 Did Rand ever write on the subject of vigilante justice? Also, what are your thoughts on art promoting vigilanteatism such as equalizer or death wish? So, of course, you know, I mean it depends what you mean by vigilante justice and I want to be careful here because I haven't thought about the definition of vigilante justice. I mean is vigilante justice the idea of in a lawful society taking the law into your own hands? Or is, would you include under vigilante justice in a unlawful or in a civilization that's breaking down in a sense taking the law but there is not much law into your own hands? And I do think there's a significant difference between the two. So, of course, the one example of what you could think of as vigilante justice, but I'm not sure if it falls, I'm not sure. It depends how you exactly define vigilante and I don't have a good definition right off the top here. Is, you know, oh my God, Ragnar in the Atlas Shrugged, the Pivot, right? I mean what is he doing? There is a law of the land and he is violating that law. The law is completely irrational. The law is, you know, the government is using force against its own citizens. There's no protection of individual rights. There's a complete abandonment of the role of government as protecting individual rights. It's now just a rush to thuggery. And Ragnar goes out and builds a warship and goes out and, you know, takes the wealth that's been stolen by the government from the producers and gives it back to them and gives it back to them. So in that sense, one of the most heroic characters in Iron Man's novels, under those circumstances and willing, willing to suffer the consequences of being caught, is a pirate who is taking back what was his. So I would say, first of all, vigilante just, this kind of justice, in sense outside of the law, must be just, right? Must be just objectively, not just just subjectively, but objectively just to the best of one's ability. It has to be, you know, it can't just be acting on emotion. It has to be thought through and secured that there's justice. I mean, the real problem with vigilanteism and why Iron Man spoke against it in a free society or even in a semi-free society is its lack of objectivity. It's the danger of losing objectivity, right? And that's why it's really, really important. It's really, really important to whoever does this, whoever does it, and I'm not advocating for it. But in the case of Ragnar, for example, and we'll get to equalizing death wish, to do it in a way that is objectively demonstrable to the better people in the culture, to the people in the culture that matter. And if you remember, Ragnar keeps, he keeps, the pirate keeps really, really, really detailed records of who he's taking the money from, who the money actually belongs to. He is clearly doing this as an act of justice, of objective justice. Now, I have to say that I really enjoy, most, not all, vigilante movies. So I really enjoyed the equalizer movie, one and two, with, oh my God, one of my favorite actors whose name has slipped my mind, but one of you is going to tell me who it is, right? And so, yeah, Denzel Washington is the actor. So I really enjoyed the equalizer movies. Death Wish I watched in the 70s, and I think a lot of the sympathy and a lot of the energy around Death Wish was, Death Wish was, Bronson was the actor, and it had a lot to do with the fact that during the late 70s, crime was rampant. So if you take Donald Trump's statement about carnage in the streets of America, I mean, it has no objective merit in the world in which we live in today, has no reality. But in the period of the 1970s, there was really massive amounts of violence, particularly in New York City, and New York City was unbelievably dangerous and violent. You wouldn't walk in Central Park Park during the day, never mind at nighttime. And there was a sense that the police were not doing their job, that there was no justice, that also this is a time of criminal justice reform, a bad form of it, where violent criminals were let loose and let go, where people were getting relatively short sentences for violent crimes. And there was just a sense in American society that there was nobody standing up for the innocent victims of violent crime. And Charles Bronson, I think it was Charles Bronson, the actor in Death Wish represents kind of an everyday man who stands up against the violent thugs and then has to protect himself and defend himself. So he goes around, you know, first it's kind of a cult, he's not looking for it, but ultimately if I remember the movies right, he is going out and looking for the rapists and the murderers and killing it. And let me be very clear, you know, one should never, one should try never to get into a situation where you live in a society where that is the case. Because that's anarchy. And once people start taking the line to their own hands, everything breaks down. Now in the case of Atlas Shrugged, taking the line to your own hands is part of the effort the strikers are making to bring about the end of civilization. So it's not neutral, it's not trying to save civilization. It's an effort to destroy civilization because once the rule of law is gone, once there is no government, once what we have is anarchy and violence in the streets, civilization is finished. And in a sense what the strikers are trying to do is accelerate the end of civilization. And in that sense the pirate Ragnar is doing what he's doing in the context of a bigger mission. He's not just doing it as a vigilante, as I'm going to go after these guys. He's doing it as part of the bringing down the world. He's doing it part of a war, a war that John Galt and the rest, and if you haven't read Atlas Shrugged, close your ears, the war that John Galt and the rest have initiated against, you know, think about it as a war of independence. So it's not a simple act of vigilanteism. And indeed if you start engaging in vigilanteism, and if you start embracing that idea, what you get is the rule, the destruction of civilization, the move towards anarchy, the move towards violence. And while I enjoy the movies because I enjoy the idea of justice and it horrifies me when government doesn't execute that justice, and I can sympathize emotionally, and that's what the movies capture, is that sympathize emotionally with the idea of going out and striking back at the bad guys when the government doesn't. I don't think, and Ayn Rand wrote about this, I don't think unless it's part of a bigger plan, I don't think an endless civilization is really collapsing, that it's justified, that it's legit to do. As long as we live in a semi-free society, as long as we're not in rebellion, which is what the strike is all, as long as we're not in rebellion against the society in which we live. But I have to say, I enjoy revenge movies. So it was a movie I saw recently about a woman whose husband and kids are brutally murdered and because of corruption in the legal system, the murderers get off, and she goes and gets trained as this super-duper amazing assassin and she comes back and she kills them all. How can you not like it? But I can like it as art and still believe that there are mechanisms in a civilized society, which I still think we have, to deal with the real bad guys without resorting to individuals taking guns and dealing with it independently. And this is of course what happens in Anarchy. In Anarchy we go back to dueling in the streets, we go back to the absence of the objectivity of due process, the absence of, you know, there's a whole system of law. And it's pretty beautiful. If you really think about our criminal legal system, how amazing it is. We have a whole system of due process. We have a whole system of what is legitimate evidence collection. We have a whole system of a trial by jury with a bunch of procedural requirements, all to protect the innocent, all to make it difficult to prosecute criminals because it's so important for us to be objective and to protect the innocent. We are so fearful of power in the hands of those who have guns, who can then, you know, provoke it, distort it, or just get sloppy. We want to, we really take seriously or at least the law take seriously in the way it's been created in this country is the assumption that you are innocent until proven guilty. And that is such an important feature of the law. And we built so many of those protections that then to say, well, you know, but if you feel like an injustice me committed, go out into the streets and kill whoever. I mean, that is devastating. That is horrible. So, no, I, you know, it's the rule of the jungle. It's really, really bad. And again, in the context of Atlas Shrugged, it is within the context of a revolution. It's in the context of bringing down civilization, of declaring war on civilization. And that's something completely different. Revolution is something different. So while I enjoy vigilante movies, guilty, guilty as charged, I find vigilante-ism abhorrent in a civilized society. And when vigilante-ism is the only way to achieve justice, then it's time, it's time for the revolution. It's time to move to another country or it's time to replace the government in the existing country. It's time to, you know, to revolt, to really have a revolution. So, yeah, I mean, I want to emphasize how important I think the nature of our legal system and its attempt to prosecute justice objectively is. It's one of my arguments against anarchism. That all breaks down. It all goes away. There is no objectivity in the prosecution of criminals in an anarchist society. Indeed, I've seen many anarchists argue that in anarchist society, there is no criminal law. There is only civil law. If somebody murders you, your wife will sue them. I mean, that is such an evasion of reality that it's mind-boggling. And of course, again, by what process is that lawsuit prosecuted? Well, whatever the parties have negotiated or whatever the two legal organizations, the two police organizations of the competing parties have decided, objectivity is out the window. In a sense, truth is ultimately out the window.