 national self interest and individual rights. This is the Iran book show. All right, everybody. Welcome to Iran Book Show on this. What is it? Sunday. Night here in Madrid. Afternoon. Somewhere where you are. Our clocks have moved. Your clocks have not. So I'm a little closer to you right now. I guess US shifts their time on no video I'm told. Why is there no video? Oh, I know why there's no video. Alright, we can fix this. Jennifer. Thanks for letting me know. There we are. Alright, video in a second. US moves their clocks next Saturday on next weekend. Puerto Rico stays put. So basically what happens that I get Puerto Rico becomes a different time zone. And it makes I have to admit just makes my life complicated. I wish they'd stop playing around with the clocks. Just leave them as they are. I mean, the difference between someone went to is just not worth it. I don't care really that much. How they shift it. But just just leave it just freeze it. Like every few months I have to remember am I on the Eastern time zone or my one hour ahead of Eastern time zone? It's just a pain in the butt. All right. Hopefully that I'll get fixed soon. Um, bigger problems I think in the world. Look, Catherine is here. We haven't seen Catherine and I don't know, a month, weeks, whatever. Great to see you Catherine. We're going to need you today. We're going to need you today. So thanks for joining us. Hopefully you can get the troops wild up about supporting the show through super chat. That'll be that'll be really fantastic. And yeah, we do have a today show will be an hour and a half. We do have a hard stop for today show. So get your questions in early. Rather than now waiting the last minute because I will end it an hour and a half. And that means that whatever questions are left that I haven't answered, I will left that push into next show, which I will get to all of them. I promise I always do. I get to all the questions, but it might have to wait until until until the next day. All right, let's see. What else do you what I want before I get to the topic? What else do I want to talk about quickly? Yeah, I had a screen of this and it's it's disappeared. Just you know, today's a it is indeed a day filled with news. Most of it's bad. But I don't really have that much to say about the news today. So this is why I chose a more broad topic. But let me just quickly run down the stories for you and give you my just my first my my thoughts, my quick thoughts on each one of them. You know, South Korea really tragic what happened there just horrific of over 150 dead from basically a stampede on Halloween night at a party in the streets near a nightclub. Everybody was cramped together. Hard to tell exactly stimulated it. But people just crushed one another. The stories are in terms of just the number of people that were in the street in these alleys in small places. Just horrific. And these are all teenagers and young people in the 20s, mostly girls. So it's it's like 100 153 I think girls and 50 boys. Just hard goes out to their parents just horrible. In terms of in terms of what happened there, you know, I was just in South Korea. But it just it just tells you, I mean, the only lesson I have from this is stay away from super really, really crowded places. I mean, even concerts and stuff, I find spooky when the body of everybody just cramped together. You can just see that it doesn't take much for something really horrible. Something really horrible to happen. So sad day in South Korea. You know, Paul Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi's husband got attacked in his home. Somebody wielding a hammer. Violence is always horrific violence motivated by politics is particularly horrific because it does not bode well for the future. But I find it fascinating here kind of the rights response. The right response has been there's more to the story. Maybe this was a male prostitute. Paul Pelosi was who knows, you know, I don't know what the full story is. But I find it interesting that the right immediately jumps to some kind of conspiracy theory stuff. I mean, even Elon Musk was tweeting, why does he even but Elon Musk was tweeting that there's something like there's a small chance that it's not exactly as it seems. I mean, at this point, it's arbitrary. Let's wait and see how the story unfolds. Let's see what the evidence suggests. Let's see what the but I mean, I know that some people on the right will never accept that this is motivated by some Q and non loving, crazy maniac type. They'll always pretend or always believe or always argue that this was had some other dimension that makes Paul Pelosi look bad. And maybe it did. I just don't know. But the jumping to conclusions and the giving credence to nutty theories with no evidence, bad stuff. I wouldn't even give you credit. It's not the kind of thing you you you retweet. It's not the kind of thing you link to. It looks like a bridge collapsed in India and hundreds of people plunged into the river and hundreds of them died. Ukraine launched this sophisticated drone attack on on the Russian fleet in Crimea, attacking the new, you know, main ship flagship of the Black Sea, the previous flagship was sunk. Hard to tell exactly what happened. We don't know if they if any if it succeeded at all. We know that the Russians a little bit panicked by it. But it was both drone boats boats full of explosives navigated by remote control from far and drone planes attacking the fleet. We don't know what the damage the Russians is. All we know is Russia is really upset. And they've said that they're going to exit the Ukraine green deal as a consequence. So they're going to stop trade. You know, if you were buying wheat or buying anything from Ukraine right now and the Russians basically say, Now, we're not going to let it through. We're stopping it. How happy, sad, would you be how pissed off would you be? Would you be supporting Ukraine as a consequence? Anyway, that's that's happening. Have I missed anything? I think that's the main other than you know, the Celtics have lost two games in a row. Yes, I have missed one story. And the reason I missed it, it's because I'm looking at Google news. You know, I'm looking at the main newspapers. I'm looking at the headlines all over the place. And the story is not there. You can find it if you dig a little deeper. You can find it if you if you put some effort behind it. But the story, which I think is more important than all these stories, the story that I still inspires me still makes me super angry. And still is hidden on page seven of the internet, whatever the hell that means. But it's still hidden somewhere. Is the fact that yesterday, the head of the Iranian Republican Guard National Guard, whatever, came out and said, that's it, no more demonstrations. We are going to get tough. We are going to get real. So we are banning all demonstrations in Iran as if they allowed them before. But now, now we're serious. And the story that you're not reading that you're not getting in the news that you're not getting on the front pages is the fact that thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of Iranian went into the streets today and continued the demonstrations led by young girls led by women led by young girls burning, taking off their hijabs, objecting to, you know, standing up. And that, you know, now it's going to get brutal because now the the Republican God are fully engaged. TGAS is being used. Who knows what else is going on. It's a black you know, we don't know. We don't have media reports. And you're not getting this. It doesn't trend on Twitter. And it's not on Google News. And it's not highlighted in Apple News and the New York Times and Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, not highlighting this and CNN and Fox News couldn't care less. Luckily, you listen to your book show and I'm telling you that the demonstrations were massive today, that they were all over Iran, that it was like basically, you're not going to tell us you can't demonstrate in the street. We demand that this regime be replaced. We demand that the Ayatollah Khamenei be pulled down and the job of Supreme Leader be eliminated, eradicated. You know, all the power, you know, to the brave people of Iran for standing up to dictatorship and shame, shame on conservatives, people who call themselves conservatives, people who call themselves liberals, people who call themselves new right and new left, people who call themselves libertarians, shame on you, shame on you for not verbally constantly expressing your support for the the brave people of Iran for the brave girls that initiating this, the brave women who are leading the charge to try to change a brutal totalitarian and theocratic regime. We should look at Iran and we should say, you know what, as bad as things get, they are going to be people who are going to stand up and say enough is enough. They are going to be people who stand up and are willing to fight for liberty, fight for freedom, fight for their own individual rights. As bad as things get and doesn't get much worse than theocracy in Iran, they are going to be good people out there who will say enough is enough. And I believe that they will win whether they win this time or whether they have to wait another 10 years. I don't know. But suddenly, it's likely to be shorter. They're likely to have to wait less. If we in the West speak up, support them, articulate the case for them, stop negotiating with Iran on a nuclear deal, stop doing anything with your whether Europeans, where European women where are the feminists in Europe? Why isn't Europe up in arms and boycotting Iran completely for the use of lethal weapon against young girls, young women who refuse to wear headscarf? Where is the secular world? What does it even mean? If you're not willing to at least morally stand with the people trying to stand up to barbaric dark age religious theocracy. So in spite of the fact that I'm not covering the news today, I had to say that because it drives me nuts that nobody's covering this. It's not in the news. Nobody's talking on it. It's not trending anywhere. It's not being covered on YouTube. It's a it's a black hole. It's just a it's it's as if it doesn't exist. And in spite of that, and this would be my last word, I promise. In spite of that, these girls and women and men, anyone going out in the street, you know, putting their bodies on the line, putting their lives on the line to protect the most sacred of all things to protect their liberty to protect themselves. Nothing more selfish than that. So anyway, hopefully, my audience gets it. My audience will support them. My audience will speak up at every opportunity everywhere. If there was some way to send contributions to support them, I would encourage you to do so. I don't know of such a place. There are people online, and Twitter and elsewhere who are covering this story. Not many of them. Go follow them, support them, encourage them. Anyway, all right. Let's turn to our own pathetic domestic affairs. Because it's bad enough here. Yeah, questions rolling in. Thank you guys. We really appreciate it. Let's see. So today, just to remind you can ask questions to super chat. We have a goal 650 dollars. Catherine is here on the super chat on the chat today to encourage people to participate. We do have a hard stop. I don't know if you heard me, Catherine, but we have a hard stop at 430pm East Coast time. So try to get your questions in early. Let's try to get up to the 650 early so I don't have to bug you enough to have to can extend the show beyond the hour and a half. I've got a I've got a Zoom meeting I have to jump on to at 430 that I've committed to. We've already got three questions. Well, two questions of 50 bucks each. And one question at 50 something. ZAR I'm not sure what currency that is. Oh, South African Rand. Okay, South African Rand. So not worth that much. But none anymore. So I see lots of super chats. People have submitted them early. I appreciate that. I think there's a bunch of I think there's a bunch of super chat already in. We're ready at 200 bucks, which is very nice. We've got 450 to go. Given given the constraints of time today, it'd be great if we had some people who put in some big dollars like the $50 questions, we get there a lot earlier. Oh, Bonnie, I can't wait to answer your question. You got Yeah, I'm eager to do it now. But I have to get to the topic. But Bonnie asked how was the opera? It was so good. But anyway, I want to talk about that in a little bit and talk a little bit about God, I was going to do this on the show today. But I forgot. If we have the time, I want to talk a little bit about Aida. I think I have some new original thoughts about Aida. I mean, they're probably not original. Other people probably thought of them. But they're probably interesting in the context of the time of the time. All right. Let's see. Yeah, so I came across a number of articles, you know, as I've told you before, one of my goals over the next year, over the next two years, as we approach the 2024 election, because it depends on who the Republicans nominate. But my goal over the next few years is to be known as one of the strongest anti right advocates out there. My goal is to expose the right for what it is. My goal is to expose the new right to expose what conservatives have turned into to expose the death of conservatism into what I think is an authoritarian anti founding fathers, anti individual rights, anti American program. And I intend to do a lot of shows on this. I've said so, you know, and I will do more will do what today will be one of them. But we will do more. I want to expose the likes of the the the Catholic Theocrats, the national conservatives, and all the variations of different types of new right that are forming there. I think they are the force. They are the dominant force today on the right. Intellectually, just as didn't predicted, what you're seeing now is deep as m two's coalescing around a religious nationalist agenda, this perfect alignment with everything Leonard Picoff said in dim, the nationalism and the Christianity, which is exactly how he predicted it. And it seems to be coming together. And almost nobody's there's very little reporting going on on it. So I expect to be reporting on it. As I told you, I've got an essay coming out in Skeptic magazine. Skeptic magazine, talking about national conservatism, the danger of national conservatism are coming out. I think it's in December. So as soon as that comes out, I'll let you know. But so one of the threads that I think it's important to understand is the the conservatives themselves saying, we're not conservatives anymore. And I noticed this in the last few weeks, there were a number of articles around esteem, it was brought up in a number of different places. But there was one article that I think kind of summarized the arguments really, really well. And it's in the federalist, the federalist, let me just find the author for you. It's in the federalist website. The federalist has been, you know, pre Trump, the federalist really was a place as its name suggests, which was a place where pro founding fathers, pro classical liberal, you could call them, pro American Revolution, pro American Constitution, Republicans found a voice. This was the place they did a long interview with me before. But you know, maybe early in the Trump administration, there was some really good writers there. There was some very, it was, it was, it was a very, very good, very good publication. And I didn't agree with a lot of it as I don't agree with conservatives, but basically, they were coming at it from what I think is the right perspective or the right attitude for conservatives. But since Trump, basically what this has become, they've completely shifted, moved away from the founding fathers, moved away from any kind of that line of conservatism, moved away from any conception of free markets or liberty, moved away from from the Constitution and Declaration of Rights, and moved towards this territory of populism and territory of the new right of some kind of new conservatism, new ideology for the right, which is far more statist. And I think he's a, this is a senior editor at the federalist. His name is John Daniel Davidson. John Daniel Davidson. This is an article written on October 20th, about 10 days ago, on the federalist website, it's called, we need to stop calling ourselves conservatives. They always should have never called themselves conservatives. But I found the argument fascinating because it's wrong in so many different dimensions about what conservatives were, what conservative, what the problem is today, and where we're heading into the future. The whole thing is just such a mishmash, but it gives you, again, insight into the way people on the right are thinking about politics today. And I think this is really important. I think we need to understand. We need to understand the way the right is thinking about politics and what the right wants to achieve through politics. And Davidson here just lays it out. He tells us exactly what to achieve. And he also tells us his gatti, what they're not interested in by not even talking about it. We'll get to that. So here's Davidson. He says, sometimes have long defined their politics in terms of what they wish to conserve or preserve. True enough individual rights, family values, religious freedom and so on. Conservatives we are told want to preserve the rich traditions and civilization achievement of the past, past past them on the next generation and defend it from the left. Yes, I mean, this is what they want. They have no real philosophical foundation. They have no real way to ground us. They have no real way to defend us at the same time as defending progress as the same time as defending moving forward at the same time as defending the ideas of liberty and growth and progress and and maybe even to some extent a change of understanding of certain aspects of the world around us. No, they want to preserve the past. What about the past? Well, they can choose. Do they want to preserve slavery? No, no, no, nothing. Right? What exactly do they want to preserve about the past? You're called laws, not that. So they want to preserve what they want to preserve. They pick and choose what they want to preserve. The one thing that unite you as always united conservatives is the guiding principle for the preservation is defined by some religious category, some religion and tradition, which tradition they pick and choose based on their currencies in the moment. And indeed, I ran did a video, I think it was 1969, calling conservatives bankrupt, conservatism and obituary for an idea, she called it. I mean, she basically thought conservatives were dead back then. It didn't make any sense. It was a horrible defense of liberty, a horrible defense of capitalism. She predicted conservatives would be an absolute unmitigated disaster that they would fail. And she was right. I mean, they had they had a little uptick of a victory with Reagan. And then since then, it's basically the one disaster after another. And today, today, even on the right, even the right wants to give up on conservatism. Why? Well, Davidson continues to say, quote, in an earlier era, this made sense. There was much to conserve. After all, what? But now he says there's nothing concern. We have to be honest. We failed. Conservatives failed. After all, he says, what have conservatives succeeded in conserving? In my lifetime, they have lost much marriage, as it has been understood for thousands of years, the First Amendment. I'm not exactly sure what's been lost on the First Amendment. If anything, the First Amendment today legally is more protected than at any point in American history. So this is just this is one of those points where in an effort to fight the left, one of the things the right does is make the world out to be much, much, much worse than it actually is. And this is something Republicans are very good at. Donald Trump is very good at. I always campaign if he runs a 2024 will all be about Sodom and Gomorrah. The world is falling apart. There's crime everywhere. People are dying everywhere. The world, you know, the First Amendment is lost. Everything in America is falling apart. We failed state on every aspect, and I'm here to fix that. So he will return to the winning strategy of 2016 that didn't work in 2020 because in 2020 couldn't quite make that argument because he was president, but he can come back to it in 2024 because you'll say Biden did it in the last four years. But the First Amendment, from a legal perspective, happy to be contradicted by any legal scholars out there. But the First Amendment, first amendment, actual freedom of speech, and our freedom of religion, freedom of religion practices, as people understand it, is better protected today than it has ever been, ever been. He continues all the things the conservatives are lost. Any semblance of control over our borders, right, a fundamental distinction between men and women and especially of late, the basic rule of law. Now here does he mean an increase in crime rates? Again, I will remind you as bad as things are today, and in some places they're really bad, they're much, much better than what they were under Reagan and Bush, Bush 1. So 80s and early 90s. So were conservatives then complaining about the disappearance of the basic rule of law and blaming that on the left? See how they, they manipulate, they throw things out, it doesn't matter. Truth, this is the thing. Truth doesn't matter in politics, and it doesn't matter for the left, it's never matter for the left, and it doesn't matter for the right. It may be a never matter for the right. Maybe I'm naive thinking there was a better right once, but it doesn't matter for the right today. It just doesn't matter, it doesn't matter to Trump, but it doesn't matter to any of these new right. What they want to give you a sense right now of, the world is falling apart, conservatives have lost, the most important issues of the day are who can marry whom, the distinction between men and women as articulated by some people, and immigration, and what limitations they might be on speech on private platforms. These are the only issues that matter. Notice there's nothing here about taxes, regulations, tariffs, free trade, entrepreneurship, innovation, technology, we'll get to technology in a minute, nothing about any of those things. Because they don't care. Economics, they don't care. They just don't care. Economic liberty, they don't care. So conservatism has failed. It has failed. It has failed to preserve the things that it claimed they wanted to preserve that were good, to preserve the vision of the family fathers, failed, preserve the concept of individual rights, failed, conserve any semblance of economic freedom, failed. So all the important things they fail, and yes they've also failed on some of these others, from their perspective. Although again, First Amendment's no basic rule of law, somewhat. He says it's too late for conservatives. Conservatives should just give up the title of conservative, the idea of conservatism. Because Western civilization is dying, or on the verge of death. It's just, conservatives will not save it. And I agree with him, conservatives will not save Western civilization. It's too late for you. There's nothing for you to conserve. Indeed, the reason Western civilization is dying is because of you. You, who had the job of conserving it, never knew what it was about, never understood the principles, never understood what individual rights meant, never properly understood the role of government. Try to base it and ground it on the principles of religion, on the principles of the Dark Ages. Try to base and ground it in, ultimately in statism, in tradition, and in religion. You, you conservatives who claim to be the defenders of this country, claim to be the defenders of Americanism, you have indeed failed. You have been a disaster and it's your fault. The left always hated America. Since the 1850 progressives hated America, the progressives came to dominate and you were supposed to be the anti-progressives. You were supposed to be the people who stood up to the progressives. You were supposed to be the people who were going to protect Americanism from the left. And you failed. And you failed because you're conservatives. You failed because of your focus on tradition, on your focus on religion, on your antagonism or unwillingness to defend markets, unwillingness to champion progress, real progress. You progress, you conservatives, you are the enemy of western civilization. The founding fathers were not conservatives. They were radical revolutionaries and that's what's needed. But the right kind of radical revolutionaries because a fear that what we're getting, what we're going to get, are the wrong kind of radical revolutionaries. Listen to this hyperbole. Listen to this just insane kind of way to try. Now I think we, people on the show, understand the sense in which western civilization died. Understand the sense of which the left is destroying America. Understand the sense in which the vision of the founding fathers is being destroyed. But I want to give you a sense of again more of how they think about it. How the way today thinks about these things. Not how we think about it. How they think about it. Here's, here's, here are the things that are so disturbing to the right. Again, not a word of individual rights, not a word about economic liberty. I'm going to read you this paragraph. Quote. To talk in our family values, which we radicals of capitalism never did, is to assume that there are enough Americans able and willing to marry and raise children together for something like family values to matter in the public discourse. Much less in the halls of power. So now, they're trying to convince you that there's just no families out there. That families are gone. Nobody, nobody's getting married and if they're all getting married, they get immediately divorced. So there's no families. We shouldn't even talk about family values because families are gone. That's how much they want you to be scared. He continues. To talk about defending religious freedom, it's the misapprehend that the real risk today is widespread e-religion, which will leave so few religious Americans in coming generations that the government and large corporations will inevitably and easily prosecute them. So what do conservatives, what really makes them afraid? Is their traditional family is falling apart? It's that people are less religious. That's what makes them afraid. That's what why we stand. That's what undermines, that's why they think western civilization is dying and ending. Good riddance to religion and family values? What the hell are those? Family is a good thing. For those of you who choose to have them, who said there has to be one type of family? Is our history of the human race so wonderful, so fantastic, so beautiful, so amazing? Don't we want to preserve it at all costs? Conserve it at all costs? Should we go back to the middle ages? There were lots of families in the middle ages. Is that what's valuable about western civilization? Do they even know what western civilization is? The answer is simple. No, no, no. They think western civilization is the Judeo-Christian tradition. That's it. Whatever the hell that is. Going back to the Old Testament, the Old Testament's pretty brutal, not western at all. Western civilization is the Renaissance, the Enlightenment. Western civilization is the negation of Christianity. Western civilization is the recognition of reason as man's means, of survival, of man's means of knowledge, and the individual as the important moral and political entity. Reason individualism, reason individualism. That in essence is western civilization. All the rest. All right, let's see. Now here's the funny part, right? I think the conservative project has failed because it never had a philosophy because it relies on religion. It relies on faith. It relies on this morphous thing called tradition because it cannot, it cannot defend the founding fathers because it has no philosophy consistent with the founding fathers. It doesn't understand the founding fathers. Indeed, it thinks the founding fathers are crazy because the founding fathers were, you know, men of the Enlightenment. Men of, whoops, one second, the founding fathers were men of reason which these guys can't comprehend. They can't understand. They can't, they can't even get it. But this is not why they think the conservative project has failed. Here's why they think the conservative project has failed. Quote, the conservative project failed because it didn't take into account the revolutionary principle of technology and its intrinsic connection to the tedious of sheer profit. Consumers didn't fail because it didn't recognize how powerful technology was going to get and that it's motivated by profit and how ooh, evil that is. Quote, conservatives, he says, were too obsessed with left-wing revolutionary politics and missed the real threat. Real threat wasn't. Real threat was not left-wing revolutionary politics. The real threat was Silicon Valley. The real threat was progress. The real threat was technology. I mean this is beautiful and missed the real threat which was technological change so swift and powerful it fundamentally reordered society, swept tradition aside, yay, and unleashed a moral relativism that rendered the conservative project obsolete. They really believe this shit and they take themselves seriously. They really think that it's technology that unleashed moral relativism. They don't think it's ideas and they don't think it's the weakness in presenting a morally relativistic view of religion that led to all this. This is so weak. This is so, I mean moral relativism is unleashed because there's nobody to defend objectivity. The only alternative to moral relativism is faith, religion, just believe because she had 10 commandments. God told me this is true. The only alternative to moral relativism as conservatives have presented it is religion. Well religion is barbaric, it's primitive, it's old, it's it's going to die at some point and instead of coming up, instead of advocating for, instead of coalescing around a philosophy to present an alternative to moral relativism, instead of coalescing a lot of philosophy that presents an objective morality grounded in reason, grounded in reality, what do conservatives do? Religion, religion, religion, religion. That's their standard. Right? That's a standard that is dead, it's obsolete, it's gone. And yes, conservative project is obsolete not because of technology but because of religion. We continue quoting, instead of questioning these technologies asking whether they would contribute to human flourishing, conservatives asking whether they contribute to human flourishing, conservatives acquiescent to the inevitability and focused instead of narrow issues. The result is being the transformation of society within the span of one single life human lifespan. They have no, this guy has no concept of history, no concept of the evolution of ideas, no concept of how these things actually happened. One human lifespan, the world has gone to hell. That is such nonsense. And with it, the wholesale destruction, wholesale destruction of our traditions and looming implosion of western civilization, all caused by technology. Not by a lack of ideas, not by inability to defend western civilization because you don't know what it stands for, what it represents, who Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, James Madison, Hamilton actually were. You're the Federalist, you're the Federalist magazine after all. You think you know who these people were, but no, we're not going to defend that tradition. We're just going to defend family values. How many, what were Thomas Jefferson's family values? Well, Alexander Hamilton's. Didn't he have that famous affair? Anyway, so the solution is one one of these new rate advocates claims is to quote, enact a serious program of technological development to build a future that supports human flushing. So what do we need? We need central planners to develop technology that will increase human flushing because we know technology today doesn't. The iPhone, the iPhone, it destroys human flushing. It's just, it's, we need a Steve Jobs of the right to bring out good technology that will actually support. So he says, first thing, Republicans need to stop thinking of themselves as, I mean, no, they need to stop thinking of themselves as conservatives. They need to think of themselves as radicals, restorationalists, and counter-revolutionaries. I'm not sure what exactly they want to restore. Maybe the Middle Ages. We need a revolution, he says. He says, we need a break from the past and forge a new political identity. He says, forget those market-obsessed libertarians. Forget the foreign policy neocons. All that's finished. Donald Trump shaken it all up. I mean, he says the election of Donald Trump in 2016 held it a populist wave and the end of a Republican politics because we knew it and now we are in uncharted waters. Right? And he says, we need to talk. We need to figure out what our agenda should be. I mean, there's some like Sahaba Amari and Glandon Papin and Adrian Vermeer, advocates of a conservatism that is comfortable with big government and in fact sees it as necessary, not only for the common good, but to tame what Amari recently called the private tyranny of world corporations empowered by unrestrained market forces. Conservative Catholics, he argues, should today claim ownership of a pro-worker, even pro-union, I did assure on this, political agenda that once belonged to the left and which produced generations of democratic voting Catholic workers. Indeed, he says, a willingness to embrace government power has been a topic of fruitful debate on the new right in recent years, as it should be. However, uncomfortable traditional small government conservatives might be with Amari's argument, it is more or less true. Need to forget about small government. Need to forget about limited government. We need to start wielding power and we need to start liking it. We need to stop compromising with the left, he says, and we need to use political party to get our way. He writes, conservatives will have to discard outdated and irrelevant notions about small government. The government will have to become in the hands of conservatives an instrument of renewal in American life and in some cases a blunt instrument indeed. You guys aren't afraid of these people? I am. Quote, to stop big tech, for example, will require using antitrust powers to break up the laws of Silicon Valley firms. To stop universities from spreading poisonous ideologies will require state legislatures to starve the republic funds. To stop the disintegration of family might require, this is an interesting one, reversing the travesty of no fault divorce. You shouldn't be allowed to divorce. You have to have fault. No fault divorce combined with generous subsidies, generous subsidies for families with small children. Conservatives need not to shy away from making these arguments because they betrayed some cherished libertarian fantasy about free market to small government. It is time to clear our minds of Kent. C-A-N-T, not K-A-N-T. I wish it was K-A-N-T. That would be an achievement. In other words, he says, will the government power will mean a dramatic expansion of the criminal code? It will not be enough, for example, to reach an accommodation with the abortion regime to agree on reasonable limits on when unborn human life can be snuffed out with impunity. He says, he says, basically abortion now comes the real fight in state houses across the country to outlaw completely the barbaric practice of killing unborn from conception. Now these people are not about viability. These people are not about the third trimester. These people are anti-life. They're anti-life, human life. They want to snuff out. They want to snuff out the life of the mother. They want to snuff out the choices that you make. They want to destroy your capacity to control your life, your body. They want to outlaw completely all abortions for any reason from conception. This is the goal. This is what they want. Nothing should have this will satisfy them. He says, Republicans need to prepare themselves. If they want to stay in office, it better have an answer ready when they are asked what reasonable limits to abortion restrictions would they would support? The answer is none. Conservatives need to get comfortable saying and reply to people like French, like French, David French. The drag queen story hour should be outlawed. The parents who take their kids to drag shows should be arrested and charged with child abuse. The doctors who perform so-called gender-affirming interventions should be thrown in prison and have their medical license revoked and the teachers who expose their children, their students to sexually explosive material should not just be fired but be criminally prosecuted, criminally prosecuted for talking about sex. This is what it's come to. This is what hatred of the left has done to the mind of conservatives. They want to criminalize your behavior. He doesn't mention here that what he'd really like to criminalize is gay sex. What he'd really like to criminalize is much, I believe, of our secular lives. How is he going to do this, by the way? I find this interesting. The majority of Americans don't agree with him. How is he going to wield this power? Well, he's going to have to wield it using authoritarian measures. He's going to have to wield it using quote, non-democratic measures. He's going to have to wield it by being an authoritarian because the American people don't believe in this. The American people believe there should be some limits to abortion but not total. American people don't think the parents who take their kids to drag shows should be arrested and charged with child abuse. We still think that parents are responsible. I mean, I think that parents that force their kids to go to church every Sunday. Anyway, I won't go there. To those who worry, he says, I'm continuing to quote, to those who worry the power corrupts and that once the right ceases power, it too will be corrupted. As far as I can tell, it really is. They certainly have a point. If conservatives manage to save the country and rebuild our institutions, will they ever relinquish power and go away of syncynitis? Notice relinquish power. So he's saying they should relinquish power. They shouldn't, should not relinquish power until they have saved the country and built, rebuilt institutions. In other words, he's saying it doesn't matter what the voters want. It doesn't matter what the elections say. We need to save the country and rebuild our institutions. Therefore, we need to hold on to power as long as that takes. And only when we are done with that will we consider relinquishing power. He says it is a fair question and we should attend to it with care after we've won the war. All right, there you have it, guys. That is the right. That is the right in its most naked, obvious, anti-individual rights, anti-individualism, anti-progress, anti-liberty, anti-freedom, you know, pure form. It's right there in front of you. You want to continue supporting the right? Based on what? Your fantasy that maybe they'll do the right thing once they get into power? Your delusion that they are better than the left? You want to give the right the power to decide when you're going, when they're going to send parents to jail because of what parents, how parents interact with their kids, what parents tell their kids, what shows parents tell, take their shows to what movies they allow them to watch. Will there be a a religious police, a children's police screening what shows we show our children off of Netflix? Well, the fact that I told my kids about sex when they asked where babies came from, when they were very young, I assume that will be illegal now. What's the limit? What movies okay? What movies are not? Is Bambi too pro environmentalism? Is Dumbo too pro taking acid? For those of you who remember seen from Dumbo, where Dumbo takes acid. Where? Once you give government that kind of power? Once you give anybody left or right that kind of power to send parents to jail for what? For what we tell our kids? For our own views? This is, this is the nightmare, the real nightmare we're all living through. A left that wants to force our kids to go to drag queen show library reading. And a right that wants to put parents in prison for sending their kids. Imagine what this right, this new right, wants to do to drag queens. Imagine what they want to do to anybody who's a little different. Anybody who's not a abiding Christian. To anybody who doesn't believe in their traditional values. To anybody who, I don't know, doesn't want to form a family the way they view family. To anybody who doesn't want to worship at the feet of Jesus Christ on a cross. That great time to be talking about Iran with these theocrats. Theocrats on the verge of taking over the political right in America. I mean, not anymore the kind of moral majority, soft moral majority we just care about abortion and a couple of other things. Now, now they want power to control you and control the way you educate your kids and control everything about your life, just like the left, no difference. And indeed, what is worse here? Who's going to be more efficient at it? All right. Now I'm pissed off. All right. I'm going to move to the to the super chats because I think I've said what I have to say. That will make a great rant. That was a good rant. Amen. Amen came in with 500 bucks. He just blew away a goal for the super chat. Thank you, Amen. Amazing. He says thank you again for covering the Iranian demonstration. I think this is the second time ominous come in with a max super chat contribution of $500. Really appreciate it. Amen. And I, you know, it's the money is great. But what I really am touched by the fact that you guys care about what's going on in Iran, you care about me speaking out about it. That, you know, I'm hoping that I am having an impact out there and I'm hoping this becomes more of an issue at least among the people speaking here. Listening here. All right. Let's see. We got a bunch. So we're going to do these questions pretty quickly because as I said, I've had a hard stop at 430 East Coast time. So we're going to do the $50 questions first. And then we'll see how much time. And then the $20 and then we'll see how much time we have for the smaller denominations. Any questions I don't get to today, I will move on to next time. Let's see. $50. Here we go. Hop up. No. First is James. James, when I read the comments section under KW's anti-semitic, Kanye West anti-semitic video, 99% of the comments expressing excitement and agreement with this lunatic. We live in very dangerous times. All this hate and irrationality is just beneath the surface. It really is. I don't know if you saw Kyrie Irving, I think today or yesterday, basically supported anti-semitic documentary that's out that claims that the Jews are controlling the world. Then the New World Order run by Jews and he's supporting that. So it seems like within the elements in society across the board, people who you typically associate with left, right, middle that are developing hatred of Jews. And it is interesting and something to watch because hatred of Jews is often a precursor of authoritarianism. It often is a precursor of violence and often a precursor of the end. So we saw that with Kanye West. And I don't know if you saw, if you're still struggling with the Kanye West question, I encourage you to watch the Lex Fiend when interviewed. I didn't watch the whole thing, but I watched about half. And Lex really pushes him on the anti-semitism. Lex is of course Jewish. And Kanye West will now back down. Basically, he believes, justifiably or not, probably not, that he's been screwed over by Jewish music producers. He's been screwed over by Jewish business managers. And this now means the Jews are XYZ. The Jews are a problem. And Lex really tries to get him to stop. And he keeps re-upping. He keeps doubling down. And you know, Lex is super calm, much calmer than I would be. And he really gives him every opportunity possible to talk it back, to reconsider, to rethink. He gives him some outs, talk about this particular person, not generalized to the whole group. He goes on and on and on and on. And it doesn't matter. Kanye keeps repeating the anti-semitic stuff. Irving did the same thing in the news conference, I think it's today or yesterday. I never liked Kairi. And I'm glad he's not a Celtic anymore. But there is. There's a massive amount of, what do you call it, irrationality, mysticism. Just think over the conspiracy theories. Think about Alex Jones is still popular. He's going to have to pay a billion dollar fine. But he's still popular. And he's still spouting just horrific lies and conspiracy theories. And people take him seriously. People love the guy. Love the guy. Even after the verdict. I wouldn't be surprised if somebody gave him a billion dollars just to keep him around so he could pay the fine. God, these questions that come in from my supporters, from the YouTube subscribers, I don't know how to keep them. Mark says, hypothetical question. If you are a senior executive company about to be bought by an anti-semitic, not just an anti-semitic, completely irrational, mystical nutcase like Kanye is, would you go on TV and express optimism about the purchase? No, I think that's insane. I mean really insane. Kanye is nuts. How can you express any kind of optimism about Kanye buying by anything, being anybody, doing anything? It's just horrible. I mean, watch the Lex Friedman interview. The guy is not connected to reality. He's not connected to anything in reality. Harper Campbell. Even though tyrants believe economic freedom threatens their power, they know completely abolishing the freedom would also threaten their power. Once populations are used to wealth and comfort, taking that away completely leads to certain rebellion. I think that's right. Well, maybe that's right. I'm not sure that's completely right. I'm trying to think of counter examples. I mean, well, I mean, I'll think of it. But this is the problem. What they will do is they can't keep their hands off the economy and they don't believe they should and they convince themselves that they are able to centrally manage. So they will impose more and more and more and more constraints on the economy. They won't kill it all at once, but they will kill it slowly of seeing this exceeds China. He says he keeps saying he's an advocate for markets. He believes in markets. He wants markets to thrive, but he keeps controlling more and more and more. And as he controls more and more and more, economic freedom in China is limited more and more and more. And the Chinese economy will decline and quality of life standard of living will decline with it slowly. So they will kill the golden goose that not the golden goose. They will kill the goose that lays the golden egg. They will do it. But they might not do it all at once. They might do it slowly over time. Hamad asks, I'm optimistic that soon objectives will reach many more rational people who are sick of the craziness of the right and left. We need more inspiring art to show everyone how our worldview does lead to prosperity as opposed to dystopia in movies. I agree. I agree. And it's up to you guys out there to produce that art. I'm not an artist. Can't do it. You guys need to produce the art and better be good art. First and foremost, it has to be good art. And only then can it take out a philosophical values position that's consistent with objectives and it has to be good art because otherwise it'll be ridiculed and it'll do us more harm than good. Okay. Amen. Again, thank you. I just came by my... Okay. Shazba. Shazba asks, if heaven is so great, why did God bother to create the earth in the first place? Especially since a human spends 85 years on earth and 900 trillion years in heaven. Is that why people are against life extension so that they can get to heaven sooner? Shazba is trying to lighten the mood. Okay. This is your problem, Shazba. And it's the same problem Joe had. It's the same problem all of you, I don't know, secularists who are trying to explain God. Who the hell do you think you are? You don't know and I don't know. And nobody knows what God wants. God is so much bigger and more important and has thoughts and ideas that you couldn't even comprehend. He's beyond quantum mechanics and all of this. You have no sense of what God wants and what... You know, who are you even to ask the question? I mean, this is what he tells Joe, right? Who are you to ask the question? You're nothing. I created you. Me being God, right? I created you. So, yeah. No, is that why people are against life extension? No, it's against life extension because they're against life. They hate life. This is the point. I mean, in a sense, you're right that Christianity is fundamentally anti-life. It's pro-heaven, which is anti-life. All right, let's do some $20 questions. Daniel, our understanding of Native American history has grown over the years. In Randstein, Native American history was limited. Natives did believe in private property, sold leases, and so on. You think Rand's views would have changed? I mean, to the extent that that's true, I think they would have. I don't know enough about this new history. I don't know enough about private property. Some Indians probably had private property. Some maybe. Some certainly did not. Some of them were no man. Some of them were warriors. I think, and I don't want to speak for Iran, and I don't want to speak for what Iran would have thought, but I think a more nuanced view of American Indians and the place they had and the way we relate it to them is appropriate. And we need to think about that carefully. And you can't rewrite history. And she is right in the sense that when civilization confronts barbarism, civilization will win, and that's not going to be pleasant for the barbarians. But it's also true that there were better Indians. It's also true that the American government reneged on deals and treaties and contracts. It's also true that we sometimes went out there and just annihilated people for no good reason to achieve no actual end other than annihilating them. Certainly that's what they did in some countries like in Argentina. They basically wiped out the native population. They're no natives in Argentina because they just killed them all. So yes, we need to really think that through, but we need to think it through in a full context, fully understanding the situation, fully understanding not all the tribes are the same, but also the dearest government did bad things and judging them as such. I think we need to be objective about the history. Adam asks, my old beefs with conservatives, anti-life extension, check. Anti-immigration, check. Anti-abortion, check. Anti-fina of new media, check. What is added by recent changes? Well, what's really been added is the mainstream of the most radical of these positions. So, you know, anti-life extension, I think there were a lot of conservatives who would have thought, no, that's wrong. I think anti-immigration, many conservatives would claim that they're pro, like the more traditional conservatives, William Apocles, that pro a lot of legal immigration. This is a new level of anti-immigration that we've reached. Anti-abortion, again, even some of their Daniel French, Daniel French is being anti-abortion. A, believes it should be left a democratic process to determine, but B, thinks some limits, some cases they should be abortion. An anti-freedom new media, same thing, some are better than others. What's new is the absolutism, the radicalism, the uncompromising nature of it. And what's really new about it, much more so than the past, what's really new, is the willingness to contemplate using government in a way that I think past conservatives wouldn't have used it, using it in an authoritarian way, using it in spite of what people want, using it, I mean, even somebody like Scalia, the conservative justice, believed, I think, detrimental, I think wrongly, but believed in, you know, some form of, you know, what the people wanted, some form of democracy. These people want to do away with any respect for what people want, what people think. They want to cram it down their throats, and they're willing for the first time to say, we're willing to be authoritarian, we're willing to forget the courts, we'll overturn them, well, I mean, these guys would stack the courts just like the left would, but these guys would do it. We're willing to ignore the courts, we're willing to ignore the people, we're willing to ignore the voters. We are going to cram these ideas down people's throats, we are going to legislate from the top. This is for the common good. And people don't know what's good for them, and we're going to show them what's good for them, and we're going to take no quarter, quarter. That's, I think, what's new. It's the political manifestation of these ideas. Before it was all Ronald Reagan was all talk about anti-abortion. Now they're willing to do it, they're willing to pass a law to abolish all abortions everywhere under all means, rape, incest, they don't care, all abortions are banned, and they're willing to pass a law tomorrow, and they believe they have, they can attain the power to do that. That's new, and they're confident, but it's really the authoritarian nature of what they're arguing. Justin says off topic question, sex question, Atlas Fontanet spoilers. I can wrap my head around Francisco and Reardon accepting Dagny choosing gold, and presumably all remaining friends. I don't know why you have to wrap your head around that. That seems pretty, I mean, I don't know. I don't see how you, I don't see how they don't. But how can Rourke be okay with Dominique sleeping with Keating Weynand? Well, I mean, he's not okay with it. He's disappointed. He's maybe a little upset, but he knows she's going to wake up. She knows she's going to come around. You see, having sex with somebody is not this irreversible stain that is put on you. Sex is not... Oh, you had sex with that person? You're done. Finished. We'll never have anything to do with you. Sex is one aspect of human life. It's among many. I mean, I consider Dominique destroying the statues worse than her sleeping with Keating and Weynand. I consider her trying to destroy Rourke. How does he live with the fact that she's trying to destroy him, and you still love her? So, I don't see sex that way as this all or nothing or the special part of human life, human existence, where you're stained in some way, or you can never be forgiven for what you've done. Rourke sees Dagny struggling with very basic fundamental issues about her view of a malevolent universe. And she's struggling, and that struggling manifests herself in her destroying sculptures. That's... That struggling manifests herself in her fighting... In spite of loving Rourke, fighting him off. It manifests herself in her trying to destroy Rourke, the person she loves the most in the world. It manifests herself in her sleeping with Keating and Weynand. It manifests herself in a lot of different ways. But Rourke is confident, because he's confident in her, that she will overcome and come to the right conclusion at the end of this struggle, at the end of this battle that's occurring inside her, her psychological battle. And that she will realize that she's wrong, wrong to have tried to destroy him, wrong to have, in a sense, beaten herself down, in destroying beauty around her, wrong in sleeping with Keating and Weynand. But all these are wrong. It's not like, oh, she slept with somebody, that's out. That is a Christian, that's still remnants of a Christian view of sex. And I don't have that view of sex. And I Nrand obviously didn't have that view of sex in her novels, and I'll reflect that view of sex. I mean, so, I mean, if I were, I mean, if I were weirded, I would have thanked the stars that had, thanked whatever that had the opportunity to sleep with Dagny. But now that she's with Gold, she's with Gold. And Gold is this amazing person I want to be friends with. And Dagny was this amazing person. Yes, we had sex. And it's hard to become friends after you have sex with somebody. But hey, don't really want to cut her off, because she's this amazing person. And she's with this guy who's an amazing person. How could I not want to be friends with them? And yeah, it, I mean, I don't, I don't see that you can't have a friendship with an ex. You can have a friendship with an ex. Just because you slept with them doesn't mean you can't have a friendly relationship after you sleep with them. So again, I think you're still suffering from a Christian view of sex, which turns it into this, I don't know, this, this both something, you know, above and beyond any other human experience. And in a sense it is, in a sense of pleasure. But it's just one more human experience, an important one, significant one, spiritually important, physically important, more enjoyable, maybe more pleasurable than any other. But that's what it is. It's an experience. It's not couched in this, you know, whole I mean, whole Christianity. And I don't know if this is in the origins, but at least the way the church has developed, has built a whole corpus of thinking around the, around virtue that is relates to just sex to be a virtuous woman. What does that even mean? It doesn't mean be productive and be rational. It means don't have sex until you're married. And virtue is associated with a particular view of sex. That's how important Christianity placed placed on sex. Now, I think secular culture diminishes sex too much, right? It eradicates sex too much, makes it into a completely physical activity. We need to have the right balance and the right perspective on it. It's super important as a human experience. And you have to gauge that experience and put it in the appropriate context. There's a lot to be said about all that. And I'm not your expert on it. William asks, Yoram, thank you for the platform. Thank you for your platform, Yoram. We're conservatives are not a dying breed. We conservatives, I think he said, are not a dying breed. Just, just H told to be kind while we tolerate new social groups. We want law to go to rest so that magic of man flourishes. But new groups are trying law so we wait. William the black. Yeah, I don't know. I don't completely understand what you're saying. But again, I think conservatism is an empty idea. It's an empty idea intellectually. It has no content. And to the extent that its content is religion. It's a primitive idea. It's not the future. It's the past. Seth, a common argument against CEO compensation is that they can't possibly work hard enough to earn what they get paid. What do you, what do people in the C sweet do day to day? And why did they get paid so much? Oh, God, I need a swig of this is what I promise. I think again, this could be a whole show. This could be several shows. We could interview CEOs about this. But your compensation is not determined by how hard you work. I eat how many calories you expend on the work that you do, how many hours you put in. Although CEOs probably put more hours into their job than maybe any other profession out there. All the CEOs, I know, were basically worked seven days a week 24 seven because they were always on call. And in terms of actual work in the office, they were they were often the CEOs often the last person to leave the office the first person to come to the office and often were reachable on the phone over the weekends and holidays and everything else. But what does CEOs do? Fundamentally, what CEOs do is that they organize the capital and labor within a company. And they project into the future what the company's goals, missions, purposes, products are going to be given the constraints of capital and labor given the given the needs for capital and labor. And of course, all within the context of maintaining profitability. So they on a day to day basis decide what the long term strategy is, whether what they're doing today is relevant to the long term strategy, whether what they're doing today is the best that they could be doing in order to maximize the profitability from an economic sense of the business, whether they're deploying the right people for the right jobs, whether they're deploying the right resources capital machinery for the right purpose for the right job for the right place, whether they should move all production to China to China or Mexico or keep it in the US and move it to Iceland or whatever, whether to grow right now and raise capital and grow like crazy or hold on because of the future is uncertain what products in the future to go into and what products that they're making today stop making because then they might not be profitable anymore might not be profitable in the future. Every question that has to do with how the business is run, how resources are allocated, how production happens and what to produce and how to produce is ultimately the CEO's job, including often when some of those decisions are lower in the chain to find people and choose people and hire people who can confidently and effectively make their appropriate decisions at the appropriate time so that those things happen. But if you think about some businesses, they might have 100,000 employees, you might have 10,000 employees. What are these employees doing? That's the responsibility of the CEO. Are they doing it well now? Responsibility of the CEO is what they're doing today, going to set them up to do even better in the future. Responsibility of the CEO. So everything the company does and the company is massively complex. Think about the complexity of the company and all of this is the CEO's responsibility. It has to deal with regulators, politicians. It has to deal with financial markets. It's a big business, has to deal with Wall Street and its investors and its board of directors and its owners, investors of its owners. It has to deal with pressure groups, want this or want that, environmentalists, whatever. But they have to deal with unions sometimes. Employees in all cases. This is beyond all the planning that I talked about before. I can't think of a more complex job that requires greater skill and greater dexterity and greater thought and greater effort and that has achieved more than being a businessman, being a CEO of a business. A successful one anyway. All right. Thanks, that's a good question and maybe I'll do a whole show on that. Okay, Colts. Something that makes me sad is I know conservatives that still genuinely care about free markets and they've been genuinely duped into thinking Trump is one of them. I want to tell them the truth but they won't listen. Yeah, I know. You see, but Trump is you see, but Trump is not one of these other ideologues. Trump is a nothing. Trump doesn't believe in anything. Trump is an empty vessel into which all the frustrations and the anger and the demands of his voters but also these conservative intellectuals go into. He is a complete and utter total pragmatist. That's what gives these people even more power is the fact that he will do what they tell him, what the Steve Bannon's of the world tell him. I warned you of the danger of Steve Bannon but Steve Bannon now is a kid, is a nothing as compared to much more powerful, much more well-established, many, many more numerous intellectuals that have risen up to take Steve Bannon's banner of nationalist, statist, so-called conservatism and drive a stake in individual liberty. Steve Bannon always hated individual liberty and these new intellectuals are there to supply the intellectual firepower that I think don't think Bannon has. They have it and they have it in spades and they are hundreds of them now, hundreds of them and people are getting PhDs, more people are getting PhDs under these people. These are people at universities, these are people who are influential, these are people who are changing the world for the worse. They are competing with the left in terms of their control over the universities. I mean their control over the little part of the universities is not controlled by the left. There's a battle going on between the more traditional conservatives and these new conservatives to control that. All right. Well, it says trick or treat. I always prefer treats to tricks. All right, Liam says, thanks for being a great thinker, not easy to come across in this world. I appreciate that. Thanks, Liam. Michael says this can't as big in America as he is in Europe. Among intellectuals, certainly less in terms of the population partially because America's population is less intellectual than Europe's. Europe's is more intellectual, therefore Kant has more influence. Why does nihilism manifest in different forms? Because there are many ways in which falsehood manifests itself. There's just not one way. You know, it's completely subjective. It's completely, you know, it can express itself in a million. Truth has one form, but falsehood has many, many forms. I don't see why not. I guess I don't see what stops it from manifesting in very different forms. There's just no one way. Whoa, I've got six minutes. James says, I think the Santas would beat Biden and Biden would be Trump again. But Trump would beat the Santas in the primary. I think that's right. I think all of that is right. Okay, Bonnie asked, how is the opera? The opera was fabulous. I saw Iida by Verdi at the Madrid Opera House last night. It was amazing production. The singers were excellent. It was just beautifully done when you do a traditional presentation, both a little bit of originality, some screens, great visuals, great setting, real drama. I mean, this was one of the greatest operas ever written. There's not a moment almost of just dull music. The music is constantly beautiful and amazing. The drama, the story is set off from the first aria. You know, one of the most beautiful arias in opera is sung by the tenor Sesta Iida right at the beginning. It sets up the whole plot and it's an interesting story in the sense that, and I'll just say this, and there's a lot more I can say about this, but we'll have to leave that for another time. And the rest of your questions are probably going to have to wait until next time. But here's what it sets up. It sets up something very similar to Mr. Sunshine. It sets up a conflict between patriotism and love. A conflict between patriotism and individualism. Love represents individualism. Love is something you do as an individual. You love an individual. Love is fundamentally individualistic. And what it sets up, the opera sets up in the story is the conflict between individualistic love and patriotism, commitment to the state, commitment to collectivism, to your people, to your countryside, to your country, to whatever. And it does so, I think, really, really well. And if you think about it, and I'll end with this, because again, I've got, there's a lot to say about this, and I think it's really interesting. But you think about when this opera was written. It's written in the middle of the 19th century. It's written at the time where two things are on the rise. Two phenomenons are on the rise, and I think they're in conflict. The one is nationalism. There are nationalistic wars, small wars, revolutions going on all over Europe to establish nationalism, your country, and country becomes a center. Hegel determines that country is the closest you'll get to God, right? It's the one. It's the thing. And the individual is nothing. That's nationalism, on the rise in Europe, middle of the 19th century. And at the same time, on the rise is romantic love, or more accurately, on the rise is individualism, where one of its manifestations, most importantly, is romantic love. And these two things are rising at the same time. And therefore, there's going to be a conflict. And the conflict might not be evident, but it's in the minds of people. How do we square these things? What's going on? So it's so much makes sense that Verdi is writing the story. Now, he writes it in ancient, it's in ancient Greece, but it makes so much sense that this is a story on the mind. Now, often, I think that stories in operas are stupid, are really, really dumb. I mean, they're always very, very simple. And Aida is no exception. It's a very, very simple story. But the stories are very, very simple. But they're not dumb. They're not dumb if you understand the context in which they were written. They're not dumb if you understand the conflicts, the challenges, the questions that people were asking themselves about identity, about, you know, aristocrat versus simple person, about nation versus romantic love, individualism versus that. These are the questions on people's minds in the 18th and 19th century where operas were written. And they create these simple little gems of stories to present this conflict. And they write the most beautiful music. I mean, I was thinking during the opera Kanye West. Kanye West is a musician and this is music. They're not the same category people. Rapp and Aida are not in the same category. I don't know. It was so beautiful. It was so well done. Every time I go to opera, I'm like blown away because it's got all these elements. So I'll have to do a show on opera. All right, guys. I will do a show on opera. But opera is an amazing art form because it's, I know nobody will watch it. It's one of those shows I'll have to do just for me and for the five people who care about opera and my viewership. But it's just such an amazing art form because it combines music, singing, theater, and all the aspects of theater acting, set design, all of that together in this amazing art form. It's the most, it's the most complex art form. Three movies that there was. All right, I have to run. I said I was going to run at 4.30 and I have to run. I will get to, including John's, unfortunately, I would have to get to all your questions next show. I will answer the questions. I apologize for this. There will be a show next week. I do go to Puerto Rico tomorrow, but I won't be able to do a show probably until I get to New York. So probably Thursday. So I'm traveling again. I get back to New York and the next day I travel to, I get back to Puerto Rico on Monday and I get on a plane on Tuesday to New York. And I maybe on Wednesday, I'll try to do shows Wednesday, Thursday from New York. Thanks everybody. And then suddenly from Puerto Rico Saturday and Sunday. But that's a long time for now. I'll try to get them, but I will save these questions and I will get to them next time. Thanks everybody. Have a great rest of your day.