 I want to start really with the morality of war, how to approach thinking about morality when it comes to war and how to think about morality when it comes to the state, when it comes to government. And the objective perspective, which is very different than the libertarian perspective, the objective perspective is that government is a necessary good. The objective perspective is that government is, you know, that individual rights are a way to subordinate society to moral law, to morality. That individual rights is the concept of applying morality in a social context. How do we live together in a society? Not as a collective, but in a society. Individual rights are the way in which we live. And government is the only way in which we can apply the principle of individual rights consistently as a government. Now, few governments do that, certainly few governments do it consistently, but that is the purpose of government, to apply the principle of individual rights to make it manifest in the world, to bring it to the society in which that government is responsible for. It requires that the government have a monopoly over the use of retaliatory force. Morality requires that, because individual rights require that. This only way to protect individual rights is not to have a bunch of people running around with guns, defending their property, shooting at one another because they think other people are violated, but to have an objective system of law that regulates how force is used in retaliation, how justice is manifest in the world. That's why good governments have rules of procedure, rules of evidence, you know, you're innocent until proven guilty. All of these things are ways to bring objectivity to the issue of figuring out who violated rights and then dealing with them appropriately, but these questions are complicated. It's not easy to figure out who violated rights. It's not easy to figure out how to build a case and to objectively show that they violated rights, murder, theft or any kind of violation of rights. The world is complex. If it was always obvious exactly who violated rights, exactly how they did it, exactly who are the bad guys, then, you know, justice and the legal system and the police, policing would be super simple, super easy, super straightforward, but they're not. And that whole process of chasing down the criminals, of figuring out who the bad guys are and figuring out what the appropriate, you know, where they are bad guys and an appropriate sentence and how to deal with them, all of that needs to be done in an objective manner. In order to do it in an objective manner, you need to have, you need to have a monopoly over the use of retaliatory force. That is required. So morality requires, morality requires that governments exist. Good governments exist, not bad governments. But then what is a good government or are there any good governments? Can there be any good governments? Well, a few things here, because I wrote in a tweet somewhere, I said, or in my article, in just one theory, I wrote a proper government does this and people say, well, there are no proper governments. Therefore, it's completely out. But what do you mean by a proper government? I mean, basically, two forms of governance out there in the world today put aside the ideal. Personally, it's an ideal government. We don't have that. We've come close a few times in a few places. But even today, there are big differences between governments out there. And there's generally governments that generally strive to protect individual rights. They do it very poorly. They do it very inconsistently. And you could say this dramatically flawed government. But they generally, they're trying to have a rule of law again as weakly and as badly as and as consistently as they do. But there's a certain process, they call it democracy, they call it republicanism, they call it constitutionalism, that is tried in some way to protect at least some rights. And then there are other governments who don't give a damn about rights, that are completely arbitrary, authoritarian, totalitarian. And that's a majority of governments in the world, or at least used to be, and so to some extent probably still is today. And it's suddenly the overwhelming majority of governments in human history. And there's a difference between the two. There is a difference between the United States and Russia today. Russia is basically one man rule. It's completely at his request, it's completely arbitrary. There's no attempted objectivity, there's no attempt at a process, there's no attempt at a rule of law, there's whatever Putin wants Putin gets. In the United States, as far as it is, not a bad place to live. Your rights are at least to some extent protected. Not fully, not winning as much as I'd like, huge critic of the US government. But to compare it to Iran, North Korea, Soviet Union, Russia, I mean that's just bizarre. As by the way, you know, Rothbard and other libertarians have done. That's just bizarre. I'd much rather live in the United States than any of those other countries. So would almost everybody in the world. That's why you have such an inflow of migrants coming to the United States. Not because the United States is worse, but because the United States is better. Israel versus any other country in the Middle East. Israel protects rights indeed. Even for Arabs who live in Israel, they have a better life than they would in any other Arab country. They're generally property right protection to the extent that Western countries protect property rights, not fully as we would like, still taxed, true, but fundamentally it's a Western country. It's got a government that's elected by the people. The government is primarily dedicated to trying to create an environment in which human beings can flourish and be successful. It does so very poorly, but that's its focus compared to Hamas or compared to any other government in the Middle East. Jordan, Syria, Lebanon doesn't matter where the governments are dedicated to basically robbing their own people, controlling them, oppressing them, killing them. So Israel's not an ideal government for a farmer, but in a competition between Israel and Hamas, so Israel and the Palestinian Authority or Israel and Syria, I mean there's no competition. One is good and one is evil. I mean all you have to do is go to Israel and see and go to Syria and see. Go to the Gaza Strip and see, but go to Syria, forget Gaza Strip, Gaza Strip is the way it is because of Israel's evil, they tell us, to go to Syria and you can see. You can see just by walking around, you can see how people behave, you can see how the violence, you can see this quality of life, the standard of living, where is the human flourishing. You know, Alex Epstein has this great idea of, you know, you evaluate based on what is supportive of human flourishing, what is anti-human flourishing. Israel, with all its weaknesses, with all its problems, with all its horrible stuff, is pro-human flourishing and you can see it in the fact that Israel is flourishing. So to conflate the two, to view them as equal somehow is disgusting. It's disgusting. It's disgusting when Marie Watba did it with the Soviet Union in the United States and it's disgusting when David Smith does it between Israel and Hamas and don't tell me he doesn't do it because he did it. Not only did he do it in the tweet that he posted, but he did it in his critique of me saying that he did it. He denied it, but then he went on to do it again. He says, what Hamas did is evil, it's horrible, it's terrible, it's disgusting, it's disgusting. And then he says, but don't forget, Israel is, let's not forget, Israel is evil and horrible and all the stuff is wrong. What is that if not moral equivocation? Dave is being objective, Dave is not being objective at all. Dave is morally equivocating. So no, there is no equality between Hamas and Israel. A challenge between these two, one is good and one is evil. You want to criticize Israel on certain things? Okay, but not in the context with Hamas, in a separate context. In a context where you're criticizing basically a good country, a good government. And I know the idea for an Al-Qaqabalus of a good government is offensive. I know that. But if you can't tell the difference between the government of Hamas and the government of Israel, the government of Israel and the government of Syria or the government of Israel, even in the government of Jordan or Egypt, then you have no clue. You basically got your head in the sand. You're basically taking out your eyes on purpose. And you're letting your dogma, your anarchism drive your views rather than reality, rather than observation, rather than seeing what's going on in the world. So yeah, I mean, so we can apply morality to countries. We can apply morality to governments in a sense that to the extent a country defends individual rights, to the extent that a government creates the environment in which human beings can flourish, which is an environment of freedom. To that extent it's a good country. To the extent that they oppress it and repress it. To that extent a country is evil. Hamas is evil. The Hamas government is evil. The Palestinian Authority government is evil. The Syrian government is evil. The Israeli government is good. I mean, we're not going to get excited about how wonderful they are, but they're good. And if you can't, again, if you can't see that, then you're blind or purposefully, purposefully evasive. Purposefully evasive. And that's what I think they are. I think they're purposefully evasive because again, even though they deny it, they reject any government. To say a government is good is anathema to everything they believe in. All right, so, so governments can be good. So what is a, governments can be moral. Morality does apply to government. That is our collectivism. Now, when is it, so how does, how does one decide about what is moral to do and when it is moral to engage in war? Well, war is horrific. It's horrific for everybody. It's horrific for people defending themselves. It's horrific for innocents caught in the middle. It's, it's, it's horrific. It's, it's, it's, it's an, it's an unmitigated evil. So when should you engage in war? You engage in war when you're being attacked or when attack is inevitable, when you're threatened, no problem with preemptive war. You engage in war when attack is inevitable or when you've actually been attacked. And then what is your responsibility as a government, as a military? What is your responsibility? What is your moral responsibility? It's the same responsibility it is in every other realm of government activity. It's to protect the individual rights of your citizens, your citizens, the people you're responsible for, the people over whom you have established a rule of law. So your responsibility in war is to protect your citizens and then includes your soldiers. The citizens too, they don't, they don't give up their rights. So it's to defend your citizens from the initiation of force by somebody else. If force is initiated by a state actor or by a proxy of a state actor, then it is your responsibility to go to war to defend them and to prevent it from happening again. And in doing so, your concern should be only one, to be moral, to protect the individual rights of your citizens, which requires you to win. And it requires you to suffer the fewest casualties possible. It requires you to win while minimizing your own casualties. And that really is it. That's the responsibility. Everything else is, you know, tactics. It's a question of, okay, how do I win? What is required for me to win? How do I take out this enemy? There is, the issue of innocence is irrelevant. The fact that they are innocent on the other side, well, of course they're innocent on the other side. They're children. In every war they are children. So I can't fight a war because the other side, the side that attacked me has children and they might be killed in the process. I mean, that is insanity. That means you can never defend yourself. So the gangster comes and he kills your kids and he kills your wife, but he has kids and he lives in a house with kids and he never leaves home without those kids and he drives in his car with kids. So you never fight back. You never take him out. You never shoot at him because you might hurt one of his kids. I mean, that would be insane. That is unbelievable, altruistic, that is unbelievable rejection of the value of your own life and for a government to do that, that is immoral because it is defaulting on its responsibility to defend its own citizens. So it's sad when children die. It's always sad when children die because they truly are innocent but you can't not engage in self-defense because children might die. I mean, that would end it. If that were the standard, evil would win. And look, by you not engaging in self-defense, that's like some kind of neutral thing. It's not like, and this is again this anti-war libertarian BS. They think that if Israel doesn't defend itself, then peace will come. If Israel doesn't engage in violence, then peace will come. But it's exactly the opposite. If you don't defend yourself, all you're doing is emboldening the bad guys, all you're doing is enhancing their power, all you're doing is supporting their cause and all you're doing is victimizing your own children. Some more of your children are going to die because you wouldn't take the action necessary to defend yourself. I mean, it's truly stunning. It's truly stunning that if you don't fight in self-defense, then you lose. So the fact that Hamas, half the population of Gaza is under 18. So the fact that half the population of Gaza is children can't fight, okay, well, I might as well surrender and have them just kill all my kids. Or I'll just stay behind my borders and protective and just wait for the next attack. And I'll never strike them because, God forbid, I might kill one of their innocents. I mean, that is collectivistic. It's valuing the enemy's collective above the lives of you, your own life. And individualists would never think that way. If my self-defense requires me going in there and some children will die, then it's sad that they die, but they will die. And the blood of those kids, the blood of those innocents always is on the person who initiated it first. In this case, it's easy. The blood of anybody who dies in Gaza, everybody who dies in Gaza is on Hamas. You know, morality of war dictates that you have to pursue your life, you have to pursue your self-defense. And if innocents are in the way of innocents inevitably going to die, if there's going to be collateral damage, then there's going to be collateral damage. And indeed, more than that. Sometimes, in order to win, you have to eviscerate the will of the other side to fight. Sherman understood this when he attacked the South, when he burnt their crops, when he burnt Atlanta. America understood this during World War II. Churchill understood this when they flattened residence. And Truman understood this when they bombed Jerusalem and Nagasaki. Sometimes in order to win, and to win quickly, and again, your responsibility is not to them. Your responsibility is to you, to yourself, to your own people. You have to completely and utterly demoralize the other side. That's why war sucks. War sucks. War is horrible. It's evil. It's barbaric. But if you start it, then you are unleashing hell on yourself. At least that's how it should be. You should be unleashing hell on yourself. And you've got nobody to blame. Hamas has nobody to blame but themselves. They did this. As I said the other day, Hamas had complete control of the Gaza Strip. They could have turned it into Singapore. And the Israelis investors were willing to invest in the Gaza Strip. Egyptians, Arabs were willing to invest in the Gaza Strip, built casinos, built hotels. They've got a beautiful beach there. They could have built a financial center. Who stopped them? Israel? Come on. Anybody who thinks that just has no clue of the history. Just is completely ignorant of the history of the whole conflict. The Gaza Strip is the way it is because of choices that Palestinians are making for themselves, electing Hamas. But it's not like the Palestinian Authority was a freedom-loving organization dedicated to individual rights. They have chosen political leaders who are evil and horrible. And they get the consequences of their choices. Not just Hamas, but the Palestinian Authority as well. It's an open air prison because they build defenses. They build the walls. Of course it's an open air prison when what you do is harbor criminals. What you do is in every opportunity you cross the border and inflict as many casualties as possible on the other side. Open air prison is disgusting. It's an open air prison created by Hamas. It's an open air prison created by the Palestinians. It's an open air prison created by them. Nobody, nobody forced them to embrace their ideology and embrace the policies and embrace the violence that they have for the last 20 years since the Gaza Strip became quote independent. To blame this on Israel is again, it's evasive, it's ignorant. But it's evasive. And therefore, it's just immoral. The Gaza Strip is a consequence. The conditions in the Gaza Strip are a consequence of the choices Palestinians have made for themselves. And the Arab world is made for themselves because many of those Palestinians would have loved to leave. But the Egyptians won't take them, I wonder why. I wonder why the Egyptians won't take their Palestinian brothers. And most other countries won't take them. Why didn't they just leave? They fought a war, they lost. Go find a life somewhere. But no, nobody wants them. Nobody will let them leave. And the last people who wants to let them leave are Hamas. And you see that now with Israel giving them an evacuation notice to go south to spare civilian lives. God, to spare civilian lives, to spare innocents. And of course they've been criticized for it. And who's trying to stop the Gazans from getting out of the way of bullets? Hamas, Hamas wants civilians to die. It wants children to die. It wants innocent to die. It wants their own children to die. And this is the evil so many out there wanna protect. This is the evil so many out there wanna create a moral equivalence around. Of course they can leave. They've always been able to leave. They can leave through Egypt. Why doesn't Egypt let them out? They could leave through Egypt. They used to be, a long time ago, as I've said many times, they used to work regularly in Israel. Million Palestinians used to sleep every night in Israel. Why did that stop? Did it stop because Israel decided to be mean and create an outdoor prison? God, you guys, some of you guys are so ignorant. It stopped because there's Palestinians, those people from Gaza started to blow up buses and coffee shops and just slaughtered people left and right. Israel used to allow them complete free travel and their reward was violence. So you have to defend yourself. I mean, hundreds of people dying. Thousands of people dying. But you know, many Palestinians left and they went to Lebanon and what did the Lebanese do to them? They put them into camps, refugee camps. And 30, 40, 50 years later, they're still in refugee camps. The Arab world restricts Palestinian movement, restricts Palestinian advancement, restricts the Palestinians much more than the Israelis do. But yes, ignore that. Pretend it doesn't exist. Pretend the Israelis are the meanies and the Palestinians are just wonderful human beings that Israel has just been nasty to. I mean, that's just a complete rewriting of history, a complete revisionist view of the historical fact, the historical evidence.