 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Book Show. All right, everybody. Welcome to your own book show on this Saturday night. Look, I am back. Back in Puerto Rico. Back in Puerto Rico for the next six weeks. A lot of shows in the next, oh, Jonathan haven't seen Jonathan in a long time. He's bringing back the tradition of being the first super chatter on the Iran Book Show. Thank you, Jonathan. Really, really appreciate it. It's good to see you. So yes, back for the next six weeks. That means a lot of Iran Book Shows. Means lots of the daily news roundups. It means a lot of things. So it's going to be fun. Hopefully, you guys will stay tuned and keep following what we do here. I think we got a lot to talk about today. We're going to talk about two topics. We'll talk about the Twitter files that were released yesterday by Matt Taibi. I think I'm pronouncing his name right. Maybe not. You'll correct me. Matt Taibi and Elon Musk. And then I think we should talk about anti-Semitism. Talk about it more broadly. Kanye has really brought anti-Semitism into the mainstream. Maybe we should talk about what it is and where it comes from and everything else. Anyway, we have Katharine on the chat today. Katharine is responsible for getting us to the Target on the Super Chat. The Target is $650. So don't forget to use the Super Chat both to support the show if you want to support the show and to ask a question. And you can do it at $2 or $0.99. Some people do. You can do it all the way up to, I think, $500 as the $4.99, I think is the limit. So please use the Super Chat feature to support the show. And yeah, encourage me to do all these shows that I'm about to do. Of course, those of you who would like to support the show on a monthly basis, you can do so in uronbrookshow.com slash support. Patreon, subscribe star, or locals. It's really, really going to be important for us to get those numbers and number of subscribers up as we go to the new year, December is a month where a lot of people think about what they want to do, what they want to give to, what they want to support over the next year. Please consider supporting the Uron Book Show value for value, assuming you're listening. Otherwise, you wouldn't be hearing this, that you're getting some value out of this. Please support the show. All right, let's start with a Coke. Thank you, sirs. Thank you for the free control. My pleasure. I'm enjoying it. I think everybody else is too. You said something in the chat about Peacuff tweeting. Peacuff is an account on Twitter, but he's never actually tweeted. He had people who tweeted for him. So whatever tweets are there from people who managed the social media account, not from Leonard Peacuff, he's never done social media. All right, that was just an aside. Let's see. We want to talk about Twitter files. There was something else I was going to say. I was going to cover before we got to that, but I forgot. So we'll have to cover it tomorrow, which is fine. There's plenty of shows for us to cover different things that are happening in the world. So let's jump in with the Twitter files. Twitter files from Twitter that Elon Musk released to the journalist Matt Taibi, who then released those files on Twitter. So a number of angles to the story. One is that this breaking news on Twitter, so instead of an article, instead of a sub-stack, instead of the New York Times, the Washington Post, instead of somewhere the Atlantic, I don't know, wherever Matt Taibi usually publishes, Elon Musk told him he could have exclusive access to these files if he published his article, if you will. It's not really an article, but it's some thoughts on these files on Twitter. So Twitter had the breaking news yesterday. Mel, thank you for the support. So Elon Musk, Elon, you know, talked this up quite a bit on Twitter, so there was a lot of anticipation for this. And it came out yesterday. These are files of internal conversations, internal emails within Twitter that happened around the Hunter Biden laptop story just before, about 20 days, I guess, or a month before the 2020 elections. And, you know, so this is about kind of what Twitter was thinking, doing, acting on during this period, so that I think that is of interest. And we're going to go over some of these tweets and try to figure out what they mean, what they represent, what they say before that. Because I think there's still a lot of confusion around what it means to censor, what the First Amendment means, and what free speech means. Free speech is at least in the political sense, in the sense of the First Amendment. And so I want to go through all that quickly in the context of what we're talking about, and then try to break down this particular story and what these emails reveal and what they mean. So, you know, I can see on Twitter there's a lot of, there's Twittergate is trending right now, Twittergate. So that's how they're referring to all these emails. I will say that anything I say is going to be tentative. It's going to be tentative because there's supposed to be another Twitter files, too, coming out tomorrow. So we'll see if we have to revise anything that I say today based on new information that comes out tomorrow. I don't know, but we will find out. All right, I'm quickly looking for a particular tweet of Elon Musk that I thought I had ready, but I don't think it was, but it isn't. Obviously, let me just quickly see if I can find it. If not, that's fine. We can manage without it. I should have just copy pasted it. Yeah, there we go. So the first amendment protects ability to speak freely, protects the freedom of the press, to write freely, but it protects our ability to speak freely on our own property in a particular context. That is, it does not override the ability of a movie theater to decide what movies it will screen. It does not override the authority of a private lecture hall to decide what lectures will be delivered and what lectures will not. It does not prevent a private organization from deciding which speakers to invite and which speakers not to invite. And either first amendment does not protect you on Twitter. You are on a private platform. Twitter's right to free speech is that it has a right to decide who to have on the platform and who not to have on the platform. Twitter as a private company gets to decide what speech is allowable on the platform, what speech is not allowable on the platform, just like I in my house. Or I as an owner of a movie theater get to decide what speech is allowable and what speech is not allowable on my private property. Platforms, Facebook, Twitter, are private platforms. They're private spaces. So there is no such thing in the political sense of free speech. And again, free speech is a term that I think is used loosely. I typically think of free speech as the right to free speech, a right to free speech that is protected by government. That is something very specific. That means you cannot use coercion to stop me from speaking on my property. So you can't fire bomb my bookstore because I'm selling a book you don't like. You cannot come to my lecture that I have paid in an auditorium and disrupt it to such an extent that that lecture cannot be delivered. You don't add that the government's job is to remove you so that the event can continue. And the government itself cannot, of course, put me in jail for anything that I say. Again, put aside issues of defamation and things like that, we're talking about speech. So it's pretty clear that in a free market where there is a separation between state and economics and the government is not evolved, where the government is not evolved, then private platforms can do whatever they want. They can decide who to have on and who to have not. They can make it completely subjective. They can make it completely random. They can do whatever the hell they want. Like Elon Musk is doing right now. By the way, we'll talk about this in anti-Semitism section, but Kanye put up a kind of a swastika weird swastika looking thing on his Twitter account. Guess what happened? Elon Musk banned him. Elon Musk is now the moderating committee of Twitter. And so he's gone. That's Elon Musk right. He can decide who he has on and who he does not have on. Again, this is Elon Musk's company now. It's a completely private company. But a public company is not a public company. A public company just means that the public has the ability, if it wants, that is, we as individuals have the ability, if we want, to buy shares in the company. It's kind of a shame they called it a public company. So in what context is there an issue with free speech? Is when the government imposes its will on a private company in a particular way? So for example, if the company came to Twitter, if the government came to Twitter and said, we're going to harass you to no end through antitrust and other legislation. We're going to bring you in front of Congress. We're going to really rip you to shreds unless you limit speech in the way we're telling you. Now in a case like that, the corporate, the evil party, the party that is wrong here, is the government. The private company, in a sense, has no choice. So it's never the private company that's censoring you. The censorship is coming from the government. It's using the private company to do it. Ideally, a private company would tell the government to go to hell as it would in a free society. And the government wouldn't have any power over that company. So there would be no repercussions. The problem today is that you really do have repercussions. Now in the context of Twitter, this is kind of obvious. I mean, this is what Elon Musk wrote. And I think his wording is wrong here, but it gets to the core of it. Twitter, acting by itself to suppress free speech, is not a First Amendment violation. Now notice, he's using free speech a little differently here. Here he's saying, I don't know, that anybody can say anything is free speech. But there is no such thing. There's no such thing as free speech in that kind of context. I mean, Twitter, acting by itself to suppress certain speech, not free speech, certain speech, is not a First Amendment violation. True, Elon, absolutely right. Karma, though. But acting under orders from the government to suppress free speech with no judicial review is. Absolutely, and I would even cross out with no judicial review. So acting under orders from the government to suppress free speech is. And the orders can be explicit orders. Take these posts down, take these people off. They can be, we want you to promote this idea, we want you to undermine this other idea. That would be an explicit order. Twitter, you have to do this or else. It could be subtle. It could be, we suggest you do X, Y, Z. And you never know what's gonna happen in Congress next week. You never know what the SEC is gonna look into. So kind of a subtle threat, a good mafia kind of training would get you there. So those two examples, and I'm gonna argue that in a mixed economy, the kind of economy we have today, where the government is in the business of business, that the government is everywhere, that the government controls and regulates everything, there's a sense in which corporations don't really have free speech. Businesses don't really have free speech. I'll give you an example. Do you think, given how involved government is in the oil business, it gives oil companies leases, it determines whether they get tax write offs, it determines whether they get subsidies, they determines all these things. Do you think that CEOs of all companies in the United States, they have the freedom to come out and say exactly what they think about climate change? I'm talking about the big companies with high profiles that are going to be engaging with the government in one way or another. Do you think it would have no consequences? Do you think the government doesn't hold them out against them or wouldn't wag a finger at them and tell them you can't say that? You want that subsidy, you want us to give you the lease on the government land to drill, don't say that. Do you think tech company CEOs can really voice their opinion about American policy vis-a-vis China or Thailand without any repercussions? I mean, certainly we know there are going to be repercussions from China, but do you think there wouldn't be any repercussions from the United States? For example, do you think if there was a CEO in the steel industry who thought that Trump's tariffs on steel were a bad idea, even though he would be a beneficiary of them? Do you think he would be just free to express those ideas and do an interview with the press? Or what about an auto company executive who's cost are gonna rise because of the steel tariffs? Is he free in a sense to go out there and talk freely about how evil steel tariffs are, how many jobs they're gonna lose and how stupid this idea is and how dumb Trump is? I mean, how long before there's a government investigation, how long before Trump calls him up and fires him? How long before the government threatens his business? So sadly, sadly, and this is not a justify Twitter or anybody else, the reality is that as long as you have a mixed economy, as long as you give politicians that power over business, the power over the business's existence, its thriving, if you give government the ability to pick winners and losers, then those companies, the companies that the government is paying attention to at any given point in time, in a sense are now deprived from the right of free speech. And that is a rights violation, but you can't prove it because it's subtle, because it's more of a threat, because it's in the background. So real evil in the world in which we live, the real evil in the world in which we live is the mixed economy. It's the involvement of government with business. It's the intense involvement of government with business. And once you have a mixed economy, it's not only your economic rights that are going to suffer, but it's your free speech rights as well. All your rights will suffer one way or another, one way or another, all your rights will suffer. So cronyism, the mixed economy ultimately, and look, cronyism is everywhere. It's a system we have. It's not like three companies are crony and five companies are not, everybody's a crony because everybody's, in some extent or another, the government is involved with them. I mean, our tax code is written in a way that favors some over other, some investments over other investments, some industries over other industries. It tariffs every aspect of economy. Layers, government favors and government penalties. All right, so that I think is an important point. The first important point is that our freedom of speech is already in jeopardy and being violated by the very existence of a mixed economy. So let's see what happens specifically at Twitter. And if you remember, the New York Post, New York Post, which is considered kind of a right wing publication, published a story of the laptop and that story was, in a sense, banned on Twitter. They actually deactivated for a short period of time the New York Post's account. They prevented people from sharing it. Even when it was later reinstalled on Twitter and the New York Post was reinstalled, they made sure to suppress the story and for the story not to be shared extensively across social media. Of course, people like Trump administration would argue that the fact that the Hunter Biden laptop story didn't make more of the news. I mean, in addition to this, the mainstream media, New York Times, Washington Post, and others ignored the story completely, even though it was certainly a legitimate story, even though it was a story that was relevant to the election, they ignored it. Now, I happen to think it wouldn't have changed the election result, because I don't think the election was about Biden. I think the election was about Trump. But it reflects the fact that there was basically a cover-up of this story by the left-leaning media and Twitter participated in this. Now, you can tell, say that the New York Times, the Washington Post, are bad newspapers. You can say that they're bad journalists. You can say that they are no longer, they're betraying their tradition as journalism, their tradition as newspapers of printing all the news that's worth printing, that you need to know about, because they're skipping stories that don't fit their political agenda. But you can't argue that they censor this. They're not a government body. Now, if they were threatened into censoring it, if Biden called them up and said, look, if you publish this story, when I become president, I will make sure that you go out of existence, right? As by the way, a Trump did on many occasions when he was upset with the Washington Post and threatened Bezos with all kinds of things in an attempt to try to get the Washington Post to change its coverage and to change the stories and to change what he was done. So one of the presidents, maybe the president most antagonistic to the First Amendment ever, and the president who mastered their ability that existed in a mixed economy to put pressure, try to put pressure, is Donald Trump. Certainly, Florida and Nick mentions the Santas, and Disney is certainly a violation of the First Amendment. It's a government body penalizing a corporation for point of view that it has. And I've covered this story. Don't even get me started. It's clearly a violation of the First Amendment. It's clearly a political leader going after a particular company because they don't like what that company represents intellectually or politically. Those are clear-cut violations and Trump didn't follow through with his threats, but the threats themselves are really, really, really bad, right? Really, really, really bad. One of the reasons I despise Trump so much was because he was so clearly antagonistic to the First Amendment, was so clearly willing, even with the limited power he had, to go after journalists to threaten Jeff Bezos because Jeff Bezos owned both Amazon and Washington Post. If you don't get the Washington Post in order, I'm gonna come after Amazon. That is a horrific abuse of power and way too little was made of it even by the leftist mainstream press that hated Trump. That's what they should have. And one of the reasons I think they didn't make a big deal out of it is because they know that at the end of the day, in a mixed economy, it's always gonna be like this. It's always gonna be like this. And all Trump was is more explicit, was more explicit about it, but everybody doesn't. And indeed, if you read the Matt Taibi release yesterday, one of the first things that struck me, first of all, it just, it was nothing in what was released that was surprising in my view, if you've read it. It was nothing in what was released that was really new, especially new. And it was nothing, yeah, I mean, that's the key. I mean, one of the first things that Matt Taibi says, he's read all these files, he's read all the email communications, a long history, not just about Hunter Biden, but kind of the history of Twitter and its moderating policies, moderation policies. And he writes, both parties had access to these tools, these tools of letting Twitter know when they found objectionable tweets and asked them to do something about it. He writes, both parties had access to these tools. For instance, in 2020, requesting both Trump White House and the Biden campaign were received and honored and honored. So the Trump administration, Trump was president, Trump had the power of government behind him. Arguably, Trump was the one asking for censorship. They would point out tweets, they would point out people that they didn't think should be allowed to be on the platform. There were whatever reason they thought should be knocked off and they were honored. That is what Twitter did what they asked them to. Now, we don't have the concrete cases, I wish they'd reported exactly what examples, what are the examples of these national security examples, are these, what political examples are they? This is 2020, so these COVID examples, what are these examples of? That would give us a lot more, a lot more to go off of in terms of what was actually happening. Biden campaign was doing the same thing. And Matt Abbey says, however, this system wasn't balanced. It was based on contacts because Twitter was and is overwhelmingly stacked like people of one political orientation. There were more channels, more ways to complain open to the left, Democrats in other words, than the right. So again, nothing new here. Twitter's people who work at Twitter are leftists. They tend to be Democrats, they're almost all Democrats. And they had, the Biden campaign had more channels in, they knew more people, they were in the same circles. Matt goes on to say, the resulting slant in content moderation decisions is visible in the documents. You're about to read, however, it's also the assessment of multiple comment at high level executives. So what happened? So yes, so people from government are asking Twitter to do stuff and it sounds like Twitter often agreed, not good. Again, who do we blame? We blame government. They have the gun, they have the force. It might be just an implicit gun. It might not be fully loaded. It might not be pointing at the forehead yet. So it is, it is government that is stepping outside its boundaries. And we know for now revelations and many other articles that really since 9-11 government has been more and more engaged and more and more interested in and more and more engaged in working with social media. Social media, of course, came later but Google and other companies in terms of content moderation that initially was national security and then you give a government a task and it's gonna grow and grow and grow and grow and what used to be national security becomes all kinds of things. Suddenly all kinds of things become national security. All kinds of content, anti-national security. All right, let's see. So what transpires from these files is that when the West End post story hit, Twitter was committed to suppressing it. It was committed to suppressing it, I think, for two reasons. One, I think there was a genuine fear that it wasn't a real story, that this was misinformation, that this was a Russian bot, that this was something like that or this was hacked. I think there was some reasonable belief that that was the case. Coupled with a real ideological agenda. And you can see in the emails going back and forth between different people at Twitter that there was real confusion and real, they didn't know what to do exactly and they didn't know how to justify it, but they went ahead, they suppressed the information, they went ahead and did it and they kept talking, well, it's because it's probably hacked and we'll use that as an excuse. And the interesting thing is that people inside Twitter, not so much on the legal team or on the content moderation team but more on the communication team that are saying, really people, are you sure, do we have any evidence that it's hacked? Do we have any evidence that there's a problem? Why are we doing this? And what you see is real confusion about what they should do and how they should address it and how they should communicate and how she should tell the world about it and what exactly they should do to the story and how to suppress it and all of that. And that's going on among themselves. Another indication that they didn't actually know exactly what they were doing and that they were afraid of what they were doing and they were worried about it and that they were kind of, it's almost like a decision was made early on and then they were just covering their asses, is the fact that the CEO of Twitter at the time, the founder of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, was not really appraised of the situation until it was way too late. That is all these communication going back and forth and nobody's telling Jack because they're afraid of what Jack will say. They don't want to tell Jack because they're worried that their decisions were bad. It seems, reading these, that there's a lot of confusion and upset and decisions are being made by a few people in senior positions but not everybody's on board. As somebody says, Matt TB quotes, they just freelanced it, is how one former employee characterized the decision. Hacking was the excuse but within a few hours pretty much everyone realized that wasn't going to hold but no one had the guts to reverse it. It's like you get on a path and you need balls to admit your mistakes sometimes. And of course Jack would have done it but, and Matt goes, you can see the confusion in the following lengthy exchange which ends up with Gad and former trust and safety chief, Joel Roth and Combs official Trenton Kennedy writes, quote, I'm struggling to understand the policy basis for making this, for marking this as unsafe. See, he's not getting, says real confusion because this is, I mean, they don't know what they're doing. And the problem is that if you give some people the ability to moderate content, who are these people? How good are they? What are their ideas? What's their perspective on speech on a forum like this? Do they have the best interests of the company? Do they have the best interest? Do they know what the CEO wants? They know what Cheville does once? What is, what is driving their decisions? It, and our different parts of the company have different criteria pushing for different things. Roosevelt, thank you, I really appreciate the support. And then, funnily enough, at some point a Democratic congresswoman, so, Ro Khanna, k-h-a-n-n-a reaches out to Twitter and says, look guys, I don't know what you guys are doing, but you're gonna get a backlash here. This is not good. You should stop doing this, right? This is a Democrat saying, not good to suppress the story. And you know, Twitter replies, oh, we're looking into it, hacking, whatever, nonsense, right? But the congressman pursues this, right? Now, again, the congressman, Ro, is confused about the First Amendment as well. So, I mean, just a confusion. There's so many few people who understand what rights are and how rights are violated, who violates rights. I mean, that's one of the really sad things about all of this. Ro does recognize that there's a real balance here and what do they keep on and what do they keep off? But in the case of this particular story, he's saying, this is not a good idea, guys, stop this. Later on in another context, this is a few days later, I guess. Let me see when was this, if they have dates on these things. Not everything's dated in the end, because this is just a tweet thing, it's not easy to follow exactly what's happening and what they're doing. They need to put dates on all these. But on October 15th, there is, on the other hand, something from, you know, somebody did a quick survey of congresswomen, nine Republicans and three Democrats, staffers, and, you know, and they, you know, they were saying, if you do this or you don't do this, a blood bath, a blood bath, you can expect a blood bath at the congressional hearings that are coming up. Again, but it's just kind of staffers, nine Republicans, three Democrats, they're not even the House members, they're not really politicians. Is this really a violation of free speech rights? Are they really putting, they're trying to put pressure through staffers, does that count, doesn't it count mixed economy again? Why are they hearings? So this kind of stuff, sadly, is inevitable. This kind of stuff, because this kind of stuff, because government has such control over private companies. Was there censorship here? It's hard to tell. But these government officials should have never intervened. Should Twitter have suppressed the story from the New York Post? No. It had a right to do it. It was within its rights to do it. Should it have done it? Probably not. Not if it wanted a reputation of being fair. Not if it wanted to be more people to the platform. Not if it wanted to have a actual platform where there's open debate about a variety of issues. Then you don't do stuff like that. So we'll see if there's more evidence of real pressure from the government in the Post tomorrow. But so far, I don't see anything new here. I don't think anything exciting, anything we didn't know. Government is way too involved in these things. It was way too involved with COVID, so-called misinformation with Facebook and Twitter. It's way too involved in quote, so-called national security issues. It's basically way too involved in any of this stuff. Government should silence itself. It should not be involved at all. You know what the media, social platforms, social media report or don't report who they ban or who they don't ban. These are private businesses, it's private property. Stay off, keep your hands off. I was gonna use the F word there. All right, so it's always been my view, still my view, I'm still waiting for the devastating information, but it is, there's no question, no question that government is way too engaged in these kind of content decisions and they need to back off. And by the way, that is who we should be complaining about. Not the social media companies or governments, from Trump to Biden to all of their underlings to Congress itself. All right, let me quickly scan this to see if there's anything about this. Not there, not there. I'm just looking to see if there's a lot of anti-Semitism, Nazi stuff. Let's see. All right, so we're still, Catherine, you gotta do your job. We're still way behind on the Super Chat numbers, so please consider asking questions, $20 above questions would be ideal. Anybody can do $50 or $100 would be fantastic. We've got 140 people watching live. Please don't forget to like the show before you leave and please don't forget to support the show before you leave if you want to, if you think it's good. If you get value from it, sorry. If you get value, value for value. All right, let's talk about anti-Semitism. So, you know, there's not a lot to say about anti-Semitism. I mean, there is a lot to say about anti-Semitism. I could do a three hour show on anti-Semitism, so we'll see how long I go here. But let me first say that anti-Semitism is just one more form of collectivism. It is just one more form of tribalism. It is one more form of not treating people as individuals. It is one more form of conspiracy theory, of irrational, completely irrational, nonsensical conspiracy theories. It is one of the ugliest of all the forms of collectivism, racism, to the extent Jews are race, but tribalism and conspiracy theorists, the worst conspiracy theories in history, have been, have accused Jews of doing the worst and most unspeakable things. They still do. Anti-Semitism is alive and well, and it's alive and well all over the world, but in particular, I think it is rising in the West. It is after, I think, decades of being suppressed, primarily because of the obvious evil of the Holocaust. It is now coming back as tribalism will broadly makes it come back, as collectivism will broadly makes it come back in the West. You're seeing an increase in anti-Semitism. It's not a surprising in Europe, where some of it at least is being driven by the increase in Muslim population, and the Islamism deriving from that Muslim population. But where it is really shocking is in the United States of America, but let's remember that anti-Semitism was quite prevalent in the beginning of the century. I mean, Jews were excluded from places like, or there were quotas on Jews, or places like Harvard and Yale for a while, they were excluded, and then there were quotas, just like there are today on Asians in these places. We'll get to the causes of anti-Semitism, and I just wanna say a minute what it is. I mean, anti-Semitism is basically the idea that Jews are bad, they're evil, they are a part of some kind of satanic, they're influenced by Satan, they're part of a big war between God and Satan, with Jews representing Satan. It is the accusation that Jews control the world, but it's basically the lumping together of all Jews, and the assignment of some evil to all Jews, to the whole category of people who are Jewish. Category of people are Jewish, either self-described as Jews, as some people are, or genetically Jewish, that has come from a Jewish heritage. That is that Hitler didn't stop and ask you, do you consider yourself a Jew? He basically said, was your mother a Jew, was your grandmother a Jew? It was third generations from now, was somebody a Jew in your family, and that defined you as a Jew. What is a Jew is a question that not even the Israeli government can decide on. It's not something, I mean, it's arguing about, it's not even, we'll get to Jews arguing in a minute. It's not even something that the Supreme Court in Israel can decide on. They're a constant argument, they're constant debates about what constitutes a Jew or not. In Israel, it's important, because in Israel, Jews have priority in terms of immigration into Israel, any Jew can immigrate into Israel. So it is, it's not clear, a Jew can be somebody who holds a Jewish religion. A Jew is somebody who's defined by the fact that his mother was Jewish. You can take it back as long as you want. A Jew can be defined as somebody who grew up with Jewish traditions and exists within a Jewish community. A Jew can be somebody who checks his genes and finds a lineage back to Judaism, but back to a Jewish heritage. But it's from an individualistic perspective, it's other than the religious definition, other than the religious definition, that is a Jew is somebody who practiced Judaism. Jew is somebody who believes in the Old Testament and the Jewish God. That is what a Jew is. But all the other definitions are geared towards genes and race, but it can be geared toward culture. So in my view, somebody who's Jewish is somebody who embraces and lives either the Jewish religion or his Jewish culture and is immersed in that Jewish culture. So it could be culture, it could be religion. I don't place much anything on genes. Rand, I knew Rand who was born to Jewish parents, said that she only considered herself Jewish under one circumstance. She considered herself Jewish when facing anti-Semitism. So in the context of anti-Semitism, in the context of standing up to anti-Semitism, she would consider herself Jewish. But since she was not immersed in a Jewish culture, since she did not obviously practice the Jewish religion, she did not consider herself a Jew in her day-to-day life and neither do I, right? I don't consider myself a Jew or anything else, any belonging to any kind of tribe. I consider myself belonging to a nationality, in a sense, identifying as a citizen of Israel and a citizen of the United States, primarily the United States, because that is my chosen citizenship. So I consider myself an individual. I don't consider myself a Jewish American, I consider myself an American. I do come from a Jewish culture, I do come from a Jewish background. That's not an anti-concept, there's nothing anti-here. It's a mushy concept. And there are lots of concepts to a mushy, not every concept because the people dealing with it, epistemologically mushy, there are concepts that apply to mushyness. It's belonging to the tribal group, that's what it is. What defines that tribal group? Whatever they decide defines a tribal group. I mean, to say that a mushy concept means nothing is just not true. It means something mushy. So, you know, I'll try to think of other mushy concepts, but it is a reflection of the culture from which you came. It's not hard, it's not hard. It's not hard, it's not hard. And it's not about the DNA. It's not about the DNA at all. In Israel, they define Jews based on DNA. Basically, right? So, they don't define Jews by any other measure, but I don't define it that way. I don't care about what your DNA is. But some people are very Jewish because they live within a Jewish culture and they express that culture. A hatred of somebody because he's Jewish is anti-Semitism. A hatred of the culture of Jews because it's Jewish is anti-Semitism. A hatred of Israel because it's a land of Jews is anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism today in the United States is all over the place. It is dominated on the left and it is reflected in life primarily as a hatred of Israel. But as we can see in the last few days, there is a really last few years, there is a dominant anti-Semitic streak on the right or significant, I don't know how dominant it is, a significant anti-Semitism on the right as well. Anti-Semitism, as you know, has a very long history. It goes back to the idea that the Jews betrayed Jesus and therefore should be persecuted even though it might be that a Jew betrayed Jesus, the Jews did not betray Jesus. But it's exactly that taking individual's actions and collectivizing it that constitutes anti-Semitism, racism, collectivism, tribalism. You know, in the dark and middle ages, there were stories of Jews kidnapping, murdering Christian babies and drinking their blood during certain high holidays. And I agree that ethnicity is an anti-concept and I think race is an anti-concept. But there is such thing as culture and there is such thing as groups that are united by a particular culture. The French have a culture. It's not just that they live in France, you can meet a French person living in America and he's French because he has a certain culture, he speaks a certain language, he has a certain attitude that is French that comes from the culture. Ethnicity is absolutely an anti-concept. It doesn't really mean anything. So does race, doesn't mean anything. Culture means something. And groups of people have culture. And the Jews have a culture. Like it, hate it, but they have a culture. And you watch somebody, I can tell if somebody, often I can tell if somebody is Jewish or not, based on how they talk, the kind of jokes they have. But I don't care what other people think. I mean, crypto speak wants to argue with me about, I mean, it doesn't matter, I'm telling you what I think. The fact that the whole world defines everything based on ethno, DNA, racist, garbage is the whole world is racist. But there are cultures and they're not subjective. You can objectively define, you know, a French culture, a German culture, an English culture. You won't mistake an English culture for something else. And you can define a Jewish culture. And you can define, to some extent, American culture. American culture is particularly diverse, but you can define it. That's not subjective. All right. What was I saying? So anti-Semitism goes back a very long time, as I said. The stories about blood in those days, Jews were basically people who believed in Judaism. That is, it was very easy to identify Jews, not as an ethnicity, but as a religion. They were Christians and they were Jews. They weren't even really countries in the dark and middle ages. They were Christians and Jews and pagans. And Jews were particularly hated. They were always hated. They had been hated from the beginning of Christianity. And they hated, for a number of reasons, they hated because they're different. It's easy to blame those who are different whenever something goes wrong. It's easy to blame the Jews when there's a plague. It's easy to blame the Jews when there's an economic disaster. It's easy to blame the Jews when there's a war. Jews have always been, have always been hated by the dominant culture, by the dominant religious, religious and national groups in any particular area. And this is true of Western Europe. It's true of Eastern Europe. It's true all over Europe. And Jews, as a consequence of that, also they were hated for those who were, they were also hated for a reason I developed in my course on the morality of finance. They were also hated because they were the money lenders. They were hated because they made money off of money. They were hated because they were committing a murder sin and yet got away with it. They were hated because they were bankers. Bankers are to this day hated whether the Jewish or not. They were hated because they were successful, because they were rich, because they were prosperous. Jews were hated for 2,000 years. They've been hated. They've been slaughtered. They've been slaughtered by the British. You know, just think of the massacre in York. They've been slaughtered by the Eastern European. Think of the Russian pogroms. The Poles didn't particularly like Jews. Later, early on they did. One of the reasons Poland has so many Jews is that Eastern Europe was much friendlier to Jews for a period than was Western Europe. Many Jews immigrated to Eastern Europe, including to Russia and to Poland, but they all turned against the Jews as the Ukrainians. So Jews have been beaten down for 2,000 years. They've been slaughtered. They've been murdered. They've been evicted. They've been thrown out of countries. History is important. And Jews, like it or not, are being one of the great victims of history. In England, for 200 years, there were no Jews because they were basically thrown out of the country. It was illegal to be Jewish, to practice Judaism. In England, why? Because they were money lenders. Because they were different. Because the country fell into the spell of anti-Semitic stories of all kinds of conspiracy stories about the Jews doing horrible things. In Spain and in Portugal, there was an inquisition. And during that inquisition, the Jews were persecuted. They were put in trial. And they were killed, slaughtered in huge numbers and ultimately thrown out. The Jews had to leave the entire Iberian Peninsula. Many of them going to southeastern Europe, to even the Ottoman Empire, to Northern Africa, to Amsterdam. Many Jews left the Iberian Peninsula and went to Amsterdam. So, you know, Jews again are being persecuted. I don't have to tell you about World War II and what happened in World War II. Well, maybe I do. Maybe people don't know. But I assume you do. These are just simple facts of history. It's not, and it's not, this is not hard to discover. It's not hard to find out. But one of the things that's happened over the last 100, 200 years, really, is that as societies have opened up, as property ownership has become open, as governments have stopped discriminating, as banking has become legal and perceived as more moral than it had, Jews have also become unbelievably successful. They have become successful, exceptionally successful in banking. They have become exceptionally successful in a variety of different professions, from medicine to law to entertainment. In every intellectual field out there, you will find Jews dramatically overrepresented. People who call themselves Jews, dramatically overrepresented. Whether it's in academia, whether it's in law, whether it is, yeah, I mean, entertainment. I mean, Hollywood was founded by Jews. So they have had unbelievable success. If you look at Nobel Prize winners, I mean, I don't have the numbers in front of me, but the proportion of Jews who have won Nobel Prizes is just, it's hard to comprehend how such a tiny people, what are they, I don't know, 16 million Jews in the world today, maybe, and they would, you know, have achieved so much. Them, you know, highly represented in pretty much every intellectual movement, from Marxism to Socialism to Neoconservatism to Objectivism. People who are raised Jewish in a Jewish culture, in a Jewish household, are dramatically overrepresented in Objectivism, particularly among the intellectuals. And of course, one of the things that success creates is it breeds envy, it breeds resentment, it breeds hatred. So people see Jews successful, and they resent them and they hate them, particularly losers, the biggest anti-Semites in the world or the dominant anti-Semites in the world are the people who are losers, who have not been successful, who have not achieved anything, who resent the fact that other people have. And what you see is at times of uncertainty, times of trouble, times of challenge, people turn against the other. They blame the other for their problems. So it's not just that they're different, although it was just that they're different, but the fact is that if you go way back in history, it wasn't that the Jews were particularly successful. Although it is a culture that focuses on learning. They are the people of the book. They do focus on reading and learning and studying, and they care about the intellect. That is a culture, it's a cultural phenomena. The Jews care about the intellect. And when things are problematic, when things are troublesome, people need a scapegoat. And Trump understood this better than anybody, because when he ran for president, and I've said this a million times, I'll say it again, I mean he had the formula down, right? The world, America is under attack, it's in awful shape, it's falling apart, it's a disaster. It's not your fault, it's their fault. It's the fault of the Chinese and the Mexicans and the elites. Not yours, it's somebody else's. Now in the past, he would have said, it's the fault of the Jews. And what's the solution? Me, I will solve your problem, I'll take care of the Chinese, I'll take care of the Mexicans, I'll take care of the elites, I'll drain the swamp. So we always look for the other to blame when things are going to hell, or when things are perceived to be going to hell, because they're not going to hell in this case. And a convenient other throughout history has been the Jew. Jews have been, have been the scapegoat. They have been what we take it out on. We kill them, we slaughter them, or we just tell nasty stories about them. Why? Because they're successful and they're different, and we need to blame somebody, because things are not going well. We need to blame somebody. And again, for generations, not for generations, for centuries, well, there is something unique about Jews. Two things unique about Jews. One is that they're different. Well, three things. One is that they're different. Two, they've always been the ones that we get after. Three, they're very successful. There's somebody to go after. You're not just going after a bunch of losers. You're going after people who seem, because of their success, to be able to control the world. I mean, the whole idea is that the Jews control the world, that the Jews are behind every conspiracy theory, that the Jews are pulling all the strings, that the Jews control Hollywood, and the Jews control the media, and the Jews control fill-in-the-blank, because they're successful. They appear like they're in control. So it is a complete, complete make-belief, like all irrational conspiracy theories. It has no basis in reality and no facts. And as tribalism rises, we look for the tribe that is most likely to be behind all our problems. And the tribe that is most likely behind all those problems is right in front of us. Jews, whether they are a tribe or not, is irrelevant. We make them into a tribe. We define them as a tribe. We, I'm talking about we, not me, not you maybe, although some of you in the chat clearly, but the anti-Semites. Some people who are successful admire it. Very few, by the way, ultimately. Very few. I talk about this a lot in my lectures. I do not admire it. Again, we need an excuse for why we're failing. And refuse. There's no basis for anti-Semitism. There's no rational reason for anti-Semitism. It is a complete and utter irrational position to hold. It is a complete and utter, given the history of anti-Semitism, evil position to hold. The first thing is being a decent anti-Semite. An anti-Semite is racist scum. An anti-Semite is evil, given history, given the facts. I don't care what Kanye's mental condition is. He obviously is in a state where he can travel, he can walk around, he can take care of himself to some extent. I mean, it's an evil statement to say there's some good in Hitler. It's an evil statement to say there's some good in the Nazis. Now, maybe you could argue he's so mentally sick that he's not in control of his own mind. Fine, but the Buddha proof is on him after he said it. The only conclusion one can come to is that Kanye is an evil bastard. The fact that he hangs out with somebody like Nick Fuentes, who has been an anti-Semite for years now, is explicit about it on his show, denies the Holocaust. I mean, why would you associate, why would anybody associate with an evil person like that? Milo, who has now become, has returned. I remember what a horrible human being he was in 2015, 16. Now he's even more despicable from what I've seen. I mean, it's amazing to see people in this chat who are pretending to be rational, pretending to be thoughtful, and who are just plain unabashed, tribalist, anti-Semitic, irrational scum. And this is what has been, I think, truly scary, since I never encountered real anti-Semitism in the United States. I did in 1979 when I hitchhiked around to U.S., but I never really encountered it when I came back until really 2015, 2016, when I did some shows on the alt-right, and the stuff that they responded with was some of the most, the vilest, most horrific anti-Semitic garbage that I've ever seen. No, Milo was horrible. He was a disgusting human being. All the way back to 2015, 16, I did shows on him. You can find it. But a big part of what the alt-right is is anti-Semitic. A big part of what the alt-right is is hatred. It's focused on hatred. You can be a Jewish anti-Semit. You can certainly do a half Jewish anti-Semit. That's not hard. Anti-Semitism is not about what your genes are. It's not about what culture you come from. It's about your attitude. So, the fact that Alex Jones would have counted you on, the fact that Donald Trump would have Nick Fuentes in his house, and you can say Trump didn't know who Nick Fuentes was. Well, he hasn't apologized for having him. His handlers certainly knew who Nick Fuentes was. There's no way somebody entered and had dinner with Donald Trump without Donald Trump's handlers knowing who that person was. There's no way they didn't do the research. There's no way they just let him in by accident. There's no way they didn't know who Milo was. They knew exactly what they were doing. So, for Donald Trump to have dinner with three anti-Semite racist, nasty human beings. I mean, that should disqualify him from the presidency. I don't think it will, but it should. And I mean, the idea that in the 21st century, there's still people who are apologetic or apologizing for anti-Semitism, apologizing for, as Kanye West did, for Hitler and for the Nazis. It's just hard to believe. There are other neo-Nazis out there. You expect them to be there to be some neo-Nazis out there in the world. But the idea that people who are supposedly, you know, regular people, supposedly people, members of civilization, support this kind of garbage, support this kind of crap, that there are members out there that are so unthinking that they just buy into the stupid conspiracy theories. And of course, what are the conspiracy theories? Jews control the world? Really? I mean, how could that even happen? You get five Jews together, you're going to get, they're not going to agree on anything. Look at Israeli politics. And yet, they somehow control the whole world? It's bizarre. The people here who like Nick Fuentes, why are you on my channel? I guess to troll me. I get it. You know, Nick Fuentes, for those of you who don't know who he is, is one of the creepiest, most disgusting, most evil public faces out there. I won't call him an intellectual because I don't think he is. The public faces out there, commentators out there. Truly horrible and disgusting. And yet, he has a following. He has a huge following. Huge following. I think saying, for instance, a loser is way too weak. He's much worse than a loser. His followers are losers. He's much worse than a loser. And anybody who, you know, you get, I'm sure that somebody who is Jewish might have done something bad to you at some point in life. To turn that into hatred of Jews is irrational and stupid and evil and immoral and anti-Semitic. I mean, the conspiracy theories are silly and stupid and ridiculous. And the generalizations people do are simply, you know, unthinking, irrational, and tribal and collectivist. And the rise of anti-Semitism is one of the signs of cultural decline. And I think we live in a time of cultural decline where the attacks on Jews are exactly that. A sign of a culture in decline. All right, let's see. I'm looking for relevant. I know there's some relevant. Andrew Trager says, Ben Shapiro hires Candace Owen. Owen aids Kanye's radicalism to Trumpism and exposure to the alt-rights and nick-for-enters. Shapiro has aided in the growing the power of two anti-Semites, one his personal enemy, fair or unfair judgment. Yeah, I mean, I think that's fair. I think that Candace Owen is just a horrible human being. I mean, she's black and she's conservative. That's what puts her in. But she's terrible on the issues. She's not a thinker. She can't think for herself. She is a mouthpiece for other people's ideas. I've never really seen her say anything interesting and original. And she is anti-capitalist, anti-liberty, anti-freedom, anti-farthing fathers, anti-this country. And for Ben Shapiro to hire her and to promote her and to encourage her, you know, he might have made a mistake. He's all making mistakes. But there's a price for those mistakes. There's a price for those mistakes. What's my favorite portrayal of a Nazi in movie of TV? I certainly think that the Commandat in Stephen Spielberg's what's Stephen Spielberg's Holocaust movie called Somebody Help Me Out. It was list. I thought it was a really effective portrayal of a Nazi because, you know, it was Ralph Fiennes acted. Because it was a, it was a, his evil manifested itself in his, in the randomness. In the fact that he had, he didn't care. One Iota for human life, Jewish life. The fact that he took out his rifle every day and shot somebody at random. The fact that he understood that the thing that would demoralize and destroy the spirit of the Jewish people more than anything else was, you know, was the uncertainty, was the cruelty associated with not having fixed rules. That anybody could crush them at any point from anywhere no matter what they did. And it was, it was an excellent portrayal of evil, of real evil and what evil represents. Evil is that anything goes. So I thought that was the best portrayal of, of evil. Ralph Fiennes in Chindler's List. You know, a lot of you are putting out there, a lot of the, a lot of you guys are putting out there comedies, you know, there's a sense in which it's not right to make fun of Nazis. I mean, Iron Man talked about this in the romantic manifesto, I think. When she talked about, I think she talked about Ninochka and how she couldn't really enjoy Ninochka because, because communism was so evil. So it wasn't something you made fun of. It's something you fought. But if you had to have a, a, a comic, then I think my favorite would be, to be or not to be. You know, to be or not to be, there's a, there's a Nazi in there who is, who is really funny. But again, I think if you're going to have a real portrayal of a Nazi, it should be somebody who's really deeply, unequivocally evil. Unequivocally evil. What am I trying to do here? Let me just see anything else. Yeah, Michael Sanders says, as economics collapse and the world becomes more and more unstable, history repeats itself, the Nazi propaganda machine is marching. Yes, it is. It's, it's disgusting and horrible and very distressing. And, and, and what's distressing is reading on the chat, people who think of themselves somehow related to objectivism, who buy into that Nazi propaganda. Liam says, do you see a dramatic rise in anti-Semitic violence coming? Will Jews around the world start moving to Israel? Well, they really are. There's a dramatic rise in anti-Semitism over the last 10, 20 years in France. A massive, massive number of French Jews have moved to Israel as a consequence. I think there's anti-Semitism growing all over Europe, and I expect more Jews to move. And I think, I think ultimately as, as civilization declines, as culture declines, as individualism declines, anti-Semitism increases. And, you know, it's, it's, it's not, and as a consequence of that, more Jews will move. It's one of the reasons I think Israel is a legit country, because they need some way to move too. And, yeah, I mean, the reality is the anti-Semites don't care if you define yourself as Jewish or not. I can say all day that I'm not Jewish, the anti-Semites are going to come after me no matter what. They're going to hate me no matter what. Somebody, somebody, I think Frank tried to say no, there's, there's something about non-anti-Semitism, there's Christ, attacks on Christ or something. Really? What are you talking about? Christianity is the majority religion in this country. And to the extent that I attack Christianity, I attack Christianity. You want to critique Judaism? I'll join you in critiquing Judaism all day long. It's not what they're doing. I don't hate Christians because they're Christian. So you're not getting it. Let's see, what else? Harper Gamble says, Trump embases the worst elements of his base and the worst elements of humanity just to close way back into power. Yes, that's the kind of human being he is, a disgusting one. Andrew says, a follow-up, the reason I don't give Shapiro a pass for an individual, he has a lot of privilege of rehiring Owens. She was a rabid Trumpist when he hired her. He has virtues but I think he overlooked her character flaws for influence on money. But I think that's true of all the Trumpists and there are lots of them. There are lots of Trumpists and they absolutely overlooked her trumpism. Trumpism, they overlooked Trumpism in Haiming, but they didn't overlook it, they embraced it. I mean, to say that Shapiro embraced Trumpism. So I'm not sure exactly, you know, I give Shapiro a pass in a sense that I give Shapiro, look, Shapiro hired Candace Owen and she was a rising star in the conservative movement. Everybody thought she was a rising star in the conservative movement. Nobody questioned her. Everybody was a Trumpist, nobody questioned Trumpism. The fact that she then turned out to support anti-Semitism, I don't think you could have predicted that. So I don't give her, I don't blame him for that. Let me just say to Justin. If you like for interest, you're not an objectivist. Let me just say it again. If you like Nick for interest, if you like anything about Nick for interest, if you associate with any of Nick for interest as an idea, you are not an objectivist, you don't know what objectivism is, you don't know how it's applied, you have no concept of it. So don't call yourself an objectivist, please do us a favor, go away, because this isn't your philosophy. This isn't your place. God, anytime a topic like this comes up, anytime a topic like this comes up, it's unbelievable the kind of people who come out of under all kinds of rocks. Michael Sanders do collapse of mixed economies, always end up in concentration camps. Well, we don't have a very long history of mixed economies. It's only been 250 years, 300 years. So I don't think, I don't think, the answer is not yes. But I don't think we know the answer to it. James Taylor says Nick for interest said it's going to go from zero to 60 on the Jews very quickly if they keep doing what they're doing, not sure what they're doing. We're not anti-semitic, we're counter-semitic. All creatures are coming out of the rocks and you are, it looks like you are one of them. Yeah, I mean, I know what Nick for interest says about Jews. Let's see, what other ones? Yeah, Emilio asks, have the Jews been hated for being selfish? Yes, definitely. I mean, Karl Marx has an essay on the Jewish question, which he published. And you can get it online. It's available in which he blames the Jews for being selfish. He blames the Jews for being capitalist. And as capitalists and, you know, as capitalists and self-interested, the self-interested. He actually, Karl Marx says the problem with Christians is that they're too Jewish. And he means the way that they're too selfish and they're too capitalist. And he condemns them. I've got to talk about anti-semitism and anti-capitalism, which I get into all of that. But yes, Jews definitely hated for being relatively speaking, perceived at least to be self-interested and selfish. The fact that you shouldn't play the victim card doesn't mean that sometimes they aren't victims. Really interesting, I think. People don't hate the Jews because they're different. Amish, Amish are different and no one hates them. Well, some people do. People hate Jews because of their massive success in the world, irrationalization of jealousy. Again, they haven't always been successful in the world and yet they've always been hated. They're hated for a variety of reasons. Success being one of them, different being one of them. The story about them killing Christ, another one. And all of that are reasons why people hate them. Usury because of the attitude towards usury. That's another reason people hate Jews because they're associated with usury. Justice says Kanye is not evil because he loves everyone. No, he doesn't love anybody, least of all himself. Kanye doesn't love anybody. Let's see. Hopper Campbell does a lot of anti-semitism. Also stem from the fact that a lot of nihilistic movements have come from intellectuals in the community like communism, feminism, and pornography industry. I don't understand. Are you saying the nihilistic movements have come from Jewish intellectuals? I guess I'm not sure what the question is. Justice says Trump is smart to not alienate voters. Is he? Trump is smart? Is that a legitimate question? Is that a legitimate opening of a sentence? It doesn't strike me as right. Let's see. Hopper Campbell says, I find many people think race realism or racist ideas are actually true. That we need political correctness to climb down on truth to prevent civil unrest and maintain socialism. People have weird ideas about race. They have weird ideas about political correctness. Racism is an evil ideology. Iran wrote extensively about it. About it being an evil ideology, it's the lowest form of tribalism. I think you all know what she thought of tribalism. Race realism is just a form of racism. That's all it is. Let's see. Justice says, is AORI a Zionist organization? No. Let's see. We'll get to that. I answered that already. Hunter Hunter Hunter says, something I've noticed about the anti-Semites I've met is that they all have an irrational bleak view of the world, such as people. They tend to be, they're almost always losers, big time losers. Hunter Hunter is absolutely right. You meet them, they are not going anywhere. They're not doing anything with their lives. They're not achieving anything. They look around and they resent the people who do achieve. They have to find an excuse why they're not achieving. They have to find an excuse why they are losers. And their excuses, illegal immigrants took my job, all the jobs went to China. The Jews did it. The Jews are screwing me. The Jews don't like me. The Jews are using this to take over the world. That's their excuses. It's always the other where the blame for their own faults, for their own losing mentality lies. This is a hatred of the good for being the good targeted at a particular group of people. Self-identified group of people. And that has, of course, a bunch of historical context for why that is. And it's all about hatred. And it's all about, it's no accident that anti-Semitism disappears when tribalism disappears. All right, let's see. All right, let's just take general questions. We got a bunch of them. We are still short on the super chat, which is interesting. I'm surprised, I guess, given how many people are watching. About $230 to go. And, you know, so if you, if anybody out there can do $50 or $100, that would be great. It'll get us to target much quicker. Or if you want to ask a question, please do a $20 question. If that will be great. But let's try to make the goal. This is our first show of December. Let's not disappoint Catherine here on the first show of December. All right, let's do, Len has a question. Both posts in Austin were awesome. Thank you. Interview was elevating two months into subscribing. Thank you for the therapy, for being an objectivist in this world. My pleasure, Len. Thanks for subscribing. Thanks for the support through the super chat. Thanks for following. Michael, seems like Democrats are starting to go harder on the homeless and mentally ill. Both New York and California began involuntary placing mentally ill homeless people in institutions. Are the voters moving to the right? Yeah, I mean, I've been telling you this for a while. I mean, they voted out the district attorney in San Francisco. They voted down people in on the school board. There's no question that the voters do not like the far left. They hate the far left. It doesn't mean they're on the right, but it means they hate the far left. And so therefore the left in order to maintain its power is going to have to clean up its act. It's going to have to move to the center. The more they cater to the far left, the more they will lose elections. Arom says, should I continue a second degree when I already have a decent career despite not knowing what I want to do long term? I just enjoy math science and want to learn more and I'm better at learning in a structured environment. Then yeah, go get a second degree. I mean, if you can afford it and you love doing it, then why not? And it might open up more horizons career-wise. It might accelerate your career. It might move you in a new or different direction career-wise. So absolutely go ahead and get that degree if you love studying so much. Absolutely. By the way, if everybody on the chat right now did a couple of dollars, we would blow through the goal. Just two dollars. If everybody on the chat right now did two dollars, not chat, watching live right now, did two dollars, we would blow through it. Frank, thank you. Frank said, $100 for your productiveness. I appreciate it. Thank you. That cut what we were looking for by half or about half. So another $100 would pretty much put us at the goal. Thank you, Frank. Let's see. Shahzad asks, have you heard the audio version of Atlas Shrugged? So what was your impression of it? I've heard really good things about it. I've not heard it. So I haven't. I read Atlas Shrugged, although maybe next time I will listen to it on audio. So I've not heard it. Can't really comment. Sorry, Shahzad. Thanks for the $30. All right, Hopper Campbell. It is very difficult to debunk something that only exists in another person's imagination. It's actually impossible to debunk it because it's completely arbitrary. Juniper, thank you for the $2. Armin, thank you for the $100, which basically gets us almost there. We're $14 short. So thank you, Armin. Thank you again to Frank for getting us to $16 to the goal. So hopefully we'll blow through it. Still time for more questions. I've got about six or seven running here. Linda, thank you. Really appreciate it. If John Allison became governor of Tennessee, would you move there? Or work in his administration and objectives? Governor might go a lot further than podcasts and OAC. Would it? Is there really an advantage? What's the point of having political power when the people object to what you really stand for? No, podcasts and the OAC are far, far, far more important. And a far, far faster route to changing the culture than having an objective as governor. John Allison wouldn't become governor of Tennessee. If he did, he'd become governor of North Carolina. Would I work for him? Absolutely. But he's not interested, because he, like I, know that the real power does not lie in politics. Politicians are just puppets of the people who elect them. Liam, you're on. You don't seem to be getting any more subscribers, but the subscribers you have are getting more passionate. I think that's probably true, but I'm still trying to figure out why I'm not getting more subscribers. So any help you guys can provide, we surely appreciate it. Michael, if the founders didn't put the First Amendment in there, what would be ARI's strategy? Be for spreading objectivism. Would ARI even exist? Yeah, I think it would exist. I think America's still be a relatively free country. There's no First Amendment in Europe, and yet we are active in Europe. So, yeah, we would definitely be in existence of fighting until they silenced us. I don't think they would silenced us yet, but they will one day, even with the First Amendment. I fear that that will happen. Daniel, thank you for the support. Really appreciate it. Emilio says, were there any positives in enlightened despotism? Well, it depends on what, right? I mean, enlightened despotism was an improvement over unenlightened despotism. But it's still not going to be right, and even the enlightened despots were still despots and behaved like despots. So are there positives only that it's better than unenlightened despots, only that it's better than them, not that it provides any real good? A lot of people, to me, say certain freedoms, and that's good. But again, you can't escape the fact that it was despotism. It's my birthday run another year around our star. Cheers, Daniel says that. Thank you, Daniel. Happy birthday. Happy birthday, Daniel. Upper Campbell, since much of what the left pushes is nonsense, many assume the left's anti-racist crusade must also be nonsense. Well, the form of the left's anti-racist crusade is nonsense. The fact that racism exists is not nonsense. The fact that racism should be combated is not nonsense. But anti-racism, as defined by the left, is worse than nonsense. It's truly an evil ideology. Liam says, could we do a $10,000 super chat goal for New Year's Eve? I can't afford to match it, but maybe one of the way else can. Keep up the consistency. I see you making a difference out there slowly. Liam, you might be preempting me, but I will let you know more about a $10,000 super chat goal for New Year's Eve. It's likely that there will be one. Likely that there will be one. You know, I'm worried that if I announce it now, everybody's going to save their money until New Year's Eve. Nathan, thank you. Really appreciate the support. Caleb, thoughts on Saul's point, the targeted minorities are usually successful in everything but politics. Yes, usually, historically at least, because they're excluded from politics. And I'm trying to think in the United States, you know, Jews are overrepresented in Congress in terms of, but not in the presidency. They're overly representative of the executive branch. So we've had a lot of senior executives in administrations going back 100 plus years who are Jewish. We've had congressmen, we have congressmen today, that more Jews in Congress than you'd expect given the percentage in the population. So I'm not sure it depends what you mean by success in politics. Len asks, is focusing on choice in political suffrage sufficient outside of living your own life as an objectivist in this subjectivist and transist world? I'm not sure what you mean by focusing on choice in political suffrage. What do you mean by that? So you have to explain it to me, because I don't quite get it. I think it's only a matter of time before they turn on other groups as well, very concerning. Yes, but remember, you know, the Nazis threw in a bunch of other groups they turned on as well. But Jews are a very attractive target in the alt-right and to the extent that the alt-right can find some blacks out there who are sympathetic to their anti-Semitism that only strengthens them and they can put aside the hatred of black Americans for a while in order to have a common enemy. But yes, racism, tribalism are clearly on the rise. As tribalism is on the rise, they'll turn on other groups. But Jews have, for whatever reason, some of the reasons we've talked about, they have a special place in the heart of the races. They have a special place in the heart of the nationalists. They have a special place in the heart of the alt-right and beware, because anti-Semitism can grow very fast and can become very powerful among people. All right. Thank you, Ian. Oh, Jeff. Thank you, Jeff. Shame on me for not knowing the true history, but the Bible says Moses challenged Pharaoh by demanding he let his people go. Were they really enslaved in Egypt? As far as I know, yes. As far as I know, Jews were enslaved in Egypt, or the Jewish tribe in those days were for period slaves in Egypt. It's not clear how historically that slavery ended and how they left, but the Old Testament, the Bible tells the story of Moses going to Pharaoh and demanding their freedom, and then God basically punishing Pharaoh for not providing that freedom. And only when God basically kills every Egyptian's firstborn son, does Pharaoh relent and allow the Jews to live, and then he changes his mind and chases them down and tries to slaughter them all. So, as far as I know, the history suggests that the story of Jewish slave in Egypt is a true story. The exodus from Egypt, elements of it, of course, are made up, but it's probably based on something. There's probably some elements of truth to it. Let's see. Yeah, there were a lot of... Yeah, Israel in those days was not... Yeah, I'm not sure what St. Louis is getting to, but anyway, Egyptians enslaved a lot of peoples. They had a lot of slaves, the Jews among them, right? Caleb asked, any thought on the anti-Semitism of Henry Ford? Yeah, I mean, he was clearly an anti-Semitic. He was clearly sympathetic at least for a period with Hitler. He was a proto... He definitely had fascist elements, but he was also an anti-Semite. So, it's sad that such a great industrialist had such a poor character ultimately. It just shows how people can be really split and compartmentalized. Fenn Hoppe, could you address something I sent you in a DM on Twitter? It's about an AI networking, the summon on the mount to be by Rand. I think it's fascinating. Also, have you read The Future's Faster Than You Think? I've not read that book. I plan on talking about chat GPT tomorrow, which is I think the AI who reworked the summon on the mount to be by Ayn Rand. No, it took the summon on the mount and said, this is a question asked of AI, of artificial intelligence. It said, take the summon on the mount and change it so that it was as if it was written by Ayn Rand. And it's actually quite good. It's actually quite good. So, let's talk about chat GPT, the AI tomorrow on the show tomorrow, which will be either at 2 p.m. eastern time or 7 p.m. eastern time. I'll let you know tomorrow. But yeah, this new AI is super amazing. It's super interesting. So, I don't know that much about it, but it just hit kind of all my feeds. It hit in the last couple of days. And it seems pretty amazing. It seems pretty amazing. All right. Thanks everybody. Thanks to all the superchatters. We exceeded our target, which is always amazing. So, thank you. Thank you, Catherine, for cheering everybody on and making sure that they made the goal. We're going to have a lot of goals this December. We're going to have a lot of shows this December. So, you're going to have lots of opportunities to support the Iran Book Show on using superchat. Those of you who don't want to use superchat or can't use superchat or don't watch this live, please consider supporting the show on a monthly basis. www.uranbookshow.com slash support or Patreon or subscribe star. Just look up Iran Book Show on any of those platforms. You can also do it on PayPal. You can also do it on Venmo. On any one of those platforms, you can support the Iran Book Show. All right. I will see you all tomorrow and have a fantastic weekend. And we'll talk tomorrow.