 Welcome to Delling Pole, a Breitbart.com podcast. Here is the podcast host, James Delling Pole. Welcome to the Delling Pole podcast with me, James Delling Pole, and I'm really excited about this week's special guest, and I know I always get excited, but I've just been talking to beforehand, and there's so much we could talk about. His name is Jaron Brook. He is the chairman of the Einrand Institute, and the reason I sort of got to hear that he would be a good thing is that he came to talk at my son's school and my daughter's school, and I got really good feedback. You caused a real stir, Jaron. I always caused a stir, so the feedback I get afterwards is always, the kids don't stop talking about it. For weeks later, there is debate and discussion going on among the kids, and that's what you want to do. I mean, what are we in the business of doing? We're in the business of trying to get people to think, think for themselves, and to think a little bit outside of the box, and I think what happens when I go to these high schools, and I've been touring for the last couple of years, touring British high schools, is they've never heard what I have to say. They've never heard this position. They've never heard my views on history or my views on economics or my views on politics or my views on ethics and morality, and it really creates cognitive dissonance, which is a truly beautiful thing because it forces them to think, and whether they agree with me or not, it gets them thinking. So give me a potted version of what you're saying to these kids. So it varies from school to school, but mostly I'm saying, look, capitalism is this amazing success story. It's just, you can't look at the data and not see how wonderful capitalism is. You can't travel around the world and see different countries and not identify that capitalism is the greatest thing that's happened to mankind, really, from a material perspective. We are so rich today. They can't imagine, I tell them a story 300 years ago, 95% of humanity lived in $2 a day or less, and they don't know that. They don't know that before the Industrial Revolution, we would all do it for, all of us would do it for a few aristocrats and the rest of us. And then I say, well, but this is the real challenge, particularly for people like me and maybe for you. Why then, if it's such a success story, it clearly is, there's just no question about it, and that they take as a shock. How can you defend capitalism even like that? Why is it that everybody hates it? Why is it so despised? Why is socialism so popular? Why is statism in any form so popular if capitalism is so despised? And I lead from that into a discussion of morality, because my claim is, Ayn Rand's claim was, that really what drives our infatuation with statism and socialism and communism and any form of collectivism is not the success story, because there is no success story. It's a moral identification. We are raised with a particular morality that drives us towards collectivism, that drives us towards being taken care of by the state. The morality of otherism or altruism, not in the common usage of the word, but the idea that the purpose of life is to live for others. Well, if the purpose of life is to live for others, it means others are more important than you. If others are more important than you, then the group out there is more important than you, and there you have collectivism. It's pretty straightforward. And then I talk about the alternative, which I think is the only way we can defend capitalism, and that is to establish an individualistic moral code, a moral code based on Aristotle's view of eudaumonia, of virtue achieving individual human flourishing. And I do all of that, and I cover that. I've got the shtick. I've got it down. I've got good stories. I've got good jokes in the middle. And they're intrigued by the capitalism story. They're intrigued by the moral story. They're really intrigued by the whole thing. Nothing that I say there have they ever heard before. Yes. Now, isn't that scary? It's very scary. It's very scary, particularly the history. And actually, I did an event last night with Douglas Murray and those some interesting questions afterwards. And one of the things I said was, somebody says, isn't it too bad that our kids don't learn about the evils of socialism? I said, yeah, that's bad, but what's really horrible is that our kids don't learn about the beauty of the industrial revolution. I said, all they learn is about from the lens of dickens. That's what they know about the industrial revolution. Child labor, you know, and it was horrible, and it was cold, and it was dirty and filthy. But what they don't learn is about the doubling of life expectancy, almost doubling. What they don't learn is how we became rich from poverty. What they don't learn is that capitalism, it's that century, and it's capitalism that freed the slaves, that its slavery disappeared during the 19th century, during this industrial revolution. And that's not an accident. It's not a coincidence. They don't learn about even emancipation of women as a direct consequence of the attitude of capitalism, the idea of individualism, the idea that drives the capitalist mentality, all these beautiful things. And primarily the wealth and technology they saw at door today, the iPhones or whatever. Well, all products of the industrial revolution in capitalism, and yet all they know about it are negatives. Totally. That's scary. I don't know whether you're aware of this. There was this famous, the opening show of the London Olympics. They had this sort of tableau vivant of English or British history presented for the nation. And needless to say, the high points of history were the NHS, the National Health Service, this kind of socialist rationing system. And when the director of the show, Danny Boyle, who was the film director, made some good movies, train spotting stuff, when he portrayed the industrial revolution, he showed these dark satanic mills, these chimneys, erupting like menacing fallacies through the green and pleasant land that England was where, presumably, Strefflin and Chloe Frolick played their pastoral pipes and stuff. And of course, I always ask the audiences, what do you think children did before the industrial revolution? And a few people say, well, yeah, they worked. I said, yeah. Well, children have worked since the beginning of time. They've always worked because if they don't work, they starve. And if they starve, they die. But more than working, what do children really do before the industrial revolution? They died. Fewer than 50% of kids made it to age 10 before the industrial revolution. How many kids today die before age 10? Almost none. Why is that? How did that happen? It's a consequence of the wealth created during the industrial revolution. And people say, medicine. Well, where did medicine come from? The same process that led to the industrialization, the same process that created the wealth also allowed us now to build hospitals, also allowed people to specialize in profession of doctors, also allowed for all the medical research that all requires capital and all requires money. And of course, the scientific method is what led to both. The scientific method is a product of that kind of veneration of reason which led to both capitalism and medical advances. It's all one story. And for them to take what they want out of the story and to forget the other parts is horrible. So yes, children came into the cities into London and worked in factories during the 19th century. Their life expectancy increased. It wasn't pleasant. But it's not clear that it was worse than working in the farm from sun up to sunrise and barely eating. And within a few decades, parents were making enough money that they could take their kids out of the factories and put them in schools. People think government did that. But government only steps in and passes laws against child labor after there's almost no child labor anyway. Yes. You've got metrics for that, have you? Yes, absolutely. There's data on this. And it's not just in England. If you look at the Third World today, you see the countries that are passing laws against child labor, they always do it at about the same GDP per capita because at that point, parents are rich enough to be able to feed their kids without the kids working. Isn't it the same as well to do with things like female emancipation and all the laws or the race laws in America? Wasn't integration already happening on both fronts before the Civil War? Well, it was certainly before the Civil War. Oh, well, I was thinking later. Oh, yes, yes. So if you look at the 1940s and 50s, integration was happening, particularly in the north and indeed blacks from the south were leaving the south and going to the north, starting in the 19 teens all the way through the 1950s and 60s, they were leaving because of discrimination, because of Jim Crow laws. And indeed, the data suggests that more blacks were entering the middle class before the Civil Rights Act and primarily before affirmative action and before all these reverse discrimination. And I'd say particularly before the establishment of the welfare state, which was in the 1960s, blacks were entering the middle class much faster than they are today. The reason I think blacks that halted the entrance into the middle class is welfare. If welfare institutionalizes into poverty, welfare tells you that you're not good enough to make it by yourself and you need the state to help you. So welfare, the biggest victims of welfare are the recipients. I'm offended by the fact that my money is stolen without my asking to redistribute other people, but what really offends me is what we do to poor people and how we institutionalize them into poverty by writing them a check and giving them unconditional funds to live. It takes away their incentive to work and if you take away somebody's incentive to work, you reduce their lifestyle immediately. But more importantly, you reduce something that I think is more important than the money, which is their self-esteem. Much of our self-knowledge, much of our self-esteem, much of our confidence in life comes from putting bread on the table, from feeding our family, from achieving things, from having goals and achieving them. And we get that mostly from our work. I think everybody does whatever profession. You push, you strive, and you get that confidence. Yes, I can do it. You take away work from somebody, you destroy their capacity to live. So where are you on Trump? You must be quite a fan. No, I'm not. No, you're not. But in terms of what he... OK, compared with Obama, what he's achieved... Well, I mean, these comparisons are hard because I worry about the long-term consequences of a Trump administration. Policy by policy? Sure, we can find a lot of good policies that he has implemented. But his crass and vulgar and authoritarian in his nature has no understanding of the American Constitution or the American system of government. He's impatient with the separation of powers and would love to get rid of that. Now, he can't do anything about it because I don't think he's that smart and because we have a system of government that's pretty solid and protects itself. I worry about where this trend though, right? So if he is the first in a line and Obama was to some extent also, it's definitely out of authoritarian tendencies. But with Trump, it's more... And what I find would really scare me about Trump are the people who blindly support him because they are exhibiting real authoritarian tendencies. So they were supporting whether he does good things or bad things, so tariffs, which I think is like one of the dumbest strategies in the world, people who supposedly a free market were supported because it's Trump, no matter what he does. So I think he's revealed something in American psyche, something in American politics, which is very ugly and very scary and so I fear for what happens. If there's a backlash from the left, which could be scary, or if there's no backlash from the left and people become more and more enamored with him, then it's also scary in terms of where the right is heading. And then we can take apart his policies, policy by policy. I think the good stuff he does is mainly by accident and he does a lot of bad. So just a quick one. Everybody compliments him on tax cuts. I'm always for tax cuts. Never seen a tax cut I don't like. Just I have to say tax cuts are useless if you don't cut spending. Right. Spending is higher than under Obama, except for his stimulus package in the early days. That's interesting. But in terms of the welfare damage, that was done a long time ago. Was it LBJ? Yes, it's all LBJ in the 60s. So the great society was about the worst thing that ever happened to America? Well, yes. I think it really gets going with FDR. Yeah, you've had some socialists, haven't you, running your country? My goodness. I mean, even before FDR, if you think about President Wilson, a real progressive, the first real progressive who was president of the U.S., we got an income tax. Before Wilson, it was deemed unconstitutional. It literally had to change the constitution to add an income tax, which it did in 1914. We got the Federal Reserve, which I consider abomination, and we got World War I, which I still don't quite understand why the U.S. got involved in and why I don't know how many hundreds of thousands of Americans died. For what exactly? You Brits, Germans and French were killing each other quite well without the Americans having to intervene and get themselves killed. And we got the League of Nations. There's another abomination. So all of that under President Wilson. So he really, you know, I don't particularly like Teddy Roosevelt. So if you start with Teddy and then go to Wilson and then go to FDR and then I think you get the four manifestation in LBJ in the 1960s and then of course Nixon was quite bad if you really look at his policies from establishing most of the environmental regulation that we suffer from in the United States today is under Nixon. And, you know, I don't know, he did price controls. He did all kinds of funny things that you would never expect from a Republican to do. He tried all kinds of status policies to try to address the economy and failed. So it's been a long string of bad presidents. The last president I like is Calvin Coolidge. He's not my favorite, but he's the last one I like. Everyone knows anything about it. Well, it's early 20s and there was a recession and he did nothing. And it healed itself. And it healed itself very, very quickly. Very, very quickly. I've got a whole theory about the 2008 crisis and what would have happened if Paulson and Bernanke had chosen to do nothing. Oh, tell me. I think it would have been much better. I think if Bear Stearns would have been allowed to go bankrupt in March of 2008 early, Lehman Brothers would have to shape up. Lehman Brothers would have never gone bust. The U.S. economy would have gone into a session in March. But it would have healed itself very quickly. I think a lot of what happened in the financial crisis in September and October of 2008, exactly 10 years ago was panic as a result of the fact that people realized, markets realized that you had people leading the country who didn't know what they were doing. Who had no clue what they were doing. But Paulson goes out to the press and to the American public and says unless Congress gives me a billion dollars to do with, as I please talk about authoritarianism, as I please the world might end. Yeah, yeah. He said this. And so what are markets supposed to do? Markets are supposed to, wait a second, Treasury Secretary has no, is panicking. We should probably panic too. Bernanke, if you look, I mean he's written a book so everybody thinks he's a hero, he saved the economy. But actually you look at Bernanke, I did this. You take his commentary from some of 2007 to some of 2008. And you just take the comments he made about the economy. He was wrong in everything that he said. Housing can cause a recession. Freddie and Fannie are fine. The banks are all in great shape. Don't worry. All of these things he's saying for 12 months that turned out to be absolutely wrong. What are markets supposed to do? The Federal Reserve doesn't know what's going on. So I think a lot of the panic, a lot of the damage done to financial markets was done because of the incompetence of these people. Where do you think in your alternative history would, please say no, would Goldman Sachs be still with us? You know, I'm not quite as negative at Goldman Sachs as many people are. The thing I hate most about Goldman Sachs, the thing I hate most about them, is that they have provided every Treasury Secretary in a long, long time. And there's no question in my mind that Paulson didn't mind letting Goldman Brothers go bankrupt because Lehman was the competition. And he was the former chairman of Goldman and Goldman and Lehman have always been competitive. Although Goldman's always been better, so they've always been Lehman insignificant. If Goldman had been on the bank of bankruptcy, there's no question in my mind he would have bailed them out. But that's the kind of cronyism that exists in the world. I know people who work at Goldman. I understand Goldman's business model and on a day-to-day basis it's the cronyism and it's a rotating door with a Treasury that is horrific. Isn't that a bit like saying I really love the way the trains ran on time in Hitler's Germany and Mussolini's Italy? Well, but the question is who do you blame? Do you blame Hitler? Do you blame the trains? So when I look at Goldman Sachs what I blame is government. So I don't blame, for the most part, I don't blame business for being crony because I don't think they have a choice. I blame government for having power over business and therefore necessitating the cronyism. My favorite example here is Microsoft, right? So Microsoft in the 1990s was the largest company in the world by market cap and more successful and dynamic and growing and innovative. And this is from a guy who's always used Apple. I used to hate Microsoft, but those are the facts. And they were invited to Congress because in spite of all their success and the billions they had made and the billions Bill Gates had made they were spending exactly zero dollars on lobbying. They didn't lobby. So they were invited to in front of Congress just like what's his name? Zuckerberg recently. And the head of the committee was on hatch from Utah, Republican, young. He was young back then. And he literally stood up and yelled at them you have got to start spending money in Washington, DC. You have got to hire lawyers. You have got to start lobbying. And I want to see a building here in Washington, DC. You should have a headquarters here. In other words you should bribe me. This is a Republican. He basically is telling Microsoft you should bribe me. And this is all well documented. And Microsoft basically said at the meeting, he said, look you leave us alone, we'll leave you alone. We're not interested. We've got nothing to gain in Washington. We're doing our thing. We're producing great products. We're the biggest company in the world. What do we need you for? We don't need politicians. You guys are just a waste of time. And they left. And they went back to Seattle. And six months later knock on the door at Microsoft headquarters we're from the Justice Department and we're here to go after you for antitrust. All right. What did they do? What was the evil that Microsoft did with regards to antitrust? They offered a product for free. It was called the Internet Explorer. And Netscape had complained to the Justice Department. So the lesson learned is you have to play the game. If you don't play the game, we're going to go after you. I mean, look at Google today. Google has never gotten in trouble with antitrust. And you have to say, wait a minute, Google? I mean, I don't believe in antitrust laws but given the laws that exist, Google should be on their radar. Why has Google never been in trouble? Because from day one, Google has spent the money around, has spent money in Washington. They haven't spent enough in Brussels, obviously because they get in trouble in Brussels. So Microsoft today spends tens of millions of dollars in Washington lobbying. It has a beautiful building, beautiful building right in the middle of D.C. Equal difference distance from the White House and the House of Representatives. Gorgeous glass building right behind the Cato Institute, funnily enough. And they've learned their lesson. You have to play the game you have to be in Washington. So when I see bankers lobby Washington, it's like, well, what are they supposed to do? You know, Goldman Sachs has seven different regulatory agencies that regulate it. I don't know the number for Goldman Sachs but I can give you the number for J.P. Morgan. J.P. Morgan every day over 150 government employees go to work at the J.P. Morgan building. They have offices at J.P. Morgan monitoring and supervising and signing off on every single thing J.P. Morgan does. There are no private banks in the United States. They've all been nationalized. It's like public utilities where pretend you're private but the government controls everything. Whoa. You're listening to the Delling Paul podcast with me, James Delling Paul and my very special guest, Yaron Brook more in a moment. He agreed with us so let's love him today until he raps tomorrow and you turn your back because if you jump off when the fun of the moment is over then you are in fact making Kanye the token he is accused of being. So please don't do that. Don't go there. Here once again is James Delling Paul. Welcome back to the Delling Paul podcast with me, James Delling Paul and my very special guest, Yaron Brook who is the chairman of the Ein Rand Institute. So what are we going to do about this? Well, I mean I know it's a big question but my jaw was hitting the floor when you described there's 150 people going to the mall and crony capitalism is one of my best. Well, I hate calling it, if I can I hate calling it crony capitalism. There's no something capitalism cronyism is a feature of statism crony is a feature of the lack of capitalism and the capitalism there is no cronyism by definition because capitalism is in my view the separation of state from economics. So the state has no power over business and therefore business doesn't lobby cronyism is only exists as government grows and controls the economy more and more. So cronyism cronyism is a feature of statism I mean the most crony system in the world is socialism where everything's integrated right the government and business is completely integrated so I don't like I don't like conscious capitalism I don't like I don't know enlightened capitalism or any this capitalism capitalism is the system that protects individual rights it protects us as individuals and otherwise leaves us alone leaves the economy alone separates state from economics there's no something capitalism okay but but yeah I agree with cronyism is a major major problem in the world in which we live today. Yeah and it's a product of the mixed economy of too much government because I'm thinking look here you are you're doing the Lord's work you are parachuting into schools like my kids schools and and red you're basically redpilling the kids and if only their teachers did it which they're not doing at all no opposite no teachers are doing damage the teachers are tend to be at least in the United States they tend to be way on the left in the political spectrum and in philosophical spectrum and they're teaching the exact opposite they are they are training these kids to be good socialists they're training these kids to be good collectivists they're training these kids to ultimately for authoritarianism and they're giving them false history it's not just that they don't teach history they give them false sense of history and so these kids come out of school not really knowing anything about the real world and in America which is different than England England is actually much better in America we don't teach kids to think so they don't know how to be critical thinkers they don't know how to ask the right questions my impression is that the English school system is much better hang on a second are you talking about you mainly go to private schools don't you well here in England yeah yeah exactly that's the thing so you've got kids who have probably got slightly better teaching I mean we do have we do have good new schools cropping up but actually even in America even the private schools are now very good are they not no I mean the private school I showed my kids to for high school was more left than the public school I'm afraid this is the case in the UK as well now increasingly you get these lefty teachers who think they kind of want to undermine the institutions that they're being paid lots of money to work for and they kind of resent on some level I mean not all of them you get some great teachers but I'm quite shocked sometimes when I realize just what bunch of lefties I'm dealing with it's unbelievable I mean I've been impressed I have to say I've been impressed in England with the quality of the kids I'm going to the best schools granted but I'm getting great questions real engagement real you can tell in the eyes that this is interesting they might not agree with me but they and they have the confidence to challenge me which is which is great I get in the US kids tend to be way too passive and way I found that whenever I've spoken to American college kids even they are just it's like talking to I might as well be addressing a herd of cattle actually for the all the interaction I get that that occurs a lot although I have to say the countries in the world where it's worse like Scandinavia is pretty bad and already you know but the worst place in the US is if you go to Midwest where they have they have no expressions and it's very tough to get them to express themselves and to get them to actually engage but yeah it the American educational system with exception of the science as an engineering is pathetic it's really really really awful now my impression is a British kids is the smarter now it might be the accent haha yes we ask now yeah because the accent adds IQ points immediately yeah well yeah I'll take that that's good and what are the questions generally hostile yes yes which is good because it means it means that you know I've challenged real deep beliefs and and that they are now challenging me with the things that come into their mind and of course all the challenges are the same which I've often commented on all the challenges I get are but what about the poor okay so I answer that one but what about those poor and okay answer that and what about those poor it's so and I often say to them just partially to shock them but partially because there's a point here why do you care right what is it that motivates the question I mean I care about the poor and I think capitalism is the best system hands down no question for the poor but why do you care about the poor why don't you care primarily about what the system would do to your life why isn't that your first thought and I guess this is the moral training we give our kids the moral training to think of others always first but I would like to see kids thinking oh how would I live on this system like this what would life for me be like and then ask about the poor I mean I'm not saying don't get there but it shouldn't be the first thing that everybody wants to ask right and that you're never satisfied with the answer because it's not the answer you're expecting to get and this goes to the point you ask what do we do about it you know and this is where I'm most controversial and most controversial even with allies I mean even with conservatives and certainly with libertarians who might be allies on some issues this is where the rubber hits the road I believe in rational self-interest I believe that the moral purpose of life is to make the most of your life is to live the best life that you can live for yourself it's the achievement of happiness is the greatest moral achievement or achievement of a complete life as a human being really to live fully that's it and everything else like what about the poor should fit into that but the first question should always be how does this affect me is my life going to be better under this system or that system can I flourish, do I have more opportunities can I do more things can I experience more art what does it do to my life as a human being given the kind of animal we are conceptual being with all the wonders that are available to us in the world that's what I think is important and then part of that is how you treat other people but that's a derivative it's not the primary I want to treat other people well because there are other people they create an almost value that I benefit from and I live in a society I live with other people love is what's more selfish if we want to use that term what's more self-interest than the love I love you because you make me feel great about the world so until we can tell my libertarian particularly friends what we need is a moral revolution the economic political revolution will come if we have the moral revolution but if we don't have the moral revolution I fear that we will never have the political economic revolution because even if you'll achieve a few things you'll always drift backwards okay so first of all where did this attitude come from this almost well we've now got pathological altruism haven't we but altruism generally but is it Christianity or is it religion generally I think certainly Christianity because it's more in Christianity than it is in Judaism Judaism has a lot less of it Judaism is much more concerned about individual happiness but Christianity really gets it solidifies it and establishes a whole system at the end of the day Jesus is on a cross dying the most horrific death imaginable for since he didn't commit for since all of us committed now what an injustice that is that to me is horrific why would I want to die why should anybody die for something they didn't do just as demands the opposite just as demands that you get treated the way you deserve as an individual and yet he's not treated as an individual so every time I see a cross what we're worshiping here is the idea that the most noble thing we can do in life is sacrifice and die not because we deserve to die but because other people have done something wrong but I don't think it started there obviously Christianity capitalized on something that already existed and I think from the beginning of time the tribal leader and the witch doctor schemed together to figure out how to control all these individuals who were in the tribe and trying to do their own thing and the best way to control them is to say look, your life is meaningless as an individual what matters is the tribe what matters is the group, what matters are other people how do we know this because the witch doctors commute with the spirits and the spirits have told him and this is the only way to know the truth because there is no other way and how do we know it's good for the tribe because nobody here actually can represent the tribe well, that's what my job is I'm the tribal leader and I commune with the spirit of the tribe to tell what is right for the tribe and I use the witch doctor to help me do that and together you must follow our orders so altruism is a great way to control people if I tell you your life is not yours your happiness is not important what's important is their happiness and I'm the only one who knows what causes them to be happy and it's not any particular one of them none of them are supposed to be happy either because they're supposed to sacrifice for the rest of our tribe so nobody's ever really happy then it establishes me in a position of power and I get to control everything that happens and if you think about it what does Hitler say Hitler says you must all sacrifice for the Aryan people what is good for the Aryan people well, you guys don't know what's good for the Aryan people we need somebody to commune with the world of spirits for the Aryan people to tell you what's good for the Aryan people that's why we need a dictator and communism is the same thing why do we need a dictator in communism because how do we know what's good for the proletarian the proletarian can't talk the proletarian don't have a voice we can't have elections because it's not a majority thing it's what's really good for the proletarian well, we need somebody a philosopher king this is all kind of institutionalized by Plato we need a philosopher king to tell us what's good for the proletarian we need a philosopher king and he'll let you know what's good for the proletarian and then you can sacrifice for the proletarian so it's a mechanism whether the church did it or secular redictators have done it throughout the ages there's always a witch doctor element to it so there's always a religious element to it the same with fascism and communism there's a religious element there to control people and it's always been the case and altruism is probably the greatest gimmick but what was crushed, what's always been crushed is kind of the Aristotelian individualism the idea that we all have the capacity to know the truth we don't need a philosopher king to tell us what's true we have reason, everybody has it and we should treat people as thinking individual human beings and the only way to change their mind is to convince them using reason other than that what they do is none of our business we should leave them alone so what you describe is very familiar I was fishing yesterday and I was with a bunch of people some I had met, some I hadn't met nice people that I great time fishing with but when it came to talking about politics and they sort of discovered where I'm coming from politically their first reaction was you don't really believe this you're only saying this stuff to be a provocateur nobody could possibly believe this and one man confided to me well even though it's not in my own interest this is just classics, your argument even though it's not in my interest I'll always vote Labour because I care about the poor and I think these are probably quite representative of a lot of people out there now which is the second part of my question to you which is you said we need a philosophical revolution a moral revolution it's quite out there you're on well I know but so is any ideology at the beginning and it takes a long time and the more radical the ideology is the longer time it takes so I'm in this for not for tomorrow but I really am in this for decades I think it's going to take generations before basically mankind's ready for it before we can give up on these ancient ideas that still have a but it's education, education, education there are no shortcuts I really don't believe there are shortcuts yes you can improve things for a little while I'll give you an example Chile is this wonderful country in South America it used to be the poorest country in Latin America on a pro-capital GDP basis and today it's the richest country in Latin America and yet as it got richer and as it got more successful and it got rich and successful for one simple reason it adopted almost by accident the dictator he was so desperate that he handed the economy over to a bunch of people who studied the Chicago under Milton Friedman the Chicago boys and they turned to capitalism and they freed up the economy and they became rich when did this happen? well he turned the economy over in the very early 80s and over the last 20 years and he stopped being, he actually had an election to decide whether he should stay as a dictator or not and the people voted against him established a democracy and so for a while this was going and everybody was happy and everybody voted for good policies and they got freer and freer and freer and it got richer and richer and richer and then they got to a point and they said oh but we still have poor now the poor, the poor were a lot richer than they used to be a lot richer than they used to be but the gap between the poor and the rich had expanded even though the poor had gotten richer so then they vote for a couple of socialists and for two terms the socialists ruled over Chile and now they've, she was a disaster so they've turned back to a kind of a more market friendly president but what happens is, and this happened in the United States, we had Ronald Reagan but there was no revolution there was no Ronald Reagan revolution he freed up the economy, did some good things and the economy did well and then Bill Clinton didn't really change anything but then we got to Bush and Bush reversed a lot of what Reagan did and then we are back to a huge government spending went through the roof under George Bush even if you take out all the military spending and then we got Obama and now we got Trump so unless you challenge the fundamental beliefs yes you can have a president or you can have a political party that for a while makes a difference certainly in the UK I think more than in America, Margaret Thatcher had a profound impact on this country a profound impact on the UK and it's benefited from it but of course people here now hate Margaret Thatcher it's stunning to me how many people kind of Brits really dislike her she's the reason we're so rich here in London it's amazing to me but there's always going to be this backlash against the left and then the left will come and they'll screw it up and then the right will come and they'll tinker a little bit and things but we're not going to get a sustained improvement we're not going to get this over many many years over generations unless we rethink our fundamental beliefs we're totally not because even under Reagan government spending Reagan was a failure when it came to government spending and when it came to a number of different things I mean I think Reagan gets too much credit for the good stuff I mean even deregulation, the funny thing is people don't know this historically most of the important deregulation happened under Jimmy Carter and people don't even know this airline deregulation trucking deregulation, financial deregulation all that happened under Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan benefited from it because he came right after just as all this was taking off but yes I mean you don't get cuts and spending which is what really matters what really matters when it comes to politics is how much money does the government spend that is the proxy for how much power they have and how much influence they have over the economy I think my take home of this podcast is going to be my hero Jimmy Carter by Euron Brooke he did good things isn't that interesting actually we think of him as the idiot peanut farmer who went and cocked up of the Iranian hostages and actually he was a deregulator who knew that? he had some decent economic advisers and the economy in the US people forget this again because they left us brainwashed us with the alternative history the 1970s was an awful period awful in England in 1970 great music though you can't let Zeppelin we grew up on that music no question I'm a Pink Floyd fan but then if you but then if you look at the United States the 1970s were a disaster stagflation and they they'd run out of socialist remedies and what was left was well let's try this deregulation thing and it worked and of course nobody learns from that but yes it was Jimmy Carter I think by default doing it not because he intended to because he handed some stuff over to but he had a democratic congress and they still voted for it I've got to ask you this I know we're going to disagree on this because of what you've hinted earlier I'm very worried I think almost the biggest ok China Islam Fundamentals Islam I think one of the biggest menaces to our worldview and actually to western civilization is the power of Silicon Valley which is dominated by leftists now what do we do you don't believe in breaking up these cartels so how do we escape their stranglehold I don't believe they're cartels I really don't think they're cartels they're de facto cartels whether they're intentionally cartels but ideologically that's true there's a certain mindset in Silicon Valley which they all share so they all act in unison because they all basically are afraid to be left behind so if somebody de-platforms Alex Jones then everybody does because it's the cool thing to do in Silicon Valley and you don't want to be uncool my view is that using the state to do anything here is going to have immense damage down the road again you're giving the state more power to decide when there's a monopoly over intellectual ideas and when there isn't you know what when the left gets in and decides to talk radio in America is way too right-wing and what we need is to break up Rush Limbao and he can only broadcast once a week he can broadcast five days a week and he doesn't allow leftists on his show which he shouldn't right because maybe he should be forced to interview a leftist once in a while once you get the government into the business of deciding who is manipulating ideas how the marketplace should decide we don't like it I don't know let's get Peter Thiel and a few other better profane market entrepreneurs and create a competitor to some of these ventures that's what we should believe in as capitalists let's create a better mousetrap much worse than Silicon Valley a hundred times worse than Silicon Valley at our universities leftism in Silicon Valley the universities are 90 something percent left particularly in humanities and I've seen the statistics they were bad 30 years ago but they're much worse today what are you going to do there you're going to force a particular point of view into the universities and what is that point of view is it conservatism is it libertarianism is it just centrism and to me the other question you have to ask is why is Silicon Valley so so uniformly leftist and I think that's the more interesting question that's why we should really be challenged with why are these really really smart people who are the most productive people in the entire world today they're really creating economic growth in the United States is being driven by Silicon Valley today whatever the GDP numbers are it's predominantly coming out of Silicon Valley it's why California survives in spite of its socialist policies why are these incredibly productive smart people leftist and I think there's a lot of soul searching that the right has to do to figure out how they lost these people because they lost these people the previous generation of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs were not this leftist you know I don't believe Steve Jobs was really a leftist Larry Ellison is a libertarian a lot of these people were never radically left as they are today and I think the reason is that the right is automatically screwed up I mean my view is that the big screw up the right is made in America it's affiliation with the with the religious right and if you have candidates in the Republican party and they're asked what is your view of evolution and not one of them will say I believe evolution is a legitimate scientific view not one of them they'll either say I don't want to answer or they'll say well I'm an educated man then nobody who's got an engineering degree and who takes his belief in science and belief in engineering is going to support you know and what is going to support you and as a consequence they lump them all together these religious finance capitalism that's from the religious right which is tragic and you think they would be better thinkers than that but that is what's happening it's really the fact that the right tries to cultivate you know the worst elements in American society or the most backward elements in American society and that is rejecting science explicitly and that turns Silicon Valley off from them now I'm not saying that's an excuse for them to be doing what they're doing I don't think what they're doing is good but I think the right is quite a bit of responsibility for alienating these really smart people I mean I remember somebody asked me to advise Ted Cruz before the California priming I turned out that he withdrew from the race before we got to California because Donald Trump had already won it but they said no and I said look Ted Cruz you know Ted Cruz doesn't want to hear from me and I said no no no we've talked to them they want to talk to you they want to get a sense of what could he do to win California and what I was going to tell him was you're going to have to take back a lot of what you've said on the campaign trail you have so groveled before the evangelicals to no avail because they all voted for Donald Trump not for you but you have so groveled before them you have so demeaned yourself and the ideas of science and progress and the modern world unless you do a real 180 degree turn you're not going to get the vote even the better people in Silicon Valley they're just not going to vote for you so no I think intervening in Silicon Valley now in the name of so called free speech is going to be the worst thing for free speech possible it will destroy free speech in America and these companies are not censoring because only the government can censor and by the government stepping in and telling them what they can and kind of produce or breaking them up because they don't like what they're saying is the worst kind of censorship that you do is create competitive alternatives you know if the white has 50% of the voters in the United States then they should be able to create a real competitor to Facebook we'll talk about a bit more about this in the next section you're listening to the Dellingpo podcast with me James Dellingpo and my very special guest you're on Brooke more in a moment or it must have been fake news and by fake news they mean conservative websites but this is with the left things and by fake news what they mean is shut down Breitbart Breitbart news tonight weeknights starting at 9pm east on Sirius XM Patriot 125 this is Dellingpo a Breitbart.com podcast here once again is James Dellingpo welcome back to the Dellingpo with me James Dellingpo my very special guest you're on Brooke I did know that was going to be your line and the vibe you're a very very impressive person I don't want to thank you you are and I think that the actual solution to the world's problems is if you could somehow have you seen the boys from Brazil if you could clone in a nice way you could be like a nice hitler if we could clone lots of you and have you going because clearly the message you have is a good one I cannot share your faith that libertarian whatever you want, objectivist ideas are enough and in the same way the market I wonder Peter Teal's shown no interest in creating the alternative to has he? I'm not sure we'll see I don't want to speak out of turn but there are discussions, there are debates there's the things going on in the background I see I'm not sure Peter will do anything but there are people out there certainly having discussions about this and looking at the possibilities and what would be involved true, I have a very very positive view of human beings I'm an optimist when it comes to individual human beings and I look at the world around us and I see this amazing beauty and I see human creations everywhere I look there was a mind behind everything whether it's that computer on the desk or whether it's the amazing restaurants down the street we talked about the fact that we're both foodies I mean wow what people can do with simple ingredients it's fantastic and I believe in human ingenuity I believe in the human mind my heroes I have to say and I get a lot of flak for this my heroes are the people in Silicon Valley they're better every single day and I can't imagine life without the products that they build and the products they create so I'm literally in awe of them because I think they're such great human beings well, on one level well, but on the important level to me what you do with your mind in producing and trading with people and innovating is far more important than politics at the end of the day why do we want that enamored with politics because I wish politics was less intervening in our lives politics is important but what you do with your own life what you produce, what you create I don't care about Michelangelo's politics for all I know Michelangelo and I know his politics were terrible he was very religious and he was miserable unfortunately but when I stand in front of David I don't care about his politics wow, this man produced something in unbelievable ways and the same is true of Steve Jobs and the same is true of many of these people in Silicon Valley they inspire me and to me that's much more important than politics politics we need to fight the politics but as I said I think politics are derivative from morality and what's more moral than taking your life seriously as I think all these people in Silicon Valley do producing and creating and trading with other people to win relationships what would life be like without Amazon particularly living in Puerto Rico which I do now I rely on Amazon for a lot of basic stuff I can buy in the supermarket and it's a beautiful amazing thing so I believe that we appeal to people's virtue if we appeal to the positive to them wanting to be happy to them wanting to be successful then I think we can win it's going to take a long time but if we appeal to the worse in them and if we condemn the most productive in our society then we lose there's a book I commend to you it depresses you greatly have you heard of Richard Lagutko? no he's a Polish academic MVP who recognizes the parallels between liberal democracy and communism he said I grew up in communism and I look at liberal democracy when we came down suddenly we were exposed and low it's just like he doesn't use this phrase but this is my phrase it's like communism without the bread cues it's the same controlling mentality and I there's a truth there majorities I think I ran maybe it's Madison who called democracy the wool of the gang the majority is just it can be just as authoritarian although I was at a celebration of the fall of the Berlin Wall when it was a 25 year anniversary a couple of years ago and it was in Berlin and they had Vaklev Klaus from he's good and they had this woman who was a fighter in Eastern Germany and me and the three of us were speakers and Vaklev gets up there and he says oh it's getting worse look at all these feminism and the woman I fought for freedom look what we have today and the organizer came up to me and said this is supposed to be a celebration of the fall of the Berlin Wall can you be a little positive and I said look guys this isn't communist, give me a break look at the outside look at the kind of world you're living in look at the fact that you can say these things right now right now I know I understand you but we can talk about these things and we can argue about them but look at the quality of life and the standard of living you forget what communism was really like C.S. liberal democracy is bad and I'm not a believer generally in democracy, co-majority rule this is why I think the founders of America were such geniuses in that they created a system of constitutional republic which guarded everything they did was to guard us against the majority they were the best of England they came out there absolutely and of course they took English and French ideas it's the enlightenment the creation of America is the great achievement of the enlightenment it is the pinnacle of the enlightenment it's John Locke and the French and Scottish, primarily Scottish enlightenment of that period and it all manifested itself in the creation of the United States of America and it's amazing and I often think that what we're really trying to do is save the enlightenment and I know we'll probably disagree on this and I know most of my friends disagree with us I think Ayn Rand is an enlightenment thinker and to a large extent completes or fills in a lot of what the enlightenment missed out on and she provides the answers to those who attack the enlightenment the Germans who come afterwards and some of the other philosophers so this is one continuation and our job is really to save those thinkers to save those ideas the ideas of reason, of science and of individualism that's what the enlightenment boils down to and capitalism is just a product of reason and individualism I'm going to not ask you about Islam because I really want you back on the podcast I think some people are going to say he doesn't like Trump, I'm not sure I can deal with that but I think you will have swayed many people and they will have fallen in love with you and I think they'll find my views on Islam interesting well, of course they will I know, of course they will but I want to say that for another podcast I want to find a bit more about you so you grew up in Israel I did, grew up in Israel and your parents were socialists yes, as everybody was in Israel at the time so I grew up in a period of Israel where the Labour Party won every election as a socialist, it was unimaginable and unknowable to be anything else you just didn't know of it I spent two years actually in England when I was very little in the 1960s actually in Hackney I went to the Hackney Jewish Day School that's where I became an atheist and then I spent two years in America and I have to say back then I hated America it lacked all the things I loved about Israel the collectivism, the tribalism so you bought into it for a while hook, line and sink, I was completely I was a socialist, I remember arguing in America with all my American friends about the virtues of socialism so how old were you at this stage? I was 14, 15 and then one day I was with a friend and we were arguing about something and he was spouting these pro-market capitalist ideas and I said where are you getting this nonsense from and he said you got to read this book and he handed me a copy of Atlas Shrug and that was 1977 and it was also the first year where the Labor Party lost in Israel Begin came to power and I fought the book, I disagreed with everything, I did not want to accept anything she said it was turning my world literally upside down I was the kind of kid who grew up in Israel looking for the grenade I could jump on so I could sacrifice my life for the tribe for the, you know I was a patriot, I was going to be in the special forces that was my life and I was in the Israeli army and I was good at it but I meant completely I would throw the book on the wall I would argue, I would yell but in the end she won and she convinced me and the rest is history in a sense I went out to read everything else she wrote and spent three years in the Israeli army Did you enjoy that? No, it was mainly boring The best thing out of it and I guess the reason I don't actually regret it is I met my wife in the Israeli army, we were in the same units in military intelligence during a war It was 82, the war in Lebanon Okay, so did you get some access to some interesting intelligence stuff? Oh absolutely a lot of cool intelligence stuff and we were very involved in the Israeli invasion into Lebanon and the destruction of the Palestinian terrorist bases over there and the whole Palestinian terrorist infrastructure that was permeated southern Lebanon all the way into Beirut and I spent a little time in Beirut as part of the intelligence gathering mission and traveled around Lebanon to see what we'd identified whether the intelligence was right So it was interesting The war was interesting but of course it's sad when you have to have a war to make it interesting but it was I think it was a just war and it was Israel did the right thing in going into Lebanon Unfortunately they didn't leave fast enough but they should have left very quickly People don't learn from history about wars but again that's probably a discussion about Islam and about war Now you said relatively that my views in Islam are quite interesting People are going to be going Why is he not going to ask him his views on Islam? Say go on, go on Tell me your views on Islam My views on Islam as a religion of all the religions it's the one that has been least secularized and therefore it's the one that's most evil and it's the most primitive, it's the most barbaric it's still dark ages it's where Christianity and Judaism were a thousand years ago or more Luckily Christianity and Judaism went through a secularization and that is Aristotle the discovery of Aristotle by Thomas Aquinas who brought it into the Catholic Church and really changed the West and we had a renaissance and we had enlightenment and that completely changed everything Islam had that for a very brief period of time really in the beginning of Islam about 900 to 1100 and unfortunately abandoned it to abandon Aristotle, abandoned the libraries I mean there's a golden era of Islam which is quite amazing the greatest philosophy, it's all about ideas and it's all about philosophy philosophy is the most powerful people in the world this great so during this golden age of Islam they discovered Aristotle, they translated they had the biggest libraries in the world the most amazing libraries and the biggest debate within the Islamic world in terms of philosophy is what do we do with faith because Aristotle is teaching us reason but Islam teaches us faith and how do we do it and they try to integrate it they try to mesh it and they try to deal with it but it was always a point of concern just like it was with Aquinas in the Catholic Church so at around 1200 I can't remember the exact date there was the greatest philosopher of the time his name was Al Ghazali he was struggling with this debate and he landed up, it's a true story he landed up going into the desert to meditate about this issue and he spent about 10 years away from Baghdad and away from civilization and he returned and he said I've got the answer and we have to dedicate ourselves to Islam and dedicate ourselves to faith and until we do that we cannot return to greatness and within a generation all the libraries in Baghdad are burnt to the ground, they disappear they literally are gone now later, about 50 years later the Mongols invade and they destroy Baghdad and they destroy this whole but all the libraries in the Middle East are gone the last remnant of the Islamic Golden Age is in Spain in Córdoba and Seville and those great libraries in Spain and they're not destroyed his ideas do not travel to Spain they just influence the Middle East and when the Christians invade Spain and they conquer and they take those libraries they discover all these writings and they immediately take the books to Paris where they're translated from Arabic into Latin so they don't read Aristotle in original Greek they read him in Latin translated from Arabic which was translated from the Greek and to a large extent that changes civilization so you could say the Arabs save civilization because they save all those Greek amazing books and of course you had great Arab and Jewish philosophers at the time who were very Aristotelian Maimonides is the great Jewish philosopher who's very influenced by Aristotle and he's in Spain during this period but then once the Christians take over and they absorb that knowledge into Christianity which ultimately leads to the secularization of Christianity and at the same time the Muslims take many many steps backwards and become back to their primitive roots and they're still unfortunately the sad thing is they're still there and every attempt they make to break out of those primitive roots we in the West discourage it so the best example of this is in the 19th century rich Arabs from Egypt and Syria and Iraq would send their kids to study in the West because they thought the West is richer it's better they have great ideas they'll bring them back what did these kids study when they went to German universities and French universities and unfortunately British universities well they came back with two ideas they came back with socialism and fascism and if you look at the Barth party the Barth party which is a Syrian and Iraqi the secular they're all fascists and socialists so these fascists and socialists destroyed the Arab world and who gets blamed for that well the West does because they learned these ideas in the West they didn't come out of their and even today you have this massive Muslim immigration coming into the West and the West is not telling these Muslim immigrants all right trying to abandon your primitive barbaric ideas and adopt ours because ours is superior and here's a list free speech you know women have equal rights free speech no we tell them yeah multiculturalism all cultures are equal your barbaric culture is just as good as our wonderful culture and again we're destroying their opportunity this is an opportunity for them I like that take on it yes because that's almost the almost the altruistic take yes well I think altruism is behind it multiculturalism is a product of altruism it's a product of the lack of self confidence lack of self interest of the West but then there's also the question certainly since 9-11 but I believe since November 4th 1979 when the American embassy was taken by Khomeini that we're at war with a certain faction of the Islamists so within the Muslim world there's a faction we can call it jihadis we can call it Islamic totalitarians a variety of different names to it and we're at war with them now this is the most pathetically fought war in all of human history because we in the West don't like to kill anybody when we go to war we like to provide them with sewers and to build them roads and so we like to bring them democracy but God forbid we actually defeat them and crush them and actually teach them a lesson so I was a huge critic of George Bush after 9-11 because I thought he was a wimp and I thought the United States had the wrong response it invaded the wrong countries it penalized the wrong people and it never except for one week during his entire presidency he refused to affiliate the terrorists with Islam he called them terrorists and there was a war on terrorism instead of a war on Islamic terrorism or a war against the totalitarian Islam he called them terrorists which is one of the great feats of cowardice in all of human history and I'll give Donald Trump credit he is the first to identify the terrorists as Islamic although he also does that at the same time as going to dance with the propagators of these ideas in Saudi Arabia so he gets only half credit for me but a brief praise for Trump the Warsaw speech, his Warsaw speech was great no, his Warsaw speech was terrible it was one of my worst I actually did a whole podcast analyzing his Warsaw speech because he attributes what western values are he attributes to all the wrong things it's basically a kind of a pro collectivism pro family values kind of soppy conservative it was awful, it was perfect for the Poles because of where Poland is right now and I think he wanted to emphasize religion and family and all the conservative virtues but it messed up sure it's important but it's not what makes the west the west Muslims have families, everybody has families what makes the west the west again is reason and individualism and science and technology and capitalism and none of those things ever make anybody's speeches, not just Donald Trump but anybody's speeches and certainly not even George Bush but if I were president on 9-11 the first thing you would do Islamic terrorists attack us who funds them, who supports them who's the ideological mind behind them who's the spirit that animated the terrorists and I'd make a list and number one on the list would have to be well, Al-Qaeda, okay, Al-Qaeda but who animates Al-Qaeda, who funds Al-Qaeda where do they get their money from well, it has to be Saudi Arabia and right above or right under depends how you want to do it, is Iran and then you have to list Al-Qaeda and Hamas and Qizballah because they're all dedicated to the same cause Muslim Brotherhood and then you have to say, okay, we're at war with all of these people starting with the Saudis and the Iranians not the Iraqis and the Afghans and that would have changed everything because instead of hugging the Prince of Saudi Arabia which he did three weeks after instead of inviting Muslims to celebrate the Ramadan in the White House three weeks after 9-11 the whole orientation would have been different you go after them, you crush them, you defeat them you want war with us? Alright we can do this but you will die and you will be destroyed because we're much more powerful than you and you are primitive and barbaric we can't win a war against people in caves that's pretty sad so even though I don't like Donald Trump I'm a lot less politically correct than he is I think he's much more your man than you're prepared to admit or even mentally acknowledge but look that has been a great podcast I really enjoyed it and I'm glad I asked you that is a long question and you've got to come back you've so loved to come back you listened to the Delling Poor podcast with me and James Delling Poor and my very special guest Euron Brooke, thank you very much, goodbye you know bizarre, bizarre behavior from the Republicans