 Mostly I'm only speaking about free markets, but today he's speaking about free speech and you might wonder why and Because I mean they haven't we achieved free speech already But I want to speak about my personal experience with that So I'm living here for six years now in Georgia And I never had any problems to speak my mind. I was always totally open both Privately and in the media even now, you know, I have published a lot of articles in Georgia and I never ever felt That I have to restrict myself. I always could speak my opinion Now as some of you may know I'm moving to Europe. I'm moving to the UK and the first thing I did when I started sending applications to Europe was deleting my Facebook account because if you don't agree with certain mainstream opinions in Europe if you don't agree with opinions on Mainstream opinions on immigration if you for example, if you are very pro-Israel as I am Then it may be problematic It may be a disadvantage for your career if you share these opinions And so I got rid of my Facebook account and I never had this need here in Georgia We'll give you another example. So I'm originally from Germany and Here in Georgia, you have a television broadcaster Wustavi 2 which is explicitly critical of the government. I mean, okay, the government tried to shut it down but so far they didn't succeed and Compare that to Germany in Germany in 2015 when when 1 million people were invited to the country in the media There was just one opinion and that opinion was aligned with the government opinion So in Germany, I don't feel as free as I feel here and once I move back to Europe I will have to restrict myself much more therefore, I think it's a very important topic and I'm very happy that we have Yavon Brooke here and Yeah, the floor is yours. Thank you. Thank you Yes, so free speech As hard as it is to imagine and I have to admit I never thought I would be giving talks about free speech Because the logic stand I took it for granted. Well, of course we can speak. I mean particularly in America where I live today It's part of the Constitution. There is a First Amendment You're allowed to say pretty much whatever you want to say. It's always been viewed as an absolute As long as you're not inciting for violence as long as you're not committing fraud You basically can say whatever you want to say and that is always in America being taken for granted Particularly, I would say since the 1960s where there was a big movement on campuses To emphasize the idea that everybody has a right to speak And yet over the last couple of years We have seen particularly at universities The bastions of free speech one would think We have seen more and more and more restrictions and what one can say How one can say it many speakers in America were invited to speak on campuses have been The invitation for them to come to speak has been rescinded. They've been asked not to come to the campus because of fear of demonstrations against them on a Number of occasions wanted Berkeley, but in a number of other universities They've been violent demonstrations when specific speakers have come on to campus and we're not talking about crazy really out there nutty People we're talking about somebody like and I don't know how familiar he is here But in America very familiar Charles Murray who is a conservative It's a conservative sometimes he calls himself a libertarian, but you know not Nutty extreme crazy right pretty mainstream conservative libertarian type Very prestigious written a lot of books and yet violent demonstrations have prohibited him from speaking at some universities We're talking about somebody, you know like Ben Shapiro again a conservative so everybody on the right today has been restricted or Woman some of you might have heard of I am who see Ali Who who is originally from Sudan who escaped an arranged marriage at the age? I think of 14 or 16 and Ultimately landed up in the Netherlands and today lives in the United States is very critical about certain practices in Islam But is a very Educated very well-spoken very reasonable person and yet She is not invited to speak on Campuses in which he is there are demonstrations. There's violence and she is prohibited from speaking More and more this is the case on a university campuses in the United States in Europe things are actually worse Because in the United States we have a First Amendment We have a part of our Constitution. It says that you have a right to free speech in Europe there is no Guarantee of free speech and many European countries today have what are called hate speech laws That basically say that the certain type of speech hate speech That you cannot engage in that you cannot say otherwise you go to jail Now we all know the tragedy that happened at the At the call the offices of the cartoon Charlie Hebdo Was it two years ago now? or a year and a half ago Where where a number of cartoonists were murdered by Islamic terrorists Charlie Hebdo was in trouble already before that happened with the French government who was trying to shut them down It was trying to silence them nobody talks about that and then their freedom of speech was ultimately Violated with violence by them being murdered You know going back even further to 2005 the publication of the Danish cartoons in Denmark They caused demonstrations and riots all over the world violence because of speech and Governments all across the West did very little to protect Those who engage in writing those cartoons don't know publishing the cartoons and indeed in the United States Newspapers and in Europe newspapers refused to publish the cartoons even though it was news People were rioting all over the world because of cartoons and American newspapers were too afraid to publish the cartoons and self-censored themselves Because of fear of violence because they knew their government wouldn't protect their right to free speech Actually, you can go back even further to 1989 when the Iranian Supreme leader to the humane at the time put out a fatwa to kill Salaman Rushdie for Expressing anti-islamic opinions for being an apostate basically put out a what in the mafia we call a contract on Salaman Rushdie and What's interesting is that the response of the West wasn't How dare you in our countries you can write whatever you want in our countries We defend free speech to the end and we will protect not only Salaman Rushdie But the publishers and everybody else associated no in the West we apologized. Yes, it's not good to offend religion Yeah, you we have a right to free speech, but it's really not nice of Salaman Rushdie to have written what he wrote We're talking about Salaman Rushdie who is a well-known novelist not a Prova control not a political part. We're talking about an author of You know significant novels of the 20th and 21st century He had to go into hiding in the United States bookstores What firebomb that carried his books and the West did nothing to protect the free speech of this individual? They didn't even stand up for his right to protect it So since 89 at least we have seen in my view a slow deterioration and a chipping away of the right to speak just a personal experience last year Was it last year in November? I was giving a talk at Exeter University, which is in England in the southwest of England and The speech was titled exactly what the speech is titled free speech and Western civilization and a number of people arrived at the speech And started yelling at me and they would not let me talk every time I started talking They would stand up and start yelling and chanting And refused to allow me to speak security had to come they had to clear out the room And of course it was perfect because I was giving a speech of free speech So it's perfect to see people obstruct free speech. I didn't have to motivate to talk But to see more and more of this And it's always been people demonstrated. They've always been people trying to shout it speech down The difference is that today we tolerate it like never before in the New York Times recently Just as one example, but there are many a well-known professor American professor wrote that since speech can cause psychological damage to students and Therefore it is equivalent to violence Speech cannot be an absolute right So now in America we're equating speech words that I say with violence a fist in the face Once you do that Again free speech is gone. Now the important question is really Who cares right? So what? my speech importance Particularly why speech important when we're talking about, you know Relatively radical people like me Or I have her CLE or Charles Murray. I mean, yeah, okay, so they don't get a speech big deal. What's why is this an issue? Well, I would argue that this is the idea of free speech the idea of free speech for everybody Even people you hate even people you despise is Is a core and necessary value of civilization There without it civilization will break down and always has in history broken down Western civilization the civilization we all enjoy Here in Georgia in Europe in American vast parts of Asia and South America I consider all of that Western civilization is Grounded to a large extent on the idea of free speech on the idea of your right to communicate without Being silenced through violence so to me, this is a this is a core value of Civilization and and let me just give you an example of what I mean by Speech that's hateful and offensive and you know, so I'm I'm up. I really believe in free speech, right? So as you know some of you might know I was born in Israel So, you know from an ethnic perspective or heritage perspective. I'm Jewish The first laws against free speech in Europe in the modern era Were instituted in Germany after World War two and what kind of speech did they exclude? Holocaust deniers if you're a Holocaust denier you go to jail in Germany and Austria and in many countries in Europe today Because clearly Holocaust denial is offensive. I'm offended by anybody you denies the Holocaust I have family members who died there, but but once you accept that idea Then if you're offended you can silence somebody Where do we stop? I? Know lots of people who offended my by my advocacy for capitalism and freedom. I Know many people who offended by lots of things that I do that you do What's the standard who gets to decide the standard? And this is where I think going back in history is really important If we think about Europe and the world really before the Enlightenment before the 17th century Who got to decide what speech was allowed or not allowed? Well, it was the church and the king Queen or whatever right it was the authorities Decided what was allowed and what was not allowed is There were authorities that dictated what constituted science that was acceptable and what constituted science. It was unexpected Except or what constituted acceptable philosophy and what constituted unacceptable philosophy? And if you happen to practice science that was unacceptable For example, God forbid claiming that the earth went around the Sun not the Sun around the earth. What happened to you? Well, if you were Galileo, you got lucky because you only were put under house arrest If you were came earlier than Galileo, you typically got burnt at the stake Not so lucky. What about philosophers who might have claimed that? Maybe God it didn't intervene in every aspect of our life and had more of a Mr. Tilly and conception of God as a First mover, but otherwise, you know not intervening in everything. Hey, you know really radical What happened to them? Well, they had a basically staying hiding like Solomon was Steve. They had a published their articles it with anonymous names And if you read one of their books if you were found with a book by Spinoza the philosopher You could get into real trouble. You could land up at jail. You could land up dead because this was heretical These were heretics so Historically by the way, there are two seats up front here if anybody wants to sit there two seats here history is full of Authoritarians whether in the name of religion or in the name of the state dictating what we can think dictating what we can say dictating what is offensive dictating What is acceptable in the 18th century? Thinkers started to challenge this idea They started to recognize That the attribute that makes us human The attribute that is most important for human life Is what? What's another name for the for the enlightenment the age of what the age of reason? The age of reason they started to recognize the human reason Again, this is really them rediscovering Aristotle and the standing Aristotle Aristotle defined man as the rational being and the age of reason is an age in which we end up Disturbed that reason is our means for knowing the world Reason is what you guide our behavior reason is how we know things The first in my view the first think of the enlightenment really the first think of the age of reason is who really 17th century 18th century Isaac Newton In many respects as the guy who popularizes a Sunday because think about it before Isaac Newton What was our understanding of the physical world? What moved planets and objects and everything? Basically God's will we had no understanding of physics of science of how things moved around The notion was that real knowledge Real knowledge of truth came to us not through reasoning not through figuring stuff out, but through revelation And we need an authorities to have that revelation because you know what we're too stupid to actually get the reveal knowledge directly This is Plato if you know a little bit of philosophy Plato says all of us live in a cave and we just see shadows We don't really see actual reality You need the philosopher kings the philosophers to actually get the revelation of what's real of what's true of what's actual knowledge At a start all of course comes and says no all of us have the faculty of reason all of us can think rationally All of us can know truth directly through observation of reality and Newton says yeah as thought was right Here are the laws of physics that actually explain all these things here's some formulas where you could predict the movement of Planets you can predict the movement of objects and suddenly Everybody can understand physics It's not that hard. I know you know if you didn't understand physics Newtonian physics. It's you didn't you had a bad teacher Because it's not that hot and people in the 80s and she kind of woke up and said wow cool We can understand the world. We don't need authorities to tell us what the world's about We can actually understand it here in there's a system and it there's a way to understand it It's called science and this is called the age of science the age of reason the enlightenment and of course If you can reason if you can think if you can discover truths Then it's important for you to have the freedom to act on those truths Because otherwise, what's the point? What's the point of thinking if you can act on those thoughts and One of the actions that we gauge in when is expressing those ideas Expressing those thoughts expressing those truths where they're in writing where they in speech And they came to understand that it's important for the developer for the discovery of truth or development of science in all human realms to give people the freedom To express those truths and yeah, some people some people Will express lives some people will express things that we don't like but what they what they understood during this period was That the last thing we want is an authority to decide What is a lie and what is a truth? What is acceptable and what is unacceptable? What is offensive and what is unoffensive? That the real authority is you me every one of us we get to decide Not the Pope or the King or the president or the government but we Get to be exposed or whatever ideas Out there and we get to decide using our own reason using our rational faculty What is true and what is not and are we gonna be exposed to offensive ideas? Oh? Yeah, lots of them. I mean half the stuff I hear and the news is offensive to me. I mean we're offended all the time So what? Grow up Standard, you know if you if you disagree you know It's a good opportunity to get better at expressing yourself. You're disagreement to understand why you disagree Sometimes the offensive speech is actually true speech and you'll have an opportunity to rethink your own thoughts and reexamine your own beliefs but to give somebody else the authority to decide for yourself to decide what is right for you is To accept authoritarianism in everything It's to deny your capacity to think things through it's to deny your capacity to deal with your own emotions I'm offended big deal, but that's where we're heading we're heading towards a world in which we're gonna have Authorities make decisions for us what we are grown up enough to understand or not understand To be exposed to or not to be exposed You're seeing this, you know with most of the most the action on this on American campuses is from the left But you're also seeing it in the way Donald Trump talks about this Because Trump the president of the United States Still I still find a hard time actually saying that I mean continuously attacks the media the instrument by which Information is disseminated now the media is biased. We all know the media is biased You know, we have the example of Germany certainly in the United States is very similar But when a political authority when somebody in the position of the president tells us this media is not okay And this media is okay, and the media that's okay happens to be the media that praises him constantly And this is a president with the power of the state behind him This is very very very dangerous for the idea of true free speech Presidents should not get in the middle of the debate about the media, you know, they have opinions they can express Politicians should stay away from commenting on what media is okay in which media is not again It's our job to make those decisions as consumers of that information Not the job of government to regulate So if we believe in reason then we have to believe in our ability to express our ideas and as a consequence be exposed to things that offend us and Think about it this way every new idea Every new idea that's true for the side the false ideas every new idea that's true has offended somebody I mean Newton Galileo and Many of the scientists offended the church and offended people who are deeply religious now. They got over it They ultimately found a way to to to live with it, but when the four ideas first came out, they were viewed as offensive ideas when Locke with John Locke the great British philosopher articulated the case for individual rights Articulate the case for individual liberty individual freedom He offended the church He actually at some point had escaped England to Amsterdam because he was worried that a Catholic King would kill him and he only came back to the to the Britain after the Catholic King was deposed and a different King was putting place Amsterdam has always been a place of freedom It's always been a place where Ideas were accepted Voltaire in the 19th century because it was critical of religion had to escape Paris of all places and went to Amsterdam in order to escape death threats and Yet John Locke today we all know was one of the great philosophers of all time And yet at the time what he said was offensive because truth if it's new is Always gonna offend the people who believed in whatever it was that they believed before the truth was discovered. I Mean think of a modern example Everybody know uber Uber fence whom Taxi drivers And uber You have a uber here Okay, you have a you have a compromised uber Every new technology offends an old technology Everything new is upsetting to those people who hold the old ideas But the only way to advance Is to continuously to discover truth to express truth and don't we want to be exposed to it Don't we know when a new truth has been discovered the price for that if you will is that yeah We're gonna be exposed to a lot of falsehood. We're gonna be exposed to a lot of nonsense but I Think we're all adults I think we're all capable of figuring out ourselves Of evaluating of judging and what we don't need authorities to tell us What we should believe what we should think what is true? What is not how to You know and what can be expressed and what cannot if you attack speech Ultimately what you're attacking is thought Ultimately what you're attacking is reason if you attack speech What you're attacking is? fundamentally the right of the individual to judge for himself to Think for himself and therefore you are attacking individualism Now in my view the two foundational ideas of Western civilization The two foundational ideas that created the civilization that we have today that is being enjoyed by billions of people around the world the two foundational ideas are reason Capacity of human beings to know the world around them through their rational faculty and individualism The individualism ended himself The individual is the standard for morality the individual is Determining the course of his own life Individualism and reason are both under assault when we assault free speech Now why do we ban physical force? What is the demonstration physical force because speech is not physical force speech has not be punching you in the face why of all Since the enlightenment all thinkers agreed at least the enlightenment thinkers The physical force should be banned and that's the job of the government trying your job of government is to protect us from people Who would use physical force against us? What's different about force? Force is the one thing that can destroy a capacity to think to reason to discover truth When Galileo was put down a house arrest. What was his motivation to do more thinking to discover more truth? zero He was now being penalized for using his mind When somebody puts a gun to your back and says from now on You must live with the idea that two plus two equals five and if you don't I will shoot you You can't think This is why by the way three countries countries in which we have freedom Advanced technologically advanced economically advanced from the perspective of innovation much more than authoritarian countries because To discover new technologies to discover new truth people must be free to use their mind as they see fit Otherwise we stagnate otherwise we die violence is the antithesis of reason To defend to defend reason to defend the human mind means to reject violence Speech is not violent. I Can tell you nonsense some of you might think I'm saying it right now, right? I can talk nonsense and you can you can ignore it You don't have to pay attention. There's no way I can impose my nonsense onto your mind You have to choose whether I'm saying something. That's right or not whether what I'm saying is true or false There's no way I can impose my ideas on you the same way. I can impose my fist on you So there is a fundamental difference between violence which indeed needs to be banned from society and Speech which cannot and should never be banned in a society Okay, so just to summarize and then I'll take your questions the great achievement of Western civilization is The rediscovery from the Greeks of the role of reason in human life and the importance of the individual politically that's what's led to the you know the prosperity we have today anybody ever seen a you know the graph of Per capita income or per capita Wealth ever seen this graph. I'm gonna draw it in the air So, you know, so this is this is gonna be wealth or income per capita and this is time It's a 10,000 years ago. We're gonna start 10,000 years ago 10,000 years ago people made under three dollars a day on average almost everybody and This is true for about 10,000 years I mean there were periods where it went up a little bit Rome and then it went down during the dark ages And then it stayed like this at three dollars a day or under and then what happened? Suddenly out of nowhere it went like that like that and What is that date when it went like that anybody you know what that date is? Yeah, that's what was the date and and why did industrialization happen? What was the date? We suddenly went like that. When did we start industrializing? 1770 Why haven't I liked 1776? for two reasons two reasons One because a great book in economics was written At the time the first real defense of markets was that As rent the wealth of nations was published in 1776, but what else happened in 1776? The Declaration of Independence was written in my view the most important political document in human history Because it is the first political document in human history To recognize the individuals right to his own life Which means the right for individuals to act on their own behalf in pursuit of their own values Free of intervention free of force and as long as you're not violating somebody else's rights You can exercise you can pursue your values that you deem necessary for your own life You have a right to liberty. That's a way to liberty It's the right to think whatever you want to think it's the right to speak whatever you want to speak to write whatever you want to write It's the first political document to recognize this Based on the ideas of John Locke based on the ideas of the Enlightenment But the founding fathers of America put it in writing in a political document and established a country based on this specific principle No country in human history Had this in its founding document To this day very few have it and then finally Every individual has a way an inalienable way in the elbow means nobody can take it away from you not even a majority To pursue your own happiness Individualism your life your thoughts your happiness. That's what's important America was the culmination of the Enlightenment the political combination of the light It was finally a political entity established in order to recognize The value of reason and the value of individualism When we lose free speech we lose those values we lose the promise that the Enlightenment provided us Thank you There is a current discussion right now They were erected in the late 19th century early 20th century What do you think about that okay, so let me let me take the first question then you can ask the second one So I am very sympathetic to the idea that the monuments should go to museums. I Would find it and I do find it offensive to To be in front of a monument celebrating slavery Which I think every one of these monuments does because what it there? What are the what's his name general? Lee You know, what did he fight for? first of all I committed treason by Succeeding from the United States and fighting the government and second He fought for slavery because the only reason the self-succeeded from the north was to maintain slavery now I Find we're taking those down now. Do you have a way to stand up and say on your own property on your own radio station? Anyway, you want that's yours. I'm for slavery. I believe in slavery slavery's fine Sure, you have a right. Do you ever wait in your own home to to to have a confederate flag or to put up a statue of Robert E. Lee? Absolutely, that's free speech But we're talking about public monuments. We're talking about government space that is public space representing the views in a sense of the government entity Now I don't I'm not much for public property generally. I don't believe there should be any right? I think everything should be private. I think that solves a lot of the problems we face But I can solely understand why in certain communities they would get rid of these now I would leave it to the local communities I don't need I don't think you need a federal law to say get rid of the statues local communities can make these decisions and People can then decide whether they want to live in those communities I for one would be horrified by having a you know a beautiful sculpture of Lee on my way to work every day You know celebrating slavery so I understand completely people who want to get rid of those monuments I I commend those states that got rid of their confederate flag I think the fact that a confederate flag will be flying next to the American flag I don't know the state house of South Carolina or North Carolina is offensive and ridiculous again This is a government institution not a private home private home. You can fly whatever you want to fly But a government institution cannot so I so I'm for taking those down from government institutions But again, I would leave it to localities and I certainly don't advocate for the anarchy of mobs going around pulling statues down I mean that's ridiculous. That's violence and and they have no right to do it generally. I'm opposed to mobs my second question is I was putting companies when I saw a video of yours four years ago until I got to the college And I was introduced to philosophy with John Rawls and My god So this is John Rawls argument for egalitarianism the fact is we are born unequal by the way tonight I'm giving a talk on this topic Where we are talking tonight At the University of Georgia tonight, I'm giving a talk just on this so I'll give you the the short version The fact that I was born with more opportunities than you let's say I don't know if that's even true Right, but the fact that I was born with more opportunities than any one of you Does not make me guilty of anything It's not my fault. I you know, it's not my responsibility Let's say I was born with money. Well, I was born with money. That's a metaphysical fact now what you want to do what John Rawls wants to do is Force me to give up those things in order to benefit somebody else By what rate? Oh Good wolf sure not all of it. He wants to keep me alive so I can keep producing so he can steal more of my stuff absolutely My point is you're not born guilty. I don't buy original sin not in its religious version and Not in its secular version You're not born guilty because you're born rich. You're not born guilty because you're born with whatever problem Exists out there. We love original sin for some reason in Christianity is really uncockated this What I want is a world that maximizes opportunities that everybody has as many opportunities as are possible a world like that Does not engage in stealing Which is what redistribution of wealth is redistribution of wealth to stealing look it's immoral for society to do Anything that it's immoral for an individual to do You don't gain morality by having a group by having a mob We all recognize that it's immoral of a poor person to come up to me in the street with a gun and steal my money The fact that all of you want to vote To take my money and give it to this poor person doesn't make it any less stealing it is stealing It's just stealing by democratic vote But democratic vote does not make something bad good does not make an evil justifiable Remember the most famous vote To silence somebody talk about free speech right is Athens And they didn't like what Socrates was saying Socrates was going around and he was corrupting the youth because he was challenging the religious ideas So basically Athens got together and voted. What should we do with it? How do we silence Socrates? Well, there's only one way to silence Socrates. He's a philosophy. He speaks. How do we silence him? By killing him They gave him a challenge of poison which he drank because he too believed in democracy. I don't believe in democracy If that's what democracy is If you get to vote on how much money I get to keep I don't believe in it If you get to vote on what I can say and what I can't say, I don't believe in it I believe in voting But I don't believe in absolute democracy and this is the whole idea of individual rights The whole idea of locks individual rights is that they're inalienable Nobody can take them away if I have a right to my property. You don't have a right to take any of it Even if you get everybody to vote on your favor now Is it true that people are unequal when they're born? Absolutely Is it sad that some people are born with lousy parents? Let's say or bad genes? Absolutely. It's sad That sadness does not give you a right to penalize those who are let's say more fortunate in that sense It's not immoral that somebody was born with bad genes or with bad parents Because morality can't apply to that which is not chosen So it just is it's a metaphysical fact. It's fact of reality. They were unequal I think that's a beautiful thing by the way I think it's wonderful that we're unequal because it would be horrible if we were all the same And at the end of the day, the only way to establish equality is by doing what? How do we establish equality? Yeah So my question is how my capital Wherever I'm born with can be social capital material capital Defines our equality. So why these possessions or whatever it is Defined how equal we are because I believe in In my free speech that we're all born equal And if I am born with a lot of money because of my father or my mother And you don't that doesn't make us unequal I I agree with you. So I think we have to differentiate between two forms of equality political equality Equality of rights. I believe in equality of rights. I believe we're all equally free when we're born We'll equally have a right to life limiting the pursuit of happiness when we're born and in that sense Everybody is born equal and that's the only sense in my view that equality has any meaning Because the alternative to that is equality of outcome, but you can't attain equality of outcome We're never going to be the same. So you don't want to take all my money. You want to take some of my money But we'll still be unequal Because let's say Let's say i'm smarter than you. I'm just, you know, as a hypothetical right now. What are you going to do? I'm smarter than you. How are we going to fix that equality? Now I can tell you how to fix it. There's only one way to fix it It's not a it's not a nice way And it's not a permanent way because there'll always be inequalities is you get to kill me Well, you laugh, but this is the classical example, right? So there was a group You know, and those of you coming tonight. We'll have to hear the story again There's a famous group of intellectuals who went to study in paris And learned from the best egalitarian philosophers in the world the the predecessors to john walls, you know Sotter and camu and did row and all these all these really french french philosophers And they decided they wanted equality And they were going to go to their country and they were going to establish equality So yeah, they went back home to their country and they gained political power And they said, okay, we're going to create the ideal equal society and for them It was equality of outcome not equality of rights like like we hold it, right So what did they do? Well first they looked at their country and they said some people live in the city Some people live in the countryside. That's not equal. You have many more opportunities in the city people in the countryside So what do you do? Well, they emptied the city They basically drove everybody out into the countryside The city became a ghost town Everybody was out in the in the countryside And in the countryside now they had all these people in the countryside And they said wait a minute. They're still not equal Some people are educated Some people are intelligent Some people are better farmers Some people are better farages farages is picking berries and nuts because these people are starving now And they had to run around and pick berries and nuts in order to survive. Some people are good at it Some people are not so what did they do? They said, but we want this equality. We want to establish absolute equality They killed them So they took everybody who was exceptional So if you wore glasses, they said you must be you must be able to read or you must be educated That was their proxy. They shot them Anybody who had glasses was shot. Anybody who had a high school education was shot Anybody who was a good farager was shot They killed 40 percent of their own population 40 percent two million people out of a population somewhere between five to six In the name of what? In the name of John Rawls In the name of equality In the name of everybody should be the same We're not So for example, if men and women are stopped to be equal Then obviously we can't Close So equality means accepting our differences So if you are born with some capital and I'm born without I'm born with different capital, but we're still equal. Sorry. That means you won't develop. Absolutely. So if you look at the how how these responses are Cultures try to develop the rest of the undeveloped And locating for the equality itself. It means that we are not equal and okay. We're gonna help you to be Developed like us. So it's not equality itself, right? So I agree with you completely, but some people don't agree with us Now by the way that by the way that regime was was poor part and it was cambodia And you could look it up. It's the killing fields of cambodia And it's a true story. None of that was made up. I have to move on What I'm trying to say is that it's not a team in absolute equality, but Take it and give me the opportunities and advantages to people Would you know how this thing started? The best opportunities and advantages you can give people the only opportunities and advantages you can give people Is freedom period and every time you you take away freedom from somebody in order to give it to somebody else You are destroying opportunities generally in the culture So it's it's it's it's what you're doing is moving away from the principle of freedom and everybody is worse off Behind you there Well, let's go back to speech speech if we can That is exactly what I'm going to ask you about and you very effectively Describe that what is happening right now all around the world in all the countries Freedom of speech against the press and the consequences of this process But you never actually mentioned or express your opinion why it is happening So why do you think it's happening even in such countries as the states great question And again, I think the answer is philosophical. I think it's happening because We have as a as a culture it has us philosophers rejected the idea of reason We train our kids in america at least I I don't know how your educational system works within america In america the focus is not on thinking The america the whole focus is on feeling We ask our kids all the time how you feeling Not what are you thinking We train them to feel We have elevated emotion to a primary emotion today is our tool of cognition Emotions are the most important thing in our lives. No Emotions are consequence of thinking Emotions come from ideas. They come from conclusions They come from Reason not the other way around But if we elevate emotions if we say emotions are the most important thing Then what we need to protect these poor delicate human beings is from being emotionally upset If emotions are total of cognition, then the fact that I am upset by what you say means what you say is wrong somehow Because truth is completely subjective. There's no absolute truth. The only way to come up with absolute truth is through reason Emotions can't lead you to real truth So it's the elevation of emotion above thinking And my view is and the enlightenment view was That the only tool of cognition the only way you learn about the truth outside of yourself Is through your ability to reason your senses in your mind And reason has been under attack Primarily by german philosophers Since immanuel kanth So since the late 18th 18th century Who so and can't start The the the the real attack on human reason and today what you've got is postmodernism That tells you which is dominant in many of the humanities which basically says there's no such thing as truth There's no such thing as reality All there is is your subjective emotional view of the world There's nothing else And by the way that emotional subjective view is determined by your class Your race your gender your you know fill in the blank and therefore we almost aggregate into little groups Because since emotions are not really tools of cognition Then we need a group to help us with our emotions And what does a group always have that ultimately determines the fate of the group what do groups always have Leaders authority So this is the path to authoritarianism This is why collectivism always leads to authoritarianism Once we view our primary alliance Is to the group the group How do we know what's good? You know I hate terms like the public interest and the common good Who gets to decide what the common good is. I mean do we have a common good? I mean I think we do in the sense of freedom and and and individualism and respecting one another But beyond that what is the common good? I mean half of us want to do x and another half want to do y who gets to decide Well one way is to vote that they don't like voting Because what about the minorities a minority in my view is the individual but for them the minority is Whatever group they decide is being oppressed right now So what you need ultimately is an authority an authority to channel The will of the of the group And that's slippery very fast slope towards authoritarianism as you see it in America I mean in my view trump Is is an obama before him, but particularly trump is That slippery slope to awards authoritarianism. You're seeing it already It doesn't matter what he says. It didn't matter what obama said the left believed anything obama said anything obama said they worship Now with trump. He's got his following. They believe anything he says It doesn't matter if he contradicts himself. He doesn't matter if he blamely lies Everything he says is okay. This is it's all about emotion. It's not about fact We I think they call it now post-truth error Well, I mean if you don't have truth, then what's speech worth, you know, what's thinking with nothing? Yeah, you've got the mic and then just pass it around Sure uh, hi you mentioned uh lies in the environment of freedom of expression people can express freely in their truths and lies in this uh How we should cope with the lies? Well, I mean the only way to cope with lies and dissipation is to reveal them is to argue against them it's to it's to um It's to call them out for what they really are I mean the only way is to use speech To expose them and to hope that there's still enough people in the world thinking for themselves Who can differentiate between truth and lies, but again once you give the authority Permission to silence the liars Then it's the end of freedom because then the authority is going to decide You are now lying. You know, they they stand it is not necessarily going to be your standard They stand it is probably their standard, which is power which most authorities latch on to So the only way is to speak up against it And and it's becoming more and more difficult. I mean, uh Uh, if I do a video and put it up on youtube about terrorism YouTube will not allow me to monetize that video. They won't put ads on it Because they deem that offensive speech So it's getting harder and harder to speak up against Certain points of view because even and I think they have a complete right to do it I'm not objecting to their right to do it. It's probably a company that can do it Whatever they want, but it's becoming more and more difficult to stand up and say what's being expressed as false Here's what I think is true. You guys get to this up Because we're limited in what and where we can speak If I I have a question second for very much for your very interesting speech First of all, I have a question more of about designing the system What frequently said about the part when when I'm offended that the state tries to impose some kind of a rule of me is that Okay, that's kind of a prevention of Obinding the law If we look at Smith's or Friedman or Hayek, they say that the Two roles of the government right protecting society from outside force protecting house from each other. Yes So what do they say tell us? Someone in EU country Okay, the the reason why I'm stopping this free speech is to prevent the violence To protect you from you It's a good question. I I don't so and they say that they say that another time because these people are going to be offended And they're going to rise up and they're going to comment after you By the way, I hear that argument about redistribution of wealth all the time, right? If we don't redistribute wealth to the poor If we don't take money from the rich and give it to the poor the poor who rise up and beat us up Right and they'll come and take the wealth. So we're just protecting you for violence by stealing stuff from you and giving it to them You cannot penalize the innocent Because the guilty might rise up against There's no end to that once you begin on that path So the only role of government is not is to protect us From force by doing what? By using force in retaliation I mean the whole rule of law is set up in a way as to say In order for me to use force against you I have to have proof Solid evidence that you're about to commit a crime or that you have already committed a crime So it's not the role of government To to prevent all violence in the sense of I'll give you another example You know, we could have a cofew we could say There's a lot of rape going on and we could say all men have to stay home Because men typically commit rape So we say in order to prevent violence We're going to have all men forced to stay home so that they can't rape Right, but that would be absurd because Most of us are innocent. You can't penalize the innocent for the sins of the guilt I don't buy efficiency arguments Sure So it's more efficient to keep men at home than to let and therefore reduce the rate of But I that's why I'm not an efficiency guy. I don't buy efficiency. I'm not a utilitarian I think those are bad arguments and they they they they lead to lack of freedom Now I happen to believe that the model is the practical that morality is also consistent with efficiency So I'm not going to argue efficiency with you But I believe that if we respect individuals rights, we also get an optimally efficient solution Even if I can't tell you in economic terms Exactly what the graphs look like because I don't think And this goes to economics I don't think we can actually model human behavior in that kind of detail to know what is the truly efficient outcome and therefore I'm I'm for rights. I'm for protecting individuals And all of my experience shows me that when you protect individual rights, you get the most efficient economic and political outcome as well And once you start violating them Slippy slopes do exist Uh, uh, uh If violations of rights one begun do not stop and you get very inefficient as well as your model outcomes as a consequence Okay, just to came to the question. Yes, use the mic Just to came back to the To the question of why yes You mentioned the consul vectorism and that they take out the reasoning. Okay. That's could be partially The explanation in my understanding, uh, the roots are deeper It's have been written in Daniel Bell's cultural contradictions of capitalism. Yeah And because we have these contradictions Then the question was how to overcome and there was the free just Three five ten eleven. How much you like ways? Yeah Because uh, this all with if you have contradictions in the system contradictions can't survive contradictions can't exist But I I for one don't believe capitalism involves contradictions. So I probably disagree with bell's book. Although I'm not that familiar with it Um, I don't believe it. I don't believe freedom is a contradiction I believe capitalism the central characteristic of capitalism is individual freedom It's the protection of individual rights. It's the abolition of violence from society That's the only rule of government. It's abolition of violence and the arbitration of disputes the final arbitration of disputes That's it. There's no contradiction there. There's there might be disagreement, but that does not create contradictions you know, so I think I mean Part of what is going on. I mean, I think the deep point is this negation of reason I think that's how much more deeper point philosophically. It's a negation of reason and the adoration of emotion But I also think that there are elements in our societies who want authority Who thrive on authority who don't want to think for themselves Who don't want to have to decide for themselves that they want somebody else to make those decisions for them somebody else To to protect them because that's the you know, the sensitive beings Um, I think those authoritarian elements among human beings that have always existed ultimately In the hundred thousand years that we have known in human history How much of that have we been free? By 200 200 and even then only a fraction of humanity has been free even during those 200 So freedom doesn't come easy to human beings freedom is not doesn't come, you know naturally in a sense of it just we just do it We tend there's that strong cultural tendency towards authoritarianism There's a strong cultural tendency towards letting people tell us what to do and how to do it And and I think that that is Ancient it's been around in our culture forever and that's luring its ugly head again today And they won't move back I want to hear your opinion about all this threat to the free speech From my point of view it comes from this strange language Which is becoming more and more not understandable. I'm looking about this politically correct language What is your opinion of that threat? Well, I think again this is this is authoritarians Trying to restrict what we can say and and it's it's being called over the you know It's the term being used as politically correct. I don't know who exactly gets this side What's politically correct and who it isn't I guess it's university professors Now I always thought university professors were the most influential people in the world And I think I think you are because you shape future generations But it's it's determinative universities and there's certain things now that are not acceptable speech To to now look Soon things are indeed offensive Certain things are indeed evil and and wrong and and and so on And if I'm running a classroom There's certain things that I don't want you to say because it's in my classroom And it's irrelevant or it's untrue But you can't generalize that you can't force that on a whole community And that's what they're trying to do Through political correctness through and it's getting worse and worse and worse Thank you lecture. Thank you. So unfortunately as I have just a short comment and totally attest to what you said about the Julia lego free speech in the United States in the US as a societies I am totally experienced as first hand on several occasions when I Was teaching in the United States last year on a number of universities. So Again, first of all my I think it's like easy question and then like more complicated easy question Isn't this identity politics a group politics is a direct effort to individualism from the main pillar of Of the western civilization. So all these All this actually politically correctness speech all these identity politics like all these victimology Sort of poker It's not what the meritocracy it's like Competition is with more like victimized and victimized sometimes people with a certain group. So Minority It's a direct of fun against individualism and it's true on the right as well as the left Right, you know the old right today Which identifies itself as whites and european and white nationalism or white whatever is just as despicable and disgusting and horrific As it is on the left where you know this subgroup of transgender blacks You know is more victimized than I don't know Black males black males victimized black females, but you know, it's there's a whole hierarchy now It's called intersectionality where you have all these sublittle groups and each one is they're rated and ranked And who's the biggest victim? I mean this is all sick in my view. It is it is anti These fundamental values. It's certainly anti individualism. It's anti reason Because reasons suggest that we should treat people as individuals and what they say Based on whether it's true or false not based on the color of their skin Not based on their gender. This is goes back to equality, right? It's You don't care if somebody says if they're female or male with old transgender for all that matters What you care about is what they're saying true or not true. That's what matters, right? All of that is in a font to to the idea both of reason and individuals And a little bit like harder question about public education and certain minor Or maybe living to the moment of the state, maybe Don't you think that many potential you are intelligent people are being Lost because of being sufficient like public education? No, well, so that's actually an easy question Jips might be lost. That's a much That's a much easier question, but a more controversial answer even though it's an easy answer No, I think that what we have today in America, you know, I'm not going to talk to other countries because although I think this is universal You can universalize this The reason there are people today who are so badly educated The reason there's so many people today that are disadvantaged because of their education Is because of public education public education is a disaster Public education cripples the mind because it's run by bureaucrats. It's not run by teachers You have no profit motive in education. Imagine If you had imagine that instead of the next entrepreneur designing a stupid app for the for, you know, the next angry birds or whatever it is For the iPhone instead of that they applied their mind and their entrepreneurial ability To figuring it out how to create a better more efficient school how to educate people better Imagine if you had competition and innovation in the field of education I mean then you would have better opportunities for people people who are smart would rise up much faster People who are not so smart would still get a basic education that was helpful to them Otherwise they wouldn't buy the product Imagine education treating parents as customers Instead of the teacher's union as the customer which it is in the united states, right teachers union rule education instead of their parents And you don't have choice you get to send your Your kid goes to school x by geographic design. What if my kid doesn't want to go? What if I don't want to send my kid to the school tough, right? So I want the complete and utter hundred percent privatization of education I think that was where you would have real opportunities for kids. That's when ability and you talked about maybe talk to say I don't like to turn maybe talk to see but that's where ability would determine how far you would advance And if you're worried about how many kids Couldn't afford that education first of all I think when you have competition prices come down We know this from every other field and education could be much cheaper than it is today and much better But also I always ask audiences how many of you Would be willing to support like a foundation that I started or anybody would start to support Giving scholarships to poor kids to go to school and everybody raises their hand So it's easy to raise money for that cost. It's not hard So every kid would get an education And it would be a far far far far superior education to what we have today when the state remember the state George Washington said in one of his speeches the state is a gun The state is force the state is authority You don't want a gun. You don't want force. You don't want authority in the classroom What you want in the classroom is education You're not going to get that with the state-run system And that's true in europe. That's true in america if you had real competition You can't imagine how good education could be given given the technology we have today given how much we know about the human mind It would be a hundred times better than it was a hundred years ago Whereas by most objective measures our educational system today is worse than it was a hundred years ago Who's got the mic? I want to go back to us examples that you mentioned in your speech So if media criticizes a trump president, so that's okay. That's free speech But it's not okay if trump expressed his own personal idea and say that that area is biased So what's wrong with that if he doesn't do anything illegal? So what's wrong that he is a person? He expresses personal ideas. We know as individuals we have our position Does our position in a society prevents us expressing our own ideas? So he does when you're in the government absolutely So trump as real estate billionaire could say whatever he wants to say can accuse anybody of anything Can it as president of the united states? He has a gun He might point it at you. He might just hold it like this and look at you But you know that gun is pointed and he said it so he has said this is how stupid. I mean We're taping Trump is in my view, right Well, think about this he has said That he's going to go after amazon for being a monopoly And in the same sentence he said, you know on they own the washington poster. I don't like the washington poster So when the justice department goes after amazon Is that an attempt to silence the washington post? Isn't it an attempt? Do we know how can we tell? A very very very dangerous when a president starts threatening the media Starts accusing some in the media versus others in the media. I mean Again as a private citizen you can do it all but once you have a gun once you are in uniform As president of the united states commanded chief of the military You can't just speak as a private citizen You now represent the official view of the u.s. Government. The official view of the u.s. government of the media is Zero they don't have an official view the official view of the u.s. government of the u.s. media is They're free to say whatever they want freedom of the press That's the only position that a that a that a government official house Privately say whatever he wants, but but when he's doing a press conference as president of the united states No, all right, and then this guy here So i'm just going to be really quick and So today you talk about the free speech, which is I think what our society needs is individuality right now So I just want to give example for example on the mind house free speech Works and to ask the question how to actually have the power to stand up for yourself because Ultimately, I have experience experience in on myself that how it's not only about the authority right it's about the social norms that govern us and that For example, I didn't have the mic now and I wanted to say something right So ultimately the free speech or somebody who can be heard you need some resources right you need some So if I find somebody who is who doesn't have any possessions Any not even like to to use to Just pick up right so my individuality is just Kind of doesn't exist. So how do I survive in this society? where To stand up for yourself can you give us some tips how to do that and to express your opinion Even though it may sound crazy for other people So the idea free speech does not mean you have a right to the mic It means that you have a right to say on your time and on your property You know with your means and your ability Whatever you want and nobody has a right to use force against you It doesn't mean you have a right to block traffic in a demonstration and and and violate other people's Property rights or freedom of movement rights or anything else It means that you have the ability to speak when you have the ability to speak and if you don't have it You don't have it if you don't have the mic you don't have the mic Now I would say that the most important thing in terms of individuality in terms of expressing yourself Is to have courage Is I know there are social norms. I know that people put social pressure on you, but You gotta if you believe in something strongly you got to speak up you got it You know social norms are meant to be broken. You know All advancement is is created by people who broken social norms So you got to be brave and you got to stand up and the more you believe in something the more something is important to you The more you invest in making sure your voice is heard the more you invest in speaking up You don't have a way to be heard you have a right to speak you don't have a right to be heard I I it's not my I don't have an obligate. It's not my I'm not obliged to hear everybody wants to say something I can actually if you come to my facebook page I can accept you as a friend or not Now you can say wait a minute if you're not accepting this offend you won't hear what I have to say true There's no obligation on me to hear what you have to say you have to write to say it on your facebook page I don't have a I don't have an obligation to go find it and see it Well social media creates bubbles I agree and it's a problem. It's a real problem But but there's no way to force us out of those bubbles We have to be it's our personal responsibility to break out of the bubbles I purposefully follow people on twitter and facebook Who I disagree with because I want to see what they're saying and I want to see what their argument is And I don't ban people who argue with me unless they're really really obnoxious On on facebook and twitter But that's a personal choice if you want to live in a bubble you have a right to live in a bubble You don't have a right to impose yourself on other people I know I know so don't be so don't be in a bubble, you know, but that's up to you You don't know that you're in a bubble Well, everybody knows they're in a bubble based on the on the on the fact that they're getting this feedback. It's an echo chamber