 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Book Show. All right, everybody. Welcome to Iran Book Show on this Tuesday, Tuesday night. It's already 8 PM over here in Puerto Rico. Hope everybody's having a fantastic Tuesday and good week. All right. So I thought we'd talk today about American exceptionalism. It keeps coming up. It'll come up a lot during the elections. Nobody uses that terminology much anymore except to critique it. There used to be a period where American exceptionalism was something that was promoted by America. But even then, it was rare that it was something that people really understood and had a proper conception of what it was. So what we want to do today is talk about, is America exceptional? Was it exceptional? Is it exceptional? What made it exceptional? What was exceptional about it? And to what extent does that still exist? That is, America might have been exceptional. But is it still? Is it today? So that is a topic. And we can take it in a, we'll see how long that takes. Feel free to ask questions in the super chat on this topic or anything else you want to talk about. So this is your opportunity to get a shape to show and take the show where you want it to go by asking questions on any topic that comes to mind. A reminder that the show is sponsored by the Einwand Institute and the best place to go find out about stuff that they are promoting right now or exciting things that are happening is on einwand.org. I think that Don Watkins is doing a webinar on five things. I can't remember exactly the title, but he's doing a webinar tomorrow. And I think he's got like 500 people signed up, which is fantastic. It's just fantastic. Hopefully, many of you are signed up. And you should just go regularly to einwand.org slash start here and see what's going on. And oh, it was today, Jennifer says. Whoa, I'm behind. It was early today. So you guys participated? How was it? I'm curious to know how it was. Did you learn something valuable? And so earlier today, that's great. I mean, 500 people is pretty amazing to get to a webinar and on objectivism. So Richard said he enjoyed it. Jennifer said it was awesome. Yeah, this is great. This is great stuff. All right, so super excited to see Don do such a good job. That is truly, truly great. All right, any other housekeeping stuff? I don't think so. You all heard the news I gave this morning that I'll be meeting Melee. I'll be meeting Javier Melee in Buenos Aires in April. We at the einwand conference there. And I will be doing a panel with him. So it'll be me and him. And we'll have Maria asking us questions in Spanish. So I'll have to brush up on my Spanish between now and then. But yeah, it should be a lot of fun. It should be interesting. I'm looking forward to it. I don't think I've ever done an event with a sitting president. I've done events with past presidents. I've done events. I did a day-long event with the former president of Colombia. But I've never done an event with a current sitting president or prime minister. So all right, maybe this is the beginning of our influence into politics. Who knows? Who knows? More exciting news coming in the weeks to come. So more stuff happening. It turns out my April is going to be unbelievably busy. May is going to be busy. June is O'Conn busy. Yeah, things are ramping up. All right, let's see. So let's talk about American exceptionalism. What does it refer to? Basically, it refers to this question, is there something unique about America? Is there something unique about this country? Is there something that this country can model for the rest of the world? Is this country a country that should be mimicked out there by other countries? And it's a question. What is the source of the American exceptionalism? Because is it mimicable? Is it possible to copy America? Is there anything that is uniquely American that cannot be exported, that cannot be moved anywhere else? And so we'll talk about that. So first, what is it? I mean, clearly America has gone from a country which was a colony of Britain, fairly poor, fairly insignificant, but didn't really fight that hard. It had other problems with the Spanish and the French. It went from that. It fought a brutal civil war. 600,000 people died during the civil war. It's just brutal in order to correct a mistake in its founding with regard to slavery. You know, this country struggled. It absorbed millions and millions and millions and millions of immigrants, almost all of whom were poor, all of whom came from Europe, but came from not necessarily the best places in Europe, the best families in Europe, with the best education in Europe. And what's amazing about this country is that within about 150 years, this country was by far the richest, strongest, militarily most powerful country in the world. And that achievement is unique in human history. It's unique in human history in the sense of the speed at which it happened and the wealth and power that was attained. I mean, it didn't just become a little richer. It became dramatically richer. This all happened during a period of industrialization. Some of the biggest companies in the world were suddenly in the United States, the biggest industries. So the United States did something exceptional. And then it fought two world wars. Both world wars were not, in a sense, finalized until the United States entered and won them and clearly the United States won those wars. And since then, it has basically been the dominant economic and military power in the world. And the question is, is there something unique about America that made all this possible? It's clearly a unique story. But some people would say, well, America has a great geography. We sit on both the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans. We have vast, very fertile land. We have a lot of natural resources. It's just a great, it's almost a whole continent. It's a great place. It's got great resources. It's got decent weather. Yeah, so it's a geography. And by the way, as Tucker Carlson would like to remind us, it's beautiful. So is it the natural resources, the ports, the ability to trade with basically the rest of the world fairly easily because America is so accessible? Certainly, there are many people who emphasized this idea of geography in terms of, and there's no question, geography helped. There was a vast country here to be settled. There were vast opportunities for people to come. But Russia is pretty vast, open territory. Now the weather is not great, true. Pretty big. Lots of resources. China, lots of resources. Big. And ancient civilization, a lot of groundwork had been laid. This never happened to China. Europe, of course, both place of the civilization we live in and the ideas. But it didn't happen to any of those places. South America, vast continent, Atlantic and Pacific, opportunity to settle, opportunity to get to rivers where you can navigate down and bring resources down, just like in the United States. It's dubious to think that what made America great, what made America successful, not great yet, successful was natural resources, geography. What was it? Was it religion? Well, there's nothing unique about religion in America. Suddenly, in the 19th century, America was on and off religious. There would be awakenings. But generally, it was fairly secular. The immigrants who came here were not particularly religious. They needed the people who came out of settled. The West were not particularly religious. I mean, they were a little religious. But religion has been with mankind forever, basically, certainly for the last 2,000 years in every continent, in every place, has not generated the United States of America. So what is it? And I think everybody listening to this show, or most of you, know the answer to that. But what is truly shocking is how few Americans know the answer to it, how few Americans seem to care about it, and how few Americans will fight for what it is that made this country great. And what made this country great are the ideas at the very founding of it. To make it very simple, what made this country great is freedom. But not just freedom, like in Braveheart, you remember that, Braveheart? I've talked about this before, right, Braveheart? Everybody else, freedom. I want to be ruled by a Scottish king. Not a British king. I don't mind being oppressed by a Scottish king, at least from my blood, from my tribe. No, America's freedom was freedom of the individual to live his life. Freedom from kings, freedom from authorities, freedom from an oppressive state. What made America great is America's conception of freedom. American conception of freedom centered on the concept of individual rights, on the concept of individual rights, the right of every individual to live his life based on his own judgment, free of coercion, in pursuit of his own happiness. That idea articulated in the Declaration of Independence and then kind of manifest in a political system that came together in the Constitution, that idea made America different. Nor the country in human history had a systematic approach to protecting individual rights. No other country in human history would be founded on a moral, ethical principle, on an individualistic moral principle, on the sanctity of the individual, and on his right to pursue his own happiness, on his right, fundamental right to his own life. Now, what was the result of that? The result was that was Americans, immigrants, and locals who prioritized their life, their happiness, who set out on adventure after adventure to settle this amazing geographic piece of land and to build on it and create on it and produce on it. The results of these set of ideas were a group of people who were ambitious, ambitious about their own life, ambitious about their own prosperity, ambitious about their own freedom. People who wanted, didn't want just to sit around theorizing about freedom, but people who wanted to exercise that freedom, exercise that freedom by the choice of where they wanted to live and who they wanted to marry and how they wanted to live it and what kind of job they would have and whether they want to start their own company and they didn't have to ask permission and they didn't have to get approval. These were people who stood up for what they believed, spoke their mind. And over the 19th century, I mean, I think a real American character emerges. Certainly an American spirit emerges. A spirit of, don't tread on me. A spirit of, I can do anything I said in my mind to do. I can build, I can create. That is the American spirit. That spirit is what made America exceptional. Because when you came to America, and look, people came from all over the world, from Asia until we stopped that, and then from all over Europe until we stopped that, and then from Latin America, and we're still trying to stop that. But they all came here for what? For opportunities. For economic opportunities. I mean, people accuse immigrants today of coming here for boo, for jobs, for economic opportunities. Yeah, isn't that great? Isn't that beautiful? They came here for the freedom, for the opportunities that freedom creates. They came here to work hard. They came here to make something of their lives. They came here to own a piece of land when in Europe they couldn't own anything. They came here to be able to say and speak their mind when in Europe they were constrained in what could be said. They came here to build industry and create a new vision of what is possible. When in Europe, again, they had to ask permission. Here they could do it with no asking. So what made America exceptional is, its focus on individual rights is its freedom. It's freedom for the individual, of the individual. It's restraint on the power of government, on the power of authority. And there's a sense, you know in America had this sense, I think well into the 20th century. This independence, you know, during the Great Depression, when the government first started, in a sense handing out welfare, first started all kinds of programs to support the old and the poor and the unemployed. So many Americans refused that, refused the help. Or felt shame in taking the help. So many Americans still believed in the power of independence, in their desire to live their life on their terms. They didn't wanna sell that out to a government that now was gonna support them. And what would it ask in return? Maybe a little less freedom? So the spirit of independence, the spirit of can do, the spirit of don't tread on me, the spirit of freedom, the spirit of liberty, the spirit of individualism. I mean, it was always, it's always been in America, I mean, since the founding, because of those ideas, because of the political structure that was then manifest in a culture and an economy. I mean, it is the documents that founded this country, they created a free market. They created capitalism in this country as flawed as it was, and as incomplete as it was, certainly in the beginning. Even today, when you come to America, there is a different spirit attitude. You travel around the world and different places have different attitudes. The rest of the world has become more like America. As America has become less like America. But America in its founding, America in its principled creation was and is the most exceptional country in human history. And therefore, also as a result, the most successful country in human history. The moral is the practical. When you do something right, you benefit. So, was America exceptional? Yes, American exceptionalism is absolutely true. At least it was true. Is America exceptional today? Well, some of that spirit still exists. Some of the legal framework that protects individual rights still exists. But a lot of it is gone. America today is a very inefficient by European standards welfare state. America today is a massive regulatory state. Regulatory state. A state that intervenes in production, innovation, invention. Just look at the regulatory response to artificial intelligence. It's true, in many regards, it's not better than the rest of the world. It's better than China. It's better than Europe, both in terms of redistribution, welfare and regulation. But, and you just saw the big AI regulatory bill passed the European Parliament. But it's gone from a permissionless society, a society in which people did pretty much what they wanted. Started businesses that they wanted. Didn't ask anybody for permission. To a society that requires lots of permission. That spirit of going out into the wilderness, building, creating, making God today the number of permits you would have to get. And the environmental inspections that you would have to go through. And the prioritizing of a snail over human beings. So much of that entrepreneurial spirit. Not just entrepreneurial in a sense of going, starting a business in Silicon Valley. But entrepreneurial in a sense of taking your life seriously and being ambitious with your life and demanding the freedom to live your life on your own terms. Kind of the spirit of the, some extent the American Western. A lot of that is gone. A lot of that is gone. And it's gone because the ideas behind the funny fathers, the ideas that made the declaration of independence possible and understandable to the population. The ideas that generated the optimism and the excitement and the spirit of the 19th century, the industrial revolution, the building up of vast industries, the settling of the West. Those ideas are gone. As ideas, they're not taught anyway. Nevermind taught. They're not understood. How many people out there understand the concept of rights as the founders articulated it? Nevermind as Ayn Rand improved on. But as the founders articulated, even their conception of rights is missing. Again, even in the Supreme Court, how many of our Supreme Justices understand the concept of rights as John Locke and Thomas Jefferson and John Adams and Madison and the rest understood them. I think none. I really think none. How many of them understand freedom and liberty and individual liberty as the founders understood them? I doubt any of them. And the common American people don't. And since our institutions don't embed these principles other than the momentum from the founding, the momentum that just keeps the institution still running. We have a separation of powers and we have a Supreme Court and they somewhat look at the Constitution and once in a while they reference it and we have a First Amendment, although they don't quite know what it says, but they kind of understand it. So they have some resemblance of it because in this precedent, so certain momentum that happened. But how much of that spirit is really there? It's harder. Sorry, how much of that understanding is really there? It's hard to see it. Very little. And it doesn't matter left or right. It's just not there. That's why they don't talk about rights. They don't talk about limited government. They don't talk about the role of government. They don't talk about what is government, what its purpose is. So the knowledge is gone. There are no intellectuals out there speaking about individual rights. I mean, where are the talk show hosts, television personalities? I mean, imagine Tucker talking about individual rights and conceptions of individual freedom. He'd have no audience. Or maybe he would have an audience. Maybe we can be optimistic. Maybe we'd have an audience. Maybe he'd be educating people. Maybe people would learn and appreciate it. But the reality is there's nobody doing it, nobody. Nobody with an audience anyway. So what we have is a country with a disconnect that has been going on for 50, 60, 70 years. A disconnect between it and the ideas of its founding, the ideas that made it exceptional. And while that spirit of adventure, entrepreneurship, innovation, don't tread on me, independence, I could do anything, that spirit can sustain itself for a while without intellectuals, without the ideas, it can't forever. Iron Man talked about this there. America consists of life that she identified. Cannot last forever without the intellectuals supporting it, without the intellectuals giving it the proper foundation and giving it the proper intellectual fuel on which to run. And that spirit has been in decline, I think for a long time. And how much of it is left at all? When one looks at the political map, certainly, when one looks at who we are choosing to represent us in politics, whether it's in the White House or the House or the Senate, these are our people that value liberty, that value individual freedom, that value individual rights. When we look at the way Americans behave on a day to day basis, there's so much more pessimism, there's so much more darkness, there's so much more resentment of our fellow man, so much more zero-sum thinking. His gain is my loss. So much more envy than there used to be. When we look at Americans being locked down during COVID and saying nothing and doing nothing and accepting it, that's not America. That's not the exceptional America. America seems to become, because of its intellectuals and because of the political programs that have dulled our brains and dulled our ambitions, America's become Europe. There are fewer and fewer differences between Americans and Europeans. Yeah, we're still more brash, we're still a little bit more independent, we're still louder, but in terms of fundamentals, in terms of actual actions out there in the world, America's still better, God, it still is. There's still a little bit of that spirit left and it's left in places that you guys don't like, like in Silicon Valley, where stuff is being built and created. It's, so is America still exceptional? A little bit, but it's meaningless as a model for the rest of the world because America can't articulate what it is about itself that is exceptional. What is exceptional about America still is those remnants. It's sad because it's mostly a past. Once in a while, you get a sense of it. Again, in innovation, in something new and people standing up, after COVID, it's very hard to even see that. I mean, the way in which Americans who agreed to be sheep during COVID is so stunning. So European, that hard to see that exceptionalism anymore. And I think very much we are a country in decline, an exceptional place in decline, the greatest country in all of human history, but in decline, in decline. Now, what does it take to reverse that decline? What it takes is ideas. The ideas we have. So what it really takes is the articulation of those ideas. It takes people buying into those ideas. It takes people being educated in those ideas. So what it's going to take to turn this country around, intellectuals arguing for the ideas of liberty, arguing for the ideas of freedom, arguing for the ideas of individual rights, arguing fine rent, because there's nobody else talking about rights. There's nobody else talking about ideas. There's nobody else trying to actually change the culture, not just for better free markets, but for freedom and for everything that comes with freedom, the opportunity, the potential to live your life to its fullest, to make the most of the life that you have, to return America to being exceptional, is going to require some exceptional intellectuals doing the hard work, doing the hard lifting, going out there into the world, and educating people about the value of human life and the value of independence and the value of the human mind. Nothing short of that is going to be successful. So America today, better than most, but not anywhere near as exceptional as it used to be. And in order to change that, in order to get us on the right path, in order to return us to the glory days, is going to require some fundamental changes that are going to have to come from the intellectuals down. Or maybe from the people up, maybe the people buy into these ideas before the intellectuals. I don't know, but it's ideas. We know ideas shape history. It's going to have to be better ideas. And it's not going to come from the current crop of conservatives, or right wingers who don't understand America, never have no clue what America stands for, have no idea what American exceptionalism is. It's not going to come from new conservatives who wanted to bring democracy to the world and who talked a lot about American exceptionalism in the 1980s or in the 2000s. But we never really understood what it was about. Something about liberal democracy. Again, that's what made Europe, Europe, not America, America. America's not just another liberal democracy. America's fundamentally different in that it is a country of freedom and liberty. All right, we need a new generation, new crop of people to change this country. Maybe America's over. I'm not sure what replaces America. There doesn't seem to be anything out there to replace America. Certainly it's not going to be China. It's not going to be Europe. I think what could argue is if America is gone, if America is over, so is the rest of the world. So is civilization in many respects. I'm a little bit more optimistic. I think America is such a powerful force. The Enlightenment is such a powerful force. The founding documents of this country is such a powerful force. That there is a chance that we buy enough time to turn this ship around, to infect enough people with the ideas, to infect enough people with the passion, to change and get us back on track. Get us back on track. But that's going to require a lot of work that we all are going to have to do. All right, all right. Let us, we've got some super chat questions. Not that many. Maybe we can get more as I start answering them. We've got quite a way to go to reach our goal, but also just not that many questions. So it might be a short show. All right, so interested in your thoughts on American exceptionalism. How that term came about? Where you heard it first? What it means to you, is it good, is it bad? I mean, the left thinks American exceptionalism is about slavery. Left thinks American exceptionalism about how awful and bad America is. I mean, the way that at least thinks that America is good, but then it has no clue why, has no clue in what sense. It has no clue what that means. But the left thinks America is bad, and the better left thinks America is just like everybody else. And in a sense it is. I mean, my biggest, biggest criticism of Obama was that he basically was the first anti-American president. He thought America was inferior to Europe and could be better by becoming more like Europe. I think Biden thinks similar. I think Trump thinks America is inferior to, I don't know, Russia and China maybe, and is trying to make it more like Russia and China. All right, let's do some questions. Harper Campbell says, Americans today are shallow, superficial, materialistic, no integrity, not any kind of selfish, long range egoists. Well, but were they ever, you know, selfish, long range egoists explicitly? No, I mean, many of the people who founded this country, built this country, created that spirit with religious, they might have been philosophically very different than us, even though in the spirit, in assets, they absorbed a lot of the influence of the Enlightenment. They might not have explicitly identified that. But it's true that today Americans, and I think not just Americans, I see it all over the world, people are shallow, unintellectual, uninterested in ideas, very materialistic, and look, materialism is not a bad thing, but if that's your whole focus in life, it's that all you've got, it's an issue. No integrity is a big issue. And I think that the world is heading in that direction, it's a cynicism, the world's become cynical. And it's what happens when you have an absence of ideals and you have an absence of objective truths to guide you. So yeah, it's a lot of this superficiality, you just go on TikTok, you'll see it all. Clock, and of course the solution that government has to all of that is let's just ban TikTok, right? The problems we face, the problems we face as a culture are cultural. The solutions have to be cultural. They're not gonna be political. We're not gonna save ourselves by getting rid of the platform in which people express this superficiality. Clock, how close was the founding of America to an objective society, 80% there? You know, it's hard to tell. I think in many respects, the political structure of America is as good as it gets. I don't know that it will be improved on. You know, the main issue is the explicitness, how explicit were the ideas laid out in terms of individual rights, what they meant and what they implied, that needed to be more explicit. It would be good if the concept of individual rights had been talked about more and developed more in the constitution. And then of course, what the founding didn't have is a philosophical framework to ground the concept of individual rights and the founding in a proper morality and a proper epistemology and a proper metaphysics. They didn't have the philosophy. They didn't have a invent. So 80% depends from which perspective. There's a perspective in which it's 80%, 80% there's a perspective in which it's 50% because philosophically, culturally, they had some sense of egoism, pursuit of happiness, but it wasn't clear exactly how that fit into the Christianity and the morality of altruism, the morality of the summit on the mount. They had a respect for reason, but they didn't have really an understanding of how reason functions and the importance of reason and they tried to combine it with faith or at least some extent, at least some of them. The problem with the founding was that the philosophy wasn't developed enough. It was still early. The enlightenment was still young. You were still trying to figure these things out and it didn't have the great thinker, like an iron hand who could solve all these problems. And it was immediately attacked, of course, both by religion and by Kant. So both by secular philosophy and by religion that it was just hopeless without a genius. I mean a millennium type genius, not just any genius. It needed iron hand at that point and without it, it just couldn't, you couldn't get those philosophical foundations and without that, you're basically building a foundation on quicksand and that's what happened. They didn't get rid of altruism. They didn't get rid of mysticism and subjectivism and ultimately the foundations crumbled. They took a long time crumbling because what was built above the quicksand was super good and the few pillars that they have were as good as human beings had ever done. But not quite good enough. So I don't know how to put a number on it. Michael asks, aren't people who never leave academia, the same people who never leave the army, both types of people are fade if uncertainty of them all could place? I mean, there's a bit of that but there's certainly different people. People in academia love a sudden risk less, low risk life. They love a certain regiment and simplicity. The military is anything but that. It's very, very different. The military is their risks and it's, things change and there's a lot of, you know, there isn't this, you're not stuck to a desk. So there is a certain sense in which both have a certain fear of the uncertainty of them all could place. At least some of the people, not everybody, but there's a vast differences in the type of people who go into each, they're seeking different things. They're seeking different things. Michael says, it seems civilization is dying slowly with a lot of little shocks along the way. COVID lockdowns, Russia invading Ukraine and over nothing, October 7th, et cetera. Yes, I think that's right. I think the death of civilization, particularly in a nuclear era, is not in one big bang. It's, you know, a thousand knives, small cuts, slow erosion and that's what we're experiencing. And it's, America's not gonna become authoritarian all in one day. We're not gonna have a dictator tomorrow. But a little bit, we head in that direction, a little bit, every election, a little bit, every time our political discourse gets so absurd and so ridiculous, so emotional, so unreasonable, so detached from reality. And it's good that civilization is declining slowly. We don't want barbarian sacking Rome. We don't want a quick decline. We want slow because that gives us an opportunity to rise up again. That gives an opportunity to resurrect the civilization and bring it back, resurrect America and bring it back. And I think it's always a possibility. There's no fair to complete that civilization is finished. And I don't know where the civilization, you know, and it might be saved not in America. Some other place might rise up as an alternative, as something better. So don't give up on this idea, this civilization, you know, has the potential and will come back. And it'll surprise you where it comes back. Yeah, people are a little too excited about Millet, but maybe Millet is the rebirth of civilization in Argentina and maybe he's the last desperate gasp of civilization. Who knows? Hard to tell. Michael, who's in Argentina right now, says, Millet has the support of most people in Argentina and it's real and it's lasting. If that's true, then there is real hope. There is real hope. All right, Adam, I hear a similarity between philosophy and supply-side economics. Our citizens don't demand freedom from our politicians. But first we need the dynamic intellectuals to show the better way is not right or left. Thanks to showing philosophy's importance to the culture. Yeah, I mean supply-side economics is, you know, it required intellectuals to explain it to the people and then politicians acted to on it. And, you know, supply-side economics is not quite good enough. It's better than demand-side economics, but it's not quite good enough. What we need is free market economics. What we need is freedom economics. But yes, citizens won't demand freedom until they understand it and until they actually desire it, they actually get it. And they are excited about it. Like when people came here in the 19th century, came to America in the 19th century. It wasn't like, yeah, okay, we're gonna have some freedom. Oh God, but also there's a whole burden of responsibilities and consequences and this is gonna be tough and freedom. Oh God, that's hard. I mean, that's the sense I get today. You want more freedom? Yeah, but there's responsibilities and you're gonna have to live with the consequences. Who the hell cares? Of course, when people came here in the 19th century, they just wanted to be free. They wanted to make their own life. And it wasn't like a burden. It was like exciting. It was like they were ambitious. They wanted to live a good life, free of coercion, make their own decisions. And yes, that entailed potential negative consequences, but they weren't thinking about that. They were thinking about what they could achieve, as free human beings. And they knew what lack of freedom meant. That's where they were coming from. Just like most immigrants understand this. So, citizens won't demand freedom until they fully value it. They get it. They really want it. And we're not all born with the desire for freedom. Most people don't wanna be free in the world in which we live today. They wanna be taken care of. They wanna be given stuff. I mean, you look at welfare recipients and the institutionalization of welfare and the lack of ambition within the welfare community, welfare state will do that to you. So, we need to inculcate in people a desire to be free. They need to view freedom as a crucial life value. Only then will they demand it. Only then will they fight for it. And to do that, we need dynamic intellectuals to show them the way. And to show them their importance, to show them the value of freedom, not in some abstract way, but to show them the value of their freedom to their own lives, to their own ability to prosper and succeed. Yeah, I mean, one of the things that revitalizes, Ed reminds me, one of the things that revitalizes the American spirit are immigrants. Immigrants of this country do assimilate. Immigrants to this country do come here because they wanna be free, even if they can't express that. They come here because they wanna make their lives better. Yeah, that's exactly the point. They come here so their families are better off. Yes, that's exactly why immigrants have always come here from the 19th century. They didn't come here for some abstract theoretical notion of freedom. They came here for something very clear. They wanted their own freedom. They wanted opportunities, economic opportunities. They wanted to make a better living. They wanted to make a better living for their family. So immigrants rejuvenate the attitude towards freedom. And one of the signs of the decline of American exceptionalism is the climbing down in immigrants, whether it happened in the 19th century against the Chinese in California, or whether it happened in 1921 across the entire United States that basically restricted immigration dramatically, or whether it's happening now with just a panic, the panic over the southern border and the demand to build walls. This is the slow death of civilization. Monotropic. Thank you, monotropic. By the way, Adam, that was $100. Thank you, really appreciate it. Monotropic is $50 Australian dollars. I just wish the Australian dollar was stronger. Yeah, monotropic says, I found some historical average annual GDP per capita growth rates, figures for the US on the internet. They state that the growth rate growth rate was similar throughout the 19th to 20th centuries at about 2%. What do you think of these figures? That seems low. The 2% growth rate seems low. I think that in the 20th century, until modern times it was closer to 3% in the 19th century, it was closer to 4%. So I'll have to look at the figures more closely. I'd look at the figures more closely. But this is GDP per capita. So maybe I'm thinking of gross GDP and you're doing it per capita because one of the big drivers of GDP is immigrants, more people, right? More people means more work being done, means more GDP. So maybe it is closer to 2% on a GDP per capita, which, okay, maybe it is reasonable. Oh God, we got a stupid IQ debate going on again. Where do you bring this nonsense up regularly from? It's just so dumb. Anyway, so 2% GDP per capita makes sense. If you extrapolate that over the long run, those are big numbers. But GDP is a lousy measure, generally, of anything, of measuring size of economy or economic growth because GDP is consumption, primarily measures consumption. When governments consume a lot, GDP goes up. For example, I mean, Russia is experiencing this right now. Russia's GDP is going up. Even as the standard of living, the quality of life of Russians is going down, hundreds of thousands of Russians, or tens of thousands of Russians are dying in the battlefield and the quality of life of the standard of living is going down, GDP is going up. Same thing happened in the United States in World War II. I think in 1942, first year, four year of the war, GDP in the United States grew by 12%. Standard of living quality of life went down, thousands of American men were dying, but GDP went up. So GDP is not a great measure because why did it go up? Because government was spending a huge amount of money on the military, on building weapons, non-productive activity, by the way. And when the government spends a huge amount of money on something, I don't know, digging holes and then filling them in, GDP goes up. But again, productivity doesn't go up. Standard of living quality of life don't go up. Wars are negatives for everybody, even the winner. So GDP is not a great measure. Quality of life, standard of living, I don't know. The kind of consumption goods, I think what is some of the best statistics in terms of improvement of human life, things like, how many hours, how many hours do you have to work to feed yourself, to buy food so you can survive? How many hours of work does it take to get you from one side of the United States to the other in terms of the cost? How many hours do you have to work in order to buy that plane ticket or that host ride or whatever it is? And how many hours does it take you to do the trip? Those are real measures. How many hours of work does it take to do the laundry? I mean, one of the reasons women came into the workforce and left the home, one of the big reasons for that is automation. It just became, housework became really easy and it freed up a huge amount of time. And suddenly, you know, in the 17th century, housework was full-time job. In the 20th century, it wasn't anymore. And women wanted to fill their lives with something meaningful, productive, right? I mean, baking bread and cleaning by hand and washing clothes, I wash clothes by hand. My first year when I was married, we didn't have a washing machine. We would wash the clothes in the bathtub by hand. I'm not ancient, right? It's just incredibly time consuming. So once all of that gets automated, standard living goes up. Why are people obsessed about having kids? You wanna have kids, have kids? You don't wanna have kids, don't have kids? Why is this a thing that people worry about, people concern themselves about? What's the issue? So a lot of countries have populations that are shrinking. That's true, they're shrinking. For most things, what's the relevance of that? And if the population is shrinking, one easy way, particularly if you're rich, is to open up the gates of immigration. But even if you don't wanna do that, well, you're gonna suffer some consequences. But at the end of the day, the economy will shrink. But it doesn't mean standard living of people won't shrink. The purpose of life is not to have kids. The purpose of life is to live. And to live happily and to live productively and to live a fulfilling life. What if kids are not part of a fulfilling life for you? What if kids are not part of achieving for you? What if kids are not part of having a fantastic life for you? I mean, this obsession with having kids is pure collectivism. It's you need to live for the nation, for the state, for the group, for the tribe, for your whatever, your ethnic group. No, you need to live for yourself. And whether you have kids or not, none of anybody else's business, and it's completely up to you, and I mean, a lot of people out there I know shouldn't have kids. A lot of people who have kids shouldn't have them. It destroys their lives and they're not good parents. No, I have two sons for the record. But God, this obsession of who has kids and who doesn't, and why they have kids and all of that, what the, I didn't have kids so that America could reach a replacement car, a replacement. I didn't have kids so that my genetic material could continue in the world. I didn't have kids to satisfy you or the American state, or the American people, or Japan, or Africa, or anybody. I had kids because I wanted to have kids. I enjoy kids. I enjoy having children. I enjoy the process. And my kids, your kids don't necessarily, are going to have your same values. I don't have the same values as my parents. I don't, they regret having me. I don't think so. Children do not have the same values as their parents. That is a bizarre world in which children have the same values as their parents. Static, immobile. So, God, you're not born with some duty to have kids. You're not born with some duty to procreate. The only responsibility you have is to live a flourishing, happy life. And if you can live a flourishing, happy life with kids, great. If you live a happy, flourishing life with our kids, great. That's the only standard. I mean, you gotta shrug off. You gotta get rid of, whoops, sorry. You gotta get rid of the collectivism, the duty orientation, the tribalism that is still part of so much of this culture. It's part of what we have to re-educate the world about if we want to achieve freedom. Individual counts. An individual will have kids or not have kids. Now, a culture that doesn't have kids, you could say something about that culture maybe. And it's not because women went to work. Maybe it is. Maybe it is about women going to work. Maybe women went to work and discovered, hey, this is more fun than having kids. So why is that a bad thing? And it's, you know, so one day there'll be no humanity because nobody will have kids. All right, so there'll be no humanity. Is it my problem? Is it your problem? Why is this a problem? That's like a thousand years from now. Why do you care? I don't. I don't see why you care. Now, as it turns out, a lot of people do like having kids. And optimistic people, positive people, ambitious people, like having kids. And they have kids because they're selfish. Because kids are selfish value. And that's to make the best kind of parents. They love their kids. They know where they had their kids. Imagine parents who have kids out of a sense of duty, out of a sense of responsibility to the human race. Ugh, that would be horrible. So, yeah. Gotta live life for the fullest and do what's necessary to live life to the fullest and make the most of your life. And you don't owe responsibility to humanity or to America or to anybody in terms of how you live your life. All right, Alex. Alec. Oh, by the way, thank you, Mary-Aleen. I know I got a bunch of these. So, I haven't thanked all these stickers. Let's see. Mary-Aleen again and Stephen Hopper. And that's it. All right, so thanks. Thanks, guys, for the stickers. We're still short of the goal. So, stickers are great. A buck 99, $299, $100, whatever you can is greatly appreciated. We still have to make up about 300 bucks. And as you know, this show is made possible through the support of people like you, people like Alec and Richard and John who have just done kind of $20 questions even though Alec, it's only $20 Canadian. Hello, Yvonne, amazing news regarding Mille. How much for a review replay of songs about four minutes each? I know many tangos, medagos and waltzes for you to contemplate before you go dancing in Buenos Aires. I mean, I don't know what replay means, but I can't play them on the show because of copyright issues. There's always copyright issues whenever you play music on the show. So, I can do a review. The reviews are 100 bucks each, 100 bucks a song. Richard, I agree that what we need intellectuals, that what we need are intellectuals promoting individual rights and responsibilities. Yet, when I've asked Greg Salamieri about academic postmodernism and collectivism before that, he seems deeply entrenched. How to overcome? I don't understand the question. What do you mean by he seems deeply entrenched? Is he entrenched about not fighting postmodernism and academic and collectivism? I guess I don't understand the question, Richard, sorry. What does deeply entrenched mean? I think Greg is doing a great job fighting for reason, for positive, for rationality, and I think that's what we primarily need to do. Fighting against is something you've got to do the polemics, but the main thing is to fight for the positive. Oh, collectivism and postmodernism are entrenched in academia. Yes, they are entrenched in academia. It's very difficult to break in. But, you know, I'm not sure we need to break in in great numbers initially. What we need are intellectuals. What we need are people who can articulate these arguments in places like this, in YouTube, in podcasts, on the lecture tour, in newspaper articles. And we also need academics, and we'll get academics. That'll happen. It's hard. It's slow. But it will happen. And, you know, maybe we need our own university to train them. But we need to be out there in the culture. The culture doesn't just change from the universities. Universities have an important point of leverage, but they're not the only point of leverage and they're not in a modern society, not necessarily even the most important point of leverage. I mean, think about the work Alex Epstein does. Imagine hundreds of Alex's. So we need a lot of intellectuals doing intellectual work, writing books, writing articles, doing podcasts, speaking at events, speaking, doing these kind of shows, doing interviews, going out there and engaging with the world. Academia, we will... It will be pinpoint. It will be a Greek salamiri here and a Greek salamiri there. Greg is a rare... It's rare to get a Greg, so it's going to be difficult to have, you know, Tara Smith, to have people who can make it in academia out of massive. Think about it out of massive. Probably the leading defender of intellectual property rights in academia in the world today. An objectivist. Doing it from an objectivist perspective. So we need more. And you can make it in academia. All right, let's see. John, I've come up with a new... And John, this is, I think, John's first superjet. Yep. No, fifth. Fifth superjet. It gives me these announcements on certain milestones. And I guess fifth came up. John, thank you, John. I've come up with a new commodity-based monetary system using something more common and valuable than gold. I can message it on Facebook. Sure. I don't... Don't message me on Facebook. It's better to email me. You're on at youronbookshow.com. Facebook message I don't like. I don't use. I rarely go there. So if you want to communicate with me, just send me an email. You're on at youronbookshow.com. Thanks, John. Shazbad. Maybe the people who are complaining about childless people are actually teachers. They want the roster to remain filled. Yeah, maybe. I doubt it. No, it's much more... It's much more like they're collectivists. And they think in a collectivistic way. And, you know, if you're an individualist, you think, do I want to have kids? Yes, no. That's it. That's what you care about. And then, you know, it's interesting that in some cultures there are more kids and in some cultures there are less. You can think about the economic consequences of each. You know, for a country like China, certainly given how much they're going to shrink, the military consequences of this, the ambition of the political class. But the decision to have kids or not is really the individualistic, you know, individualist decision. It's up to you. And it's up to you based on your values, based on what is going to lead to your success in living the best life you can live. All right. How are we doing? All right, we've got a bunch of $5 questions. $1 to $10 questions coming up. All right. Shakato says, $25, thank you, Shakato. Really appreciate it. Thank you for the show. Great content. Appreciate it. That doodle bunny, what is your current net worth? Why is it any of your business? Why would I tell you what my net worth is? It's such a weird question. I'm not telling you what my net worth is. It's not high enough. I can tell you that. What is a good amount for a comfortable retirement? What is comfortable? How big of a house do you want? Where do you want to live? How many, you know, just you? Do you have a wife? You know, if it's more than one person, how much do you consume? Do you expect to travel a lot? When you travel, do you go to nice hotels? Do you travel coach or business? I don't know. For some people, a comfortable retirement needs $10 million. And for some people, a comfortable retirement requires $1 million. It really, really depends on you. I mean, you'd have to take your particular profile, what your income, what your expenses are, and see, you know, what you would have to save in order to be able to afford the expenses you expect to have when you retire. And that's a formula. You'd have to run it and figure it out. I do not have enough money. I do not have a high enough net worth to comfortably retire by my standards. That doesn't mean they're your standards. So I'm still working and will continue to work for a very, very long time. To a large extent, not because I can't afford to retire, to a large extent because I love working. Working is fun. I love what I do. But could I retire and not work at all with a different lifestyle? Yeah, sure. I would love to have as much money as I have. But I don't have enough. Liam says, the price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by even evil men. Absolutely, absolutely. It's why it's important to be involved because if you're not involved, somebody else gets to decide who rules over you in this world. We do not live in a free society where who is in government doesn't matter. It matters. You should all want to get... I mean, you should all want to get comfortably rich, right? How rich is comfortably rich depends on you. It depends on your values. And you should try to make as much money as you can within the context of what you love doing and what you enjoy doing and how much you need to expense, to spend in order to live a good life. Chandler says, more money, more problems? No, not at all. I don't think that's true. Is failure always success in progress? No, sometimes failure is just failure. But it really depends on your attitude towards that failure and certainly failure can lead to success. Failure can be a stepping stone toward success and failure is something that if you have a positive attitude towards... In other words, you don't have a negative attitude. It's not destructive to you. It can be amazing in terms of the learning opportunities. And you should live your life with the anticipation of failure and use it to learn and to grow. Akira Felix, love the new setup. Why don't we have more subs? Why don't you have more subscriptions? I don't know. I don't know. And right now I'm flooding YouTube with shorts with one minute videos and I'm getting subscribers from that. But it's not massive numbers of subscribers. So I think I don't have more subscribers because people don't like the content. But we will see. We're in the process of instituting a new strategy of marketing with short videos on a variety of different platforms, variety of different places. And we'll see if that works. There's experimentation going on in the background and we will see that accelerate in the months to come. And this setup, this background is just a beginning of getting even better with the background. This will be improved. You know, ultimately I might even get a better camera and everything here is, we're in the process and we'll be in the process in the next few months to upgrade and hopefully there'll be positive results. There'll also be a new website. Somebody's working on a website for me. There'll be marketing. There'll be some high profile events. Put it that way. After all, I'm doing an event with Mele. That'll be good. So all of this stuff is good. It's, yeah. And of course, one thing that will not change is the content. I'm not going to panda. I'm not going to stop offending people who love Trump. I'm not going to stop talking about abortion. After all, a majority of Americans support abortions. But not a majority of people potentially liking the show, I guess, because I attract more people on the right, I guess. I have no idea. But no, I'm not going to stop talking about controversial things. I'm not going to stop offending Tucker and other people that so many people love. The content will always stay the same no matter how many subscribers I get. Paulo Zeus, your take on America's enthusiasm for the UK war family. I don't know. A little sickening. I find the war family. All war families, particularly the British war family, sickening. I don't know what purpose they serve. I don't know why anybody should care. I didn't get it with Diana. I don't get it with any of these people. I don't understand royalty. I don't appreciate royalty. I think it's an ancient institution that needs to be buried. The Brits don't like it when I say this. They love their monarchy. But it's just despicable. These people live off of what? No productive activity. I guess they serve some entertainment value. And people obsess about all these little things that they do. It wouldn't matter to me if they just disappeared. The whole war family just disappeared. Nothing in the world would change. Nothing would get better or worse in particular. Maybe things would get a little bit better. But yeah. Complete another waste of time. Marilyn, why do so many people seem to think that politics can change the world? Because they don't understand all of ideas. They don't understand that politics is a consequence. It's also a mentality that seeks leadership. That seeks to be told what to do. That's what politicians do. They dictate from the top. They don't educate. They don't teach. They dictate. They want to do that. Politicians are the consequence of the things that actually change the world, which are ideas. And they can accelerate. They can slow things down. They can distort, pervert. But politicians are almost always a consequence of. Politics is downstream from culture. It's a consequence of. It's not. It's very rare. Very rare to find a politician who actually leads. It's almost, and it's much rarer to find a politician who leads in a direction the public is not interested in. That is who initiates something new, who leads towards something new. The founding fathers example of such politicians, but that's very rare. It's very exceptional. Ed Elon Musk quote. They need to be things that inspire you, that make you glad to wake up in the morning and be part of humanity. Yes. Although I don't know about the part of humanity. Why would you think that way? But they need to be things that inspire you, that make you glad to wake up in the morning. Absolutely. Absolutely. And that's when life's great. Life's really good. Oh, what is your take from your interview with Dr. Roy? I liked it. I liked the interview. You know, we're never going to agree. He's religious. I'm not. This is an interview I did with a pretty prominent podcast in Israel who has interviewed me twice, once in English and this time he interviewed me in Hebrew. And I enjoyed it. I thought it was a really good interview. I thought we covered a lot of ground and I'm looking forward to doing more interviews with him. Of course, I think I'm better in English than I am in Hebrew, much better, but you know, there's certainly advantages to doing it in Hebrew in terms of reach and in terms of the probability that these podcasters will come to you and actually interview you. Daniel, thoughts on Komenger as an economist. Oh, Komenger was a great economist. He was the founder of the Austrian school, one of the greatest economists in human history, really important in terms of methodology, the methodology of the Austrian school, less in terms of any particular economic observations, although of course he's part of the marginal revolution, the whole idea of marginal value. So no, Komenger is one of the handful of great economists of all time and of all the Austrians, the best philosophically, the closest to objectivism philosophically. He was an Aristotelian, fundamentally, an Aristotelian who's connected to reality with a good epistemology, which most of the other Austrians are not. Contians or Paperians or the Papas type of Contian. Shazmat. For no matter how silly the idea of having a queen may seem to us, as Americans, we must be gracious and considerate hosts. Frank Drubin in The Naked Gun. Yeah, I mean, I wish, I wish most Americans saw it as silly. I wish they did. Too many of them seem infatuated by the whole thing. But Frank says, why do people like Howard Zinn and Norm Chomsky have a problem with America? This guy, Chris Hedges, keeps saying America's an empire. Do we have that? Well, because they're Marxists. They're against everything that America is. They're against every principle of the America founding. They're anti-reason, anti-individualism, anti-capitalism. And therefore they hate America. They despise it. And as they affront to everything they believe in, is America an empire? No, it's not an empire. It's one of the strangest empires if it is in the world. It's an empire that keeps leaving its territories. It's an empire that rarely uses the full might and force that it has. It's an empire that tries to set up democracies. No, America's not an empire. America's got a lousy foreign policy, but not for the reasons Chris Hedges or Zinn or Norm Chomsky believe. They're anti-American because they fund them on a belief set. They fund them on ideas, anti-American ideas. Daniel says, new setup looks sick. I assume sick here is a good thing, not a bad thing. Any thoughts on Israeli spokesman Ayalon's firing? Oh, I didn't know he was fired. Huh? I thought he was pretty good. I don't know why he was fired. And he had good English. So I don't get it, all right? So if he was fired, I don't... I think it was a bad call. I think he did a good job. Now, the results are not there, but I don't think that's his fault. I think he was a good communicator. All right, guys, we're almost to the end. If you want to ask another question, but please make it a 20, 50, 100, 150, something like that question. For bang for buck's sake, we're $225 short for those interested. Paul, I think, is this Paul's first question? Somebody had a first question. Let me just see. No, Caden's first question. We'll get to Caden in a minute. Anyway, no, it's us for Paul's first question. All right, we got a couple of first timers. Do you think the young left-wing online bloggers who appear to be in their parents' home are animated by a fear of going out and making their own way? What are they animated by? I think there is a part of it that's definitely fear that animates them. The fear of girls, women. I think a lot of them are kind of incels, or what is it, men going their own way, or whatever it's called. A lot of them are intimidated by the opposite sex. I think some of them are just intimidated by reality. Now you're not going to have sex because the women you're having sex with are not going to have kids. God, that's pretty bleak and pathetic. There was just a comment on the chat. So I think a lot of it has to do with fear. A lot of it has to do with, again, the lack of... How do I deal with reality? Reason? Reason that many taught? It's an escape. It's entertainment. It's shallow. And they haven't been taught to be ambitious. They haven't internalized ambition in any kind of sense, any kind of way. All right. Mary Alene says, Mele will be speaking at Ayn Rand Conn, Latin America on April 6th and 7th. Pretty sure I have the date right. I think he's speaking on the Saturday... On the Saturday... Yeah, when is Saturday that week? Why isn't this working? All right, let's see. I'll tell you in a minute when he's speaking. He will be on Saturday the 7th. Saturday... No, Saturday is 6. God, I can't... Okay, Saturday the 6th. I think the last thing on the program is me and Mele on stage taking questions from Maria, who's going to be the moderator, questionnaire, or whatever you want to call it. But it will be me and Mele supposedly answering the question. Mary Alene says, Mr. Mele announcement, I was like... It's fine. Question, illegitimate children. I'm of the opinion that there is no such thing as an illegitimate children. Only illegitimate parents. Children shouldn't be stigmatized for actions of parents. Yeah, but I don't think there's illegitimate anything. I mean, having sex out of marriage, that's a bad thing suddenly. That's a horrible thing. You get to put them illegitimate. What the hell does that mean? Children are children. Parents are parents. Mothers are mothers. Some people are adopted. Some people are... All kinds of arrangements. Who cares? So, yes, I don't like the term illegitimate. Bastard, whatever you want to call it. I don't like it. Children are children. It doesn't matter what arrangement their parents had. What arrangement their mother and father had when they had them is irrelevant to the fact that they're human beings and should not be treated any differently whether their parents were married or not married. And I don't think not being married makes you an illegitimate parent. How you raise your child, how you treat your child could make you illegitimate. But not whether you happen to be married or not. Who cares? I mean, the whole concept of family and the way we perceive family and the way we view family is like it's Christian. I mean, who knows what families will look like once we get rid of this emotional baggage and our sexual repressions? You know, I don't know. But I really think that, you know, the conception of family is pretty old and could use a refresh. Kaden, in coming years, could hatred of Israel be intense enough that the United States and Europe start imposing sanctions on them for defending themselves? Yeah. It could certainly happen. It could certainly happen. So, you know, the world is heading in that direction. And it could happen from either political direction. You know, the collectivists on the rise in Europe and America, that has not bowed well for, you know, a country like Israel, which is alone, small, and difficult to defend. All right. Shazbot has come in with $150 song review. Please review the song One by Metallica. Thanks. Keeping with the anti-war theme from last song I requested, which was Zombie. Okay. I will do that. Let's get this copy pasted into the right place. Cool. All right. Let's see. Mary-Aline, thank you for the support. A whole series of supports. Let me just do this. Paste. All right. So thank you, Shazbot, for the money to review the song. We're $70 short, but we're out of questions. So we're done. All right. Oh, Andrew's come in with $20. Why did Galt, instead of saving Dagny like she was a damsel in distress, not strongly dissuade her from leaving the Gulch, even though he knew she wouldn't succeed in the world as it was because he respected her judgment, because he understood that people have to make their own decisions, have to live by their own choices, that you cannot strongly dissuade and that, you know, it's much more important to let people, adults, make their own decisions, live their own lives than to be right, than to be right about something. And a lot of parents could learn from that because for many parents, the only thing that's important is to be right. So Galt respected Dagny. He respected it too much. Not her let her go and find out for herself, experience it for herself, know it for herself. Richard asked, have you ever reviewed the movie Casablanca on your show? No, I haven't. I mean, I love the movie and I'm a big fan of the movie, but I've never reviewed it on the Iran Book Show. All right, guys, $30 short. We're that close. Anyway, thank you all. I will see you all. When will I see you tomorrow morning? Well, not morning. I think it's either one or two o'clock tomorrow. East Coast time is our next news roundup. I have a great rest of your night. Have a great morning tomorrow and I will see you then. Thanks everybody. Thanks all the super chatters. Really, really appreciate the support. Thank you.