Israel's never invited, even though it's clearly, you know, motivated, incentivized, and would join eagerly, it's never invited because the United States cares more about appeasing the Arab world than actually forming coalitions that actually can win and actually forming coalitions that are meaningful. It's also interesting that Saudi Arabia is not part of this coalition. Jordan is not part of this coalition, even though they have a strong interest in this. And maybe the country that has the most interest in it is Egypt. Now I did want to show, I want to show you a, whoops, let me do this. Where is this? I want to show you, oh, it's disappeared on me. Oh no, it was another tab, all right, there it is. I want to show you a map because I want to make sure that we all, this is what we're talking about. You can see Saudi Arabia, you can see Yemen there. That's where the Houthis are. They're fighting a civil war with the Yemenite government who will control Yemen. It's been going on for a long time. Saudi Arabia has been on the side of the Yemeni government and the Houthis on the side has Iran on its side. There's currently kind of a, in a sense, a ceasefire because the Saudi Arabians and the Iranians have made up. So there's kind of a ceasefire right now. But you can see that tiny little straight over there, right? That tiny little separation between Africa and Asia which all boats have to travel through. Now note, if you continue the Red Sea a little bit further, you'll get the Sinai Peninsula split into two. If you go to the left to the west, that ultimately becomes the Suez Canal and that's the route directly to Europe. And if you go to the right, it goes to Elat and Akaba. Elat is a port on the Israeli port. Akaba is a port on the Jordanian coast. Akaba is actually the only port Jordan has. So any shipping has to go through here. Any imports to Jordan that come by boat have to go through here to get to Akaba. So you think Jordan would have a huge incentive. Egypt has a huge incentive because it controls the Suez Canal and of course the Suez Canal is a massive source of revenue for Egypt. So in general, you know, this is one of the most important shipping, what do you call it, narrows shipping areas in the world. Everything that goes to the Suez Canal has to go through here, no other way. The only other way to get to Europe is go around Africa, around Africa. So just thought a map above Yemen is Oman, Saudi Arabia you can see on the other side of the straits you get Djibouti, Eritrea, Sudan, Somalia, you can see this is where Somali pirates operated. This is why it was such a big deal when they did operate and why by constraining that strait between Djibouti and Yemen, you can shut down a big portion of global shipping. Another challenge that global shipping has right now is the fact that the Panama Canal to a large extent is shut down. There it shut down because there's just not enough water because of drought conditions in Panama. There's not enough water. I didn't even know that it required kind of fresh water to fill the canal. I thought it was all from the ocean but the Panama Canal is functioning at a very low level and therefore very few ships are traveling there. So generally to get from Asia to Europe is super difficult and super expensive these days and I wouldn't be surprised if you see increasing cost of goods resulting from the supply crunch created by all of that. So that's what's going on in Eritrea. We will keep track of kind of this coalition, international coalition to see what happens. Quickly, I'll just talk about US Steel quickly. As I predicted yesterday, people on the right will be offended by the fact that Japan is buying an American company. Right and the left of course, JD Vance immediately came out with a statement condemning this for national security reasons, which is a joke. Last time I looked, Japan was an ally of the United States. It's a joke in any case but it certainly is a joke given that it's a Japanese company. Two democratic senators have already come out against this. The demonstration has not taken a stand yet but Republicans on Twitter, you know the kind of national conservative types are going nuts. How can America sell US Steel? It's not yours to sell, it's shareholders to sell. How can the American government allow this? How can a Japanese company buy such a large American company? You know, this is kind of the economic nationalism, the insanity of reconcileism that dominates the right right now and why the right is such a enemy of economic freedom and economic liberty and such an enemy of freedom. I'm sure Taka Carlson is gonna come out against this in dramatic fashion. Of course, one of the reasons US Steel has failed is because of the subsidies and all the protectionists. I mean, think about the tariffs that Trump passed. All, I mean, US Steel didn't fail but it's not, you know, it's gotten to the point where he needs to sell. Think about all the protectionism that Donald Trump, all the tariffs, the steel tariffs. Did it protect US Steel? No, it probably hurt them. And indeed, by the way, one of the reasons Japan, a Japanese company wants to buy US Steel company is because it's a way to get around those tariffs. It's truly stunning. This is not an American first strategy tariffs. It's not an American first strategy to prevent the sale. It is an American last strategy and always has been and was when it was done and still is. Anyway, US Steel is now or will be soon Nippon Steel unless everybody can convince the Biden administration to challenge this, which might happen, we'll see. All right, finally, we have a, it turns out the Pope, you know, has been a progressive Pope. Has been a progressive Pope. He's been accused of being a progressive for a long time. And he is, he has just announced in, I think, what is pretty revolutionary, that priests can now bless same-sex couples. So you can have a Catholic wedding. It appears. Now this is a radical shift. And I'm sure there are a lot of people, a lot of people within the Catholic church are really upset. But this is, this will go a long way, I think, in the world out there to normalize gay marriage. It is fantastic. It is good. But it is pretty, pretty radical. And we'll see how this kind of creates conflict within the Catholic church and what happens, right? Abuy-Yin says he's objectively non-biblical. That's a really funny statement, Abuy-Yin, as if any Pope is biblical. As if any of them know what the Bible actually means. I mean, it's pretty funny, right? Not to mention all those priests who sadimized young boys. I'm sure they were very biblical. I mean, the Catholic church has never been biblical. It's a political institution that is engaged in power and has a set of belief that is malleable, that is gonna change constantly, right? I mean, at the end of the 19th century, the Pope decided that usury, or at least some level of usury was okay. The Bible didn't change. I mean, they keep changing how they interpret the Bible, constantly, right? I think it's wonderful because I think it's wonderful because it is more normalization, the greater normalization of gay marriage, which I think is a positive thing. And so, yes, so I care because I think it helps normalize the phenomena and it'll make it less likely that religionists of the future will do, or Supreme Courts in the United States, will do away with it. I have no idea the details of this, and I don't know if he's blessing gay marriage. I don't know if that means actually doing, performing a marriage semi-harmonie. I don't know what exactly it means, but here clearly he's approving the blessing of gay marriage. I guess he's approving of gay marriage. I think that's a good thing. And look, the Catholic church is incredibly powerful and has huge sway in the world. And this is a move in the right direction. You've got, particularly in Africa, where you've got probably the largest Catholic population in the world, maybe right now, is in Africa, and it's growing, and they are super anti-gay. Maybe the Pope announcing that gay marriage is okay will relieve some of this horrible, horrible, horrible anti-gay sentiment that exists in Africa. Savanos, thank you. Wow, $100, really, really appreciate that. Savanos has brought us very, very close to our target, we're now only $14 away, so I'm sure somebody will step in and get us to target. All right, that was it. I want to remind you a few things. Tonight, that'll be a short 7 p.m. topic to be determined. It'll be up online. Second, tomorrow, I'll be interviewing Jonathan Honing about loving pets, which would be fun. And then you can ask a question on the super chat. And yes, please, if you're not a subscriber, please subscribe, subscribe, subscribe, subscribe. Really, really important. Please like the show before you leave, and like, share, comment, do all that stuff. It helps with the algorithm. All right, let's take some questions. Bree says, in 1979, I take me great to the United States. My father had to show $5,000 in cash and prove he had a house. He had to invest $15,000 in a company to get a green card. Today, they would seize the cash. Seize the cash. That's right, they would take it. Maybe not 5,000, but... And the investment would have to be $900,000, you know? And yes, and it's a million times more difficult to get to immigrate now than it was in 1979. And it looks like it's only gonna get harder. That is the answer to all the issues around immigration is to make immigration, legal immigration harder, which is nuts and unfortunate. And it's just sad and depressing. All right, we have a poll going on. Who is your favorite economist? Mises Hayek Friedman-Soul. Right now, Mises is leading with 46% Hayek 12, Friedman 15, and Soul 27. We have 126 watching live right now. Only 93 people have participated in the poll. So please participate in the poll. Give us your opinion. I will tell you my opinion later on. I want more people to participate. So more of you participate and choose who in you, you know, who is your favorite economist? Favorite is ambiguous. It is the most important, the most meaningful, the most significant, the most substantial. Yeah, I mean, in my view, this is a slam dunk. There should be 100 to 0000. But, you know, I can't control everybody else's views. James says, how much is it to review a movie trailer? I don't do movie trailers. You can't review a movie trailer. A new movie is coming out about the Civil War in the United States. Also, I'm wondering what countries benefit the most from US Civil War, from a US Civil War? What industries are the first to go in a Civil War? Well, I mean, I mean, benefit in the sense of power. China, China benefits the most. I mean, China, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, the evil countries in the world. The countries that rely primarily on force in the world, the countries that want to dominate the world, want to replace the United States as a significant power. Those are the countries that benefit the most from a Civil War. So I'd say China, Russia, and then under them is Iran, North Korea, and, you know, Saudi Arabia, it's not clear because Saudi Arabia has some benefits from the United States, but certainly the axis of evil. Everybody, any authoritarian regime, any authoritarian regime benefits from an American Civil War. In terms of industries, I don't know what it means to go, but, you know, Civil War would disrupt the ability to produce and to export. Technology would decline. Chip industry would move, you know, whatever's left of it in the United States would move away. Basically, anything that requires the human mind would move elsewhere. And particularly if you had a Civil War today, who are the good guys and who are the bad guys? There are no good guys, no bad guys. Everybody's a bad guy. Why would anybody stay? I think you see mass migration out of the country, people trying to, and the most productive, the smartest, you've seen a huge brain drain out of the United States. But on that end, it's not clear where you would go because Europe would suffer dramatically from a decline in the U.S. A lot of people would go to Canada. A lot of people would go to Canada. But hard to tell where people would go given there's not a lot of freedom out there. The whole world is turning in a very, very bad direction. All right, we have over 100 votes, but still people seem to be changing their minds. The vote kind of keeps going down instead of up. What's up with that? We have 101 votes. Don't forget to vote in the poll. We've got a bunch of people watching and not a lot of people participating in our poll of your favorite economist. So go up and then I'll tell you who is mine once this is over. I guess maybe you don't want to disagree with me, so you don't want to vote against what you think, what some people might think is mine. All right, well, I don't know. I don't know why so few people are voting. Today's left is a menace, Robert says. And that's why today's unprincipled, anti-ideological, demagogue-driven right must be opposed, I agree completely. We must once again have a reasonable, at least semi-credible opposition party. Yep, been saying this since 2015. Trump destroyed the Republican Party as an opposition party. And now you can't blame it on Trump anymore. It's Republicans who basically have emptied the Republican Party of any quality at all. It's just a shell. It's just meaningless. It's just a nothing. It's a Trump abyss. A Trump swamp. How about that? A Trump swamp. Tom Bowers, do you think the US West needs a larger Navy? Yes, to a sure-free trade. Yes, and also, I think the US needs a larger Navy because the most likely existential conflict the United States faces is a conflict with China. And to face such a conflict, it needs a Navy. I think in a very, very advanced missile defense system, and it needs a Navy. And that's what the US should primarily be investing in right now is beef up the Navy and beef up defense systems against all the kind of missiles that the Chinese might have. And of course, free trade, I think, is essential. Now, free trade, there are a lot of people claiming that trade is in decline. And if trade is in decline, international trade in decline, you don't need as much of a Navy. But I'm hopeful the trade is not in decline and, therefore, a Navy is necessary in order to protect the sea lanes, particularly if there's a conflict with China. Frank says none of these self-described atheists have ever read the Bible. So it's no wonder they don't know geography of river to the sea. Give me a break. Well, is that really the issue? I bet you most Christians don't know river to the sea. What the hell it means? I mean, I don't think it's about reading the Bible. And I doubt they're atheists in any kind of meaningful sense. But what sea? Do people even know what sea is involved? Never mind what rivers involve. I'm not sure many people know what the sea is. Shali says you really should do more debates with YouTubers and such. I'd give you much more exposure to new audiences, especially with Israeli Palestine. I'm happy to do debates. I need to be invited to those debates. I need somebody to debate with who's not a complete kook. But I'm open to debates. There are a few people I won't debate. I've mentioned those. Finkelstein and the anarchists, the complete nutty anarchists. I won't debate. But there are plenty of other leftists, there are plenty of other people on the right and the left who disagree with me. And I'm happy to debate them. Send them my way. I will not debate Dave Smith. How often do I have to say that? I won't debate Chomsky. I won't debate Dave Smith. I won't debate Finkelstein, whatever his name is. Tough. What can I say? All right. That was it. Let me just say something about the poll. Of those four, soul is the least original. Soul is not, and we're talking about economics, is not an original economist. He is a good communicator of economics. He makes interesting arguments. And he's good on certain cultural issues. But as an economist, he's a free market economist, but a mainstream free market economist. He's not an original thinker. He doesn't expand the envelope. He doesn't make it bigger in any significant way. Jordan Peterson is a hack across the board. Friedman is pretty good. He's an excellent communicator of all of these. Friedman is the best communicator of economic principles. Maybe the greatest communicator of economic ideas ever. He is great at taking difficult economic ideas and simplifying them and providing those explanations. He is mixed on some of economics. He buys way too much into conventional analysis. He's terrible in his presentation of the epistemology of economics, although so are the others, really. He's good at most things. He was bad on a central bank until the very end of his life. He was pro-central bank. He was supportive of a central bank. And God, I have fans of Dave Smith on this chat. Why do you even bother coming here? God, Dave is such an empty hack. I mean, he's such a nothing. And you guys up here on my chat promoting him? Come on, give me a break. All right, Hayek is a really good thinker when it comes to economics. I don't think he's a particularly original thinker when it comes to anything else. He's a good economist when it comes to a lot of things, although, again, it was very compromising and mixed on things like a central bank but also on elements of welfare state. I mean, the only economist on this list who is a true unabashed, uncompromising advocate for laissez-fait economics, for freedom, for capitalism. For capitalism as the system of private property, of capitalism as a system of no regulation, no redistribution, a complete dedication to individualism and to free markets, truly free markets. And who was an original economist and an original thinker and really somebody who pushed economics dramatically forward and contributed dramatically to economics is Ludwig von Mises. Mises is the greatest economist probably who ever lived. He is the most important economist certainly of the 20th century. Somebody mentioned Sey, Sey was a great economist of the 19th century and Sey should have been on this list and I would say Mises and Sey, Sey is definitely up there. Menga, who is the founder of the Austrian School of Economics, is important, von Bevek and other Austrian economists. But Mises is, he's got problems, particularly in his methodology and in his epistemology. But he is, you know, the greatest economist and the stuff that he wrote about government intervention, the stuff that he wrote about why markets work and how markets work and the mechanisms by which they work. Yeah, I mean, he's not the end of economics. There are lots of people who need to do a lot of work based on that, but that's great. And if you want a introductory book in economics, the best introductory book in economics is still, even though it's old, is still Henry Haasler's Economic and One Lesson. So that is the introductory and he was a friend of Mises, I remember as a friend of Mises for a while. But yes, Ludwig von Mises in my view is my favorite economist because he's the greatest economist because he's the most, he's the tourist economist, right? Even if he, even he is not perfect, he's pretty damn good. I pencil, I think is very flawed and I pencil is not Mises. Haasler does a hack, give me a break. Let me throw up a second. And no, Haasler does a genius. Haasler does amazing, is amazing communicative. Economic ideas. Again, Haasler is not an originator. He is not an originator, but as an application. And as somebody who communicates, he is brilliant. And sure, Bastiat is great, but that does not diminish Haasler's one aota and his application of the book and window fallacy to all these other issues is genius. And in fact, there's nobody else did it. All right, Bradley, in Campachico's Rancho social approval is trained into your mind out of fear of the pack as a father and vigilant of this and focus on my son's individuality first. His mind and passions are primary, not socialization. That's great. And that's exactly what you should be doing and that's exactly what our ultimately our school system should be doing. Their mind, their values, the individual's mind, the individual's values. That is the essence. That is the essential, right? And yeah, all right. And schools, that's how schools should be. Okay, Oban, final question. For the record, I found you through your so-called forum debate with John Mackie about shareholder value. Wow, that's great. You were saying things I've always believed but never heard anyone argue as unapologetically. That's great. I hope you've had a chance since then. That is the most important thing you can do is read Atlas Shrugged, read The Fountainhead. All right, guys, thank you, Stephen. Thank you, Stephen Hopper. There's a bunch of stickers I don't think I thanked. But anyway, all the super chat is Sivanus. Of course, I did thank you, Sivanus. Thank you, Wes. And thank you all. I will see you all tonight, 7 p.m., East Coast time. Stay tuned for the topic. It'll be, it should be interesting. All right, bye, everybody.