 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Brookshow. All right, everybody. Welcome to Iran Brookshow on this Tuesday, February 6th. Hope everybody's having a great week. All right, we have a bunch of stories today, mostly about the 2024 election. Obviously, that's heating up, and we'll have more and more stories about it, and it's going to dominate the news cycle. And it's going to be ugly and unpleasant, and just get ready. This is life in the 21st century in America today. Not only America. It's pretty ugly out there. The rest of the world as well, as we'll see. We talk about the UK. India is a bright spot for what it's worth. All right, so a decision came down today from the Circuit Court of Appeals around the question of does a president have immunity from everything, as Donald Trump argued. And the court was pretty adamant that the president does not have immunity for life for everything that they do while president. In a three to zero decision, the panel on the Appellate Court ruled that, and I'll quote, I think this is the key, it's from page 4041. So like all of these legal decisions, you have to go through dozens of pages in order to get. But this is, I think, key. It says, at bottom four, President Trump's stance would collapse our system of separated powers by placing the president beyond the reach of all three branches. Presidential immunity against federal indictment would mean that as to the president, the Congress could not legislate, the executive could not prosecute, and the judiciary could not review. We cannot accept that the office of the presidency places its former occupants above the law for all time thereafter. Careful evaluation of these concerns leads us to conclude that there is no functional justification for immunizing former presidents from federal prosecution in general or for immunizing former president Trump from the specific charges in the indictment. In so holding, we act not in derogation of the separation of powers, but to maintain their proper balance. That is from the court decision today regarding President Trump's immunity argument regarding January 6th and his actions during January 6th. The court case against them with regard to what happened in January 6th was scheduled for March. That has been delayed given the appeals. Now that the appellant court has ruled, the expectation is that Donald Trump will appeal this. The court has given him I think six days, seven days, a week basically to appeal to the Supreme Court. So that the trial court will hold off on doing anything until this appeal is granted at the Supreme Court level. I think technically Trump could appeal to the entire circuit court. This is just a panel of three judges and only then to the Supreme Court. And since he wants the delay, it has been speculated that that is what he will do. Given that the court has allowed him to go directly to Supreme Court, I'm not sure that it will work. I don't know. I don't know enough about the mechanics of these things. But expect us to reach the Supreme Court either way. I think it will. And then the Supreme Court has two options, right? It could say we're not taking the case. We basically accept what the circuit court has ruled. And in that case, things will move fairly quickly and a new trial date will be set. And there's a good chance that Trump will be tried and a verdict come in before the election. The alternative is that the Supreme Court takes the case and then probably expedites it, but still takes the case, hears arguments and then makes a decision. And that means the court case might occur this year, but it's likely a verdict happens only after the election. So, God, I mean, America has never faced anything even remotely like this. This is a complete... What's the technical term? I think the technical term is shit show. And it's going to be super interesting. I find it hard to believe that the Supreme Court would rule differently than the circuit court. But you never know. It probably wouldn't be unanimous at the Supreme Court, but hard to tell. It could be unanimous. But if Roberts or the court thinks that there's a clear majority for the fact that the president does not have total immunity or they think that's just a frivolous argument or they think that's ridiculous, they might just say, we're not going to take the case, we're letting the circuit court opinion hold. That would be pretty significant and that would expedite everything and that would get things done. So those are the options that will be stand. I think this is... I'm not a constitutional scholar, but from just common sense, legality. This seems to me to be the right decision. You can't be immune forever for everything. And a president should not be and it looks like the trial will happen. It's just more of a question, I think, about when and how far can Trump's delay tactics work. I think if the Supreme Court thinks that the only reason he's appealing is not because he thinks he has a chance to win, but only because he wants to delay, then they might not give him the delay by basically not hearing the case. One other Supreme Court and Trump question and that is the question of eligibility. Is Trump eligible to run for president given the 14th Amendment and given the provision there about being involved in an insurrection? And given that Colorado has ruled that he is not eligible to be in the ballot in the state of Colorado, the Supreme Court will now on Thursday, that is in two days, hear arguments about whether to uphold the Colorado decision and therefore open it up to any state to withdraw him or to rule that he's clearly ineligible and therefore he would have to be stricken from every ballot in every state or that he is eligible and therefore even in Colorado he has to be in the ballot. The Supreme Court will have to rule on that, it will hear arguments and I'm sure they're going to be interesting and they're going to be fiery on Thursday. This is a huge case, not so much because of legal issues. The legal issues with rest on the specific interpretation of the amendments involved, but I don't know what the right balance would be, but what the decision would be based on just the legal aspects. I have a feeling on this one that the court is actually not going to rule on the merits. I think that there are several Supreme Court, Republican Supreme Court justices who are going to rule on this one with the I2, I don't know, call it social stability with the I2 not fermenting a civil war with the I2 politics, not with the focus on the legal issues. I think that this could be, this will not be, I don't think this will be unanimous because it boils down to this interpretation I'm not just click cut, they're conservative, for example, legal experts on both sides of this. But I think the court will come down on the Trump is eligible because I think that they will take into account the consequences, that the consequences of them ruling Trump ineligible could be devastating for trust in the Supreme Court by a significant portion of the American population. It could be significant in terms of violence, political violence, demonstrations. I think the Supreme Court is very sensitive to those things and despite the idea of a blind justice and going by the law and politics doesn't have anything to do with this, I think the Supreme Court is very political. You saw that in the Roberts decision on Obamacare, he was not going to overturn Obamacare. And if he had to massage and manipulate the law in order to make sure Obamacare was not overturned and that was not for legal reasons, but completely 100% for cultural, political stability, majority will, whatever reasons that have nothing to do with the law. I think that'll be the case with the eligibility. I do not see a situation. I can't imagine a situation in which the Supreme Court rules Donald Trump is ineligible. It's possible. It's possible. And if that happens, it better be with a very large margin. It better be like 7 to 2 or 8 to 1 or 6 to 3. But if it's 5-4 that he's ineligible, this country will implode. And I think that justice is a very, very sensitive to that. So anyway, it's going to be fascinating to listen to arguments on Thursday to see how the justice responds, the kind of questions they ask, and how they're leaning. So I'm going to be listening and following legal commentators who are experts in Supreme Court in order to try to assess how the court is thinking about this. Yeah, I mean, there are three major Trump-related cases now basically in front of the Supreme Court. And how the Supreme Court chooses to resolve them is going to be truly fascinating. And I'm looking forward to watching it because this is political dynamite. Political dynamite. All right, let's see. Yeah, no labels. Talk about political dynamite. No labels is basically no labels is a political party that stands for nothing. That's why it's no labels, right? They stand for nothing. They're kind of middle of the road. They don't offend anybody. They don't stand a principle on anything. They're the compromising party. We don't stand for anything party. And the only reason that even looks mildly good, and it kind of does, is because of the state of the Democratic and Republican Party, right? This is a party that says, we're the no labels party. We don't stand for anything. We have no principles. We have no ideas. We're Democrats and Republicans. We're both. We're just moderate. The thing that identifies us is we're moderate, which means we're nothing. And the only reason that has any credibility in the world is because the stand for something parties are so ridiculously insane because the Republican Party and Democratic Party are basically bankrupt. So the no labels party is actually registered now in a significant number of states. I had that number, I think it was 13 or 14 states. They will be registered in every state they can, in a sense, pre-register for an election. They will be registered in. And then as soon as they decide they're running a candidate for president and they pick that candidate, they will be registered in every single state, which is not an easy feat and not a cheap feat. So it's expensive to do. And they're committed that if they decide to run and they say that if it's if it's Trump Biden, and if the unlike ability about Trump and Biden holds at the levels that that's today, they will run candidates. That's what they claim. We'll see if that actually holds. They they will be registered in every state and they think they think and some analysts think that they have a shot at winning. Not just because they might get 30% of the pop of the vote just because people are so fed up with Biden and Trump. But because of the specific dynamics of specific states, they might get a majority in the in the electoral college. I don't know. I have no opinion about whether that is true or not. The gimmick that they are suggesting is that they would run a presidential and vice presidential candidate where one is a Democrat and one is a Republican. One is a Democrat and one is a Republican. We'll get to RFK in a minute. So, you know, people there and it looks like they would probably run a Republican as president and a Democrat as vice president. But it could be flipped depending on what they thought how they look total map looked and whether they thought they would pull more had a shot at pulling more voters from Trump or from Biden, whether they could carve off moderate Republicans more than moderate Democrats. And the idea is both candidates would be centrist like moderates from their own party. So this would be a centrist party. So some candidates they would consider, for example, from the Republican Party and these are mainly Republicans is Mitt Romney. He already lost, if I remember it, Liz Cheney. I don't I don't know who she attracts Chris Sanunu. That's an interesting, interesting choice. I mean, he's the governor of New Hampshire, quite charismatic, but couldn't couldn't even get North New Hampshire Republicans to vote for Nikki Haley. But he is probably more popular than Nikki Haley. Former governor Larry Hogan from Maryland. Also, I think too small of a state, the same problem with New Hampshire. They're not that well known nationally. But those are the kind of people they would look at to run from the Republican side from the Democratic side. The only name they've really put out there is is Joe Manchin. Joe Manchin was retiring as a senator. Part of the speculation is he's retiring from the Senate so that he could take up this position as either VP or the top of the ticket in a no labels. And then, you know, a lot of the speculation is who do they draw on most? If they can't win, then do they draw more on Biden supporters and therefore make it easier for Trump to win? Or do they draw more on Trump supporters and make Biden win? I mean, this is what is going to make if they really run a candidate. And I for one hope that they do run a candidate because I think this country needs to mix it up a little bit and make this more interesting and make this more confusing rather than run another 2020 Trump versus Biden boring, you know, and horrible choice. So I think this would be fascinating. The Democrats are purpooling this. A lot of people who hate Trump are purpooling this because the fact is that a lot of people are worried that this will pull more votes from the Democratic side and make it easier for Trump to win, that his base is more solid and therefore more likely. But, you know, really, really hard to tell. There are other candidates. We'll get to RFK in a minute, but you've got other candidates running to the left of Biden. The question is, will those candidates be able to register in all states and will they be around for election day? And they, because they might be able to take a lot of the kind of progressive, crazy left votes from Biden. I mean, I mean, I like, I like mixing this up. We've got, we've got Jill Stein and we've got Cornell West. I don't know if Jill Stein and Cornell West will still be there come election time. They might or might not be. Anyway, this is, it's real. It's not fake. They're not just pretending. I think they're serious. The founder of No Labels was Joe Lieberman, if you remember. Joe Lieberman was a Democratic Senator for Connecticut who was shunned by the Democrats because he had many positions that were more compatible with moderate Republicans. And he was considered a real centrist. And he founded this. And I think he's serious about checking it up. I think this would be really interesting. It would open up a lot of possibilities for the future. It is sad that the best chance for political party to oppose Donald Trump and Biden is for political party to basically say, we don't stand for anything. We just stand for compromise, moderation, middle of the road, nests, nothing real. Anyway, that's where we are. All right. So talk about other candidates. Well, RFK is also running. Robert F. Kennedy is running. Of course, he has going for him. What he has is phenomenal name recognition. He is, after all, a Kennedy. And he is fairly well known. He is a Democrat in many of his positions, but has strong appeal to kind of Trump voters. He is anti-vax, not just COVID, but more broadly. He is very, very prone to all kinds of bizarre conspiracy theories. He is also very anti-Ukraine and very pro-Israel, which is also a position that kind of aligns with many Trump voters. He is a rabid, devoted environmentalist, a complete leftist, not when it comes to the environment, which should disqualify him in normal circumstances from attracting people from the right. But it doesn't because nobody really wants to stand up to environmentalism. And I think they're all kind of sympathetic to the environmentalist cause. So he is polling quite well. He's polling like 20-something percent. Again, not clear if he's pulling more people from Biden or pulling more people from Trump. It could very well be that he's pulling more people from Trump because of the COVID stuff and because of the pro-Israel anti-Ukraine side, whereas Democrats tend to be anti-Israel pro-Ukraine, particularly out on the left, that he is probably going to pull more people from the right. So the biggest challenge, and this is where it gets interesting, the biggest challenge Robert F. Kennedy has right now is getting onto the ballot in all 50 states. That takes real organization. It takes money. It takes time. He doesn't have, it appears, the organization, the money, the time to do it, which is surprising because you'd think he'd have the money. But he is struggling with that. That is not something that is going well. It appears. So he has figured out a potential shortcut. There is one political party out there that is on the ballot in all 50 states, all 50 states. And if he's in all 50 states, if they're in all 50 states, then that political party is the libertarian party. Now, you would think RFK is not a libertarian. But you know, the libertarian party is pretty eclectic and pretty all over the place. And he's kind of libertarian on anti-vax. He is foreclosing the border, which you'd think would not be a libertarian issue, but these days is. He's, I don't know, what else is he on the libertarian side? But the libertarians don't seem to care. They seem to think this would be cool because it expose lots of new voters to the libertarian party. And it'll get us the highest vote count we've ever had. And why not? We're pretty eclectic. We're big umbrella, right? Remember, the libertarians are big umbrella. And, you know, and so they are considering them. They're considering nominating RFK to be the representative of the libertarian party. This is how pathetic the libertarian party has become. You know, we're talking about environmentalists, a hater of corporations, somebody who wants to regulate everything, shut the border. But you know what issue might prevent RFK from actually getting the libertarian party nomination? It's not going to be in his environmentalism. It's not going to be his pro-regulations. It's certainly not going to be his anti-vax or immigration stance. What issue do you think would prevent RFK from getting the libertarian nomination? What is the issue most important these days to libertarians? And therefore, no way. They're willing to get an environmentalist on. They're willing to get a status on. They're willing to get any of these things on. The one thing they're not willing to accept. He's a good call on Neocon. He's pro-Israel. So I saw an interview with him and what's his name? Smith. What's the guy's name? The comedian? Dave Smith. And Dave was just going after him over the issue of Israel. And you know, RFK was doing a moderately okay job defending his position in Israel. And Dave Smith was having none of it. None of it. The usual irrational, stupid libertarian arguments around it. But it was just pathetic of all the issues RFK is bad on. This is the one issue he's actually good on. How can RFK be a Zionist elder when he's not even Jewish? You can't be a Zionist elder. Ayan Mirkat, if you're not Jewish. And I'm pretty sure Kennedy is not a Jewish name. So that's where the libertarian party draws the line. You can be an environmentalist. You can be pro-taxing the rich. More higher taxes. You can be pro-regulations and control over business and going after it. You can be anti-vaccines. You can be a lot of things. But if you're pro-Israel, I don't think you make it. Anyway, if RFK can get listed on all 50 states, I think this election, imagine. And no labels candidate, RFK. And maybe you get Jill Stein and Connell West on the ballot with Biden and Trump. Now it becomes interesting. Now it's fun to watch. Now the election gets fun rather than having to, you know, the muck gets distributed among all of them. So there's still no candidate you can vote for. Although there are no labels candidate, it might be a candidate I could vote for. There's still no candidate you can vote for, but at least it becomes interesting. What term do we have to stop using? Can we stop using that term? A package deal. Who is a package deal? I don't know what you guys are talking about. One of the people says, RFK only needs to be on the ballot in seven competitive states. No, not if he wants to win the college. RFK wants to win. To win he has to be on all 50 states and he has to win enough electors to win in seven states. Even if he wins those seven states, he could be on only seven states to be a spoiler. Not clear for whom. Again, not clear who does he take more votes from. But in order to win he has to be on all 50 ballots. Alright, here's a depressing story. This comes from Barry Weiss from the Free Press. So there's such a thing called an assassin's veto. An assassin's veto is basically the threat of violence prevents people from doing what is right. Ryan asked what the hell is anti-vax? It's somebody who is opposed to vaccines. That's what anti-vax means. He's opposed to vaccines. He's opposed to the COVID vaccine. He's opposed to childhood vaccines. He's opposed to vaccines. That's what anti-vax means. So an assassin's veto is the threat of force stopping people from doing what they otherwise would have wanted to do. This is the ideas in politics. You basically stop a particular movement, a particular vote, a particular politician, a particular trend, just by threatening. Threatening them with violence, threatening force, threatening to kill. Over the last, I'd say 40 years, really since the mid-1980s or the early 1980s, the Islamist world has used an attempt to use an assassin's veto on many different things. The first use of this, maybe, was with a fatwa against Salman Rushdie in 1988, which basically silenced Salman Rushdie, or at least attempted to, but to some extent did silence him. He went into hiding. His publishers withdrew some of his books, even from American bookstores. And of course, the response to an assassin's veto should be that your government does everything in its power to protect yourself and annihilate the threat to you. That is, assassin's vetoes should never be acceptable. Should never be acceptable. Assassin, of course, is an Arabic word. The first assassins were Persian. Were part of the, you know, one sect of Islam. They specialized in assassinating political leaders, Islamic political leaders. This is in the, I don't know, 10th century, 11th century, 12th century. I think that's right. Or maybe later, maybe after the golden era of Islam. So, what are we, Ryan, I don't know what you're talking about. So, you're flooding my channel with stuff. Slow down. Slow down. No reason for all that. If you've got a question, or if you've got a comment that you really want addressed, the super chat is available. But flooding the chat with two word comments. Not cool at all. Not cool. You're not helping me out. You're just disruptive by flooding the chat with that kind of commentary. Again, super chat exists if you want to say something meaningful. Iron Hosea Ali, when she lived in the Netherlands, was constantly threatened. Had to have protection. And ultimately, her colleague, the filmmaker Theo van Gogh, was murdered in Amsterdam for collaborating on a movie about Islam with Iron Hosea Ali. She ultimately had to leave the Netherlands out of fear for her life and move to the United States. And really, this trend of Islamist threatening the lives of individuals is prevalent, constant. You saw a tiny little version of it, if you will, in my talk at the University of Texas, with the disruptions. But my life was never threatened. But there is an Islamist threat to people's lives. Theo van Gogh suffered from that and has many, many others over the years. On Sunday, on Sunday, Douglas Murray was scheduled to make a presentation on his experiences in Israel at a theater in the center of London. It was a sold-out event and the theater had to, you know, basically shut the event down because it received violent threats against their staff. Notice that the police did not come to the theater's assistance. It was not the case that the police guaranteed their safety and rallied around the theater and prevented demonstrations or anything. No, they just shut the event down. Assassin's veto is a way to silence free speech. It is a use of force to silence free speech. And the only job of government in the face of an assassin's veto is to eliminate it, to get rid of the threat. In Britain, where I think this is the most acute anywhere in the world right now, other places, people have already been silenced. So it's gone. But in terms of an ongoing threat where this is relevant on a daily basis, Britain seems to be the worst right now. There are constantly threats to events like we saw with Douglas Murray. And now an MP, a member parliament, actually, I think he's the secretary or the minister of justice in the British government right now, has said that he will not. He will resign. He's going to resign for parliament. He's not going to run for reelection. He's resigned from the government because he is spooked and does not want to run any risks. He's got a family and he is leaving. He is a robust supporter. This is his name is Fria and he is a conservative member of parliament and a member of this existing government. Fria is a robust supporter of Israel and Jews make up about 20% of the votes in his district, but he has been targeted because of his support for Israel. He's not Jewish. He's not Jewish, but he's been targeted because of his support for Israel. And the fact is that today on the streets of London, it is safer. I mean, on the streets of London have been handed over to Muslim thugs. They can demonstrate. They can do whatever they want. The police will let them demonstrate basically every single weekend, but the police does not vigorously defend the lives of the Jews living in London. I mean, many Jews now won't go to central London on a Saturday because of these big demonstrations. They basically shut out of it. And this is only getting worse. The British government is basically, and you can see this is not, this is somebody of the British government basically leaving politics rather than fight for this. The British government refuses to do anything to win the culture back from these Islamic nuts. They are going to destroy one of the great countries and one of the great cities in the world with this insanity, right? This insanity of handing the reins of the culture and of basically of safety and security to the Islamists. And if, as this is happening, it really is the end of Great Britain and of London, as we know it. Douglas Murray has been talking about this and I think he's basically right. All right. Finally, by the way, this is from David Collier. I'll just read this quickly. This is a tweet from David Collier that I think reflects some of this. And he says, David Collier is a British journalist. Make it all mistake. All signs are here now. British Jewish life will be squeezed out of the UK. There is not a single institution from the courts to the schools in which anti-Semitism is not firmly embedded itself. People can publicly call for jihad in our streets and the police protest their innocence. Celebrities openly promote the propaganda of radical Islamic terrorist groups. Opposing a key element of Jewish identity is being equated with a progressive human rights stance. It has become fashionable to dislike 90 plus percent of Jews. To accommodate the rise of Islamic ideology in our shores, the British left has simply sold out the Jews. Everyone else is running scared. There is no other reason why the Muslim Brotherhood are given free reign on London streets each weekend. This is all about numbers. British democracy will not save us. It will bury us. Not all Jews will leave. And it won't be immediate. Unless we witness a moment of real horror, the process could take decades. Some will assimilate. Some will hide. What will visibly remain will be dense pockets of Orthodox Jewry in places that will resemble a ghetto. But may well be a ghetto. But many will go. We are at the end of a golden period like a boiling pot will start to feel the heat. It doesn't matter whether you agree with me like it or not. This is the course upon which we are now traveling. That is unbelievably sad. This is just a quick story about relative economies. We've talked about on the show before the capital flight from China. The billions and billions of dollars that are leaving China for an investment is basically negative in China. Money is not flowing in to make investment in China. It's flowing out. Part of that is seen in the stock market in Shanghai. But part of that is seen as just capital investments in factories and in technologies and businesses in China. Money is flowing out. It's not flowing in Wall Street and Wall Street firms and global money managers are moving money out of China. Where is it going? Well interestingly enough, a big chunk of it is going into India. India is becoming an industrial center. It is becoming a technology hub. It doesn't yet have the infrastructure that China does in order to be able to deal with all this capital flowing in. But it is working on it. Poverty in India has been on a sharp downward spike over the last 20 years. And really since 1994 when India abandoned its status socialist run economic system. It's still way too statist. It still could be so much better. It is truly a tragedy that India does not more fully embraced market ideas. And in that case it's a largest country in the world by population. It's got more people than China. It has got a British educational system at least for a significant number of Indians. It has some of the best technical universities in the world. It has phenomenal engineers. It really literally has the capacity to become one of the great economic powers in the world. Which would be tremendous for the peoples of the world. And capital is flowing in to start reflecting that. And hopefully they will liberate their economy more. Although again the trends are going against that with the current national government of Modi. But it's still a much better alternative for most investors right now than China. A lot of companies are investing in it. Apple is moving, well it's not really Apple. It really is Foxconn. The subcontract of Apple that builds the iPhone is moving assembly to India or some assembly to India. But that's just a typical iceberg of capital moving to India. India is the place people are investing and I think justifiably so. It's a democracy. It has some political freedom. It's again moving in the wrong direction by almost every measure. But it's doing well. So India is the place to be. China is yesterday's investment. Alright quickly. Maria Lien, thank you for the sticker. Really appreciate that. Let me just get going here. Jonathan, thank you. Savano's $50 that is incredibly generous. Really, really appreciate that. And let's see. Ryan, thank you. And Katherine Dawson. Thank you. Really appreciate all the stickers. Before we get to the super chat, a quick reminder. The Iron Man Institute is a sponsor of the One Book Show. They are still taking scholarship applications for the Iron Man Conference in Austin at the end of March. If you're a serious student of Objectivism, you're really interested in digging deep. This is going to be a phenomenal conference. You'll have Tara Smith. You'll have Greg Salamieri, Jason Rines, Ben Baer. Just an all-star team of Objectivist philosophers, which will, I think, will make it a really unique experience. It's not going to be just lectures. It'll also be courses where you delve deep into a topic and you really get to analyze it. And yeah, I mean, I hope that many of you take it up and actually, I think Gina Golan will also be there and apply for a scholarship. Basically, it's all expensive paid. I think the scholarship is. So check it out. www.inran.org. www.inran.org. And of course, don't forget to subscribe if you're not a subscriber. Please subscribe to the channel. If you're not yet a subscriber, that's true of those listening on whatever channel you're listening. Come to YouTube and just subscribe. It, again, helps the algorithm. Please like the show before you leave. That helps the algorithm. And please become a supporter of the show on Patreon or you're on bookshow.com. All right, let's start with Phil, 50 pounds. Thank you, Phil. He says there's a dual U.S. by both British citizen in over 65 years on this planet. I cannot recall or ever having be more ashamed of the philosophical moral degradation of those who represent us politically. Thank you, I ran for objectivism and thank you, Iran. Yeah, I mean, I agree with you completely Phil. Even when you look at the broader candidates, it's just disgusting to have to vote for these people. I mean, they are the worst ever. Trump is the worst Republican candidate ever. Biden is probably the worst Democratic candidate ever, particularly if you include not just philosophical but also moral as human beings and brain capacity in England. The Conservative Party is basically completely folded. They are weak. They are pathetic. What I'm describing about the rise of Islamism in the UK could not happen without the government's complete acquiescence. And it is just truly horrible what is happening in the Western world. The West is collapsing. I cannot think of a period in the last 200 years, you know, maybe with the exception of the Great Depression and leading up to World War II, where things have been worse in the West in terms of where we're heading and how we're doing. So, you know, somehow we're going to have to find a way out of this. And Iran gives us a, gives us the path whether anybody is actually interested in pursuing that path. Who knows? Imagine, imagine how bad it's going to get if Trump wins a second term by Trump. Oh my God. Michael Sanders says, genocide and apartheid all around us, words are being perverted and misused. There's no genuine respect for reason. And now words can mean anything. We've got to reverse this or we have lost a battle for civilization. Look, this has been going on forever. The left is brilliant at this. The right never seems to be able to catch up with kind of the redefining of terminology. The left did this with liberal. It's done it with pretty much every other term, including capitalism. Remember, Elizabeth Warren coming out in defense of capitalism. The right usually just buys into whatever the left gives them. Of course, they've all done it for selfishness and self-interest and the way they define those. You know, genocide and apartheid are just a last permeation. People can't think, they just pick up the labels, the intellectuals provide them and they run with them. They don't think, they don't consider the stuff, they don't think it through. And yeah, I mean, it really is horrific. But if we lose the battle for the concepts that we use, we lose the world. And I think we're at risk of that happening, of exactly that happening. Bree says, I like disqualifying politicians from running. I think any politician who has ever voted for a law that was laid overturned on constitutional grounds should be disqualified. You can't read the Constitution, you can't run. You know, that would be great, Bree, but that would basically disqualify every single politician out there. Because they've all run, well, maybe not by current views of the Constitution. But every single politician out there, every single one of them, in my view, and maybe even in your view, Bree, has voted for bills that are anti-constitutional, just maybe not based on the current Supreme Court or Supreme Courts of the past. But yes, God, I'm with you about disqualifying politicians. And you know, I don't think the Supreme Court has it in them, but I would love to see them disqualify Trump. You know, and that would speed up maybe the reckoning with MAGA. It would put that reckoning into the streets, but it would speed it up in a sense we'd get over with. So it would be fantastic if, you know, if they disqualified him. Of course, they can do that because they couldn't do what Bree's suggesting because nobody out there understands the Constitution. And the Supreme Court and the shifting interpretations of it would make whether you qualify or not constantly shifting. But yeah, the crop of politicians we have right now, we should have cognitive tests, which would basically, I think, disqualify both Biden and Trump right now. They're both cognitively not competent to serve as president. Partially, they're just getting too old. All right. James, what do you make a Biden calling Netanyahu a bad something guy? Are you Israeli's nervous that America public is losing support for them? Yes, I think Israel's very nervous. The nervous about Biden. Look, I think Netanyahu's a bad guy. So I'm with Biden on this, but so does Trump. Trump right after October 7th, the first thing he did was attacking Netanyahu. So I think Israelis are very nervous. They're nervous about whether Biden or Trump wins. They're nervous about the fact that a significant number of Americans are really, really opposed to a growing number of Americans as opposed to Israel. And that the strongest support Israel gets in America is from evangelicals who could flip like that. And you never know, because it's all based not on any kind of coherent moral principle, but on some scary biblical stuff and based on faith. If it's based on faith, that can change very quickly. So yes, this is Israelis are very, very worried about America. Liam says in Germany, a baby was taken away from its parents because they named him out of Hitler. Is this a rights violation or is the state properly protecting a child from abuse? No, it's clearly rights violation. There's no, there's no basis on which you can, you can take a child from parents because of the name they give him, even if they do call it a monstrous name. I mean, I feel sorry for the child. I feel sorry for everybody involved, but the state has no business here, you know, stepping in with regard to, with regard to a naming a child. That's ridiculous. Harper Campbell does America's, I mean, short of physical abuse. It's very difficult to justify taking a child from parents. Harper Campbell does America's lax gun laws show American culture has resisted altruism more than other Western countries since altruists hate self-defense. No, I don't think so. I don't think that is what illustrates it more than anything else. I think the whole issue of guns as I've said many times is a complex issue. And I don't, I don't think many people who are pro gun rights are doing it for some, you know, because they understand anything about altruism or because they reject altruism in any kind of sense. There is, there is a, there is some still notion of don't tread on me in America, but it's just fading and maybe the last gasp of that is in gun rights. But that's the point that if the last gasp of individualism of Americanism of, of, of, you know, founding fathers principle, if the last gasp of that is gun rights, then we're done for and we're finished because of all the rights. You know, it's the one that, that, you know, the one that will get us in most trouble at the end if we've given up on all the others. Because once we get to the point where it's all about guns, then we're getting to the point where, well, we're going to shoot each other over other issues because the other rights are not being protected. It becomes anarchy. It becomes the use of force. Clark Young, how would you compare Milley to Ronald Reagan? Oh, Milley, I think is much better than Ronald Reagan. I think he has a deeper understanding of economics. He has a deeper understanding of electivism versus individualism. But also the big difference is Milley is coming into a completely destroyed Argentina. Milley is coming into an environment of where Argentina hasn't quite reached bottom, but is heading towards bottom. And anything he does, even a little bit, is going to make a huge difference. Ronald Reagan is coming into an America fairly in good shape. He was coming into America that was on the path to resurrecting itself on the path of re-establishing itself after a long decline because much, because of a lot of the deregulation that happened under Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan came in in a much better situation and did less than Milley is going to do. Partially because Milley can get away with doing a lot because of the bad situation that exists there. But I think Milley has just a deeper understanding, certainly, of the economics of the situation that Reagan had. Gabriel Woods, have you heard of Harari's recent podcast in Gaza outlining his model case for the war and if so thoughts? I have not, but I'm interested in that. Harari is terrible and including terrible on morality. So I'm curious what he comes up with in terms of defending the war in Gaza. So I will look into that. Daniel, have you tried to reach out to Sam Harris? He is so close on Israel Middle East issues, it would be interesting for you two to have a conversation on the topic. I haven't because when I did reach out to him, I had a way to reach out to him, which is way back when he was part of the intellectual doc web. He basically rebuffed me and would have nothing to do with me. I don't have any access. I don't have any way to get to Sam Harris now. I don't have any shared contact with him. I would be surprised if he would be willing to do an interview with me. If anybody knows Sam Harris, if anybody wants to write to him, if anyone wants to recommend to him, please do so. I will look and see if I have any contacts to connect or not. Ryan, thank you for using the Super Chat rather than just flooding the chat. He says, anti-vax is a package deal fallacy. Your definition includes two essentially different things. Against vax is your definition. That includes being against unjustified use of the vax. I'll read the second question as well because they kind of flow into the other. Dr. Drew on YouTube is studying history because he is apparently anti-vax as well. As he knows where he was lied to and where he was manipulated and how the whole damn thing is co-op. Do you? No, I mean, I'm not anti-vax and I think anti-vax is to be anti the inappropriate use of vaccines. Absolutely. Sorry, anti-vax is to be anti-vaccination. The idea that vaccinations for the most part, not in any particular case, are inappropriate, both childhood vaccinations and COVID vaccines. I think that the science is pretty clear cut on this, that the science is pretty unequivocal on this. Childhood vaccinations are really, really good, really, really positive. They have saved hundreds of millions of children from unnecessary pain and suffering. There was completely unnecessary and unrequired. I, for one, was not vaccinated from childhood diseases and had to suffer from actually having those diseases. And it was awful. It was awful having the mumps. It was awful having measles. It was awful having all these things that today you don't have to have because you get a vaccination for it. And I would jump on that vaccination any day and my children were vaccinated. And if I had children today, I would have them vaccinated. So I think overall vaccines are incredibly safe and they've done a phenomenal job of eliminating for most kids the real challenge. And in some cases, the risk of having the diseases themselves. I think VACs are wonderful. I would celebrate a VACs day if such a thing existed. It is a tremendous feat of science. And in that context, I'm a huge proponent of the COVID vaccines. Now, I don't believe vaccinators should be mandated for, for example, for COVID. That was ridiculous. I don't believe in VACs mandates at the governmental level. I'm fine with private enterprise saying you can't work for us unless you're a vaccinator. You can't anti-store unless you're vaccinated. That is voluntary. But anti-VACs means somebody who does not believe vaccinations should be used. Now, unjustified is meaningless, but RFK is anti-VACs. He's not, don't give COVID vaccines to young people. I wasn't particularly and still am not enthusiastic about COVID vaccines to young people. But to be anti-COVID vaccines is to be pro the death of many, many, many millions of people whose lives were saved because of COVID vaccines. And I will just say that there's no fraud here. What are we talking about fraud? Where's the relevance of fraud? I've looked at the data on COVID vaccines. I've studied the data. I might not know medicine, but I know statistics. I know how to read a graph. I know how to read statistical, I know how to read scientific papers, at least to some extent. And the evidence is overwhelming regarding COVID vaccines. So I've done all this and I'm tired of it. But just to give you a sense of this, I just got my second shot of the shingles vaccine. And I am unbelievably thankful for the existence of shingles vaccines. Data's manipulated. Give me a break, Ryan. You guys are brainwashed. You're deluded. You're completely, completely, completely deluded. The data with regard to COVID is overwhelming. It's international. To be manipulated, the data would have to be manipulated in every single country in the same way. And to say it's all manipulated, well, how do the people who think they know get better data? Dr. Drew doesn't know what he's talking about. Dr. Drew has become a hack. Like many of these guys, this celebrity goes to their head and they find a niche audience that they feed. And that is exactly what a bunch of these people have done. And it is sad to see, but it is obvious. And you can look across all countries and the data is consistent and unequivocal. Every time one of these anti-vax people point to a study about COVID vaccinations, you actually go to study and read it. And half the time, it shows the exact opposite of what they're claiming and they're just taking a sentence out of context. And half the time, it's a bogus study. There's literally no evidence to suggest that COVID vaccine was killing people. What was the other thing? Oh, yeah, I just had the shingles vaccine. And I'm thankful for that vaccine because I've seen people that have shingles and the kind of impact it has. But Bette Weinstein is awful on this. He's just awful. And the credibility he gave to some of the most awful ideas possible is amazing. Now, one of the amazing things about Bette Weinstein is how many people love Bette Weinstein and think he is so anti-establishment. So when Bette Weinstein is just a conventional leftist who didn't buy into some of the woke stuff, but on every economic liberty issue, Bette Weinstein is your enemy. And therefore he must, Bette Weinstein is your enemy and therefore he must be right on COVID vaccines because he's God. The way that the tribal alliances have shifted is fascinating to me. And the greatest victim of the realignment of American politics and American tribalism, the biggest victim is economic liberty. Because the fact is that all the tribes have realigned, but all the tribes have one thing in common. And that is they're against economic freedom, against economic liberty. And there's nobody representing that particular point of view, not a single person. But that's fine. You guys want to hold on to the COVID conspiracy theory around COVID vaccines, all the power to you. And when they want to inject you with a modified RNA vaccine against the cancer, you might have turn them down because modified RNA vaccines are dangerous and turn them down and live with the cancer. I intend to embrace mRNA vaccines and salute and celebrate their development and their widespread use against all kinds of diseases and all kinds of cancers. It's pretty, pretty amazing. It wasn't wrong about free speech and social media. Everything I said turned out to be true about social media. I acknowledge that the government was pressuring social media companies. The difference between me and many of you was I said it's not social media violating the First Amendment. It's the government violating the First Amendment. It's not social media stopping you from posting that is the problem. It is the government telling social media what to do or what not to do that is the problem. There's no fraud. If there's fraud, sue them. But there's no fraud. And stop buying into the insanity of these conspiracy theorists. Ryan also says, Dr. Drew is looking for ominous parallels and understanding philosophical history. I have my doubts. I don't think Dr. Drew understands philosophy and understands any kind of real ominous parallels. Charles Butts says, Pennatella had a good episode of bullshit in which they debunked the anti-vax movement. Yeah, I know. I know. It's not that hard. It's not that hard. And the fact that, sadly, the fact that Pennatella debunked a lot of things on the show did not prevent those things from growing even bigger after the show. Catherine says, have you ever had Douglas Murray on your show? No, I haven't. Although we are friendly. And I'd like to do something with him, maybe in the UK, but it looks like he can't do something in the UK. I've met Pennatella. I actually hung out with Pennatella once before and after the show. Huge In-Rant fans, really nice people, had dinner with Penn and then lunch the following day with Teller. And Teller was particularly impressed with Teller, the guy who never talks. Really intelligent, really intellectual, really interested in In-Rant and Objectivism. Really an interesting, interesting guy. I am Melcott. F. Trump. I'm with you. But let's not destroy the Republic to save the Republic. He hasn't been convicted yet. P.S. Gaza must be destroyed. He hasn't been convicted yet. I still wouldn't vote for him. Even if he's not convicted, I wouldn't vote for him. And in terms of what the Supreme Court does, you know, it's a six to three conservative system. My assumption is that they would only rule him ineligible if they thought that he somehow, it violated the Constitution, having him on the ballot. I assume that they would then rule that you don't have to convict somebody. You know? Daniel Duffy, if you had to choose Beethoven 7th and Dvozhek 7th or Dvozhek's 9th. I would choose Beethoven 7th. But it's a close call. But I would choose Beethoven 7th. It's probably my favorite symphony. Although the 9th, Dvozhek's 9th is up there in my, probably my top five. John, why do people struggle connecting abstracts like human life with concrete like civilian deaths during war? It seems that for them, being on the side of human life means you can never kill. Oh God. I mean, John, I mean, people can't connect abstractions and concretes. Anyway, so we have a massive epistemological problem in the culture of a challenge, real challenge between your ability to think abstracts. And connecting those abstractions to concretes. Many people who think they can think abstractly are rationalistic and deal with floating abstractions. And then most of the population has very hard time dealing with abstractions. All they can deal with is concretes. So all they can see is the concretes of people dying, people dying bad, value people's life. Therefore, people dying bad. Therefore, the killing of people must be bad. They can't deal with an abstraction and abstraction. They can't think in terms of abstractions. And that is unfortunately a majority of the human population. As Lenin Pekov once said, we're just not ready yet. Human civilization is too young. Human culture is too young to be able to integrate these concepts properly. Vandy says, sheesh, the goofballs are coming out in force today. Yes, they are. Even Scott showed up in the end. It took him a while, but he showed up. If they want to argue with you, you should charge them. Give them hell, Iran. Well, I mean, at least, yes, Alex did, Ryan, sorry, Ryan did ask a super chat question. And Scott does sometimes. So, so you can't, you can't claim they never do. All right, we will have a show tonight, 7 p.m. East Coast time. And no show tomorrow. No shows tomorrow. So no news roundup and no evening show tomorrow. Thursday, we'll be back with two shows. I think on Thursday, I'll be interviewing Jason Rines. I still have to have, for some reason, he hasn't confirmed, but I think that's still happening. But no show tomorrow. I'm traveling in Puerto Rico, but I'm out of the house. Daniel says a Canadian objectivist, Paul McKeeva, just released a book called Judge. He claims to have a unique method of approaching philosophical enterprise. Have you heard of the book? I did buy it and will read it. Have I heard of the book? I have this vaguely collection that maybe he sent me a copy or asked me to review it or asked me to look at it. So it's a very good collection. In the last few weeks, I get so many requests and through so many different channels, I can't remember if it was an email or a tweet or a Facebook or what it was. But yeah, absolutely. That would be interesting. I don't know and I don't recall if I knew what it's about in detail. But any book by somebody out there is worth somebody who could consider themselves an objectivist. At least worth looking at and seeing what value it has. No guarantee one way or the other, but worth looking at. All right. Thank you, everybody. We'll see you all tonight at 7 p.m. Thanks to all the superchatters. You guys were very generous today. We beat our target and I appreciate that. So thanks. See you tonight. Bye, everybody.