 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Book Show. All right, everybody, welcome to Iran Book Show. Friday night, not usually a time I do a show. Zack says it's midnight. Where is Zack? Zack is in, my guess is Zack is in the UK, because it's midnight in the UK right now. It's 8 p.m. here in Puerto Rico. I hope all of you are having a great Friday evening. Thanks for joining me, second show today, so I know it's a bit of a stretch. Wow, more people are watching right now on Twitter than are watching on YouTube. That's never happened before. YouTube's catching up. I think YouTube's overtaking. But thank you to all the new people out there on Twitter. Please, if you're on Twitter right now watching, please follow me on Twitter, and also come over to YouTube and subscribe. Ooh, yeah, so anyway. We've got Tessa. Tessa is in Southlake City, and all right, we've got some people asking obnoxious questions. Okay, as you know, if you wanna ask questions, which have features available, I will answer questions in that part of the, any question you want, I will read it out loud, any comments you want, any insult you wanna make. Just put dollars behind it, and we will give it appropriate attention. Who's going home to us? All right, she's going home to us, and excellent. All right, so I thought we'd take a break from talking about Tucker. I think we talk about Tucker every day this week. I'm kind of sick of it, and about to throw up, and so I figured we'd pick a couple of other topics, and I really wanted to have an opportunity to show this video to you. So we're gonna watch a video related to the evil of racial preferences. So I'm gonna just jump in, yeah, we lost everybody from Twitter. So they came, they saw, and they left. Maybe they moved on to YouTube, that would be nice. But the Twitter crowd did not stick around. I wanted to show you a video of, of somebody who resents the whole idea of racial preferences. It's a short video, it's about two minutes long, but it really has the moral power. It really has moral power. It really reflects maybe the greatest evil of racial preferences. It reflects the real outrage that somebody, not who doesn't get the job because he has a long race, but somebody who gets it, but who the world can't identify why he got it. Did he get it because of some racial preference, or did he get it because of his actual ability? So let's jump in and start with that. This is a short video of Glenn Lowry, who I love, Glenn Lowry is fantastic, and he is gonna be the only one speaking during this two minute rant. But I think it's really powerful, and I really wanted you guys to listen to it because it has that passion and moral energy of somebody who is morally offended by somebody, somebody who really wants to stand up and object. All right, so here it is. Let's see what I need to do. It's Glenn Lowry, you can see him. I'm gonna press play and listen to this. I was a brilliant kid. I looked at like the Matt Damon character in Goodwill Honey, I was working class kid. I didn't have a lot of polish, but I had real, real sharp smarts. My life took a various turn. I was a father at 18 and at 19 and at 21 and dropped out of college and went on to bounce around community college. Got discovered like Matt Damon in the movie, ended up at Northwestern University where I was a wizard. I was taking the PhD level courses in these technical subjects and acing them. Went to MIT where I was at the top of my class of games for gifts this, but I want you to try to understand the point. So my genius, yes I said it, my gift, my extraordinary abilities were what carried me forward, notwithstanding the vicissitudes of racism and discrimination in America. To have that minimized by somebody presuming that, oh, you didn't get the MIT without affirmative action. And it's actually true. I didn't get the MIT without affirmative action because every black person is gonna be the beneficiary of affirmative action, whether they ask for it, need it or not. MIT had three positions set aside in its entering class and those three were to be black students of the greatest promise. I was one of them in the year that I came in even though I didn't need to be in that box in order to get in because I had A's in everything. In the PhD level courses I was taking at Northwestern, my professors were writing letters saying that I was the best student they'd ever seen because I was. Again, I asked for your forbearance as I took my own horn here. God damn it, don't dishonor my amazing achievement by chalking it up to favoritism. I resent it, I don't like it, I don't need it, I don't want it. That's not a political position. I'm defending my own dignity here. So you gonna call me a sellout because I'm defending my dignity? Fuck you. I mean, please, will you get your hands off of my dignity? Let me succeed or fail based upon my abilities. Don't patronize me, God damn it. I was a breach. Now I love that, I think that is fantastic. Here you get Glenn Lowey. First of all, tuning his own horn in a way that is so rare in our world. I was a wizard, I was top of the class, my genius, my ability. He was good. Goodwill hunting, kind of discovery. And no embarrassment, no shame, no guilt, no, you know, this is real pride. This is knowing who you are, standing up for who you are, declaring who you are to the world. And, you know, he gets really emotional there through the end. And I think he gets really emotional there at the end for a simple reason. Because his ability, his genius, which didn't just come to him as he describes, he had a kid at 18, he dropped out of college in 1921, he had three kids before he was 21. Obviously he came from a difficult background, had to be discovered, had to work hard, had to make an effort to achieve what he achieved. And what racial preferences does is it minimizes all that. It says, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're smart, but really you're black, so that's why you're gonna get this job or that's why you're gonna get this scholarship at a university. And he finds, Glenn Lowey finds this offensive, and he should. I am smart, I got this based on my ability. But now, you know, how does anybody know that? How does anybody know that? And this is the thing about affirmative action and the variety of different racial preferences that exist in our economy, whether it's at workplaces or in schools, is the biggest victim, or the victim's all over the place for this, right? There's the kid who's of the wrong race who could have got the position, who didn't because he's not of the right race. He could be white, could be Asian, could be Jewish, he could be, you know, whatever, however you want to define race. He could be, you know, that's one victim, but he also could be the brilliant black kid who got accepted and will never, never be acknowledged as brilliant because, oh no, no, he's just a token, whatever. He just got in because of it. So any kind of system, there's a third victim, there's a third victim, so those are two victims. The kid who doesn't get the job because of race, the kid who gets the job because of his race but could have got it anyway if it was based on ability and will never be recognized for that. And the third one is the kid who got it, who didn't deserve it and is now never gonna have the self-esteem. He will never know why he got the job. He doesn't have the self-confidence and the self-knowledge of a glen lawy to know what he deserves and to know what he is. And he will always live in doubt. People around him always will view him in doubt. And instead of him, and often he will get a job he's not qualified for, he'll get into university he's not good enough for and that'll just destroy his self-esteem as he fails. Instead of getting the best job he can based on his ability, getting into the best university he can based on an ability, now he's getting a better job because of his race or a better university because of his race. And that undercuts, undermines his self-esteem and therefore his ability to be happy. His ability to live a successful life, to live a successful life. So, in this sense, getting a job, getting accepted into university, based on the color of your skin or based on whatever random arbitrary assignment of race that is given to you, is destructive to everybody in the process. There's no winners, there are no winners. Nobody gains. And on top of that, on top of that, the fact that everybody is worse off, there's another element to this, which is we resent people looking for the outside, resent the system, resent the people participating in it. And if anything, it breeds racism in the culture. Why are they getting something? Why are they getting goodies and other people are not? Do they deserve it? Don't they deserve it? So, any form, any form of preferences with regard to race in anything that relates to ability is evil through and through. Now, I understand why it was put in place initially. It was put in place because for a long time, people didn't get jobs because of the race. There was clear discrimination. There was clear racism, particularly in the Jim Crow South, but really beyond that. And the idea was to break that, to demolish that. And while I think it was wrong to do even back then, that it was wrong to do even back then, it certainly at some point needed to be abolished. At some point, the doubts had to arise. At some point, you've kind of given them a boost to kind of compensate for the past sins, although you're not giving a boost to the people who actually were sinned against. Enough, enough. So, I think Glenn is such a good reflection of this. He's a super smart person who resents racial preferences, racial preferences, resents racial preferences and work in everywhere else and speaks up against it. And yet is accused of having benefited from them and therefore being a hypocrite. When it's clear that you didn't, but go prove it. Go show it. And that explains his frustration. And I thought just the passion and the anger, just to show another dimension of the victims here is important. Again, we can understand where the racial preferences came from post Jim Crow laws, but it's never appropriate to resolve an evil with another evil. Evils don't wipe themselves out. Civil Rights Act was appropriate to the extent that it did away with Jim Crow laws, it did away with government discrimination. It did away with the state discriminating. But once the civil rights laws started to tell people what they couldn't, couldn't do on their own private property, what they couldn't, couldn't do in their own businesses, what universities couldn't, couldn't do and who they couldn't, couldn't hire, couldn't, couldn't accept and then of course, Affirmative Action built on that. Affirmative Action, by the way, interesting fact. Affirmative Action is not a law. And it's not a decision by the courts. Affirmative Action is an executive order. Affirmative Action could be done away with like that because it doesn't need voting. A president could reverse the executive action of I think Truman and reverse it. Isn't it interesting that with all the discussion of getting rid of racial quotas and racial this and racial that and everything, there's no discussion about a president actually doing that. There's no discussion about, there's no discussion about actually getting rid of Affirmative Action. To get, to change the civil rights law, you would literally have to vote on it. That would be almost impossible in today's political climate. But a Republican president could just take out a pen and sign Affirmative Action into history and would change so much of this country. So much of this country. Maybe one day we'll get that. All right, so I just, I wanna show you the video. For two reasons. One, I wanted you to see somebody with real self-esteem. This guy has self-esteem and he's gonna fight for who he is and what he is. He has passion and he is a real victim. Not a pretend victim, not a victim because of the color of his skin, but a victim of the system that treats people of his color skin differently than others and promotes them unjustifiably in some cases. And therefore makes it impossible to differentiate. All right, that is my little spiel, short spiel on racial preferences and Glenn Lowry. And I hope you enjoy that. Vandy says, maybe you can have Glenn on sometime soon. I'll try to get Glenn Lowry on. I'm not sure he'll come on, but I certainly will try to get him on at some point. Hiram says, Iran, is it okay to make up and identify as a by a fake race and phony ethnicity, translating back to some same race? There is no purple race. There's no such people as Saint-Saint-Golise. No, I mean, well, I don't know in what context, in what context would you make a fake race and identify based on a fake race and in what context would you do that? The only reason to do that is legitimately is to ridicule race as a category, be ridiculed, the whole idea of race, which I think is a bogus concept. I don't think there's an objective reference, an objective reference in reality for race. There's an objective reference in reality for skin color, even though even there people have shades. Arguably there's some, you know, but there's no, I don't know that there's any reference in reality to race. But so I think it's wrong to identify as a race period. It's wrong to talk about races period, although it's impossible to get around talking about race given the culture's obsession with it and given the laws that identify it and make an issue of it. So it's almost impossible to avoid it. But there is no such thing. And it should be recognized as a con. It's a con created by, originally by whites, you know, by people of white skins in order to prove their superiority over people who look differently from them or there was blacks from Africa, brown from India, you know, or whatever from China. And it became a pseudo science and starting in I think the 18th century, continue through the 19th century and early 20th century, the whole issue of race became kind of a pseudo science all with an attempt to somehow show the superiority of a white race over everybody else. But it's a, the whole construct is bogus. So I wouldn't play into that and legitimize it even by faking a race or doing anything like that. Vandy reminds everybody to smash the like button. Please do like the show if you like it. James G says, is it wrong to take into account the racial makeup of a city neighborhood in which you are considering moving? Also, how about a country you're considering relocated to when no one looks like you? No, I don't think it is legitimate. I think it's legitimate to look at crime rates. It's legitimate to look at quality of schools. It's legitimate to look at the culture and whether you'll enjoy the culture or like the culture. But what's not legitimate, I think, is to evaluate it based on how the way people look or the color of their skin and what would be the criteria, right? And who lives there? For all the negatives, I don't know, crime, for example, quality of schools, they're objective measures for those things. You don't have to take a proxy through, suppose it's some kind of racial makeup. What would be the relevance? How comfortable do you feel? Well, if you don't feel comfortable dealing with people who don't look like you, then there's something wrong with you. There's something wrong with you. And so you should, you know, introspect and consider and think about how to shift your attitude, shift your attitude. But no, I don't think it's appropriate. I mean, if I had a chance to live in Hong Kong at some point, that would have been interesting. The fact that everybody around me would have been Chinese. You know, the challenge of language is a real challenge. The challenge of culture is a real challenge. So you really have to think about these things and those are the things you have to take into account. But race is a bogus concept. Race is an irrational criteria for anything, anything. And I can see there are people who can only think in terms of left and right, pox in both your houses. I'm not left and I'm not right. And my views are what they are, they're individualistic. And they oppose collectivism of all forms. And that is the only legitimate political spectrum. It's between individualism and collectivism. Left and right are bogus concepts. And today they completely reflect statism of the left and statism of the right. Collectivism of the left, collectivism of the right, they're all collectivists. And they all suck in that sense. What you really need is an alternative to collectivism, an alternative to the variety of different collectivism, whether its origins are in socialism and class system and Marxism or whether the origins are in racism and race identification theories, white supremacy, or just plain old fascism with or without the racial dimension. All right, as I said, if you wanna ask me a question, if you wanna challenge me on something you disagree with me on, or you think I'm a hypocrite or something like that, the Super Chat is available to everybody and I do answer all the questions that you raise. So if you're interested in any of that, you know, if you wanna catch me on something, if you wanna prove that I contradict myself, the Super Chat is the way to do it. The Super Chat is the way to do it. All right, let's talk a little bit about... But the one Gaza, I've talked a lot about the one Gaza obviously since it began and there's a lot to say about it in a lot of different dimensions. But, you know, there's a lot of discussion about can this war be won? Has Israel won? Is Israel winning? What does winning look like? And there's a lot of skepticism about the ability to win. But I wanna emphasize here that this seems to be always skepticism about the ability of the military forces of, call them the good guys, Israel certainly qualifies for that, to actually defeat evil. Military experts who appear on television and maybe military experts in the military too, in the US are really, really bad. They have, you know, surprisingly, shockingly, really, a very little understanding of warfare and winning and what it takes and who the enemy is and what the enemy is capable of and so on. I mean, you saw that in the first days of the Ukraine war which we were told at the time would be over in two weeks, everybody on television, every single general, colonel, major, whatever who appeared on television was just, you know, it was just a question of whether it would be one week, two weeks or three weeks, but Ukraine would collapse and the Russians would control Kiev, it was imminent. Before Israel went into Gaza, we were told over and over again how difficult this would be and indeed it was. This is, and I talked about this, urban warfare, very, very, very dense population, tunnels, high rises. I mean, the potential, the massive potential, massive potential for huge Israeli casualties. Everybody said, Israel's gonna be crushed. You know, they can't defeat Hamas, Hamas says, tunnels and they're gonna ambush them and they can be everywhere and they're just gonna kill Israelis and Israeli soldiers are gonna die in mass and Israel will lose its commitment to the fight because of that and every military expert, the majors, the generals, the colonels, they all said the same thing, Israel can't do it and it's shocking to me, it's shocking to me. You'd think that, I don't know, these military experts would know something about the really pathetic nature of the military equipment that the Russians used in Ukraine. They'd know something about motivation and the role of motivation in warfare and how the Ukrainians were motivated and the Russians were not. You think they understand this kind of stuff. The doctrine, the ability of small units to destroy, you know, static strategy that just sends tanks. Anyway, it was shocking, shocking. Then the failure of logistics, but again, this was not, shouldn't have been completely shocking to people. The Russian army did not do well in Afghanistan, the Russian army has not done well anyway. On the other hand, the Israeli army has done phenomenally well, at least on occasion and they underestimate the motivation of the Israeli army. They underestimate the ability to use technology. They underestimate the quality of the Israeli military. Israelis don't send 18 year olds without training into battle like the Russians do. Israelis are trained at least for a year, nine months. Basic training, specialized training before they're sent into combat. Israelis value the lives of their soldiers. Israeli tanks, the Merkava, is better protected than any tank in the world. So even though Hamas had plenty of Russian anti-tank missiles, they did almost no damage to the tanks. Not only did they have particularly thick armor, but then they have overlaid, they have a anti-tank missile defense system, every single tank. The troop carrier that carries troops around doesn't have any openings, but inside, but it has layered into its, layered into the body of the vehicle, our cameras. And the troops inside have large screen TVs and they have a 360 view of everything that is going on outside. They also, these troop movers, have the thickest steel of any troop movers in any army, anywhere in the world. One way you can tell a country is a good country is how it treats its own soldiers. A country that protects its own soldiers. A country that defends its own troops. A country that respects the lives of its own people. It's basically a good country. Country that sends its soldiers to die, like what's going on in Ukraine, Russia, sending tens of thousands of soldiers into just battles where they're just being mowed down. Yes, they're making advances, but the cost of thousands of young men in more bad country. The US is mixed. The US values its troops, but it values the civilians on the other side even more. Israel suffers from their disease as well, although this time in Gaza, less so than in the past. Do you know that by American estimates, 315,000, 315,000 Russians have been killed or injured in the war in Ukraine. 315,000. I think the Russian army at the beginning of the war was something under 500,000. Almost the entire army, the size of it, was being basically incapacitated. It doesn't matter, they'll recruit more, they'll just send bodies and bodies and bodies. America has a volunteer army. It's a huge difference. So you volunteer, you know the rules of engagement, you volunteer. It's sad, but it's not the same as conscription and then send them as cannon fodder into the battle. How? Anyway, Israel has fought a war now for over 125 days. You know, it has lost about 200 soldiers during battles in the Gaza Strip. It has occupied space, which housed 2 million people. It is basically, it has killed well over 10,000 Hamas fighters. The ratio is what, 500 or one? I think that's right, 500. So that's two for every thousand. All right, 50 to one, 51. 50 Hamas fighters for every one is really killed. A quarter of the Israeli killed have been killed by friendly fire because of the complexity of the mission. They are using technology, like no other army in human history has used technology. They are destroying tunnels. They have an entire unit that is just, that they've been training for 20 years, 20 years this unit has existed, that is just specializes in fighting in tunnels, destroying tunnels. It's a unit of engineers. And, you know, they have basically pushed Hamas, 10,000, by the way, is how many, they've killed Hamas, they've injured many more of that. They've killed very few civilians when taken into account. They've destroyed Gaza. Gaza's basically really flattened. It appears that something like 50% of all the buildings in Gaza are not habitable anymore. They've inflicted real pain on the enemy, taken very few casualties, protected their own soldiers, used some of the best technology in the world. Israel is really the first country to have used drones extensively in warfare. It's been using drones for, you know, the first drones that Israel launched was 60 years ago. But in warfare, Israel was using drones in the 1980s, in the 70s and 80s. I remember Israel using drones in the Lebanon War in 1982. So Israel is using smarter drones than any other army in the world. And it is using drones again in a city environment, which is very unusual. And it has been more successful. I mean, and it surprises me because I thought they would wimp out. But Israel has been more successful in Gaza than any army that we have stats on has ever been in urban warfare. They've taken fewer casualties and destroyed more of the enemy than any other army ever has. And you got to say that Israel is reestablished itself after a period, I think, of about 15 years, maybe 20 years of a lot of doubts about Israel's capabilities as a military. Israel has reestablished itself as a dominant military force. Maybe the best trained, maybe the best competent military form, military in the world. I'd put them up against anybody. Now, they don't have the numbers, but in terms of size. If you want to ask a question, I'll say it again, about anything, there is a super chat available. So stop asking me questions in the chat. Use the super chat for it. Do $2, $5, $20, $500, whatever you want, but the super chat feature exists for a reason. It exists for a reason. All right, so yes, so you have to say that the success is amazing. You know, it's also important to note that this is the success of the military. It's the success of the soldiers on the ground. It is a strategic success of the Israeli military over many decades building the kind of weapon systems that they will be able to use. It's the success of a military that emphasizes and places first and foremost the protection of its own troops. It's a very, very sophisticated military that has used technology in ways that other militaries are only starting to imagine its use. So the credit here goes to the strategizers, the generals, the trainers, but also to the troops themselves, the people on the ground who are fighting, who are obviously highly motivated, highly incentivized, and who are doing the work. You know, there was a story in Israel that one of the brigades was asked to basically evacuate with the intention of them being replaced with fresh troops and they refused the order. They said, if we're evacuating Gaza, we're not evacuating Gaza. We haven't finished our job. We haven't finished the duty. Now, once they heard that, no, it wasn't evacuation. It was a rotation, fresh troops coming in. They said, oh, okay, okay. But no, one of the reasons Netanyahu can be as tough as he is, which is unusual for him, is because if he was weak, he wouldn't survive. The military would not let him. The troops on the ground would not let him. The Israeli population would not let him. This is one case in which the Israeli population and the military are more radical, if you will, more concerned about winning and more concerned about doing whatever is necessary in order to win than the politicians. Politicians are wimps standing by the sidelines, putting their finger into the wind and adjusting their views based on which way the wind is blowing, which is pretty typical of our politicians. All right, so by the standard of victory, by the standard of pacifying the enemy, by the standard of how few troops on your own side get killed versus how many troops on the bad guy's side you kill, Israel has done a phenomenal job and this war so far, at least, has been a success. It is not over. And of course, I think that it could have been done better. They could have been less regard for civilian casualties. They could have been even more aggressive, but given the international pressure, given the fact that if there had been a lot of more civilian casualties, even within Israel, there would have been pressure. I think the military has done an amazing, an amazing, amazing job. Now they have to finish it. And that means going into Rafa. It means going into a place that now has one and a half million people as compared to just a couple of hundred thousand before the war started. It means figuring out how to evacuate Rafa so that the Israeli troops can go in, evacuate in a way that does not allow Hamas to evacuate, but it only allows civilians so that Israel can capture, kill, destroy the remnants of Hamas in Rafa. It's gonna be an interesting few weeks as the Biden administration ramps up pressure on Israel, not to fight, ramps up pressure on Israel to fold, to give in, but the pressure from within Israel is intense. And I don't think Israel is going to compromise. I don't think Israel will fold. I don't think Israel will give in to the Biden administration or to the Egyptians or to the Europeans. I think they're actually gonna go in and finish the job. The Egyptians, the latest reports are the Egyptians are building a tent city that could house a hundred thousand refugees on their side of the border. Maybe, maybe, maybe that'll give, that is part of going to Rafa is evacuating a certain percentage of the population into the tent city, into Egypt. Egypt had been refusing to accept any Palestinians. It still claims to be refusing that, but this tent city is being built. So maybe they will, is weakening and they will take some refugees. It's gonna be an interesting few weeks. I know that very little attention in America is to what is going on in Gaza, but the fighting continues to be intense. Israel continues to push to the south towards Rafa and to the west towards the Mediterranean, where Israel has not completely cleared the territory on the west of, the southwest of the Gaza Strip. But it continues to push forward and it continues to clean up the territory where it's at. Yesterday, or the day before yesterday, Israel went into the largest hospital in the Gaza Strip inside they arrested and killed a number of Hamas members. We still haven't seen all the evidence they find within the tunnels underneath this particular hospital, but they're convinced that the hostages were there. They were also convinced sadly that once they went to the hospital, they would discover bodies of killed hostages. We will see if that materializes, we'll probably know probably tomorrow, maybe on Sunday, maybe on Sunday, they will provide information about what was discovered within the hospital. All right, let's see, what else about Israel? Can I tell you about the war? Yeah, I'll add this related. Israel has engaged in a tit for tat with Chisbalah in the north. Israel has seemed to have intensified its response over the last few days. It is bombing more, it is killing more of Chisbalah leadership. There's a real possibility that if there's any kind of ceasefire, or once Israel completes whatever it is doing in Gaza, that they will launch an offensive into Lebanon and keep Chisbalah to the north, we will see. I hope that is what happens. I think it's the only way to bring any kind of security and any kind of peace long-term to north of Israel. Israel should actually occupy southern Lebanon. I think that is what it needs to do, given the impotence of the Lebanese army, of the Lebanese government, actually to impose its will on its own territory. If the Lebanese army can't keep Chisbalah out from the border area, maybe Israel can by occupying that part of Lebanon and making it peaceful. So at some point, I expect there to be some increased intensity of battles in the north, and potentially an Israeli invasion into Lebanon, and a pushing the Chisbalah further north. You might have noticed Iran is much quieter. The Houthis are much quieter than they were. Even a little bit of American bombing of the Houthis, even a little bit of American bombing of Iranian-affiliated groups in Iraq goes a long way. Appeasement is the worst thing you can do. But if you go in and America has so much firepower, it's hard to even imagine the quantities of firepower. And even a little bit that they did, which was pretty pathetic in my view, and they never went after Iran, so it's a short-term cure, not a long-term cure, but short-term asylum stuff. The Houthis, the last ship they attacked, they landed up attacking an Iranian ship. So one of their own, friendly fire. So with Iran and the United States, even America standing up a little bit to Iran has huge impact. Imagine, just imagine, if once in a while, at some point, the United States actually stood up to Iran, actually dealt with Iran, actually inflicted real damage on them, the Iranian regime would crumble. They would crumble. America could win at a very low cost. But that would require strategic foresight, that would require what Israel and America, unfortunately, lost for a while. Maybe Israel is regaining it. Maybe, maybe we'll see. We'll see if that actually happens. All right, what else? I think that's all I have on the Israeli war. All right, we are way behind on the Super Chat. I mean, way behind. So feel free to ask questions about anything. I know there's, there was a chat, all kinds of discussion about Israel and Jews and whatever, good Super Chat questions. So feel free to ask about that, but feel free to ask about anything. And you can also use the 96 people watching right now, a couple on Twitter. You can use a sticker to support the show as well. This show exists because of support of the listeners, like you, and the questions, of course, what shaped the show and determine how long I go. The fewer questions, the quicker the show ends, the more questions, the longer the show goes. And of course, yeah, you're gonna support the show on a monthly basis at your runbrookshow.com slash membership and on Patreon. All right, we have one question by Shazabat and if that's the only question, then we'll call it a night and that'll be it. And that's fine. But if anybody else has any questions and if you wanna just support the show, Steven, thank you, Steven just did a $20 sticker. I know Jonathan Honing did a sticker early on. Yes, thank you, Jonathan. And if everybody right now just did even just did, you know, a dollar, a couple of dollars, $2, $5, that would be great. It's just the show of support, which is appreciated. All right, Shazabat asks, in the movie Enemy at the Gate, the Russian army sent soldiers to fight against the Germans, but only half of them were given rifles. They were told to pick up a rifle from a fallen combat as they ran, as they ran. Is that happening today? I don't think it's quite that bad, but it's very similar. I mean, basically the Russian political regime and the Russian generals treat their soldiers as, you know, just kind of fodder. And they figure that if they just keep pushing masses of people, what will happen is that they will just break the Ukrainians. The Ukrainians just will run out of ammunition. They'll run out of just a personnel to fight back. And they're achieving that. They did that last year in Bakhmut. They're doing it right now near Donetsk city in, I can't pronounce the name of the town, and they're gaining ground. But the cost they're gaining, God, is just unbelievable. The tanks are not what protected. I've talked about their tanks many times about Russian tanks and how bad they are and how the one thing that they don't protect is the lives of the soldiers. So that you don't have to hit a Russian tank very hard to basically destroy it. And Russian tanks are falling apart. They're being destroyed by drones, by artillery, by anti-tank missiles, not like the Israeli Merkava which can really take a hit. Israel has lost no tank personnel who were in a tank and fired them. They've lost them when they're outside of the tank. Or I think one guy actually fired his missile when the back door of the tank was open into the tank, and there's nothing you can do about that. But if it's just hit towards the tank, towards its armor, it doesn't pierce it. So I think the Russians have enough arms to give them in terms of weapons to run into battle. So that is not an issue. But they don't have very good weapons. You can find videos of this in Telegram of Russian soldiers complaining about how they're being treated, about the quality of the weapons, about how they're just being mowed down. All right, Shazba, thank you for the support. Michael, Michael has a couple of questions. Your Q&A response in the Tucker show regarding cynicism in the West is a good point. Tuck up pragmatists that reject the idea that people can be animated by belief or fight for ideas good or bad. They're completely bankrupt. So your grammar needs a little work. Grammar is important because it makes things more understandable. So let me see if I understand. So I made the argument today that it's just cynicism and skepticism and this anti-ideological pragmatism that drives these people. And they are motivated by hate more than anything else. And they can't imagine people fighting for an ideal, people fighting for freedom, people wanting to be free, and be willing to fight for it. And that's why they make fun of the Ukrainians. And they want to stop the Ukrainians. So they want to give the Russians all the land that they've taken, give the Russians big pieces of Ukraine. And they keep saying, don't hear this a lot. I hear this a lot, particularly over the last, I'd say, two, three months. We don't want to give aid to Ukraine because we want to save Ukrainian lives. If not for Biden, then the story goes, Zelensky would have surrendered or negotiated a deal with Putin a long time ago. So if we stop Biden from providing weapons, then Ukraine will be forced to negotiate or, i.e., surrender. And isn't that better for Ukraine? I don't know what war people have been watching. But from day one, it's been clear that Ukrainians are fighting because they don't want to be ruled by Russians. They're fighting because they want to liberate the land in which they live. They're fighting for the lives and freedom of their own families, if anything. This war in Ukraine has brought the Ukrainians closer to the West. And as such, what Ukraine wants is to become a normal Western country. They don't want to become Moscow. They don't want to become just a vessel for Putin. They don't buy Taka's adoration. They want to be, God forbid, free. And I think, I actually think, seriously think this, that if they can defeat the Russians, in other words, kick them out of Ukraine. I think Ukraine will actually move to becoming a Western country much faster than the people expect, because I think many Ukrainians have died. And people will honor their death with freedom. And I think that's what they want. That's why they're fighting. All right, so, yeah, I mean, Taka and the rest of the pragmatic way, they've lost what it means to be American. They've lost what it means to think in terms of freedom, in terms of liberty. They've lost the willingness to fight and to stand up to the enemies of freedom. Michael says, it's like the scene in Equalizer 2 when McCall confronts his former colleagues who murdered his friend. There are no good and bad guys anymore. There is no sin, no virtue. This is what the villain says. This is modernism. And I think that's absolutely right. And it's used as a rationalization. And I think you see that all across the political spectrum. But you see it particularly among the right who used to have ideals, who used to believe in America, who used to have a positive view of the founding fathers and what it meant to be an American. And they've given up on it. And when you give up on it because you are corrupt, then what happens is you reflect that on the rest of the culture. There are no good people or bad people. Oh, no, they're good people. And they are bad people. What you actually don't want to acknowledge is that now you are one of the bad people. That goes against your old self-image, but that's exactly what you are. You're one of the bad guys. And there's so much of that. There's so much of that. I mean, in some sense, the left holds onto some form of idealism, at least for now. It's a cynical, it's a horrible, it's a evil idealism. Tuckett is giving up on idealism. Now, there are people who are idealistic. And at the end, idealism wins. And as I've said many times, I fear the idealists of the right. I fear the idealists of the right who ultimately take over the right, who ultimately rally the right around cross and flag. Adam, thank you, Adam. Really appreciate the $50. That is amazing. It's good to hear Glenn's self-esteem. Often when you hear similar statements, they come across as unconfident. People seeking second-handed approval. It's clear he knows this ability and resents those whose policies minimize his genius. Absolutely. I mean, I'm really glad you guys got to see that. Those of you who came in late, you should go at the beginning of the show and watch the Glenn Lowry segment. Here's a real strong, confident in himself person, a person who clearly has self-esteem. And I love that he gets angry. I love that he's mad at the end. This is not just technical. It's not just theoretical. It's not just an ideal. This is real. This is life. This affects him. This goes to who he is and what he stands for. And he is willing to, without any qualms, express that, express that in his power with passion and with anger, with real anger. People say, no, no, you should never be angry. Of course you should be angry. You should be angry at injustice. People say you shouldn't hate. Oh, yes, you should hate. Bad people deserve your hatred. And it would be unjust not to hate them. Now, you shouldn't be obsessed with the hate. You shouldn't let the hate take you over. You shouldn't let the hate dominate your life. But to hate is healthy. To be angry is healthy. Now, again, you don't want the anger to dominate. You don't want to hate to dominate. You don't want them to reflect. But in the face of injustice, in the face of evil, what alternative is there but to hate? Oh, Troy. Wow. Thank you, Troy. Really, really appreciate it. Troy just came in and almost got to start target. Thank you, Troy. Richard said, happy anniversary. Enjoy with your wife. Yes, it is my wedding anniversary tomorrow. It's hard to believe how many years. I don't know if I want to tell you, so I'm not going to. But I think some of you don't. But yeah, it's a wedding anniversary on the 17th of February. And we're going to our favorite restaurant tomorrow night. Last night, we were at our other favorite restaurant. Oh, my god, what a meal last night. What a meal. It was five courses, four safety and one dessert. But there was an ingredient. He does these meals where there's an ingredient that runs through the entire meal. It's an every dish. And here the ingredient was cacao, in other words, chocolate. And it was fantastic. And this is in Marmalade. This is a restaurant called Epikoro. Tomorrow is Marmalade. But Epikoro, stunning, just amazing. And yesterday, this is our fifth time there. Yesterday was the best. I mean, he upped it significantly. I think every time we go there, the food is better. And he uses everything that the cacao bean has, all the different pieces of the cacao. Plus he gave you, I got to eat raw cacao bean, which was fun. And actually, I enjoyed it. And it's a five course prefix with a dessert for safety dishes, just amazing food. We had so much fun. And the chef, it's only 12 people. It's a kitchen table. Yesterday it was 14. But it's never more than 14. And usually it's 12. You sit around, and he has a microphone. And he actually explains. He cooks the food in front of you. And he explains what he's doing, right? He explains what he's doing. He tells you about the chocolate, where it comes from, the properties of the chocolate, what's in every dish, what's how the sauces are made. It really is. If you're ever in Puerto Rico, Epikoro, it is a fabulous experience. It's just an experience, a unique dining experience that I highly recommend. And we loved that last night. So again, Troy, thank you. You got us very, very close to the goal. We're just $72 now away from that goal, guys. Troy got us most the way there. You guys need to get us over the finish line. So again, thank you, Troy. One of these days, I'll make it out to Australia and get to meet my Australian benefactor. Michael, the threat to America is twofold. Pragmatism and Christianity. The pragmatists reject ideas as such, leaving open to authoritarians. The Christians advocate mysticism and authoritarianism explicitly. Yes. And what happens is that the pragmatists will fail because pragmatism always fails. Pragmatism has to fail. The left, which is the other evil, of course, is disintegrated. And ultimately, failure on steroids. It cannot sustain itself. It cannot win. Even if it wins, it cannot sustain victory. It has to disintegrate. It has to fall apart. And then the question is what swoops in when the pragmatists and the disintegrationalists of the left when they all fail, well, what swoops in is something that was very successful for 2,000 years. And that is Christianity. What swoops in is religion. What swoops in is nationalism. What swoops in are ancient ideologies that provide explanations for everything. Now, hopefully, we can resist it, and I think we can. I think the country is sane enough and secular enough to resist it. But for that, those of us who hold for an integrated set of ideas to replace the disintegrated, the pragmatists, and the Christians, those of us have to double up our efforts. We have to really push hard to defeat everybody else, to provide an alternative. Americans want an alternative. Not the people who go on Twitter. Not the people who are out there. I think most Americans don't want to be on any one of the sides that seem to be winning the cultural battle these days. I think most Americans look left, and they look right, and they hate what they see on both sides. All right, Mipoki. Mipoki, we'll just call you Mipoki, because I can't pronounce your family name. Can you defend short-selling as a positive sum game? Where the main narrative is that it's used by hedge funds to crash down companies for profit. That's one party loses, or how do you go about defending short-selling of stock? Oh, wow. There are lots of things you can say about why short-selling of stock is valuable. First of all, it can provide you with a real hedge in an investment portfolio against variations within an industry. You can short part of the industry and long part of the industry, and try to make money off of the difference between the two. Reduce volatility dramatically and make money off of your identification of one company being better than the other company, short the company you think is worse, buy the company you think is better, and make money when the company you're buying goes up and the company you're shorting goes down. Oh, let me tell you what shorting is. Many people might not know what shorting is. You borrow the stock, you borrow the stock and sell it. You borrow the stock and sell it. And then when you have to return it, when you have to give it back to the person you borrowed it from, you buy it in the market and you give it back to the person. So you want the stock to go down, because you want to sell it at a high price and you want to buy it at a low price. Short-selling is very risky, because when you buy a stock, the most you can lose is $100. Let's say you pay $100 for the stock. It's $100 you bought the stock for. The stock could go to zero. It could go back up, but you lost $100. But if you short $100 worth of stock and the stock doesn't go down in price, it goes up in price, there's no limit on how far up it can go. And on a $100 investment, you can lose $1 million. There is no limit to how much you can lose. So shorting is very risky. So one, it serves a productive function by allowing sophisticated, and I don't recommend this to people to do, because of the riskiness in shorting. It allows sophisticated investors to hedge risks. And people out there are very good at doing this, at figuring out how to hedge those kind of risks using shorts. It also provides information. If I think a company is not as good as a stock price reflects, but I don't own any stocks, I can't sell it and express my lack of confidence in management, lack of confidence in the company by selling stock I already own. I can short the stock. I can borrow it, sell it, and thus provide that information, the information about my, at least, negative evaluation of this stock to the market. And that is hugely important. It's important that stock prices reflect the best available information about the value of the company, because stock prices are crucial to the allocation of capital and economy, and you want that to be efficient. So you want to have mechanisms by which small investors can put downward pressure on a stock when downward pressure on a stock is justified, at least they think it's justified, by information or analysis or thinking they have done. So those are the positives. Think of the stupidity of the GameStop meme stock buying groups that bought stocks like crazy and drove prices up, prices that made no sense, that completely distorted the allocation of capital. Well, it's good that there were people I call icon who shorted those stocks and who helped correct the prices and who ultimately drove them down. Pokey, hopefully, that provides an answer. I mean, I could talk a lot more about that and we could run through examples and everything in our finance class we did, but that would be, at least, my quick super chat answer to that question. But let me know if you have any follow-ups. All right. Daniel, do you think Iran will get a nuke? I can't see Israel allowing it, but I don't know if they have the capacity to take out the nuclear program. I don't know either, and I don't know if they have the capacity to take out the nuclear program unless America gives them the thumbs up. Remember, Israel has to fly a long way from Israel to Iran. America controls much of that airspace. And it's not clear, not clear, that America would allow Israel to fly that in order to attack the nuclear facilities that the Iranians have. So it's not clear. Will Iran get a nuke? I find it hard to believe they won't. I find it hard to believe they won't because I don't see America having the will to take Iranians on. And the United States could destroy Iran's nuclear capacity very easily, very quickly, very effectively without casualties on the American side. And yet it refuses to do so. Will it give Israel a green light to do it? Does Israel have all the capabilities it needs in order to do it? It might, particularly if it landplains in Azerbaijan. I don't know if it can, but if it can landplains in Azerbaijan, that will make an operation in Iran much, much easier. Anyway, I don't know. Again, wouldn't surprise me if Iran, one of these days, announces it has a nuke. Vandy, the trolls feel like laying into Iran in the chat but don't want to spend even $2 to get a response from him. That's because they can't stand the response. They know I have a response. They know I'll rip them to shreds. And they want to be able to take pot shots without the response. I mean, and a lot of people in the chat do this, right? At least I give credit to Scott, who's disappeared, by the way, that at least he once in a while asks a super chat question. He's willing to write a check. But most people are just, they want to sit there and hope to distract me. Maybe they'll get an emotional response from me. Maybe they'll get some other response from me. But they're not willing to actually engage. Because if they willing to engage for $2, they would have engaged. But they know, what are they really going to argue with me about Israel and my position on Israel? And they don't think I've thought this through. They don't think I have an answer to their bullshit. But yes. And yet, they spend Friday night trolling my show. These are people with real lives, with real lives. They have nothing else to do but to listen to a show they hate by a person they hate who they disagree with. John, do you have any recommendations for traveling to a place in which few people speak English, Eastern Europe, South Korea? Just do it. I don't really. I've traveled to all those places. I don't speak any of the languages. I've managed great sign language goes a long way. Now, with Google Translate, you can speak it to your phone and it'll speak the language to the locals. Beware, a place like South Korea and Japan, taxi drivers don't speak English. And yet, you manage. You manage. One of the things I definitely would do in all these places is pay for a guide. Get a guide for a day in English with a car to drive you around and just show you the highlight and explain a little bit about the culture and tell you about the place. In Eastern Europe, historically, it's been very cheap to do. Asia's a little bit more expensive. It's still definitely worth doing because it's going to be hard otherwise to just orient yourself. A guide could orient you and give you a sense of the place. And then just do it. People are super friendly. I mean, the least friendly people are probably Japanese. And it's still fine. They're still friendly, right? But South Koreans are super friendly. Eastern Europeans are super friendly. I wouldn't hesitate to go, even if you don't speak the language in a hotel. Of course, I'll speak the language. Your guide will speak the language. And you'll find, particularly in Europe, you'll find people here and there who speak quite a few who speak the language, particularly young people. If you want to talk English to somebody, find a group of young people and walk up to them and talk to them. Yeah, I mean, travel. Travel the world. I talked about that in one of my rules for life. Traveling the world is incredibly, incredibly valuable and beneficial. Flatenix says, have you heard of the Firefly Petoneus? It's been genetically modified with the fungus. So it glows in the dark. It goes on sale soon. Cool. So it glows in the dark for beauty's sake and for something else. But yeah, yeah, I mean, very cool. Brownie is 003. Do you hate Putin? Yeah, I hate Putin. I despise him. I hate him. I don't dwell on the hate. It doesn't affect me. But if you ask me what I feel towards Putin, it's hatred. It's hatred. So absolutely. And I hate Tucker. He deserves it. Michael says, the right agrees with Obama's pastor, Jeremiah Wright, goddamn America. Yeah, I mean, isn't it shocking? I mean, this is the right who used to stand with America. This is the right who used to cherish this country. This is the right that's given up on their ideals and sold out completely. And they sold out on the meaning of America. So they sold out on freedom, on liberty. It's unrecognizable. Here's a good example of this, right? This is one of the trollers, one of these idiots, Scott, a different Scott. You know what they say? Freedom, just another word for nothing left to lose. That's the cynicism that dominates the right today. That's the cynicism. Somebody says they're fighting for freedom. Well, god, freedom. They're just desperate. They don't know what freedom is. Freedom, who cares about freedom? Why would anybody fight for freedom? God, imagine the founding fathers rolling in the grave to hear Americans talk like that, disgusting. But that's the attitude. That's the attitude on the right. And now the right and the left both hate America. And again, I've been predicting this for years now and being told, no, no, no, you don't understand. You don't get it. They're playing 5D chess. They're doing this, that, or the other. But no, this is the reality. This is who they really are. This is what's really going on. Daniel, can you explain what an ETF is for those of us who are borderline investing illiterates? Well, you shouldn't be an investing illiterate because it's important. An ETF is basically a basket of stocks. It could be an ETF of the S&P 500. It's basically it has a basket of all the stocks in the S&P 500. It could be a tech ETF. And therefore, it has a basket of stocks with all the right, with a bunch of tech stocks in it. And then people can buy and sell this basket. So you can bid up this basket, buy and sell the basket. And if you buy the basket, then money's flowing in. Then they go and they buy tech companies. And when you sell, they have to sell. And that pulls tech companies, those companies theoretically, that pulls their prices down. So it's just a basket. It's like a mutual fund. Just as a mutual fund that's traded minute by minute. It's traded constantly. Whereas a mutual fund, you can only buy and sell. You can put money in, put money out of a mutual fund only at the end of the day. An ETF, you can buy and sell during the day. I don't see what the point of an ETF is for most of you. For most of you, mutual funds are what makes sense, because you shouldn't be buying and selling on a regular basis anyway. You should be buying and holding for the most part. So yeah, there's absolutely no reason to be specializing in ETFs rather than mutual funds. I would look at which one's cheaper. I think mutual funds are cheaper. You pay a fee for them to invest your money. So look for whoever charges the lowest fee. Michael says, Trump is mindless and expects the supporters to show mindless obedience to him. Absolutely. And what he's done to a Republican party is reinforce mindlessness and attract all the mindless people to him. This is how he's destroyed the Republican Party, which is what I told you would happen in 2016. Nothing could be more un-American. A nation bought out of rejecting a tyrant in support of the individual to think and act for himself. Absolutely. This is the country that was built on the principle of individuals thinking for themselves. Individuals living by their own judgment, living by their own reason, choosing their own values and living in pursuit of those values by the use of reason. That is what this country was founded on and to have a moron, goon, a man of mindlessness as president and as influential as he is in the culture. It's just hard to imagine that this is the same America that we had even 30, 40 years ago. Certainly that it's the same America, the founding fathers. I just don't see it. And again, this is on the right. We expect that from the left. They've given up on America a long, long time ago. But now the writers joined them in hating America. Frank says, where's Trump's space force? Can it stop Putin? I wouldn't worry too much about space weapons and space. This is just more stuff to fear mongering and to cause you to worry for no reason. And I'm skeptical of these kind of stories about these kind of amazing weapons that the bad guys have and our inability to deal with them. I find that highly unlikely. But we will see. We will see. All right, guys, we're very close to target if somebody wants to chip in 10 bucks or two people five bucks. I will see you all on Sunday for a Iran book show. I'm a topic to be determined. Next week, I'm traveling. So we will have a shorter week in terms of shows. I think we'll do news roundups Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. But we won't do a news roundup Thursday and Friday. Friday and Tuesday we'll have evening shows. So by the way, we haven't had anybody sponsor a show in a long time. If anybody wants to sponsor a show, that is to choose a topic for a show, choose a series of topics for a show. It's $1,000 to sponsor a show. And just let me know what the topic is. And yeah, those are always fun and always interesting and always gets me to talk about something you guys are interested in, which is always a value. And a value to you, a value enough for you to be able to put $1,000 into it. Justin, Iran, have you followed Pierre Polyver in Canada? He seems to be a bright light in Canadian politics. I think he's somewhat influenced by Iran. I haven't closely, but look, Canadian conservatives or Canadian free market types sound really good. And one of the reasons they tend to sound good is they don't have to pander to the religionists. In Canada, you can be a free market and a capitalist without being a Bible thumper. So I'm not surprised that Polyver is pretty good. Over the last few decades, there have been a number of good people on the right in Canada. And they haven't managed to actually go and succeed in Canadian politics. Canada's a left-wing country. But they do sound good when they're in opposition. And hopefully one day, one of them will win and actually do what they promise to do. Davia says, what is the best performing index, or ETF, over the last 20 years? NASDAQ 100 is one of the few indexes that beats the S&P 500. Tech seems to do the best. It does, until it doesn't. If you bought tech in the late 1990s, it basically took you 15 years to recover your money, to get your money back. Then NASDAQ 100 was a disaster in the 2000s. So what you want, and I'm not giving investment advice, take this for whatever it's worth, what you want is a diversified portfolio. You do not want all your money in the NASDAQ 100 because you could have a collapse like we did when the dot-com bubble burst, which takes, I think it took 13 years until the NASDAQ 100 returned to where it was in March of 2000. I think it took 13 years. I think it's 2013 before that happened. So beware. You want to be diversified. You want to have some tech. There's a lot of upside, but you want to have some other stuff that's not as correlated. So when tech collapses at some point, maybe some of you are the stocks do better. You want to be internationally diversified. You want to have a diversified portfolio. And over the long run, that performs best. There will be years where you'll underperform. Maybe most years, it'll look like you're underperform a particular index. But over the long run, a diversified portfolio works best and gives you the best returns with the least amount of risk. All right, thank you, everybody. Really appreciate the support. And don't pay attention too much to the trolls and just the haters that seem to be attracted to our chats. They will go away at some point that we come bored, and they will go away. And in the meantime, just ignore them. I think ignoring them is the best policy. They thrive on the attention that they are trying to seek. They are complete second handers in that regard. All right, thanks, everybody. I hope you enjoyed the video of Glen Lowry and the discussion of the Israeli military. We will talk again on Sunday on what I'm sure is going to be a completely different topic. See you soon. Bye, everybody.