 low radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Book Show. Alright everybody, welcome to Iran Book Show on this Wednesday, October 5th. Thanks for joining me, third show in a row, one more tomorrow, and we'll take a night off. Hopefully you're enjoying this string of Iran Book Shows where I'm back in my studio in Puerto Rico and we are trying to cover everything going on in the world. I thought today we'd take a short break from kind of the just the news-y stuff, although we will be talking about the news in the context of what I want to talk about, and maybe do something a little broader and a little wider. So what motivates me to talk about today American exceptionalism, why so much hatred towards America, why so much hatred towards America from conservatives, from libertarians, why do libertarians hate America so much, or why do some libertarians hate America so much, inspired to talk really about this by Twitter, by a bunch of posts on Twitter, by I guess the Mises Caucus of the libertarian party, and so we're going to talk about that, we're going to talk about is America special, what makes America special, is Russia special, is China special? I'm reading a book about China that is really, really interesting, but is China special, is everybody special? What about Iran? Maybe Iran is special. It is America special, and is it still special? Is it still exceptional? And in the context of the world, in the context of other countries, in the context of the geopolitical whatever, is there anything different about the United States of America or is it just the same as everywhere else? Is there anything that is, you know, are we just one more bad player? One more evil government, evil regime among many, among many. And certainly that seems to be the attitude, actually among libertarians, the attitude seems to be, again, certain libertarians, the attitude seems to be we are worse than anybody else, really. We are the worst of the pack, and we should be condemned for that. So we'll be talking about some of the Twitter stuff that's been going on over the last few days, and discussing that. We'll talk about Russia, we'll talk about China, we'll talk about America, we'll talk about the Middle East. I definitely want to talk about Iran, we'll talk about Iran because exciting things are happening in Iran, or at least, you know, moving things and inspiring things are happening in Iran, and it's interesting how much they are being ignored by both the mainstream media and by the so-called, you know, lovers of liberty. So yeah, that's what we're going to cover today. That's what we're going to try to cover today. Richard, thank you. Richard's already started us off with some $20 questions, so we'll get to those later on. You, too, can participate in the Iran Book Show, set the agenda, set what I talk about by asking questions, and by using the Super Chat to ask questions. I will answer all of them, no matter how much you spend on the question, I will answer them all. Of course, $20 questions get priority, $50 get extra priority, $100 get extra, extra priority, and it goes off from there. So feel free to use any one of those numbers to get there. We usually have a goal of $650 to make it. Catherine Mendes is on the chat here live to try to spur you on and try to get you excited and try to make sure that we reach our goal. Yesterday, she came a little late and we didn't make our goal, so she's got some stuff to make up for Catherine Mendes. 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All right, so let's talk about America because God, I mean, the number of people out there who claim to be pro-America, pro-freedom, the number of people on the right, on what's called the right, whether that is, you know, whether that is the conservative right or whether that is the libertarian right, particularly the paleo-libertarians or the Mises Caucus or however you want to call it, I mean, it just is astounding that whatever there is a challenge on an international scale, whenever some bad actor goes out there in the world and does something horrible, really, I mean, really horrible, whether those actors are Muslims like a 9-11 or whether those actors are Russians like today, I wonder, I wonder what would they would do if the bad actor was China, I don't know. I mean, it's hard to tell exactly what motivates this attitude. So I wonder, you know, I wonder what they would actually do. So, you know, 9-11, let me start with 9-11, 9-11 happened and the immediate response of the Ron Pauls of the world and many of the libertarian anarchist kind of wing of the libertarian movement was, we asked for it. Here is America's fault. We've been intervening in the Middle East forever. We've been interfering in Muslim lives. I mean, they were, these are peaceful people, these are wonderful, friendly people. They are, this is me embellishing a little bit, they just want to live their lives, they have different ideas than us, but who are we to judge other people's ideas? But this portion of the libertarian movement is dedicated to moral and epistemological subjectivism. And, you know, they, the reason they engage in violence, really the only reason they engage in violence against us is because we keep pissing them off. We keep interfering in their business. We put troops in Saudi Arabia. You know, we just, we just, we go to places where we don't belong and we just upset them. And the same is true, this was after 9-11, but the same is true of any Iranian hostility towards the United States. Any Iranian, I mean, the Scott Horton, I think his name is, who is now their guru when it comes to foreign policy. I mean, he is the God of foreign policy for the libertarians. Oh, no, Iran is a peaceful country. They, you know, they're part of the, part of the Judeo-Christian Islamic tradition. They just want to live their lives and we keep interfering and we keep doing this stuff. We, we killed, you know, we didn't kill, we help depose their prime minister in 1950s something. I forget the exact date. And we helped the Shah of Iran come to power. And the Shah of Iran was this brutal guy. He happened to have been secular, but he was a pretty brutal guy. And, and therefore they, the Iranians hate our guts. They hate our guts really because, you know, because of, of American intervention and American interference. I mean, indeed, Ron Paul recently, I mean, over the last few years has been saying that the reason Venezuela is such a basket case, look, Chavez wasn't a bad guy. Maduro is not a bad guy. You know, the fact that the socialists, it's okay that the socialists, it's okay to have socialism over there. There's nothing wrong with socialism. If people choose socialism, who are you to tell them socialism is no good? That is so authoritarian. I mean, it's really authoritarian of you to say freedom is better than slavery. It's authoritarian for you to say capitalism is better than socialism, freedom, free markets are better than anything else. So, I mean, this is, the reason Venezuela is so poor has nothing to do with socialism. Ultimately, it has to do with American sanctions and American interference and American attempts to destabilize the country. I mean, just go and look at Ron Paul's website and you can find all this. I mean, this is Venezuela. So he defends Venezuela, Scott Horton and the rest of them defend Iran. I mean, it is no accident that you hear almost nothing about the amazing girl led girl as in high school and young women in college. I mean, women who are in their 20s and in their teens are rebelling in Iran right now against the mullah. They're taking off their scoffs, they're taking off the hijab and they're declaring. They're demanding, they're demanding the replacement of this regime. They're demanding that the mullahs go away. You would think, you would think that this would be all over the place among libertarians. That this would be, wow, here are young women fighting for their liberty, fighting for their freedom, fighting against oppression. But, you know, my guess is a lot of these people think that this is all, they agree with Khamenei, the supreme leader. This is the regime, people like Scott Horton want to defend. The supreme leader of Iran, they probably agree with this. This is a country that has a supreme leader. They probably agree with the supreme leader of Iran that this is all just an American scheme to undermine legitimate Iranian interests. It's all to undermine Iranian sovereignty. These young girls are just paid agents of the CIA. That's the Iranian line. And I have a feeling that there are people in the United States who support that line, support that line. And of course, you know, so we've covered Venezuela. We've covered Iran. We've covered Saudi Arabia in 9-11. And then, of course, there's Russia. And, you know, this is not Russia's fault. They're just trying to defend themselves. This is all just a provocation of the United States. We have ambitions to establish an empire. Those ambitions entail taking over all of Eastern Europe. And so we have foisted NATO onto Eastern Europe. And as a consequence, the Russians seem, the Russians are defensive because they are convinced that NATO is going to launch a war against them. All that's happening in Ukraine is this is just a self-defense preemptive strike by the Russians in order to protect themselves against evil NATO, which is known to have ambitions for taking over, you know, countries and trying to assimilate them into the American Empire. That's the story. That's the story you hear from conservatives, from Norm Chomsky, from the nutty left, and from the Mises Caucus and the nutty libertarians. This is indeed the story that almost everybody who despises America and despises anything that America does in the world has, it promotes and have embraced. So is there any validity to the story? One of the things that the story relies on, and that really all of this foreign policy nonsense relies on, is the theory of multiculturalism. Multiculturalism as in the leftist theory of multiculturalism. Multiculturalism is the claim that all cultures are equal. There's no difference between America, between Venezuela, between Iran, between Saudi Arabia, between Russia, between al-Qaeda and ISIS. They're all cultures. They're all people making choices. There's no difference between North Korea and South Korea, North Vietnam and South Vietnam. If it's the will of the people, they're all equal. You can't rank culture. You can't approve of some and disapprove of others. And you can't suddenly, God forbid, promote one over the other. This is a theory that has been promoted by the left, but it has advocates on the right, on the subjectivist right. If you hold subjectivism, then who are you or who is anybody, who is anybody to decide what is right or wrong, better, worse, superior, inferior, by what standard? There is no standard the subjectivists would tell us. America, this has violated rights throughout its entire history. You know, the left was emphasized, the left will emphasize slavery, colonialism, and the Jim Crow laws and racism. The right, particularly the libertarian right, will emphasize taxes, they hate the civil war, of course. The right will emphasize the welfare state, particularly, again, the libertarian right. They will emphasize state intervention in the economy, subsidies, bailouts of banks, and on and on and on. And in that, again, the left and right are not that different. And in that sense, it was said, look, America is statist. America, the government uses coercion, uses force against its citizens. So does the Iranian regime. So does the Venezuelan regime. So does the Russian regime. All of them are equal. And indeed, if all of them are equal, then the one we have to suppress, the one we have to put down the most, and this is certainly true of the left. And it turns out now that it's equally true of, I don't know, call it the paleo right or call it whatever kind of right you want, the libertarians and conservatives. What we really need to do is suppress the culture that is most powerful, the culture that is most successful. The culture that is done the most, the better human life. And that is the American culture. That is at any egalitarian view of anything means chopping down the able, chopping down the best, pulling down and knocking down and hating and despising the best. And that is America. Because in order to make all cultures seem equal, in order to make all cultures seem equal, you have to, you have to take the best culture and make it seem really, really bad so that it quits with all the others. So Putin is the same as Biden is the same as the Supreme Leader of Iran is the same as Maduro in Venezuela is the same as whoever. Pink. It's interesting. I haven't seen much about China from these people, although I suspect there's a deep hatred and resentment of China as well. So is it all true? Is America the same? Is America as bad? Is America worse? I just hid Matty Kat from the chat. It's just distracting. It doesn't add any value. He's obnoxious and rude and dishonest and there's just no point. So I hope you guys appreciate the fact that you don't have to read his nonsense anymore. You know, I'm pretty tolerant for these guys, but there's a limit and then yesterday his race of stuff was just disgusting. So anyway, done. He's gone, at least for today. I don't know if hiding the user from the channel is forever just for today. I'm not sure. Yes, good riddance, I think is right. So is America the same as everything? What would you use as the principle to guide this? So, I mean, in my view, and I think you know this, America is the greatest country in human history. America was founded on fundamentally the right principles by which a country should be governed. I am not an anarchist. I believe government is not an necessary evil, but a necessary good. It is necessary for capitalism. There is no such thing as anarcho-capitalism. Capitalism acquires government. It acquires an entity that holds the monopoly over the use of force, over the use of a territory force in protection of property rights. It acquires some monopoly on a particular geographic area that protects property rights. And the reality is that as bad as America is, and as bad as America has been, no other country in human history has come close in protecting individual rights to what America has done. Suddenly, none of the countries that these libertarians seem so eager to defend Russia, Iran, Venezuela. It is interesting why they hate China so much and yet they love all these other countries. Have to think about that. The founding principles of this country are the right founding principles. They were not applied consistently from the beginning. They were not fully understood even by the founders from the beginning, but they are the right principles. The idea of individual rights, the idea of ineliable rights, the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are rights. I mean, I would have added property, but once you get the right to life, property is obvious. And liberty and pursuit of happiness, obviously, in a sense is only one right, which is the right to life, as I ran articulated. So they got it right in the beginning. And as a consequence, in spite of the fact that they were never consistent about it, they never applied it consistently, in spite of the fact that from the beginning, the American government violated rights. This country was the freest country in human history in spite of its racism, in spite of the slavery, in spite of the Jim Crow laws, in spite of taxes, in spite of regulations, in spite of the crazy banking regulations that existed in America really from the beginning. In spite of all of that, there was less of that horror than in other places. And yes, you could argue if it's not perfect, it's evil, but that would be absurd. And if the standard is human life, if the standard is human prosperity, if the standard is human flourishing, God, look what's happened over the last 250 years. And shouldn't we, by that standard, look at those places that have facilitated that flourishing and celebrate those places? And want to make them better, want to improve them, want to recreate what made it possible for them to achieve this flourishing? But fundamentally, shouldn't we be focusing on the things that made it flourish while condemning the things that doesn't, evaluating the country based on both not just based on the bad? And this country, this country has been, in its history, overwhelmingly good. Overwhelmingly good. And as such, should be celebrated. And again, overwhelmingly good, not only when Republicans win power, not only when this party or that party has nothing to do with that. The principles on which it's based were good. And it deviates from them all the time. But the principles are there. So even today, we are not as economically free as we once were. And that is a tragedy. We're not even economically free as we were 30 years ago based on the Economic Freedom Index. And there are countries in the world that are more economically free than the United States. But it's not Russia. And it's not Iran. And it's not Venezuela. So at least in comparison to those countries, we should be celebrating America and condemning them. But Economic Freedom is not the only type of freedom. We have in this country free speech. We're one of the few countries in the world where you really do have free speech. Where your First Amendment rights are protected. They're being chipped away at in all kinds of directions, yes. But still, we don't shut down TV stations we don't like. Although they do want to regulate Twitter and Facebook because they don't like them. We don't put people who say things we don't like in jail as compared to Venezuela, Iran and Russia. We're a bastion of free speech. A bastion of free speech. Not moderately, huge. So, if you're gay, how many countries in the world respect your right to have whatever sexual preference you want? I mean, this is new in America. But in Russia, God, you do not want to be gay in Russia. You do not want to be gay, believe me, in Iran. In Iran, you just get hung. And you probably don't want to be gay in Venezuela or even in China. I mean, our sexual freedoms, now we're backtracking on abortion, which is tragic and horrific and sad and bad. And we should fight it. But overall, our social liberties, if you will, we're probably better protected today than we were 50, 60 years ago. Certainly if you're black or gay or of any kind of minority. So, yeah, America is not perfect. It's far from perfect. And the government in America is doing horrible things, primarily to Americans. And we should condemn it. And we should fight it. And we should educate people about how America can be dramatically better. But we still don't have, we don't have political prisoners in America. We don't kill a political opponent. And by the way, when it happens, for example, in Russia, it's not hidden. When Putin tries to kill one of his political opponents, it's not like it's a secret. It's just accepted. Now, just that would put Russia in a different category than the United States. A different category. There's a category of countries where you don't kill your political opponents. And a category of countries where you do kill your political opponents. And those are essentially different countries. So what is being defended here? Why do we care about Russia? Yes, they have nukes, but short of nukes, why do we care? What is good about Russia? And what way is Russia our ally? And what way is Russia part of Western civilization? No respect for the individual. No economic freedoms. No social freedoms. No political freedoms. What is it about them that Western? Their white skinned, is that it? Is that what makes them Western? Is that what makes Putin an ally? Or is it maybe that they hate the left? I think for Jordan Peterson, that's what makes it. They hate the left. They look like us and they hate the left. Ally, Western civilization, they must be the good guys. Poison your political advocates, you know, opponents who cares. Put people in jail for speaking up. Who cares? Regulate and control the entire economy. Who cares? A president who has siphoned off hundreds of billions of dollars. Hundreds of billions of dollars. Into private bank accounts in Switzerland. Who the hell cares? They hate the left. We love them. Indeed, the Iranians hate the left even more than the Russians. If that is possible. Yeah, I mean Iranians want to put women in their place. They want to keep women at home. They want to keep women covered up. Only for their husbands. God forbid you have sex. Or you even look at a woman who's not your wife. They know the place. They know how to take care of their women, right? God admire those Iranians. They hate the left. Can you imagine? Can you imagine having a discussion about transgender in Iran? They hang people in Iran from construction cranes. That's what they do to trans people in Iran. They hate the left. This is good. And Venezuela, well, I don't know. Do they hate the left? They just hate America and that's good enough. It's good enough. It's stunning. I mean, in the world in which we live, there's like a handful, maybe two handfuls of countries that you can say good countries and the rest are garbage. Not the right. I mean, and then there's a group of countries, maybe, that are kind of still struggling to figure out if they belong to the good group or the bad group, but they're struggling. They're in this middle. Maybe that's the vast number of countries. They still don't know. And then there's a group of countries that are clearly evil. They clearly promote evil ideals, evil values. That are clearly anti everything we represent in the West. Clearly antagonistic to human reason, human individualism. Clearly, clearly, anti freedom. And yes, you'd have to include Venezuela, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Russia in that group. But no, Russia's the victim. The United States is the real bad guys. What does that tell you about these people? What does that tell you about these people? All wants me to list them. America, the United States, most of Western Europe, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, those are the better countries. I mean, any thinking person knows the list. And by the way, it's an easy list to figure out because all you need to look at is immigration flows. What are the countries people want to go to? What are the countries people want to escape from? We want to go to America. We want to go to the UK. We even want to go to France and Italy. God knows why, but we want to go to France and Italy. Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Germany, New Zealand and Australia. Yeah, sure, New Zealand, Australia on that list. Again, flawed, certainly during COVID. Super flawed primarily because they learned everything and how to deal with COVID from China. But immigrants want to go there. And where do immigrants want to leave? Well, hundreds of thousands of Russians have left Russia. And if you open up the borders to the United States, they'd all come here. And then there's a bunch of countries kind of in the middle, probably Mexico, most of Latin America, that are still waving between these two. But look, Cuba is on bad side. People want to leave Cuba and come to America. I mean, just look at immigration flows and you can tell which are the good countries and which are the bad countries. But no, if you're a good libertarian, big L libertarian, you've got to condemn America. It's always America's fault. And look, America makes stupid mistakes out there, primarily because it doesn't actually declare what it's fighting for. So yes, America deposed the prime minister of Iran in the early 1950s. Why? Why? Well, basically because Iran was stealing, confiscating, nationalizing oil assets of the West. Now, they ended up letting the Shah do it anyway. So again, inconsistency, hiding the true motivation, not asserting itself, not declaring its true goals. But yes, America should have defended the property rights, its property rights, its companies' property rights, its citizens' property rights in places like Iran and Saudi Arabia. And the fact that they didn't, we're paying for today. With the power we've handed over to OPIC, which by the way cut 2 million barrels of oil today from production in, you know, in siting with the Russians. To drive all prices up. So yeah, the U.S. does terrible things, usually because they were appeasing. So we protected our family of Saudi Arabia forever. Instead of asserting our claim on that oil, it was owned by French, British and American oil companies. We forced the French and the British to vacate the Suez Canal when their companies owned it and nationalized it illegally, immorally. We let the Iranians take our embassy and did nothing about it. We let them kill Americans and did nothing about it. We let them threaten Americans and did nothing. Yes, so America's wrong in its foreign policy because it's been so weak. And at the same time, we've subsidized the rest of the world. We protected Europe and we protected Asia. How awful are those? I mean, this is the thanks we get. I mean, the fact is that it is the American, quote, world order, if you will, the fact that America has protected the sea lanes since World War II till today, the fact that America has provided a nuclear umbrella over Europe and much of Eastern Asia that has created some of the greatest prosperity in all of human history. There's more people out of poverty than out of human history that has facilitated the growth in international trade, the growth in wealth all over the world on a scale nobody could have imagined. And you could argue whether American resources should be deployed in this way or not, whether it was just to American citizens to deploy them in this way. But in terms of benefiting the world, we've been a massive benefit to the world. NATO. Is it really American imperialism that is driving the expansion of NATO? Really? I mean, if you go to Poland, do they feel like they're under the thumb of the Americans? If you go to Romania, if you go to Bulgaria, if you go to these countries, do they really tell you, oh, my God, these Americans, these American colonizers, they whip us three times a day. Why has NATO expanded into Eastern Europe? Because the Eastern Europeans demanded it. It's because the Eastern Europeans felt unsafe. And because the Eastern Europeans wanted an American subsidy. They wanted America to subsidize their defense. They wanted America to subsidize and provide them with the nuclear umbrella. They wanted America to fight to save them from the Russians. Now, you could argue that's bad for America, but it's not bad for Eastern Europe. And why shouldn't Poland fearing Russian aggression want to sign a treaty with its neighbors to protect itself? How is that imperialism? How is that bad? Why shouldn't Ukraine, a sovereign country, recognized even by Russia, indeed created, arguably, with the fall of the Soviet Union by a popular referendum sanctioned by Russia? Why is it not the right of the Ukrainians to engage as a sovereign country in a defensive treaty with whoever they want? Oh, no, no, no, no. The Russians will be offended. The Russians, the beacon of civilization, the beacon of freedom, the beacon of liberty, the libertarian mecca. They might be offended. We can't do it. We can't offend the Russians. So it truly is stunning. I mean, this goes back to Rothbard's perversion of the libertarian movement. It goes back to Rothbard chewing the North Vietnamese on. Even though they were communists, you'd think the opposite of libertarians. They were communists, but he was chewing them on. How dare the United States try to preserve freedom in South Vietnam? Now, I ran objected to the war, but I ran objected to the war now because how dare the United States preserve freedom in South Vietnam? But that it wasn't in American interest to sacrifice its young kids for the sake of South Vietnamese. But she was for South Vietnam. She was for fighting communism. She was for a country defending itself against communism. Rothbard's view was, well, it's the will of the people. Communism is the will of the people. Cool. So be it. Just go look online at what the libertarian movement is defending Putin. All the libertarians defending Russia and blaming the United States for all the problems in the world. Go look at Ron Paul's website. Go look at Dave, whatever, comedian Dave. Go look at what the libertarian movement is really like. So go now. Go to Rothbard's been dead a long time. So go to Ron Paul's website. Go watch the interviews by a bunch of libertarians. Go look at what's his name at antiwar.com which is a libertarian website supported by Norm Chomsky. No, I'm not going to debate any of these people. Anybody associated with antiwar.com, I will not debate. So in this kind of nihilistic subjectivist view of international relationships is despicable. Yeah, I mean, I know libertarians in Russia. I know libertarians in Russia. The better ones are the ones who land up in jail. The better ones are out there protesting the war. They're not saying, oh, Russia has a right because NATO was, I mean, maybe somehow the ones inspired by Rothbard. Maybe it's a small minority of libertarians, but it's the libertarians that are running the libertarian party and the libertarians that are representing the libertarian movement these days. And, you know, maybe it's only a small group. Good. You know, but you know, there's a number of people at Kato that I suspect are probably like this. Maybe they're keeping quiet because they don't want to piss off their donors. I suspect there are a number of libertarians that the whole of the Mises Institute is like this that is basically not so much pro-Putin, but anti-American and blaming America for every problem that exists out there. You know, I know that the independent institute was like this. All of these people, right? I mean, I know after 9-11, the number of libertarians that came after me, came after anybody who tried to defend America, anybody who tried to say that this was not our fault, that this is an ideological battle. There are dozens and dozens and dozens of libertarian intellectuals who advocate for this position. It's not some fringe minority within the libertarian movement. I mean, I wish it was. And then, of course, there's Tchaikovsky, so it's not just libertarians, it's conservatives as well, and you can see them all over Twitter defending Russia. Every time you post something about Russia defending Russia, party line propaganda out of Russia, Putin is the hero, they love Putin, and then there's Jordan Peterson. I mean, it's a white swath of American populist that is barred into multiculturalism. And yet, they hate the left. And yet, they are the left. Collectivism, subjectivism. It doesn't matter if it's left or right, they're all the same. I mean, you've even got Peter Hitchens in the UK. I mean, you can imagine Christopher Hitchens rolling in his grave, swaggering his finger at his brother. No, this is not a fringe view that blames America for 9-11 and blames America for what's happening in Russia or what's happening in Ukraine. It blames America for all the problems in the world. Not a fringe view. So is America exceptional? Yes. Certainly in its founding, still is a pretty damn good place to live. Could be a lot better. There's a lot of work to make it better. But to make it better, we have to first realize what its virtues are. And we have to realize how much better it is than much of the rest of the world. And we have to be willing to fight from that basis. Not start without awful it is, how bad it is, and how the same it is with everybody else. Because then, we're now being objective and we really have no clue what we're fighting for. I'm not fighting for anarchy. I don't want to fight for subjectivism. I don't want to fight for any form of collectivism. So, they hate America because they reject objectivity. They hate America because they refuse to have actual standards. They hate America because they view everything as the same. Because fundamentally they are morally egalitarian. They believe everything is the same. As long as it's willed, as long as it's somebody's desire, it's fine. Who are you to judge somebody else's desire? Who are you to judge somebody else's culture? Even if that culture oppresses the individual. Since when is the individual the standard? It's shocking how many people out there who you would think are individualists, land up being collectivists. If you dig just a little bit deeper. America is a good country because at its foundation are great ideas. And those ideas that need to be fought for. And those ideas that need to be recognized for their greatness and fought for. Travis, thank you for the support. Really appreciate it. Without a question. So, that's why I singled him out. Thanks Travis. And if you put them all together, it's the same, egalitarianism when it comes to ideas. Yeah, you lose the plot. If you think Islamism is the equivalent of Americanism. If you think the Muslims attacked us because we pissed them off rather than attacking us because of our ideas and because of their ideas, you don't know what you're talking about. Of course you can blame the US for making mistakes. Like funding the Mujahideen in Afghanistan. Or being sympathetic to the Muslim brotherhood in Egypt. As the Obama administration was. There are lots of things you can criticize America. But then the criticism has to be from the perspective of freedom. From the perspective of liberty. And from the perspective of individualism. And the criticism needs to be from the perspective of what is morally good and what is morally right. What is morally just. It's not from the perspective of those poor Putin. It's just trying to defend his people. That cannot be the right perspective. To this day America is defending Qatar. Qatar. That is one of the biggest funders of ISIS and Al Qaeda and the rest of them. Yet we protect Qatar. We protect the UAE. We protect Saudi Arabia. America is weak in its foreign policy. It's not judgmental enough in its foreign policy. It's too accommodating to the bad guys out there in the world. The problem is not that America is too assertive. That it's not assertive enough. It doesn't differentiate enough between the good guys and the bad guys. And that they're willing to tolerate and to sanction some pretty bad and evil regimes. Including Russia's. We should have called Putin years ago in 2008 when he invaded Georgia for no reason. And in 2014 when he invaded Ukraine. I mean, Putin should have been called out long ago when he poisoned Russian dissidents on other country's soil. That's when we should have called him out. Not waited until he got so bold as to launch a full-blown war against his neighbor. So the thing we need to really beware of in the world in our lives, in the people around us in our political allies or so-called allies is moral subjectivism and moral egalitarianism. Judge and be ready to be judged. Have standards. Be willing to declare the good. Realize that maybe the good is flawed but it's better than the evil. Be willing to call evil evil. People just... Anyway, so subjectivism is the enemy here and it's left and right. It unites them. You know, remember Dugan? You remember the show I did on Dugan? And he comes out as being pro-postmodernism. There's no difference between today the left and the right in its different variations. They're both collectivists and they're both subjectivists. And they're both mystical. It's just... the mysticism is... you know, tinged differently left and right. The left worships Mother Earth and the right worships the Judeo-Christian God. I see we've got a number of disruptors on the show today. I don't know what brought them out. Maybe Heat Trade of America. I think that's what brought them out. All right, let's start with... let's do some super chat questions. Let's start with the ones that have actual relevance to the topic. By the way, we're about 161 short of their normal goal which is 650 and we're we're short... from Catherine's goal. We're about $400 short from Catherine's goal. So still room for more questions. And let's make it only $20 questions now, $20 and above because we've got a lot of questions already and so if you're going to ask a question in the next half hour or so make it $20 above and if you really want to make Catherine's day that she reaches her goal tonight and covers her goal deficit from yesterday then $100 questions are particularly good. All right, Richard says welcome back to the state Iran. What has been your favorite foreign country to visit since COVID? Oh God, I don't know. I mean I visited so many countries since COVID. Yeah, I don't know. I was really happy to visit Asia but a little depressed by all the mask wearing. You know, I visited Israel. I really enjoyed that. I visited many countries in Europe as always I love visiting the UK. Yeah, hard to tell. Probably the UK just because I love going there and it had relative to other countries. It opened up post COVID one of the earliest and I was there so that was fun. All right, Richard asks what are America's greatest strategic deficiencies from military perspective? Do you think we need more submarines and more investment in nuclear missile defense? What do you make of Chinese and Russian supersonic missiles? I think the biggest deficiencies are two I'd say. The United States has overwhelmingly the most powerful navy in the world. I mean it's not even close. But the United States also if it values if we as a country, as individuals value free trade the United States needs the most powerful navy in the world. It needs to protect the shipping lanes. I think that's one of among many one of the most important roles of the US military is to protect global shipping to allow for globalization to allow for trade to protect in a sense the property rights the investments of Americans. I was it was interesting that I think yesterday or this week the US launched its most sophisticated most ecological advance and by far the largest aircraft carrier in American history and in the world no country in the world has anything to match this thing. It it has had a lot of technological problems they try to cram it with every technological innovation possible and as a consequence it's been delayed and delayed and delayed and delayed let's hope that it works the technology works it's the USS Ford an objectivist was an objectivist navy officer was part of the team that designed the ship the aircraft carrier I think the US needs to bolster its its navy even further I think the two areas the US needs to bolster you know I don't think the US US has a vast superiority in the air I don't think the US has to use ground troops very often in a proper a proper war and US special forces are the best in the world we don't have a vast superior to anybody else but I think to facilitate all that given our geography given where we are geographically we need to have a great navy and we need to keep the navy we need to keep the navy the best in the world we need to keep the navy you know particularly aircraft carriers to dominate not just to be the best but to dominate the world and that would allow us that would allow the US to preserve free trade to preserve the shipping lanes and to provide for globalization which I think is crucial for economic prosperity in the US and the rest of the world so that would be part of it but I think really the biggest deficit we have and again I don't have any inside information into the US military but I would say that the biggest deficit we have is in anti missile technology I think we you know and this goes back to Reagan's Star Wars kind of project that wanted to put satellites in space that could take out ballistic missiles I don't know if that's scientifically technological possible but if it is it should be done I think the United States should invest a big chunk of its military budget in making sure that the United States cannot be hit by nuclear missiles from North Korea, from China or from Russia now maybe that is an impossible goal but having such a system that knocks down a majority of their missiles would really intimidate those other countries it would it would eliminate the possibility it would create doubt in their mind whether they could actually take us out and it would make it so much less likely they would ever launch I think if Israel can have an eye and dome on basically fraction of a second response to the launch of just simple homemade kind of not homemade but simple missiles that take seconds to launch and impact certainly the United States with its wealth and its technological advantage could create a system an eye and dome that protected the United States from both ballistic and cruise missiles of Russians and this is where the supersonic missiles play a role you know luckily for the United States to reach the U.S any one of these missiles has to cross vast distances that distance should allow the United States the ability to track these things and to knock them out of the sky and that includes supersonic if we don't have that capacity today then we need to develop that capacity today we need to develop the new KFACs really appreciate it we need develop the capacity that would ensure the security of Americans in America you know Europe cannot be protected from supersonic missiles it's too close to Russia Taiwan can probably not be protected from some missiles too close to China but the United States should we should be able to protect the United States from some such missiles I mean we should be knocking down the North Korea launchers I've said this before every time they launch a missile one of these tests we should knock them out of the air before it reaches any altitude we should have that kind of capability in South Korea and we should be using it how dare he threaten the United States how dare he voice a threat to the United States so I would use that's where I would say we are most efficient I don't know what our cyber capabilities are I assume they're very good so here I'm talking I think we need to secure a Navy we need to secure advantage Navy we need to always always be be superior to anybody else and we need to secure missile defense those would be the two deficiencies militarily I think the big deficiencies intellectually and philosophically we need to be able to declare who our friends are who our enemies are we need to be able to identify enemies and call them out and be unequivocal about it and we need to be willing to take them out when necessary when necessary Ashton says even though we didn't make our goal yesterday Catherine Mendez is still amazing in this life chat yes she is but really you guys should help her out I mean with 360 $5 away from her goal the goal that she has set which is ambitious granted and she's amazing but she needs to feel the love of her amazingness and the only way she can feel the love of her amazingness is to make these goals alright Vadim $100 thank you Vadim I really really appreciate it can you comment in the industrialist in the movie there will be blood the philosopher the philosophy of the movie portrays him to be evil but I think he should be the good guy except he didn't have to make certain choices that he made yes but this is art right you don't get to rewrite the art the art is purposefully mixing his virtues and his vices the art is purposefully making somebody who could if he didn't do certain things be admirable but he does those things and therefore makes him bad the movie is part of a tradition part of a moral tradition that once equates in your mind egoism profit motive capitalism with evil with violence with lying, stealing, cheating and being violent so the industrialist is heroic in his industry but he's willing to kill his competitors in the most brutal, horrible way oh god thank you Shazba Shazba's review fantastic beasts and way to find them god I've never even heard of that movie Shazba comes up with these well I've heard of Star Trek so it doesn't always come up but once in a while he comes up with something that I've never heard of this movie I've never heard of so it sounds like a fun movie if not one I would necessarily but he's told me that he's not looking for movies I enjoy necessarily so Shazba that made Catherine's Day I think she's done I think and so now I think Catherine's going for 2000 is that my interpretation because we're at 1000 so we're going to go for 2 I do review movies for $500 I review TV shows for $250 you can determine the topic of a show you can sponsor a show $1000 somebody wanted to ask me what it would take for me to read a book and review the book that's tough because a book takes a lot of time so I don't know make me an offer if you want me to review a book somebody asked me I think it's in an email I'll have to find it then make me an offer because it's a lot of money because it's a lot of time unless it's a book I intended to read anyway but yeah feel free so I think Vadim the movie is consistent with the mohawk code that most people hold you know we look at Steve Jobs and we say wow look at the productive genius what a good guy is isn't this amazing and what the movie is trying to tell you is put Steve Jobs in the right circumstances put in the right circumstances and wow I actually hid two people from this channel on one show Lucifer Sword is the second one maybe I should do this more often maybe it'll be more fun if I just you know ban people idiots so yes so it's this package deal of individualism productiveness with violence and lying cheating stealing right that's what the movie is about that's the conventional view of morality and you know Steve Jobs put him in the right room circumstances he's a blood thirsty maniac because we know that's what self-interested productive people are thanks Vadim really appreciate that Ashton I think a major reason why a lot of educated liberal people hate American foreign policy and American exceptionalism is because they view the United States as an empire do you consider the US as an empire? No it has none of the characteristics of an empire it has global influence but it's global influence is has been a huge boon to the world a huge benefit it's global influence it's it's primary influence has been the facility trade around the world it's probably influence has been to reduce violence in spite of the reputation America has it's nuclear umbrella around Asia and around Europe has probably reduced violence not increased it prevented wars not made them possible so I don't consider American empire it does not occupy land it does not course other governments to do its bidding in ways that are destructive to those countries I mean again not to say American foreign policy is good American foreign policy has been terrible but it's no way near as bad as what they claim it is and it's not bad in the same way as those who believe America as an empire is so I mean let's think of empire it did what countries does America conquered in the last 50 years you know yes it has troops in Germany but those troops are there to defend Germany they're not there to oppress Germany Germans don't pay America a tax we pay taxes to put troops in Germany to protect the Germans that's how weird kind of colonialism or empire what other countries are we invaded you know yeah we replaced the dictator in Panama we've gone in to try to help out Haiti and left and yeah we occupied Iraq and the Iraqi people instead of thanking us for getting rid of a brutal dictator they created mayhem and destruction and killed us and killed themselves and we're just overall brutal we should have anticipated that that's the Middle East after all yes we invaded Afghanistan but so we didn't stay there we didn't occupy it we left and from the beginning biggest problem is we were too nice to the Afghans and let them run the place instead of annihilating our real enemies there and getting out of there as quickly as possible so no we don't we behave like this ridiculous altruistic empire if we have an empire that's altruism Hawaii is a long time ago I mean Puerto Rico is occupied territory it's like the closest we are to an empire it's Puerto Rico not a very big empire if you come to Puerto Rico but no we don't behave like an empire at all do we cut do we use our military force to cut better trade deals and stuff like that yeah but we should be cutting even better trade deals like zero tariffs would be the best trade deal yeah I mean the Philippines was the one attempt of America to become an empire and it was terrible and it was a disaster and it you know in America should have never done it and it was done with the sanction and the support of the progressive movement it was Teddy Roosevelt I forget the other president it was very much a period in American history where presidents were pretty bad and yeah so it's that period of the late 19th century early 20th century was where we dabbled with empire no McKinley I think it was the president the president where we took the Philippines and tried to take Cuba and all of this when Teddy Roosevelt established himself as this heroic ridiculous character I think it's under McKinley was president so yes there was a period where America tried to be an empire but maybe it was Taft but it wasn't very successful it says Taft went to the Philippines yeah I mean American empire didn't last for very long it wasn't very successful we're not very good at imposing our will on other people it's a wasteful strategy to have 80 bases in 80 countries I've said this over and over again actually we have troops in 150 or 130 different countries I wanted the troops to come home from Germany I want the troops to come home from Korea I certainly want the troops to come home from Africa I want the troops to come home I don't believe that America should spend its resources defending all these countries I do believe that the United States should spend its military resources in defending the shipping lanes but I do not believe we need to have troops all over the world and if we understood who our enemies were and were ready to rid the world of those enemies not particularly when those enemies aggress against America then we don't need troops over there we have the firepower to rid ourselves of enemies without troops on the ground having troops on the ground in 80 different countries is amazing because in spite of the fact that we have troops in 80 countries we're not an empire we have troops in in Kenya fighting against terrorists trying to overthrow the Kenyan regime occupying Kenya we shouldn't be fighting there we shouldn't have troops there but is that an empire? no all the ways in which American foreign policy is bad it's bad because it wastes Americans resources and it puts American lives in danger that's the sense in which American foreign policy is bad that's the sense in which it's bad not it's bad because we're colonizing other people we're not and we shouldn't Adams asked what is your take on the idea that the Nord Stream sabotage was the US retaliation for Russian sabotage by causing explosions of the US LNG ship and terminal in Freepoint in June secret to prevent embarrassment or escalation I'm very skeptical that the United States would do that and piss off its European allies I don't think Biden has the courage or the audacity to do it and I don't think it strategically makes sense for the United States to do it you know and if it comes out that the United States actually did it I don't think the worry is what the Russians would think I think the worry is what the Germans would think the Germans would be stuff more than the Russians so I doubt it I think the US has other ways it can get back at the Russians for anything the Russians might have done to the US like help the Ukrainians kick their butts the doodle bunny why is Africa constantly the most underdeveloped continent in the planet equally mystical societies like India have improved but not Africa this suggests an intellectual barrier that markets may not be able to breach the racist bullshit that keeps coming back no India sorry China if you got to China in 1970 it was poorer than Africa poorer than most of Africa and you could have said well these Chinese obviously have no intelligence they're obviously idiots and that's why they're even poorer than Africa God they must be idiots India so successful well a couple of things one is the British the British the British provided India with a massive educational system a system of railroads but primarily an educational system Indians know English and India was integrated into the world economy because of British colonialization so while British colonizers of India did horrible things I'm not justifying the colonization but you've got to be able to see the good parts of it whereas Africa primarily was colonized by mainland Europeans Germans Belgians French Portuguese and they were brutal to the population they provided like the British were maybe in India but they didn't provide the benefits they didn't build railroads they didn't provide an educational system they didn't bring over the ideas of British enlightenment they brought over the ideas of continental mysticism and authoritarianism and as a consequence Africa remained colonized for a long time there's some parts of Africa that were British South Africa which is more advanced because of English and because of the educational system parts of Namibia and other places that indeed better today because they have property rights because they got that from the British so look it's not skin color that drives history I know it's a shock to you doodle bunny it's not skin color it's not skin color that drives history what drives history are ideas and the fact is that Africa is the last continent to get the ideas of enlightenment if you had looked at South Korea 50 years ago poorer than Africa poorer than Africa South Korea today it's what the seventh world doesn't take much to change but it needs good ideas and it needs proper government it needs respect for property rights respect for rights but primarily property rights from an economic perspective and it needs good governance and Africa has none of that and places like Namibia and Botswana and maybe Rwanda and the beginning of you know and you see glimpses of it sometimes in South Africa where they have a little bit better governance these African countries will match any country in the world when their time comes Egypt, Sudan, Somalia, Uganda, Kenya, Malawi, Zambia, Rhodesia and South Africa or all British that is true but notice so let's take these countries South Africa is indeed the richest country in South in Africa is in the best position and you know they have every potential the problem in South Africa is ruled because of apartheid and because of the way the blacks were treated when they came into power they adopted kind of Marxist ideology and leftist ideology and that's ruined the place South Africa has been going to hell for decades I mean my family is from South Africa I know South Africa intimately been going to hell for decades every you know the predictions about South Africa collapsing any day now take Zimbabwe though Zimbabwe is a rich flourishing country and then Mugabe took it over again partially justifiably because he was fighting against a British oppressor and fighting against an apartheid like system but Mugabe adopted the ideas of Marxism which drove Zimbabwe to become one of the poorest countries in Africa when it was one of the richest so there's nothing inherent in Zimbabwe it is the fact that the people who replaced the British were socialists, worse communists now take India for example India in spite of all the advantages the real world, the British built, the educational system all of that 1948 I think that was Year of Independence of 49 until the early 90s was good poor as poor as Africa why? because it adopted socialism China socialism equals poverty North Korea socialism equals poverty South Korea in its history authoritarianism equals poverty so there's no secret here if you had a rights respecting government in Africa if you had a government that respected property rights and had the institutions of property rights and it would be rich you know Egypt has all the makings of a wealthy culture, of a wealthy world and by the way Egyptians are not of the same stock genes the so called race so Nigeria is fundamentally it has a corrupt government it hasn't instituted the institutions of private property and the best Nigerians have left the best Nigerians live in the United States or live in the UK and they do phenomenally well because they don't like the regime that they have but if you look at other countries if you look at these countries and you look at their immigrants their immigrants do great Liberia was fundamentally super corrupt unfortunately it was black slaves former slaves left America and went from Liberia but they were corrupt from the beginning so the challenges always the challenges ideas ideas ideas the challenges how do you create how do you change the ideas in Africa and how you bring them the institutions the institutions that allow them to flourish because there's no barrier there's no inherent barrier to them flourishing, none what was the good British influence in Nigeria I don't know I think parts of their educational system Nigerians speak excellent English the educated Nigerians the more wealthy Nigerians get an excellent education in Nigeria I know a number of Nigerians super intelligent I mean look at Kemi I forget her family name the Minister of Trade in Great Britain there are a number of Nigerian TV commentators in the UK that are phenomenal super smart very well educated, great English Nigerians who come to America great example so I think what they gave them was an educational system better knock, thank you better knock but you know that's again there's zero barriers that are not ideological for Africa to be flourishing and they will be flourishing I predict Africa will do very very well in future the fastest growing economies in the world right now, African economies Michael asks a thousand mediocre objectivist intellectuals could change the culture in 50 years 100 Alex Epstein's could change the culture in 20 years, how does AOI locate and motivate the great minds out there how you know you try to get Inren's books you try to get Inren's ideas in front of as many people as possible you monitor their response you try to get them to take courses in classes at the Inren Institute you observe them, you try to identify the best talent the best talent you encourage to become graded students at the Inren University and then of those graded students the best and the ones interested in intellectual careers you you promote to the graduate program the best and the brightest within the graduate program you have junior fellows and there you have your next Alex Epstein's but I don't know if the difference is a thousand mediocre is 50 years and 100 Alex is 20 years I don't know maybe that's right but let's try, certainly should try I wonder how many Uraans it would take 100 Alex's a thousand mediocre is it 2,000 Uraans or 500 Uraans or 50 Uraans I don't know maybe you shouldn't answer that Michael you might insult me alright Michael ask 50 bucks thank you Michael how are people particularly the young people supposed to develop a heroic benevolence of life when surrounded by neuroticism and negativity a constant message of you are going to fail and we're going to laugh at you for trying yeah I mean it's hard it's really hard this is why it's so important why education is so important why having alternative schools and alternative educational programs are so important why getting art right is so important right so it's things like that that are so crucial to doing that and then you have to step back a second and say in spite of educational system in spite of the cynicism in spite of the horrible sense of life and neuroticism and negativity you still get unbelievable entrepreneurs starting businesses reinventing the world creating products that could have never believed would exist creating platform software you know stunning stunning how many heroes there still are in the world so we can all focus on negativity it's easy but what about all the amazing what about all the amazing people out there that are changing the world every single day friend Harper says thanks for hiding that guy in the chat also showing support because I've listened to YBS in reverse order and I'm in August 2020 your predictions are always really good thanks for covering an event in full context yeah my pleasure you know what you should do friend Harper since you're listening to the backwards predictions and give me a check mark for the ones I got right and a minus sign for the ones I got wrong and then we can do a whole show just illuminating those because some people Richard for example in chat think I'm a complete idiot and everything I say is bullshit so yeah I think if you go back to my predictions after 9-11 in 2002 onwards I find my ability to predict the big events including the you know during the financial crisis and what would happen post financial crisis and all of that are really good I mean surprisingly good they surprise even me because I don't expect to have as high of a rate of predicting these things right as I do so I would like to it would be cool to see a list of all the predictions you've made and you know it's for sure not 100% but it's astounding how high and it's not because of me it's because ideas do this it's because you know this is what ideas give you the power to do yeah I'm didn't you're on Khazoni call me Moses right so I am Moses I am the prophet the prophet prophet thank you Diego I like that the prophet prophet alright Ashton thanks Ashton Michael Malis would disagree with you that you need government in order to have capitalism just look at Gold's Gulch Gold's Gulch is not a government Gold's Gulch is not a country Gold's Gulch has a government Gold's Gulch has a court system Gold's Gulch has the equivalent of a government it has judge what's his name judge something something I always I can never pronounce his name but it has a judge let's say there's a dispute in Gold's Gulch and you go in front of the judge and the judge rules and the other party says tell with you I'm going to start my own defense agency with a different judge how long before John Gulp pulls out his gun this is your off Gold's Gulch I'll put you in Gold's Gulch jail I mean the idea that Gold's Gulch doesn't have a court government is absurd and ridiculous it's stupid there are no parallel security services in Gold's Gulch there's no anything does whatever the hell they want in Gold's Gulch there is the equivalent of the law and there's a judge that oversees the law and believe me there will be a defense force like that and this was necessary so Michael Malice is wrong Michael Malice is absolutely fundamentally unequivocally wrong about Anarchy and he's wrong about his interpretation of Gold's Gulch so as everybody else who thinks Gold's Gulch is Anarchy it is not Anarchy Michael asks are there any other countries inventing new technologies in industries moving humanity forward like the US what new has come from England or France lately just spin-offs and new technologies we originated it's not really true it's not really true UK has a lot of innovations when it comes to biotech primarily because the whole field is a biotech primarily genetic engineering stem cell research that you know is banned in the US and the US won't invest in for all kinds of religious environmentalist reasons remember the UK are the ones that clone the sheep they're very good at things like cloning and other things like that there being entrepreneurs in Europe for example in Scandinavia in Europe that have made some real breakthroughs when it comes to FinTech and have moved the world forward and there are other areas in which in Europe they are innovating Swiss drug companies are very good German drug companies are very good remember BioNTech a company that actually came up with the mRNA vaccine that Pfizer used but that was a German company run by a couple of Turkish immigrants and I know it cannot be the Turkish immigrants actually did something good but it is a couple of Turkish immigrants who came up with the mRNA vaccine although now I'm going to start a whole vaccine a thread on the chat and then there's China and China is at least on the internet created some truly innovative technologies they are far ahead of us in FinTech in terms of innovations when it comes to FinTech they are far less regulated when it comes to these kind of things although that's changing as I mentioned in the past I'm actually reading a book about that right now so I'll have more to say about China and FinTech and innovation in the weeks to come as I read this book but it's just not true any place that has some freedom you'll have some innovation and the more freedom the more innovation and China because it left the internet alone for a long time had a lot of innovation on the internet and the UK because it doesn't have the ridiculous religion based restrictions that we have in the US and BioNTech has had massive innovations in BioNTech Richard says I was in Korea this summer oh so yeah for the first time and I loved how efficient and fast the public transportation system is even with food service the people were so fast and friendly why is the US so third world by comparison well partially because Korea's infrastructure was built so recently American infrastructure if you think about the subway in in New York was built a long long time ago so a lot of American infrastructure is old a lot of Korean infrastructure is new it's all 50 years old there was nothing in Korea before that the the other reason is Korea has a they just have a work ethic that we don't have in America and certainly we don't have uniformly in America Koreans are the hardest working people in the world they work more hours per week than any people in the world they care about work, they take pride in work you could argue that they might be overly obsessed with work we also have a culture of you know we have a more nihilistic culture a more decadent culture we have in certain parts of the country and among certain people in the country a disrespect and a disregard for things so you get graffiti you get dirt just a huge you know just disregard for private property and just regard for property generally and that has to do with the philosophy in this culture and the way we evolve, the way America evolved culturally you know Korea is more homogeneous, culturally more homogeneous has basically one culture and it evolved in lockstep together there are differences between rich and poor in Korea and Korea definitely has a dark side you can see that in the movie Parasite and you can see it in the show The Squid Games but there's also something about being newly rich which I think excites the Koreans makes the Koreans particularly positive motivated, excited and culturally respectful of their own achievements which we are not in this country David, hi David passive of rights pushes from emancipation to the 60s had a core message of it is big A American thing to secure individual rights but the latest push says the US is corrupt is that fixable of the beginning of the end it's hard to tell you know so and the problem is that this push primarily you know in the summer of 2020 the riots of 2020 the Floyd riots and the whole CRT and white fragility and white guilt and white racism whatever it's called anti-racism I guess it's anti-racism that whole movement is fundamentally deeply anti-American whereas I do think Martin Luther King was fundamentally pro-American I think they are anti-American but I think what really bodes ill for us is that the anti CRT the anti-woke is also fundamentally anti-American you see that with Tucker Carlson so what you have is the left being super anti-American and now the right being anti-American and that is the first time in American history we were seeing both of that you know the hippies in the 60s were pretty anti-American but there was the middle and the right were pro-American today everybody at least the two extremes the left and the right the the far left far right if you want to call it substantially anti-American and that's a real problem I don't know how you recoup from this is again why Trump was so bad because Trump brought out that element of the anti-American right Trump led the anti-American right gave it a name America first but it's really anti-American because it's anti the principles of America and that's new and that is super destructive and that could be the beginning of the end it's so hard to tell I hate being pessimistic so I'll say we can still save America the foundations are still strong alright Colt, wow we got a lot of questions and it's already 1938 if we go to two hours shouldn't we get to like 1500 or something like that Colt says I had a theory about the left and why they hate America so much they have this platonic form in which everything is perfect as they wanted and anything less is just corrupt and evil I think this also applies to the right now yeah I mean there's a sense of that but it's not like it's not like this platonic ideal is a true ideal it is a horrific state it is a horrific place so you make them out to be too good because because the far left today is nihilistic it's not idealistic it doesn't have an ideal to strife with it just wants to knock things down and I think the far right is they might have a vision and this is what makes them more dangerous than the far left they have a vision of what it should be they are more idealistic but the far left is just they don't have an ideal what does anti-racism stand for it the elimination of all non- blacks and then who's next to be eliminated there's no integrated philosophy there it's a complete mess it's a complete disintegration in the left so there's no ideal they're not communists they're worse than communists I say this over and over again they are worse than communists right friend Harper this book called the myth of normal it has been wondering how people can be so close to agreeing with Rand but haven't read her it's showing how altruistic behavior leads to negative health no I haven't heard of the book I'll look it up I'll check it out I mean there's a lot of good stuff out there in self-help that you would think has been or should be or you would expect to be inspired by Rand but it's not or it's not consistently inspired by Rand Joao off topic have you read the book A Thousand Brains I have not by Jeff Hawkins it seems to me it's going to have a big impact on how we think about the mechanics of free will self rationality and future AI if the theory is right um alright no I haven't I haven't read it I'll look it up not promising to read it but I'll look it up okay Ryan says capitalism is equals freedom thank you Ryan it does that doodle bunny what is your favorite brand of hot sauce I just like I don't like hot sauce I just like um yeah I don't have a favorite brand of hot sauce I like peppers themselves I like different sauces made of those peppers I like um I like hot spicy food Harissa I love Harissa was that too African for you I don't know Joao and I loved your talk on Milo man that was a long time ago a long long time ago I did Milo I think he might be some kind of pro-punishment masochist yeah I think so too like Francis Bacon in St. Augustine's Robes no I mean Francis Bacon is too good of a character St. Augustine maybe but not not Francis Bacon anyway I you know I'm glad you enjoyed that Milo talk that was a long time ago that was in 2016-2015 yep there's another one I was right about you can add that friend hop I add that to my list Milo is there a greater than 50% chance Putin will use some form nuclear weapon if he feels his government is being overthrown by Koo from the west well but I don't think there is a Koo from the west so maybe feels like there's one but there won't be a Koo from the west but no I think the probability of Putin using nuclear weapons is significantly less than 50% it's not zero but it's less than 50% Fenn Hopper doesn't even know who Milo is it's better for your sanity not to know who Milo is that's good by the way I was wrong one of the things I was wrong about was I was wrong about the war I did not think Putin would invade Ukraine so that proves that I am sometimes wrong James Taylor asks is there any way you can still consistently do shows while traveling not consistently I will try to do as many shows as I can I appreciate the fact that you guys miss me that is you know the reality is that to stop traveling I would have to I'm trying to think what the number would be I would have to approximately double the income from the show itself because travel is very lucrative I get paid to travel it provides me with a good income so I would have to double the income from the shows in order to stop traveling so I guess it's possible one day but I guess I would have to really become much more aggressive or much more generous would be the better way much more generous on Patreon or on PayPal for me to stop traveling I will do as many shows as I can I'm restricted by the quality of the internet and by time zones time zones I don't plan to retire so the answer to when will you retire on his deathbed I plan to die while doing a YouTube show fighting with words to the very last minute Francis says what do you think about military aid to Ukraine should it be given should they have to pay back eventually or is it worth it cost to beat Russia I think at this point it should be paid back but of all the foreign aid that we give and we give foreign aid to 100 different countries we give billions of dollars to countries like Egypt giving Ukraine money to defend itself against a power a force of evil in the world which is Putin is one of the better investments we're making you know when the day comes where we stop giving foreign aid to all the loser countries and all the ridiculous stuff and all the countries that hate our guts and we give them money to Pakistan and places like that then we can talk about stopping giving aid to Ukraine and Israel countries that I think are very pro-American and support American interests but I don't think ultimately Israel needs our support Ukraine needs it and it should pay back for it it should pay back for it ultimately if pure stateism like the Soviet Union can last 80 years it's quite possible that the mixed economy could last 2 to 300 years yeah maybe even 500 years it's quite possible we could survive we've already survived this mixed economy you know over 100 years arguably from the founding 250 years so certainly we could do 2 to 300 years but can we do another 200 years that is the question somebody is asking I'll answer this do you think Ukraine will retake Ukraine by this years and according to General Hodge I think Ukraine I think Ukraine will take much of Ghassan province this year I think it will take much of Luansk I can't pronounce these names the one in the northeast where the fighting is going on right now I think it will take much of that province I do not think they will take Donetsk and I do not think they will take the other provinces name I can't pronounce which is in the very southeast of the country plus whatever progress the Ukrainians are making it's going to slow down once November December hit so there's a real push now particularly in Ghassan to get the Russians out of that city I think that is doable and that will they'll be successful at they might even push them even further back further south the Russians will try to defend Crimea at all costs so they will consolidate their forces on the land bridge on the land connecting Donetsk to Crimea you know that there's that south eastern corridor and that there it's going to be very very difficult I think for the Ukrainians I don't think the Russians are out of Ghassan basically not out of the city yet out of the northeast portion of the province they may be evacuating the city as we speak they'll probably retreat from the city at some point there's a river that goes by the city and it cuts Ghassan province into two I think the Ukrainians within a couple of weeks will take the whole northern portion of that river I think the southern portion will be more difficult partially because they have to cross the river and it's not easy they blown up all the bridges across the river and partially because that is where the Russians start feeling really really really worried about Crimea and and and so they would rather give up the northeast and let them have whatever the one that starts within El province and and not given the southern portion of Ghassan so I think I think it's going to get I think again Ghassan probably the northern part of Ghassan province that's Ukrainian within within a couple of weeks I think the northeastern part where they're fighting right now north of Donetsk and that's going to be Ukrainian probably by the end of the month maybe into November then it becomes really ugly because of the cold Ukrainian winters are not pleasant particularly in that eastern part and it becomes difficult because as the territory Russia holds is smaller Luhansk as the territory Russia holds is smaller they can concentrate more forces there they can bring in reinforcement just for those sections I think ultimately Ukraine has a chance to kick them out of all of the occupied territories including Crimea but that's going to be well into next year nuclear war is not going to happen Putin is too much of a coward to use nuclear weapons Putin knows that basically his Russian military is toast the entire Russian military force in Ukraine will be annihilated within hours weeks if a technical nuke is used so nuclear war is not going to happen ballistic weapons he might use a technical nuke but if he does every single weapon system the Russians own have will be destroyed and decimated and the Russians are not ready for that you know I think it's not that they would the only thing stopping them from using nuclear weapons is their own survival they want to survive the Russians are not mystics they don't believe in 72 virgins the Russian nationalists will kick Putin out because the Russian nationalists will don't want to lose their entire military what they would prefer I think at this point is for Russia to retreat and rebuild they believe they can rebuild they believe they can bring all the industrial capacity internal to Russia I think they can they believe they can manage and become rich even with the sanctions and what they want is a period of rebuilding and restocking and I don't think they can I think they're finished one way or the other Russia as a force in the world is finished but I think they believe they will retreat and regroup well Stephen 13 says we all die Stephen 13 has been right on everything he's predicted so far everything he's predicted from the beginning of this war so there's going to be a nuclear war and we're all going to die thank you Stephen for your brilliant insights okay Jack 04 pro-freedom philosophy professor children are not property are the property of their parents not old enough to join social contract thoughts children are not the property of their parents children have have rights rights where they should be protected from their parents often children are autonomous individuals their parents hold some of their rights in God what's the term for it you know they basically hold them for the child and as the child gains the ability to make choices for themselves as the child gains rationality as the child gains rationality the he gains he gains more and more independence from the parent but no you cannot apply property to human beings the concept of property does not apply to other human beings no human being could be the property of another Frank says it's so disgusting seeing Roger Waters defending Putin and wanting Ukraine to surrender and seeing Edward Snowden get Russian citizenship Putin I'm less concerned about Snowden he has very little choices but yes Roger Waters but Roger Waters is also anti-Israel he's anti-America Roger Waters has a horrible disgusting philosophy consistent with the sense of life of peak Floyd as much as I love them Daniel says you are awesome you're on keep it high and tight thank you Daniel thanks for the support friend Hopper the Ukraine never say the Ukraine there's no such thing as the Ukraine that is giving in to Russian propaganda it's Ukraine Ukraine is the only one I can think of that was wrong does January 6th count as violence from the right of Trump losses by a small margin cause you get that one if so I don't know what you're talking about friend Hopper the Ukraine one is the only one I think that I got wrong was the Ukraine one does January 6th count as violence from the right of Trump loses by a small margin I got that one right yeah I think that gets I think that counts as violence absolutely I got that right yeah Ukraine I got wrong the war I got wrong was Reagan smarter than Trump oh yeah no contest Trump is not smart at all not in any meaningful sense of the word he's very good at showmanship he's very good at marketing but he's not smart he's not very good at living alright thanks everybody I hope you enjoyed the show I will be back we'll be back tomorrow another show four in a row alright we'll be back tomorrow Saturday we'll do on a Sunday maybe we'll even do one on Monday and then Tuesday after I did the UK I will try to do shows from the UK but for example like on next Thursday I have a three hour train right to Durham this is after meetings all morning then a three hour train to Durham I have I give a talk and then have a three hour train ride back to London I could do the show from the train I don't think the internet connection is good enough so it's logistical challenges like that that make doing shows impossible I'm often flying I'm often speaking I'm often schmoozing with people I could do shows during the day in Europe but during the day in Europe is your morning so maybe I should try that maybe you guys don't mind I'll take a cup to the Iran Book Show in the morning alright everybody it's been two hours, thank you great super chat today particularly Shazmat, thank you for the 500 I will get that movie watched on my trip to Europe next week what else do we have to say remember if you want to support the Iran Book Show Patreon is a great place to do it you can also do it on youranbookshow.com slash support don't forget to like the show before you leave it helps with the algorithm if you want to beat the leftist algorithm now when we know that when Elon Musk takes over Twitter my subscribers are going to go into the hundreds of thousands because the algorithm will stop suppressing the Iran Book Show because we know Elon Musk loves me and my ideas and he'll help get rid of the suppression by YouTube maybe some of that is true alright don't forget I like the show I don't see thumbs up, there are more people on the show listening right now so if you like the show give it a thumbs up