 The Dispatch, sorry, the Dispatch. He writes for the Dispatch. He founded the Dispatch, and he and Jonah Goldberg and a bunch of others who are kind of anti-Trump conservatives write for the Dispatch, and I think they do a good job mostly at the Dispatch. He also, once in a while, writes for Barry Weiss. The Dispatch, by the way, is a sub-stack. And Barry Weiss, of course, has a sub-stack. And over the weekend, he published, David French published a article on Barry Weiss's sub-stack. About the school shooting. And specifically, in the context of Memorial Day, about the cowardice of the police not going in, not actually going in and defending the kids, not putting their lives at risk to defend the kids. He writes, so some of this, I think it's very good, and some of it is really, really bad, and I think it's interesting what makes it bad and what the appropriate, if you will, objectivist, if you will, self-interested response to this would and should be. He says, when a man or woman puts on a uniform and straps on a gun, whether they're a police officer or a soldier, they should be making a profound declaration. They're willing to die to protect their community and their nation. They don't want to die, of course, but they're willing to pay the last four measure of devotion if that moment arrives. Now, I think that fundamentally is right. It's part of the job. Now, I wouldn't put it that way. I wouldn't say they're willing to die. I'd say they're willing to risk their lives. They're willing to put their lives in danger. Nobody's asking them to perform suicide missions, but when they strap on the gun, when they put on the badge, when they put on the uniform, they are committing themselves to protecting those they are charged with protecting. They are taking on the responsibility of often or not often, really, whatever the case may be, depending on where they are, putting their lives in danger, putting their lives at risk in order to protect those that they are committed to protecting. And that's the job. That's the definition. That's what it means to be a soldier. That's what it means to be a policeman. That's why it's so important that these jobs be voluntary, that nobody be constricted, nobody be forced to take on these responsibilities. Now, he goes on to say, that's why we respect men and women in uniform. In some cultures, the uniform is a symbol of authority, not of sacrifice, and those who wear uniforms of fear more than they are respected, and that is all true. I don't particularly like the word sacrifice here, but if you understand the word sacrifice as willing to risk your life in the performance of your job, then okay, we'll see that he's gonna want to use the word sacrifice differently. I mean, the same goes for firefighters. Even though firefighters might not be in the same exact category, because they might not be agents of the state, they could be private, they could be volunteers, they could be a lot of different things, but firefighters are expected to risk their lives on occasion to save people in a burning house. I mean, not to commit suicide, not to go on a suicide mission, but to risk their lives. This is why, and this is amazing to me, firefighters are expected to be in amazing physical shape, and it's surprising when police are not, but firefighters are certainly expected to be in amazing physical shape so that they can fulfill the responsibilities of their job, which means doing physical things, going into burning homes, you know, carrying those heavy hoses, but also carrying people out if you have to. But in Texas, the police did not rush in. They did not put themselves in danger. At 11.35 a.m., there were seven police officers there when the shooter walked into the school. They should have had only one, only one choice. And that is to enter the school, chase him down, fight him, and kill him as quickly and as efficiently as possible while not getting themselves killed and protecting the children at the same time. That is their job. I don't care what the Supreme Court says. That is their job. And yet, they didn't. They waited and waited and waited. And the story's a horrific, young girls called up 9-1-1 begging for help. Children, young children lying on the ground bleeding out as other children were watching, kids dying, and the police knew this and they waited. The first 9-1-1 call came in at 12.03. The same go-call back at 12.10. Where are you? Why aren't you saving our lives? 12.10, 12.13, 12.16. A different go-call at 12.19. Then another call at 12.36. An hour after the police had shown up, an hour after the gunmen had gone in, families were coming in. Families, family members who wanted to rush in and try to save their kids anyway, not allowed to do it. They were blocked. The police knew how to do one thing. Block people from entering the school. Finally at 12.50, the police finally opened the door with a key charged into the room and killed the shooter. No police died at that point, right? Why didn't they do that at 11.35? One hour, 15 minutes. It took for the first police contact with the shooter. It's unbelievable, how pathetic, how cowardly. Now the same thing happened in Parkland in Florida. That was in Florida. Sorry, I said Parkland earlier was Colorado. It's in Florida, I apologize. Same thing happened in Parkland, Florida, where the police, Sheriff's Deputy Scott Peterson, notoriously stayed outside the school as a killer rampage through the halls shooting people. And he didn't go in and confront him. Seven other sheriff's deputies who raced to the school, heard gunshots, but stayed outside the building. What the hell are they doing? Why are they getting paid for? What did they put the uniform on? Where importantly is their pride? And this is the key, where is their pride? Pride of doing a good job. The pride of taking your responsibility seriously. The pride of living up to the moment. I mean, kids would have died anyway. Maybe a police or two would have got shot. Maybe who knows, maybe not. But there's only one way to confront great evil and that is with great courage. And what we're seeing today is a culture of cowardice certainly from these policemen, but I think more broadly in the culture. Now what is causing this? What is causing cowardice in our culture? Cowardice in our police. And you could argue, oh, it's defund the police, but that was 2020. And Parkland was 2018 or was 2018. So no, this is more than that. And the lack of courage is a cultural white phenomenon. It's not limited to police. It's a lack of courage for people to stand up to cancel culture. It's a lack of courage for people to speak out against massive injustices happening all over the country, the world. It's a lack of courage to eject conformity, to eject the popular view. It's just there's a lack of courage in our society that's just prevalent everywhere. Why is that? Now here is David French's explanation. It's a simple fact that when men and women face mortal danger, every single molecule in their body screams at them to seek shelter and safety. It takes immense effort to overcome the desire for self-preservation. That's all true. Training can help, but it isn't enough, true. What's acquired is a fundamental, deeply embedded ethos, a core understanding that love requires their lives. Now, there's so much true here. It is about an ethos, it is about love, but it's love may require their lives. He's leading us somewhere, and here it is. I get in the quote, David French, at the root of a failure of courage is often a failure of love. C.S. Lewis wrote that courage is, quote, not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point. It's true. Jesus said, no one is greater love than this to lay down his life for his friend, unquote. What we witnessed from the police in Uvalde was the triumph of self-love over love of others, including of young kids bleeding in that room. So the problem is selfishness. The problem is self-interest. The problem is self-love. These policemen love themselves too much. They respect their own lives too much. That's the problem, we are told. Again, David French, at the testing point, the officers were confronted with a question, whom do you love? I love me, they responded, and they stood down. That declaration, I love me, isn't demic to our nation. And it's not just demic when lives are on the line and he goes on about how it's love of self, love of profit in the end, love of institutions. It's self-interest, he doesn't say this, but it's self-interest destroying this country. Now my view is the exact opposite. I agree that it's an ethos issue. I agree that it's a self-love issue. These people don't love themselves enough. They have no self-respect. They have no pride, they have no ambition, they have no conception of what their profession requires of them and demands of them. Yes, I don't think they have the training. Yes, I don't think we have a proper understanding of policing, but they know when they put on that uniform what that means and what that represents and what doing a good job is and they don't wanna live up to it because they don't have self-love. They don't respect themselves enough. They don't respect their lives enough. These men and women, I assume, are gonna live with the thought, live with the idea that they could have acted, could have saved young kids from dying and didn't. And it's not just random people off the street who didn't. That would be bad enough for somebody just on the street to ignore killings going on all around them. But these are people whose responsibility, whose job, who are committed supposedly to a job that requires them to protect those kids. It's the idea that somehow doing your job badly is a result of self-interest. No, self-interest acquires that you do your job well, that you only do a job, that you're committed to doing well, that you're committed to be excellent at. What these policemen lack is pride, a commitment to living. What these policemen lack is integrity. Not just wearing a badge, but living up to that badge. Not just having a uniform, but living up to that uniform, taking that responsibility seriously. What these policemen lack is self-interest, is self-esteem. They don't like themselves. They don't value themselves. They don't respect themselves. They don't believe in themselves. It's not that they love their life too much. It's that they love their life too little. No, it's not that they are eager altruists and ready to jump on the grenades so that people won't die. No, most of our culture are not the Mother Teresa type altruists. They're not willing to give up the comforts of ordinary life in order to go and save people from certain death. That's not how altruism works in the modern world. It's not how altruism works on 99% of the people. The way altruism primarily is destroying our culture is not by committing people to acts of sacrifice. The way it destroys our culture is by preventing people from living up to their potential of human beings. It works to prevent people from living up to achieving self-esteem. It prevents people from living up to their self-interest. It prevents people from being selfish. That's the evil of altruism, that it doesn't allow you to think in terms of pride, in terms of integrity. And what are you left with? You're left with a rejection of morality because altruism, nobody wants to do live that way. Selfishness, well, I don't want to do that. That's ridiculous. So what they're left with is emotionalism. What they're left is this middle of the road, conformity, cowardice, unprincipled, neither here nor there, nothingness, passivity. Who wants to take a stand? Well, I don't know what's right and what's wrong. What we have is a world full of mush. It's not that we have a world full of Mother Teresa's, we don't. We have a world full of people claiming you should be Mother Teresa, but we don't actually literally have a bunch of people volunteering to be Mother Teresa. Nobody wants that. Neither do we have a world of self-respecting people with great self-esteem wising to the challenge of living the best life that they can live. We have a world in Wonder Freeman's terminology of, Chandler's terminology of mush, nothing, gooey, nothingness, and that's scary. And that's the sense in which altruism is destroying the world. It's destroying the world by destroying people's self-esteem. It's destroying the world by eliminating people's ability to live up and be the best that they can be, to live up to what they should be, to live up to what they're capable of being. And then you have conservatives, like French, who want many issues I like. But of course, when it comes to the fundamental issues, you can't avoid it. What's he proposing here? That the police should not love themselves and therefore run in because they don't really care about life, their own life, well, if they don't care about their own life, why should they care about the kids' lives? It's only in the context of their own life can they care about the kids' lives. So what should they say when asked whom do you love? Well, not me, I love the kids. What world do they love the kids and not themselves? I don't respect myself, so I'm gonna jump in and be a hero. Why? It's exactly those self-interested motivations is why the best fighters fight, why the most people with the most courage, have the most courage. Indeed, French somewhat recognizes this when he says, about, he says this about the military. He says, in the military, because we know that it's hard to hold an abstract concept as something that I'm willing to risk my life for. So what the military cultivates is, you know, the idea of brothers in arm, the idea of close knit units, the idea of your fighting for the guy next to you. Why? Because it's more self-interested. It's something I can really connect to. It's something related to me. It's something that's more related to my self-love directly, this guy, this guy who I know, who I have who weed out of the same ration meal. If he's under attack, I need to protect him. The military understands this. It's harder to have soldiers that fight for a concept like liberty. They do, but in the trenches, what you want them is to be fighting for their brothers in arm. Brothers, brothers as close to them, important to them, people they love, not love because they don't love themselves, not love because they love them more than they love themselves, love because they love themselves, love because of the value they represent for themselves. So no, the last thing we need is more David French sacrifices, calling for more sacrifice in the name of what? In the name of Jesus Christ? In the name of God? Why should we sacrifice? Because God said you should love your neighbor like yourself, but nobody loves their neighbor like themselves. And most people don't love themselves. So they don't love their neighbor either. That's the problem. When you don't love yourself, when you don't have real self-esteem, you don't really care about your neighbor and you don't really care about your neighbor's kids. But a people of self-respecting, self-loving people, they are the ones who fight for their values. They're the ones who risk it. They're the ones who love their neighbors and love their friends. Jane Nicolini, thank you. Jian, Jian, I think Jian, Jian Nicolini, thank you. John, thank you, appreciate it. Anyway, that's my rant for today. What we need is more self-esteem, which means more self-interest, more selfishness, and then we'll get more courage. Self-interest is about having integrity. And I agree with the CS Lewis quote, actually. They are courage. Courage is where the rubber hits the road. Courage is when you take your principles, your abstract principles, and now you have to apply them in life. Now actually you have to live up to them. Courage is a virtue under integrity, right? It is a feature of integrity. It means living your principles, living your ideals, living your morality. And to be self-interested means to have courage. It means to have integrity. And it should be something that police understand when they put on the uniform. And they should understand that that is the expectation. That's an issue of management. You have to set right expectations. And you have to incentivize the right behavior. And you incentivize it by creating that expectation. You're taking on a massive responsibility when you put on that badge. Live up to it. Live up to it. And sometimes living up to it means putting your life at risk. And if you don't want to do that, don't become a policeman. That's fine. Just don't. Go do something else. All right. Let's go to super chat. Yeah, these things infuriate me because I think they, it infuriates me too when smart people make stupid arguments like what David French does. But that's what Christianity does to you. It creates mush in your mind. A guy with a good mind gets mushy as soon as these kind of issues come up. Thank you for listening or watching the Iran Book Show. 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