 Some of you might know that originally the plan was for me to give kind of a broad talk about the institute and about where we are and about the struggle to change the culture, what needs to be done, what we're doing and how we're going about doing it. But something happened exactly two weeks ago, something that we at the institute could not ignore. Three Islamic terrorists walked into the offices of Charlie Hebdo and shot in cold blood 12 people. They actually called out the specific people they wanted to murder, the editor in chief, the specific cartoonists. They shot them for this, for drawing these cartoons. They shot them for their ideas. They shot them because these individuals had the courage to express their ideas, to make their ideas public, to engage in speech, to engage in drawing, to engage in satire. Now, this was not an isolated event and I'll go over some of the previous instances and what led to this and this should not have been unexpected. But it was shocking in its brutality, in the fact that they knew exactly what they were doing and they knew exactly why they were doing it. And for us at the Ironman Institute, this issue of Greek speech, this issue of being able to express radical, unpopular ideas, for that matter, any ideas, is crucial. It's crucial to everything that we do. But not only is this issue crucial to who we are as an institute, to the ideas that we are trying to educate the world about. This is crucial to what it means to be part of civilization, specifically to be part of western civilization. This is not an Ironman Institute issue. This is not an issue for radicals. This is not an issue for left or for right. This is an issue that goes to the core of what western civilization is about. What western civilization stands for. So what is western civilization? What does it stand for? Writers free speech matter in this context. Those are important questions which nobody, by the way, is asking and certainly nobody's answering. There's a huge disagreement about what western civilization is. And let me say right up front, western civilization is not about geography. Western civilization is about ideas, very specific ideas that are specifically western. We call them western because they come out of western Europe. That's why they're western. In many respects, they come out of France. Makes this all the more tragic. So what is western civilization? Where did western civilization come from? So in my view, western civilization is really the product of a specific era in the history of western Europe. And that specific era, we call the age of enlightenment. And the age of enlightenment is about what idea? What is the idea central to the age of enlightenment? You can yell it out. Reason. The other name for the age of enlightenment was the age of reason. So the enlightenment sets reason as the most important idea. The thinkers, if they might understand that reason is, is the means by which human beings survive. It is the way in which we thrive. It is the essential value that we as human beings require in order to be successful. Now this is an identification that Aristotle makes in Greece way before that. But for the first time, there's a whole period that embraces that idea. The first time in human history. Embraces the idea that knowledge, the source of knowledge is our senses. It's our ability to observe, to integrate, to understand, to conceptualize the reality around us. That is a huge breakthrough in human history and for this to be part of a whole culture. And that's what the 18th century was. It was a culture that at least tried to be a culture of reason. Who's the first figure really of the enlightenment? Newton. Right? A scientist. This is important because Newton's the first one, the first human being really, to show us the power of science, to explain the world in multiple dimensions. So for the first time in human history, we can see that this is how knowledge comes about through a specific method, a scientific method, the method of reasoning rather than through revelation, rather than through the Pope, rather than through communion with some other dimension. The knowledge is possible here and knowledge is possible for whom? For everyone. Because as human beings, we all possess this faculty of reason, this capacity to think, this capacity to use our mind. And this idea is spreading through Europe. And part of this idea, part of this idea of reason, is shrugging off what ideas? The ideas of religion. The ideas of mysticism. Part of it is the rejection. An essential part of it is the rejection of the whole way in which religion operates. Both in terms of knowledge that comes to us through revelation, but also in terms of how we arbitrate disputes. Because what's going on in Europe leading up to the age of enlightenment? What are Europeans doing to one another? They're killing each other. I mean, on a massive scale. We think wars are brutal today. You should read about these wars. And they were called things like hundred-year wars. Right? Talk about long engagements. That's long. Thirty-year wars, Catholics killing Protestants, Protestants killing Catholics, right? All over Europe. People being slaughtered. Why? Because they disagree. Because they disagree. And the only method to resolve a disagreement was what? It was force. It was force. And the efficacy of reason, raising the efficacy of reason as a primary says, no, there's another way to deal with this agreement. Reason, argument, fact, discussion. And the people in the age of enlightenment are sick of the religious intolerance of the period before them. They're sick of the wars. They're sick of the violence. They're sick of the killing. And they're standing up against us and they're saying, no, enough. This is not how we deal with this agreement. This is not human. This is not what it means to be human, to kill one another over disagreements of ideas. There is a method. Let's engage in this method to resolve these ideas. So the core of the enlightenment is this idea of reason and the ability to express oneself, the thoughts, the new discoveries, the new ideas. Some of them good, some of them bad. Some of them right, some of them wrong. I'm sure there was a lot of bad science. There was a lot of bad philosophy. There was a lot of bad ideas. But the idea was that you could express them. You could test them out there. You could debate them. You could discuss them. You could argue them. And that's how you engaged with one another. That was the method by which we engaged with one another. And it was wrong. It was wrong to try and pose by force your ideas on somebody else. It was wrong to kill people because you disagreed. That was barbarism they considered. And they understood it to be. And it was crucial that that ability to exchange ideas freely, to come up with ideas, to express ideas, that had to be protected. And they understood that ideas offend. There's a big deal here about, ooh, this is offensive. Yeah, you're Muslim. That's pretty offensive. So was Newton offensive? Absolutely. I mean, he offended the Catholic Church. He offended everybody who believed that to explain nature, you had a mystical revelation. He disagreed with them. I'm sure they took it personally. I'm sure they were very upset. And if he had been born a couple of centuries earlier, they might have actually burnt him at the stake, which they did to many scientists and many thinkers just a little bit before Newton. Think about what they did Galileo. Didn't quite burn him at the stake, but they put him a house arrest. Many others got burnt. That's how you dealt with people who offended you. The Enlightenment is the first era in which that's not acceptable, at least not to the intellectual. Voltaire, a key figure in the Enlightenment, still has to escape France because he fears for his life, because he challenges religion. Now, what is the culmination of the Enlightenment project? What is the peak, the pinnacle, the creation that has survived? Yeah, the United States of America, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution. These were men of the Enlightenment. These were men of reason. Go to the Jefferson Memorial and you've got that beautiful quote up on the top. I never memorized the stuff, but it says something like, to everything bring reason before even the existence of God. Reason is the primary. That's Jefferson. That's what this country is about. It's taking, so Newton took reason and applied it to the physical world and explained science. The founding fathers took the idea of reason and applied it to politics. How do you create a system of politics that protects what? The individual's ability to reason and act on that reason, to pursue his values as a rational animal, as a rational being, to pursue the values that enable him to be happy. They even say it. They have a right to pursue happiness. A right here means an action and speech is an action. So you as an individual, according to the founders, have a right to pursue your values, to think, to discover new ideas, to put them into action, to act on them, to speak them, to draw them. And if they offend somebody, tough. They have to deal with it. It's not your responsibility. And indeed, for the founders, I'm going to be showing cartoons. Indeed, for the founders, the one on the left, by the way, is a Danish cartoon. We'll talk about those in a minute from 2005. Mike, you can't see them? It doesn't really matter. No, it doesn't. I don't know what they are exactly. I've never really studied them. They're cartoons. They offend people. And people died for them. That's what matters. And the specific nature of what they say. Some of them you can imagine they could offend some of them. Some people, some of them are just benign. They're just there. It doesn't matter one way or the other. So for the founders, freedom of speech, the ability to express yourself, is crucial. It's in the First Amendment. First Amendment to the Constitution deals with this one issue. And why is it so important to them? Because what did they do? Who did they offend? Who did the Declaration of Independence offend? King George and the British, right? There's a huge offense to them. Good, core, right? It stood for something. Indeed, if you really think about it, is there ever a truth that doesn't offend somebody? Is there ever anything something new that somebody who's bound to tradition, or bound to the past, is not offended by its existence? Think Uber and taxi drivers. Find Uber offensive. And some of them are resulted of violence, particularly in Paris. So this idea of free speech, the idea of a right to action, to speak, to draw, to pursue your rational values in pursuit of your happiness, in pursuit of your life, is at the core of Western civilization, because it's at the core of the Enlightenment, and it's at the core of what it is that is America. It's at the core of what this country stands for, has always stood for. And whose responsibility is it to protect this idea of free speech, to protect your ability to exercise your freedom? It's the government. The one job the founders, the one job they give government is to protect us from those who would silence us. It's to protect us from those who would threaten us. It's to protect us from those who would kill us. Protect our right to draw that, or to draw anything, or to say anything. That's the one job of government. It's not even to have an opinion about whether that's offensive or not. Indeed, I would argue that part of the idea behind a separation of church and state is not just church and state. But in terms of ideas, the government doesn't have an opinion about what offends some people, doesn't offend other people. What ideas are right or what ideas are wrong? What science is good science? What science is bad science? What's a good educational curriculum? What's a bad educational curriculum? Government has no role in making those distinctions. All government is there to do is to protect you from engaging in those activities right or wrong. And many ideas are wrong. Many ideas, indeed, objectively are truly offensive. And yet people have a right to engage in those ideas. Because part of the question you have to ask yourself, or they have to ask themselves, people who object to free speeches, is at the end of the day who gets to decide. There's a little lot of ideas out there. Some of them are true, some of them are not. Who gets to decide which are true and which are not? Who is the authority here? And remember, what is government? What is government? Government is a gun. Government is coercion. Government is force. Do you want the entity with a gun, the entity that is force to make those distinctions? Newton-Wright scientists, why wrong? No, they can't. They don't have the tools. They don't have the mechanisms. And it's incredibly dangerous. At the end of the day, they will kill off truth. They will kill off virtue. They will kill off new discoveries. They will kill human progress. Human progress dies when you give that assignment to government. And this is, again, what the founders really understood, because they'd experienced it. We're just starting to experience religious persecution and silencing of people for speech. But this is part of human history, until the founding of America, a consistent part of human history. This is how people engage with one another for thousands of years. Didn't like what you say. Not bullet, but arrow to the head. This is the revolution. This is why this is, and this is precious. We're still young. History-wide, 200 years, that's nothing. And yet, it's already slipping away, because we don't even understand it. We don't understand its source. We don't understand why it's so important. It's so important because reason is so important. It's so important because it's the human mind that's so important. It's because ideas are important. Thinking is important. This is, I mean, reason is the way in which we survive. There is no alternative. I like to give the example of, you know, if you look around the audience, you can look, not bad. You know, we're all pretty pathetic. I mean, look, we're pretty weak. I mean, really weak. You know, we have no fangs. We have no claws. We're pretty slow. I mean, you guys try running down a bison and biting into it. You can't do it. And yet, I had a bison booger yesterday. Right? I'm here, bison's on the plate. Or put any one of you opposite a sabre through tiger. And you'd be dead. And yet, last time I saw a sabre through tiger was in a museum. And you guys are here, and you're not just here. You're living the life. Look, look around you. This is amazing. The comfortable clothes you're wearing, the seats you're sitting on, the wonderful building we're in, the sound system, the technology available to us today. All of that is a product of just one thing. Just as a physical species, we're pathetic. It's this. It's our reason. It's our mind. It's our ability to think, to solve problems, to innovate, to discover, to communicate, to organize, to strategize. That's how we get the bison. We build weapons. We strategize about how to hunt him. We build traps. We skin him. We use the fur for clothes. None of that is trivial. Not one of you has the gene of how to do it. You have to figure it out. Now, I mean, even got to what it takes to design one of these. But it's the same principle. No different. Hunting bison, making one of these, same principle. You have to use your mind. You have to innovate. You have to discover. You have to use reason. That's how we survive. And the protection of speech is the protection of thinking. It's a protection of our mind. And this is slipping away. It's slipping away in Europe fast. It's slipping away in America slow. But it is slipping away. And I'll just give you, I'm just going to hit on some highlights because we could spend all day with all the examples and all the horrible examples of this. And it's depressing enough, even with just a few highlights. And it's not just that people who are offended by speech, like these Islamists, it's not just that they're acting against us. It's that what we see consistently time and time again is that government, our government, is not doing its job. It's not doing what it's supposed to do, which is to protect us. So it's a double whammy. Not only are there barbarians out there who would kill us for what we say, but the entity that we created that is our servant is not doing its job in protecting us. And worse than that in Europe. In America, not yet as bad. But in Europe, worse than that. Indeed, in Europe today, it is the government that is restricting speech. Because before these jihadists walked into this office and killed these people, the French government was after them. The French government was harassing them, was taking them to court because they were violating France's hate speech codes. And these are not codes, voluntary codes or private codes. This is in the law. You can go to jail in France for saying certain things. And this is all over Europe, all over Europe. And you know what started it? What started it are codes against speech that all of us would find offensive. So nobody spoke up. Nobody defended them. But what was the first, at least post-World War II, because there's always been speech codes in Europe, even pre-World War II, but post-World War II, what is the one idea that if we expressed, we go to jail in almost every country in Europe? Holocaust denial. So Holocaust in Germany and in France, if you're a Holocaust denier and you write about it or you say it, you will go to jail. Now, it's horrific to be a Holocaust denial. It's irrational and stupid and immoral and evil and so on. But you have a right to do it. And if we believe in free speech, we have to defend your right to do it. But nobody has in Europe. So they started with Holocaust denial. Nobody agrees with that. Nobody likes those guys. And then slowly, they expand to other stuff they don't like and other stuff they don't like. And you know, in real life, slippery slopes really do exist. Not just on slides, they really do exist. And this is a great example of one of those slippery slopes. Once you violate the principle, now we just have to figure out, okay, what do we find offensive? Oh, that's offensive. We'll ban that. And Charlie Hebdo is very close to being banned in France by the French government. Not just because they insult Islam, but because they insult the Pope and they insult the French intellectuals and they insult anybody. So it's the French government that is the real problem in France, in my view. Not just because they wouldn't protect these guys from the Muslims, but it's because they were doing the jihadist job for them. In Sweden, last year, a painter painted a painting. A horrible painting, stupid painting, some neo-fascist thing. He put it up in a private gallery, taken to jail, tried, convicted, six months in jail for painting a painting. Sweden, paradise, right? Like the leftists consider this the ideal. So in Europe today, there is no free speech. In Europe today, they are legislated codes against hate speech. And you go to jail if you break them. So free speech is dead. In Europe, if people took seriously the I am Charlie, just sweet Charlie, if they took that seriously in France, last, you know, two weeks ago, the first thing they would have demanded was the repeal of all hate speech codes by the French government. But the contrary is happening. There's discussion of expanding those codes, of expanding censorship on a European scale. There's talk of the European Union passing a code, a hate speech code that would cover the entire union there. So we're gonna restrict people's freedoms of speech. And in addition, what is the other solution, right? We're gonna increase surveillance. We're gonna tap your phones more. We're gonna watch what you do on the internet more. We're gonna put more police out into the street randomly. God forbid we should identify any particular group not to be named as the actual bad guys, right? Because that would be hate speech. If we actually said who it was. So that's Europe. It's bad. It's really bad. And again, this is not the first murder in 2004. Van Gogh, the movie maker who had done a documentary about Islam, was murdered in the street. Knife to Death. In the street by Eji Hadi. Ayan Hirsi Ali's life was threatened. She ultimately had to leave, what's that? Leave Holland, that's right, in Holland. Leave Holland and come to the US to find refuge. So violence in the name of silencing, the so-called defenders of Islam, is not new. What about the US? Well, the US thanks to our founders, thanks to the drafters of the Constitution and thanks for Madison changing his mind about the Bill of Rights. We have this protection in writing that lots of people would love to undo, but they can't, not really. I mean, they can chip away at the edges and they do and they have. But particularly with political speech, this kind of speech, it's right there. It's in the First Amendment. They can't really get at it because it's in writing. Europe doesn't have that. So we have codes, hate speech codes on campuses, even public universities. Students are not allowed to say certain things. It can be penalized for say certain things. So you're seeing it at the edges without it being government policy. It's politically incorrect to do certain things. Newspapers want to use certain words, want to publish certain images, but it's more voluntary in quotes. And the government in the US has defaulted, clearly defaulted, on its one responsibility of protecting us. Now, I want to give you a few examples of this. I think the first example that really is real was 1989. This was a Salman Rushdie published a book, a novel. This is a serious novelist, right? Go up in Pakistan, I think. Muslim Heritage. Go up and wrote a novel in which he's critical of Islam. Ayatollah Khomeini, the supreme leader of Iran. That's a cool title, right? Supreme leader, not just leader, supreme leader. It's just a fatwa. A million bucks on the head of Salman Rushdie. You know, you get a million bucks for killing him. And this is not an idle threat, right? The Iranians are known for assassinating people all over the place. So Rushdie really went into hiding. There was a British citizen went into hiding in Britain. Nobody said anything, not the British government. Nobody said anything. But it went further in terms of us in terms of America. The publisher, the booksellers were all threatened, including explicitly the American publisher, the American booksellers. Now, any half decent president would have said, you know, at the very minimum, I'm not even saying what you really should have said to the Iranians at that point, given that they'd taken our embassy in 79, that they'd killed the Marines in Beirut in 83, that they'd killed Americans throughout the 80s, put all that aside, right? This supreme leader is threatening citizens of America at the very least you say, you don't dare. You touch one hair of an American and we will crush you. But George Bush was president. So we didn't get that, but what do we get? So this is his response, right? However offensive the book may be. Now note, the book is offensive. He's decided, right? He's acknowledged, he's accepted, and he's a judge. Government is not judging what's offensive or what's not. So however offensive the book may be, inciting murder and offering rewards for its perpetration are deeply offensive to the norms of civilized behavior. Two things offensive here, right? The book and threatening murder, both offensive. They're both about the same thing, right? This is our political leadership, right? Not I will defend the rights of American to speak, to publish, to sell anything that they want. That is my job as president of the United States. No, this offensive, yeah, you Iranians, you're kind of offensive, stop it, please. Now, when you put in the context of this, now, when you put in the context of the embassy, the Beirut bombings, the killing of Americans, then it really, you get in focus how pathetic, how appeasing, how wimpish that response really is. How much of a betrayal that is of the responsibility of government and a betrayal of the protection of free speech. That was Bush senior. So let's skip ahead to Bush Jr. For some reason, I couldn't find an example with Clinton, but he does show up here in a minute, by the way, James Baker, the Secretary of State, described Homanie's call for the murder of Rushdie as the Secretary of State, right? Regrettable. It's funny and unbelievably depressing, right? So in 2005, a Danish newspaper publishes 10 cartoons of Muhammad. These are some of them. Here are some others. And why do they publish these cartoons? They publish these cartoons because they have a sense that there's self-censorship going on in Europe. Now, remember, this is a year after Van Gogh is killed, but it's also, they're hearing whispers, they're hearing stories about paintings coming down in museums, sculptures going away, paintings of Muhammad, sculptures of Muhammad. Of people trying to do like children's books describing different religious leaders, and nobody would draw Muhammad. They'd draw Jesus, they'll draw Moses or whatever, but they won't draw Muhammad. And it's just, there's this sense in Europe that everybody's self-centering and nobody would actually stand forward. And nobody will talk about it. And they say, this is news. This is something with investigating, revealing, bringing to the forefront. And the way they chose to bring it to the forefront is to find cartoonists brave enough to draw Muhammad and publish it and see what would happen. The goal was to reveal to the Europe the state of free speech in Europe, the level of intimidation that people were feeling, the level of self-censorship that was going on. And initially, nothing happened. They published cartoons in silence. But locally, moms in Europe were very unhappy about this. They wanted to make a statement. So they started sending these cartoons with inflammatory letters all over the Middle East. And in 2006, riots broke out all over the Middle East and Pakistan and other places. Embassies were burnt. People were murdered. They're spilled into Europe. The newspaper was threatened just like Charlie Hebdo. Fleming Rose, who was the publisher. His life was threatened. All the cartoonists were within, I think a few years later, one of the cartoonists was attacked in his home by a ex-wielding Muslim terrorist. He managed to escape, but imagine, right? I mean, these guys were being targeted. People were trying to kill them for drawing this. Now this is going on everywhere. Of course, in the United States, what do the newspapers here do? Embassies are being burnt. This is a real news story, right? People are reporting. Embassies being burnt because of cartoons, which we're not gonna show you. We're not gonna show you. And one of the reasons we're not gonna show you is we're not convinced that our government would protect us, if we did. Because this is what Bush had to say about the cartoons, right? George Bush, president of the United States of America. The cowboy, the tough guy. I hate Bush. I'm just out there. He can ask me in the Q and A watch, but I really, really deeply hate him in a way that I don't hate many. He says we find them offensive about the cartoons. And we certainly understand. I mean, he's taken his father one step more, right? We certainly understand why Muslims would find these images offensive. The State Department says anti-Muslim images are as unacceptable as anti-Semitic images, as anti-Christian images, anti-Christian images which are often funded with taxpayer money in the U.S., by the way, right? Just to give the contrast. Well, any other religious beliefs. So offending religion is unacceptable. Something, by the way, the Pope said last week. He would. But the State Department, again, remember where the enlightenment comes from, where this whole idea of free speech comes from. It comes from shrugging off religion. It comes from a period where they offended religion because they were letting go of religion. And yet today, our politicians want to protect religion. A few years after the cartoons were published, Bill Clinton had to bring him in. Said, none of us are totally free of stereotypes about people of different races, different ethnic groups, and different religions. There was this appalling example in Denmark. These totally outrageous cartoons against them, against Islam. So we get no government protection, no assertion of free speech, no assertion of the right to express yourself. Nothing from our political leaders, from the freest country in the world. Blame the Europeans. And President Obama. Remember Benghazi? And put aside the lies and that's part. But let's take it for what it was, right? So Benghazi happens and what does the Obama administration blame it on? A video on YouTube. Let's pretend that that was true, right? It doesn't matter. Even if it was true, right? What should have been the response? Should have been to protect the right of whoever produced the video, to produce the video, to stand up for his right free speech, to tell the Muslims that that is unacceptable, to do militarily what you need to do, to penalize them. But that Americans will express themselves. That should have been the response. What was the response? A front call from Jay Carney, press secretary to the president, to Google asking that they take the video down. Remember, government guns force coercion. The press secretary of the president of the United States doesn't just ask. So, you know, in, this guy was whoever made the video was later, persecuted for all kinds of other stuff, but you know, this has a lot to do with it. So rather than defend his freedom, they go after it. They try to destroy him. See that even in the United States of America, freedom of speech is being eroded. Today, there's a cartoonist in Seattle who declared that everyone draw Mohammed Day. And she's in hiding. She fears for her life. And nobody's protecting her. And she's been in hiding since 2010, five years now. For what? So, we're at a point today where we can't trust our government. Here's a, I mean, this is my, I think the one that creeps me out the most. So you remember Terry Jones, this guy wanted to burn Korans in Florida, right? I mean, it's stupid, whatever. I mean, he's not the smartest guy and he's not the best person, but he wanted to burn Korans, right? So this is what Obama had to say, right? It's, I mean, listen to how he says this, because he's, it's like, he wants to stop the guy. I mean, this is what I said about it. It's written in black and white, so they can't do it. But they want to, right? He wants to stop this guy, but he doesn't have the tools to do it, right? So, let me just find this quote. Well, maybe not. Anyway, what he says is, oh, here it is. He's kind of, he says, it's frustrating, right? And this is in an interview. My understanding is that, that he can be cited for public burning, but that's the extent of the laws that we have available to us. Now that's this close to fascism, right? Just, if only they'd pass more laws, right? That I could get this guy, stop him from burning Korans. And again, it doesn't matter what he's burning, it's none of anybody's business. None of anybody, unless somebody else's property. So what we're seeing in America today is a massive erosion. In a view of what free speech is, the world of government visa, V-free speech. And because government doesn't seem to be leading on the restraining speech, we're doing it to ourselves. We're doing it on campuses, we're doing it voluntarily, we're silencing ourselves, we're censoring ourselves. Government would love to do it for us, but we still have a semblance of protection of rights and that's not happening. So free speech is in trouble. You know, it's in grave danger in Europe, but it's bad here as well. And the question ultimately is what do we do about it? Right, what can we do? Because we're not gonna be saved by our political leaders. Our political leaders have shown, both right and left, Republican and Democrat, they've shown that they have no respect for free speech, they don't understand what free speech is, and they're not gonna be there to defend us, they're not gonna be there to protect us. They've abandoned us. They've given up on the real principles in which this country's founded. They've given up any kind of understanding of what the Constitution and what the Declaration of Independence really mean in this country. So what's left for us to do? Well, I think what's left to us to do is stand up, is speak, is object, is draw, is write, is publish. Prove to the world that we're not gonna cower, that we're not gonna be silent, so we won't self-censor us. If the government wants to censor us, let them show up with guns. Let them take us kicking and screaming. I love this, and Bosch is here, who drew it? Bosch is right there. Stay quiet, you'll be okay. That's a message we're getting from the world of the jihadists. And it's up to us to decide are we willing to stay quiet in the face of that? Granted, that we cannot count on our government to help us. I say we not stay quiet. That we publish the cartoons at every opportunity. That so many of us do it that they can't target any one of us because they wouldn't know who to start with. We should not buy the New York Times until they publish the cartoons. I wish we had enough of us to boycott the New York Times, but my guess is nobody here reads it anyway. How about the Wall Street Journal? How many of you read the Wall Street Journal? I read the New York Times too. How many of you read the Wall Street Journal? Right, a lot of you. They haven't published the cartoons. We need a demand that they do that. And if they all do that again, where's the target? Who are we gonna go after? And it shows strength. It shows that we believe in something. It shows that we're not gonna just cower to the bastards. We're not just gonna give in to fear and intimidation by barbarians who live in caves because that's what they are. And if we won't use the mightiest military force in human history to destroy them, that at least those of us who have the courage stand up and say, no, we won't give in. And we have to educate Americans about this, about the very foundational, the essential nature of what free speech, because what happens when we don't have free speech? So let's say, you know, I'm an objectivist. I wanna convince people out in the world that freedom's a good thing, that Einrhein's ideas are the right ideas. If I can't do that by speaking, what is the only other mechanism left for me to advocate for freedom? Guns, revolution. I fear I lose that one. They have bigger guns. I don't wanna get to that point, but that's what Einrhein actually said. When is a time for a revolution? And a key time for a revolution is when you can't speak, when you can't use reason. When it's not permissible to engage in reason, discussion, in argument, in persuasion, in an attempt to convince. And then all you've got is a gun to fight for your own freedom. That's all that's left. That's all that's left. So if we wanna change the world, if we wanna change any little piece of the world, if we wanna just live a better life, this is what we have to fight for. This is the idea that is crucial for us to continue to execute on all the other ideas. We want capitalism, great. If we don't have free speech, we won't get it. We want romantic art, great. If we don't have free speech, we won't get it. Every other value that we wanna fight for, the means to get there is through speech, is through reasoning, is through using our mind in argument with other people, trying to convince. So if we're gonna stand for anything, if we're gonna stake our lives on anything, this is the idea that we should stake it on. The right to think, the right to live is the right to speak. Thank you all. So we've got a mic, I'll take questions. Somebody has to be the first and then it kind of usually rolls. Count the mic as we're filming so that we can capture the question. I just said you said the right to speak. I don't know. I made it up on the spot. The right to live, the right to speak. I think it was the right to think, the right to live is the right to speak, so. I mean, it's all the right to life. It's all derivatives of the right to live. So could you comment, you touched on it, but comment on the kinds of responses that have come from what's known as the right to these events? Yeah, I mean, the right is mostly silent. I mean, you don't see much responses, certainly not fundamental responses. So the right wants to talk about Islam. The right wants to talk about terrorism. The right wants to talk about what do we do with these radicals, right? That's what they want to talk about. It doesn't want to talk about free speech. I mean, there's very little conversation about what free speech means, about what the right to free speech means, about the role of government in the context of free speech. That's all you hear is about what we should be doing and no go zones in this and that. It's all practical stuff about the enemy, but not about the principle because they don't conceive of the principle. They don't understand the principle and they would love to violate it when they had the opportunity to do it for their ideas. And they have a problem. You see, they would love, they would love, most of these guys would love to ban, I don't know what is, Jesus on the urinal or whatever the thing. They would love to ban that stuff. They're just looking for an opportunity to do it. So they are against offending Islam. They're against the culture, they're always against violence so they have to condemn their terrorists, but they're against the, just like Pope said, well, what did the Pope say? Violence is an excusable, but nobody has the right to offend religion, religion. You're gonna offend our grand. You're gonna offend capitalism. You can offend anybody here. You just can't offend religion. And what's interesting is, somebody should ask me, why is it so, why do they make an exception for Islam, right? Because we agree that you can offend everybody else, but not Islam. So somebody asked me why you can't offend Islam. But if you want to, if you don't, that's fine. So the white has no response. I mean, how many people have you seen out on television talking about, really talking about free speech and what it means and what the implications are? You don't see it. I mean, the best of them give tough speeches about the need to deal with the jihadis, with radicals, with whatever. That's the best you'll get, but nothing principle. Hi, I'm in academia and I see the free speech zones shrinking a lot on the places where we're supposed to have ideas. Can you speak to that and any ideas of what, like, I'm afraid to even use, I'm tenured, so I feel I have a little more freedom to teach things and I do teach Iran, but it's still scary. So I was at a public school in San Jose Tuesday, I think. Yesterday, it was yesterday. Yesterday morning, and speaking at an English class, an AP English class, and the teacher told me afterwards, he said, you know, if I taught, if I suggest the teaching to the class, Hakaberry Finn, I would be sent to sensitivity training. Hakaberry Finn, Mark Twain, right? That's how bad it is. You can't mention Mark Twain in America. So the free speech zones are shrinking, which is horrific, particularly in public schools, particularly in universities, which claim to be what? Intellectual, knowledge, seeking the truth. Well, if you're seeking the truth, what are you afraid of? What are you afraid of, speech? Bad ideas? Well, if you're seeking the truth, then you can contradict bad ideas. That's easy, right? What are they afraid of? They're afraid of the truth, yes. And remember, you know, the right to free speech is the right to offend. If we all agree, we don't need a right. We just agree, right? We don't need, rights is a protection, right? We don't need protection if we all agree. It's when we don't agree. It's when we don't agree, you know, major way is when we need to be protected by our right. It's the right to offend. There's no difference. You can't say, I saw this a lot on Twitter and on Facebook. Yeah, but, you know, you really shouldn't offend. You shouldn't, well, but again, every truth, every truth offends somebody. I mean, the standard of not offending is a standard which means not speaking, not seeking truth, not innovating, not doing anything new, not doing anything different than what's been done before. It's a preservation of the status quo. And that's what universities are about. They're about the preservation of that mainstream, you know, leftist agenda of the university. They don't want to be challenged. They don't want to be questioned. They want to control. They have the, they believe they have the truth in some bizarre way. They want to control you and they don't want to be, they don't want the discussion, the argument, which way they would lose. So it's authoritarian, it's horrific, and it's so horrific because it's a university, a place of learning of all the places that should not have, right, hate speech codes. The universities are the primary place. You shouldn't have them, the opposite. You should be encouraged to express yourself and say stupid things. You're young, right? You wouldn't say young. They're gonna say stupid things. We all said stupid things when we were young. That's part of learning. But when you discourage that, when you oppress that, when you destroy that, you destroy thinking. I'm not gonna think certain directions if I can't express myself in those directions. So you shut down whole areas of thought. And that's political correctness, right? That's the whole agenda of the political correctness crowd. And at the end of the day, this is postmodernism. This is a consequence of this whole postmodernist, subjectivist world out there. Because what are the postmodernists? Tell us, there is no truth, right? There is no truth. So what is that negate? If you say there's no truth, what do you negate, the ability to do what? To argue, to discuss, to have a, you know, you can't point to anything. No, no, look, it's like this. There is no this. It's all flux, it's all moving. There's no it, it, right? What did Clinton say? What is, is? Oh, Clinton was the first postmodernist president. I truly believe he believes. Hey, what is, is, I don't know. My professor told me it's all flux, so. He went to Yale, that's why. Better the school, the more nutty it is. So if it's all in flux, if there is no truth, if there is no reality, if there is not something we can point to when we're discussing he was actually first. If there is no something we can discuss, then once they get into power, the only way to institutionalize their ideas is by doing what? By forcing you to accept them. They can't argue with him. They can't explain it to you because explanation requires a reality and postmodernism tells you there is no reality. See, it undercuts everything. It undercuts reason and therefore it undercuts everything. So the only thing, once you undercut reason, this is the principle, this is the fundamental. Once you undercut reason, all you have is force. And this is why religion almost always leads to force because religion is the undercutting of reason. It's the negation of reason. It's mystical revelation. I got this revelation. Oh no, no, no, I got a different revelation. Let's argue about it. How? By what standard? The only standard is who's God's gonna be on my sword or on your sword? Who's gonna be stronger? That's the only way to resolve religious disputes because they're not about reality. They're not about fact. So religion has to lead to violence. Some religions have been, that's been toned down because reason has been introduced into those religions, Judaism, Christianity, post-enlightenment, not reformation, post-enlightenment. In Islam, that hasn't happened. Still, pure mystical revelation and therefore it's all about a sword. It's all about force. I'm an objectivist and to kind of help you light a fire under this and make it concrete for everyone. What do you think of the concept or idea that America is already socialist? I mean I think it's a mistake to call America socialist. As somebody who grew up in a socialist country, I can tell you. We're not quite there yet. And it's not the direction I happen to think the country's moving in. I don't think we're becoming more socialist. Socialist means the state owns the means of production and state ownership of. And we're more sophisticated than that. It's not state-owned. It's not. But what is it? They got screwed. But that's not socialism. Let's just get our terms right, right? This is fascism. It's a different form of statism. It's where the government doesn't own the means of production. The government controls the means of production. Through regulations, through screwing the bondholders, through putting people on the boards of directors or enforcing companies to put certain types of people on the board of directors, through all the different mechanisms of the regulatory state, we have a regulatory state in the United States. And that regulatory state is a type of fascism. Now it doesn't matter. You want to call it socialism, fine, who cares? But it's statism. This is the elevation of the state above the individual. That's the fundamental. It's that the state is all important and controls your behavior. It doesn't lead to communism. It doesn't, no. It could lead to concentration camps. There are lots of things, lots of things that could happen. There's not one form of evil communism. Unfortunately, there are many, many, many forms of evil, only one form of good, but many, many forms of evil. And to label it communism makes us look, it makes us look not credible because Obama is not, not nowhere near a communist. In some ways he's worse than a communist, in my view. He's closer to being a nihilist which in my view is worse than a communist. He's not a communist. He doesn't believe everything should be owned by the state and everything should be controlled by the state in that sense. I don't think he cares. What he really wants is to see people destroyed. That's nihilism and it's worse than communism. Communism had this utopian vision to happy people one day. No, the reality of communism is the destruction but that's not what he's about. It's not his ideology and when we confuse that ideology, when we call Obama a communist, it makes us look uneducated. We don't understand what communism is. It's not good. We need to be precise in how we use these terms. Communism means a sudden ideology and that sudden ideology is not the ideology that Obama or Elizabeth Warren hold. They hold a different ideology. In some ways worse than communism. Let's call it what it is. Now I know it's nice to call things communism in America because we all hate it. Even the leftist Americans don't want to be communist but it's not accurate and it makes us, it doesn't legitimize that cause. Yep. By the way, anybody wants to hear more of this kind of speech and truth on the radio. XM Sirius every day, Andrew Wilkow. It's constitutional or it's not and there's no argument. If it's not the constitutional then it's a bunch of crap. Now something coming up that I might use. But what makes that true? I mean it's that, you know, I've argued with Wilkow. I mean the constitution is flawed. I've heard you on the show. Right, the constitution is flawed. The constitution is not the 10 commandments brought down from God. I mean, I'm all for the constitution. I love the constitution. I love the, I love the declaration much more than the constitution but I love those documents but they're not, they're not sacred stones. We have to understand why they're written, what are the ideas behind them and where they're wrong. And the constitution is wrong in some places and it could be stronger and it needs to be adjusted. It needs to be refined. It needs to be made better. So let's not worship a document. Let's not make the same mistake as the mystics make. But let's protect it, our bill of rights. Absolutely let's protect it but let's understand it first. Let's understand what it means and let's understand where it comes from and let's understand the enlightenment. That's what you need to understand. Those ideas. And as far as our freedom of speech, this administration and the FCC are planning to control that internet and that's coming up real soon where they plan to take that control for our own good. Well, everything they do, everything that's done in the United States is always done in our own good. But yes, I think the internet is the real battle is gonna be a big battle for freedom of speech and the airwaves are gonna be, I mean they forever wanted to give equal opportunity on the airwaves because the airwaves are dominated by relatively rights. And it's gonna be up to us to speak up because our House of Representatives they're playing with deflated balls. Absolutely. And so we must stand up and speak up and get ready to start calling our representatives. Deflated brains I think you meant. Pardon me? Deflated brains you mean. Well that too but the other is more topical today. Yeah I know. Anyway, thank you Eurid. Sure. I've noticed that people like Bill Maher, he's liberal but he's against Islam, the main roadblock he runs into is sort of multiculturalism and anti-western sentiment. I was wondering if you had any tips on appealing to people who are, who might be amenable to being appropriate speech but are sort of... Yeah this is a great issue to appeal to the left on, to the rational left. The fact is that reason is a concept that the left is always embraced. That the left is always, they've been pro-science, they've been pro-reason supposedly. Now the modern left undercuts those but there's still many on the left. I mean Charlie Hebdo is not conservative. These are leftists. These are French leftists. The conservatives wouldn't do that. So many people on the left still have a respect for free speech that people on the right often don't. So this actually for us objectivists, this is a great issue that we can appeal to the left and then expand if you believe in free speech. What about other freedoms, right? We can expand our reach to the left side. But remember the left traditionally, the old left, the really old left, was pro-science, believed that if you were gonna argue for something, you had to use reason to argue for it. Now, they failed because you can't actually argue for it using reason. But that's what they believed. The new left, and this is why I think Obama's not a socialist, the new left doesn't believe in reason. They're much more motivated by hatred and by nihilism than they are by some utopian future, socialist, beautiful world. We know it's not beautiful, but they wrote about so. But you gotta find the better elements on both sides and cultivate them. And I think free speech is a good issue to kind of wedge issue into the left. Any ways in particular of appealing to free speech and examples? Well, yeah, I mean, I think the cartoons are a great example. I think a lot of the cartoonists in America who've done all kind of satire, all kind of stuff, are offended by what happened in, or horrified, not offended, horrified by what happened in France, horrified by the fact that they might be killed for drawing something. And I think one can appeal to them, not all of them, but to the better ones. They understand that many of them are in the arts. So if you're in the arts, you're about expressing ideas. That's what you're doing. And the idea that somebody's gonna come and limit that, or that your life might be at risk if you say the wrong thing, I think you can talk to them about that. These are the kind of issues that they would get. Thank you. Sure. The question I find interesting is, a lot of the same voices who say you shouldn't paint Islam, shouldn't condemn an entire religion for the actions of a few quote unquote extremists, are some of the same voices who will tell you that one hurricane, or one hot day, is indicative of man-made climate change. That kind of leads me into my area, an area where I see a big, huge assault on free speech. And that's this issue of man-made climate change. You see it being pushed by the intelligentsia and academia, the media, and I call them posers to knowledge and science. It's the fact that they used intimidation, the whole idea of the consensus, right? 98% or whatever the number is of scientists agree with this, which is a made up number. That kind of intimidation to silence you are, you're a denier, I'm not even gonna talk to you. You see that all the time. And it's those kind of tactics, are definitely tactics that are meant to silence, that are meant to deny you the ability to speak and to express yourself. And you see that all over the place. And you don't just see it with climate change. Climate change is one of the issues that they discuss. But you see it across the left. Again, particularly the radical left is very good at this kind of stuff. And the right is good when it comes to things like religion. They find ways to shut you up, right? And they often use intimidation, subtle or explicit, but it's intimidation nonetheless. Why not call them Iranian and Saudi funded terrorists? Why not name states? Why not name the states? Yeah. I'm okay with that. I'd be naming the states since September 12th, 2001, right? Absolutely, they're funded by those two countries. And until you deal with those two countries, nothing will change. I mean, we're winning the Unwinnable War. That's what it's all about. And it's absolutely that. There is no such thing as just terrorism out there. They're funded by the Saudis and Iranians. And by the way, Saudis, best friends, right? Our best friends. A month after 9-11, George Bush, George Bush was hugging the Prince of Saudi Arabia. I mean, these are our friends, right? Saudi Arabia, Iran, where did ISIS come from? I mean, suddenly out of nowhere, there's this massive military group that's marching through Iran. And everybody on the news, oh my God, where did they come from? This is amazing. This is the Syrian opposition that the Saudis have been funding for well over a year now that many in America, on the right, wanted us to fund and supply weapons and training too, right? That Qataris, that whole region has been pouring money into. You know, to get rid of a Shiite, not really a Shiite, kind of an Alawite, which is kind of a sect of Shiism, you know, who runs Syria, right? It's all this battle between Sunnis and Shiites and, you know, this vision of Sharia imposed. Saudis created ISIS. They're building a wall now to protect themselves from their own creation, right? Because they're afraid. Now, they're not afraid because of the religious things that they would impose on the Saudis. They already have all that. They already behead people. They already lash people. They already do all that stone people to death. They do all the stuff ISIS does. What they're worried about is to lose their kingdom. They're worried about losing their crown. They're worried about losing the opportunity to go to Monacollo and sleep around in Gamble. That's what they're worried about. That's what the Saud family's building, the wall to protect, the Saud family, right? Not to protect the religion because the religion's already there. It's really institutionalized into Saudi Arabia, right? So it's Saudi Arabia and the Iranians who are supporting the other side of the Syrian dispute. I mean, my solution to Syria, granted that we don't have foreign policy, is let them kill each other. This is great. Support the continued uprising in Syria. Let them be so worried about each other that they don't have time for us. And when the winner is declared, crush them. You know, that's when America should intervene. But up until that point, leave them alone. So it's clearly those two countries. Iran used to have a line item on their budget called terrorism with a budget number. But they were sued in America. They were sued here by victims of terrorism attacks. So they've taken the line item out of their budget, right? This is the kind of stuff that's going on in the world. We're negotiating with them. We're sitting down at the table and saying, hey, kind of, would you behave and stop building nuclear weapons, please? And this is, this reason would work with them. So, but look, if after 9-11, if after 3,000 Americans die, and an attempt was made to kill 40,000 Americans, because if those towers had come down just a few minutes later, 40,000 could have died, right? If that didn't wake us up, if that didn't cause the president of the United States to say the enemy is Saudi Arabia and Iran, then now nobody gets it. Nobody's gonna do anything about it, right? What recommendations would you give to media organizations in the US that may be hesitant to publish controversial ideas or cartoons and speech, because they may be trying to protect their property because they're afraid. And their employees. So if it's real fear, which I don't think is the real motive, I don't think it's mostly. So first of all, if it's really fear, then I understand it, right? They should be afraid. And they should be demanding the government protect them, which is the role of the government. But this is what collusion would be great, right? Anti-trust collusion. All the newspapers should get together and agree to publish the cartoons together. Make a statement. So imagine if 50 newspapers around the country all publish the cartoons at the same time. I mean, what a statement that would make. We are standing up to this. We will not be coward, right? And again, there's real safety in numbers. There really is safety in numbers, because what do they attack the whole United States if we all publish the cartoons? So that's what I would suggest. But at the end of the day, the demand that we have to make to our government, to our politicians, is protect us. That's your job. And if not, we'll fire you. That's what elections are for. Fire people who don't do their jobs in politics. No matter what political party they're part of. So what's your analysis of why you think our press is unwilling to take on or call Islam out for what it is or why they kowtow to the... So if somebody asked a question, I asked to be asked. Exactly. That's what I'm here for. Why do we treat Islam differently, right? Because cartoons are being drawn every day of Jesus, to pick Jesus in horrible positions. And everybody's being insulted. Left and right by cartoonists, by... Take South Park, right? You all know South Park. South Park insults everybody. Everybody. It's their modus operandi. Of course, South Park wanted to draw, and they did draw Muhammad. They had him in a scene. It was one of the best episodes ever. If you haven't watched this, it's the Danish cartoons episode of South Park. You know, the town doesn't know what to do about the Danish cartoons. So they all decide together to bury their heads in the sand. And they literally have trucks of sand brought in, and they dig holes, and everybody buries their head in the sand. It's beautiful. I mean, that's so true and so sad. But it's what we all do. We just don't do it literally. But in the episode, there was supposed to be a cartoon of Muhammad. And the Comedy Central wouldn't let them show it. So they blanked it out. So they had Muhammad behind a screen. They hit him. So why do we treat Muslims differently? And so I think there are a lot of reasons. But the main reason, I think, is the moral code of altruism. Altruism demands that we show respect. That we sacrifice ourselves for the sake of whom? The weak, the pathetic. Those who don't have anything. Those who are struggling. Those who are in distress. Our moral obligation is to treat them with respect. Our moral obligation is to sacrifice for them. And of all the people out there right now who's being killed left and right and suffering and poor? I mean, the poorest region in the world is the Middle East. Or close to it, sub-Saharan Africa. The pockets that might be poor. But it's the same thing. These are the poor of the world. These are the pathetic. These are the miserable. You can't stand up to them. That would be immoral. So there are two sides of this. So one is that. And I'll give you a great example of this from that region of the world. What was Europe's attitude to Israel pre-1967? They loved Israel. They loved Israel. All the weapons Israel had when they fought the Six-State War in 67 were European. They mirage planes, British tanks, German weaponry. Indeed, Americans don't know this. But from 1948 until 1967, there was an arms embargo in the United States on Israel. Not a single weapon was sold to Israel. Placed there by the Truman administration. Thank you. So why did they love Israel? Underdog is such a nice way of saying it. Right in football, you back to underdog. No, these were pathetic, miserable, poor Jews who'd just been slaughtered in the Holocaust and they went a God-forsaken country in the desert and they were pathetic. So we love them. And what happened in the Six-State War? These pathetic Jews turned out to be strong, capable, able. They beat five Arab armies in six days, wiped them out. Now we hate them because they're successful, because they're proud, because they're able. This is altruism. So Europe immediately fenced embargo arms on Israel. We hate Israel, right? And who did they start loving? Well, they looked around the world or that region said, who's pathetic? Who's really miserable? Who's suffering? Ah, Palestinians. Great, we now love Palestinians hate Israelis. And that's exactly what happened. I mean, it happened on a day, on the day the Six-State War ended. Everything flipped. Because you can't support strength. There's no morality in pride and strength and in self-assertion. That's deemed the same morality of altruism says, you have to sacrifice for the poor. You have to respect them. You have to be good to them. You have to do all this stuff. And at the same time, how do you treat how do you treat self-assertion and pride and power and strength? Ooh, suspicious. We don't like them. That's too self-interested. So this is morality playing out on a global scale. And if you mix that up with religion, wow, powerful. Powerful stuff, right? So we don't, we can't be self-assertive. We can't be strong because that's wrong. We can't condemn somebody who's weak because that's wrong. So here we are, appeasing. Killing our own kids, right? To bring them democracy. So God forbid we shouldn't kill any of their civilians, right? 5,000, this is why I hate Bush, right? 5,000 Americans, young kids. Your kids, my kids, died in Iraq. And the rules of engagement that, ugh, right? That basically they were sacrificial animals. I mean, if we lived in a semi-rational world, George Bush, we tried for crimes against those kids. If you've ever served in the army, you know what that is, going into a dangerous zone and your hands are tied behind your back and this is how your government is sending you there? With your arms tied behind your back? That is pathetic. So, no, no. You go, I know you hate, you're so blinded by hatred of Obama, you can't see the truth. There was nothing worse in terms of American fighting than what we did under George W. Bush, nothing. Now Obama's worse, I grant that. But at least we're not going to war. You know, if you're gonna tie people's arms behind their back, if you're gonna take Marines and put blindfolds on them, at least keep them home. But to go and engage in a war and do that to our kids is a crime. And nobody should ever forgive him just because there's a worse president now. It's a crime. He went to war and he sacrificed our children. That's what he did. No, they're just as bad as they were. And by the way, this is true of Petraeus. This is true of the entire military leadership. This is what they advocated for. This is the kind of war they wanted fought. If they're worse today, it's because of people like Petraeus, generals like Petraeus that the right adores. These are people who believe that the life of an American soldier is worth less than an Iraqi civilian. And that is insane. And that is suicide as a nation. And we have to recognize that and call that and call them on it, even if it's worse today. At least they're not dying by the thousands today. I'd rather be out of those places, given the rules of engagement, than in those places with those rules of engagement. And I was for the wars and stuff, but not that way, not the way they were fought. Yeah, you crushed the enemy. You've given a whole speech about free speech, but I find it interesting that you didn't talk about the subject of Sony and the interview, which was just a month ago. And I was wondering what your thoughts were about. Yeah, I know, absolutely. When I remember, I include that in. That's the problem of not writing out your speech. You don't include everything. Sony's a great example of this, right? Sony was intimidated, right? It was intimidated by foreign power. Now it turns out, and I haven't read in detail about this, that the United States, the NSA probably knew that the North Koreans were doing this when they were doing it, because they had, you know, they were bugging the North Korean servers and they could tell that they were doing it, right? And they didn't stop it, or they didn't let Sony know about it. But they certainly didn't protect Sony. I mean, Obama said a few things about you can't silence us and Sony should have done this. But people said that when Sony called the White House, they were not given any protection. They were not given any assurances. And again, the first response of Sony was to do what? Self-censor. Now, luckily that passed, but that was their first response. So yeah, Sony belongs in this, and there were a lot of examples. I mean, I didn't get into Citizens United and I didn't get, there were a lot of issues of free speech out there that are very related where we're seeing, you know, speech being curtailed or attempts. And let me just, let me say this. For the first time, as far as I know, in American history, there are debates today on American campuses, debates between legal scholars about whether free speech is a good thing or not. I'm serious. Their whole essay is not published in legal journals where respected legal scholars are saying, maybe this free speech is a little bit too much. Maybe we need to start curtailing it. You know, I really hate speech. We really need to get it. Look, the Europeans are doing it and this is the way it should be. So we're really seeing the beginnings of an intellectual attack at the very highest level of our universities against the concept, the political concept of free speech. Now, that battle's been lost in Europe. We're gonna be fighting it for years and decades here in the United States and the assault is here and it's gonna intensify. Yeah. It's the government's job to protect us from these attacks on our freedom and you said they should be doing that but they've picked up that mantle and created the security state where you can't get on the airplane without being frisked and they watch everything you do to the extreme. Yes, so what the government is doing is not protecting us. It's supervising us. It's observing us. It's inspecting us. It's frisking us. It's listening to us. It's not protecting us. None of that has anything to do with protection. If they were just listening to people who might be terrorists or might engage in violent activity, that would be fine. But no, they're listening to all of us. They're storing our information, they're tracking it all. This is the opposite of defending us or protecting us. No, when I mean protecting, I mean finding the people responsible, the people who fund it, the people that ideologically support it, the people that provide the infrastructure for it, the people who send these bastards and crushing them, destroying them, killing them, annihilating them, use any word you want, right? Bringing them to their knees so that nobody would ever have a thought of attacking the United States, of doing anything to the United States. There was a term during Iraq, shock and awe. But we all shock and awe, not the pretend stuff that we practiced during that campaign. We have to destroy them. And until we destroy them, that's protecting us, right? And that should have been done in 1989 when Solomon Rushdie was attacked. Actually, it should have been done in 1979 when our embassy was invaded, right? And the longer we wait, the weaker we are, the more we, and you can't say that. I mean, I've called all kinds of names for saying this. Genocidal and Islamophobic, whatever, right? And by people on the right, people on the left, people in the middle, people everywhere. But the fact is, it's a, they declared it, they started it. The only job of the American military is to end it quickly, decisively, with as little casualties to outside as possible. It's the only responsibility of our military. And when we don't do that, what's only gonna get worse? So yes, the default is, let's live in a police state. Right, where everything's monitored and that's what they're doing. That's why the NSA and all this stuff is so horrific, because it's not protecting us. It's using the excuse of terrorism to impose statism on us, to control us more, to violate our rights more. We'll make- You are so eloquent, and I really don't have anything formed. So I feel quite awkward, but I won't be silent. Good. And this really doesn't fit in at all. But when you were speaking of Israel and the Holocaust and the Jews, and I don't disagree with any of it, but I would like to know how you could maybe put into this, can't put it in the picture you've drawn so far, but how does the Balfour Declaration fit in when we talk about bringing all the folks back to Israel then? And what is Israel, what is the whole point of Lord Rothschild and Balfour in that circumstance? How did that break up? That's a big question, and it's mainly history. Look, the Balfour Declaration was a deal cut. The British owed, I'm too old for this, because I can't remember people's names anymore. The first president of the state of Israel, who was in Britain, and basically, look, now an Albanian, he was the first prime minister. Anyway, let me try to get to the heart of what I think you're asking, although I'm not sure, it sounds conspiratorious, I'm not sure. The point is this, Jews in the early part of the 20th century in Europe realized something that sounded nuts at the time, but turned out to be unbelievably true. They realized that if they stayed in Europe, they would die. They would be murdered in mass. And the person who really realized this was Theodor Herzl after the Dreyfus trial in France. He was a secular, assimilated Jew who didn't want to be Jewish, right? He was completely assimilated, and he looked at Dreyfus, who was, I don't know how much you know about Dreyfus. Now I'm not gonna give you a whole history lesson, but a French-Jewish general, or Colonel, a very senior French officer who had been persecuted clearly for being Jewish, even though he's completely assimilated. And Herzl came to conclusion, if this is what's happening in France in those days, the symbol of enlightenment, Europe was, Jews were gonna be slaughtered. Anti-Semitism was always gonna be around and they would be killed. And he said, what can we do to save ourselves? And he said, the only thing to do is self-identify as a Jew and get all the Jews together and go find a place to live. And Herzl didn't care where. The British offered the Jews Uganda. And there was a vote in the Zionist Congress, there was a vote. And Herzl voted for going to Uganda. He didn't care, he just wanted out of Europe because he understood what was going on. The Balfour Declaration was a negotiation where the Jews said, look, we're looking for a place of land where there are not a lot of people where we can inhabit. By the way, our ancestral land is now called Palestine, we'd like to go there. So they kind of deal with the British. Now that you've taken it over from the Ottoman Empire, would you give us that land? The British said, sure, we'll bring a little bit of Western civilization, part of the colonial project, to the Middle East. Why not? And that's the Balfour Declaration. That's what it is. The Jews then went, built something and created something and they created civilization where there was nothing. You should read Mark Twain sometime on the state of Palestine when he toured it. He's got a little book about his tours around that region of the world and he has a whole section of Palestine and there was nothing there, right? And the Jews built something, they created something and that's the right that the Jews have to that piece of land. They built it, they created it. They created a free country, a civilized country and that's what means protecting. Not the Jewishness and not the holiness of the land, but the fact that these people built, created. It's theirs, property rights. I don't even know if I answered the question, but anyway, you got a taste of Middle East history. And I think this will be the last question. First in the Air Force and looked at... Well, I mean, profiling is not a violation of your right. It doesn't restrict you from saying stuff. Profiling just says you have the characteristics in some way of a threat. These people threaten you to look like these people. So we're going to ask you some questions. We're going to search you in an airport situation where it's legitimate, I think, to search for security. You don't have to go to the airport. So we're going to use the facts of reality about the particular case in order to evaluate you. And I don't think that's a violation of free speech. I don't think it's a violation of anybody. I mean, if I looked Middle Eastern, I would want to be profiled because then I know they were on the game. My wife, who looks Middle Eastern, I remember after 9-11 once we were going through an airport and these TSA engines took her aside, right? As we're going boarding the plane, it took her aside to do an extra search. And she said, oh, are you profiling? And I said, oh, no, no. She said, oh, why? You should be. And it was like, I don't mind, right? I want to be safe. I have nothing to hide. Search me. I understand why you're searching me for blonde, 10-year-old little girls that are probably not suicide bombers. If I look like a suicide bomb, you know, I have no problem with that. This is part of protecting my rights. It's part of protecting my life. I have no problem with that, right? And I think profiling, honest people, wouldn't mind being profiled. Now, it could be taken out of proportion on nonviolent crimes, on stupid things where police stop people just because of the color of their skin and all kind of stuff. So I'm not defending all practices of profiling. But if there's a murderer out on the loose and he happens to be green, it's absolutely legitimate to stop everybody who's green and say, hey, there's this murderer out on the loose. Let me make sure it's not you. And the green people should say, yes, please, because I don't want to be a victim of that green murderer, right? So profiling when done rationally is completely appropriate and not a violation of anybody's rights. Great. Thank you all.