 Thank you all for your speeches today, they were great. I was actually talking to Tony at the break and one of the things I mentioned was where I grew up and you could probably tell where. We kind of went from Rome to the Renaissance and then we had like the nights in between for like a day in school. And I was wondering, in fact, what we kind of learned was more about the Holy Roman Empire rather than Byzantium. And I was wondering if you had any explanation for that because what you were talking about was really great today but I pretty much had nothing about that. There's two answers to that. One is that the Byzantines, if I can use the B word, are not terribly sexy. The Romans have pretty togas and they march up and down waving their swords and conquering places, whereas the Byzantines spent most of their time in church. A longer answer is that when we study history, there's a natural tendency to focus on our own parents and grandparents in civilizational terms. And so, of course, in England, we study the history of England. And before that, we study the history of the Romans and the Greeks. And although our parents, to some extent, dispossessed those grandparents, we shoehorn them into our family. And we sort of put the Jews in and sometimes the Egyptians and Babylonians because they're quaint. The Byzantines, they don't really fit into the family tree. They're sort of their cousins or uncles and aunts. And we feel a little uncomfortable with them. They're a bit alien. They're not quite like us. And I think that's one reason why there has, generally, in countries like England and maybe France and Germany, less interest given to the Byzantine Empire than to the other medieval states. Of course, it has changed. It has changed. There is a lot of emphasis on Byzantine matters nowadays. But this is a fairly recent development. I would like to ask Mr. Gapp this pattern of the division of Europe into east and west. Well, it looks for me that is a recurrent pattern in history. And you could even make the point, the argument that Europe is divided between east and west again. And yeah, what's your take on that is that a pattern you would recognize too? And why would you do such a thing even if you have a one empire and you divided between east and west? Why not divide between north and south or between, I don't know, could have come up with any other division? The division of the Roman Empire in 395 made very good military and administrative sense. You divide it down the middle between Italy and the Balkans so that the western part can focus on the pressure on the Rhine and the English Channel frontiers. And the eastern half can focus on the pressure from the Persians. It allowed for a very good division of military attention. You also have the fact that the western half, broadly speaking, you use Latin as its official language and the eastern half used Greek. It's not an entire, it's not a perfect fit. It just seemed to make sense. I don't think that that division has entirely persisted. In some degree it has, I suppose. But many years ago, an American friend of mine suggested that if you want to see the real, if you want to see a real civilizational footprint in Europe, you should superimpose the borders of the Habsburg Empire onto a map of modern Europe. Everything inside those borders may be a bit corrupt, but it is broadly decent and civilized. Everything outside is just some howling storm of despotism and corruption and general hellishness. I think that would be a more important footprint of an old empire nowadays than the division of the Roman Empire into east and west. Very interesting points that you made about rights. And the question I have is are you merely against the proliferation of rights in the modern age and would recommend a return to just a few very limited rights like negative rights, classical liberalism? Or are you merely making a point about the psychology and not about the philosophy or politics of rights? Or would you go further and say that one should do away with the whole notion of rights in total and rather talk on, in law and economics, what is most efficient in the particular environment? Thank you. Yes, I mean, I think in practice, negative rights are advantageous and most of us are quite pleased if we can say what we like and we are free of arbitrary arrest and so on and so forth and supposed equality under the law and irrespective of any metaphysical justification for them, I think we are very pleased with them. I think when it comes to other rights, their effect is intrinsically to proliferate. And therefore I think if we were to recede from these rights, they would soon come back. It would be like a tie that comes back and forth. But I don't say that I have the solution to this problem because I think it's now at any rate of very deeply ingrained in people that they have the rights, including the rights of those enumerated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I think what you see generally after what you see it as part of the Enlightenment and afterwards is an insistence on or just banging on about things that they have no real definition of, no real firm grasp of both reason and ethics or some. Yes, since then we've sort of had an insistence in the truth of our knowledge and the universality of our values. And those two things are things that libertarianism gets right, but the rest of the world doesn't seem to. And I think it does go back to, as Anthony said, having some kind of metaphysical foundation for them because these are fundamentally abstract things. And you're not going to get the answers simply in looking at little empirical phenomena and you're not going to get concrete firm answers by just making them up. And so I think this is something that's symptomatic of a modern way of looking at things. I recommend a book by Alistair McIntyre called After Virtue, which was written in the 1980s. And he makes essentially this point that of course everyone believes in reason and of course everyone believes in universal and yet essentially natural rights. But you've got to have some kind of system. And his answer, he's also very big in theology. His answer is some kind of medieval scholastic system. But of course there are others, but you need to get the thinking right. Just a brief remark, I think it's related to what I call the letting loose of the virtues. I think the rights was perceived as quite a one-sided. And of course the traditional answer is that rights go hand in hand with duties, but that of course has been politically abused as well. I think what is meant is if you have a right, you have a duty to bear the consequences and costs of the right that you exert. And once this balance or structure is lost, in particular rights, and of course even liberty becomes a meaningless term. And it was Viktor Frankl, the Austrian psychologist who referred to this one-sidedness. He said that liberty without responsibility is this one-sidedness, which is quite dangerous. I think that's correct. Thank you. Actually to follow up on the previous question, how do you, because from what I've heard in the several talks, by proclaiming something as a right to have access to, is basically cover for, I don't really deserve this, but you should give it to me anyways. Has this particular psychology been solidified and furthered by all the bailouts in 2008? A lot of younger people saw the older folks make mistakes, say in investments. And the duty is to bear the losses. But once the young see that those who made the mistakes didn't have to bear the consequence, then they start asking, well, what other things that I don't really deserve, but I should have anyways? Because you don't deserve, but you got the help. Would that play a part, especially in the rise of all these rights, especially in the last decade that Dr. Daniels observed? Do you think that that particular bailout and the financial crisis played a part? Not really, no. Because I think this development is a deep cultural one that went back much before that. And of course, the freedom that most people cherish the most is the freedom from consequences. That's what most people really would like. But I think that the culture that I've described having a right to a tangible benefit preceded very considerably the crash in 2008. It might, of course, be furthered by seeing people not taking the consequences of their own actions. But nevertheless, I think the culture that I've described preceded 2008 by quite a long time. Well, I think obviously it's a symptom. As many other symptoms, bailouts are a symptom of the no skin in the game, no consequence approach. And probably psychologically, it's really related to a higher time preference and capital consumption in the end. And I think the issues in morality, which I've discussed and you've discussed, I think they also link to a kind of higher preference morality because it's conspicuous consumption of morals, I'd say, and of course leads to an abuse and consumption of cultural capital, and even if there's something like moral capital in the end. So I think the analogy and the symptom is quite correct. If our naivete and also our productivity is largely genetic in origin, is this a source of optimism or pessimism? What could we make of it in practical terms? I wouldn't say it's largely genetic. Epigenetic plays a role, but interestingly, the gaps have narrowed a lot. And I think the reason is that technology and capital has become so transferable all around the world. And that's, I find, is the greatest miracle that you can have high productivity in very different cultures and very high level of a technical, productive civilization in all around the world, basically. There are still differences, but if you measure them, it's about, I think maybe 10%, 15% or something like that in productivity difference. If you, I mean, if you select for all, I mean, all variables, if you can compare all the variables, then the difference doesn't count as much as in the past. So then is that optimistic or pessimistic? I think rather optimistic. That means even if central and western Europe won't be in the future, the hub of entrepreneurship and productivity, there is a high chance that the torch can be passed on. And of course, part of it is not only the mobility of capital and ideas, but also the mobility of people might be western Europeans just living elsewhere, working elsewhere. But that's part of the general mobility of ideas and capital, which is due to technological civilization, I think. But of course, then you can look at the social and societal and cultural pattern. And in politics, I'd be more pessimistic. I think the worst thing you can do as a non-western European country is to listen to the advice of western Europeans. And I think to the history, they just have such an idealized theory of politics, which basically politics without violence. And that's anti-historical and anti-scientological. So I'm afraid of that. So politically, I am pessimistic. But economically, I see there's every chance to pass on the torch of productivity and wealth in the future. And it's not dependent so much on culture anymore as it used to be. I mean, look at Saudi Arabia as potentially the place of the most advanced city if that project really works out. And I'm skeptical. But might really, I mean, this Neon City, maybe you've heard about it, this grand idea to have a robotic city with really high, highly advanced technology. I mean, if you look at the Emirates, you say, wow, may actually really work. And I think 100 years ago, you would have said no categorically. And you would be right, of course. I mean, all of old places Saudi Arabia should be a center of technological civilization. But I think it shows the mobility of ideas. And it's part of a result of the cultural process in Western Europe. So in a lot of ways, this history just tells you why it emerged first in Western Europe. But it doesn't tell you that it can't be passed on. Thank you all for your presentations. This question is specifically in regard to Dr. Gabb's statement about how the armies of the Caliph crashed against a wall of armed freeholders. And if you could add further comment as to their structure and composition that made them militarily effective. And if that has anything to do with Rahim's statement about overlapping quasi-corporate structures such as the family, the farm, the manor, and the church offering social organization that made them more resilient. There was after about 400 AD that there was a substantial, though unquantifiable, fall of human populations, probably throughout the world. And although before about 300 AD, battles looked rather like the battles that we imagine as large national armies with professional officers and generals and baggage trains and so on. During the medieval period, there wasn't that much in the way of a standing army in any European state. It was largely a case of small bands of people who would come together for specific purposes. And so when I talk about the armies of the Caliph, I'm not talking about some vast army with green banners and kettle drums playing marching forward. We're probably talking about a few hundred horsemen at a time, raiding parties more than attempts at conquest. But they were met in this part of the world and somewhat to the south. They were met by organized groups of villagers who put down their agricultural tools and took up the tools of war and went off and drove away these raiders. And so perhaps the armies of the Caliph was a rhetorical exaggeration. But it does remain to be said that there was in Western Europe almost no popular resistance to the barbarian invasions. It is very hard to find any resistance, certainly in Gaul. There were some in Italy to the Lombards. But there was very little in France, in Spain, or even in North Africa. Whereas in this part of the world, in the territory of modern Turkey, the people were given pieces of land. They were given the right and the obligation to bear arms in defense of that land. And they felt that they had a country. And so, yes, they fought for it. And for a very long time they won. I think, Sean, in trying to rehabilitate the Byzantine Empire, which I think is a very worthy thing to do, you have neglected to mention that the Venice fleet was quite important to the survival of it. And I think the Venice, of course, is more European in the sense that the frontier, autonomous, small-scale, merchant-oriented empire, not so much a large-scale organized state. And I think, without those city-states at the frontier, Europe would have fallen in the end. I'd like to make a point for the rationalization for science or the enlightenment, maybe, in a German sense. And couldn't it be, or couldn't you make the point that this rationalization, this finding of the scientific method, was a very good thing and that it improved living standards drastically and improved the whole of Europe and basically changed the whole world to where we are right now. And it's a very powerful tool. And like any powerful tool, it can be used in different ways. If you would use it in a correct way, you, for example, would seek in history and come up with something like the Byzantine Empire, was not so unimportant after all. But if you put it in our state's hand, this tool is being misused or overused. And that couldn't be that this is the case for bad consequences we are seeing instead of, I think you call it, a wrong way of thinking. So isn't that? I agree with everything you said. And I hope I said, I hope I made the disclaimer that I think, particularly the scientific revolution that you would associate with the Scottish and some English thinkers of the 17th century was absolutely fine when applied to its proper sphere of interest, so to speak. I would completely agree with you. The reason I was a bit nasty about Stephen Pinker is he made the complete opposite of that sort of point. He spends a lot of the book pointing out the obvious that nowadays, even the poorest are overweight rather than malnourished. Lots of people have smart mobile telephones, all that sort of stuff. And yet then he argues that the scientific approach is something that you can apply to every sphere of life and thought. And that's what people who've taken issue with the book are taking issue with. But no, the scientific revolution I have absolutely no problem with, really. You see repeatedly a scientistic ideas rather than scientific ideas so that you have Marxism, Darwinism, Freudianism, behaviorism. Now we have the neurosciences, which are going to tell us how to live. You just have to put someone in some kind of scanner and it will tell you how to live. This is the kind of absurd hope. But it seems to me that's obviously absurd. It's not that I can tell you what the answer to how to live actually is. But science is not going to tell us how to live. OK, but allow me one remark in order to defend science. Marx is not scientific. No, it's scientistic. It's scientistic. It talks on the Norris Darwinist's psychology, which tells us, in my belief, doesn't tell us anything about human existence at all, really, any more than does behaviorism or, I don't think, Freudianism does. And you're as well off. When it comes to psychology, you're as much better off reading literature than you are reading psychology, except in small isolated spheres. But you can't treat life as if it's an extended case of arachnophobia to be here. There is no technical problem or no solution to the problem of life that is merely technical. I have another question regarding enlightenment. Keert Martland told us about two visions of enlightenment, the process of enlightenment, which, in my opinion, gave way to the liberal revolutions and to individual freedom and to an attitude regarding individual life, which caused probably the few experiments in liberal states, classical liberal states, in the 18th and 19th century. On the other hand, the scientistic mentality of a part of enlightenment may have given rise to the idea that society is something that can be experimented with. And so maybe this is the cause of social engineering and of our modern managerial states where anything can be done with the societies which are not independent organisms anymore. So I would like to hear a take on these two aspects of enlightenment. So you're saying that one is a controlling and one is a process, right? Yeah, I agree. But the problem with enlightenment ideas to the extent that we can construct them and synthesize them and so on is they're often quite subtle. Or they should be put forward in a much more subtle way. And what it often devolves into is, I know Raheem used the term earlier and I take his point, but it's such a convenient term. It does degenerate into virtue signaling to the point where these very subtle ideas become simply shouting over and over again reason, freedom, and so on. And it becomes less about these things and more about telling people how enlightened we really are. And yes, that said, there is something to the criticisms made of the Enlightenment project, made by some very disreputable thinkers like Adorno and Foucault, who are generally rubbish on most things. But on this, they detect, as you said, a controlling impulse, an authoritarian streak. And it's in a sense because of the internal contradictions, I would say, or the lack of any firm grounding. But yes, certainly I would prefer to stick with the much less grandiose idea of Enlightenment as a process which takes into account human nature a bit more. There's a story that I like about the Enlightenment is that there are two different traditions. And one tradition might be a Scottish-Austrian one and that the Austrian school actually is part of a different tradition, which is a tradition of Enlightenment. But it's much closer and of course a lot of intellectual influence from the Scottish Enlightenment. And the argument is that the difference may have been practically that in both in Vienna and in Scotland, at times of the Enlightenment, there was more exchange between practical entrepreneurs and those people trying to understand the world around them. In Scotland, it was the tobacco merchants who had quite a lot of leisure time. And so actually in the lecture hall of Adam Smith, you had really merchants, entrepreneurs sitting there and being interested in the ideas. And the very similar thing happened in Austria. Austria, Vienna was at the time when the Austrian school emerged the center of Oriental trade in Europe. So you had a lot of merchants with a quite large outlook on the world and they would meet in the cafe houses and the salons. And I think that people with a practical responsibility take an interest in ideas that you have a natural kind of checks and balances to this idealistic kind of Enlightenment as a movement. Because in practical reality, there are so many paradoxical things which you only realize by trial and error. It's completely irrational to try to be always rational. But you can't just figure it out. You learn it by experience and so on. And I think it's with every one of those buzzwords of the Enlightenment that practical experience leads to kind of checks and balances on these grandiose ideas. One of the figures of the Enlightenment, David Hume, implicit in his work, actually is that reason cannot tell us everything, cannot tell us how to behave. He actually says that you cannot derive a nought from an is. And if that is the case, you can't point to anything in the world which will tell you exactly how to behave. So there is an irreducible impossibility of leading a completely rational life, which some of the more extreme proponents of the Enlightenment believed that there was. But so he was both Enlightenment and counter-Enlightenment at the same time. Western European societies as non-tribal societies, what happens if a tribal society meets a Western society as you described it? You would expect some tensions, some incompatibilities or so to arise, which is, of course, something that we are currently seeing in the Western world. I think what's happening is that those non-tribal Western societies have turned to a kind of formalistic universalism, which basically just boils down to treat everyone the same. Of course, traditionally, justice means so quick that everyone as he deserves. If you have this kind of universalism, which is an unchecked virtue, running loose, and you treat everyone the same, and you have a tribal society mixing a non-tribal society, you have people with non-universalistic ethics, which of course take advantage of people with more universalist ethics. But at the same time, they are pointing the finger at problems of a structure of trust. So I think it's a challenge, and it would be cynical to say it's a welcome challenge, but maybe a wake-up call for Western society. And I think this exchange with people coming from more tribal mindsets can lead to reflection and understanding that the institutional pattern is no longer in accordance with the cultural pattern in Western Europe. And that's what's happening right now. This universalist, non-tribal ethic leads, of course, to results when you treat everyone the same, which either you have to treat everyone as a child or a criminal. And it's where it's going. Other ways, it's just not working out. And people are realizing that actually it's two sets of ethics. Because if you treat everyone the same and there's an invisible part of obligations, does people follow culturally? Of course, you don't treat everyone the same because everyone has to pay the same tax, but not everyone has the same tax honesty, as they say. And then, of course, the same treatment leads to totally different outcomes. And that's what's on the ground, I think a lot of Western Europeans realize that they are held to rules, which can't be applied anymore, can't be executed anymore universally. So either you go back down to non-universal rules and then, of course, you need to break up this kind of artificial, great universalistic nation state. And I think that's what's happening right now. So I don't see just the confrontation. I see an invitation to reflect Western society and reflect the institutions of Western society and how they match or don't match the cultural shape. And in the end, of course, it may boil to do what they call the parallel societies. It's a non-universalist society with parallel, moral, legal codes and so on. And that would be a typical pattern. Maybe more aligned with a more decentralized approach, but that would be too optimistic, probably. Actually, we can see a big difference how Western and Eastern European states handle the immigration crisis. What would be your explanation for that phenomenon? Well, there's a positive and a negative explanation. A negative explanation is that in measures of trust, Eastern Europeans are lacking. And that means it's harder to take advantage of them, but it also means they are less welcoming to different people. I think, totally contrary to what we are told in the media, Western Europe is one of the least racist societies on Earth. And that's peculiar about it, because it's a non-tribal society. It's if you're functional and productive, it's a very welcoming society. It's possible to be taken in. I think it's a good thing. And I think there's a negative thing in parts of Eastern Europe. And just going back, of course, to this kind of shutting everyone out is not necessarily the best answer. But practically, of course, it leads to this preservance of national sovereignty on a national level. And that was a cultural achievement as well. It's just, I think, it's halfway. But it's not too bad. A lot of our liberties are linked to that kind of national community where even democracy seemed to work for a while. And that's quite all I mean. And I think the main argument against or one of the best arguments against socialism is that even the Germans couldn't make it work. And I think we're less the same as with democracy. And the positive reason would, of course, be that in Eastern Europe they have the historical experience which is far more recent of not being sovereign states. And so, of course, it's much more important to all understanding and historical perception of their identities. Tony, just one for you. And I'm not sure if I asked you this last year. And I apologize if I did. But your comments reminded me of it. You talked about how reason isn't prescriptive in terms of living. What is your opinion of the underlying ideas and the phenomenon that is Jordan Peterson? Well, I'm sorry to say I must be one of the few people on the Earth who has not followed him very closely. So as far as I can tell, he is a master of the higher cliche and that what he says is perfectly obvious, much of what he says is perfectly obvious. And it's a sign of the times that the perfectly obvious should have such an effect. But I don't know his, I haven't read his book. And I must confess that I would have to know that I was going to live to be about 500 years old before I would consider reading it because there are many things which are more interesting to me. He's a Jungian psychologist, so maybe a... Well, that's a very bad thing. That's what I'm reading. But as far as I can tell, he does say things which are fairly commonsensical. It's just that common sense isn't very common. But I don't know his work. I wanted to add something to Rahim. We are... In Turkey, we are extremely complaining about all the immigrants. And we have much, much more immigrants than any country in Europe. And everybody complains, I mean, that they get better treatment in hospitals, that the hospitals are full of them, that they get payment from government without doing anything, and that all parts of cities are only... by now inhabited by them, that they label their own shops and everything. But the main difference is that complaining here is not politically incorrect. So that's the main difference. I have a question to Anthony. Assuming that, right, hyperinflation would follow the same behavioral patterns as money hyperinflation, when do you consider the moment of a general right replacement, right reduction, especially because the increasing lack of enforcement seems to enjoy a bigger tolerance than in case of money hyperinflation? Well, unfortunately, I can't give you any answer. I don't see easily a reversal of this trend. And the only way that it's going to come about is either through circumstances which make the fulfillment, even the partial fulfillment of the rights, impossible, which would actually cause a lot of social unrest, or alternatively, a lot of work has to be done to persuade people that their ideas are actually mistaken. But I don't want the first scenario. I don't want there to be a kind of social breakdown. And I don't really see many people arguing against the idea of rights in our society. So I'm somewhat pessimistic about the possibility of change. I think there might be some kind of... I think there is some reason to be hopeful when you look at the state of the modern left, who seem to be eating each other. You look at, for instance, the transsexual activists and the homosexual activists. They are frequently clashing with one another. I think one of the more common, one of the more famous examples was when Germain Greer, who is a very radical feminist and has been, for some time, was deemed not extreme left enough by the transsexual activists because she, as a very proud feminist, doesn't believe that a man who decides to change his sex has become a woman. And you see more and more of these sorts of incidents there. And I don't know if it's simply enjoyable to watch or whether there might be something good that will come of it in the long term. I don't know, but that's my two cents. Yes, I agree that it partly comes down to the increasing and self-refuting absurdity of this entire movement. But a somewhat more optimistic observation, I think, is to quote Thomas Kuhn, that revolutions tend to happen one retirement party at a time. There is no persuading the present elites in our civilization, elites broadly defined, that they are wrong or that there is anything wrong with their ideas. The ideas that they adopted when they were very young have brought them status and financial security and power and all the things that normal human beings long to have. And so they will not abandon those ideas. But as these people get old and retire, or perhaps preferably die, you may see the reemergence of not a rationality, but simply of common sense. I certainly hope so, but do you actually... I mean, I have no contact with young people, so I can't say. But do you see it amongst young students, for example? Do you see any rejection of these old ideas in young students? I don't know, I'm just asking. Keir observed recently that most of my students are rather odd. I don't know if that's how I make them, or if they see me and run towards me. But my experience is that young people are deeply cynical about the whole process. There is almost no belief in the system in which they live and which they will in the normal course events take over. Forty years ago, perhaps 35 years ago when I was younger, there were many people of my age who sincerely believed that these absurdities would produce a better and kind world. I don't think there are many young people who seriously believe those propositions anymore. Perhaps they believe things are even worse, but I doubt it. I don't see many young people who believe this nonsense. Oh, I have no doubt there are many young people who find it highly convenient to appear to believe it, but there's a difference between apparent belief and belief. Because I am a young person, I think I should say something about it, but no, I would just echo what Sean said in my experience. Perhaps less so in the universities. But outside of the universities, people who are going, say, straight into business or something like that are much, much more likely to reject the nonsense that you get in politics and the mainstream media and so on, and to actually be quite deeply sound on a number of things. Certainly much sounder than their parents, because there is a lot of resentment that their parents' generation has got them into a bad state generally, people look to their parents' generation and blame them, not only for the economic problems, but also for the cultural and social degeneracy that they see around them. And, yeah, they wish their parents had been a bit more right-wing, and so they're often taking it upon themselves. You remember three years ago in September, we had our conference here. And a few days after, this massive movement of migrants started exactly here in Podrom, went to the Greek islands, from the Greek islands to the Paracan countries, and up the Paracans to Austria and Germany and Sweden. Now, what happened then is very interesting if we confront it with what happened with the barbaric invasions in the end of the Roman Empire. Why? Because the behavior of Greece, of Macedonia, of Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, and so on was simply, we don't want you, but you can cross our country because you're invited by the Germans. So please, cross it. Don't create too much troubles. We will help you. We give you the possibilities to take the train, the buses, and whatever. And the Germans will take you. The Eastern Roman policy was different in what regarded the immigration pressure which came out from the Eastern part and from the Asian parts. They didn't take them in. But the Western Roman Empire changed and liberalized its immigration policy dramatically between the second century and the fourth and fifth century. So it was very easy for them to enter. So the breakdown of the frontiers of the Western Roman Empire was not only the effect of a military invasion brought from outside, but it was already the effect of a broad system of contracts with Germanic tribes who were incorporated inside the Western Roman country. And there I think this is one of the explanations why the Eastern part of the Roman Empire could survive so much longer than the Western part. I'll tell you a story. Around the year 500, it was reasonably plain in this part of the world that the presence of large numbers of Germanic barbarians might not be entirely in the public interest. And yet in all the great cities of the East, there were large numbers of Germanic mercenaries and their families they had settled. And so one day, a decree was sent out and published in all the cities that Germanic barbarians should meet together in the main public square of the town at a specific time when they would hear something very much to their advantage from the government. And so the appointed day came, the barbarian mercenaries were gathered there with their families, their wives and their children. And suddenly archers appeared from behind various columns and massacred all of them. And this is not an entirely reliable story. It's in Gibbon. Gibbon's comment is that he will make no comment on this. There are times when the most awful things may be justified in the public interest, but he has no interest in either condemning or defending such things. But undoubtedly the Eastern Empire found a way of managing those people who entered its territory. Oh, it's a long, long story. There are so many things that you could talk about. You could talk about the geography of it. If you look at a map of the Eastern Roman Empire, you'll see that it's broken in two. And you've got the choke point at Constantinople. It means that barbarians can sweep through the Balkans. They can burn. They can rape. They can murder. They reach the walls of Constantinople and they can go no further. Or the Arabs can break through the defenses and sweep through Anatolia. And again, they reach the walls of Constantinople, but they can't cross the straits. And it is very difficult to have two enemies from the north and the south attacking the city at the same time because Byzantine control of the sea means that those enemies cannot coordinate their actions. This is a geographical advantage which doesn't exist in Western Europe. But there are so many things that I could say, but it's three minutes to six. I'm convinced that most Eastern European countries are not more racist than Western Europe. At least I can speak for Hungary. People are used to speak more openly. That's the main difference. Civilization often means not in all cases not being racist but not speaking about it openly. And this is, in my opinion, the big difference. The other one is I think Eastern Europeans are different because they used to be parts of empires. They didn't choose themselves. Since the 15th century, they were parts of the Turkish Empire. After that of then Austria, which might be a very civilized empire, and still it was not chosen voluntarily by these countries. And the last 60 years, they were part of the socialist camp. You could say they were subjects of the Soviet Union. So I believe they learned a lot by being subjects of empires. And this makes the main difference in their attitude towards dangers or things they estimate as dangers for their national sovereignty. Thank you so much for your contradiction. I loved it. That's great. I mean, talk about who's more racist. I won't pick it up. As I tried to explain, that's become really complicated to figure out who's racist and who's not. I think it's not a good label to use anymore. I used to live both in, I spent the first part of my life in Hungary. And since 30 or more years, I live in Germany. So I have a good ground for comparison. So therefore, I dare to say that at least Hungarians are not more racist and less anti-Semitic than the Germans are. There, I'm sure. Well, sociologically, there seems to be evidence that there's difference in trust. And of course, one of the things is that there is less trust, we used to be less trust in governments and the state, in particular in the countries that were part of the Ottoman Empire and, of course, the Soviet Empire and so on. So that's a very valid point. But interestingly, it can't explain the difference in trust entirely. So you can see that thing. But still, within society, there is sociologically evidence. Of course, there's statistical evidence. It's not true for everyone. And it's just kind of density of results that you get that Hungarians seem to do a little worse than Western Europeans in cooperating among each other. That's the difference. And I would tend to assume as a non-Hungarian, and it's totally a difficult language, of course, to acquire, to become really part of Hungary. I know quite a few Austrians who live in Hungary. And of course, they don't want to integrate. And they are left alone. So that's, is that a great thing? I don't know. There is no effort to integrate them into Hungarian society. So the Hungarians are not very forthcoming. But of course, they are not evil people. They are not racist in the sense that as an Austrian living in Hungary, you'd have any problem with your neighbors. I think you maybe even have less problems than living in Austria, but that could be other cultural things. So if you have to control for the arrivals, which is totally impossible, of course. As a modern society, you can't have that homogeneity so that really the state apparatus of violence is equal society, and equal is totally homogenous, religiously, culturally, and so on, at the size of a nation state. So I'm maybe a bit more skeptical. But of course, if you compare, it's totally, it seems evident that you can't talk about certain subjects in Germany or among Germans. But I think Gülsing gave a very, very good and pride example of what might be the repercussions about these things. Of course, in China, it's no problem to talk about Baidwao. And you can be really outspoken about Western society. You can't really be that outspoken about Chinese society. So that's a bit unfair to compare it like that. And just say, wow, it would be amazing freedom to be in China and just criticize German society compared to Germany. And I'd be very that the same might ring true in Hungary. And that over time, I think it might feel more difficult to criticize Hungarian culture, Hungarian society. I don't say that you have to and that you should. But I think it would be unfair to compare this way. But thanks a lot for your contradiction. I think it's a very, very evil insight.