 Okay. So, yeah, Walter Peter Brennan. Walter Peter Brennan. So, one of the things that struck me today as we were touring around Guatemala City and talking about UFM, I haven't been to the university yet. I mean, I've been there before in my previous trips to Guatemala, but I haven't been there yet. This trip I'll be there tonight. But one of the things that struck me while we were looking at the sculpture and moving around is the fact that here we are in Guatemala with this amazing university. We have libertarians, classical liberals, and even objectivists in the media. We have businessmen who claim to have been inspired and hugely supportive of Atlas Shrugged, love Atlas Shrugged. And I was thinking about other places that have kind of a similar environment. You know, I think I've told you before about Georgia, Georgia, the country of Georgia in the Caucasus. Georgia, about 20 years ago, was was governed by a group who dominated the government of free marketers. Baka was one of them. And the prime minister was another one of them. And they basically, you know, dominated the politics of Georgia for a few years. And during that period, they completely deregulated the country, they lower taxes, they flattened them. They, they completely liberated business from most regulations. I think they did some of the most dramatic deregulations we've seen anywhere in the world. And this is in a country that had lived through, you know, Soviet occupation and through communism, and it was liberated, but it hadn't really adopted capitalism. About 20, 30 years ago, they really did. They had this moment in history where the government just completely freed up the economy in ways that even today are unimaginable. Even there, Kaha, who Kaha, who is the person mainly responsible for this kind of a libertarian businessman, also started a university called Free University free, not because it was free, free as showed for freedom, freedom University in in Tbilisi in Georgia, university dedicated to the ideas of freedom. Indeed, to this day, they have asked an economist teaching there. They have, I think the vice dean of the university has pictures of Ayn Randall over her office. So these are, you know, this is the university again, dedicated to kind of free market ideas to political liberty and to freedom. And yet Georgia has over the last 20 years since that government is no longer has moved away from freedom away from liberty. They have put in place, put back a lot of the regulations that were taken away. They have slipped, slighted their way back into more and more statism. They are, in terms of political influence, the libertarians or the free marketers have a lot less influence that they had back then. And it's kind of sad that here they had this experiment. It succeeded. By the way, Georgia economy did well. Jobs were created. GDP per capita went up. GDP generally went up. You know, it completely modernized this deregulatory regime and the lowering of taxes completely modernized the Georgia economy. So it was an absolute success. This was not like it failed. And yet all their achievements are being reversed and have been reversed. And then when I look at Guatemala, UFM has been around for a long time now for several decades. And while at the margin it's had an impact on individuals, it's had an impact on the culture, it's had an impact here and there on some deregulatory bills and some people who are graduates of the university who have done good things in politics. But overall Guatemala is still a massively status place. It's still a very poor country. It's still a country with cronyism, massive cronyism and big families who control much of industry and farming here and also have all kinds of subsidies and all kinds of benefits that they get from the government. Very feudal almost in some aspects of its existence, but definitely crony. And the university arguably has had some impact certainly on individuals, right? There are many more objectivists here than there would otherwise be, but it's still just a dozen or two. It's a handful. And in Guatemala socialism is on the rise, just like it's on the rise pretty much everywhere else. Young people tend to be status and socialist. And then of course, if you think about a country like Chile, another country in the world that has gone through this amazing experiment over the last what is it now? 40 years, right? About 40 years ago, General Pinochet at the time authoritarian dictator of Chile handed over the reins of the economy to what were called the Chicago boys, economists trained in the Chicago School of Economics and they basically deregulated, freed up the economy, privatized social security and generated what became a massive, unbelievable economic boom. Chile went from the poorest country in Latin America on a pro-capital GDP basis to the richest country in Latin America on a capital GDP basis in a relatively short period of time. And they had until recently a dynamic economy and economy which poor people rose up from poverty and an economy that generated massive benefits for people across the board, in particular, poor people who benefited disproportionately from the liberation of the economy as they do everywhere where the economy is liberated. And yet what we've seen over the last and you had think tanks and you had university dedicated to teaching free market economics and a human boom in increasing in teaching these ideas. And yet over the last, I'd say five years, but in particular over the last couple of years, Chile has taken a sharp turn to the left and there's now they've assembled a constitutional convention to rewrite the Chilean constitution and it's clear that it's going to be written in a way that supports socialism. It's going to destroy all of the achievements of the Chicago boys. It's going to turn Chile again into socialist country, very similar to that of ultimately Venezuela. You saw in the recent election in Peru, a sharp shift to the left, Peru that had a relatively, relatively speaking thriving economy, relatively speaking liberalization, movement towards free markets. And yet they are now drifting back towards statism, socialism. And in this case, they elected a Marxist, explicit Marxist to be president of the country. And this of course brings up the question, what are going to take? And it particularly brings up the question in the context of the fact that we celebrated last week, the founding of this university in Texas, this University of Austin, Texas, I told you it was going to be confusing, not the University of Texas in Austin, the University of Austin in Texas. Of what impact? What impact do free market, libertarian types do universities that teach free market principles? How? In terms of the long run sustainability of freedom of liberty? Can they bring about liberty? And if they can, can they sustain it? Can they keep it going? And when you look at these historical examples and granted, from historical perspective, not a lot of time has passed, but you've got to conclude that this seems to be something missing. Something is missing to the combination of political power and free market economics. Something is missing was significantly missing in Chile, which has abandoned capitalism or whatever semblance of capitalism they had to move further to the left towards socialism. Something is missing in Guatemala that prevents a university like UFM from having the kind of influence on the culture and on politics that we would like to see that is revolutionary, that is world changing. Something was missing in Georgia when free marketers captured the commanding heights, captured government, did the right things, actually deregulated, shrunk government, reduced regulations on a massive scale and cut taxes, did all the right things and succeeded just like in Chile they succeeded in terms of the impact on the economy. And yet it didn't survive. Something is missing from this recipe of having some good universities and some good politicians and great economists. And of course I've been talking about this for 20 years. What's missing is a philosophy. What's missing more than all anything is an ethics, is a moral code. And what missing is egoism. What missing is an epistemology of reason. What's missing is objectivism, a philosophy. I mean I have a lot of respect for many of the kind of free market economists who come to a conference like the Montpalaman Society. I have a great respect for many of the teachers at University of Francisco Marqueen or in Georgia or in all of these other places. But the unwillingness or inability to challenge religion, Catholicism in the case of Guatemala, you know Christian, what is it, Eastern Orthodox, religion in the case of Georgia, Chile, Catholicism and in the United States to challenge Christianity more broadly. The unwillingness to challenge religion makes it impossible for capitalism to ultimately be sustainable. And in that sense it's fantastic that we have the University of Austin in Texas. But it can't win. It can't change the world. It can slow the decline hopefully. It can bias time hopefully. But it can't win because it doesn't have anything to offer. It has to offer the status quo of 20 years ago. It wants to turn back the clock to an era that they think is idealistic of 20, 30 years ago when while the universities were as dominant as they are dominated as they are today by leftists, at least the leftists were more rational in the sense that they were more open to people who had differing ideas. They weren't quite as eager and as fast to cancel. They weren't quite as woke if you will. They're still leftists. There's been no mistake in the universities to be dominated by the left, dominated by the left for 50 years. Nothing really has changed except the left has become more wacky, more egalitarian, more woke. But people like Stephen Pinker, people like Barry Weiss, people like Arthur Brooks, the people who are on the Board of Advisors of the University of Austin in Texas cannot, will not, change the world. They will not reverse the course because they don't have what it takes. They don't have the philosophical foundations, the philosophical context to actually reverse the course of history as it is playing out right now. There are a lot more voices on campus. They'll provide an alternative for parents who want to send their kids to university that is not completely thoroughly corrupt. But the best one can say about the university like a university in Austin and granted, I celebrated it last week because I do think it's worth celebrating. Somebody says now Ferguson, same with now Ferguson. Now he's not a revolutionary thinker. He's not a radical. The best these people can do is give us a university of 30 years ago, 40 years ago, but that wasn't that great. There was already anti-capitalist. There was already a rejection of true freedom and true liberty. Yeah, it's a good start, but it's a good start towards what? Towards what? They will teach the same altruism that every other university teaches. They'll soften it a little bit. They won't be quite woke about it. They'll teach a mixed economy economics just like every other university. They'll be a little bit more tilted towards free markets. They'll teach the same Kantian philosophy or philosophy influenced by Kant as everybody else teaches. They'll be a little bit more oriented towards liberty and freedom, but look, they won't be as good as you are families. They won't be as good as freedom. University isn't to me. And those universities haven't had a huge impact on societies that are much smaller than the American society of 350 million people. So what kind of impact are they actually going to have? Sadly, a minimal impact, big impact on individuals, big impact on parents who want their kids to go to a relatively sane university. Not a huge impact on the culture as a culture. The culture as a culture is dominated by statist, mystical, irrational forces. And one university is not going to change that, particularly one university that is not willing to challenge the fundamental, prevailing ideas in the culture, which are mysticism, religion, and altruism, also the morality of religion. And therefore, ultimately cannot, will not, challenge the prevailing acceptance of a mixed economy, which almost nobody stands up against to actually change the world. And this is what so many people are not willing to recognize and not willing to actually change the world. You need a radical philosophy. You need to be willing to challenge everything. And granted, you're going to be canceled by both left and right. I got into some of my most passionate disagreements with students here at UFM about stuff, even though on economics, they're pretty good. But God, you mentioned abortion here, run for the exits. And the faculty here has responded negatively to many of my presentations because of the issue of religion. You cannot raise it. You cannot have a rational discussion about it. In Montpelerin Society, the society that was founded by, I don't know how much you guys know about Montpelerin. Montpelerin Society was founded by Hayek in 1947. In its first meeting, I think there were 12 of the leading free market intellectuals. Notice who was never invited. Iron Man was never invited to join the Montpelerin Society. Hayek was, Mises was there, Milton Friedman was there, and many of the other leading lights of classical liberalism of the 20th century and the 21st century. To this day, it's a society of the leading thinkers in the classical liberal tradition. But Iron Man was never welcome because these thinkers, as great as they were, as revolutionary as they were, in the case of Mises, as radical as they were, were not willing to challenge not the morality, not the conventional morality, and not the conventional epistemology or metaphysics. They were not willing to challenge religion. And indeed, once in a while, a couple of times now, they've had me speak at the Montpelerin Society, I remember. And I don't run for the exits, Stephen Porter, never have, never run to the exits. Twice now, at the Montpelerin Society meetings, they've invited me to speak about the compatibility of liberty and religion. And twice I've explained why religion and liberty are incompatible, not in the long run, not if you want to be consistent. And, you know, while many of the European members of the Montpelerin Society agree with me, they will never say it. And the Americans, of course, despise me for having these views. To them, liberty and religion go together. It's stunning how they're not willing to question their premises, as Iron Man would have encouraged them to do. In particular, given arguably their failure in country after country to really have an impact. Now, granted, if you challenge religion, and you challenge altruism, you're going to be sidelined. You're going to be marginalized. You're not going to have influence in the short run. And I know that upsets many of you, many of you who want to see political change now. But if you really care about the future, if you don't just want to see a glimpse of freedom, a glimpse of free market, a glimpse of liberalization, but you want to see a sustained, a sustained political freedom, something that lasts forever, maybe, or at least for a long time, then what we need is a philosophical revolution. What we need is a moral revolution. And what we need is the minority to be marginalized for a while. This is why I've said we don't have allies, not on the left and not on the right. We don't belong anywhere because we are true radicals. At least I am to know about you. I believe reason is man's means of survival. Reason is the way we know stuff. We reject the idea of revelation of any kind. We reject the ideas of mysticism of any type, left or right. And we reject determinism. We reject the idea that you're shaped by your genes exclusively or by your environment exclusively or by a mixture of your genes and your environment. Nobody holds that. Psychologists just assume determinism. Nobody holds free will except the religionists. And the religionist idea of free will is very mixed up and very confused. God is all-knowing. He knows everything in clearly in advance, but you have free will somehow. And at the same time, we reject this epistemology, we reject these ideas. We advocate for a philosophy of reason, for a morality of egoism, for particular virtues, for particular ideas. We are very, very adamant supporters of a particular type of morality, with particular virtues and particular values. We're not subjectivists, as many of the Libertarian's friends that I have in Montpelerin who might not be religious, but then they're subjectivists. And our defense of capitalism is not built around just the economic consequences. But it's built upon a deep understanding of human nature that explains those economic consequences. It's deep, it's based on a deep respect for reason, the need for freedom in order to be able to think and choose your values, be able to pursue your values free of coercion, a deep respect for man as a rational animal. It's why we have the concept of individual rights, to protect the individual's ability to live by his mind in pursuit of his values, with the end being his own happiness. We are egoists. Your life is yours for the purpose of living for your own happiness. Our argument is not that capitalism is good because it's good for society. And if you once in a while need to sacrifice somebody for the good of society, so be it. We're consistent, radical individualists who believe in capitalism as the only political system appropriate for individuals, for rational animals, rational animals with free will, rational animals with free will that require reason to live their life. And until there are institutions that are willing to teach that, until there are dozens and dozens and dozens of intellectuals willing to advocate for that, we can't win. And this is why I'm excited about, you know, the Iron Man University, which the Iron Man Institute is launching with the idea of training dozens and dozens and dozens of intellectuals over the next few decades in advocating for liberty and advocating for freedom based on the philosophy of objectivism. With all respect to University of Austin, with all respect to UFM, with all respect to every relatively pro free market university on planet earth, without objectivism, they cannot succeed. The culture will not change in fundamental ways. We need intellectuals in every sphere to discuss, to debate, to articulate the case for romantic art, for capitalism, for egosm, for reason, for reality, and for the connectiveness, is that it would, of all of those into one philosophical whole. And only when we have such intellectuals, and we'll have to have artists and we'll have to have practitioners, we'll have to have a lot of people, can we ultimately, can we ultimately win this battle? Thank you for listening or watching The Iran Book Show. If you'd like to support the show, we make it as easy as possible for you to trade with me. You get value from listening, you get value from watching, show your appreciation. You can do that by going to iranbrookshow.com slash support by going to Patreon, subscribe star locals, and just making a appropriate contribution on any one of those any one of those channels. Also, if you'd like to see The Iran Book Show grow, please consider sharing our content. And of course, subscribe, press that little bell button right down there on YouTube, so that you get an announcement when we go live. And for you, those of you who are already subscribers, and those of you who are already supporters of the show, thank you. I very much appreciate it.