 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is the Europe Book Show, rational self-interest, and individual rights. All right, everybody, welcome to your Unbook Show on this Friday night. Not a usual time for us to do a show, but making up for the fact that I would definitely agree. All right, this is never happened before. Why do we have a... Not a usual time for us to do a show, but making up for the fact that I would definitely agree. All right, this is never happened before. Why do we have a... Always fun. Not a usual time for us to do a show. What's going on? That is muted. That is muted. All right, one, two, three. It's gone. That was weird. It went away. I didn't do anything. Okay. Anyway, welcome, everybody, on this Friday night. I am incredibly happy to have Ilan Junot here with me. Ilan is a senior fellow at the Ironman Institute. He specializes on applying Ironman's philosophy to current events with a particular expertise in Von Posse, and in particular the Middle East, but broadly Von Posse. Ilan also has a distinction of being one of the few people, maybe the only person still at the Institute who was there before I arrived. So longer... Yeah, so I think that's right. Donna, part-time, but I don't know anybody else. I don't think anybody else is there. So welcome, Ilan. Thank you, Ron. I'm pleased to be with you tonight. Good. All right. I don't know. You're a little soft. I don't know if it's just me. Say something again. Let me just check the... Hi, is this any better for you? It's a little soft. Let me see if I can increase the volume here. I'm worried about them. Can you guys on the chat maybe tell me if Ilan is too soft? I've raised his volume, so hopefully... Okay. Let us know if it's not loud enough and I can also speak more. Ilan says fine for us. Cool. All right. So I thought we'd start a discussion maybe with water kind of perspective. There was a time in the 90s and then maybe 10, 12, 13 years ago when the sense was... Certainly in the 90s, there was a sense where as far as he doesn't matter anymore, Soviet Union's gone. America has no enemies in the world. You know, farm policy is finished. It's dead. We then got 9-11 and we screwed that up and various people have different views on why we screwed it up. We have a particular view. Others don't agree with us. But generally okay, well, there's the Islamic threat, but we're strong. We're powerful. We can overcome that. Rather than that, it seemed like a pretty boring world and it seems like the last two, three years, that has changed dramatically. I mean, do you have that sense that something has changed significantly and do you have any thoughts about why and what's going on in the world? Yeah. I would differentiate between the reality and how people process it. I think the reality is farm policy was always important. It wasn't something that was given the attention it needed until there was a crisis. And when you get a crisis, everyone's on top of it. The best example of this was Bush. He ran Bush Junior, so George W. Bush. People might not remember because he's so associated with 9-11. He ran as someone who's not interested in farm policy. He was very much in the kind of leave us alone, we'll leave you alone camp. And then 9-11 happened and that became the defining issue in his career. So I think the reality is that the threats were mounting for many decades pre-9-11 and it's not as if, take Russia as another one. So it was Bush who stared into the eyes of Vladimir Putin and saw someone, saw his soul and believed he found someone he could trust. And 20 years later, all of that was, it didn't take 20 years to discover that was BS, but it was there for anyone to see that this was a mounting problem. I think similar things can be said about China. But I think the reality is that there was always lots to think about and lots to deal with. It was, I think it's a symptom of the way our political scene works, which is that it's very concrete bound. It's what I call the anti-conceptual mentality. It goes along with pragmatism, which I know is a theme you talk about a lot. And my view is the trend of thinking of foreign policy is not maturing until it's a crisis. It is a self-reinforcing pattern. So the more you ignore it, the more it's a crisis and then you have to deal with it as a crisis. Now you asked about the last few years, I think there's, maybe there's a heightening of attention precisely because of who's seen a land war in Europe on this scale since World War II. And all the worries about Putin and all the concerns prior to that were realized. And he is as brutal and maybe more brutal than people imagined. And he's willing to cross borders again and again. So there's a whole history of doing that. I want to pick up on something you raised because something else, which is this idea that you didn't put it in this terms just since we started, but this is the way it was seen as the histories ended. And then the liberal democracy has been established. There's no other competitor to it. And I think that lulled people into a sense of complacency. Now that argument is associated with Francis Fukuyama, who is in my view a disappointing human being, not just a disappointing intellectual. I've read a couple of his works and I read that article a number of times. It's something you study in graduate school. You can't not read his work and think about the 20th century. And unfortunately it is a really stupid argument as an argument. Now there are interesting things he's talking about, which I think is that the globalization is starting to reach a cusp where, okay, this is really a powerful force on a scale we've never seen before. And there are important things about so-called liberal democracy that are being recognized. So if you think about the Thatcher revolution, Reagan, it's in that milieu that he's writing. So there's important developments to think about. But what he does with that is rubbish and it leads people to think, yeah, what else is there? Marxism has discredited, it's gone away. Maybe nationalism will be a thing, but yeah. And now what's left to do, as you put it, is sort of boring. But that's completely not reality oriented. It's really not thinking about it. What's wrong with it? I mean, because there's something wrong about the conception of liberal democracy, basically a mixed economy as some kind of end result. And Rand really emphasized that a mixed economy was not stable. It would never sustain itself. Yet he viewed it as kind of an end game, whereas Rand certainly viewed it as it is not sustainable over the long run. Yeah, I don't think it's sustainable for a number of reasons. There are dynamics in the economic side of things that lead to more regulation and greater controls and sort of a whiplashing effect. There are also dynamics in the way people think. And so I think that one of the deeper insights she has that I ran has about the mixed economy is it creates a certain mentality and reinforces a certain mentality. One piece of it is a tribal way of thinking because it fractures society into competing groups and everyone wants a piece of the so-called fixed pie. And that's just not reality, but that's how people behave and it fosters pressure group warfare. And we see that as everywhere. And now it's just taken for granted that there's lobbies and pressures. The other kind of thing that it fosters cognitively is a very short-term mentality. And so if you think about the intellectual currents in the 20th century of pragmatism and rebellion against principles, the mixed economy reinforces that because realistically, how far can you think? How far can you plan? And you have to deal with all sorts of crises. And I think there's an interesting issue where it brings people into political office and into positions of power where their success is based on not thinking long-term and sort of navigating these constant crises. And that ties into the issue of foreign policy as well because it's the way you think about it. You're not really evaluating what's happening on the scene. You're looking dot-to-dot, not seeing the whole pattern. So I think there's a lot that makes it unstable politically, economically and then with respect to foreign policy. If your view is there's no principles or no permanent friends, no permanent enemies and we'll kind of deal with anybody because that's what you do domestically. Well, what does that look like internationally when you deal with people who are croaks and criminals and gangsters and thugs and dictators? If your attitude to them is the same as it is with your people across the aisle, so to speak, we can kind of deal with anybody. We can log roll. We can, okay, if you think that applies internationally with people who want to kill you, okay, that's going to be a recipe for real conflict down the road. If you look at Putin and you think, yeah, he's just like the guy on the other side of the aisle. We can kind of deal for the budget with that guy. Well, why can't we kind of deal with Putin on he wants a bit of Europe? Now, I think there's a lot there, and it's a kind of multi-factor trend where you have this mixed economy that pushes people into certain forms of behavior and reinforces them. And yeah, so it's essentially a system of pragmatism which ends nowhere and it encourages the anti-conceptual mentality you talked about and it leads towards short-term policies and weakness. It is interesting that every so many years, every time it's quiet a little bit, an American president comes around or this so-called, you know, we don't want to intervene in the world. We don't want to think about fampasi. We don't want to do any of that. And that is always perceived as weakness and that is always when they come after us. I don't think it's an accident. In 1911, it happened when it did, given the weakness of the presidents before that, starting with Reagan or starting with Jimi Carter really, with Iran, and of course the weakness of, I think, Trump and Biden, which I think have been bold in both Putin and the Hamas. So what's your assessment of the stakes in Ukraine and what is America's kind of, Justin asks in a question here, why should Americans care about Ukraine? What's in it for America? Yeah, I mean, I think the basic issue is you're looking at Putin as a world actor and it's important to understand that he's, there's no reason to expect him to be satisfied if he wins in Ukraine. And that is a real threat. And that's a real problem with respect to our commitments to NATO countries. So Ukraine isn't yet in NATO, but there's real worries about what happens after Ukraine. So that's one issue. I think the second issue is, so you don't, I don't think to put that differently, you don't want to encourage someone like Putin that's really harmful, he's destructive. And we've done a lot prior to Ukraine to embolden him. So there's a lot to say about that. There's an argument that I heard recently that I'm thinking about as more and more plausible, which is that one reason to support Ukraine, well, let me, let me come to that in a minute. So the other reason to think about this from the US perspective is I think Ukraine is a country that has a lot of problems. It also is trying to move in the right direction. It's trying to move towards Western Europe. I think there's reason to think that they will want to be a better country, more free. I don't think they're angels. I mean, there's a lot of problems with Ukraine, but they're worlds away from Russia. And in that contest, I think morally you have to support the better side and the better side in this case, I think is unquestionably Ukraine. So there's that piece of it too. So I think there's important issues at stake. So you don't want Putin to win. You certainly don't want him to win in a contest with a better country. I think there's a moral claim that Ukraine has to support from that side of things. But let me get to this argument that I heard recently that I'm still thinking about. I'm not sure I'm convinced of this, but there's a kind of tactical issue that people offer as a reason to be more concerned with supporting Ukraine. And that is if the Ukrainians are fighting against Putin and we offer them support, that weakens Putin at very low cost to the US. No, I generally don't go into that kind of strategy thinking or it's tactical thinking, because there's a lot that goes into those sorts of things. And I don't know if it's that credible militarily. But the argument is you weaken Putin without actually having to confront him militarily. Ukraine does that and you support Ukraine. So in effect, it's a kind of proxy war, which it is already. I mean, the reality is Iran is supporting Russia and we're supporting Ukraine and the other bad regimes are supporting Putin. So I find that interesting as a perspective, but I wouldn't say it's the key issue for why we should care about Ukraine. I think the key issue is it's a better country than Russia. Russia is a horrible dictatorship that should lose. Yeah, and we don't want to embolden Putin. The reason he probably won't invade other countries in Europe is because he's having such a hard time in Ukraine and the only reason he's having such a hard time in Ukraine is because they've got Western weapons before the war and they've gotten them since and indeed, hopefully they'll be getting them soon again. I think the House of Representatives is actually going to vote on a Ukraine aid bill and I think they're going to approve it. So I think the U.S. will be providing aid to Ukraine here soon. Any thoughts about the relation between Russia and Iran? I mean, that's an interesting one. Russia's been supporting Iran for a long time. I think they helped them build their, still helping them build the nuclear power plants in Iran and have one of the few countries that don't pay attention to the embargo or restrictions on trade with Iran. But on the other hand, Russia has a Muslim problem. It fought a whole war in Chechnya over a Muslim problem here supporting a Muslim country. Do you have any sense of what their thinking is there and maybe there was pragmatic as we are? Yeah, I don't know if I'm classified as pragmatic. I think there's a kind of mentality that you find with dictators or authoritarian regimes. It's sort of a gangster mentality and it looks a lot like the pragmatist but maybe in the end it is the same thing and it's about power and convenience and it might be that, yeah, they're Muslims and we have a Muslim problem in Chechnya but in the end it's more important to get the weapons from Iran. It's more important. Now, before we get deeper into this topic, I want to just flag that the Iran-Russia nexus goes back a long way and it's important to note it. So throughout the early 2000s, Iran was in this back and forth with the United Nations where periodically there'd be a resolution in the United Nations. I think the US would sponsor it. Other nations would sponsor it. Iran, we want you to stop with this nuclear stuff and you need to comply with these conditions. And the two countries that routinely blocked the resolution, blocked enforcement were China and Russia. And then, so this is through the early 2000s, then you get the Syrian civil war where the Syrian collapse, or however you think of it, because it's really just a collapse at this point. And Russia is a major part of this conflict along with Iran. So Iran's supporting the Assad regime and Russia is supporting both of them. And again, you could ask the same question, why are they doing this? Is it Islamic regimes or nominally Islamic regime? But in the end, I think Russia had a view about what it wants to do in that part of the world and had a view about Iran. Now, the wider point that I think is important to put this together, like the headline issue is when you find authoritarian regimes and dictatorships in Europe, when they're clubbing together, which they are, so Iran and Russia and China, I'm not saying they're best friends and have slumber parties, but they're collaborating in a way that we haven't seen coordinated in this way. That is really problematic. And when you talk about not emboldening Putin, they're all watching this, right? And it's not as if China isn't concerned about how does this play out in Ukraine? They've been holding back. They're not involved in it. I think they're one of the few countries that hasn't put their moral support with Ukraine. I think they've been reticent. That's significant. And I think there's a way in which we've often talked about the way other... Our enemies are looking at us as an audience. What do we signal to them? If we're weak, that encourages them. And when you have an audience of collaborating, coordinating authoritarians and dictatorships, that's a very powerful signal of where the world's heading in terms of conflict and the risks that we face. So I have a lot of concern about that. Yeah, and they seem to be all united by the hatred of the United States or by wanting to see ill come to the West, the United States and its allies. That's the one thing they all share and they kind of feed off of any failure of the U.S., any weakness the U.S. shows. And again, another reason why you're right. I mean, the Chinese are clearly watching Ukraine to see how the West reacts, which gives them a signal in terms of how the West will react if they go after Taiwan. And, you know, I mean, Iran is constantly trying to play off the West and find weaknesses and exploit those weaknesses. So it's the bad guys all teaming up. They're all teaming up against one enemy and that is, you know, Western civilization. And I think this is an interesting issue to connect to your earlier question when we started with, which is this perspective that was, I wouldn't say it was universally held, but it had a lot of currency in the early 2000s, late 90s, this whole end of history narrative that I've been bashing. And the way to connect it, one way to connect it is you aren't taking ideas seriously if you don't see that there are dictatorships in the world and they're driven by certain goals and that there's a path, there's a direction which you can expect them to follow given certain circumstances. So the idea that, well, history's ended and this is, I forget where it is, 1993 or something like that, it comes out. The Iranians had the revolution in 79. The Fadwa against Russia is 89. The Iran-Iraq war is 89. Okay. You have to be thinking about that and the idea that we've reached the apex of political development. And one more thing to say about this. I know this might not be the thing you want to talk about. I want to say something about the idea that the conception of liberal democracy as the apex, now there's a lot of good in how people view liberal democracy because it's the closest thing they have to a free society. And it's good if they are in favor of that. But as you said, it's really a mixed economy and that's a differentiated, a distinctive conception that Iran argues for that you have to really understand what that means. And I was really critical of Fukuyama and maybe I'm being just mean and petty, but just think of him as a scholar. One of his most recent books is liberalism and its discontents. And I read that book because I wanted to see what does Fukuyama think these days? And he basically said, yeah, there are things that didn't get everything right, but so there's real problems with people who are not in favor of liberal democracy and it's a problem. Here are some ways we can get around it. But what he hasn't given a moment's thought to is the essential question of what is liberal democracy? And what he advocates for is, well, we just need to tweak the ways in which it's mixed and that will appease the populist so-called and that will appease the woke people that he's upset about. And we can find a middle path and if ever there's a lesson here that has gone unlearned is that there's no middle path. The mixed economy is not stable. It has a certain trajectory unless certain important changes are made. And he's the kind of intellectual who, while recognizing the problems, won't go at level deeper to see, oh, you know what, I'm actually fostering this problem. I'm making it worse, but the kind of solutions I'm talking about. Yeah, no, absolutely. And they all seem to want to evade the fundamental nature of the West, and the ideas that led to even the liberal democracy. So they completely ignore the good side of liberal democracy, which is capitalism, which is individual rights, protection of individual rights, and the foundation for that as the egoism and individualism, or individualism and respect for reason, which they don't, the conception of what they consider civilization is bizarre. I think our enemies understand what makes the West the West better than we do, right? Then I think our own intellectuals and politicians do. I think they understand that the West is fundamentally about individualism. That's why they make such a big deal of making fun of our individualism. And they understand that we stand for reason, and they make fun of that. They emphasize the mysticism, both Putin, Iran, North Korea, and I think China as well. They all have some greater goals, some greater thing that they're fighting for, and they get. So it's hard to get anybody excited to fight for liberal democracy. Let's go fight for mixed economy. This is going to really get us excited. And it's a real problem that I think that the West has right now. I think with Ukraine, what are we fighting for? This great greatness? That's one of the criticisms of the Fukuyama perspective these days. His latest view just is it's beyond uninspiring. It's actually depressing because the opponents make a good argument about why this system is really problematic and you're not able to answer it. Do you expect people to go to the barricades for this? Yeah, absolutely. And again, the enemy is motivated because they at least have an ideal. It's a rotten ideal, it's an evil ideal, but they have an ideal and they can motivate and they can get people engaged in an ideal, even a rotten one, better than the greatness of the West. I mean, luckily the greatness of the West because we have a little bit of freedom still allows us to be richer and more powerful than the bad guys, at least for a while. So in Russia right now, in the Russia-Ukraine issue right now, voices in the West almost constantly, particularly in America, and mostly on the right, are urging negotiations and a peace deal. And it's fascinating that it's coming from the right. Usually it's a left demanding peace deals. And it very much reminds me of the same demands being made of Israel. What do you think of this and why do you think it's coming from the right? What's happened to the American right that they view Putin as, I don't know, as the good guy somehow, or at least not as evil as he certainly is? Okay, let me take one part of that first. There was a lot of questions in one. It's fine, it's fascinating. I've been thinking a bit about that. Why is there this push for a negotiated peace agreement? I think that it's a narrow, short-range perspective on the stakes and a desire to get out of the problem because it's hurting support politically or might harm their... Americans have cooled on the idea. I mean, I remember when this conflict began, there were school drives to send gifts and toys and teddy bears to kids in Ukraine. And it was just a really powerful outpouring that you don't hear or see very often. And that was the grassroots. Well, nobody was coordinating that. There was people spontaneously flying the Ukrainian flag. But I think that's gone away as many of these things do at face. It's hard to sustain outrage and concern with injustice for two-plus years and to ask Americans to do that because nobody's giving them a good case for that. So I can see why... There's no principle of defense. It's so easy for people to forget and not quite understand what the hell is going on. And I think the people pushing for this, they're never in it because of the principle. They're in it because, well, we have to do something. And now it's, well, we don't have to do anything anymore. Let's get rid of the problem. And this is a good case study of there's a real appetite for peace deals. And I've studied one of them in depth. That's Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I've studied other ones, but not as in depth. And I think there's just a kind of mystique around this. So there's the Northern Island Agreement. There's the Israeli-Palestinian. There's a number of the really famous cases. Nobody can look at this and say, oh yeah, we figured out how to do this. And we know how to reach agreements with hostile adversaries who are literally killing us in the streets and come to a resolution. And we've got the recipe for this. It's just not true. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict was seen as that in the first decade or so. Yeah, this is going great. We can figure this out. And then the whole thing collapses. The people who are for it, just culturally was, even the people most ardently for it realized, this is crazy. We're not going to get anywhere. And why is that? And we can transfer some of the lessons of this to Putin. The key premise is, I think you mentioned it. He's not that bad. I mean, we could live up to an agreement. He could live up to an agreement if we came to it. Just figure out the terms. And this is the classic error people make that Ayn Rand talks about, which is you're confusing compromise and appeasement. Compromise is something legitimate. If you have another party that you share common ground with, you can adjust the details within a principle. But appeasement is you're pretending to adjust the details, but you're conceding the principle. And the principle here is Ukraine is a sovereign country. It wants to be freer. And you're conceding that by saying, no, you can have a few. What's Putin going to be satisfied with? Give him a few more thousand miles worth of Ukrainian territory or give him the whole Ukraine. What do you think is going to be satisfying to someone doing unspeakable things to the Ukrainian people? And then what makes these kinds of deals credible? It has to involve whitewashing. And so I think anyone pushing for this is going to be responsible for saying, well, you know, Putin can live up to a deal. Okay, really? He hasn't in the past, right? He's never lived up to a deal. I mean, he certainly didn't love it. He didn't have an agreement or any of the other agreements he signed, but dictators never do. Exactly. Exactly. So it's ignoring the fact that he's a dictator. And then that's good. This is my prediction. The more this is pushed, the more he gets whitewashed. I mean, this is an interesting reason to kind of reflect on the Tucker Carlson campaign. What is the timing for that? And is that sort of a weather balloon for getting Putin sanitized in preparation for pushing harder on a peace agreement? I don't know. I just completely speculate it, but let me say one other thing about this. It seemed to be enough to sanitize Putin so that he could kill Navalny two days after the interview. And so you basically got a thumbs up from that interview okay to kill Navalny. Because Tucker Carlson never even mentioned Navalny in the interview. Yeah. I mean, I'd love to talk more about the interview just to get one more thought on the issue of the sort of idea of Putin's uninterested in a peace deal. So the idea that you now have to do what you did with Iran is like to woo him to the table. Like the whole idea, he said, why would I agree with him because they're losing? He's at least open about the fact that this is stupid. And then if you think about other agreements like this, that are essentially appeasing, they can't go your way because you're surrendering a crucial value, a crucial principle. You can't expect it to go your way. So to me, it's what you can expect from a deal like that is at best a temporary pause until something worse happens. I don't think there's a reason to expect anything good. You also raised the question about the American right of a conservative movement in America. I'm fascinated by that. I mean, one of the areas I'm most interested in doing more writing is the development of the American right where it has gotten today. How did it get into this pit, this gutter of anti-intellectualism where you go, I saw something on Twitter that I'm sure people have seen a lot. And it really captures something. You get Reagan, who I'm not a fan of. There's a lot to say about Reagan. But there was something more American about him. Reagan went and made this famous speech saying, look down this wall, referring to the Berlin Wall. OK, it's important to remember. Even people who liked Reagan thought he went too far. So he was pushing it. And then since then, everyone said, oh, this was really one of his low points. But a lot of people respond to that favorably. And there was something sort of at a sense of life level. What I'm trying to pull is the sense of life is this emotional level understanding of ideas. And there was something about it that was on the right moral wavelength. Let's put it that way. So that's Reagan, 1980, and whatever, 1988, 1989, I can't remember exactly when it was. And then you get, yeah, if I'm in power, I'll let Putin do whatever the hell he wants. OK, so this is your conception of, this is the evil empire, as Reagan called it. And this is, well, Putin's a great guy. People respect him. He has loyal generals. OK, there's something really corrupt about a political enterprise that goes from what is Reagan's, in my view, is still quite weak statement to, OK, you do whatever the hell you want. We're tomorrow dictated. And I think that admiration of Putin, I leave aside Trump. So you could say Trump is a special case. But the admiration of Putin is, it's horrifying. I read a piece in the Hillsdale publication called Impromise. A lot of people get this. It's like 30 million people get this newsletter. And it's basically excerpts or condensations of speeches that they give in Hillsdale for people who are not aware. Hillsdale's core to the intellectual world of the conservative movement. So Hillsdale hosted a journalist scholar type called Christopher Coldwell. I don't know if you're familiar with him. And this is around 2017, I think this was. I'm not good with dates. But this was long before Putin's invasion of Ukraine. And Christopher Coldwell is a really skilled writer. He's very smart. And he knows how to couch things in a way that doesn't make him sound crazy, even when he's saying things that are horrifying and crazy and irrational. So what does he say in this speech turned article? Well, you guys think Putin's this terrible guy. But look at all the good things he's done. Look at the way he's supporting, in effect, conservative values and religion and tradition and national identity. And in effect, he's got a hard situation. He's got to deal with all kinds of social problems and he's got to deal with a bad neighborhood. And it's not quite the Tucker Carlson level of whitewashing. It's much more subtle. It's got an argument. But that's really what it is. It's laying the groundwork for, well, there's something admirable about him. And then you get sort of the more carnival barker, less intellectual people who are more the influencers, social media types who are now barking admiration of people like Viktor Orban and Vladimir Putin. Maybe they don't go all the way to Putin, but they love Orban and the national conservatives, you know, you've debated national conservatives. I've written about them. They hosted him at one of their events, Viktor Orban. And they didn't just host him as, let's figure out where we agree and disagree. It was more like, Viktor Orban, let us bow down to your awesomeness and look at the success story that you've made out of your country. We have things to learn from you. That's really what they did. Now, you- Which is kind of funny because Hungary's a complete failure, right? It's unsustainable without subsidies from those leftists at the EU. That he's constantly snubbing, right? That's kind of what they like about him. Like he's giving it to the EU the way we giving it. We can snub the- He doesn't survive without the checks from the EU. Hungary would collapse tomorrow without those checks. High inflation. It's a real disaster. And yeah. And so this is- Now think about what conservatism used to be. Yeah. It was fiscally responsible, militarily confident and just the reputation of being for free markets and free- The markets are going to solve things. The government's the problem. The sort of idea that they're associated with capitalism. A lot of them are shying, have shied away from that. But this is the movement that has gone from that reputation at least, or that cultivated reputation to, yeah, we're good with Orban. We're good with all these families. He's fostering- He's got programs to foster childbirth. He's got tax cuts for babies, basically. And there's just an alarming level of government control over the media. Maybe what I've read and I don't have up-to-date knowledge, but when I read about this a while back, it was not really a free media and the elections were not- I don't think you'd call the elections totally straight. So the idolizing of someone like him makes the admiration of someone like Putin less surprising because what they value are these non-essential things that are tribal. They're religion, family, tribe, sort of racial identity. And I think this is an issue that people don't understand enough about with Orban, which I think there's a really strong ethnic aspect to him. And I don't know if I would go so far as to say it's racial, but there's implications in his anti-Semitism that it's basically a racial conception of what the national identity is. And they love national identity. That's the whole thing that they've been pushing the last five years. Their conception of nationalism, which is now trying to take over the movement, it is essentially an identity, it's about racial identity and tribal identity. And that is just the farthest thing from individualism as you can get. So it's really a trajectory, not just down, but like scraping into the gutter and going down to the sewer and mighty intellectually. And it seems that, I mean, what they care about, it seems the new right seems to care about social issues. They care about babies, lots of them. They don't like abortion. And they don't like contraception. They want the state to subsidize babies. And they don't like gays for a variety of reasons. And they like religion. And Orban, even though every indication in the world suggests he's an atheist or was an atheist at least, talks about religion constantly, hates gays, and subsidizes babies. And Putin, of course, is probably is religious and hates gays, makes a big point of that. And also he's trying to subsidize babies and talks it up. And it seems like that trumps everything. You know, there's this article, I don't know if you've seen it, I did a show on this of Jordan Peterson, where he says, look, Putin is the actual, Putin's actually on the side of the western civilization. It's the EU that is leftist nuts and they're moving away from western civilization. Because they view everything through this lens of religion and these social issues that relate to that. Nothing else seems to matter. Jordan Peterson, yeah, he shouldn't have invaded Ukraine. But let's not forget, we can't alienate him because he's one of us. He's a real westerner because, I don't know, Jesus take the wheel. I don't know, something like that. I've heard you talk about this issue and I've been thinking about it for a while too, which is that I think this started in Europe in part a reaction to the assertive Muslim community. And the Europeans for the last two decades have been asking themselves who are we? What are we for? And how do we get people to assimilate? Maybe we shouldn't assimilate, maybe not. And we've seen what happened to Europe. But I remember going to a conference here in California where a lot of people from Europe, a lot of really prominent American intellectuals were asking the same question. What is the identity of Europe? What is the West that we're trying to defend? And my view is that was 2007. They didn't have any answers back then. One of the speakers was Ion here, Ciali Daniel Pipes spoke there. Just a number of people that you would associate with this kind of issue. And it goes to this issue that you, this is what you've been talking about in other contexts, the West, as it's understood, is just too vague a concept. You could argue it's a package deal. It's putting together both religion and best elements of the Enlightenment. And that's it. There's a reason to try to unpack that because what happens is the argument is, well, religion is central to the West. And if you just do it by the, in terms of history, religion was a big part of the West for a long time and that's not wrong. But is it essential to the West? That people aren't willing to really think about when we think about what is good about Western societies today. By Western here, I'm going to slightly concretize it. It's like America, the United Kingdom, in France, what are the best elements of those countries? It's the freest elements, the more Enlightenment rooted ideas. But that's what people aren't willing to acknowledge. What they want to say is this whole idea of religion, tribe, our tradition. That's what the Enlightenment was a rebellion against. Like, why do you care about tradition? Why do you care about religion? The level of mockery of religion and the Enlightenment will shock people who read about it today. The idea that tradition is any kind of endorsement, that thing is commercialistic. The Enlightenment was a varied group of people. So you have to understand some of the variation. But basically it was, what are you talking about? How can you be for religion and tradition as a group? The individual is the source of knowledge, the source of value. Individuals can gain knowledge. When we talk about the West, you and I and others were on this premise, it's precisely the best aspects, the freer, individualist, reason-oriented perspective on the West. When you get Jordan Peterson telling you that Putin is part of the West, a lot of people buy that because part of what they like is there. But this is part of how a malformed concept or a package deal operates. People respond to the parts of it that they like sometimes, and then they swallow the parts that don't belong there. I think that's a fundamental issue is that people don't understand what the West represents and what it stands for, what they should be fighting for. They are super confused about this. I've done some events with Douglas Murray on this, and he's super confused about it. He can't separate out the Enlightenment values from the religious elements. And indeed, like I and Hirsi Ali, who just became religious, it's almost like, yeah, but if we adopt Enlightenment ideas, then we will lose meaning, we will lose purpose, we will lose significance, we will lose identity. And Douglas Murray was an atheist, I and Hirsi Ali was an atheist until recently. That is the real problem in the West is they cannot, they do not have a set of ideologies that connect the Enlightenment to personal values, to morality, to actually to purpose and meaning. You said this earlier, you can't get passionate, you can't fight excitedly over something that has no purpose and meaning. And there's a certain admiration, I think, about the way it exceeds but Putin and Orban, they stand for something. They believe in something. We know it's rotten to the core, but they stand to believe in something. And I think this is the problem with Muslim immigration into Europe, it's the inability of Europeans to assimilate them or even to try to assimilate them because they don't know who they are. Yeah. What do you assimilate them into? Convert them to Christianity? Is that what it means to be Western? Yeah. I don't want to talk too much about Europe because it's... There's things to say, but the European situation is there's pre-Charlie Hebdo and then there's post-Charlie Hebdo. And in my view, things were getting worse in the early 2010s, 2000s, and I think Charlie Hebdo and the attacks in Paris that happened later that year, I think those were symptomatic of a community that became... They were assertive to begin with and there was no pushback on it, no intellectual pushback. And it was, in my view, as a symptom of Europe's intellectual collapse and this whole idea of who are we? There's things that you would see as solutions, the kind of assimilation guidebooks that they offered people coming in in the early 2000s. They're a punchline, right? And it's no surprise that when you get a lot of people who don't share those values, you get a lot of social problems. And this was actually... Here's the last book was about the treatment of women in Europe by largely Muslim immigrants. Largely substantiated by the evidence. But none of this should be surprising when you have a society that doesn't understand what it stands for and can't bring people to... So I think that is a fundamental issue. And to me, the reaction of saying well, Orban or Putin or some other thug like that, he's got something right. That is another symptom of that, which is if you can't see through it, then you're really lost. And I think that part of what they're responding to is... And I think this goes along with tribalism. They're responding to... Someone will tell us what to do. The appeal of authoritarianism isn't just, oh, he's strong, he stands for something. It's, well, okay. I'll have answers. They'll tell me what to do. I'm going to be long to this tribe and this is the leader. Okay, well, I don't have to do a lot. And I think that goes to some of what you see in the American right. It's not an accident that they like the power that these people have. If they weren't quite as powerful, I don't think it would be as tempting. Yeah. I think that's right. The other thing that's unfortunately going to happen in Europe, and I think we'll see it in the next few months, we saw it in the Portugal election a few days ago, is that there are going to be a lot more Albanians and a lot more Putin's inside Europe. The new right, the national conservative right, is very strong in Europe right now. European elections are being held in a couple of months and they're going to dominate those elections, I fear. And Portugal just had an election and the far right party did phenomenally well. And I expect Germany, people are going to be shocked by how bad it is in Germany. But this is, I didn't predict this, right? A mixed economy has to go either towards more freedom. That's not happening. And therefore it has to go, otherwise it goes towards more statism. And the world is going towards greater statism. And the leftist type of statism is kind of bankrupt. So the world is going towards right kind of right wing collectivistic right. I agree with that but I would add one more thing to that which is, and I agree I think she I keep every opportunity I have where it's not obnoxious, she saw us coming because one of the places to look at is it's right that her analysis of the mixed economy is incredibly relevant to this. The other piece of it is what she called global balkanization. And the fragmentation of societies modern day tribes. Tribes within societies where you don't expect them. So if you go to Africa, the underdeveloped parts of the world, you say, yeah, this is the default people are tribal. When you go to the western world, Europe, America, Canada, you don't expect tribes. But that's what was forming about 50 years ago and she saw this as a trend that was rising and some of it was through manifested in secessionist movements or breakaway people who want to create their own country out of little pockets of Spain and little pockets of England and Wales and so forth. And there's just dozens and dozens of these examples. But what it has developed into because I think it's a continuous trend what is developed into is just the fragmentation into tribes within society. So when we've been talking about the conservative movement, I don't think of it as essentially an intellectual enterprise or even a political enterprise anymore. It's always been a conglomeration of social groups, ideas and political goals. But I think those elements have shifted to the point where it's mostly a tribal collection and the ideas are really like a tale. They're really an appendage not the core. You can argue was it ever the core but it's become such a peripheral thing that it's essentially just we're one tribe and the woke are another tribe and this sub-tribes is the squad tribe and this is the old school. That is another that's also reinforced by mixed economy but the driver for that balkanization, that tribalism is deeper than politics. I think the driver for that is intellectual. It's the collapse of philosophy as a power in our culture. And this goes to the point that you made where who's going to fight for the mixed economy? Who's going to be inspired by it? And there's no inspiration because nobody's defending the values that matter. Capitalism, individualism and reason when those aren't defended why would anyone flock to them? Yep, absolutely. So let's turn to Israel a little bit now. I want to let everybody know next week Elon's going to come back on Thursday and we're going to analyze the debate that was done on the Lex Freedman show which was two against two and it goes for like five hours. So we couldn't do it today because the debate just hit Lex Freedman's channel and five hours is a long time to listen and to think and then to analyze and to comment on. So we'll be ready for next Thursday with an analysis of the debate on the Israeli-Palestinian issue on Lex Freedman. I'm not looking forward to sitting through five hours of that, particularly given that I don't respect any one of the people debating. Indeed I despise three of the four. I don't despise destiny but I'm not a fan of Benny Morris's for a variety of reasons. I don't know, you know, given his history and destiny I have I'm just blah about. So yeah, the two representing the Palestinians which are just, you know, one of them at least is monstrous. But anyway, we'll be doing that on Thursday. I'm also going to be doing a debate on the Israeli-Palestinian thing with a Palestinian libertarian which should be interesting. This will be on Sunday, not this Sunday, the following Sunday. So actually I'm going to ask you for some book recommendations in preparation for that. So tell us a little bit about your reaction to October 7, not so much obviously the horror of it, but were you surprised that it happened and if you weren't surprised why and what did you think would happen following it? I wasn't surprised and I have to admit I thought it was when I first heard about it it's just like what happened in 2021 rockets infiltrated I didn't realize the severity of it for a good hour or so. I had another work event planned and we cancelled it, good thing we did but I think I was being naive in how awful it was and so I wasn't surprised but I was shocked at the horror of it. What did I think would happen? I think we went on the air that day and one of the things I said is I'm counting the minutes until whatever moment of sympathy Israel manages to eke out from this is extinguished and what we actually have in a few minutes is the predictable war crimes narrative the chorus about pulling back restraint, innocence and everything that you've heard right now and it's not because I have some fantastic power to predict anything it's just you follow this issue long enough and it's a predictable pattern and it's predictable precisely because of the ideas that people hold and the assumptions that they make that drive them to make these horrible accusations and so that was my initial thought at the time but the one aspect of it that I did not expect I think it really did surprise me and I'm still thinking about it I don't know that I've fully processed it but it's the reaction in the streets and on campus and when I have to say the campus side of it there's always been young people on campus there's a lot of stuff that they do that seems like they're young you go to give them some room they get and something comes from being idealistic so you can't treat it all as they're all fanatic but then what they actually do it's much less defensible much less excusable and I was talking about this with my colleague Ankar Ghatay the viewers know about it and the way he put it I think was really helpful he said part of what October 7th did is it exposed the nature of academia it was not new it was there for a long time but it suddenly became real and visceral and hard to ignore and that piece of it I still am dumbfounded every day I see things that I think how is this possible that this is a reputable institution this is someone who spent two decades in education becoming an expert and this is what they say on a topic that I think has been horrifying the people in the streets I think there's a significant difference between Europe and the US I think there's a lot of terrible protests that we've seen on the campus but the things I've seen in London right now there's basically a weekly protest in London from what I gather and in the first months or two there were these massive protests I don't know if they're the biggest but they're among the biggest protests that have happened in a long time and that it's not against Hamas right and that's the horrifying thing it's the way in which that narrative of I don't know if it's the right thing to call it but this whole idea that this is about liberating Palestinians how could you possibly believe that and the scale of evasion about what Hamas is and the idea that you could credibly believe that the Palestinians have been living under some beneficent government in Gaza it's crazy and now you've agitated me and there's a lot more to say about this but those are the two things like the campus and then the gross evasion of the actual initiator of the conflict I think that surprised me too the most is the responses on the campuses and less so on the streets because a lot of those were paying the price of not assimilating the immigrants but campuses and the day after they didn't even have any time to absorb it but they immediately knew who was the guilty party and who was the innocent and they immediately blamed Israel without any need for data or fact or evidence the Palestinians were the good guys it became so evident any sense on you know where this goes and how this ends the war itself or the cultural reaction the attitude the whole phenomenon of what's going on right now I think the war is I've been telling people when I speak about this subject I would love for there to be a good resolution to this I think there are options that are good that would lead to a good outcome I don't have confidence in the Israeli government to do what needs to be done which is to defeat Hamas they talk about it I've met people who are involved and they're trying to push this way and that way and my attitude is good I'm glad to hear it I don't believe it's going to work and probably that's based on some of the things that we learned about the policy prior to October 7 the complacency and there was a time when there was some recognition that Hamas really exists to destroy Israel but that you can't really believe that and behave the way that they behaved in the weeks and months before October 7 as a policy and I think the idea that they're so that I think is not encouraging the other thing and I've written about this from a different angle is the story in 2014 which was the longest conflict prior to this one where there was a ground war there was rockets there was a sort of ground invasion the story about that was this was Israel's war crime there was a big UN report that came out the Goldstone report you might remember and that was a defining moment what happens after this I don't think it's recoverable because every single day now the whole way in which this is being understood is irrational from top to bottom and the idea that this ends with Israel okay so you defeated Hamas but Israel is now they're already talking about it being a pariah nation because of what because it's defending itself and not supplying enough trucks I mean the fact that we're asking what's the right number of trucks that's being laid into Gaza is the wrong question there should be I can tell you what the right number is it's zero and the fact that we're building we might talk about this more but the fact that there's now being built a floating pontoon and the whole story is people in Gaza are suffering there's famine they're getting that's the story what is that and the idea that it's exclusively Israel's fault and it's the Israel's the latest crime I read about Iran is that Israel is not just slowing the trucks it has the temerity to inspect what's in there and the inspections are too stringent it's slowing things down closing it down okay so now imagine any other context that is the number of aid trucks you're delivering to your enemy how is that irrational but the whole setup is irrational right because the whole setup was that Gaza was under blockade and nothing could get in and out and you couldn't get food and electricity when it turns out Israel's supplying them electricity with water with food with everything before the war and now it's expected to continue to supply them with all of that during the war and it doesn't matter what the Palestinians do Israel is supposed to wall over and let them get away with anything let's go to let's do some questions we've gone for an hour already and we can take some questions let me just thank some people let's start with Maria Lean $50 thank you Maria Lean where are you there's Maria Lean for now it's a little bit more and then Steven Hopper thank you Mike Dial Wes $100 thank you Wes that's very generous all right let's jump for some for some of the super chats here although oh job all right I'll do this one quickly Ilan I know we talked about this before and you don't you know you have no comment for this one you haven't discussed the crumbly case yet have you I'm curious about your thoughts on the mother and father 15 year old shooter being charged with involuntary manslaughter I personally didn't follow the case if the boy was tried as an adult isn't that in itself identifying that he should have known better and that he did what he did in his own free will yeah I mean I don't think anybody's denying that he did what he did with his own free will that is that he is ultimately responsible that's why he was tried as an adult and so that's an indication the question is are the parents that is did they aid in a bet right it's clear that they didn't pull the trigger it's clear you couldn't you couldn't have have prosecuted the kid as a as an adult if he was just being manipulated by the parents 100% but with the parents complicit and you could argue and I haven't followed the case close enough to know that this is the case but you could argue that the parents by providing him with a gun in spite of the fact that they had every reason to believe that he was mentally unstable every reason to believe that he might abuse this gun that he might do something horrible with the gun that he still encouraged him to you know or still gave him a gun and made it available to him that that is so irresponsible given that he's 15 years old and given the mental state he was in that they should be tried for that as accessories so not as responsible for the manslaughter but as accessories to it so that would be my view and in that sense I think the court seems to have gotten it right I I don't know that I would add or subtract anything from what the court did unless you have some evidence to suggest that I'm getting this all wrong which is completely possible I don't know if you have anything to add to that Ilana do you want to go to the next no let's go to the next one thanks this one is from Ali Al-Wahal Al-Wahal I can't pronounce it, if enlightenment values are separate from religion why don't we see the same values across different cultures from different religions I'm not sure I totally get it but I think he's suggesting until enlightened values coming out of Christianity or necessarily coming out of Christianity can you really separate them from Christianity given the historical sequence okay so if the question is asking isn't the fact that there's diverse views in religion evidence that enlightenment is the core of the western religion isn't then I think there's a long history to say about the long history for each religion to understand its relationship to the enlightenment and I think some religions will be more influenced by than others but I don't feel I fully get the question but let me offer this other thought the enlightenment as a as an intellectual enterprise was viewed itself as a contrast to religion so the idea that there's some some of them were religious but not all of them and many of them were atheists or deists meaning that they saw religion as you set it up and you leave it and God's not really part of the picture they definitely saw this as a standing contrast to religion and they I mentioned that they ridiculed religion you have to understand that that's not like ridiculing religion in the book of Mormon today you can do that on Broadway you couldn't ridicule religion back in the enlightenment that was a very risky thing to do and that speaks to religions hold on people's minds and so when you do that you're signaling yeah I don't accept your view that I have to bow to a religious figure so maybe the person wants to ask a different way but I'm not sure I'm able to offer more than that I mean I'll add this so Alice he's writing in the chat we don't see enlightenment values in other countries we only see it in western Christian countries yes and but here's the thing about the enlightenment the enlightenment is fundamentally Greek it's fundamentally a product of the renaissance it's a product of the resurrection of Greek ideas so Ali you mentioned in the chat before the slimy golden age the slimy golden age was a product of Greece it was a product of the Arabs translating the Greek philosophers taking them seriously engaging with them challenging them and as a consequence also adopting science and technology and really advancing mathematics and science huge advances under the Arabs of the golden age and later in Spain and that's exactly what happened in Christianity that is this Greek element entered into Christianity both from the Arabs and from the Byzantines and ultimately ended up with people like what's his name the guy who Eloise Abelot Abelot and then why I remember Eloise but I don't remember Abelot I have no idea the weird state of memory and Aquinas and all of that and it came into Europe and those ideas those Greek ideas that traveled traveled westwards why they didn't catch on in Persia why they didn't catch on in India it's hard to tell I don't know it's something about those cultures that prevented them but they never got caught on then they did get caught up and Alexander the Great I think by invading those areas tried to bring some of those Greek ideas there but it never caught there it did catch in the west it had nothing to do with Christianity because it also caught in Islam it has nothing to do with the monotheistic religions by the way Jews were influenced heavily by Greek philosophy Maimonides who's a Jewish philosopher from the 13th to 14th century was also heavily influenced by Aristotle and the Greeks and that is what led to the enlightenment so it did all that in spite of Christianity Christianity was the enemy Christianity was the opposite and everything that these Greek ideas are filtering through are fighting the Christian ideas and the enlightenment is when they come to dominate intellectually at least among some intellectuals and you know Christianity is still fighting them still fighting them so this day it's fighting now what happened in the Muslim world and everything is for another time in terms of why they didn't catch on there permanently but but to think about the enlightenment of Christian is to miss the point the enlightenment exactly as Elon said is the rejection and making fun of Christianity I mean even the enlightenment figures who were religious were not Christian Voltaire was not an atheist he believed in a God but he made fun of Christians all the time he hated Christianity as a religion even though he himself and of course he had to run away from France and he had to live in Switzerland in order to survive because Elon's actually right in those days the ridicule religion could easily be a death sentence easily be a death sentence alright this one's for you what are your thoughts on US senate majority leader Chuck Schumer calling for Bibi Netanyel's resignation yeah I read about that last night I I think it's a it's two things I would say one is I'm not a fan of Netanyahu I don't think he's the best leader for Israel it's important to remember he was trying to modify important features of the Israeli legal system and it's controversial and I think it takes work to figure out whether that was the right thing to do I'm not convinced it's the right thing to do and that led to some of the biggest protests in Israel's history so it's really important to see that Netanyahu is very problematic and so I can understand people saying he's got to go I don't think you want to do that in the middle of a war I don't think that's responsible and so I think what Chuck Schumer is doing is the dirty work the Biden doesn't want to do it's a very political move it's Biden is trying to push against Israel he can't really do it but he needs to do it and so Schumer a very senior member of Congress who's Jewish who's seen as very vetoed various things he vetoed their wrong deal he has credibility on these issues I think that's it and I think it's it's a pretty dirty trick in fact it's like this is what Biden ministers needs to done and you can kind of Chuck Schumer Why do you think Biden needs to do it and why do you think from his perspective and why do you think he can't do it himself or is too he needs to do it himself Well one of the things we maybe this will come up when we talk about the debate next week but one of the things that has been fascinating since October 7 is the impact of this on the Democratic Party because I think it definitely exposed it's either you can think about it as a generational problem so Biden is the older generation and the squad or the newer generation there's not only the squad this are the younger people I hasten I'm hesitant to call it an intellectual division but it's the more overtly nihilistic elements and the more traditional we have a long strong alliance with Israel and I think that division in the party I think there's a lot of concern that it's going to it already cost him there's a whole campaign I think you might know about maybe we talked about this in Michigan where in the primaries people went in I think it's uncommitted and so this is a signal yeah we're not going for Biden we're telling you we're unhappy and this is being done in other elections so I think he's getting an activist element in the party telling him your support of Israel is going to cost you at the ballot box so I think he's reacting to that and why can't he do it himself I I don't think Biden really Biden has views I don't think I think he does what he's told to do and as advisors and they think this is the way to navigate this problem you can't get it re-elected and be this close to Israel that's I think the way they're thinking of it I mean maybe they won't say about that but that's sort of the read I have since last night do you think that the opposition that the Biden administration has for Israel going into Rafa is political in a sense of re-election maybe opposing this even independent of that I tend to think they would oppose it even if it wasn't an election year and that's I think it's they've been hesitant to support Israel from the beginning so from October I don't think you can argue that that was an election consideration that was really far back and people don't really it doesn't factor in that early so they you know it's not enough time to tell people to leave but wait give them a bit more time let's create a new corridor this was all happening before December so I think there's something animating it that's maybe amplified by the election but I think it's there and it's not unique to Biden I think this is this has been true of past administrations and it goes to the core you've written about this this idea of what morality looks like in war and it's essentially altruistic it's essentially sacrificial yes you have a right to self-defense but don't dare act on it that's the way I think of it and it's sad because we saw this in previous conflict Israel's had with Gaza but we saw it on an even bigger scale in Iraq and Afghanistan and this was done to American troops they were told to go in and hear your weapons but don't shoot at anything and don't try to defend yourself and that's direct result that they have and it's not like you would get a very different response if you put different personnel it's just a very common view that the cross is it's bipartisan I think yeah I mean this is altruism in action it really is and they really think they're doing this for moral reasons it's Justin asks why should Americans care about Israel there's your book about this yeah they shouldn't care about Israel there's no should about it it's a question of what values do you have and do you see them represented do you see them embodied in other countries and if you do you should care about that country and it's because of the values that it embodies not because of some other tribal or religious consideration so if you ask me should any random American care but if he cares about individual rights if he cares about progress what it means to live in a good society and a good society is so very difficult to create and then sustain if you care about those things then you should look at the world and say who's managed to do something like this and in effect those are those are countries that have a kindred value context they basically share the spirit of America the best elements of America's spirit and to me that's the essential reason to be interested in Israel to be interested in Ukraine to a lesser degree because I think Ukraine is not nearly as successful politically but it's a good it speaks so well of any country that wants to get better and I have to say I've been listening one of the benefits I get to working at the Anran Institute is I get to listen to Anran University courses you and Ankar did a course that was really fascinating and one of the points that came up recently in the discussion of government it really helped me see this issue in a much deeper way which is if you reflect on the challenge of creating a government so leave aside Israel the philosophic issue what is a good government it's not an obvious question it's very easy to think the founders cracked it they didn't even document but that is such a monumental achievement and then they didn't even fully realize it and it's still an achievement so they got a lot of things right and they made some big mistakes and moral failings along the way but it's look at how far we got even with that so it's such a difficult thing and when you think of countries in the 20th century with all the pollution of intellectual sort of bad intellectual trends and not only arising in a sort of barren not very fertile very... it's a backwater right in the Middle East and surrounded by hostile countries and you think wow and they managed to do something pretty good it's good enough that they have technology and science and real advances and you look at that and you think okay I don't respect their government I don't like their policy but that is its own and I don't live in Israel by choice and I know you don't live there by choice but what I respect and admire is that they took a really difficult challenge and they accomplished something really impressive and this is by the standard of what is a good society for human beings anywhere and anytime and the ability to do that is just so the kernel here that I got from... I was describing this as something that came up in a discussion in the Carlos class the kernel there is just to think philosophically about what is a good society and how difficult that is and I think there's a a gross underappreciation both of the United States is an achievement but then just of answering that question philosophically you have to take that to me the answer is yeah if you care about these values you care about countries that try to live up to them and that is essentially and then there's sort of further layers to this which you would say their enemies are our enemies who do you think Hamas is? I mean is it any different than Al Qaeda in its intellectual goals or Iran no there's a common Islamist thread that runs through them and so that adds to the reason to be concerned about it and there's a lot of good things that have come out of that part of the world that Israel has been the locus for so there's a lot there but it's rooted in what I regard as rational values even if a lot of Israelis are irrational even if a lot of Israelis are fanatically religious they the country has the government that it created constitutes a significant achievement well in the culture and the civilization that it's created yeah I mean earlier on in the chat people were saying well you guys support Israel because you're Jewish it's the only country you support in the world and stuff like that and the funny thing about that is you won't find people who are in in essential terms more critical of Israel than you learn and I can be when we're talking about Israel, Kua'i Israel but when you talk about Israel it's situated in the Middle East Kua'i fighting against an enemy like Hamas and Islamic jihad and you know Islamic authoritarianism more broadly then yeah Israel's the good guys and they're about as good guy as anybody in the West and just like I criticize the American government constantly and I criticize European governments constantly but we recognize that in spite of that America, Europe, Israel a lot better than Putin, Russia Iran, Hamas and if you can't tell the difference as unfortunately many people don't seem to be able to these days between the American government and the Russian government Taka for example certainly can't he sees the Russian government as superior because I guess the subway is cleaner if you can't tell the difference between Hamas and France not a country I love particularly politically I love the odd but nothing much more than that if you can't tell the difference between those two things then you're really confused out there you're really you're on the side of evil you're on the side of the bad guys you're diminishing good and if you don't realize the this is the point you were saying about Unko if you don't realize the massive political cultural civilizational achievement that is the West we'll call it then you've lost the plot you really have it's not that hard I mean Unko says that at a deep level just life is just so much better in spite of the subway's being more dirty I guess I have one other thought just to very quickly I want to make this question dominant but I resent being called a Jew it's not because I'm self leading I don't think people understand what Jew means and that's because I've thought a lot about it and I can tell you it's not easy to define what a Jew is because it's not only culture it's not only ethnicity and then when you get into ethnicity it's very complicated because none of your relatives none of my relatives like this ridiculous and I resent it because it to me and I'm not saying this is true of the question but it's a symptom of the culture we have where people are now much more comfortable classifying and talking about people as you are part of this tribe you're part of that tribe you know it's exactly the question I mean not the question but the person mentioning this in the chat you know what I believe I don't I'm not really I'm an atheist I'm actually fairly militant as atheists go and I don't I think it's exactly the same thing as if you said to someone who's black and he says well you're black why don't you vote for Biden which is a view Biden held right if you're not voting for me you're not black it's that is tribal thinking and it's corrupt and I there's a sense in which I'm a Jew because my mother was or my family were but even then what do you think that means is it a cultural issue so to me it's just it's a good example of how you're not using your mind well if this is how you're thinking yep yeah I mean only time I feel Jewish is when I face people like that I think I like I mentioned statement about she's only a Jew in the face of anti-Semitism and I feel like on this chat of mine I face anti-Semitism almost every show so but yes I agree completely I mean we both left Israel we both don't consider ourselves Jews in any in any respect really in our day-to-day lives we both are militant atheists I think that's fair to say and but even the culture I mean I left Israel for a reason it wasn't about religion Israel is not a religious state people don't get this Israel is a very secular place in some respects it's more secular than the US I was shocked at how religious Americans are when I came from Israel because all the people I knew in Israel were atheists though very very secular and so it's Israel is this secular place but it's a collectivistic state a tribal state in many respects and I hated that so it's even the culture I don't consider myself a cultural Jew if I was a cultural Jew over the state in Israel that's the place for cultural Jews so it's yeah I mean it's it's horrible how tribal we have become how tribal people have become they can only think of people as tribal and I think it's because they think of themselves as tribal and they project on to others you know the idea that one would be supportive of Israel because one is a Jew there are people who who have that perspective I wonder if the person asking this question people who find the question engaging understand the number of Jews who hate Israel and are chanting in the streets for a ceasefire which essentially just means give Hamas a break so they can regroup and fight again now at this point in other context because to me it's it's put a point even more strongly in the early 90s when the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians was going strong that it was super popular in Israel this was the intellectuals were for it a lot of the public and what that means is that you can't even project that it's not even remotely true there was so supportive of a Palestinian state which is another way of saying it's I hate to be in the position of trying to refute a tribal argument but the reality is you're not thinking if this is how you approach things the idea that having a certain background determines the contents of your mind is just so insulting absolutely all right let's see Apollo's Zeus your opinion of Russian GPS attack on the RAF aircraft Defense Secretary Grant Shapes was flying today so I don't know if you saw the story so he was flying and it looks like somebody tampered with the GPS I mean remotely of the plane everybody suspects Russia I mean my view is I don't think anything happened but my view is this is just Russia flexing its muscles Russia saying we have a the capacity but be you know you guys are hostile to us we're gonna be hostile to you we're not gonna tolerate this and we're gonna so they're playing games it's like when they fly their planes really close to an American plane or they what did they do they knocked out a few months ago they knocked down one of the American drones above the Black Sea they're sending a message we won't tolerate you guys and we have the capabilities to fight you I think they're bluffing but they're doing all right Daniel says a large element of Iran seems very pro-American any idea how this came to be I don't know if I would say they're pro-American I think they're pro-west generally and there's a strong anti antipathy to the clerical regime and we saw that for two years of the protests around women refusing to wear the hijab in Iran which I think is an incredibly brave protest that was not given the support the moral support it really deserved in the US why are there people in Iran who are supportive of the West or the question puts it in America I think that it was always true since before the revolution in Iran in 1979 that there was a significant population in Iran who were Western oriented I think Iran as a country was interested in the West and more sophisticated than their neighbors in that part of the world travel, education were much more developed and I think that in that sense they were secular and leftist I think there was a significant constituency like that and the Iranian Revolution there were people who supported it and it became foisted on the whole of society but there was always this undercard of people in Iran who were not interested in religion and I actually spoke to a woman who escaped from Iran she had to climb over mountains at night to get out of the country she was one of the protesters of the hijab before it became a big national movement it was a sort of my impression of her is she she's not religious you told me to be religious and I had to pretend to be religious in school and you told me to wear a headscarf I didn't believe this stuff it's what happens in the communist system too you see people go through the motions because that's what's expected of them it doesn't mean they've completely swallowed the ideology now there are people in Iran who have so I think it's important to get that so I think there's that latent community that some of them left I think a lot of people left and you see those communities this big one here in California but there are some who didn't leave but they still were much more western oriented and I think they recognize we don't want to live under this kind of government that's my best guess at the answer yeah I mean the Shah was very pro-west and brought in a lot of western values except freedom and respect for individual rights but he did there was a lot of western culture that was brought in during the 60s and 70s but even going further back the west the the Iranians were very intrigued the Persians were very intrigued with the west and of course Persia is a real civilization and has always been more intellectual than the rest of that region and has always been curious about knowledge and they've always reached out to the west so it doesn't surprise me given the history and given the Persians the Iranians are well traveled they've seen the west and the internet of course brings all that much closer to them but they've responded to it versus other places in the world that have it because I think there's a deep cultural there's a deep civilizational I mean the election we just told the Iran and the religionists crazy religionists won overwhelmingly but what's interesting is according to the Iranians according to official Iranian numbers only 25% of the people in Tehran voted 75% stayed home which is a stunning number in an authoritarian regime where you're expected to vote nationwide only 45% of people voted so these are all the lowest amounts since the revolution so there's clearly something going on in Iran that is rejecting rejecting the current regime which is some of the best news in the world out there given the depressing these times are the go revolution and now the fact that Iranians seem to be at least somewhat resisting this regime that's all good we'll see if they can take the next step towards revolution alright Dave Dean asked would it be fair to suggest the US politicians sending humanitarian aid to Gaza is an exercise of political pragmatism in other words if it works to secure gain votes then they perceive it as good I don't think it's about votes I mean there might be politicians who act that way but I don't think it's primarily about votes I think there's the interesting thing about pragmatism I'm sure one of my colleagues could do a better job of this but pragmatism it just is you reject principles you go by short range thinking and what fills the void where you need values and principles what fills the void is the conventional view which is altruism, self-sacrificial view and so when they're pressed where do they go for direction there is no pragmatist answer to what to do and they default to and they think they're not being activated by ideas so this is part of the irony of being a pragmatist you think we're just trying to solve problems we're technocrats we're just finding a way to make things better and we're not ideologues that's the alternative in their mind you're an ideologue or you're a pragmatist you're solution-oriented and when they think they're acting in that way when there's a crisis that tugs on their emotions because that's what activates the altruists it's emotional responses to things that's what they're acting on and so you get this blend of altruistic action there's really are doing too much they're being too assertive they need to stop and we need to get more trucks in there we need to build a pontoon we need to get more let's do air drops let's do something there's kids dying okay well that's not a pragmatic that's not what a pragmatist can do unless there's some there might be a conscious where the pragmatic way of thinking leads them to this but I think it's what it actually reveals is that ideas are inescapable philosophy is inescapable in the end the pragmatist what fills the void intellectually or morally just is the conventional view and I think this is this is a point that is really I take this sort of clarification I hope I'm expressing it correctly but in Leonard Peacoff's essay why should one act on principle this is part of what he says there's always some principle active even if you're defying principles and what that means in this context is they think they're doing something smart and pushing towards a ceasefire there will be a resolution and maybe in their mind this is what's happening but when you listen to what they're saying and when you see what they do this is essentially a self-sacrificial policy it sacrifices Israel's interest, sacrifices America's interest it's totally animated by people are suffering send money that's the ultimate catchphrase and notice as well like if you are really thinking there's so many questions you would have to confront what happens to all the aid what happens to 20 years worth of aid where did it go it went into tunnels a tunnel system that's bigger than the London underground Paris underground it's incredibly complicated what's going to happen to the aid that we send now don't ask questions just serve the people who are needy how sophisticated do you really think you are as a pragmatist if you're not asking those questions what's going to happen the day after tomorrow we don't know we don't care we just want as people are dying okay the other irony about the pragmatist is that they think they're playing five-dimensional chess or whatever and the reality is they're not they can't think five steps ahead well I mean pragmatism denies the ability to think five steps ahead right I mean who knows what will work and what will work but altruism is what ultimately drives all of this both in it's why it works on voters and it's why it's a moral necessity for the leaders themselves and it works in two ways one is the need of the Palestinians but it's also the fact that you have to stand up to Israel because Israel is strong and Israel is successful so you have to hate them to some extent you have to at least because there's something people all of the world we're not dropping aid right now there's a massive slaughter going on in Sudan I mean real you know Christians and the people of the wrong tribe are dying by the thousands in Sudan is anybody dropping aid in Sudan no because because neither party there is worthy of our hate here there's somebody worthy of our hate which is Israel because they're strong and powerful and it's you know Muslims can kill Muslims but primitives can kill barbarians but God forbid a western country actually stand ups to defend itself right Jennifer says I see this a lot where people think they must love a family member it seems it's really hard for some people to not be tribal where relatives are concerned unfortunately yeah I mean I think it's absolutely right yeah I just clarification I think it can be tribal and a lot of families are that way I think another feature of it could be or it's not either or it could be both is that one of the lessons people are taught growing up is that there's certain shoulds in life certain duties you have and respect your elders and you have to love everybody right and love your enemy love your love everybody that's just a very common view so what if this person is a jerk what if they're an SOB and well okay they're family and that in effect is the answer to everything you've got to obey obey tradition obey the so it can interact with collectivism but I think there's that deep don't trust your judgment don't go by what you think about that's sort of the deeper sense in which altruism activates the obedience aspect of it too so there's a lot of family and it's just yeah Daniel says your book was illuminating and lucidly written any others you're working on I if he's referring to what justice demands I really appreciate the compliment everyone's listening and if you really want to hear more about this issue we'll talk about it next week when we do the debate but if you want to hear more you can listen to the book or read it I just want to make sure people I want to find the book just to be shameless say something about what the book's about so the book is an analysis of Israeli-Palestinian conflict what drives it what keeps it going and how to solve it from a unique perspective what I take as the framework for the book is the ideas and values that you get from Ainran philosophy of objectivism but it colours the way the book unpacks the conflict so we've been talking about this idea of tribalism and collectivism the book is an individualist secular pro-reason perspective on this conflict and that comes out in the analysis of Israel and what are its virtues, its flaws and it comes out in the analysis of the Palestinian movement and how to think about that enterprise the book argues as I think it would not be surprising from today's conversation that America should be supportive of Israel hasn't been sufficiently supportive over time and the reason to do it is insofar as Israel lives up to the ideals of freedom and I think it does to a significant degree and that's the principle at play here so that's a snapshot of the argument I've heard really encouraging things from people who've read the book lately, it had a spike in interest since October 7th, it would not be surprising and it makes feelings because that's not the occasion in which I hope the book would find an audience but I'm glad it did in the end so thank you Daniel for that I'm gratified that you found a value in the book. Am I working on other projects I'm interested I don't want to talk too much about it I'm interested in a number of issues one of them is the development of the American right and we've talked a bit about that today so how did it get to where it is now and I'm also interested and it could be the same project but just the cultural abandonment of individualism the fact that people don't know what it is what they're drifting toward is tribalism I think there's a lot there but it's still early days let's see Alejandro says it's been 20 years since the Madrid 11th March attacks any thoughts so for people who don't remember what those were this was an attack a sophisticated bomb attack on the train system in Madrid at rush hour on a weekday and pretty lethal and this was in 2004 on the eve of an election in Spain and I think the way this was processed at the time is that this pushed Spain towards a different election outcome so this was seen as really significant and who carried out the attacks this was an Islamist attack from what I remember and this was early in the 2000s I think it a couple of thoughts on this so it was a precursor to what happened in London in 2005 the bombing on the London Underground of the buses and then it led to I think it encouraged further attacks that we saw play out in the years that followed so I think it was a sign that there was a community of people in Europe who found the idea of Islamic totalitarianism not just interesting but worth dying for and that was revealed continually and that was we talked about this a lot at the time the signals are there they have to take this seriously and the one of the things we talked about and this is the subject of other books I've written one of them is failing to confront Islamic totalitarianism what went wrong after 9-11 one of the things in that work is the failure to understand the nature of the failure to defeat it leads to things exactly like this so notice this happened a year after the Iraq invasion Iraq this is one of the things you were really vocal about Iran the Iraq was not the right target it was a complete the wrong target and I think it showed a weakness on the part of the west and part of the US as well that I think emboldened the Islamists to feel like yeah they don't know what they're doing of course not and they let us go in Afghanistan so this is also two years after the Afghanistan debacle so America goes into Afghanistan and lets the Taliban through its fingers escape into Pakistan and there's a whole history about how Osama bin Laden was a free man for basically 10 years after 9-11 so there's a lot of that I think it was a watershed moment if we want to look at that Madrid attack we kind of have learned nothing from it I mean we're still struggling with the same Islamists globally and what was interesting politically is it caused the relatively I guess send a white government of Rosemarie Asnow who was doing good things in Spain reforming the economy and doing a lot of good things but who had supported the US invasion of Iraq it caused them to lose the election the idea was it's because of your support for Iraq that bombings happened the way to stop bombings like this from happening in the future is by appeasing the terrorists so we need Spain elected the Socialist Party and Socialist Party undid a lot of the good things Asnow's government had done and so both we didn't learn how to deal with the terrorists and in the end Spain itself suffered because they got a socialist government in its place what was interesting at the time was this is a lesson for social medias the immediate response after the bombing was it must be the Basques and there were huge rallies in Spain over this idea that it's the Basques and unity of Spain and everything and then as the day war on it became clear that it was Islamists and the whole atmosphere in Spain it was really a war as you said a watershed event in the history of Spain and a strong illustration of how we don't know what we're doing in the war with with the Islamists right lond dissenter something like that you want to learn debate partners when when we find somebody who will match us up with somebody the problem is finding the other side it would have been yeah there's a sense in which I'm glad I didn't get to do the next debate because Finkelstein is such a scumbag you really want to know I want to be on the same stage with him I haven't done many debates I've done one real debate and I I didn't think I did very well I didn't like it and one of the takeaways for me was I'm not convinced it's a great way to get to people so and with the other takeaway I had after the debate was I'm glad the guy I debated was the guy I debated and not somebody worse because then I would have been really uncomfortable position I'm on a stage with someone I don't respect I don't really want to be in that position and I think the Finkelstein I'm glad in some I agree with you I don't think I would have want to be across the table from Finkelstein or somebody is kind yeah there's just way too many people in this topic that I don't see the reason to debate them yeah as you know I've done dozens of debates some people have converted to objectivism because of my debates so I said that speaks to your strength not the debate format maybe debate format expo it brings people to the event that wouldn't come otherwise yeah I can see that yeah debates are useless in terms of actual delving and discussing intellectual ideas but a lot of people like them so they show up so you get exposed to a larger audience but thanks for the vote of confidence from the question I appreciate it yeah I know it would be fun to do to do a debate with Elon not against Elon with Elon alright Mary Alene says Murray seems to understand I assume this is Douglas Murray seems to understand it is almost clearly when a Hamas must lose and overall he's an altruist he's an altruist thoughts or comments I think Douglas Murray is being particularly good on this issue and I've been impressed with him I have concerns about Douglas Murray from a few years back and I've recently read his book The War on the West and it confirmed my concerns because I think he's a sophisticated conservative I think he's quite really smart and I respect that about him the last part of the book really alarmed me and the last part of the book is the book is about the attacks on the west which he's good at illustrating some of the problems that are being faced right now but the and particularly from the progressive book tribal side of things what he says at the end and this goes to the question I think the question is asking is he an altruist is there a sort of Achilles heel here and I think there is and the concern I have is not only is there this altruism but based on what I read in his book one concern is that he walks this line of where for the west has enlightenment values and it's about it happened in Europe and a lot of people are the Europeans and it's not quite racial and he doesn't, I don't think he's a racist but it's very close to that line and he even says in the book which is really interesting to read it look you make me he's like a monologue to his opponent like you're pushing me to identify as a white person I don't want to do that but if you push me I'm going to do it not capturing it exactly but I was uncomfortable with that and I think that is an Achilles heel if your debating strategy with opponents just is okay you set the term and I'm going to push back from this perspective and so to think about this context broadly that's a question I would love to talk with him more about that and just to see is this like a tactic for you or is this more like you actually think this and where do you draw the line is it really about it happened in Europe so it's essentially European slash national ethnic elements he doesn't think it's in the genes but he thinks it's something about being European that's unique and so I don't think he would say oh this couldn't have happened somewhere else I don't think he genetically from a genetic perspective but he thinks there's something unique it's so hard for people outside of Europe to assimilate to that that it's better just to keep them up and he walks a very fine line I've done a couple of panels with him and yeah the things he says that are so close to being and I don't think he's a racist but I think there's things that come very close to that where he sanctions an racist perspective even without knowing it but he is he's super smart, he's super articulate I love his accent, how can you not love his accent he also grants way too much to Christianity he also I've seen him on talks I saw him in a video with Tom Holland the guy who wrote Dominion and Dominion is awful it's an interesting book and I don't know if you're familiar with this book but it's a book about how well I mean everything that's happened in the West is Christian because Christianity was dominant every way in the West when it happened so even the Enlightenment even though it really killed Christian that's within Christianity that's not from outside so everything is pro-Christian on the one hand he gets that he gets a communism and woke basically Christian but he can't separate the metaphysics the epistemology the morality of Christianity so he can you know he doesn't get that it's the morality of Christianity the woke and communism grasp you can't get the Enlightenment you can't it's very it's a very strange book because he's a Greek scholar and he says things about Greece that are not true but I saw a thing with him in Douglas Mourney Douglas Mourney he said yeah the West is Christian even though I'm not Christian I'm an atheist the West is Christian it just is we have to accept it and we have to embrace it but he does he writes a great column one of the things I like about him is he has this reverence for culture and he writes a great column for free press for Barry Weiser staying on poetry every I think Sunday or something and they're really beautifully written and he brings out some beautiful things you know some of them are kind of altruistic and sacrificial but but he emphasizes some really beautiful stuff all right Frank Frank has questions sometimes it's hard to okay I see Christianity as originally dualistic with Judaism and achieved identity with Catholicism's dichotomy and then evolved to compete with Protestantism any uphand thoughts as a philosophical regression I'll take a shot at this Frank you'll tell me from advancing question because it's hard I mean Christianity did I think evolve as a religion ideology that was contrasted with Judaism so it was in this competition if you will with Judaism but it did achieve its own identity at some point and rejected Judaism when it achieved a certain critical mass of people who believed in it when it was formalized and the Catholic dogma and that happened anywhere between 300 and I don't know 1,000 it slowly kind of solidified this Christian dogma but the Christian dogma of course is false and it's dogma and it doesn't lead to anything really good so it inevitably I think ultimately broke apart and that's the rise of the whole Protestant movement which is the breaking apart of Catholicism without yet rejecting Christianity completely and yes then Catholicism has to compete with Protestantism but that's the beauty of the enlightenment the fragmentation of Christianity created space in which the real rebels the enlightenment could arise the renaissance and the enlightenment could arise so I think all that happens philosophically inevitable that happens in that sequence I doubt I don't think that's true I just think that happens to have happened in history I don't think it's inevitable or philosophically inevitable alright Enric Eric did you see the documentary of Clarence Thomas he stated it was the fountain head that motivated him to compromise and not stay compromise and not stay in a mediocre job and not compromise I haven't but I know that story that is Clarence Thomas is a huge fountain head fan he has his clocks his locked clocks every year they get together and watch the fountain head together he and the clocks watch it together at his home or something so he makes a big deal out of the fountain head he's very intellectual Clarence Thomas is very intellectual, you can tell that in his rulings and he's very good at some things and he's very confused on other things and he still hobbies religion and he can't let go of religions but there's no question Eingrand had a huge influence on him and there's a good indication of the fact that Eingrand had a huge influence on lots of people really lots of people in ways that we don't appreciate really don't appreciate because we don't know the impact who knew that Alishog was Steve Jobs' favorite book or that almost everybody in Silicon Valley in the early days of Silicon Valley was an Eingrand fan or that certain politicians were Eingrand fans and it just to influence is far far greater than I think most people think and we still need the historians to go in and do the kind of digging and work about Eingrand's influence on the culture. I think there'll be a lot of surprises when they do. There's one thought on that, Jaron I think it's if anyone saw the Joe Rogan interview with Zack Snyder that came up, Zack Snyder wants to do a series, Netflix turned him down I did a podcast on that one of the things that interested me about that exchange is this issue of influence which is they go back and forth, Steve Jobs was interested in Eingrand and that really surprises Steve Joe Rogan I respect Steve Jobs, how does this integrate I don't know, the way I think of Eingrand's influence so I think there's two aspects to this one, the view of Eingrand in the culture and what her influence has been is really shallow you can see that because they can't understand what it is and then I think there's a view among some of her fans about what influence looks like that is also shallow in the sense that oh, they read, so and so is a fan of the book but look at all the ways they're not like Eingrand's philosophy, they don't live up to her philosophy and I think the important point I would stress is influence is a really broad phenomenon it's way broader than you were influenced by Eingrand it defines your career it defines you in such a fundamental way but Steve Jobs was influenced by Eingrand and both are true and it didn't define his career in the same way but it did something to him it was indelible the way to conceptualize it takes a lot more work than I think people realize because I have to say I've been influenced by other thinkers but not in the way that I've been influenced by Eingrand but it doesn't make it any less real that I read their work it left an impact and so I think there's I agree there's a sort of historical work to do but there's also work to do to appreciate the variation and the subtleties of what influence looks like because I'll tell you one example that is really fresh for me the Davos speech that Millay gave I watched that and I came away thinking if I didn't know he had read Atlas Shrugged I would be convinced that he had read Atlas Shrugged because of the way he's describing business people and the whole moral tone to it now I don't know who wrote the speech but it so clearly has echoes of Atlas Shrugged now that takes I don't think someone watching that who doesn't have a context in Eingrand's work would recognize it but that to me is yeah that's another example that is easy to overlook or to dismiss as not significant is the head of Argentina it's huge a sign of it and of course the other thing is that people particularly her fans think that the influence will come in politics mm-hmm and so they say culture politically would deteriorate and the reality is that she's had a massive influence for 50, 60, 70 years and it but it it hasn't manifested in politics although even the politics are probably better to be without her but it's manifested itself in Silicon Valley in the outstanding living quality of life and inspiring business people to go into business and create and produce and I don't think people appreciate that because it's almost like the only dimension they can think of is a political dimension it's the only area in which influence matters to people all right let's we're already two hours in so let's let's we've got a few more questions we'll try to get through these quickly all right so these are all over the place let's see John is asking brainwashing by subliminal messages is an attempt to get people to vote a certain way is this only achieved if the victims values aren't made explicit to themselves isn't it just subconscious exploitation of non-thinkers I'm not even sure it's a thing there's I'm not even sure if there is such a thing as subliminal messages right I know it's attempted in marketing and everything else but I don't know I don't think it's a real thing and you're absolutely right to the extent that it is and maybe it's not so subliminal it's only it only works with unthinking people because it's like you know when I first came to America one of the things that really stunned me were the beer commercials right every way there were all these beer commercials they all looked exactly the same bikini clad women really good looking women drinking beer on yachts and cars all over the place that was the thing and that was supposed to get you to drink beer and it was like I don't get it I mean I get beautiful women that I get I don't get beer right and there's nothing about these commercials that causes me even a tiny little bit to want to drink beer otherwise they wouldn't spend the gazillions of dollars so who does it work on somebody who have very very different values than me and people who I think don't think for themselves or don't have a conception of what life actually can be I mean beer commercials always intrigued me I don't get them of course that's become politically correct so they don't have bikini clad women in beer commercials anymore but not for any reason other than it's not politically correct alright Dave Aristotle stated that the most enduring friendships are founded on moral virtue alignment are consistent pragmatists morally eligible to be good friends with consistent objectivists what is a consistent pragmatist yeah I'm not sure what a consistent pragmatist means that's right I think that's a contradiction in terms I think the answer is yes do you really want to be a friend with somebody who is a real pragmatist who doesn't believe in the long term doesn't believe in principles that's a scary proposition to be close to somebody like that in any kind of realm so yeah stay away from people who are who don't have values and are really willing to live by those values in a consistent way and good values sorry just one other thought there I think the way the question to put it is the deepest friendships and Aristotle has an interesting view on friendship which is that it comes in different kinds and this is the deepest kind there are other kinds and it's good to think about what that looks like in your own life so that not everyone you are friends with is your most deepest friend best friend or whatever there are different friendships different levels of friendships and I'm not going to defend people who are pragmatists because I think it's a bad way to live but there might be a delimited relationship you have with someone who has that tendency but you have to know that and recognize that it's going to be a limit on the depth of your values you can have in common because the important thing to know about is that what I said was somewhat flippant is there a consistent pragmatist but the reality is that people just as there's a mixed economy there's a mixed economy of the soul and people have really bad elements of them and really good elements and you have to think, not everyone people come in such varieties you have to really think about what aspects of their character is good and what's not and what to support and what not and that it's really it takes work to think through so I encourage whoever asks the questions invest the right amount of thought in the kind of friendships and relationships you want and recognize that people even if they do one pragmatist thing that does not mean that it might mean that they're like that all the way through but recognize if they're going to just be your tennis partner that's one thing you just know what the risks are I think that's why you use consistent pragmatists to get away from the somewhat pragmatist sometimes versus the pragmatic pragmatists what should be done about North Korea? Do the people have any concept of Western ideas so they can fight back or are they brainwashed forever? I mean the last time I did serious work on North Korea was 15 years ago so my knowledge is not up to date what I'll say is that my understanding of the culture of North Korea is that it's purposely made ignorant as you would expect in a dictation but to a scale that you would be dumbfounded if you understood so I had a I read about this recently last couple years I think there's a question of how much outside knowledge has managed to seep in there have been campaigns for decades to smuggle thumb drives and smart phones so people can get information this is really a hermetically sealed country that has just a few entry points I don't think the influence of the west is very strong or strong enough what could be done about North Korea that's a really big issue and I think it starts with understanding how everything that was done for the last 30 years has just made things worse which is a policy of appeasement it started basically under Clinton and was continued as a bipartisan bipartisan policy all the way through to the North Koreans going nuclear and they did it thanks to this policy not despite this policy and it was continued with Trump? well, Trump gave a bear hug to North Korea so alright pickaxing on Europa for both do you think Lex Friedman managed as well a Palestinian debate yesterday well discord friends thought Christine nailed it sadly thoughts we're going to defer that to next Thursday where we're going to go in depth into the debate including Lex Friedman's how he managed it and who he thought won but we will you know, we'll analyze it maybe we'll give some of our own answers to some of the questions that were asked I still have to think about how we want to kind of organize our discussion around it because it is a five-out debate we can't answer everything we can't but we'll figure that out by Thursday Thursday will be the big show on on that debate Justin says why did the Nazis embrace evolution when they were anti-reason? because it served their purposes because they used it to develop a theory of eugenics which served their purposes and a lot of Christians embrace evolution a lot of people embrace evolution who are anti-reason the fact that you embrace one field in science doesn't make you pro-reason let's see, Paulo Zeus your view on the Manchester arena attack I mean I'm not sure what view we could have it was horrific yeah I mean it was particularly horrific because if I remember correctly this is the Ariana Grande concert and so the people in the audience were mostly teenage girls with their moms maybe some of their friends so it was particularly heinous attack I mean it's difficult to answer that question without more specificity because at that point you get there's the Manchester attack there's the tower bridge attack there's their attacks in Paris what is it that you want to distinguish about them and evaluate they're all coming from the same kind of ideology that was unmet with any serious resistance it just shows you that I have no idea who Ariana is who that person is Ariana Grande Michael sorry joining late that the Atlantic's April issue has a good article in American Jews from left privilege and right conspiracies any comments I haven't read it yet have you read this it's on my cue to read this week actually I don't think there'll be anything new we know this that on both sides the conspiracies are just they're non-stop and they're all the same old conspiracies of the Jews controlling the world one way or the other it's stunning how kind of the protocols of the elders of Zion in a sense gets recycled year after year after year in different forms in different ways but all basically the same idea a pamphlet developed by Russian propagandists to justify programs is now really everywhere in the world and being used extensively the arguments they were used extensively let's see a former Secretary of State Condoleezza Wright wrote democracy stories from the long road to freedom and argued U.S. for staying in Afghanistan and bought a U.S. Western occupation I enjoy Rice your thoughts about her not a fan Condoleezza Rice was one of the I don't know if her view was completely aligned but when Bush was in power and she was Secretary of State I believe she went around the Middle East saying you got to have an election so she went around pushing the idea of the forward strategy of freedom and it didn't take very long to realize as we were arguing from the beginning this is a catastrophic policy you're going to empower your enemies at every step or give them greater power than they already have if not completely put them in political office and one of the things she said about that policy and then one of the things she said about Israel have always haunted me about the forward strategy of freedom in Lebanon when the elections happened Hezbollah the Islamist group that Iran supports had a huge show they basically got incredible power in the country and she was asked about this Condoleezza Rice what do you think about Islamists coming up in Lebanon as well as other places and her answer was these are the birth pangs of a new Middle East that is a gargantuan evasion of what's happening and then soon after this you have to remember that as you probably talked about in the show at the same time one of the places where they were having elections pushed by the US I think you talked about this is Gaza which was the Palestinian territories including Gaza and that's what led to Hamas coming to power but right before the elections was the Israel withdrawal 2005 and what did she say about that and that's really the thing that I remember vividly Israel withdrew unilaterally it wasn't a land for peace it was just land take the land we don't you have had it basically no quid pro quo contrary to the basic formula peace process that had come before that and convalescer I said it cannot be only Gaza okay that as they say now hasn't aged well because it didn't age well the moment after she said it it didn't it was just so catastrophically irrational that within a year Hamas was year and a half Hamas was in power then they were shooting rockets and here we are after October 7 this was a direct result imagine if Israel had said yeah you know what let's now keep going let's keep withdrawing unilaterally from the rest of these places see what happens then yeah we can tell you what would happen yeah I mean it was also America that forced Israel to allow Hamas to participate in those elections Israel didn't want them because they didn't want somebody who in their charter denies the existence of Israel and cause for the annihilation of Israel and the elections for the Palestinian government and it was Condoleezza Rice and the Bush administration that forced Israel to let them participate and they won they won just like Hezbollah won in Lebanon all right friend Alper says great interview Ilan I love your episodes a new idea live and Daniel Duffy do you think Iran will get a nuke or will Israel stop them I can tell you what I hope happens and that I hope Israel isn't too distracted by Gaza to take action to prevent Iran from getting away but I think the evidence that Israel is trying to do that is significant we know was about 10 years ago they were part of the Stuxnet worm and there's other sort of subterfuge that they did to the parts that Iran is buying and it's not I don't think it's I think it's part of the strategy and it might not look like what they did to Iraq in 1981 it might be more in the background but I really think they need to do that because there's no telling what Iran will do will they succeed I don't know I can't answer that question follows this says I'm no fool but I am convinced I am not convinced Tommy Robinson is a far right monster and is an ally in the western fight against Islamism I could be wrong your opinion so I guess your opinion on Tommy Robinson I don't I mean I read a bit about him when he got some notoriety but I don't have a definite view yeah I don't I don't particularly either I suspect he's more of a I suspect I suspect he's not very sophisticated or very either way so whether he's a tool of others or whether he's a real monster whether he's really against but I don't think he's an ally to any of us I don't think he's working for the same cause we are alright almost 20 hours cool as I mentioned earlier Ilan will be back on Thursday 7 p.m. east coast time next week to talk about the debate the Lex Friedman debate we will so we will reconvene then I will see you guys we have a show tomorrow 3 p.m. no well I don't know the clock has moved um I don't know either 2 or 3 p.m. east coast time I'll decide tomorrow I'll let you know one of those 2 hours and um thank you Ilan my pleasure see you next time see you all tomorrow have a great rest of your evening quick questions just came in is western aid to Africa helpful or not seems like they are turning their back on us I don't think it's really helpful as a principle I'm against foreign aid I don't think it accomplishes what it's supposed to and it's just inherently sacrificial I only support it in the delimited context where you already are committed to doing it and if you're going to do that you're better off supporting people who are friendly to you than you are your enemies so but as a principle I don't think it has any part in a real free governments policy absolutely it's kind of a welfare and it's not good for you and it's not good for the people receiving it it creates it creates distortions on both sides alright everybody bye Ilan