 All right everybody, welcome to Iran Book Show on this Sunday, pretty late at night over here. I guess it's afternoon in the east coast and still very early afternoon on the west coast. Welcome again. Thanks. Thanks for joining me today. I really appreciate it and thanks for all of you for all the support you've shown as I have traveled around Europe and now Israel and as I've done these travel logs, thank you for all of you who've shown support through Super Chat or through the monthly contributions. Of course, don't forget you can use the Super Chat to support the show and to ask questions. A big part of the show is your questions that dictates a big chunk of the material. Some shows a majority of the material. We've already got one question called Curel, which I will get to, Curel from the Czech Republic. But yeah, feel free to ask questions. You can use the Super Chat, $2, $5, $100, $500, $20, $20 or more question, get priority. But feel free to ask with whatever amount you would like. Today we're going to talk about really two topics. One just give you another update, a few more comments and just comments on Israel and this is a travel log. So, you know, some of my experiences as I travel around the world and in this case some of my experiences from Israel, my homeland in a sense that this is where I was born. I don't feel as at home here as I do at home, Puerto Rico or the United States. But it is a place that I'm really connected to, obviously, somewhere where I grew up and somewhere where I spent a significant number of years, early years in and I think important years in how we develop and what we've become. This is the city. I'm now in Haifa. This is the city in which I read Atlas Sharks. So we'll talk about Israel. We'll talk about a few comments. I don't have a lot to say. Of course if you have specific questions about Israel, this is a great time to ask them. So we will kind of address questions relating to Israel first as that is a topic that I'll be discussing. So yeah, super chat questions in Israel, get priority before we get to everything else. Next up, I want to talk about today is a really excellent article today that Barry Weiss wrote and inspired by what's going on in Ukraine, but really relevant to what it is that America represents, what it is that America stands for and the extent of the divisions of America and the conflict in America. And what that represents, particularly in the context of Ukraine, she also addresses this kind of Candace Owen Tucker Carlson question of justifying Russia. She has an explanation. It's a different than my explanation for that. So we will talk about that. I don't agree with everything in Barry Weiss's article. As you'll see, or as if you read it, you will observe. I think there are real flaws in the article. On the other hand, there's some excellent passages and I intend to read them to you, really truly inspiring passages and it's great to see somebody actually say the things that she is saying. So I give a lot of credit for that. So we will get to that kind of in the second half of the show. So again, we thank you for joining me and a priority will be given early on in the show to questions about Israel, because that'll be the first topic that I will be talking about and then I'll get to kind of general topics, but priority will also be given to $20 questions being asked. So today I spent today with my parents in Haifa, Haifa is the city that I grew up in or spent more time in Israel than any other city. I grew up in lots of different places. We moved around a lot even within Israel, not only in a sense around the world. And at some point during the day we went for, I went with my dad for a walk along a scenic path right next to my hotel actually, right under my hotel, the street under my hotel. And what you see in this path, I think is one of what you get to get to observe from this path is I think one of the best views you can get in a city in the world. Not the best, but one of the best. You get a, just this gorgeous view of the Mediterranean, the Gulf of Haifa, the whole Gulf with Akko. Akko is an Arab city, Napoleon, failed to conquer it. It was important for the Crusades and it is on the other side of the Bay and then up along the Mediterranean coast all the way to literally the border with Lebanon. You can see the border with Lebanon, you could see it vividly today. It's because it was a winter day and the air is sharp and you could just see in the distance. And then if you scan a little bit from that point where the border with Lebanon is and you scan eastwards for a while, suddenly you see a mountain with snow on it. And it's the only mountain in Israel that actually gets snow where you can actually ski. It's late for snow, it's March, March 20th, but there was snow on the mountain. And you could see it very vividly. It's not always that you can see that clearly, usually the air is a little hazy, but today as I said it was completely crisp and you could see all the way. And that mountain, a part of it is Israel and you can ski on that mountain, but a part of it is Syria. And you know, in one scope you basically could see the difficult situation a country like Israel faces and it is comical or not comical, tragic in a sense. When people compare Israel's, I don't know, immigration situation or security situation or any situation without of the United States. Here's a major city, one of the three major cities in Israel. You can glance and see Lebanon, you can glance and see Syria. You know that in both Lebanon and in Syria, within distance I can see, there are thousands, thousands of missiles aimed pretty much at the spot that I was standing at, maybe at that particular spot, only hundreds into the rest of the area, other hundreds. And it is, it's scary, right? I mean, all the houses facing that direction, all the buildings, all the everything that's facing that direction is exposed completely to the fire of thousands of missiles held by the Hezbollah or held by the Iranians in Syria or by the Syrians themselves in Syria. It is, it gives you a sense of how small the state of Israel, I mentioned yesterday in the south, you've got Hamas in the Gaza Strip, which is within striking distance of Tel Aviv. And of course in the east, you have the West Bank and the Palestinians there within striking just distance of Jerusalem. Luckily, they're not well armed like Hamas and Hezbollah. So it gives you a sense of how small Israel is, you know, in terms of driving distance, Israel is about six hours drive length and about 40 to 50 minute drive width. That's it. That's a whole country of Israel. All the fighting, all the bloodshed, all the disagreements, all the conflicts about this tiny, tiny little strip of land that sits here and Israel is unbelievably vulnerable to its enemies. It's no wonder Israel has to develop not only offensive weapons of high quality, but defensive weapons of high quality, like, you know, like the offensive weapons that shoot down, shoot down the iron dome that shoot down the missiles that the enemy can launch. I don't know if you, iron dome is just an amazing, it's an amazing system because it can shoot down missiles within seconds of the launch. It can shoot down missiles that are launched from, that are very small. We're not talking about big, you know, intergalactic or whatever, cruise missiles, we're talking about things that are fired over the span of a couple of miles and within seconds and it is pretty stunning the technology that they have. It's interesting that technology came up today in Zelensky's address to the Israeli parliament. Zelensky today addressed the Israeli parliament, accused them of, in a sense, multi hypocrisy, for not supporting Ukraine, accused them for trying to play both sides, condemned them for not supplying Ukraine with weapons, including defensive weapons and iron shield, compared the situation in Ukraine to the Holocaust that did not go over too well with issues and peoples overseas in using guilt, in using guilt on them. I think that is an unfortunate way of addressing a problem. It is an unfortunate way of trying to get support. I think obviously he's been heroic and amazing, but his address today in Israel I thought was relatively weak and particularly because of his attempt to kind of guilt everybody into supporting him and guilt the Israelis and, you know, primarily by comparing Ukraine situation to the Holocaust. I mean, there's certain ways in which it can be compared, but not anything significant. Israel, of course, and he acknowledged this in his speech, has this relationship with Russia where on the one hand, you know, Israel is an enemy of authoritarianism, but on the other hand, Israel needs Russia or prefers Russia's neutrality with regard to Israel's activities in Syria and Lebanon vis-à-vis attacking Syria, attacking Lebanon, the terrorists there, the missile transportation, and the bases that the Iranians are establishing within Syria that are regularly attacked by the Israelis. So Israel has this situation where it does not want to offend the Russians because it needs their corporations. Whether that is justified or not, I'm skeptical. I think the Russians are afraid to engage with the Israelis in Syria. I doubt that. But again, the way to get support is not by using guilt. The way to get support is by emphasizing shared values and by emphasizing what's in it for the party that is going to provide the help. One other topic related to Israel that is in the news right now and that is the kind of pathetic and desperate attempt of the Biden administration to cut a deal with Iran. And it's gotten to the point where they seem to be so desperate to achieve the deal that they're basically willing to give anything and willing to give up anything. By every indication, the deal that the Biden administration is cutting with the Iranians is worse than the deal Obama cut that was criticized by many even within the Democratic Party as weak and is allowing the Iranians to ultimately develop nuclear weapons. This deal, by all accounts, is worse than the deal Obama cut. And Biden is rushing into it. And there are rumors now, rumors that Israel has protested against, I think the Saudis and the Arab Emirates have also protested against their rumors that the Biden administration is about to lift the designation of a terrorist organization on the Republican National Guard, the unit within the Iranian army that is responsible for preserving the revolution and is responsible for its relationship with all the terrorist organization funding those terrorist organizations, arming them and training them. I mean, the Biden administration has already lost massive amounts of credibility with regard to foreign policy with its Afghan surrender. It has lost a huge amount of credibility with its panic in the leading up to the Russian invasion in Ukraine. And even though they turned out to be right that Russia was indeed planning an invasion of Ukraine, they see pathetic, weak and clueless in how they dealt with it and ultimately in their entire approach and in the fact that they couldn't prevent it. Now the Biden administration in an attempt to fulfill one of his campaign promises and an attempt against to appease the anti-Israel lobby, or I'm not sure which lobby, I'm not sure who, what the lobby is for a deal with Iran, is, yeah it wasn't the Republican one, it's the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Sorry, it's the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Thank you Scott for correcting that. It's the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. He is willing to basically give them everything that they want. So the rumor is that they're willing to lift the designation of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard designation as terrorist organization, which it clearly is, in exchange for the Iranians making a statement, a public statement, that says that they are disassociating themselves from terrorism. I mean it's just, it's humorously pathetic and sad to see politicians think that a statement has any meaning. A statement by a regime that is based on lies, that is based on the violation of the rights of its own citizens, the infliction of violence on pretty much everybody around them. You know this is an administration of dictators and authoritarians and theocrats who believe that it's okay to lie in the name of Islam as long as the purpose is the growth and the success of Islam. And yet the United States is willing to change policy and just grovel, grovel before an Iranian regime in exchange for a statement. So you know this is a deal that is truly horrific. And I think Biden is rushing to pass it before he loses the Senate and the House, so before the election of 2022. Again I don't think there's any constituency in the United States that really is advocating for this deal. I don't think there's anybody who is passionate about it. I don't think there's many people in the United States that care one way or the other and then it definitely has a lot of opposition both within and without the Democratic Party. But Biden like he has with many other agenda points of their far left is rushing into it. It is complete insanity. It is complete nuts. Biden is not authoritarian. Stop it Stephanie. He's not more authoritarian than any other president. He hasn't signed any more executive orders than Trump, Obama or Bush. He hasn't done anything more authoritarian than anybody else. And the fact that he's not an authoritarian partially is indicated by the fact that the Supreme Court overruled I don't know mandates that he put in place and he walked away from those mandates that he didn't fight the Supreme Court. That's not a sign of authoritarianism. Authoritarians don't accept Supreme Court rulings. They ignore them. So I mean he's just as authoritarian as Trump. He's just an authoritarian as as any modern American president. He's particularly bad when it comes to policy but to single him out as Biden is the authoritarian president or to compare him to Putin is absurd and ridiculous. He's no worse than other presidents in his authoritarianism. He is worse in terms of his policies. Definitely. But is authoritarianism. He is not. Sure it's authoritarian. So Kyrgyz says that forcing people to be injected with things in order to work in the private sector isn't authoritarian. Sure it's authoritarian. But so is requiring people to have a social security number in order to work. So is not allowing people to be fired for a variety of reasons. So is requiring employers to pay a minimum wage. So is taking 50 percent of your income. So is forcing you to do a million things that in a free society you wouldn't do. But in this society we live in today we are forced to do. Our government is authoritarian. It was authoritarian under Ronald Reagan. It was authoritarian under Bill Clinton. It was authoritarian under George Bush. It's authoritarian under Donald Trump and it's authoritarian under Biden. It's just a question of degree. And by the way children in order to attend public schools already in America have to have an injection. Have to have lots of injections. You can't send a kid to public school unless they've been vaccinated. So vaccination is already mandated for children. Is that a free society? No. Public schools are not consistent with the free society. So yes every one of these things is authoritarian. Every one of them. The income tax is authoritarian. The requirement for businesses to collect sales tax for the government is authoritarian. There's almost everything today the government does. You know the fact that when I turn 65 I have to get Medicaid. I cannot continue on private health care. I have to become a patient, a surf. I'm not sure. A consumer of Medicaid. I don't have a choice. If I want to get any kind of medical care in the United States I need to sign up with Medicare. Is that authoritarian? Of course it is. But that's been with us since the 1960s. So yeah. You know vaccine mandates were horrible things. But just as horrible as a million other things that the government has done. But I know it's because it's it's building a wall of authoritarian? Absolutely. Building a wall is authoritarian. But you know when authoritarianism is done in the name of either something you believe in or in the name of a president you agree with then it's okay. It's the other tribe. They're the ones that are beyond anything. Oh my enemies are out in force today on the thing. We've got somebody on chat today. We've got you know right wing nuts and we've got left wing nuts. We've got Vladimir Leninist. I don't know if that's a joke name or a real name. But anybody who puts Lenin in their name, anybody who might be born with that name who doesn't change it has real problems. Real psycho. So he's saying if forcing business owners under penalty of law to pay their workers a living wage is wrong. I don't want to be right. That's okay because you're holding those kind of views. You're never going to be right. So you don't have to worry about it. You know that is clearly an ignorant statement. And of course it ignores all the people who because of your ridiculous your ridiculous name and and all the people that because of your ridiculous support of the minimum wage will never have a job in their lives and you have now institutionalized forever into poverty. But you don't care about poor people. Leftists don't care about poor people. No, they just care about virtue signaling that they care about living wages. Who cares about whether there are going to be any jobs? Who cares about people who will never find a job? They don't count. All right, let's see. I was talking about Israel. C.S. I talked about it quite a bit yesterday about the kind of challenges, the conflicts, the disagreements, the very fact that Israel because of the way it is, because in a sense that is founded on a contradiction is going to be besieged with problems and besieged with challenges and besieged with internal strife. The real tragedy though, the real tragedy though, is the fact that America is besieged by internal strife in spite of having as close to a good, I was going to say perfect, but as close to a moral perfect beginning as possible, at least possible for the time, you know, with the exception, the important exception, the non-trivial exception of slavery. And we'll get to that because I think that Barry Weiss's article talks about that. Michael asks, this is about Israel, so I'm taking it up before some does. By the way, Liam, thank you for the $100. That is huge. And I really appreciate that. Nobody's keeping track of the money coming in today. It would be great if you did. Let's see. I'll just, just quick calling, Vladimir Leninist, raising the minimum wage helps reduce poverty. No, it doesn't. Raising the minimum wage, the minimum wage actually increases poverty significantly. And the more you increases, I mean, if that were true, why not increase the minimum wage to a thousand bucks an hour and you'd eliminate poverty completely, make everybody rich indeed. But the fact is that raising the minimum wage increases the poverty among the very poor. It decreases poverty among some people and increases poverty among other people. It actually exasperates what you guys are so worried about and you claim you care so much about, which is inequality. And that is just economic fact. It's like gravity. There's nothing you can do about it. If you want to just reduce poverty, there are much better ways to do it. Indeed, most European countries, including Scandinavian countries, don't have a minimum wage. And that is because they know that minimum wages increase unemployment. They increase unemployment among the people who can least afford it. They increase unemployment about the most desperately poor. So many European countries don't have minimum wages because it's one of the dumbest, stupidest, most economically ignorant ways to try and pretend to reduce poverty. But it makes middle class Americans feel good. That's its purpose, Sony purpose. Yeah, France has a minimum wage. Germany does not have a minimum wage. It has kind of a minimum wage, but not really. Many Scandinavian countries do not have minimum wages. They have welfare programs that if you want to reduce poverty, if that's your goal, then welfare or universal basic income makes much more sense, much, much more sense than minimum wages. Okay, Michael asks, how did Israel overcome its Kantian foundations? Were the founders all Marxist Kantians? Why did they allow for private property? So Israel did indeed, was indeed founded by intellectuals who were Kantian, neo-Kantians, leading neo-Kantians, German neo-Kantians founded the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The founders of Israel were socialists, former communists, or many of them were, not all of them, but many of them were. Socialism was a big part and a significant part of the founding of the Israeli state, and it was a quite socialist country. It embraced democracy, the rule of the majority, but it also, the political party, the one election from 1948 when the state was founded until 1977 was the labor party, the socialist party. But they were not communists, and I know some of you don't think there's a difference, but there is. They recognized that they needed private property, they needed entrepreneurs, they needed business, whether small business or large industrial businesses, in order to provide the jobs, the prosperity that allowed a society to grow. Socialists realized that they need private property and to create the right kind of incentives so that people create wealth so that then they can tax that wealth away and redistribute it. But without the private property, the wealth is not created, and without the creation of wealth, there's no redistribution. You can't help the poor. And Israeli socialists at the beginning of the founding of this country were smart enough and knowledgeable enough about the history of Europe, about how socialism works. Most of them had the experience of living in a kibbutz or working on a kibbutz or observing how the kibbutz worked, and they realized that a kibbutz was not enough, a kibbutz was not enough of a productive engine to fuel a nation. So they allowed private property for practical reasons because, well, two reasons. One, because they at some level believed in individual freedom and individual liberty. They found that a country that was basically free where people were free to live, to speak, to write, to debate, to argue, where they were free to challenge the socialist politically, which had multiple political parties, including parties that opposed socialism and from the beginning. And so they had a sort of respect for private property, which they had gained in Europe, and that they believed in. So as part of individual liberty. But they also believed that the state had a big role and the state needed to have central planning and at some level and needed to invest in certain industries and that the state needed to redistribute wealth on a large scale. And the two don't conflict. I mean, you see the same thing, although at a smaller scale than Israel, you see it in Scandinavian countries where there's a lot of private property, but then that private property is taxed. And those taxes go to massive redistribution of wealth programs. So anyway, that's so that's that's why they had private property. I don't know how Marxist the founders were. I haven't really gone into once by 1948, how Marxist they were certainly in their youth, almost all of them were Marxist to some extent or another. But by 1948, they were really adults. And I think they'd grown out of kind of the idealism of Marx and were more practical and more interested in survival and more interested in the flourishing of the Israeli state they had real problems to deal with. And when you ask how did Israel overcome its Kantian foundations, in many ways it hasn't. In many ways, the Kantian foundations at the core of the mixed economy, in many ways, the Kantian foundations are at the core of the not just tolerance, but adoration and groveling before the religionists. I think Kantianism leaves you completely open to the power and the strength of religion. So I'm just looking at something here in the chat. So they overcame the Kantian foundations because they had practical needs to fulfill. So yes, they're still counting in in many respects, but they also want to survive and they also want to thrive and they also want to get rich and they also want to beat their enemies, i.e. survive. In order to do all that, they have to be practical. In other words, there's a sense in which they have to be Aristotelian, they have to be connected to reality, they have to use logic, they have to use reason, they have to solve problems, they have to build, they have to create, they have to make. And so it's not like they've ejected Kant for another philosophy. They are, what is it, Kantians sometimes, Kantians to some extent. Look, even Mises, Ludwig von Mises, the greatest economies to ever live, was in many respects a Kantian. And his epistemology and his worth thinking is very influenced by Kant, and yet he comes up with the greatest economic theory ever, an explanation of economic phenomena anybody's ever come up with. So Kant doesn't, it's the extent to which you take him seriously, it's the extent to which you integrate him throughout all your knowledge, it's the extent to which you accept duties and and categorical imperatives and faith ultimately, above reason that determines to what extent you put Kant into action. And most Kantians don't put him into action in that way. I mean, again, one of the problems with saying people are Kantian is that almost everybody bad in the world is Kantian. And almost everybody is a Kantian in a sense, because he dominates the philosophy so much. And the manifestation of Kant are many because he opens up so many doors to bad things. But Israel overcame it, I think, because of its need to survive. And it's practical need and its focus on that practical need. And they became, they adopted a kind of socialism that was prevalent in Europe, that basically combined social welfare programs with private property and private enterprise. And it's a combination that didn't work very well until the 1980s, where the 1980s, the shift moved towards more private property, the shift moved towards more individualism, there was a shift towards production and towards entrepreneurship and breaking up of unions and breaking up of certain monopolies, although certain government granted monopolies, although certain government granted monopolies still exist in Israel. And a much significant liberalization of the economy that happened in the 80s a little bit and then accelerated in the 90s. And that Israel has benefited enormous farm, enormously farm, although, you know, nobody in Israel will recognize that nobody in Israel actually says that. All right, let's see Hoppe Campbell says, Do your leftist family members in Israel know what you do for a living? Do they ever bring it up with you? Yeah, they all know what I do for a living. You know, both close family and more distance family, everybody knows that some of them like to prod me for an argument, but most of them don't bother and we just accept each other as family members without challenging each other. But yeah, my uncle, I think I saw my uncle last night, he came close to trying to argue with me, but then he backed away and I backed. I always express displeasure in arguing with them. I don't see a point in arguing family. I much rather argue with non-family members. I mean, what's the point? What are you trying to achieve? They're not going to be convinced. So you walk away. So I just avoid it as much as I can. Okay, let me just see. Liam, $100. Thank you. Okay, any others on Israel? Yeah, Dave Goodman says, Israel is still fairly socialist. Most Israelis I speak with who've moved to the USA. It's very difficult to make good money in Israel unless you're in tech. I think that's true. It is still a very controlled economy. It is still have a government grant and monopolies through a lot of family businesses that have grown enormous, particularly in agriculture and things like milk products in bread. And Tel Aviv has become the city with the highest cost of living in the world, in the world. It's more expensive than Singapore, Paris, London, New York. It's more expensive to live in Israel than any of those places. But people make less money in Israel than they do in New York. So it's a difficult place, particularly for young people. It's a difficult place to find work. If you're not in high tech, it's a different place to make money. It's a difficult place to live at a decent standard of living. Now, again, I'm primarily from Haifa. Haifa cost of living is dramatically lower than Tel Aviv. And I have no idea, no understanding why anybody lives in Tel Aviv. It's not by far, far from my favorite city in Israel. But it is where the action is, I guess. So that's that's why people live there. So Israel is still fairly socialist, one of the great, my great disappointments. I wasn't super surprised. One of my great disappointments with Bebe, Bebe Netanyahu, and his government's was that he did very little once he became prime minister to liberalize the Israeli economy, to reduce government intervention, to eliminate kind of the socialist policies. I'll give you just one example. And the reason why it's so expensive to live in Israel, and that is that almost all the land in Israel, almost all the land in Israel that is not built, right, unbuilt land in Israel, is owned by the government, owned by the government. So, and the solution to lowering the cost of housing in Israel is to build more. But you can't build more because the government won't release the lands. So instead of releasing lands to contractors to let them build as many units as they can, the government has all kinds of subsidies. And I just saw there's a lottery program and all kinds of programs to try to get people affordable housing. But the way to get people affordable housing is easy. It's simple. Sell the lands. Just massively sell land in Israel. And contractors will build homes. I said that to somebody today and they said, yeah, but they'll build luxury homes. Let's assume that's true. They'll build luxury homes. So rich people move from their existing homes to these luxury homes and they'll sell their existing homes, which are now less luxury because these new things are the real luxury. And then so those are middle class and then other people will move it to those homes and other people will move it and you'll get this effect of everybody moving up. And remember prices are going to come down because there's more supply. And at the bottom of that food chain are maybe all the houses, smaller homes that people are now moving out of to bigger because they're now opportunities because there's more selection. And suddenly you've got low income housing that didn't exist before. And you didn't have to build any of it. It's, I mean economics is not that hard. It's just not that hard. And the solution is capitalism. Solution is always capitalism, always has been capitalism, more freedom, more private property. And yet nobody embraces it. Nobody embraces it. Socialism. The worst economic system pretty much ever invented is its popularity is on the rise while capitalism, the only moral and the only practical economic system is in decline everywhere around the world. And what is on the rise is fascism. What is on the rise is government controlled economy, which is fascism, which we're seeing everywhere from the United States to Europe to Russia to China to pretty much everywhere. Communism is dead. Socialism is dead. What is alive and well is the fascist regulatory state. And that is what's going to dominate. And that is what's going to what's dominating today. Socialism failed decades ago and nobody has the stomach to try socialism really again. It failed. They can see Venezuela. They see North Korea. Nobody's going to know nobody's interested. But what they are interested is in fascism, fascism of all sorts. All right, let's see. Yeah, I wanted I wanted to talk about this. Oops, this is the wrong way. There is this excellent. I mean, truly excellent article by Barry Weiss. And again, I'm saying excellent, not because I agree with all of it, not even I agree with the emphasis of some of it. For example, she's Barry Weiss just is way too accommodating of religion and way too open to religion and way too open to giving religious explanations for things. But she's also very pro-American in a deep sense and raising the kind of questions that need to be raised and raising the kind of issues that need to be raised. She starts the article off and I'm going to read you lots segments of the articles because I think it's good and I think she states it as good as anybody could state it. So no point in me. But she she she asked the question. She starts a quite why is Zelensky? Why is he hit such a nerve? Why are people so admiring of him? What is it about Zelensky that is so inspiring? And in other hand, why does he scare some people as well? Why are people like Candace Owens so afraid of him, so horrified by him, so disgusted by him? And she says there's a way in which Zelensky hits a real nerve. She says, quote, we live in an era in which acting like sheep has become the norm, in which cowardice is the default, in which the ideas of leadership seems like seems dead. And yet here in Zelensky was the real article. A leader showing courage, real courage. And in doing so inspiring bravery in others that they did not think themselves capable of. She goes on. Zelensky knows what he is fighting for. She's quoting Zelensky. We are all at war. He said in an address to Ukraine. Everywhere people defend themselves, although they do not have weapons. But these are our people. They have courage, dignity, and hence the ability to go out and say, I'm here. It's mine. Talk about private property. I won't give it away. My city, my community, my Ukraine, they're fighting for their home. They're fighting for their values. They're fighting for their family. They're fighting for what is theirs. Zelensky shames us because he exhibits these characteristics that as Barry Weiss talks about. Thank you, Apollo. I appreciate it. We don't exhibit anymore. We don't have anymore. And we're unsure what would happen. She raises the questions. What would Americans do? Would Americans fight? Would they unite to fight? Or would they be too busy fighting each other, blaming each other, and cowering? Because, I mean, if anything, Americans proved itself to be a coward. Americans have proved themselves to be cowards in our internal debates, in our internal discussions. Now, she says some cynics will point out, and I'm recording her, that Zelensky is an actor, adept at delivering lines, even applying a president. They'll say that he knows how to tug at our heartstrings, and he is doing it purposefully to draw the West into the war and get Ukraine to help its needs. She says, maybe, probably, but she goes on, but this isn't a movie. His life really is on the line. And that explanation, in any case, does not account for the millions of ordinary Ukrainians who are taking up arms to defend their land. She says she wants a computer programmer standing in line to get a weapon in Kiev. And he said, he says, their objective clearly seems to be the occupation of my entire country and the destruction of everything that I love. I am just a regular civilian. I have nothing to do with war or any other thing like it. And I wouldn't really want to participate in anything like this. But I don't really have a choice. This is my home. Now, that quote there that very wise is quoting this computer scientist, that is the explanation of how fighting a war as a soldier can be in your rational self-interest. I don't really have any choice, he says. This is my home. That's a rationally self-interested reason to fight. And that, just that, is why Ukraine is on the right and Russia is on the wrong. Here are people who have homes, have businesses, have jobs, have lives. And this is what they are defending rationally, selfishly, justly. That makes Russia on the wrong right there. The fact that it is attacking individuals who have homes, lives, jobs, did them no harm, nothing, no threat. Maybe they wanted to join NATO because they felt more safe with NATO. It seems like they were right to feel that they needed NATO. That does not do a wrong to Russia. So Barry says, why is witnessing such courage uncomfortable? By the way, subscribe to our sub-stack. It is because I cannot help but notice the gap between them and us, between the bigness of their vision and their mission and the smallness of ours. Now, here, you know, this is where she's pushing it a little bit, right? They're at war, we are not. Do we need to go to war to have big missions? No. She's treading on dangerous ground here in the sense of we need a big collective mission to defend ourselves. But we'll see she redeems herself later. Watching Zelensky and his people, she says, reminds me of what we have lost, of how uncertain and fragile we have become. How would we act if the guns were on our heads, at our heads? Would we similarly feel no choice but to fight for our home, for everything we love? Would we have the courage to live by the values we profess if our backs were on the award to the war? Or the sense of national unity? Or have we gotten so comfortable, so carred, so removed from the world of flesh and blood that we have forgotten how to name those values at all? Do we know what our values? Do we know what results in, quote, national unity? She writes, if we're the home front of the free world, and I believe we are and must be, good for her, what are the principles that should guide us? What are the things worth fighting for? I wanted to suggest three of them, she says. So this is great. So she goes from the Ukrainians know what they're fighting for. We don't have an invader on our land. But we are the home of the free world. We are the shining city on the hill, whether we like it or not, maybe we're not so shining anymore. We're on the hill still. What should we fight for? What is worth fighting for? And this is shocking to many of you because Barry Weiss is not, and the article shows us she's no objective, she's no free marketer, she's a center, center right, center left, hard to tell. I think these days center right mostly, but no radical here. But what is the first principle she believes we should fight for? What is the first principle she believes we should fight for? She says the first is individual liberty. Individual liberty is worth fighting for. Yeah, that should be the first. This is what America is all about. I've said it, the funny father said it. It's nice to see somebody like Barry Weiss say it, individualism, the value of the individual, the sanctity of the individual, the individual's freedom, his liberty. Brian, thank you. She then points out how many Americans now have punished Russians in America for being Russian, for being of Russian heritage. How many Americans have dealt with fellow Americans who happen to have come from Russia as if they belong to a tribe? As if they cannot be American if they were born in Russia? How much? All of us, everywhere, voluntarily, a penalizing Russia, Russians, here, not over there, here. Not the government, individuals here. She says, and this is where she gets really good, and I quote, but this mob mentality presenting itself now as anti-Russian bigotry, presenting itself now as anti-Russian bigotry, but it's something entirely different a week or two from now, can never, ever be made normal. It cuts against the most fundamental foundational principle of liberal democracy, individual liberty. And when she says it's going to be entirely different a week or two from now, she's talking about anti-black, anti-white, anti-gay, anti-heterosexual, the tribalization of American society that has stopped treating people as individuals, that has stopped focusing on individual liberty, and has focused completely on the collective, the tribe. She continues to write, as my friend Jacob Siegel put it in the tablet, the notion that individuals should have the employment conditioned on the actions of a foreign government or their willingness to denounce those actions is frankly gross and authoritarian. The kind of thing I was raised to believe happened in Russia, not the United States. That is the idea of treating people based on their birth or nationality or even their views about this issue. But making it a condition of a job, you have to support the American government against the Russians. I mean their cause on the left to prosecute Tucker Carlson and Candace Owen for treason. Now I don't like Tucker Carlson and Candace Owen, and I disagree with them fundamentally about Russia and Ukraine. But to try them for treason, where is the First Amendment? Where is the Constitution? Where is the principle of allowing people to speak, debating them, arguing with them, disagreeing with them and walking away. Now we have to put them in jail because you disagree with them because they support Putin. If they are Russian agents, what are they, are they giving away secrets? Are they undermining the US government? The undermining freedom in America? No, it's undermining freedom in America. Are the people who want to prosecute people who disagree with them for treason? That's undermining America. That's treasonous. So while, as you know, I fundamentally disagree with Candace Owen, Tucker Carlson and the rest of the new right on the issue of Russia, they have every right to hold that opinion. And their right should be protected. And people like me should be speaking up, even though we disagree with them, about their right to disagree. They write to support Putin. They have a right to support Putin. Now, if they start arming, sending money, arming the Russians to invade the United States, that's treason. If they start selling them secrets, giving them secrets, that's treason. If they start being paid by the Russian government to spread propaganda in anticipation of a Russian takeover of the United States, that's treason. But you have to be very careful. See, as Barry Weiss again, and I think three paragraphs that are excellent and God, if we had this kind of thinking in the world today, if we had more of this kind of thinking, we would win hands down quite easily. Abbotin says, Tucker criticized the invasion. I know Tucker criticized the invasion, but Tucker's pro-Russia. He criticized the invasion and continues to support Russia. He continues to be a mouthpiece for Russian propaganda. He has every right to do that, but it's despicable, and I dislike him for it. All right, let's talk about the good stuff rather than the bad guys. Quote from Barry Weiss's article, in free and just societies, we judge people as individuals, not as members of a group. We judge them based on their deeds, not based on the deeds of their parents or people of the same gender or zip code or skin color. Now that's a great paragraph, and that's completely consistent with my view, and I'm on board 100% with Barry Weiss when it comes to this. We are complete allies, and these are fundamental core issues that are crucial, crucial to the future. In a free and just society, we judge people as individuals, not as members of a group. We judge them based on their deeds, not based on the deeds of their parents or people of the same gender or zip code or skin color. The fetishization of group identity, whether by religion or race or gender or whatever, is poison. It leads to a zero sum war within groups and to the subjugation and ultimately the dehumanization of the individual. Yay to Barry Weiss. I mean, he and she's criticizing not on the alt-right, but much of the left, much of CRT, the whole identitarian ideology of the left. She is crushing here, or at least dismissing here, dismissing dismissal of in succinct, bold language. I love it. We need many more Barry Weiss's on our side. Continue to quote for Barry Weiss, the great achievement of America was to move beyond bloodline. It was to say for the first time in human history that we are not constrained by the circumstances of our birth or the sins or merits of our mothers and fathers. We are bound together, not by clan or tribe, but by a commitment to rights and principles. This distinction is core to what makes America exceptional, the prioritization of the value of individual life over the kinship group. I mean, you can't say it much better than that. And I mean, it's like she's reading Iron Rand and putting it into her own words or listening to her own book show and putting it onto her own words. It's, I think, truly stunning. I was shocked when I read it and how good it is, how consistent it is. And again, this is from somebody who's become right of standup pretty mainstream. She continues to say this is why any ideology, by whatever name it goes by, no matter how seductive, that grants some people a demerit and others extra credit because of the circumstances of their birth that denies our individual value and our common humanity is illiberal and un-American. It needs to be totally rejected. Yeah, I mean, I could have given this just as better written than I would have written it. It's better delivered than I would have delivered it. But it's truly, it's consistent with everything that I've been trying to say on this show about racism, about critical race theory, about the racism on the left, racism on the right, about people on this chat who argue for a white nation. That is why any ideology by whatever name it goes, no matter how seductive, that grants some people a demerit and others extra credit because of the circumstances of their birth that denies our individual value and our common humanity is illiberal and un-American. And I will add immoral, unjust, irrational, evil. It needs to be totally rejected. I agree with Barry completely on that. It's Barry Weiss's article, Things Worth Fighting For, that she published today in her sub-stack, Common Sense. That was principle number one, worth fighting for. What is principle number two that is worth fighting for? She says the second thing worth fighting for is America. She's horrified by the fact that people think that the Constitution of America is trash, that American history is trash, that we should reject everything that is America. And she says, actually, the thing we need to resurrect, the thing we need to understand, the thing we need to bring back into center of our lives is the Constitution, are the principles of the Constitution. And she says, we stand up for liberty. We stand up for freedom. We stand up for America. When we reject tyrants, tyranny, tyranny in all its forms, in Russia and in America and anyone. And she writes, quote, that means refusing to participate in moral panics. It means resisting mob mentality, since mob justice is no justice at all. It also means opposing any entity that uses its power to undermine democracy and strip us of individual liberty, truly inspiring. Later on, she writes, trying to understand why some people support Putin. She writes, if you want to understand why some people have been so cynical about this war, why they almost seem to be rooting for Putin, this is one of the major reasons why. It is because many Americans notice that the most powerful forces in America exhibiting the kind of behavior we expect from countries like Russia. And that they aren't being opposed by those who claim to be our moral betters. Instead, they're being cheered on. And here she's talking primarily on the left, cancer culture. She goes into a whole anti- big tech thing, which I think is wrong completely. But she talks about the fact that Americans completely distrust the American government. The American government is lying to them. The American government is stealing from them. The American government is manipulating them. The American government is trying to enslave them in a variety of different ways, ways that I don't think Barry Weiss completely understands. And that Americans are rebelling against that. But by rebelling against that and not rebelling against it in the name of liberty, but rebelling against it in the name of hating that which they see, they're embracing the same evil. They're embracing Putin and Russia. They're embracing authoritarianism. So she says to these people, the people, you know, these are mostly people on the right, if you will, on the right of the today's political spectrum. I think she gives them way too much credit. I think she's way too nice. I think that the fact is that Tucker Carlson and Candace Owen actually like strongmen. They actually like the power they exhibit. It's not only that they hate the left. It's that they adore authoritarianism. If the authoritarianism is culturally aligned with their own culture, if skin color, they're the same skin color. Well, not with Candace Owen, obviously. But if they were aligned culturally with them, if they share the same cultural values, then it's okay to be authoritarian. And that's why they admire Putin. She thinks it's they admire Putin because the elites in America are anti-Putin. So they're responding to the elites of America by dismissing them and being anti anything they elites. So this is what she writes to them. She says, I have two things to say about this posture. The first is one can acknowledge the lies and the hypocrisies of our experts and our institutions. I do. But acknowledge, it says nothing about the reality that Russia is actually bombing maternity hospitals, that it is killing journalists. In other words, that it's worse. Again, quoting from her. And if you have hardened yourself to that, if you hate us or part of us more than you hate that, then you've lost the plot. Then you're justifying the unjustifiable. And I would say more than just maternity hospital killing journalists, invading countries, killing soldiers, killing is killing. It's an unjust war. And as an unjust war, everything they do within their wars unjust, it's wrong, it's evil, it's immoral. And if you think that what Russia is doing to Ukraine is equivalent to what we are doing to each other to own elites and politicians, hypocrisies and lies, then I think Barry Ways is right. You have lost the plot. You are justifying the unjustifiable. You can't see the extent to which this is more evil, the extent to which this is more destructive. You've lost the plot. And she continues. The second thing is that you, the second thing is that you can oppose the lies and hypocrisies without giving up on America. America is italicized. And it's exceptional proposition. Indeed, the way to recover America isn't to become moral relativists or isolationists or apologists for evil. It's to look, it's to look on moral and practical failings in the face and fix them. Good for Barry Ways. Don't give up on the idea of America. Don't give up on the idea of Americanism. Don't give up on individualism. Don't give up on colorblindness. Don't give up on freedom. Don't give up on liberty. Fix it. She says in this section towards the end of the section. I listened to her talk the other day in which an historian, an expert on Russia said that societies that are conquered from the outside can recover. But societies that destroy themselves from within cannot. Ukraine will recover. Can America recover from its self-destructive behavior? I'm not sure. All right. Finally, she says the third thing, the third principle worth fighting for. Again, I agree with all of them so far. Individual liberty, America, and this one is civilization. Civilization is worth fighting for. She says if the past three weeks of reminders of anything at root, it is that the line between civilization and what we might call uncivilization is paper thin. Just ask the people of Odessa who not four weeks ago were going to the opera and the parks and movies who now are mothers and their children knitting camouflage and filling sandbags and learning how to shoot. They're standing at the borderland between democracy and subjugation. They will tell you what you're seeing in Ukraine today is horror. It is the death of a civilization. It is the death of our civilization. You know, that's why we care more about Ukraine than we do about other continents and wars and other places. It's not because of the color of their skin. It's not because of their religion or shouldn't be anyway. It's because they basically listen to the same music we do. It's because they share the same basic, at some level, respect for individual liberty and property rights. It's because they have the same, again, within reasonable limits, political ideology, but the same idea of what it means to be civilized. They love similar movies. They like similar music, as I said. They're part of this, what we call civilization. They're other parts of the world that have never become civilized. And therefore, we don't expect them to be civilized. And therefore, when they go to war, we shrug to some extent because we don't expect any better. We expect better of Europe. We expect better of Russia. We expect better of Ukraine. You know, they both countries love Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov. They're all western, not western in the genetic sense. I'd be horrified if this was happening in Korea. I'd be horrified it was happening in Japan. I'd be horrified it was happening in certain parts of Latin America. Any place that has adopted these ideas, these fundamental ideas of individualism, of property rights, of some level of freedom, some understanding of freedom, which is captured by individualism, they are, to some extent, our civilization. They are members of our civilization. And again, has nothing to do with color skin and everything to do with the values they have chosen. And when we see people who we think have the veneer, the facade of civilization, doing the kind of brutal things, violating the very principles of civilization, basically the principle, one of the basic principles of civilization is no force. We have a police to deal with that, no force. When we see somebody violating that so ruthlessly, so explicitly, so without apology, then yeah, we need to wake up to the value of civilization, the vigilance we have in order to preserve it, because at the essence, at the core, at the heart of being civilized is the rejection of violence. If we accept violence, if we accept violence, you cannot accept civilization. There is no civilization with violence. So war is the most anti-civilization thing there is, the initiation of force, Barry Rice writes, reckoning with the flaws and failings of past generations, grappling with our history, a part of the civilization for which we are fighting. My commentary, yes, I mean, America is not perfect. We have historical flaws, but part of what our civilization values is learning, understanding, correcting, improving, moving forward, not backwards. And that's what America is about. It's about moving forward, not backwards. It's about, it's the reason why we fought a civil war to eradicate slavery. It's a reason why we have a civil rights movement that won in order to eradicate Jim Crow laws. It's a reason why I think racism has been declined in America for so many decades. We're improving. We're moving forward. Oh, Ragnar, 500 bucks. Thank you, Ragnar. Ragnar of the desert just made my night. $500. Thank you, Ragnar. So she continues. I'll just start over. Reckoning with the flaws and failings. So the self-correcting mechanisms part of what it means to be civilized. It's part of what it means to use reason. It's part of what it means to build a civilization based on reason. Reckoning with the flaws and failings of our past generations, grappling with our history, a part of the civilization for which we are fighting. But that cannot be confused for a second with the zeal to purge and purify, to cancel and punish and tear down, to the nihilists who say we have to repudiate the tools that allow us to improve and progress and forgive, the tools that have made our civilization the freest in all of history. Western civilization is an enormous achievement. The gradual development of thousands of years of human will and wisdom of political, economic, and cultural capital. We should treat it with the preciousness it deserves, pretending as if what we have is bad or ill-gotten is beyond ignorant. I love this. And the ideologues trying to drag us back into pre-enlightenment tribalism should be seen for what they are. Useful idiots doing the bidding of Moscow, Beijing, Pyongyang, and Tehran. We should never indulge them. We should say their ideas are wrong, plainly, and without apology. Again, cheers, Barry Weiss. All right, so here she's rejecting, and I think implicitly both left and right, who would like to drag us back to tribalism, back to pre-enlightenment. She continues, quote, and I'm skipping around, so I encourage you to read the whole thing. Quote, and again, the parts of it I disagree with, you know what I think about the big tech criticism. Quote, there are people who fought very hard for the freedoms and privileges that we have, and a lot of Americans are using those freedoms to turn on other Americans, to suggest the disagreeing about the war makes them traitors. Others are sleepwalking, giving them up without a second thought. That's what Putin and the rest of the world's tyrants are counting on. They're counting on the fact that the superpower that considers receiving groceries in under an hour, its major achievement, won't interrupt a good online sale for anyone else's sake. It's not so much for anyone else's sake, for its own sake, for its own freedom's sake. It was America, she says, I'm quoting Barry Weiss. It was America that once gave the world the courage and the inspiration to keep the fight going. It was our founders that themselves stood against evil tyrants who demanded glory for their fledging democracy. And these days, it's the guy in Kiev with the army green t-shirts. God bless him and maybe we all take on this fight for his sake and ours. Now, I don't think she's talking about taking on the fight in a sense of going to war, but I think she is talking about taking on this fight in a sense of the fight for civilization, the fight for individual liberty, the fight for America, in a sense of the ideas, the ideological battle. Rejecting Putin, but also rejecting the irrational, the collectivist, the tribal in America, in American society. Now, let me suggest to you guys that an essay like this is worth supporting. Barry Weiss does not pay me a dime to promote her work. I don't think she knows who I am. But an essay like this is worth supporting. The spirit of this essay is worth supporting. Not everything I agree with, as I said, but it's spirit I agree with. We need to promote the Barry Weissers of the world. We need to give them the platform. We need to help them grow their voice. So while I always encourage you to give me on the super chat, I'm going to encourage you to go to Barry Weissers sub-stack, Barry Weiss sub-stack and subscribe. Pay five bucks a month or whatever it is in order to subscribe. Subscribe and support that voice. Support the ideas, the fundamental ideas it represents. I mean, think of it, three values we should be fighting for. Individual liberty, America, civilization. I'll take that. I mean, probably come up with better three, but I'll take that in the world in which we are, where we need a former coalition. So I encourage you to go read the article and I encourage you to support Barry Weissers sub-stack. I've recommended it in the past. She's great at going after primarily the left, primarily woke and critical race theory and everything associated with that, but she is not just one who will roll over and accept what the right stands for. She rejects much of the rights, some of the rights, racism and anti-Semitism and collectivism and brute nationalism. So I'd much rather align myself with Barry Weiss than align myself with Donald Trump, night and day in my view. All right, thanks everybody. Let's take a look here at the super chat. Don't forget you can continue to support the super chat. I think we're over the $600 goal that we have today, but we could always do better. Let's see if there are any $20 ones. I think the 500 check is equivalent to $20. I think it's $22. QLS, are there any books chronicling the various regulations and the deleterious effects which were imposed in industries such as finance, healthcare and other industries in the US? Yes, I mean there are lots of those books and there's a lot of work that's being done on an ongoing basis around those ideas. You can find that work at some of it at the Cato Institute, you can find that work at the Markatis Institute, you can find that work in specific institutes that are focused on healthcare, some that are focused on other issues. So there are quite a few. I don't have a list with me. I'm traveling and I don't have the books off the top of my head, but really there's a lot of work that's being done to chronicle all of this. That's not the problem. The problem is not a lack of research, a lot of knowledge, a lack of data, a lack of information about the evil of regulation. There's papers upon papers upon papers upon papers describing this. The problem is, I've said before, the problem is morality, the problem is altruism, the problem is irrationality. So I don't know, I'll try to come up with books. I probably have a few in my library at home, but nowhere near a full collection of what it is. A friend Harper says, thanks for this authoritarianism rant. Yeah, that would make a good short segment if Action Jackson is listening to this. Let's see. Kirill had another $20 question. My dad joined the Communist Party in the 1970s. He was a staunch supporter of communism. Over the last couple of years, I've shown him your videos, and after some heated debates, he finally came around. He is now a capitalist. Thank you. I'm shocked. I'm absolutely unequivocally shocked. I mean, it's rare that somebody particularly older person would make such a radical transition. So, wow. I mean, Kirill, you've done amazing work. Maybe we should hire you as a spokesman out there. That's amazing work. So that's great. And thank you for letting me know. It's great to think about that I converted a communist. I mean, that's great. Oh, I helped convert a communist. I didn't do much. People are justifiably complaining about the low level of the conversation today in the super chat. It really is quite something. We've got a couple of Marxists, leftist, crazy Marxists, and a number of kind of the Trump gang. It's quite amusing, actually. I think if they keep this going, they'll actually get along quite well. Colt Savage writes, Me and a friend made a couple of boxes and sent them to Ukraine full of American goodies to send to them this past year. I think America is great, and I want to share a little piece of it with them. I feel sad for them now. Yeah, I mean, I do too. And I agree completely with the sentiment America is great. I wish Americans realized how great it was. And it's sad that we don't appreciate that. But I appreciate everything else. I appreciate you supporting the Ukrainians. Yeah, I mean, Rob says lots of fascists today, fascists of the left, fascists of the right, they're all here on on my chat today. No, it's fun. Let's see. Alejandro says, Should we make children take shots for like polio? Well, who's we? Should parents? Absolutely. Should the government know? Should the government know? Now, in a, in a, should schools? Yes. So in a completely free economy, in a completely free world, schools will be private and school can demand anything. They can demand COVID shots, they can demand masks, they can demand anything they want. And then, well, within reason, within, you know, they can't demand torture, they can't demand murder, but within rights. And you get to decide, you get to decide whether you want to do it or not. Let's see. Somebody's telling me to grow up. I'm not sure what I said exactly to justify that, but I'm pretty grown. Look at that white hair. God, I'm way too grown. I can't pronounce the name. Camicia Bischuk from somewhere in Europe, using euros. I'm not sure where it's from. Couldn't attend your lectures around Europe, but at least I can contribute here. Well, I really appreciate that. Thank you. And I would be back in Europe, well, I mean London, and you should come to London and meet there for the Inland Conference in London. What is it in two weeks? But also I'll be back in Europe, primarily Eastern Europe, in April. Last week in April, I'll be doing a tour of a number of different cities in Eastern Europe. Let's see. Michael writes, should I fire a garbage employee that's hurting my business even though legally this person is protected from termination? Well, you should definitely do everything you can to fire him without getting sued. You don't want to get sued. But yeah, you should find every loophole, every excuse, every method, every way in which to fire him. He's a garbage employee who's hurting your business. It's an obrina. And then the question of the legally protected, that you're going to have to work with your lawyers to find a way around and to find a way to terminate him. Netanel writes, people in Israel are so proud of our high tech industry, but don't understand that one of the main reasons of that is the huge tax benefits to this company's 4% to 6% corporate tax instead of 25% and much more. Yeah, I mean, part of the reason capital flows there is because it's not taxed as much. And the solution to that is not to raise their taxes. The solution is as low as everybody's corporate tax rate to 4% to 6%, maybe even 0%. 0 would be good, which would be a huge boost to the Israeli economy. But look, just tax cuts doesn't create the second best high tech industry in the world, second only to Silicon Valley. The high tech industry in Israel is not just a product of tax cuts. It's also a product of brains. It's a product of hard work. It's a product of entrepreneurship. It's a product of something going right in the educational system. You know, and it's a testament to the entrepreneurial spirit of the people here. It just shouldn't be restricted to high tech. And the way to eliminate that restriction is to lower all taxes to close to zero, certainly all corporate taxes. Finally, Michael, this is the last question Michael says, isn't the current Israeli Prime Minister a big free market advocate? He has a lot of YouTube videos explaining free markets. Well, he's not, I wouldn't say a big free market advocate. He has expressed free market beliefs. He's even expressed his liking of Ayn Rand, particularly the Fountain Head, but he's read both the Fountain Head and Atlas Shrugged. So Neftali Bennett, the current Israeli Prime Minister, is a free market guy in theory. But he governs a coalition government with a lot of leftists, with a lot of socialists. And his hands are tight. Even if you want couldn't make many changes in the economy because of his coalition partners. So there's very little that can be done in this government because this is a government that's only uniting factor. The only reason they are together in the government is the hatred of Benjamin Netanyahu, of BB. That's it. That's what unites them. And that's not enough to establish free markets. All right. Thank you, everybody. Thanks, Ragnar, the desert. Thanks, everybody, all the other superchatters. I really appreciate it. I really appreciate the support. We met our goal again today. I'm pretty sure I didn't count, but I'm pretty sure we met our goal. So thank you. I will won't be doing a show tomorrow, because tomorrow I'm doing a debate about the COVID response, free market response versus a socialist response. That'll be the theme of the debate. Unfortunately for you guys, the debate will be in Hebrew, although I might speak English, but even if I speak English, you won't be able to hear his side. So it won't be as valuable for you guys, but it will be a lot of fun and it will be valuable for Israelis. I hope that the Israeli listeners to the show will consider coming tomorrow. It's in Bersheva. I know it's a drive, but it's going to be fun. It's going to be worth it. And you'll meet a lot of other people who share your ideas about many things. You'll be able to meet me. And I think the debate will be fun. And there's a lot of other events. There's a bunch of panels as part of the free market road show, which is kind of a road show. They go all over Europe and outside of Europe presenting free market ideas. I've been part of it in the past. I'm going to be part of it again in the end of April. So please join us in Bersheva tomorrow. You can find more information about that on I think my website. You can find more information about that on Boaz Arad's website, on the Facebook pages and everywhere else. So join us. And then on Wednesday night, we've got an event in Tel Aviv. I hope those of you can make it to Bersheva, at least make it to Tel Aviv. All right, everybody. Thank you. I enjoyed the show. I am ready for sleep. It is 11.30 here. I'm making a rocker's in this hotel room. They probably want to kick me out of the hotel. But I will see you all not tomorrow, but I will try to do a show on Tuesday. Bye.