 So I did a talk yesterday on kind of the issues, the philosophical issues related to liberty. And I thought it went really, really well. We had a good audience, a good-sized audience. A lot of people who I think were a few kind of objective as people who are familiar with Iron Man, but a lot of people not familiar with Iron Man, not familiar with my ideas, not familiar with me, who just attended the session. And I really started out, and this is a good question to ask yourself, a good question to ask yourself, and a good question to ask libertarians and conservatives and people who claim to be for freedom and for liberty. It's a good question just to ask them to kind of, because nobody is asking these kind of questions. And the question is, why do you care about liberty? Why do you care about freedom? And it's interesting, because I asked a question to the audience, and I waited for them to give me answers. The answers were very uncertain. They don't really know. It kind of feels good. They want it. And one of my comments was that, yeah, the left thinks this stuff feels good and they want it. And why, why liberty? Why freedom? Of course, we used to talk about how do you define freedom and why, you know, all the different definitions of freedom and how the left thinks they have for freedom and why they're wrong and what freedom constitutes and all of that is important. But I think this question of why be free is one that people don't typically ask. They implicitly assume, of course, but you want to be free, but is it, of course? In most of human history, most of human history, people are not free. Most of human history, people demand to be free. Most people today don't really know what freedom is. They'll all say, yes, I'm for freedom and liberty, but not really, not when you start pushing it. So it's not, freedom is not self-evident. It's not obvious. It's not, we're all born with freedom in our hearts and, you know, people repress it, but we really all want to be free. No, it wasn't clear to me at all that when we invaded Iraq, the Iraqis wanted to be free. That freedom was running in their blood and was waiting for an opportunity to be free. They said that certainly they didn't show that. No, freedom is an achievement. Freedom is, freedom is a particular perspective on life. It's a particular perspective that generates a desire for freedom, that generates a demand for freedom. So freedom, of course, is what? Well, again, I asked, what is freedom? And it was shocking. Again, this is a libertarian conservative group. People didn't know. They did not have an answer to the question of what is freedom? So freedom is the absence of coercion, but it's not just the absence of coercion. That's way too negative. Freedom is that condition in which man can pursue his own values based on his own thinking, in pursuit of his own happiness. So freedom is a condition. Freedom is a condition under which we can pursue with no limitations, with no permission, heavy-dash permission, and with the knowledge that force will not be used against us. We pursue our values based on our reason in pursuit of our happiness. And that's what freedom's for. So why freedom? Why freedom? Because I want to pursue my happiness. Why freedom? Because I want to be able to pursue my values on my terms. Because freedom is a prerequisite for achieving my values and then for a prerequisite for happiness. She can see now that to truly be for freedom, one has to recognize its self-interest, its morally egoistic roots. At the end of the day, the reason for freedom is so that individuals can pursue their values, their life, and think, invent, create, based on their judgment. It's completely egoistic, and of course, the Founding Fathers knew this. It's why you have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. You're all happiness as an individual. They didn't have a theory of egoism. They didn't promote a theory of egoism. But they fundamentally had that idea. So why freedom? Because it's the only social condition under which I and you can pursue our own individual values, free of coercion, so that we can attain our own happiness. That's why freedom. It's no collectivistic reason. It's not a subjective reason. It's not an emotional reason. And of course, what I walked them through is more than that, because one of the questions I asked is in a sense, what is freedom primarily protected? Or another way to ask the question, or another, not exactly a way to ask the question, but another approach, is to ask the question, in order to achieve your values, in order to be successful in living and in life, in order to live a good life, a flourishing life, a successful life, what do you need? In other words, what makes you human? And again, it's interesting. People don't know the answer. Yeah, you know, to me, if you say, what makes somebody human? It's obvious. What's different between human beings and animals? It's obvious. They go round and around and around. It's the mind. It's our capacity to reason. It's our rational faculty. That's what makes human beings human beings. So once you understand that, then you ask the question, what is the enemy of reason? What's the enemy of rationality? Force, coercion, poverty. Well, then we value freedom, should value freedom, because we value the mind. We value the human mind. That's why we value freedom. And we value the human mind, because we value ourselves. We value our happiness. We value what it means to be a human being. And of course, you can see how philosophical this is, because it is an epistemological point. Man's basically his survival is reason. There's a moral point. My happiness is my moral purpose. And then there's a political point. Freedom, the political system, structured to protect your mind and your pursuit of happiness, which is the same. So, it was a good talk. What can I say? You got a good response from the audience. And again, it was a relatively audience that didn't have the answers. I mean, there was some objectivists there and they kept quiet, luckily. Yeah, just to point to objectivists who come to live talks. If I ask a question, you're not supposed to answer. The whole point is to get the answers from the non-objectivists. So please, don't be obnoxious and give all the right answers. That defeats the pedagogical point of asking the question and getting the wrong answers. Drive me nuts. Have an objectivist up front, first row. Every time I ask a question, he gives me, he gives me gold speech right there. Get a life. You don't have to show me how smart you are. Start the purpose of asking the question. You're all objectivists, they'll be giving you a different talk. What we need today, what I call the new intellectual, would be any man or woman who is willing to think. Meaning, any man or woman who knows that man's life must be guided by reason, by the intellect, not by feelings, wishes, whims, or mystic revelations. Any man or woman who values his life and who does not want to give in to today's cult of the stare, cynicism, and impotence and does not intend to give up the world to the dark ages and to the role of the collectivist brought. All right, before we go on, reminder, please like the show. We've got 163 live listeners right now, 30 likes, that should be at least 100. If you get at least 100 of you actually like the show, maybe they're like 60 of the Matthews out there who hate it, but at least the people who are liking it, I wanna see a thumbs up, there you go. Start liking it, I wanna see that go to 100. All it takes is a click of a thing, whether you're looking at this. And you know the likes matter. 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