 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 Wednesday. Wednesday. It's almost Christmas. It's almost Christmas. Hope everybody's having a great week and looking forward to the weekend into a long weekend with Christmas on Monday. Should be a lot of fun. All right. Let's jump right in. We're going to watch a video of Takka Kalsen, which I will comment on. I'm expecting this to go quickly, but you know how it is. Once I start commenting on these videos, this shouldn't be more than, I don't know, two, three minutes in terms of the video of Takka Kalsen, but then it could be take me, I don't know, an hour and a half to discuss it. But no, I mean, kidding. So this is Takka Kalsen. He is here with Glenn Greenwald. Glenn Greenwald, they become very close friends, associates, brothers in arms, you might even say. Glenn Greenwald is a real socialist, but he's also, you know, a certain populist views. He's also anti-war. And was a skeptic, I guess, over the whole COVID thing. So he has gained a lot of supporters and from kind of the populist right. And he is, what did I want to do here? Yeah, he is, I guess part of the populist right. And my guess is that Glenn Greenwald would vote for Trump over Biden and so on. So I'm not going to play anything with Glenn Greenwald. Glenn Greenwald is basically, this is his show. He's interviewing Takka Kalsen. And this is Takka Kalsen's answer to a question about basically the economic views of the populist right. What are the, what are the, what is his views regarding the economics as they're held by the populist right? And let's listen to what Takka, our friend Takka Kalsen has to say. Whoops, why is that? Seems like that's muted. Let's see. I think a lot of people have awakened to the now demonstrable fact that libertarian economics was a scam perpetrated by the beneficiaries of the economics system. So libertarian economics was a scam. Libertarian economics, I assume by libertarian economics what they mean is free markets. It's a private property, respectful private property. It's, yeah, free markets. Libertarian economics is really free markets. When have those been tried? I mean, Takka's not an idiot. Takka used to be considered himself a libertarian not that long ago when it was convenient to be so. But when was it tried? Was Ronald Reagan a libertarian economics? Did we really deregulate everything? Is the government not involved in every aspect of our lives? From an economic perspective, is the government not everywhere? Is the government not engaged even today in industrial planning? Is the government not engaged in taxation and tariffs and manipulation of what we buy even under Reagan? Weren't there limits on how many Japanese cars could be imported? Didn't Reagan bail out Chrysler? I mean, when is this mythological time of libertarian economics? Now, he claims that now we are living through the consequences of libertarian economics. I mean, and they keep repeating this. Now, the reason I'm emphasizing this, the reason is that a lot of people listen to Takka. This particular show with Green Guild World only has 39,000 views over the last four days, but Takka is listened to extensively. Many, many, many Americans are now adopting the view. Many, many Americans who used to have a different view, but are now adopting the view that the problems we have today in economics, the problems we have, the challenges we face today are a consequence of too much free markets, of too little state intervention, of too little statism. This is what Americans are internalizing, and this is what Takka keeps reinforcing. And indeed, I think Donald Trump and I think many of the new commentators on the conservative nationalist, on the new right, keep emphasizing Reagan's free market policies have failed. Libertarian economics, no good. What we need is populist economics. There's another way for, another name for populist economics that at the end of this segment, which I will not play. Glenn Grewal mentions the fact that maybe Takka Kaussan is now a little bit of a socialist. Yeah, it's called socialism. That's populist economics, helping out the poor, structuring industrial policy to help up the poor. How has that worked? All right, industrial policy is a massive failure everywhere it's tried, but it doesn't prevent for a variety of moral reasons and political reasons. It doesn't prevent the purveyors of statism and those who would want to appeal to a large array of people, particularly people in the lower middle class, in the working class. It doesn't prevent them from constantly hopping back to status policies that we know fail and blaming all our problems on. This is Takka Kaussan. This is the new right. These are the people you think should govern. And many of you think should be supported. You know, the enemy, according to them, of American people are free markets, free markets. All right, let's listen a little bit more. That was 21 seconds of Takka, six minutes of me. We're not going to get very far at this rate. That they were defending. So they created this whole intellectual framework to justify the private equity culture that's hollowed out the country. That's my personal view. And I've seen it up close my whole life. So private equity culture hollowed out the country, complete nonsense, a private equity culture that has kept the economy, the US economy functioning. It's kept it growing. It's brought increased efficiency, increased productivity. It has actually enhanced American businesses and it made it so that we live in a world in which unemployment is basically effective. Unemployment is zero and where American companies are to a large extent the envy of the world. Private equity culture is a culture of profit maximization, which means increasing efficiency, increasing productivity. Hollowed out the country. Hollowed out what hollowed out the country is the fact that people, conservatives, conservative people left and right sat around waiting for the same old, same old instead of innovating, instead of building new businesses, instead of getting on a bandwagon of new technologies, instead of changing with the times. What's destroyed the old steel jobs are not, is not private equity. What's destroyed the old steel jobs is technology. Competition. But people like Tucker Carlson, politicians like Trump and Biden and the rest of them keep promising to bring the steel jobs back. That hollows out the country. That creates people sitting around waiting for the steel jobs to come back, waiting for their prospects to improve, rather than doing something to prove their prospects. That is the mentality of stagnation. That is the mentality that is destructive to America. It's a sitting around waiting rather than doing. And that is encouraged by those like Tucker, like Trump, like Biden, like Elizabeth Warren. I put them all together for a reason because they all belong together. Like JD Vance, like Manchin from West Virginia who just complained about the sale of financial security reasons, the sale of US Steel. Instead of looking backwards as they do. Oh, what the fifties of wonderful time. Instead looking to the future, a future of AI, a future of robots, a future of immense prosperity. All they can do is sulk and skulk about the fact that some people are making money by making America a better place to live, by making our businesses keep on working. And if we have a soft landing and if we survive the last few years with a decent economy, with people having jobs, you can credit a lot of that to private equity. Now, I know Tucker and Glenn would have liked the state to be bailing everybody out, would like the state to be guaranteeing everybody's job, would like the state to be running all those businesses. But this is why Tucker Carlson is and has been for years, but nobody listens to me, the enemy. I think it's a fair assessment. I think a smarter way to assess an economic system is by its results. So you can assign whatever name you want to the economic system of the United States. You could call it market capitalism. You could call it, I mean, you could call it a whole host today. Well, certainly calling it market capitalism would be a deception because it is not market capitalism. It has elements of market capitalism here and there like private equity. And it has, but even private equity is a lot of private equity successes by taking on debt where the interest is tax deductible. Even there, it is a product of the mixed economy. But what we have is a mixed economy with heavy, heavy, heavy role of the state. Heavy, heavy, heavy role of regulations, controls, taxes and manipulations, subsidies, tariffs, and on and on and on you go. So you can call them market capitalism, but that would be particularly coming out of the mouth of somebody educated and knowledgeable, like Tucker Carlson is, that would be plain and simple dishonest. It would be a lie. But lying is the way to achieve popularity. Lying is the way to achieve political power. And indeed, the results, yeah, the results are not good in the United States. They're better than in any other Western country, but they're not good. They could be a lot better. They should be a lot better. But the solution to getting this there is not to abandon the remnants of market capitalism as Tucker would like, but to embrace them, embrace them consistently and apply them consistently and to get rid of the cronyism that he is demanding by demanding greater government involvement in the economy. Greater government involvement in the economy can only make things worse, not better. Different things, but I don't think any of that's useful. Those are boring conversations. I think you need to ask, does this economic system produce a lot of dollar stores? And if it does, it's not a system that you want. So the problem is dollar stores. That's the problem. Dollar stores where people find bargains, where people go and find cheap stuff, buying cheap stuff, which makes it possible for them to spend more money on other stuff. So we shouldn't let the market provide for people. Dollar stores have always existed in the United States. It's not like they didn't exist in the 1950s. They would just call it something else. I remember really, really, these really, really cheap stores that you could go to in the 1970s and buy stuff basically for a dollar, the equivalent of dollar stores. And that story, if I remember right, that was in Brookline, Massachusetts, a relatively wealthy place, but it succeeded because everybody likes a little bargain. Everybody likes to buy little knickknacks, little stuff, to stocking stuffers or whatever, however you want to call it, at the dollar store, why not? But this is Takah's problem, the dollar store. Now, if he was complaining about poverty and he's using the dollar store to represent that, but it's not what he's doing. He's complaining about the very essence of bargain hunting and the fact that, freedom, freedom of consumption, we still have some freedom in retail, freedom of consumption. The freedom of supply and demand in the world of consumer products, he's complaining about that, the fact that something has arisen to provide a service to people who want these kind of cheap stuff. Some of them are poor, some of them might be students who one day will be richer, some of them are middle class, some of them just want knickknacks, all kinds of stuff. Because it degrades people and it makes their lives worse. It degrades people and makes their lives worse to seek bargains? Really? How is that? I could get it if you was talking about TikTok, but you're talking about dollar stores. This is the complaint about capitalism, it produces dollar stores, it produces bargains. But isn't that, if you look at the nature of retail over the last 150 years, from the beginning, yes, there was a high end, but there was always a lower end to be able to satisfy efficiently, productively, cheaply, the needs of a lower middle class, the needs of a working class, the needs of the poor, so that they too could have fancy stuff. I mean, here he is sitting in his, I don't know what brand of sweater it is, but Tucker Carlson is a very wealthy man. He comes from a wealthy background. He comes from an elite society. He's sitting there making fun of putting down dollar stores. He's such a snob, a snob speaking for, for the downtrodden. I mean, is there anything worse? Is there anything less appealing than that? It increases exponentially the amount of ugliness in your society, and anything that increases ugliness, is equal, and it's just kind of, let's just start there. Is it the people that are ugly? Is it the stuff in the store that's ugly? I mean, yes, Tucker, I mean, everybody should be able to, it would be great if everybody could shop where you, you know, at Saxford Avenue and places like that. That would be amazing. And maybe one day we will reach that point if we allow for capitalism. Capitalism will make everybody richer, and one day everybody will be able to afford a Saxford Avenue. But they can't today. See, so the fact that some people can't, that makes the system bad? The system that has brought people out of poverty? The system that actually is creating economic growth in the United States, and nowhere else in the world? Because it's not, it's being adopted here a little bit better than any elsewhere? I mean, is that really bringing ugliness to the world, dollar stores? So if it's such a good system, why do we have all these dollar stores? Because there's a demand for dollar stores, and there's a need to be fulfilled. And because people like bargains, and because, yeah, they're still poor people in this country, relatively speaking. But, you know, wouldn't it be cool if there were dollar stores all over the world, and people who could get bargains all over the world? I mean, really? And the dollar store is the clear, I mean, it's not the only ugly thing being created in the United States, but it's one of the most common, and it's certainly the most obvious. So if you have a dollar store, you're degraded. And any town that has a dollar store does not get better. It gets worse. And the people who live there lead lives that are worse. Again, I lived in Buckeye, Massachusetts, and had an equivalent of a dollar store at the time. I don't think it got worse. I think it got better, you know? And actually, today is probably one of the richest towns in the United States, and probably still has some kind of dollar store. I mean, it's just... So, and the counterargument to the extent there is one, oh, they buy cheaper stuff, great. But they become more unhappy. How do they become unhappy by buying cheaper stuff? Now, there is a happiness problem in America, but is the dollar store the fault? Is the economic system the fact that there's too much freedom the fault? Is that the problem? And the dollar store itself is a sort of symbol. What's a physical thing? It's a real thing. It's not just a metaphor, but it's also a metaphor for your total lack of control over where you live. Total lack of control over where you live? God, aren't they... Really? So, if you have a dollar store in your neighborhood, you should immediately be depressed because you don't have any control over where you live. You wouldn't never want to live in a neighborhood that has a dollar store nearby. And over the imposition of aggressively in your face ugly structures that send one message to you, which is you mean nothing. Ugly structures. Ugly structures. So, he wants all the small towns in America to have cathedrals in them. Is that the gist? I mean, so an efficient block structure so that you can sell products for cheap, so that people can buy stuff and get a bargain and improve their lives and maybe go home and renovate their kitchen and maybe make their lives a little bit more beautiful because they saved money because they didn't have to buy stuff in a beautiful modern 5th...Sax Fifth Avenue type store or an ancient cathedral. Is that it? You were a consumer, not a human being or a citizen. You're a consumer, not a human being or a citizen. Is consumption not necessary to be a human being? Is consumption not part of being a citizen? I mean, this is nuts. This is truly nuts. And this is the most influential public, what would you call it, you know, in the media, public intellectual in the media today. Certainly on the right, the most influential, probably the one influential, period. And so again, I don't know what we call our current system, but its effects are a grotesque, they're grotesque. They're grotesque. It's wrecked. I've been here 54 years and I watch carefully. That's my only gift is I watch. And this has become a much uglier place, a much more crowded place, a much more hostile place. A much more crowded? Have you really traveled around the country, Tucker, really? God. A place that cares much less about people. So whatever system that produces that outcome is a bad system. And you can call me whatever you want. Oh, you're a socialist. I don't care what you call me, actually. I'm beyond caring. Yeah. Well, he is beyond caring. That's fine. So we'll call him the statist that he actually is. But it's more than that. He is dishonest. He knows much better. And look, there is a lot of ugliness in the world out there. You know, a lot of the arts that is supposed to be beautiful is part of that ugliness. You know, the architecture, I would say, of the 1960s was far uglier than the architecture of today. I think the architecture today is much better than it was in the 1960s. Block buildings, glass squares, there's a lot more attempt to make architecture more beautiful than there was in the 1960s when Tucker, I guess, Tucker wasn't born yet, but maybe born at the end of the 60s. So I don't know what he's talking about. If anything, there's been an improvement over time in much of the public and much of the architecture that's, you know, I don't know that there's been an improvement much in homes, but there certainly has been an improvement in public. And yeah, there's a lot of ugliness out there. There's a lot of decay. There's a lot of, there's way too much poverty. There are way too many problems. I wish everybody did shop at Saks Fifth Avenue, but what is the solution? What is the solution? Is the solution more state intervention, more and more powerful unions? Is the solution more redistribution of wealth? Is the solution more central planning? What is the solution? I mean, you could say in many ways a city like Copenhagen is a really pretty city in many ways, prettier than many American cities, although if you value skyscrapers, you're not going to find them in Copenhagen. So do we want 70% or 50, 60, 70% marginal tax rates? Do we want everybody riding on bicycles even in the winter? You know, do we want people living in tiny little apartments and tiny little homes? Is that what we want? Would that make him feel better? Are there no dollar stores in Copenhagen? I don't know. It's certainly more aesthetic than many American cities, particularly the bad parts of American cities. But what is the price one has to pay for that aesthetic beauty? And by the way, Copenhagen, Denmark, Sweden, less regulated than the United States. So in some parameters, more market capitalism than the United States is even. So what does he want? He doesn't know. And indeed, he doesn't want to label himself because the one thing Tuck has given up on and the one thing the entire right, particularly the new right, has given up on when it comes particularly to economics, one thing they've given up on is on principles, complete negation of principles. All that matters is what works. Does that sound familiar? There's a philosophy relating to that. And that is pragmatism. So let's drive dollars stores out. Do you remember how many, what do you call it, pawn shops? I remember when I lived in Texas, Austin, Texas, in the 1980s, early 90s, there were dozens of pawn shops. I liked the pawn shops because I would go there and buy stuff. I bought some of my stereo equipment in a pawn shop. I bought other stuff in a pawn shop. So I enjoyed pawn shop because there were always deals and opportunities there. But are pawn shops better than dollar stores, worse than dollar stores? Are they more pawn shops today, more dollar stores today, more now than they were in the 1980s? What are we talking even about? What we have today is pragmatism. Tuck is a complete and utter pragmatist. He is also, I think there's an element of nihilism. I mean, one of the things I find striking is how angry he started to look over the last couple of years, the frown he has. He has a constant look, that look of I'm angry. You know, I can't be fooled. I'm going to see through you. I'm really scowling and it's pathetic. It's pathetic. Anyway, pawn, pawn, not pawn, P-A-W-N. All right, what else? Yeah, I know, I know. My pawn and my pawn are very similar. What can I say? You're going to have to, you guys have been with me a long time. You continue to struggle with my accent. You'll survive. All right, let's see. I'm going to take some honestest questions because what's $50, but also because it's about Taka and then we'll go on to our next topic. I've never lived in New York, in the way I have a New York accent. If Taka is educated enough to know better, is he aware of the hell that awaits at the end of his logic? Is he so cynical to drive the U.S. to worse end for his personal gain, assuming he'll be able to skirt the consequences? Yes, I don't think Taka cares. I don't think Taka cares when I order. I mean, he goes to Hungary and he lords Orban. Does he care that Hungary is a country basically subsidized by Germany and rich northern European countries? And that's the only reason why it has an economy. Does he care about the fact that there's no independent media? Does he care about it, you know, liberty or freedom at all? No, I don't think Taka cares. He's picked up on where the energy is in the American public. He's picked up on, he's more Trump than Trump himself. I mean, he is picked up where, as I said, I think I wouldn't be surprised if you went for president. I wouldn't be surprised if you won. He's picked up on kind of what the American people care about and what they want and what they like. And he is engaged in, he is reflecting back all of that to the American people. I think he also has consciously abandoned any kind of principled ideas he might have had in his past. He has become a pragmatist. He convinces himself, he rationalizes to himself that this will make things better. But, you know, he pretends it doesn't matter. He, you know, he pretends that that's it. He doesn't want to go down that rabbit hole about what will actually happen because then he'll discover his own, you know, in a sense nihilism and be horrified by himself. And this is why people, you know, people like this don't go there. They just don't go there. All right, we've just been joined by the, in the chat by somebody says, open borders for Israel. As if I've never discussed this issue of, as if I've never commented on it, as if there's not dozens of probably hours by this point where I haven't explained the issue of Israel. And let me be, I'm just going to say this and then go on. The dishonesty, particularly after October 7th, the blatant dishonesty of bringing up open borders for Israel after October 7th is so frigging disgusting that people who bring that up and then compare it to the United States really don't deserve an answer. It is despicable to even bring it up. And it's, again, dishon, completely dishonest, completely dishonest. All right, we'll get to another Tucker question from Alejandro. I agree that ugliness can be evil because at the end the ugliness phenomena in America is Tucker. Yeah, I think that's right. And look, there is ugliness in America. I complain constantly about ugliness, but it's not the dollar stores which serve a function. It's the homes people choose to live in that all look the same and are built from the same mold. And they all look exactly, thousands of homes in these neighborhoods in Denver and Dallas and all over the place, every home looks exactly the same. I mean, that's ugly. And I constantly complain about the lack of aesthetic focus and attention that among Americans, we need more emphasis. Yeah, there's a lot of ugliness in the music that's played today, not just rap but techno and just the boom, boom, boom, boom, boom repetition that is just mind numbing and ugly and has no beauty and none of the truly inspiring features that music can have. So yes, I'm a huge opponent of ugliness and think that ugliness has a real impact on human life. I think it's devastating to human life, but dollar stores are not where I'd focus my ugliness, although a lot of strip malls are kind of ugly and simple, but there are also some, you can see some architects attempting to make some strip malls nicer. And I think if and as we become wealthier, strip malls, what do you call it, they're more and more neighborhoods that are mixed-use neighborhoods will become prettier and prettier. All right, where are we? Yes, Trump. We haven't talked about Trump in a long time. All right, I talked about this a little bit last night, but not in a news show, as you probably all know, because it's the headlines everywhere, the Supreme Court of the state of Colorado has deemed Trump unqualified to be on the ballot because of the 14th Amendment banning insurrectionists from office. And they deem Trump's behavior post-2020 election, his attempt to overturn that election, his egging on of his supporters on January 6th, and his attempts through Pence, and everything else that happened on January 6th to try to stop the legal transfer of power, they deem that insurrection, and therefore they think he is not qualified to be on the ballot for president of the United States. There are probably about a half a dozen lawsuits in different states where this argument has been made. In every other state where it's gotten to the courts and gone up to the states of Supreme Court, as far as I know, it's been turned down. Colorado is the first, but maybe this is only the second one that's actually got that far. Colorado is the first to actually basically say he cannot be on the ballot. Now, this is going to be appealed. The justices realizing that it would probably be appealed have actually postponed taking any actual action until early January to give the Trump team, Trump supporters enough time to appeal this to the Supreme Court. The only court you can appeal a state Supreme Court decision is the Supreme Court. It's very likely the Supreme Court takes this on because ultimately this is a federal issue. It is an issue of the U.S. Constitution. It's not an issue of the Colorado Constitution, which would be a state issue. It is an issue of the federal Constitution, which is the responsibility of the U.S. Supreme Court. The U.S. Supreme Court will take this, and it is going to be an interesting decision. I suspect they will overturn it. I mean, even in Colorado, where all seven judges were appointed by Democrats, even in Colorado, this only won by a 4-3 margin, I expect this to be overturned in the Supreme Court, maybe even by a 9-0 vote. I don't think there's much here. I think the main issue is this. It's that even though you could argue that Trump wasn't a surrectionist, I could argue that Trump wasn't a surrectionist, and I think that's a very reasonable argument. You need to be able to prove that. There has to be a day in court. There has to be a due process. You cannot just declare him an surrectionist because you find his behavior as a court without actually reviewing evidence and hearing from witnesses and actually having a day in court. You cannot just do that. I think that in the fact that the lawsuit brought against him by the Independent Council does not actually accuse him of insurrection. So he is not being accused of insurrection. It's because he is, you know, who knows why, right? He's been accused in a sense of lesser crimes. It's very hard then for a court to say, okay, even though the Independent Council that looks deeply into the January 6th events and the whole election context, even though he looked at it carefully, even though he didn't call it insurrection, we will, you know, that is not, that is, that's not reasonable, right? So the court, there's no way, I don't think that the court will view it as insurrection. So I think this will be overturned by the Supreme Court. I think the other things that are in front of the court vis-a-vis Trump, the immunity and stuff, is probably not going to go Trump's way, but I think this will definitely go Trump's way. There's just no, it just doesn't make any sense for me. To say somebody is an insurrectionist, you have to prove that. You have to prove it in a court of law. You have to actually bring charges and you have to, you know, it needs to be adjudicated and they should be due process as a consequence of that. As much as I would like Trump not to be on the ballot, and I really would like Trump not to be on the ballot. All right, let's see, EU migration. Migration is a big issue. It's a big issue on the Southern border. We talked about that the other day of the United States. It's a massive issue in Europe and it's an issue that is having dramatic political consequences I think in the United States and I think that it's having dramatic, even more so, more obvious political consequences in Europe. In the United States, Trump knows that this is a powerful issue. It's why he constantly hops on immigration. I don't know or care or think or know whether there's any validity to it, but you know, God, what was I gonna say? I don't know what Trump actually thinks about immigration. I don't think Trump thinks about anything. Trump senses what the mood of the country is and Trump sensed in 2016 that illegal immigration was a big deal, trade with China, a few other things, and he capitalized on it amazingly, elites. And right now almost this entire agenda, Trump's agenda is anti-immigration because he senses that as the mood of the country. Well, the same is true in Europe and you can see that with the Goodvilder's victory, which was primarily driven by anti-immigration sentiment. You can see it in the rise of a real kind of right wing, anti-immigration, right wing, anti-freedom as well, right wing in Germany with the AFD, in France with Le Pen. But really in every country you're seeing it in Sweden, you're seeing it in Denmark, you're seeing it across the continent. The only country that bucked this trend recently was Poland. But primarily because Poland thinks the migration problem probably won't affect them, it's more Western Europe. You saw the rise of a strongly anti-immigration party in Spain, although they didn't quite make it to actually winning the election and making it into the government. But this is probably one of the biggest issues and I think in a post, October 7th post or not just post, we're living through, the kind of massive demonstrations, pro-Khamas demonstrations in Europe, that is only increasing the alarm and the distress regarding migration in Europe right now. But in some ways the European political system, as bizarre as this might sound and as crazy as this is, is more functional than the American political system. In America we have known that immigration system has been broken since the 1980s. Ronald Reagan tried to fix it, George Bush tried to fix it, Obama tried to fix it, nobody tries anymore to fix it. They just put little band-aids on the corners. And Europe, they're actually attempting to fix it. Now I don't think they're attempting this particularly good, but they're attempting to fix it. And they just agreed at the EU level to a massive restructuring of the entire immigration system and restructuring of it. There will be significant new laws passed that are going to tighten the laws on asylum, going to make it more difficult to get asylum, much easier to ship people who don't get asylum out of the country where they are. Also, there will be a significant increase in the capacity and ability of European countries at the edge of Europe, Italy, Spain, Greece, primarily, where migrants are coming in through the Mediterranean, to in a sense lock these migrants up, particularly if there is any suspicion that they might pose a national security threat, lock them up for a period of time and expedite their asylum requests. There are right now in Europe a million people who are waiting to hear whether they've received asylum or not. And then if they don't receive asylum, in almost all cases, nothing is done about it. And some of the more recent terrorist actions in Europe have happened by people who did not get asylum, stayed in Europe and were never deported. Oh, the other aspect of this, which I found interesting in about time, is that you're also part of these laws that are going to pass, it's going to be a package of laws, is going to be a significant reduction in the amount of welfare that they can receive. If you remember during the 2015-16 crisis in Europe, as a million migrants of Syria and elsewhere came across, they all received checks in Germany, they're all housing in Sweden. A lot of that has been tightened up. So Europe is tightening up welfare, it's restricting who can get asylum, it is increasing their capacity and their willingness and the laws making it possible for them to then deport people who seek asylum and they're trying to at least get their hands around the issue. It's unlikely that they solve it. The reality is that people, even if they don't get welfare, people are coming here from Africa, from sub-Saharan Africa. Many of them are coming from sub-Saharan Africa, where life is so miserable, so horrible, so pathetic that they're willing to risk their lives crossing the Mediterranean, willing to risk their livelihood by being illegal immigrants in Europe and life is still better than it is in sub-Saharan Africa. And as long as that, even without welfare, and as long as that is the case, it is going to be very difficult to stop this tide. And yes, they can deport them back and more will still come because they won't deport everybody. They can't catch everybody. And as long as these people, these individuals have a small probability of making their lives better, they will keep trying because they're heroic. They want to make their lives better. They're struggling to improve their lives. Whatever you think about the immigration system, about whether more should come, less should come, the people coming are heroes. The people crossing the unbelievable rainforest between Colombia and Panama, and then trekking up the deserts through, you know, all the way through Mexico to reach the American Southern border just to make their lives better. Isn't that what it's all about? Isn't that what we supposedly believe in? Isn't taking risks and to fight for a better life for you yourself? So whatever you think about in Bekta Heaven Society, the welfare state, all of that, the people doing it are heroes. Now, I know I've just lost, I don't know, 25 subscribers because of that comment. In addition to the European Union coming to an agreement, France, I think this morning or yesterday, passed a significant immigration reform bill. Again, France is more, has a more functioning system than the United States does. What's interesting about the law that France just passed is that Macron's own party, dozens of parliamentarians from Macron's own party voted against this bill and all the entire right wing, they're both conservatives and LaPence party, voted for it. So what you got is dramatic restrictions on welfare. You got things like, this will make Vivek's day, children born in France to foreign parents will no longer be automatically granted citizenship. It tightens access to children's and housing benefits for foreign residents living legally in France. It raises the French language requirements for residency permits. So it has raised the costs, the migrants of living in France and getting rid of warfare. I'm always forgetting rid of warfare, although I wish I'd get rid of warfare for everybody, not just migrants. Making language requirements stranger. I'm fine with that. You should know the language of the place you're moving to. And it also empowers the government to expel foreign residents who reject the values of the French Republic. Now that one is what you call the devil in the details. How are you going to do that? How are you going to do that? And what about rejecting, how about expelling French residents who reject the values of the French Republic? And who defines the values of the French Republic? Who gets to define that? The French government? Do the values change from government to government? Leftist values, right wing values, centrist values? Is there a test? Can you cheat on the test? Is there an interview? Who sits across from you in the interview? How do you do this? How do you figure this out? So, okay, we're getting an experiment. I know a lot of people would like America to have a values test before people come in. Well, we're going to get an experiment on how that works. We'll see how it works in France. I'm really curious to see how that one is going to be implemented. All right. So, yes, Europe is starting to get its act together, not because European political parties that organize though care that much, but because the right wing anti-migrants, anti-migration political parties are breathing down their neck. In June of next year, there will be a European parliamentary election. And the expectation is that right wing anti-EU, anti-immigrant parties are going to do very, very, very well in that election. And these are all attempts to take the immigration issue off the table, all attempts to appease the electorate so they don't vote for the extreme parties. They don't vote for the right wing crazies. All right. Finally, one of the most effective weapons we have seen really in the Ukraine war that have really kind of are shifting the paradigms, the military paradigms and how militaries, I think, prepare for future war is the role of drones are playing, both suicide drones, drones that carry missiles, drone swarms, where you get hundreds of drones and you can't shoot them all down, all of that. So the whole phenomena of drones in warfare is one that is going to change the way warfare is done. And there's been investment in lasers and in IMDome time technology that Israel has where you just shoot them all down. But one of the ways in which the enemy can overcome that or try to overcome that is by using these swarms. And there's so many of the drones, some of them are going to get past your, these kind of one-on-one kind of defenses. And the Chinese, of course, but it's very simple and easy and cheap to build drones. Iranians are building drones for the Russians. The Ukrainians are building their own drones. The biggest companies in the world that build drones are Chinese, they build gazillions of drones. And again, these drones can be weaponized, easily weaponized. So one of the new technologies that the Pentagon is looking at in order to deal with this, which I think is really interesting and actually is a variation of something the Russians are doing at the front. And that is, the Pentagon is thinking of using microwave technology. That is, imagine a microwave dish that is then emitting significant microwave waves, microwave waves, I think microwaves, microwaves, that basically fry the electronics of the drones. So they destroy the electronics, the electronic capacity of the drones. And so this, of course, you could do on a large space in the sky and you would fire, so it doesn't matter how many drones they send at you, you point the weapon generally in their direction and it just fires everything that has electronics in the sky. Now, of course, it's a technology that's still evolving. They have to figure out how well it works. I have to figure out the quirks of it, by the way. The Houdies are using drones to attack some of those ships in the Red Sea. And this is going to be a really, really, really interesting potential new technology. This might not be the ultimate solution, but the point is that the U.S. military is aggressively investing and looking at a variety of different ways to deal with this new significant physical threat. The Russians are doing a variation on this. They're using all kinds of technologies to disrupt the electronics of the drones, to disrupt the GPS signals, to disrupt not just drones, but smart bombs and airplanes. Part of the reason the Russians are being relatively good on the defense during the last few months in Ukraine is their ability to use kind of electronic warfare to disrupt the Ukrainians' ability to use really, really smart weapons against them. All right. I thought that was interesting. I hope you found it interesting as well. We have some super chats or just a reminder. We still got about $80 to get to our goal. Remember that this is a show that exists because of support from people like you. Thank you, Larry. Really appreciate that. Larry just did a $20 sticker. I think we got some other good stickers earlier. We got one from Catherine. Really, Catherine is consistent about this pretty much every show. We got Steven. We got Johnny. And we got Jonathan Honing. And of course, Jonathan is going to be on the show tonight. Jonathan Honing from Fox. You all have seen him on Fox. We're going to talk about pets. So a little deviation from the regular stuff we talk about in the Iran book show. We'll talk about pets. We'll talk about Ein Rand and pets. We'll talk about Leonard Pieckoff and pets. Jonathan has a new book coming out. He will talk about that book that kind of goes over Ein Rand and Leonard Pieckoff's Viewer Pets. Please join us. It'll be a fun show. Come on over also. Support the show. It'll be a great, you know, if you like these kinds of shows, that's a little different, a little less, you know, intellectually intense, so and certainly not a negative show. It should count as one of my positive shows. Then please come and support it and tonight. And yes, let's see. What else did I want to say? I wanted to say that we'll have that tonight. December 31st. We will have a review of the year, a 2023 review, and it will be so it will be a long show. It'll be two to three hours, and it will be a fundraising show. We will have a fundraising target, which I will announce probably the day of the show, but it'll be a substantial. It'll be higher than $10,000. It'll be for one show, $10,000. So it'll be pretty intense. And we will be seeing if we can raise that kind of money on New Year's Eve to kind of close out 2023 and hopefully you will be supportive of that and take 2024 kind of accelerate into 2024 with a lot of momentum. Yeah, some of that money, I can tell you now, is going to go for some, I've hired a marketing consulting group to spend a half day with me thinking about developing a marketing plan for the Iran book show so we can accelerate the growth. So part of that is going to go to paying them to do that. So if you value the growth of the show, please support the show now. We showed 58 bucks, but you can also please show up on December 31st at 2 p.m. East Coast time, and we will go until probably 5 p.m. East Coast time and see how much money we can raise. All right, Jennifer, I live in a nice neighborhood, but even here, litter shows up. I pick it up because I want to see beautiful surroundings when I'm out walking Mina. Yeah, I mean, I think that that is the right attitude and it's sad to see people who don't care about stuff like that. I mean, one of the things that I got spoiled in California was that people who take their dogs out in California take a plastic bag with them and they pick up the poop and they take it to a trash can and they throw it out. Sometimes they would try to throw it in my trash can, which I didn't like, but generally they pick it up and they go and they trash it. They don't leave poop lying around, not on the lawns, not on the public spaces, not in the street, not on the pavement. Less of that culture here in Puerto Rico, although just next to our building, which for a while had a lot of dogs pooping all over the place. We put up signs and now we don't get as much of it, but you really got spoiled for that. There is a real value of civilization. It's not about laws. It's not about the state. It's just about being civilized or picking up your trash. You could say California, the whole state is poop. But California is, from a quality of life perspective, put aside the politics, the best place I think in the world to live, best weather and just again, people pick up the poop. It's clean. It's big. It's new. It's comfortable. It's rich. If not for the regulations and the taxes, I would be hugely pro-California. Puerto Rico a little different. I think it's changed because we put up signs and now people are paying attention and we don't get the poop. I don't know if this poop somewhere else as a consequence, but at least we're not getting on our lawn and all things. It makes a big difference when you live in an environment where people show respect for their surroundings. Sadly, you don't have as much of that in Puerto Rico as you did in California. There's a place where I go walking and if you look out to the side where the trees and stuff, people litter there. People throw garbage there and it's just sad to see that they don't care. They don't have the respect. It's not just private property. Including what you consider public property, it's just a respect for the surroundings you live in and you want them to be nice and clean so you don't trash. To some extent, you're willing to pick up other people's trash because you want to live in a nice place. That's civilization. Civilization involves cleanliness. It's part of what it is. It involves beauty and beauty involves cleanliness. Stephen Harper says, I attended a piano recital by Alma Deutsch in Vienna on December 14th. Wow, wow. She played beautiful music by herself and by other composers. This included her new impromptu and the world premiere of a piano concerto number two. Wow, lucky you, Stephen. That, well, not lucky. You made an effort and you did it. Good for you. That's terrific. Yeah, I mean, Alma Deutsch. I mean, the thing I love about her most is her focus on beauty. She wants to create. She wants to play. She wants to highlight beautiful music. That's her, if you will, mission in life and that's to be commended. That's a great goal and that's a great purpose. She's an incredibly talented musician, incredibly talented composer, and she produces beauty. And that's great. Don't know how old she is now, but it's wonderful that you got an opportunity to actually see her. That's amazing. A friend of Aristotle, thank you. Would the Alliance allegiance oath that new citizens take as part of this citizenship, ceremony be considered a value test? I mean, in a sense, yes, but nobody takes it seriously. Nobody makes you stand by the oath. I mean, it's not a test. And nobody even checks that you take those, right? It's usually done with thousands of people at the same time. I did mine. There were thousands of people in a big auditorium in California and raised your hand and you took the oath, but they could have been people. I didn't pay attention, but they could have been people who didn't and nobody would know, right? So if that was the case, if you wanted to take the oath more seriously, then you would have to take the oath more seriously and actually watch people take the oath, right? Scott, when you say that GOP should be eradicated, are you saying you want Democrats to be in power until that happens? I didn't say that. I want divided government. I've always wanted divided government. I do not want the Democrats to control all the aspects of power, and I don't want Republicans to control all aspects of power. I think it's a disaster when either party has too much control. I've said over and over and over again for many, many years that this is actually being proven empirically, that the best combination from the perspective of the growth of government, from the perspective of the growth of restrictions on our life, the best combination is the Democratic president of Republican House and Senate. Now, the challenge is, and this is a problem, and I don't know how you get around it, is that as the Republicans become more statists, they tend to cooperate more with the Democrats on economic stuff that is really, really, really bad. But I don't know how you get around that. That's just a reality. So we got the Inflation Reduction Act, and we got the CHIPS Act with the help of Republicans, because they believe in this stuff. They believe in industrial planning now. But I don't see an alternative, because Republican president, Republican House and Senate, they do the same thing. And if a few Republicans who are more free market, or we end a vote against it, they'll pick up some Democratic votes and they're not worried about it. I would like my ideal in this world, and again, I've said this since for 20 years, is a Democratic president, a Republican House and Senate, and a Republican House and Senate where a significant proportion of the Republicans, enough to stop, the Republicans have a significant majority, doesn't have to be 60, but 55, let's say, and where there are enough of them that a free market is that it doesn't happen. The reality is that if you have a Republican president and a Democratic House and Senate, maybe that's an alternative, maybe that would be better. But more power in the presidency is scary when you give it to a crazy Republican like Trump. That's scary. That's one reason not to give it to Trump and to have a check on Biden through the House and the Senate. He's done much less, Biden has done much less to damage the country since Republican won the House. He was much more damaging when he had both the House and the Senate. That's the worst, is the Democratic sweep. But the problem is that with Trump on the ballot, you could get a Democratic sweep. And with abortion, with Texas being nutty, completely insane on abortion, you can get a Democratic sweep. So I'd like divided government, how exactly it's structured. President maybe, and the president of the Republican and Democratic, it depends who the particular individuals are. I would like Trump to lose every single time he runs. I consider Trump a danger to the United States, a danger to our lives, a danger to every single one of our liberties, a greater danger than a Democrat with the Republican House and Senate. Frank asks, why is Andrew Bernstein not teaching at ARU? He's good. I don't decide ARU. And second, I've asked you guys not to ask me questions about what do you think of this intellectual, that intellectual, and so on. But I don't make decisions about ARU. And even if I was, I'm not sure this is the form in which why anybody makes a particular decision should be communicated. Yep, it's my Trump de Wageman syndrome, and I guess I'm proud of it. All right, what else did we, I think we're done. All right, don't forget tonight, 7 p.m. East Coast time. Jonathan Honing would be joining me. The famous Jonathan Honing from Fox News. We will be talking about pets, the value of pets, the rational value of pets. We'll be talking, I think, some really fun stories about Ayn Rand and Linda Peacock that in Jonathan's new book, it'll be a fun show, pretty laid back. Join us, particularly those of you who have pets. I think this will be fun for you. And we are eight dollars short of reaching our goal, just I thought I'd mentioned that. Let's see, what else, what else is there? Yes, don't forget to go to aynrand.org slash start here, where you can apply to go to the Ayn Rand Institute's conference in late March in Austin, Texas, particularly if you're a student, particularly if you're interested in a career as an intellectual. All right, Andrew asked a quick question to get us over the top. I think Rand once wrote how Americans of different income levels would shop at a dollar store while Europeans are much more class-focused and the richer ones wouldn't do it. I mean, that makes sense to me. I think that's true of Rand's view. And look, I think Tucker Carlson is an American aristocrat, a typical philosopher, king, American aristocrat who knows what's good for those poor people, who knows what's good for those, and therefore would like to institute government to dictate much of our economy, because that's the way he thinks about it. Stephen Hopper, I also had a chance to meet Alma and her mother after recital, just one correction. She played her second piano sonata, not a concerto. Oh, did I say concerto? My mistake. You wrote sonata, so you were right. I meant to say sonata, but it came out concerto. That's amazing. Yeah, beautiful young woman, beautiful music, beauty in the sense of what a spirit she has. What a spirit she has. It's exactly the anecdote we need for the modern culture. Talk about ugliness. It's exact anecdote to the ugliness that exists in the common culture. We need more people in more realms of life, in more areas to be oriented and focused on beauty. Beauty. All right, everybody. I will see you tonight. Bye.