 the radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Brook Show. All right everybody, welcome to Iran Brook Show on this Tuesday evening. It's already nighttime here, 8 p.m., 7 p.m. East Coast time. I hope everybody had a great day, having a great week. Yeah, so today's show, it's going to be a mixture of both some political applications, but really I wanted to make this show a positive show about moral judgment and the need for moral judgment, and the need for judgment more broadly. We talked a lot last few weeks, the last couple of weeks I think it's come up quite often, this idea of judge and be ready to be judged. And it is a really important concept, I think in Iran's, or it is a really important concept in Iran's philosophy and Iran's system of ideas. So I thought we chew on it a little bit, and the example that really came smashing onto my screen, I guess, was just people's attitude towards Russia that is coming across as a result of the announcement that Taka is interviewing of Vladimir Putin. So I thought that would be a good illustration of the principle of judging So first, let's maybe take a step back and take a step back and consider the importance of judging and then the importance of moral judgment. Life requires action. It requires choices. It requires choosing between a variety of different options. Those choices require real thought and analysis, and at the end of the day once the data is in, a judgment must be made. What is the path that is good for me? What is the path that is bad for me? Or what is the path that is neutral? A moral life is a life that strives towards success. Success is living as a human being. Success at thriving, at flourishing, as a human being, as a conceptual being. And that requires constantly judging what food is good for you, what food is poison, what animals you can hunt, and what animals you'd expend too much energy in order to sustain a hunt for them. What shelters will withstand the weather and what shelters get swept away in the rain in Southern California right now. Constant judging, constant evaluating, constant deciding, yes or no, and we're not infallible. So it is very possible, actually quite likely, that one will make mistakes. One will make mistakes, but the only way to resolve the mistakes, the only way to fix the errors, is by the standard of your own life and by, again, judging. What did I do wrong? What are the alternatives? Which one of them is the right one? So pretty much every step of human life requires a judgment, requires a choice, requires, you know, figuring out what the right path is. And moral judgment is judgment with God's kind of the very, you know, the very essence of human action. It is the choices with regard to sustaining your own life, sustaining your own ability to flourish in this world. Let's do this. Just because I'm distracted, so I need to get rid of the distraction. There we go. I'll make it that long. That's better. All right. So we must judge the paths that we mistake. We must judge the things that we eat, the things that we do, the profession, our career. And importantly, we must judge things like the people we associate with, the friends that we have. A mistake regarding judging is, a mistake regarding judgment is a mistake that can really cost you time, effort. All right. Again, distracted. Get rid of the distraction. All right. I need to be, I need to be more stringent about these things. And I know they, you know, to some extent, when you block people in the chat, they, they get energized by that because they, you know, you're paying them attention. But the reality is that, yeah, hard to sustain a trait of thought when, and when people are just bombarding the chat with nonsense. All right. So let's get back to this. Judging other human beings. One must judge other human beings. Are they good for me? Are they bad for me? Do they promote my life? Do they hood my life? Do they help me sustain a life? Or do they actually retard me? Do they hold me back? And that is choices we must make about people all the time. Who to be close to us in terms of friendship, romantic love, association, business partnership, employees, bosses, you know, there's certain bosses that you would rather not have a job or not have a job at that particular company than have this particular person as a, as a, as a boss. Life involves constant judgment of people. And again, you can make mistakes. And hopefully you're honest enough, you're aware enough, you're engaged enough to be able to identify those mistakes and to reverse them and to make amends and to fix whatever needs fixing. But the idea of saying, well, I don't know. You know, yeah, he is an ex murderer. That is true. But you know, who am I to judge? And you know, he's a nice guy generally. Yeah, he just, he just murders sometimes. And he probably would never murder me or anybody I care about, I think, most of the time. I only murders other people. And it's kind of fun to have a beer with them. And he's, he's kind of fun. And he tells jokes and, and it's, it's good to hang out. So yeah, yeah, who am I to judge? You know, he's probably got his reasons for murdering the people he murders. Now, where is that going to get you? Now that, of course, there's a caricature, but that is how a lot of people think about other people. Maybe it's not ex murderers. Very few, very few people would make that mistake, right? Particularly, you know, an ex murderer might probably won't kill me probably. My family probably, my friends probably not, but, but who knows? And I don't really know why he does it. So how do you know he won't? You're not the next victim. I mean, the whole thing is obviously ridiculous. Your survival requires that you get away from an ex murderer. Your survival requires that somebody put him behind bars, that somebody, you know, put an end to him. Murder is a bad for your life. But what is harder to understand is that liars are bad for our lives. How many of us have associations, friendships, family members we kind of tolerate or get along with business associates who we know are liars, who we tolerate as liars? And we think, well, they won't like to me or if they do, I'll see it coming. You can't live that way, people. You got to make them all judgment. Somebody who lies is a bad person and he's bad for you. No matter how good, I don't know, the sexism, no matter how good he might be at at partying, bad for you in so many ways that I think any human being can figure out he's likely to like you. You think you can detect it, but you probably will not. He probably lied to people you care about. He is, if he's lying, he's self-destructive. His self-destruction could very well bring you down as well. Judge, get away from that, which is immoral. Get away from that, which is harmful. So you don't associate, obviously with ex motivus, shouldn't associate just as obviously with liars. You got to judge, got to judge people. You got to stay away from the bad. And at the same time, you've got to be able to judge the positive. You've got to be able to say, to see who benefits your life, who furthers your life, and promote that and help that and support that because you only have one life to live. And it's crucial to live it the best that you can and we do live in a society. We do live with other people, and it is crucial that we live with other people who are supportive of our values or supportive of our life, who are supportive of moving us forward and supporting such people, bringing them close into our into our world or just patting them on the back and saying thank you and supporting them in all kinds of other ways in any way we really can depending on how good they are and how important they are to your own life and to your own progress, defending them when they're being attacked, all of that is so crucial to raising up the good and the good here is those who support your life and therefore making your life better and therefore making it easier for you to live the best life that you can live, which is ultimately the goal, live the best life that you can live. So you got to judge the people around you, the people you interact with, the people you meet at work, your employees, your bosses, the company executives. You got to judge your family. I mean, God, can there be anything out there that can suck you dry in terms of energy and sometimes money and wealth more than your family? And you got to judge them. Are they good for you? Are they bad for you? They promote your life. They hurt your life. And those who hurt your life need to be distanced. You've only got one life to give to live. You shouldn't be giving it. You shouldn't be sacrificing it. Even to those who call themselves family, even to those you're genetically related to, it's irrelevant to your life. You got to judge your friends, but you also got to judge the people further away from you. I don't know the world out there. You all know my fondness of iPhones and Apple products. And the consequence of that is that I can really say that I judged Steve Jobs to be an immense value to me and I would defend him and do defend him, defend his memory and care because he's a value, because I used his products. He made my life better. And you can say that more broadly about businessmen. Now, all of them good, no. All of them perfect, certainly not. But all of them politically and philosophically aligned with everything you believe in, no. But do they essentially sustain your life? Do they essentially promote your life? Do they essentially benefit you? Yeah, with a few exceptions who do more harm than good, most of them benefit my life. And therefore, I'm willing to support them. I'm willing to, you know, to defend them. I'm willing to fight at their side. Their productive achievement for most of them, not all of them, for most of them, far outweigh whatever sins they commit on the side, again, in almost every case. And I do it not out of some kind of sense of duty, not because I ain't been told me, not because I feel like it. I do it because I know that if we do not defend, for example, businessmen, if we attack them, regulate them, control them, tax them, then my life will be worse. My life will suffer. My life is better for the existence of businessmen, for example. My life is better for the existence of the people around me that I've chosen to bring about around me. And my life is better for the people I've pushed away from me, the people I've distanced myself from. I'm better for the fact that I have no relationship with certain people. And maybe the most selfish thing you can do, the most self-interested thing you can do, the most important thing you can do in your life, I mean, the most important thing to do is to be rational. But this is an application of rationality. One of the most important applications of rationality is to decide how to relate to the different people around you. Most of our problems in life are caused by other people. But really, they're caused by ourselves because almost always, almost always, it's our fault when we let other people hurt us because we didn't judge. Or we judged and we didn't act on our judgments. My biggest regrets, my biggest regrets in life, are being people that I've judged and didn't fully act on that judgment. So judging is important in every dimension of our relationship with other people. And of course, it's also important in judging the system under which we live, the political system. It's important to judge it. It's important to figure out how good or bad is it, what is worth supporting and what is worth rejecting, how it is relative to any other system out there. Judging the political system, judging our politicians, judging the world in which we live. And it's very hard sometimes when it comes to this because if judging people is hard, because so many people are mixed, a lot of people we know are mixed. They have good qualities and bad qualities and we have to judge whether they're good qualities, outweigh their bad qualities and whether their bad qualities are not of such nature that they so override anything good they might have that they need to be arm's length, they need to be far away because the bad stuff is so outrageously bad. People are mixed and it's hard, it's hard to judge. And this is what we made, as I said before. This is what we make, I think, most of our mistakes. Political systems in the world in which we live are hard to judge. It's easy to say, you know, capitalism is good, socialism evil, okay? I mean, it's not easy, I guess, because most people don't even think that. But we, for us, it's easy to say that. We all get it. We all get it. Capitalism good, socialism evil, fascism evil. We're gonna make a whole list. What is good? What is evil? In terms of some ideal that we have. What's more difficult, though, is to take the various mixed economies we have in the world today and figure out what is good and what is evil. What is worth maintaining is what is worth throwing out. We live, for example, in a country in the United States of America, which many people love to hate. And there's plenty of reason to want to hate it. We have a massive government. We have lots of debt. We have a horrible educational system. We have a terrible healthcare system. You know, we have, in many places, crumbling infrastructure. And you could go on and on and on and on about all the negatives in the country, and they are real. None of them should be made up. They are all real. And yet, there is a lot of good in this country. There is relative freedom, certainly relative to every other place in the world. When it comes to free speech, there's actually a lot of it in America. A lot, in spite of the attempts of those who would intimidate us and try to silence us. You can speak in this country. There's an incredible amount of entrepreneurship. And entrepreneurship is usually a sign. It's an effect. And the cause is freedom. And a respect for change. A respect for bringing about change. A respect for risk-taking. Even a respect for failure. Places that do not have entrepreneurs don't have that kind of respect. So we can look at a culture and we can see, hmm, they have entrepreneurs. They create wealth. They create wealth. They're fairly rich. They're innovative. They're competitive. They're collaborative. They apply much reason and rationality to their decision making. Not perfectly, not consistently, not as much as we would like, but some. So you get this, you know, some indicators from a culture that maybe their political system is, you know, it's got problems. Sure, you can look at the government. You can look at, you know, the laws. You can look at the application of laws. You can look at the corruption. You can look at all these things. But underneath it, there's also some good things because there are things in this culture that don't exist in others. Again, entrepreneurship, wealth creation, innovation, free speech. And all of that exists, for example, in America. All of that exists, for example, in Israel, the two most entrepreneurial countries in the world. That's not random. Is that just by chance? Can we make no judgment about the culture which respects free speech, respects entrepreneurship, handles failure, and creeds massive quantity of wealth? Can we say something about a culture like that? Yeah, absolutely. We can say with all the flaws, with all the problems, in spite of the fact that it's not ideal, and we wish it was, it's good. It's good because it's still life enhancing. It allows you to accumulate wealth. It allows you to innovate, to change, to do new things. It allows you to speak up against, to oppose. So even if you have all the crazy woke and crazy people on campus that are nuts and crazy right wing, white supremacist fanatics, even if you have those, America, for example, is a pretty good country to live in. And if you can ignore both of those, if you can shun them from your life, if you can avoid taking classes from the woke and, I don't know, hanging out with the crazy people on the right, you can still be a successful entrepreneur. You can still build a business. You can still create wealth. It's harder than it should be. And much of that wealth will be taxed away. And the regulations put irrational and immoral barriers on what you do. But you can still do it. And you can still do it in ways that you cannot do it elsewhere. The United States is still a good country. It's still a good country. There's Wonder Freeman said, we still have error correction. If you get something wrong, you're not put up against a wall and shot. You're not told you can never raise money again and don't ever start a business again. You figure it out, you solve the problem, you try something different. But then take other countries. And you look at these countries and you see very little entrepreneurship. You see poverty, very little wealth creation. You see not only a big state, but a state that basically holds all the resources to itself. I mean, one of the great things about America, just as a side note, one of the great things about America, one of the things that sustain America, one of the reasons the economy is doing so well, as compared to every other country, and so well, in spite of the efforts of government to destroy our economy, is the fact that in the United States, the only country really in the world in which natural resources are privately owned. If you have oil under your land, that oil is basically yours. If you happen to discover gold on your property, that gold is yours. If you buy a mountain and in that mountain there's copper, that copper is yours. That's not true anywhere else. In every other state, almost every other state. That is owned by the state. So we can evaluate countries. We can look at poverty as a sign that they're doing something wrong. It's not a sign like the left tells us that they're being exploited. It's a sign that they are doing something wrong to themselves. If you look at lack of entrepreneurship, sign that they're doing something else to themselves. And then of course, if there's no free speech, then you kind of get a sense of what they're doing to themselves. They're screwing themselves. They're not allowing people freedom. There is no worse infringement on freedom than the negation of free speech. So let's look at Russia. It's a poor country, dramatically poorer than the US, but also dramatically poorer in terms of disposal of income or in terms of GDP per capita. However you want to measure these things, dramatically poorer than pretty much all of Europe. In spite of the fact that it has massive quantities of natural resources. In spite of the fact that it has individuals that when they leave Russia, can be super entrepreneurial and super productive and super wealthy. Just look at how well Russians have done as immigrants in other countries. In Russia, they do poorly. You just got a funny super chat, so I'm laughing. I apologize. I think it's meant to be funny. It would be sad if it was meant to be serious. It would be even funnier if it was meant to be serious. I'll read it later when I do the super chat. So you look at Russia and you see an authoritarian. You see anybody who disagrees with this authoritarian, who challenges the authoritarian, either dies or is in prison. You see demonstrations broken up in the streets and people thrown in jail. You see, again, poverty, lack of initiative, lack of entrepreneurship, and basically the milking of natural resources to make a few people rich. And who are the few people who are rich? The few people are rich are all the friends of the brutal dictator. And this is a dictator who is very explicit about what he believes in. He's an authoritarian thug, a nationalist, somebody who believes in a greater Russia, who wants to conquer other lands, who has aggressed against peaceful people in Georgia in 2008, in Ukraine in 2014, then again in Ukraine in 2022. This is a guy who has had his opposition killed, murdered over and over again over the last 20 years. Russians, I mean, falling dead from all kinds of windows. And this is a man who was engaged in the largest military offensive initiation of force in Europe since World War II. He's a man who's got the blood of tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people on his hands. Many of them Russians, many of them Russians. And what is shocking, what is truly shocking, and it's all over Twitter, and it's all over YouTube, and it's really everywhere, is nobody will judge him. Well, Putin, he's just a politician. All politicians are the same. Oh, there's no, he's worse than Biden? Really? How could he be worse than Biden? Biden is the worst thing that's ever happened to the world. No ability to judge. No ability to figure out what is pro-life, what is anti-life, what promotes human life, what destroys human life, what kind of system would you want to live in, what kind of system would you not want to live in? It's the same with people's response to Gaza, right? Queers for Gaza. Yeah, try that. Try that in Gaza. No ability to look at Gaza and say, yeah, it's barbaric. The political system, the leadership, the structure of society, barbaric. I couldn't live there. It's horrible. It's immoral because it's anti-human life. Putin is immoral. He's evil. He's anti-human life. Hamas, evil, anti-human life. Russian society, bad anti-human life. Hamas society, bad anti-human life. And you can go on and on with, you know, Afghanistan, North Korea, China, bad, immoral. And then what are the consequences of saying bad immoral? Oh, we should embrace them. We should negotiate with them. We should figure out, we should make a deal because that's what you do, right? Where you identify somebody in your business world, in your business environment, when you identify somebody. There was a liar who maybe even is an axe murderer. And, but he's got kind of a, you know, he's got a business. He's a, you know, maybe, maybe a competitor. Maybe he's a supplier, maybe someone like that. And you say, yes, all right, what I should really do is ignore the fact that he's an axe murderer. I should ignore the fact that he's a liar. I should ignore the fact that he is, I don't know, a brutal torturing SOV. I'll make a deal with him. Because I know that I can always trust people who are axe murderers, liars, torturers to always abide by the deal they sign. And they'll treat me well because I know how to do deals. So I'll make a deal with him. I want to listen. I want to listen to what he has to say. I want to listen to what the axe murderer has to say. I wonder, he might have some insight. It might help me figure out what axe murderers do, what they do. And then I'll go after him. And as friend Harper says, look, nobody's perfect. Nobody's perfect. So he kills all his opposition leaders. So he invades countries every few years. Look, you gotta, you gotta accept people's flaws. You gotta live with them. And you should negotiate. We should always negotiate. So let's elevate Putin. And let's have a conversation. And let's listen to what he has to say. And it might be interesting. We might learn something. He might say something he's never said before. I mean, what do you do with people like Chuck Leaf on the chat here who refuse to accept the existence of evil in the world, who think negotiating with evil is completely acceptable. And I assume it's on this channel because they've read a little bit of Iron Man. And maybe, maybe they think their view is even consistent with hers. I mean, she's spinning in her grave. Of course you're elevating Putin. Of course you're elevating Putin. But the very fact that you're willing to talk to Putin, you're elevating Putin. It's exactly like the line-cheating, stealing business associate. You don't negotiate with him. You don't talk to him. You don't interview him. You fire the bastard and you never deal with him again. But he'll cut you a great deal, Iran. You'll get the best prices. You'll get the best prices. Nope. Not if you care about your life. Not if you care about your integrity. Not if you care about your products. Not if you care about your future. You don't deal with scum. You don't deal with immoral, with the immoral. You don't deal with evil. Unless you have to. You got to deal with a tax man. You don't have a choice. IRS called you up. You negotiate because otherwise you risk going to jail. But you got a choice. So when Tucker goes and interviews Putin, he is basically saying that asking Putin questions and the answers Putin gives, those answers are legit. But we all know that Putin is a lying, manipulating, propaganda, infusing, totalitarian thug. Everything you want to know about Putin, you can find on the Kremlin website. I've been there. Every one of his speeches is transcribed and they're translated in English to provide you with easy access. You want to know what Putin thinks? Make a little bit of effort and you can find it. And believe me, what you'll find on the Kremlin website, which is what he says in Russian and is then translated to English is going to be far more useful than anything he says in English. And I want to get this straight. Is Tucker going to ask him why he poisons his political opponents? Is Tucker going to ask him why he imprisons many of his political rivals? Why there are restrictions on the free press or free speech more broadly or protest? Why he threatens the world with nukes? Why he kidnaps Ukrainian children? Is Tucker going to ask him any of those questions? Well, of course not. He would have never gotten the interview if he didn't promise not to ask him those kind of questions. I mean, he might ask him about Nevali and how Nevali is doing, Nevali's opposition leader who's in jail. And Putin will give some, you know, maybe they negotiate some one tough question, right? And I'm sure he'll ask him why he invaded Ukraine. And I'm sure we'll get the standard answer that he gives in English, which is slightly different than the answer he gives in Russian. Aren't you more interested in the answer he gives in Russian? And it's not like Putin hasn't been interviewed by other people. He has. By found press. He has. Nothing to gain by associating yourself with an evil thug, except the sanction of that evil thug, the elevation of that evil thug, the making of that evil thug into a more important figure than he is. And giving that evil thug an audience of Americans who are unlikely to do their research, unlikely to go read his speeches on the Kremlin website, unlikely to actually know much about Russia. And Tchaikovsky is not going to educate them. Now imagine if Tchaikovsky, you know, prepared a show by saying, here's the reality of Russia. Here's what they do. Here's how poor they are. Here's how horrible they are. Here's how awful the regime is. Here's how monstrous Putin is. And here's my interview with him. Don't believe everything you listen to and will critique what he says after the fact. But you know that's not what's going to happen. You know it's not going to happen. So what's the point? Why support an interview like this? Why promote an interview like this? What does it gain anybody? And I think the same is true of Alex Friedman. I don't think Alex should go and interview Putin, although I think Alex would do a much better job than Tchaikovsky. I don't think anybody should interview Putin. There's nothing to be gained. There's no compromise between evil and good. And you might say, but yeah, but Ukraine's corrupt and Ukraine. Yeah, they're not great. But they're not the aggressor. They're not the aggressor. And in comparison to Russia, they are the good. How many Americans have been to Moscow? Been to Russia? Talk to Russians? How many of them have been to Ukraine? Sadly very few. Americans don't travel that much when they do travel. They travel to nice, pretty places. They enjoy the scenery. They don't get too involved and they come home. Most Americans are too ignorant to watch a Putin interview. They are likely and particularly by an interview done by somebody who's not going to give you the context, who's not going to give you the background, who's not going to present it properly. Then yeah, most people are just going to eat it up. And Taka, like most journalists today, will have done us all a disservice by providing really, really horrible information to people without context and without the ability to judge it. Yeah, I mean the Putin interview will get lots of views, lots of views. Everybody will watch it. It's the thing to do. And will it make the world a better place? Not even by one single tiny iota. It will actually make the world the worst place. All it will do is reinforce those who are leaning towards Russia anyway. It'll reinforce their cred. It'll make them stronger. And we're all worse for it. All worse for it. I don't think it's an issue of people being able to vote, not being able to vote. The reality is that responsible journalism provides context for the information you receive. And if you're not willing to provide context, then don't interview one of the world's murderous thugs. And if you're not willing to call him a murderous thug, then you're not providing context. And given that we, for the second time now, will be choosing between Biden and Trump, I think the only conclusion you can come to is that the voters of America are pretty stupid. I mean, I don't know what other conclusion you can come to. I believe in judging, right? And when I see people voting for Biden and people voting for Trump, God, I mean, at least the people who ultimately determine who our candidates are, the people who are involved in Democratic and Republican politics, who determine who the candidates are, those people are pretty stupid in any way. Otherwise, these wouldn't be the choices. Taka never provides context. And Taka is 100% political. I mean, he's not really political. He's clickbait. All he cares about is getting his numbers up. He has no respect for the truth. He has no respect for facts. He is a con man who presents himself as a journalist. But there's nothing remotely journalistic about what Taka Kalsen does. And I've reviewed his segment after segment after segment of him just talking absolute, unequivocal nonsense, nonsense. I know you can't believe he's a con man, but he is. I mean, and he knows it, right? He knows it completely. He says what he says and he does what he does in order to, you know, maximize viewership. All right, let's see. Where are we? Yeah, I mean, Taka's a known quantity. This is not new. I mean, there's no new stuff here about Taka. Taka's a known quality. He sucks up to, you know, despicable characters. He distorts the history and the present of the United States. He creates hysteria around things that do not deserve hysteria. You know, my favorite, my favorite Taka Kalsen segment was a segment I showed you guys where he told us what America is, what he loves about America. And it was the most shallow, stupid, despicable thing I've ever seen. And he is, he's not pro-America, because he doesn't know, sadly, what America is. He doesn't understand America. The two things that were, that made America great, the two things that identified America as America were beautiful geography and basically a respect for God. America would never be the land that it is, would never be as rich and as successful, as prosperous as it is today, if that's what America made of it. I am pro the principles that make America. That doesn't make me pro Americans. I'm not pro most Americans. Most Americans don't know what they're doing, certainly not politically, certainly not philosophically. I'm pro America. I'm pro the founding principles of this country. I'm pro the things that make this country great, in spite of many of the people who live in it. I'm pro the ideas. I'm pro the freedom. I'm pro the liberty. I'm pro individual rights. That is what America is. Am I pro Biden versus Trump? No. Am I pro the people who insist that Trump should be the Republican candidate in spite of everything? No. I don't think they're, I don't think they know what they're doing. Do I trust those people to watch a Tucker interview and judge it appropriately? No, I don't. Yeah, I'm very harsh on Tucker. And I have been for years, so this is not new. I'm absolutely, I have no problem with Tucker doing the interview with Putin. He should go for it. I have no problem with people doing stupid things, doing immoral things. He's not violating my rights. Russia has not been declared an enemy state. By the way, would you guys have supported an interview with Hitler in 1939, just before the war broke out? Would you support an interview with Hitler in 1941 before the United States entered the war? Would you support an interview with Hitler in 1943, once America was at war with Germany? What is the cutoff point? When is an interview with Hitler not okay? In my view, an interview with Hitler is never okay. Never okay. It's never okay to sanction evil. Ever. And negotiate with Hitler? Were you forenegotiating with Hitler in 1938, like Chamberlain? How about negotiating with Hitler in 1941? Negotiating with Hitler in 1943? Real questions. I'm curious. What all you Putin lovers think should be done, should have been done? And look, I'm going to watch the Putin interview because I'll critique it. I'll present you with a critique of it. If I think it's even worthy of that, given that it's probably going to be pretty uninteresting. But yeah, I mean, absolutely, Tucker Carlson, as if you wait to do the interview. As long as the United States is not officially at war with Russia, he can't be tried for treason or anything like that. Once we're at war with Russia, then he could be tried for treason. But as long as we're not at war with Russia, all right, it's wrong, evil, immoral to interview Hitler, even if it's a hostile interview. It's wrong, evil to debate Hitler. And if you don't get that, you don't get Iron Man. You don't get Iron Man's idea about the sanction of the victim. You don't get Iron Man's idea about judging. You don't get Iron Man's idea about the whole idea of moral sanction and the whole idea of giving approval to those who would destroy you. And that is what Tucker is doing. So I think what Tucker's doing is immoral, certainly not illegal. I'm not going to debate with any of you what the war in Ukraine is about. I mean, obviously, you're unbelievably ignorant because you haven't read Putin. You see, I actually do my research. When I want to see a cause, I go find out what does Putin think? I'm interested in what Putin thinks. I just don't think Tucker Carlson needs the interviewing for you to discover that. When Tucker interviews Putin, he will tell you that the war is about NATO. But when Putin tells the Russian people what the word it was about, he never talks about it. He doesn't talk about NATO. I mean, peripherally, but that's not what the war is about. Never has been, never was. It wasn't why he invaded Georgia in 2008. It's not why he invaded. He started a war in Ukraine in 2014. And it's certainly not why he invaded in 2022. But for that, you'd have to actually do your research. You'd have to get your head out of Tucker Carlson's backside. And you'd actually have to do some thinking for yourself. You don't go do your research. I'm not going to enlighten you. And if you're interested, I've done, I don't know, a dozen videos in which I discuss exactly what this was about. I gave a talk at Ocon last year about what this was about, what motivates Putin. And I've quote some Putin. I've, as I said, I've actually read his speeches. But, you know, I'm not going to waste my time because I don't think any of you are actually interested in changing your minds about these things. So I have a low view, low opinion of people. What can I say? All right, the talk is available. Just put your on book Ukraine in YouTube, and you can find it. So, and it was presented at Ocon last year. And I've also done, I don't know, half a dozen to a dozen. Your on book shows on the topic where I've discussed this. So go enjoy, go enjoy reading somebody's speeches, reading my comf is not sanctioning. I know these are hard concept, William. I know it's tough on the brain, but but you'll get it maybe, maybe not. But it's it's it's these are difficult concepts. Reading somebody's work is not the same as shaking their hand, meeting with them, asking them polite questions and engaging with conversation with them, or negotiating with them like Trump did with a brutal dictator of North Korea, you know, much, much lower than much worse than what Tucker's doing. I mean, that was complete betrayal of America. But but yeah, I mean, there is a big difference. And again, thinking, I know it's tough. I can see I can see on Twitter how few people do it. A few people actually engage in it. And it's not an issue of agreeing with me or not agreeing with me. It's an issue of thinking, of actually engaging with facts and evidence and integrating and thinking in principles, thinking about principles, understanding principles. All right, I'm in a bad mood. So I apologize to all of you who don't deserve me yelling at the chat and at Twitter. But for a variety of reasons, I'm supposed to be yeah, anyway, a variety of reasons. I'm in a bad mood. And some of them have to do with the quality of just the debate around this issue. All right. See, we've got super chat. So super chat, you can ask questions, you can challenge me, I read everything you write in the super chat, even if it's even if it's a challenge to me, even if it's disagreeing, even as presenting an argument to the contrary, you can use the super chat to do that. That's where my attention is at. And of course, you support the show. Thank you, Applejack for the sticker. Let's see. Thank you, Donna. Thank you, Chris. Thank you, Stephen. Thank you, friend Harper. I appreciate the support by sticker. But Baker says, can you discuss why weighing the significant positives and negatives in a relationship is not an issue of their numbers, but of fundamentals and why fundamentals are so significant. Model judgment is crucial here. Yeah, good point. And that's true of a political system as well. You've got to judge it by its fundamentals. And this is why free speech is so crucial to judging any kind of political system right off the bat. That should be where you really start if you're looking at a political system. People's moral character, the degree to which they're rational, the degree to which they're honest, to which they have integrity, is to the degree to which they're productive. It's going to fundamentally shape everything else about them. These are the guides to action whether they have adopted them explicitly or implicitly. Most people, after all, adopt their philosophical views, even their moral views, their moral identity. Most people adopted implicitly without really thinking it through. But whether they do it explicitly, implicitly, these are the things that shapes everything that they do. These are the things that are going to touch all of their activity. Now, most people, a lot of people are mixed. And some of the time they can act quite normally and nicely and honestly and so on. But if they don't hold honesty as a principle, if they don't have that implicitly or explicitly as an absolute, then you'll just never know. You can easily be blindsided. You will easily be surprised when they turn against you, when they lie to you and cause something horrible to happen. If somebody is nice enough and they're honest, up to a point at least, but they're not productive, then what is the basis of having a relationship with them? What are they at? What are they contributing? And at what point does they need, because they have needs and they're not productive, become a claim against you? If they're honest, but don't have integrity, if they're honest, but they're not rational, then their behavior is ultimately going to be, ultimately going to be erratic and effect you. So the whole point of moral principles is these are the principles that guide and affect every action and the consistency of those actions. So what people might hold are much, if they don't hold these things as anything close to absolutes, then you're in trouble and you have to be on your guard and you have to be careful. They might be honest most of the time, but they won't be all the time. They might do what they say most of the time, but they won't do it all the time. And how do you know when? And how do you organize your life? And how do you structure your life around it? Let's say they have a business partner, when do you count on them? When do you not? Morality is a guide to life. And if you don't follow it, then you're basically pursuing death. And if you link your faith to somebody else who is pursuing death, they are likely to drag you along with them. And by dragging you along with them, you will suffer. And the only way to assess whether somebody is moving towards life or towards death is to assess the basic fundamental moral values that are guiding their life, whether they hold them explicitly or implicitly. And of course, this is also true of evaluating a political system. One has to look at the fundamentals. America is massively screwed up, but because we add such geniuses as founders and because they put such a phenomenal document together as the Constitution, some of those principles have survived. There's a fundamental presumption of liberty. There's a fundamental presumption of freedom, of free speech, of other things. And in many places, it's been eroded, but it pops up once in a while. So when the FBI opens, everybody's safe deposit boxes, confiscating stuff left and right, the courts shut them down and require them to return the money and penalize them. Would the courts ever do that in Russia? Would the courts ever do that in Saudi Arabia? Would the courts ever do that in North Korea? Do they even have courts? I don't know. Would the courts do that in any one of these authoritarian nations? So just on the basis of that, how can you compare? Yes, it's horrible. The FBI ever did it. And the more the FBI does things like that, the closer we get to being a Russia or a China. But we still have courts that reign them in. And for that, we should be thankful. And for that, we should recognize that we live in a better country than those other, in a better system than those other systems. And to equate those systems, because we don't like Biden or we don't like Trump, is an injustice. And it leads you to bad decisions again. If you decide that the two systems are equivalent, you might accidentally choose to live in Russia. Not good. Not good for you. Not good for your health. Not good for your freedom. Not good for your wealth. So you've got to make decisions. You've got to make judgments. And you've got to make them by essentials. And when you're judging individuals, you make it by their moral character. And you want to make systems. You want to look at the fundamentals that drive the system. And given that they're all mixed, you want to look at, okay, but what's essential? What am I most likely to encounter? Yes, I know there's going to be taxes. There are going to be regulations. Less, more, where? And what's the presumption? And it's still true that in America, the presumption is towards liberty. In many cases, most cases. Thank you, Baker. Great question. John, thank you for the $20. Tasey, thank you. Really appreciate the support. Applejack, thank you. I'm doing all the stickers. I did a bunch of them. Donna, thank you. I did a bunch of them earlier. So that was just some of them. Andrew, Trump called Kim Jong-un. I don't even like calling him by name. Trump called the brutal dictator of North Korea a great leader, an American president talking up a third-rate psychopathic dictator, murderous psychopathic dictator. Any thoughts on the practical effect of falsely judging a dictator as virtuous? Yes, yes. You embolden him. You embolden the clique around him, which is controlling his people. You demoralize his own population. When Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union an evil empire, he emboldened the resistance. He emboldened those people who stood up against him. When you call the brutal dictator a great man, you embolden the dictator. You embolden his thuggery and his murderousness. You also basically signal that the worse he is, the more he'll get, the more you'll negotiate, the more you'll give up. So it's horrific. It's demoralizing. I mean, when America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, sees its leader groveling and sucking up to a little nothing like the brutal dictator of North Korea, a psychopath, sees Donald Trump waving a little communist flag, it's completely demoralizing of your own people. And it's demeaning of your own system of government. They're all the same. There's no difference. You know, one of the three men said, Steve Forbes was running radio for Europe at the time of Ronald Reagan making the statement and carried that message into the Soviet Union. Yes, and a lot of really brave people carried that message into Poland, and that's why solidarity movement really got its energy. If you talk to Lech Valenza today, he will tell you that back then Ronald Reagan inspired them, even though he didn't really do anything. He just gave great speeches, but he called the Soviet Union what it really was, the evil empire. He demanded that the war come down. He made moral judgments, just making the judgment inspire change. That's what brought down the wall wasn't the fence spending. It was much more the inspiration that he gave the common East Germans, the common Poles, the common Czechs to go and fight for their own freedom, to stand up for their own freedom. So when you do the opposite, when you stand up for motorist thugs, when you stand up for psychotic dictators, you're diminishing the people that are suffering under their boot, diminishing them. So, yeah, big, big mistake. There is no carrots to people like the brutal dictator of North Korea. When Trump was tough with him, we actually, you know, got him to stop what he was doing. When he softened him, he just emboldened him and made him stronger. That's all he did. Chris, have you ever looked into Taylor Swift's master recordings dispute and her attack on private equity that earned her praise from AOC analyst with Juan? Something she should, most she should just be judged for. I haven't, I haven't seen her attack on private equity and any master recording dispute. Sure. I mean, there are lots of disputes in the music industry to the extent that Taylor Swift is wrong about her disputes about these issues. She's wrong about them. And she should be judged accordingly. That's not what anybody in my land is complaining about when it comes to Taylor Swift. These kind of things have nothing to do with that. Indeed, if somebody in right wing music, whatever the hell that was, if somebody in the right wing world had a dispute with private equity, MAGA would support the singer. It says nothing to do with anything, any real violations, any real opinions. My guess is, I disagree with Taylor Swift about almost everything. But just like I said about businessmen, when I see a businessman who is incredibly successful, made a lot of money, created a lot of wealth, I admire them and respect them in spite of maybe them having bad politics. And the same is true. Now, I don't know about the particularly dispute about master recordings, but you know, intellectual property rights are complex issues. And these are real, I can, there are a lot of disputes around these things. And it's quite possible, given AOC and Elizabeth Warren's informants, certainly that Taylor Swift is significantly in the wrong here. Okay. I have no problem judging Taylor Swift as terrible when it comes to intellectual property rights and phenomenal when it comes to making money and satisfying the desires of women all over the planet with I think pretty mediocre music. I mean, I'll judge Taylor Swift. I don't like her music. I don't like the show, but I'm not her audience. And she's incredibly successful. And I don't love her at all. But I don't hate her because she happens to endorse Joe Biden. A lot of people endorse Joe Biden. I find her music, I grew Jennifer, I find her music boring for the most part. It's just not interesting. It's just the same. She's a performer, though. And she appeals to people, not me. But the meltdown that make America great as having over her stuff. And I still see it on Twitter, the videos they post, the comments they make, it's just absurd and ridiculous. And, you know, she's in love with the football player. That's what really offends them because football is this all-American sport and how can a lefty, successful lefty, first of all, how can a lefty be successful? That offends the MAGA crowd. And thanks, Chris. Appreciate the question. But I'll try to look into that if I have time into her recording dispute. But, you know, what offends them is a lefty is successful. And a lefty has seduced, I guess, one of the best football players. Certainly in his position, maybe the greatest football player ever as a fullback. No, he's not a fullback. What is he? Anyway, whatever he is. And everybody loves him. And she endorses tight end. Thank you, tight end. One of the greatest tight ends ever. And she endorsed Joe Biden. How horrible of her. I, you know, so the Taylor Swift derangement syndrome that is occurring on the right is and the gushing over Taka Carlson on the right and over his interview with Putin on the right is indicative of the complete bankruptcy of the right and much of the Republican party. Yeah, I mean, you know, I didn't invent the Taylor Swift success offends you guys. It's all over the web. I didn't make it up. Just look at the tweets from, what's his name, Vivek to pretty much everybody associated with MAGA. They really don't like Taylor Swift's success. They resented it. What do they call it? It's a Pentagon Psycop. It's a Pentagon op because they cannot explain the success otherwise. The only way Taylor Swift could be successful is if the Pentagon put her up to it and the Pentagon is funding the whole thing. And that's not a joke. That was on, that was on the news. Jesse Waters on Fox. I showed video of it, but it's not just Fox. It's been repeated over and over and over again within the MAGA world. So the nuts, the nuts, the anti-American nutcases. Andrew says, why do you think Rand made the virtue about judging others and didn't include judging oneself? Isn't judging oneself critical to self-esteem? Yeah. I mean, she talks about that in, when she talks about justice, that part of justice is justing, is judging yourself. And judging yourself is essential, not only for self-esteem, but it's also essential for justice, that you have to be just towards yourself, not towards others. But here the question was about judging other people and being judged. And when she says being judged, prepared to be judged, she includes being judged by yourself. That is, judge other people and prepare for other people to judge you and prepare for you to judge yourself. So judging yourself is a crucial part of the virtue of justice. And sometimes other people judging you can be very helpful for you judging yourself, because it gives a certain external perspective on at least how you're perceived and what you're doing. And it can be very useful to judging yourself. So I don't think she's certainly are not excluding that. And she's a big, big advocate for it, for judging yourself. Wes, $50, thank you, really appreciate the support. We're a little behind guys, so $20 questions, $50 questions on anything, you can ask about anything. Michael, could you do a show going over Iron Man's essay, The Missing Link? I think objectivist can't comprehend why people can't think and see truth. He asked that it's not on me, it's in the living room. But yes, I've actually just started reading the essay again for, I don't know, the fifth time, because every time I read it, I discover new stuff. But yeah, that is a really good idea. And it really is a great essay. And it explains so much about the people around us, the people we encounter in the world out there, some of the people in the chat, it really is, I mean, The Missing Link is also such a great title, because it is a Missing Link, it's people not quite reaching the level of being human, because being human means being willing to engage in abstract reality connected thought all the way, not just up to a point. And what she's describing is people who only do it so far and can't go all the way. And that's kind of The Missing Link. And indeed, again, I think this is what Leonard Peacock talked about when we said the culture's just, it's too early. We haven't evolved to a point where we can handle the truth, we can handle reality, we can handle capitalism and freedom, is because, and this is the sense in which I think the American people can't think, they can't. That's a fact. It's why we have a mixed economy. It's why we're in the mess we're in. If Americans could think, would they vote for Joe Biden? If Americans could think, would they vote for Donald Trump? If Americans could think, would they have voted for, I don't know, Bill Clinton, President Obama, Bush, are these the people, the thinking people vote for? If the Americans still had the Americans sense of life and that the capacity to think through the issues, would they vote for any of these people? Ayn Rand does not talk about The Missing Link in terms of biology. She talks about The Missing Link in terms of, for her, I mean, that's the essay, right? The Missing Link in biology is in biology, but she talks about it in terms of willingness and ability to use one's mind all the way. All right, I copied that suggestion over. Thank you, Michael. Fenerbah, if you and Douglas Murray did a talk at Columbia defending Israel, it would definitely go viral. I agree. And this is the thing. And I'm serious here. So anybody listening to this who is interested in this, you know, respond to me, because otherwise, to do an event at Columbia with Douglas Murray, which is definitely doable, and Douglas would agree, he's done events with me in the past. And I know he still has a positive view of me. We would need probably $15,000. I mean, that's just the reality. Douglas Murray is expensive. He's great now. He's in London. We'd have to get him to the United States. We'd have to pay him a speaker fee. You'd have to pay me a speaker fee. I think we could get somebody to sponsor it on campus. I'm not sure because it's risky and you'd require a lot of security. But I think we get it sponsored on campus. But we would really need, to be safe, probably $20,000. I think Douglas, because of the issue, I think he'd be willing to do it for a fairly reasonable price. So I'd say, let's say $20,000 for me and Douglas to do an event at Columbia. And if somebody's willing to put up their money, and I'm serious here, if somebody's willing to put up their money, you'll put up half of it. And we can look for the other half. But somebody's willing to put up a significant amount. Don't email me and say I can put in $50. But if you're willing to put up $5,000, $10,000, let's make it chunks of five at most, at the least, then I will contact Douglas and start contacting people at Columbia and see if we can put on an event. That's my challenge to you. I don't have that kind of money to do it. But if somebody out there would like to see it happen and is willing to put up their money, we can do it. We can, it could be done at Columbia, it could be done at NYU, Columbia in particular, because Columbia is kind of a hub. It's a hub of the anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian, pro-Hamas activism is really in Columbia University. And no, you know, so yeah, it's doable, but it requires financing. So if somebody wants to finance it, great, otherwise, I'd love to do it. Right now I've been invited to do, and I've got the financing, I think, to do a talk in Cleveland at the law school in Cleveland on Israel. I'm trying to establish a contact with somebody at University of Florida, and I'll be looking for financing for that. Generally, if you're interested in financing a tour for me to deliver my talk on Israel at university campuses around the country, and you're willing to put in chunks of $5,000, then I can organize a tour like that. So I'd love to do a tour like that. So, but I need the funding. It's not going to happen, it's not going to happen by itself. Liam, the only reason the West is crumbling the way it is is because of ARI's poor leadership. If Scott were in charge, and you can add William, I think William is Scott's partner in crime, we would have coalitions and therefore would have won. I think you're absolutely right, Liam. Maybe I should just quit putting Scott in charge. Frank says, I saw you in Columbia organized by Rob Bagley. Rob Bagley would not be organizing an event that I do today, but it is possible. We'd still do it, and we'll find student organization in Columbia to sponsor it. That would be cool. Clark says, isn't it clearly counting on Trump disqualification? Could she beat Biden if the GOP base won't vote for her because of the irrational loyalty to Trump? Yeah, no, I think she could be Biden. I think she captures, I think there's a significant number of Democrats who do not want Biden and are willing to go with somebody like Nikki Haley. I think she captures the independence. And I think at the end of the day, a lot of Republicans, even if some Trumpists won't vote for her, a lot of Republicans will vote for her because the alternative is Biden. And I think they see that as alternative. What might happen is that a lot of the Trump base would vote for RFK. They'd vote for Robert F. Kennedy. And then you have a three-way race between Robert F. Kennedy, Nikki Haley, and Biden. And I think, and maybe somebody that left up Biden, I forget the guy's name from Harvard, who was from Harvard, who's also running as an independent. But yeah, I think in a case like that, I think Nikki Haley has a really, really, really good chance of winning. If you look at the polls, she beats Biden by a much bigger margin than Trump does. Extend the polls are worth anything. This is Matt. Can you review Peter Zane's latest video on the Middle East and explain where he's right and wrong? Only 16 minutes long. So maybe a news roundup topic. No, 16 minutes. That is going to take me easily two hours to review. You haven't seen me review videos? 16 minutes is like impossible. That's probably four hours for me to review a 16-minute video. But so yeah, I will look at it. And if there's enough interesting content there, I can do it on one of the long shows. Thanks for the idea. I'm always looking for ideas like that. And Peter Zane is super interesting. So it's worth doing. Mipoki, how should one go about convincing people that agree with you on the enemies of Western civilization? That is Iran, Russia, China. However, are usually against military intervention or escalation? Look, I think that the only way to convince them, and look, I'm not for military intervention with Russia. I don't think America should go to war with Russia because Russia has nukes. I think the advantage of Ukraine defending itself and holding Russia back is that it'll put Russia in if you provide it with arms and you provide it with the resources that it can put Russia in its place, reduce Russia's ambitions significantly, make China rethink its aggression. And it costs you relatively very little. But if you allow Russia to take Ukraine, that emboldens Russia. It shows China that the West will not support its allies. And therefore it emboldens China to invade Taiwan. It emboldens Iran. It emboldens all these countries to become more aggressive. So it is always the case that emboldening one's enemies always makes them more sort of more bold and ultimately more aggressive towards you. So the way to avoid war with Russia and China is, for example, to support Ukraine. In Iran, you know, what can you say? Iran first of all is a weak enemy. It's a weak country. It would not be that difficult to destroy and to cripple. I've laid out a number of different ways that could be done in terms of crippling their economy, crippling their military, crippling their ability to wage anything and make you be making it possible for the opposition to take them over. I don't think you'd have to engage in a ground war. And the reality is that Iran is engaged in a war against everybody else. So you don't want military intervention. Yeah, nobody wants military intervention, but if somebody attacks you, do you not defend yourself? And if they slap you and slap you and slap you, wouldn't you punch them in the nose? At some point, if you don't stand up to them, they'll develop nukes and they might even use them. So you've got to stop an aggressor. So I don't know, I mean, more than that, what you can do. It's in your self-defense. It's unnecessary in dealing with a bully to stand up to them. And that means punching them in the face when they bully you. And if you don't, they'll only keep bullying you. They'll only keep making it worse. John, yet another failure to connect abstracts with concretes. Supporting freedom of speech doesn't mean you shouldn't have moral standards and allow any speech in your platform. Hope your evening improves. Supporting free speech doesn't mean you shouldn't have moral standards and allow any speech in platform. Absolutely, I agree with you completely. That is, I can support free speech and not allow Nazis on my chat. Because I don't want to hear Nazis, but I support their right to be on their own chat, have their own program, or start their own media company, or do their own thing on their own property, on their own space. Free speech does not mean everybody has a right to say whatever they want on anybody's platform. It's free speech is not, you know, does not override property rights. It does not override my rights to decide who participates and who doesn't participate in my forum. I don't suggest sending anybody's sons to die unless they volunteer to fight for the freedom of this country. So, you know, you have a military to defend the country. So you have to make the case that it's defending the country. But yeah, and and those of you who want me to go and fight for Iran, I've done that already. I'm 62 years old. When I was 18 to 21, I fought the enemies and I fought in self defense. So I've been there. I've done my part. What are you doing to protect your own liberty, to protect your own freedom? Nothing. You want to be pacifist and lay down so that they overrun us, so they destroy us, so they kill us indiscriminately. Your pacifism is destructive, it's self-destructive, it's suicidal. I want to volunteer an army that actually acts to defend Americans. That's its job. That's why people volunteer to defend Americans. Somebody's attacking Americans. You've got to defend them. Otherwise, what's their military for? Otherwise, literally, let's invite the Iranians over and they can govern. I mean, some of you might prefer them to Biden, right? They're Islam. It's better than woke. I'm sure Scott thinks that, right? Islam is better than woke. You know, they hate woke. The Iranians actually, now that I think of it, absolutely. The Iranian regime hates woke, like Putin. Therefore, they must be our allies. We should form a coalition with Iranian Mullahs and Putin to fight against woke. There you go. We've solved all our problems and then we don't have to go to war. We can just have them govern over us. So no, I don't want to send anybody's, I don't want to send anybody's children to woke and Islam are not not a coalition. You have no real understanding of the dynamics of Islam. If you think that, you know, they might be a coalition for the moments of expediency in a particular place, the United States, but everywhere else in the world, it is not a coalition. They are about as anti-woke as can be. And in every opportunity, they will remind you of that and they will remind you with blood. Let's see. Yeah, I mean, this, this idea of sending other people's kids to fight in was, I've often said, you should never advocate for a war that you're not willing to send your own kids to fight in. And I hold on that. I hold by that. I would not advocate for any war that I would not be willing to send my kids to fight if they had the right rules and engagement. You guys are just cowards and you're quite willing to let the bully just slap you and slap you and slap you and slap you until you have no will to resist. It's all gone. You've been slapped down to your knees. And that's the state of so many Americans. They've been so discouraged by the incompetence of previous administrations, really since World War II to fight wars, that they're so resistant to war now that they're willing to basically bend over. They're willing to drop to their knees in front of the whatever thug, Putin, the mullahs or whatever thug there is out there that is available, they're willing to grovel before them, including the brutal dictator of North Korea. But then they don't grovel themselves. They send their president to grovel for them. What if your interview could help, would help to expose the evil? Like Oriana Felicis' interview with Harmony, also wondering right now if I debate too often evil ideas in social media. My guess is you debate too often evil ideas in social media. Look, what do you need to debate? What do you need to expose the evil? It's not like when you interview this person, they're going to say something that they've never said before. If you could trap them, if you could maybe, then maybe. But it's not like Putin is going to say anything that he hasn't already said, anything new. His evil needs to be exposed, but there is a ton of content, again, his own speeches, interviews he's done with other people, his own press conferences. That needs to be exposed. I'm not saying never play stuff where Putin is speaking, do it, but give it commentary, give it context, and morally judge it. But to sit and interview Putin on his terms, which is obvious, because he hasn't granted anybody else an interview, and he's granted Taka, Taka agreed to Putin's terms. That's not going to expose his evil. And there's no evil that could be exposed here that wasn't already known or couldn't be known if Taka wants to do one of his documentaries, call it the evil of Putin. Wow, that would be really cool. He doesn't have to interview Putin for that. He can just do an interview. He can just do a documentary. He can do a whole thing with clips from Putin, from his different speeches and the different press conferences and educate his people about the evil of Putin. But Taka's not interested in doing that. He's interviewing, is interested in interviewing Putin because he actually thinks that Putin has a legitimate point of view. Now, that's what Taka thinks. Taka thinks Putin is in the right. Taka thinks Putin is the good guy. He does. If you listen to Taka, he does. He hates America. He hates NATO. He hates standing up to Russia. He doesn't like Israel. He doesn't like the good. Taka has gone to the dark side. The guy is an adopter of evil. Lex is just, Lex refuses to judge. Lex believes there's good in everybody. And yeah, and I think he's wrong. I think he should judge. I think he should judge. But Taka is part of Russia's propaganda machine, whether he knows it or not. Alec, Dr. Book, can you talk about your confidence on Argentina and April, any concrete dates? I think the dates are pretty much set. But I still don't know the format, the content exactly where it's going to be. All the logistical details are not quite set. Even the dates, I guess, could be in flux. But right now, as of now, the conference in Argentina will be on the 6th and 7th of April, 6th and 7th of April, Saturday, Sunday. And I probably would arrive on the 5th and leave on the 8th or the 9th. It's not clear yet. So, but it's all, there's a lot of uncertainty around it. But we will be in Argentina around the 6th and the 7th of April. Maybe a few days earlier, probably not later, but maybe earlier. That's great. It would be great to see you at the conference. Andrew, as presumably you've honed your judging skills over the years, what are some things you've learned that would help people be more rational judges? Oh, God. Are people, I assume? I mean, it's very difficult. I think the temptation is when somebody offers you a great value, it's to overlook their moral failings, or to think that you can correct them, or to think that you can work with them in spite of them. And this relates to a question earlier. And the bottom line is you can't. The bottom line is no amount of positive values makes working with somebody who has basically exposed themselves, exposed their immorality or irrationality to you is worth it. You know, what happens is it only gets worse. And it only becomes more intense. And at the end, those positive values disappear. So, you know, you've got to be, I've got to be, not you, I've got to be fast at willing to look away from the positives in the name of judging the irrational and being willing to judge the irrational and distancing oneself from the irrational. And it's hard because the positive values can be very tempting. You know, you can think of this in romance. There's certain things about a certain woman, just fantastic, just amazing. Sex is great, I don't know, whatever. And there's certain things about her that you really love, but she just lies. Once in a while, she just lies. Or she's just irrational. She can't think. It's not going to work. It's not going to work. So, and the quicker you separate the better, because the less damage you will do to yourself. And that's during business, that's during people, that's true in everything that you do. If people are irrational, you at the end of the day, the more complex your relationship with them or entangled you are with them, the more damage they will do to you. So, the more entangled you are with somebody, the more you have to insist on morally judging them, the more you have to insist on rationality. And you know, if they're a casual acquaintance, big deal. So, it becomes really life or death, because it's a waste of time. What you land up doing is wasting time. It could be years of your life wasted. A. U.S. recently passed counterterrorism laws banning all sale, transport and display of Nazi memorabilia. 12 month prison sentence possible, thought. Australia, I assume. I think that's terrible. I mean, again, people have a right to speech. You know, I despise Nazis. I want to punch Nazis. I don't, but I want to. I think it's horrible. And they're evil. It's an evil ideology. And the people who practice it are evil, particularly given that they know what happened during World War II and what was done and what the consequences were and all of that. So, evil, evil, evil, evil. People have a right to be evil as long as they don't actively violate somebody else's individual rights. They have a right to it. So, you can't ban Nazi paraphernalia. You can't ban communist paraphernalia. You can't ban woke. What you can do is argue against them, argue against them. Chuck Leif, the, you know, Russian propaganda says Ukrainian army is full of them and the Russian army is not. Have you seen the tattoos on some of the Russian soldiers? Have you seen the Z? Does not remind you of anything? You think they know, you think that the fundamentally the Russians are not fascists? I mean, what is Putin if not a fascist dictator? You think they're not, you know, ethno, ethno-racist? Of course they are. It's the whole agenda. You know, Russian army, no. Russian army is all nice guys. It's the Ukrainians have those Nazis and they somehow managed to get a Jewish president in spite of the Nazi presence. And you guys, some of you guys, I just, again, because Putin is anti-woke, you, this is the, this is of course the Scott, Scott methodology. You just become paxies for anything Russia says, anything Russia does, anything Putin stands for, you're up and cheering and repeating and reinforcing without any judgment, without any research, without any, and this is the key, without any thinking. Because, unfortunately, thinking is pretty rare out there. It's pretty rare out there. It's sad. All right. Thank you, everybody. Thank you to all the superchatters. I appreciate it. I appreciate the support. I will see you guys, I said no show tomorrow. So we'll see you guys on Thursday. And yes, Thursday for News Roundup. And then evening, I'm hoping there'll be the interview with Jason Rines. I'm waiting for him to confirm. But I think you'll really enjoy that one. Or if you have questions about Immanuel Kant, why, why I thought of what he was, if you, yeah, I'm the guy who wrote a book about the evil of neocons. But I'm going to be called a neocon till the day I die because people can't think, right? I wrote a, I wrote a book with Bradley Thompson about the evil of neoconservatism. But I'm a neocon. I wrote in one of my, one of my key talks after 9 11 was neoconservatives versus America, how neoconservatism is anti-American. But I'm a neoconservative because they can't think that, you know, I'm pro a tough American foreign policy, therefore I must be a neocon. There's no, there's no ability for any nuanced categories, right? No, no, no ability for, you know, I wrote a whole book, a whole explanation of why I hate neoconservatism. And it doesn't, it doesn't register. It doesn't even register because you, you, you either can't read or don't want to read, or you can't think. Anyway, you could ask about Kant. You can ask about intellectual history more broadly. Jason is one of the most knowledgeable people I know about, you know, intellectual history. You can also ask about, yeah, there's an intelligent discussion, you know, call me names, make fun of my accent. That is adult and intellectual and shows a real thinking mind. You know, my, my, my, my confidence in the human race has taken a major beating today. God, and these are people on my channel. Can you imagine people are not on my channel? These are people who follow me. It's, it's so discouraging. It really is. It's so discouraging. Anyway, Jason is phenomenal. He's a Plato expert. So you can also ask him about Plato, about the influence of Plato and Christianity, about the history of Neoplatonism, about the late men, about the history. He's a really, really, I mean, I really want to talk him up because I don't think he's well known and he's super smart. I've known him since he was 17 or 16 and a student at Stanford. And yeah, join us on Thursday evening. I think I'm going to have him on. If not, I'll have him on in a few weeks, but I'm hoping he confirms. Matt says, can people really change from being a model to model? Yes, but it's not easy and they have to be committed and it takes time, but they certainly can change. They certainly can change. Robert, Nyssa, thank you for the support. Laywen, thank you for the support. Thank you guys. I will, don't forget to support your One Book Show on a monthly, on Patreon, subscribe star, your One Book Show dot com slash membership on PayPal. If you're interested in sponsoring my Israel talk on campuses around the country, write me an email you're on at your One Book Show dot com. Yeah, I mean, I think, I think we've covered it. So I will see you all on Thursday. Bye, everybody.