 Oh my God, the last week or two is just being insane. I mean, I thought Google that was a good story and there was a lot to talk about and it was interesting and there was a lot to say but that kind of was kept going and it didn't end. And, you know, when I did the show last week about Google that morning they had fired him but it still goes on because he's since then the guy who's been fired the famous Google memo has been fired. He's done interviews and Google has kind of gone upside down and of course the press has commented and the left press and the right wing press and the conservatives have commented so there's a whole thing around Google and there's actually, I don't know if you know this but there's a Google march. Let me find this Saturday. This Saturday there's going to be a Google march. It's called March on Google. You can participate. It's, we'll get to March on Google in a minute because it's part of this big attack on Google by the right. It's organized by a former member of the alt-right who when the alt-right got too racist is now calling what he is the new right. Yeah right, he's as alt-right as they come. Anyway, he's organizing this and there's a big march on Google in like nine cities or something, something like that. So Google, I thought okay, there's a lot to talk about Google and of course Google raises gender issues and it raises the whole issue of evolutionary psychology and I thought okay, there's a lot to do here. There's a lot to say about this. This is pretty cool. We could talk about this for a while. And then of course what happens on the weekend in Charlottesville, the tragedy in Charlottesville, the riots, the death of this woman, the 19 people ended up being injured. I don't know how badly, but certainly being injured. And that now, and so that was enough, but then there's Trump's response. But this is the gift that keeps on giving, right? There's Trump's response the day of. There's Trump's response two days later and then there's Trump's response today. And like this is, you know, he can't dig himself a hole big enough. It's a barrier himself in too, but of course he's not digging himself a hole. He's got a strategy and he's playing by the strategy. He's got belief in his strategy and he believes in these beliefs. So anyway, here we are. Now out of the Google and the Charlottesville issue and shows that I did over the last week, a lot of questions have arised and you guys on Facebook and Twitter and elsewhere, questions, attacks, discussions, whatever you want to call it. Some of them questions, some of them were attacks, some of them were other stuff. And a lot of it was interesting and of course the events since then are interesting. So I thought I would spend today kind of wrapping up doing a Google Charlottesville fallout follow-up, whatever you want to call it show and try to hit on all the issues. Of course, I think the best way if you want to engage with me on these ideas is to actually call and talk and ask a question and have a discussion. So if you want to make that live, you're welcome to the numbers 347-324-3075. That's 347-324-3075. So feel free to do that. Now, those of you who are veterans of the show know if you do that and you want to ask a question, you have to press the one. You have to press one so that I know you want to ask a question and then it appears on my screen here, although I'm using Firefox today because no other, what do you call it, browser worked today. So hopefully it's the same thing with Firefox if you put a one, then I will know you have, you're called and you want to ask a question. I'll just call in to listen to the show. All right, what else? I guess, what should we start with? What is the most interesting to start with that it get me welled up? Anybody? All right, so somebody mentions this on the chat. So most political violence seems left against right, right? A couple of days ago, a guy killed his neighbor because he the neighbor was a Trump supporter. I mean, I hear this a lot. These Nazis, I got this a lot. I couldn't believe it. I was gonna tear my hair up. These Nazis and KKK, they're peaceful. They're not violent. It's the left that's violent. The right is these peaceful people. They were just marching. They didn't do anything. Now, let's start by the fact that you're talking about Nazis, Nazis and KKK. So yeah, these particularly Nazis, these particularly KKK guys may be right now on our violent, but their whole ideology, everything they believe in and their predecessors in the movement were unbelievably violent. They killed, in the case of Nazis, over 10 million people. And in the case of the KKK, they string them up and they just, they strung them up and they lynched them and they killed hundreds of thousands, probably, of black Americans. So they are incredibly, they incredibly as movement's violent, but it's more than that. There's violence constantly from these groups that we just don't hear much about, but it happens all the time. Whether it was the guy who stabbed those people in Portland, Oregon that I talked about, I think on one of the shows. The car driver, wasn't he? Didn't he murder somebody? Didn't he kill? Didn't he act violently? You know, these people, and oh, what about that kid who walked into the church in South Carolina and literally butchered, what, is it seven, eight, nine people at point blank? I mean, I don't know of anybody other than this leftist who shot the congressman, who went with a gun and actually went out to kill people. But I'm not saying that, you know, but the idea that these groups are, oh no, these are just nice people. The other one was, the other one was, I was gonna get it later, but the other one was, and well, I mean, Donald Trump said this, there were a lot of good people at the march, at the protest on this weekend. Not everybody was a Nazi. Not everybody was a white supremacist, a KKK. There were some good people there. Really? I'm sorry, but if you march, if you march with people with swastikas or with Nazi symbols and KKK, you are just as bad as them. You are just as bad as them. I don't care if you agree with their particular issue about putting down the statue, but really? Really? If you march with neo-Nazis, you are the equivalent of. So the white, this idea that the white is not violent, is ridiculous, we just don't, I mean, the left has been recently more organized around its violence than the right has. Antifa stopping people from speaking, beating people up, using pepper spray. Luckily, they haven't started shooting people, but the right people influenced and people, members are people who participate on chat boards and people who participate on things that have to do with white supremacists and Nazis have killed lots of people, a violent, a violent all the time. But yeah, since many of you consider yourselves on the right, you don't think of them as being on the right. I mean, there is today a violent left and a violent right. A violent left and a violent right. And to minimize that, to say this one more violent, it's count the casualties. I bet you if you actually counted the number of people killed, including the cop killers, if you want to attribute some of them to BLM, right? Even if you count them, I bet you that over the last 10 years, more people are being killed by the so-called right, the racist right than have been by the left. But it's a stupid project because the fundamental is both a violent, both evil, both advocate for evil ideas, both must be condemned. And the idea that, and not only must be condemned, but you cannot in any way associate yourselves with them. If Spencer is part of the alt-right and you want to be an alt-righter, but you're not a racist, you can't call yourself alt-right, call yourself something else, invent a new term. You cannot be in the same umbrella as Nazis and racists. And by the way, it's the Nazis and racists who invented the term, the alt-right. So you're joining them, you're joining them by using that term. You cannot march with a bunch of Nazis and claim innocence. You are by marching with them, declaiming yourself a Nazi. All right, the boards have lit up. People wanna talk. All right, hi, you're new on Bookshow. Who's this? It's me. Yeah, go ahead, it's you. Yeah, so I have a couple things to say, one of which being the most annoying thing about the left is that they put you in the very awkward position of having to somewhat defend some of these other people, because in my opinion, while carrying a swastika flag is disgusting, it's not necessarily violence. I agree. So you can't justify them, attacking them. I agree, but if you saw the videos, and Ben Shapiro showed a bunch of these videos, you will see that both parties initiated force at various points during the protest. It's not true that this is all Antifa. He has it on video where the white supremacists go, oh, let's go after them and they rush the crowd. The guy who drove the car into the crowd, that was a Nazi whatever he is, initiating force. So I agree, they have a right to free speech and I'll talk about the police, the real default here. Let me finish and then I'll let you speak. The real default here is that the police didn't aggressively separate the two groups, didn't aggressively protect the peace, which is their job. The idea that this is always the left that is causing the violence, it's just factually not true. Go ahead. Right, and no, I don't think that either one side is morally superior to the other. They're both guilty of the same things, but particularly with the car, I keep hearing these different reports from the mainstream media on the one hand and then you have people who claim to have been there saying that he was trying to flee and that his car was surrounded. So it's hard to tell, at least from my perspective, what actually happened. Well, I mean, if you look at the video, if you believe in free speech. I mean, it's video, so maybe I'm wrong. I'm willing to always agree that I might be wrong and they might be another site to this and I hope that the legal system is such or we'll discover if there's another site. But if you look at the video, he's going into the street full of people with two cars in front, you know, and he steps on the accelerator, he steps on the accelerator and it's all, it's not like there's a lag there. He steps on the accelerator and then you hear screaming and you see people rushing and rushing towards the, yeah, surrounding the car in a sense and he backs. I don't know where he killed her going forward or going back, but the point was that this guy was going in at full speed and then reversing at full speed, no justification for that. I mean, and if you read a little bit about this guy who used to be violent towards his mother, I mean, this guy's a nut. I mean, why anybody would even try to defend him unless there's real evidence out there. We'll see, we'll see, but I doubt it. He went in there with the intent to do harm. There's very little doubt looking at what, looking at what the video suggests. One more thing before I give up. But if I agree with you, right to free speech is shared by all these nut cases, right? Yeah, and I would defend both sides right to free speech. I do too. But about the violent aspect of it, from what I've been told and what I've heard, a lot of the people on the right wing came pretty heavily armed and nobody actually fired any shots, which to me says that they didn't go, they're intentionally to be violent, or at least most of them did. Well, maybe they decided they were afraid. They did go there with signs attached to pieces of wood that were clearly intended to hit people. They went there with shields and with helmets, knowing they were going to fight. There's no doubt in my mind they went to be too violent. They were smart enough to realize that if they started shooting, the consequence to them would be horrific and it would destroy the rest of their lives. But there's no doubt in my mind they went there to fight. They went there knowing that they were getting into a fight. And the left did the same, by the way. If you look at the pictures of Antifa, they were there with helmets and pieces of wood. Attached to signs that the police couldn't take them away because of the issue of free speech, but the pieces of woods attached to the signs were so thick and big, it wasn't to protect, it wasn't to hold up the sign. It was to beat people over the head and both Antifa did this and the right guys did it. There's no question, both parties were looking for violence. I mean, there's no question in my mind. And if you think about who these people are and what they've achieved through the violence, they've achieved, they've achieved visibility and coverage in the media that they would have never achieved otherwise. So they've achieved exactly what they set out to do, which is to expand their movements. And I think they are. And the more we find excuses for them, the more they are emboldened to expand their movement, a movement that is evil and that we should do everything in our power to not allow to expand everything in our power short of physical violence. But we should argue against, we should debate against, we should, everything we can. All right. Thanks for the call. Thanks for taking my call. Sure. Oh, we've got, we got a couple of others before I get onto some other points. How are you on the Iran Book Show? Who's this? Hello? Yes. Go ahead. Yes. Yeah. This is Mohamed from Jersey City. Hi, Mohamed. How are you? How are you on the other? Yeah. I just finished watching the vice mayor of Charlottesville go on CNN and defend, what appears to be defend Antifa. And it just, it just got me really upset because like, on the one hand, you have Trump's widewashing of the people on the right, saying some of them are good people. And on the other hand, you have a lot of people, especially CNN itself, trying to make it seem like this, there was literally no violence from the left. There really is no such thing as a left-wing violence problem. I don't think they see it the way we see it, which is a replay of a Provimar Republic type of thing. No, I think you're right. I think most of the media ignores left-wing violence. Most of what's going on, most of the culture, most of the intellectuals ignore it. Not all of them. If you go to the Atlantic Magazine, you'll find an excellent piece about left-wing violence written by a lefty, where he is condemning it and he is pointing it out and he gives lots of examples. And it's very good, it's a very good piece. And there's others. They are the better people on the left who have called Antifa out and who wrote about what happened to Charles Murray, who wrote about Berkeley, who wrote about Evergreen and condemned it. So they are definitely better people out there, but there's no question that Antifa, by the main media, gets a free pass and there's a reason for that. And I got somebody on Twitter saying this. They said, how can you compare a bunch of Nazis to people who just want to fight fascism and who are just for equality? It goes back to something else I've discussed on my show often, which is the fact that communists and socialists get the free ride. They get a free ride everywhere, everywhere, right? And communists and socialists get, I've always got a free ride. They kill 100 million people and they still get a free ride, right? So why are we surprised that Antifa's getting a free ride for pepper spraying? I mean, that's not even killing 100 million people. So if you're on the left, you're basically allowed to do anything and history and the intellectuals and the media don't judge you and it's tragic, but that's where we are. But the answer to that can't be to justify violence on the right. The answer to that can be to downplay violence on the right. What happens in Charlottesville is disgusting because it was neo-Nazis and KKK people going up and marching and inciting violence. It's their fault. It's their fault 100%. And they have to be condemned and there are plenty of other opportunities to condemn Antifa. There's plenty of others, right? And we can keep doing it, but we shouldn't miss the opportunity to, and I think it's important opportunity. I think we, in objectivism, you know, what are we gonna call ourselves? Lezific capitalists have to differentiate ourselves from the alt-right and we need to use every single opportunity, every single opportunity to do so, to do so. And people on my chat, I mean, Mark on the chat is, I mean, the BS. He lived in the South, he never met a KKK member. Hey, I hitchhiked in the South for one week and I met plenty and I met people who hated Jews. I met plenty. So I'm not saying they're everywhere, but there are plenty of them and they're out there and they were marching in Charlottesville and you're gonna see this march on Google. Maybe they'll be there as well. So I don't, I think the worst thing, the worst thing that objectivists can do is associate in any way with the right or the left for that matter, but there's no risk of that. Although, of course, these idiots call me a leftist, but associating, but in any respect, in any respect with the alt-rights and I see too many apologists for the alt-right, for what happened in Charlottesville, for the violence of the right, too many in people who claim to be affiliated with the Lezavik capitalist ideas. All right? Yeah, I think, yeah, okay. I think it's also further complicated by the fact that everyone on the right wing that went to Charlottesville, I think was pretty bad, but the counter protesters were mixed between some people that are kind of good and some anti-fors. I don't think every counter protester was- I think that's right. A lot of the people there were not anti-fors, but everybody who was there on the right was a bad guy. Sorry, everybody who was there on the right was a bad guy and the reason they were all bad guys is because they agreed to march shoulder to shoulder with the Nazis and KKK. Yeah. Yeah, that's all I had to say for this. Thanks, appreciate it. All right. Yeah, we're stewing up a lot of, a lot of, hi, you're new on Brookshow. Who is this? Hi, Aaron, this is Optin from Gig Harbor. Hey, Optin, how are you? I'm from Washington. To me, the biggest problem these two events of the Google thing and the Charlottesville thing raised is the threat to our speed and the rapid action of the police. So in Charlottesville, facts that they're not out there preventing the violence and defending our rights give the left cause, more cause to oppose free speech as they've been slowly moving toward over the last two years. And then the events at Google give the right cause to start working towards depressing corporate free speech. Yes. I'm gonna get to that. The greatest danger here. I agree with you. I think the biggest threat at the end is the suppression of free speech. The more violence we have and the more irrationality and just stupidity we have, which is what I think the whole, a lot of what happened around Google was. And by the way, a lot of what happened with Google, well, we'll get to Google, but is the danger that it poses ultimately to free speech and you're gonna get forces on the left and forces on the right and you're gonna see them aligning with each other to attack free speech. And look, the United States government has defaulted on its responsibility to protect the free speech of American citizens. Since 1989, since the Solomon Rushti affair when American publishers were threatened, where bookstores were bombed and where when George Bush senior in this case went on television and said, eh, you know, it's not good to criticize Mohammed. And you know, you really shouldn't write these inflammatory books. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I believe in free speech and I'm not, we can't silence the author, but you know, you shouldn't really do that. And you know, I can kind of understand. And his father did the same, his son did the same thing during the Danish cartoons and then Obama did the same thing with Charlie Hebdo and everything else going around free speech. So you've got a string of Republican and Democratic presidents who have no clue about free speech, who apologize for whatever free speech we have. And now, you know, and add that to the attacks on free speech that are gonna be generated from what's going on now. Yes, I think free speech is the number one issue in America today. It's the number one freedom that, or the most important freedom under assault, under unbelievable assault. Anyway, so it's, it's, it's horrible. Now, let me just, thanks for calling. I really appreciate it. Let me just say about the police because I think it's a really crucial point that was made about the police. And this is true on the campuses. This is true all over. The idea that the police are there. The police know about these demonstrations well in advance. And the police are basically instructed to stand down when violence is being committed among Americans, among groups. I mean, this is not. This is, this is completely wrong. The police is there to protect the right, even of neo-Nazis, to speak for your violence. The police is there to protect the right, even of, even of, and, and Tifa, to speak. What they don't, either group as a right is to action violence. And if they do act violently, then, you know, then the police have to step in, separate the groups, keep them separated. And from everything I've read and heard about Charlottesville, they completely blew it. They completely blew it. And, but they blew it in Berkeley and they blew it in every place, every place where they're blowing in Portland every weekend, these demonstrations and fights. And they just let them fight. That's not civilized. That is a breakdown of the rule of law. I don't know who's responsible. Who are the mares or who are the heads of police who are responsible for this? I know they're trying to protect their lives of the policemen. Or maybe they're afraid that one of the policemen will shoot somebody. I don't know, maybe if one of the policemen actually, if the police got violent, maybe that's a solution to this. But you've got to stop the violence at these events and the only entity that has a legitimate way and a legitimate cause for stopping this is, you know, the police. All right, let's see, let's quickly look at the chat. You know, somebody should, you know, next time I'm just gonna mute you, Mark, because on the blog talk chat, you just, you know, what you're saying is just BS and it's meaningless. And there's no free speech at the Euron Book Show, my show. All right, let's see, we got, yeah, we got tons of calls. Hi, Euron Book Show, who's this? Lou, you're on? Yep, go ahead. I think you made all the points I was gonna make about when you just, the last thing you said about the police and what the local governments are doing. But I think people on the right who are at least passively supporting political violence on the left, you know, disregarding the moral issue, which is obviously the most important, but on a tactical level, what they're doing is only going to further bring about some sort of, you know, authoritarian crackdown on their ability to speak anyway, because if you look at what happens at these events, at some level, either at the state, the state or local government or the police themselves, somebody is being told not to protect somebody else's right to speak. So the more that you try to use violence to combat that, the more you're giving them an excuse to further crackdown on things they don't like and clearly at some level, most of these governments are at least passively supporting the leftist. So I don't really understand what the right, other than an emotional release of hurting people wants to gain from all this. Well, it's emotional release. It's a hoping to get, I mean, what they want is publicity. And look, violence breeds violence. You'll always get this. This really is the red shirts fighting the brown shirts in the streets of German cities in the 1930s. This is what we are today. And this is, it's always in a sense, well, not always. In a sense, it's the left fault because the left's fault, because they raised the whole issue of identity politics, they made it all about race and culture and all the whole intersectionality and the right has responded. Although the right, the racist right has always been there, but then modern racist right is kind of responding, oh wait, you want identity politics? We can do identity politics. This is our identity politics. Our identity politics is fascism. So you have fascists on the left and fascists on the right. But the only solution to this is violence. There's just no other way. There's no other way to compromise. There's no other way to moderate. There's no other way to any other way. The left and the right today are violent. The alt-right is a violent movement. The alt-left, if you will call them that, is a violent movement. And they need to be dealt as violent movers. That is, the police should be monitoring to the extent that they're organizing violent activities or encouraging people, that's incitement, to the extent that they're just dabbling in so-called ideas. Then they have obviously the right to free speech. They engage at it. But these are violent movements that need to be dealt with. And when they go and protest, the police need to be fully prepared and fully ready to make sure that that violence doesn't escalate into a wider violence. So that innocents don't get hurt. So, but that's the battle. And it might be a little more... Yeah, go ahead. I know it's a little more complicated question and it might be a whole nother topic, but would the government have a right to say, when it comes to public protest, that if you're associated with these known violent movements, you're not allowed to protest in a public space. Where do you plan to be peaceful or not? I think it's not like anyone on the alt-right or left could claim. I think at some point it can come to that. But I don't think we're quite there. I don't think the violence is such that the government has a legitimate... Now, it can stop a protest. It can say we're not allowing this protest because it's gonna be violent. They can do that. If they have intelligence that it's gonna be violent, or if they have probable cause that violence is gonna happen, the courts I think will protect them that you can't just, you need a permit to protest in public spaces. And if there's real reason that to believe that the protest is gonna result in violence, yes, the government can stop the protest from happening. All right. All right, thank you. Yeah, all right. Let's see, we've got another string of callers here. Look, the only answer to alt-left and alt-right, even though the New York Times says there is no such thing as alt-left, I'm just making up that term. I don't know if there is such a term. I take the alt-left to be Antifa. Let's call it the violent left. The violent left and the violent right. And the people, but everybody associated with the violent left and the violent right. So it's not just the people committing the violent. It's not just the inciters, but the entire intellectual structure that allows them to get away with it. And that's what I call, that's why I like the alt-left and alt-right terminology. These are, you know, the nihilistic left, the regressive left, the regressives. The left are regressives, but what are the right? They're regressives too. So it's regressives, that's the best term. Left regressives and right regressives. And I've said before, and I'll get to why I'm not on the right and why I don't think the term right needs to be fought for. What are we, all right, you know, so the only thing to do with the alt-left and the alt-right is to recognize their fundamental similarity. And that similarity is around racism. They're both racist. They're both irrational. They're both mystical in some deep sense. And so they're anti-reason and they're anti-egoism and they're certainly anti-capitalism. They're anti-individualism. So an individualism wraps together both the politics and the ethics. So they're anti-reason and anti-individualism. That's the essence. They're all racist. And that's the level at which they need to be fought. We need to fight them. We need to crush them because they're gaining more and more adherents. They're gaining more and more power. They're gaining more and more followers. And we need to recognize that and we need to fight them because otherwise this country is going to hell. It is going to hell. You know, unless we rise up and start defending ourselves from right and left and let's better Americans. Come back to the core idea of what America is. Individualism, reason. Then we are sliding whether into a dictatorship of the left or a dictatorship of the right. It doesn't really matter. That authoritarianism is where we are heading. All right, we are going to take a, I should have taken a break a while ago. We're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back after this. The Ayn Rand Institute fights for the future. Throughout history, people all over the world have been fighting tyrants in the form of kings, dictators and governments who propagate the immoral idea that your life does not belong to you. This is why the Ayn Rand Institute is important. We promote Ayn Rand's philosophy, objectivism, that not only teaches you as an individual the principles needed to live a happy and successful life but also the moral foundation for striving to achieve such a life. Ayn Rand said that anyone who fights for the future lives in it today. Join us in that fight. Go to Ayn Rand.org today. Perfect ad, perfect commercial for what I have to say, which is we need a fight. We need a fight today because this world is slipping away from us at an ever accelerating rate. And what you're seeing today is nothing as compared to what is possible and what is waiting for us if we do not stop this movement towards violence, again, violence of the left and violence of the right. And unless we stand up against it and find allies on left and right who are willing to stand up against it, we will perish, this country will end. All right, we got some more callers. Hi, you're in the Ayn Rand Book Show. Who's this? Ready, can you hear me? I can, but you gotta speak up a little bit. Oh, sure, better now? Yep, I don't know, your connection's bad because it came out gobbled, try again. Yeah, try to just yell it out. I have prior callers, but I think it's very important. And that's the connection to violence of the browns. Yep. And I think it's very, you know, prescient because we know that problems won that conflict. And they did so by really demonizing the Reds and posting them as a real threat to the stability of Germany. Yep. Of course, call them. You know, I can't, I'm sorry, try dialing and calling back again because I just can't hear you. Half the words are gobbled and I think you've just got a bad connection. You're probably on some cell phone with a very weak connection. So try dialing in, try dialing in again, but I think the points you were making about Weimar Germany, I think it's absolutely right. And I made the point, I think, it's one of my previous podcasts, that in the battle between a violent left and a violent right in America, in Germany, in a lot of these places, the right will win. The right will wrap itself around the flag. The right will present itself as patriotic. The right will present itself as pro-order and pro-stability. All the left has to offer, and this is an important point, all the left like in Antifa and the rest of the academic left that our universities and elsewhere have to offer is destruction. They have no vision. They have no something they're striving towards. I don't even like calling them Marxists because they're not Marxists. They're not as good, you know, Marx had a vision. Marx believed in something, moving towards something. I mean, it was evil and horrible and evasive and stupid and everything, but the modern leftists are not Marxists. They're, you know, Marx had some principles, he had some ideas, he had the belief in terms of how society's structured. These people don't believe in that. Indeed, the left today is the response of the intellectuals when they rejected Marxism. The left today is postmodern. And the postmoderns are not technically Marxists. I, you know, I know people throw out this cultural Marxism stuff from the Frankfurt school, but the postmodernists are not cultural Marxists. The postmodernists are nihilists. They are out to destroy, they're out to pull down, they're out to rip apart. That is the essential characteristic of the modern left. That is the essential characteristic of Antifa. You give them way too much credit by calling them Marxists, but Americans will never go for destruction for the sake of destruction, for nihilism, for hatred of the good, for being the good. Americans in a challenge, in a struggle between a nihilistic left and a violent right will always go to the violent right. And they'll do so just like many of you do. Oh, they're not all racists. And oh, I was just marching with them. I wasn't really, you know, a Nazi. It was, you know, it's, it is a, I believe that in this battle, the right is gonna win. And you know, it's horrible to contemplate, but that's where I think, that's where I think we are heading. I think that was it. Yep. All right, we got another caller here. Hi, you're on the Iran book show. Who's this? Hello, speak up. 540 ARAQ. Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. Hi. Yes. It's me. Yes, you. For Blacksburg, Virginia. I am actually from Costa Rica. Related to what you were talking about, about collectivism here in the United States. You know, I don't know if somewhere in the past collectivism has been so popular in the United States as it is right now, but as a foreigner, I have always looked at the United States, you know, this country that stands for freedom, for values like individual rights around the world and so on. So my question really is, I guess, do you think at the end of the day, individualism has like some chance of, like sometimes, you know, we're feeling all these garbage that you, we are getting right now from both left and right. That's a great question. Yeah, so I'm gonna put you on, I'm gonna hang up on you, I apologize, but the sound quality wasn't that good. The question is really bottom line is, does individualism have any hope? Do we have any hope? And Ryan says, yes, absolutely, we have hope. We have hope as long as we do it right. If we don't compromise, if we don't sell out, if we don't adopt the cloth of nationalism and Trumpism or Donald Trump and alt-right and all this garbage, as long as we stick to our guns, as long as we identify individualism and reason as the ideas that must guide us, as long as we fight for those ideas and as long as we watch who are allies, who are enemies and never make an ally an enemy into an ally, never. Whether on the left or whether on the right, and you have to realize that they're all enemies out there and people who disguise themselves as individualists but are actually deep, deep collectivists. I mean, one of the shocking things about what's happened over the last year with the alt-right is the number of people who call themselves objectivists who talk completely, thoroughly in terms of collectivism in terms of groups, in terms of my people and their people and brown people and white people and black people and yellow people. It's, let me put it, it's disgusting. Go away, people. You are disgusting. And you're not part of the objectivist movement. You're not part of the freedom-loving movement. You're not part of the laissez-fait capitalist movement. You are the enemy and you're the worst enemy than anybody because you are people who have, or at least pretend to be exposed to the truth are rejecting it and pretending. So you're doing damage to objectivism by associating it with people like yourselves, like the alt-right, like Spencer, like everybody else. It's just mind-boggling. Ultimately, I don't think there are a lot of them. They just get on my nerves and all it takes is one of them, on one of these chats to send me off the deep end. All right, well, look at the board lighting up. Hi, you're new on Bookshow. Who's this? Speak up. Oh, we already talked, I think. 540, we talked already. All right, this is 313. Hi, you're new on Bookshow. This is Jennifer from Michigan. Hey, Jennifer. Am I coming to speak at Michigan State? October. 17th of October. Anybody out there in Michigan? You know, you can come in my talk and yeah, it should be fun. Saying the police, they're not very effective. They're standing around. And I was wondering if maybe some of the better policemen are intimidated by the reputation that the police have had in recent times because of the bad ones and they feel they won't get support if they are more aggressive and cracking down so it makes them impotent and they just stand around. Do you think that's possible? I think that's possible. I don't think it's a primary reason. I think there's a certain mentality there of let the two groups fight it out. They're all evil, let them go at it. I think there is overprotectiveness of the police themselves. I don't want to get hurt. But I do think there is this element of because of Black Lives Matter of the fear that one of these policemen will hit a protester or will do something to protester and injure them or kill them or something. And then people will freak out. People will attack that policeman and he won't get support. So I think that is an element and there being some reports, I think it's still inconclusive but there's some evidence that suggests that police are generally more fearful of engaging because they fear that they will not be protected if they do something violent. Yeah, I was thinking maybe that's something to do with that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, but you would also think though that given that Donald Trump is president, given that Jeff Sessions is at the Justice Department, both of them, I mean, Jeff Sessions has basically withdrawn the Justice Department from investigating police forces where they might have been excessive force. He doesn't believe in that. He's given in, and you heard Trump the other day tell policemen to be rough, not to be too gentle with the people that they arrest. So you would think that now with the Trump administration that would go away and that the police would be emboldened. So, you know, you still wonder, you still wonder what's going on. I don't know. Now it is true that a lot of these events are happening in leftist cities where the mayors and the police chiefs might be leftists, so it's really hard to tell but all I can say is the police is defaulting on their responsibility. Their responsibility to keep the peace. That is the essential. And they're not. They're not, they're letting people initiate violence. They're not punishing the people initiate violence, but they're also not preventing them when it's an imminent danger and that is wrong. That is, that it goes against everything that the police should stand for. And I haven't seen a lot of people commenting on that. Good. Thank you very much. Thanks, Jennifer, appreciate the call. All right, we got one left in the stack. Hi, you're new on Bookshow. Hey. Hey. What's up? This is Araf from New York. Hi, Araf. Well, I just wanted to ask you, how big do you think the alt-right is? Because initially I thought there was just a bunch of people online, really, not really anything, you know, a big movement. But do you think that has changed or really do you think that just, this is just a fringe movement? Or do you think this is fairly prominent? It's fringe, but it's growing and it has a lot of sympathizers. I don't know that the core of it has a lot of people involved, but I think it has a lot of sympathizers. It has a lot of people who are apologists for it or engaged with it. I see some of them here on the chat. And they're all over social media. But originally it was- Yeah, people like Milo, right? Well, Milo's, yes, Milo's made it a much bigger movement than it needs to be. Milo is definitely an apologist for the alt-right, for the worst elements in the alt-right, not even for the so-called moderate alt-right. I mean, the things that Milo has said in defense or in explanation of Spencer and some of these out and out racists is disgusting. Now, I think he just does it because he thinks it's funny, but he's too smart not to realize what he's doing. So I can set a Milo part of the alt-right even though he would deny it and the alt-right probably doesn't want him because he's gay and weird and everything else. But I think he is. He's definitely an apologist for them. What's that? Oh, he's also half Jewish or all Jewish or something. But the fact is that he's an apologist for them. Read his article in Breitbart about the alt-right. It was kind of the definitive piece written at the time about the alt-right. And it's a whitewashing piece. It's a piece that basically is making them out to be not so bad and they're good elements and they're just a response and it's a bunch of kids and Spencer's not that bad. I mean, it really is a travesty, a real travesty. And this is why I think Milo is horrible. I think the way he purports himself is horrible. I think his ideas are disgusting. He can be funny. He's clearly smart. But I'm very, very, very, very much against supporting Milo in any way at all. Again, an apologist to neo-Nazis, an apologist to the KKK, an apologist to people like Spencer, is evil. Is evil. Amy, somebody's asking about Spencer. Let me be very clear. We are not talking about the Spencer who specializes in many studies, who is Catholic and who's done a lot of work on Islam. I mean, I don't like some things that he's done and some things he represents. We're talking about, I think it's Richard Spencer, right? Who is an alt-right leader, leader of this. He's on television a lot. He was in Charlottesville. He's been commenting a lot on Donald Trump. He's everywhere, but it's a different Spencer. There are two Spencers. I once confused the two. And once, I think, Robert, and that's the Islam expert and others, Richard, who is a neo-Nazi. He's the worst type of person you could imagine. So don't confuse the two guys. Go ahead, go ahead. Yeah. And when it comes to Milo, I think he just misrepresented the movement. Like, I think I watched him once when he was on the show. And he was saying like, this movement's about individual liberty. Or this movement is really about. But that's the danger. That's the danger, right? Because here Milo says I'm for individual liberty and we're for individual liberty. And then he says the most outrageous, horrible things. Just his language is just so offensive, I find. I mean, it's one thing to say outrageous things in the face of censorship, like Lenny Brewster in the 60s and 70s. But it's another thing to build your whole stick around saying things that, I don't know, maybe I'm getting old. But you just don't say. And you just don't. I mean, I find it horrible. But it's more than that. It's then he associates with the alt-right. He apologizes for the alt-right. And then we, because he's for individual liberty and alt-right, people in their minds think alt-right, individual liberty, those are the same things. No, no, no, no. And we need to be very, very, very clear. They are not the same thing. They are the opposite. The alt-right is the enemy of individual liberty. The enemy of individual liberty. And then I don't know if you know the Milo attacks on Ben Shapiro. I mean, Ben Shapiro is a good guy and was supposedly on the same side as Milo. And the disgusting attacks when Ben Shapiro had a baby, the tweets that Milo sent out. I mean, it's just unspeakable, you know, suggesting that the baby was a consequence of his wife sleeping with a black guy. That's what Milo felt it appropriate to tweet the day that Ben Shapiro had a baby in the form of congratulations. I mean, it's not funny. It's not funny. It's just, it's just bizarre. Anyway, thanks for the call. Keep on listening. I appreciate you guys' support. All right, we're going to take another quick break. And when we get back, I want to talk about Donald Trump and his response. Looking for inspiration? Follow us on Instagram at Einrand.org and get your daily dose of inspiring quotes, stories on how Einrand fans connect in remote places, as well as updates on our popular student programs and upcoming events. You'll also see which celebrities are reading Rant and posting about it. Follow us today at Einrand.org, A-Y-N-R-A-N-D-O-R-G, the official Instagram feed of the Einrand Institute. See you there. All right, we're back. Quick breaks, not too bad, huh? All right, let's talk about Trump's, and I talked a little bit about Trump's response right after the incident in Charlottesville, which I thought was weak and pathetic and didn't say anything really. Who's not against hate? Everybody's against hate. Everybody, you know, we're against hate, and America needs to unite. United around what? What is this unity? What is it all about? So, you know, he was criticized heavily for those statements as he should have been, and then he was, and then he later, I guess, yesterday, yesterday, yeah, today's Tuesday, on Monday he came out with a prepared statement that condemned neo-Nazis and racists and so on, what he should have done the first day. But it was a prepared statement, so then he was criticized for having a prepared statement. Now, granted, the left is gonna always criticize anything that Trump does, but, you know, sometimes he actually deserves the criticism, so you have to go with the media. But then, today, Trump did some 15-minute Q&A and it turned into a discussion about Charlottesville, and again, you get to see his thinking about this, and I think it's much more reflective of his first statement. So, first he blamed basically all the violence on what he's calling the alt-left, and, you know, video evidence just counter, but basically shifting again. It's all about the violence of the alt-left. Now, he does point out to the media, look media, you guys, you guys, you know, blaming the right on everything, but you never show off when the alt-left is violent, and he's right, he's right. The media clearly under-reported on Berkeley and on Evergreen and all these other places. They under-report leftist violence. The violent left gets away with murder, almost, right? But he goes on and on and on, so he goes on to kind of almost defend the alt-right. I mean, it's just, it's a bizarre, so let's start with the issue of the statues, because I know some of you disagree with me on the statues. All right, so he came out and said, here's what he said. So, this is about taking down a statue of Robert E. Lee. I wonder, is it George Washington next week? And is it Thomas Jefferson the week after? You really do have to ask yourself, where does it stop? George Washington was a slave owner, which, well, I can't repeat everything because he just repeats himself. And then he goes, are we going to take down his statue because he was a major slave owner? He says the same thing, like 55 times. And then I say, they're changing history, they're changing culture. Now, to compare Robert E. Lee with George Washington is absurd. Now, true, both own slaves, but Robert E. Lee fought for the preservation of slavery. He led the armies fighting for the preservation of slavery. Robert E. Lee and slavery are one and the same. Robert E. Lee fought for that. He didn't stay neutral. He didn't say, you know, I love the South, but I disagree with the stance on slavery and I can't fight for the North, so I'm going to just stay home and not participate. No, he joined the military. He was made command of the military. He killed other Americans for the sake of sustaining the institution of slavery. He is not a hero. He is not a good guy. I mean, yeah, he was probably a nice guy socially, but that's not the point. Now, to compare that to George Washington who I wish had not owned slaves or to Thomas Jefferson who I wish had not owned slaves who had major achievements who ultimately made possible the abolition of slavery completely, both because of Declaration of Independence and the American Constitution and because they created America, because they made this historical country. They made it possible. So yes, they were flawed. They weren't perfect, but Lee, what counterbalances in terms of statue, what is the only reason we have statues of Lee, of Robert E. Lee? The only reason we have statues of Robert E. Lee is because he commanded the armies of the South. That's the only reason he's on a statue. If he had not participated in the Civil War, there would be no statues of Robert E. Lee. So to compare the two is absurd, given George Washington and Thomas Jefferson's achievements. So that's one. So it's true though that you don't ever know about the left. You could see them going after statues of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. And when they do, we should defend George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. We should be out there on the barricades, defending them, not with the neo-Nazis, not with if they're participating, I'm out. But we, those who believe in the founding of this country, those who believe in the founders, those who believe in the principles of this country. Yeah, I mean, somebody's asking about a statue of Rommel. Now, there should be no statues of Rommel in terms of celebrating the guy. He wasn't a great guy. He was a general fighting for the Nazis. There are no great guys fighting for the Nazis in positions of power, even though towards the end of the war, he tried to kill Hitler, not for the right reasons. No, Rommel is not a good guy. He's an evil bastard. Sorry, I'm getting carried away a little bit. But you don't celebrate. Now, does that mean you destroy the sculptures? Does that mean you destroy them? No, of course not. Of course not. What you do with statues is you put them in a museum. You preserve the history associated with them. You preserve the history that they represent. They should not be forgotten. But you do not keep up statues of Hitler, or Rommel, or Stalin, or Lenin. I mean, one of the things that I found most disgusting in my visit to Moscow was the fact that in the mall in Moscow, there was a man dressed up as Stalin, standing around shaking people's hands and getting selfies with him. It tells you everything you need to know about modern Russia, right? And patriotism is not a virtue. If it's in the name of an evil ideology, there's no such thing as a German patriot during World War II. German patriots, people who believed in anything, were in the underground fighting, Hitler fighting Rommel, fighting the German government, fighting the Nazi apparatus. It's not a virtue to patriotic when your government is evil. Quite the contrary. It's a vice to be patriotic under those circumstances. Hi, all right. We are going to take another very short break. And I want to get into more of Trump's response today, because it wasn't just about statues. And by the way, let me just finish this point about statues. I think it's quite reasonable, given that the statues on public property, that each locality make a decision about what to do with it. I think they should all come down if they're on public property. And that they should, just like the flag of the Confederacy should be taken down from public property. You have a right to have it on private property, but not on public property. And I think, but I don't see the federal government having to get involved in this. This is something that can be left to local authorities to deal with. All right, so we're gonna take another quick break, if I can get my cursor to do what I want it to do. Yeah, there it is, found it, all right. We will be right back. 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Just go to INRAN.org slash donate and look for the link at the bottom of the page to become an ARI sustainer. If you wanna get in on the fight, if you wanna get in on the fight against the violent left and the violent right, the alt-right and the alt-left or whatever they wanna call themselves, the best way to do so is get involved with the INRAN Institute, whether you become a sustainer, a sponsor, whether you support this radio show, whether you support our other activities at the Institute. That is the best way and if you're young and you wanna become a real fighter and intellectual fighter, look into the OAC and inter-educational programs where you really get an understanding of the philosophy and you can become an intellectual fighter for the philosophy. Let me just say I wanna say because somebody posted on Facebook that all I do is that I hate everybody, that I'm always critical of everybody, so let me say something nice about somebody. I wanna tell you that I've always liked Ben Shapiro. I mean, I disagree with Ben Shapiro on a bunch of different things, but I've always, well, that's interesting. I've always liked Ben Shapiro and he's really excelling on this issue. So while I disagree with him on abortion and he's obviously religious and so on, he is excellent. He is the best commentator on the right. He, well, I shouldn't use the term right. He is the best commentator among conservatives. He is excelled on the issue of Charlottesville. He's been excellent. I posted a video of him on my Facebook page where he just nails it. It was almost like I jokingly say there that he's challenging, he's channeling me because yeah, I mean, everything he said was consistent with what I've been saying and he was really, really good. And then today on Daily Wire, he had an excellent piece analyzing Trump's speech, which I'm gonna refer to in a few minutes so I'm trying to refer to. He is, you know, he is benched. Ben is really, you know, really doing himself and himself proud and I'm proud of him. You know, I don't know if I've never met him. I'm looking forward to meeting him. I'm looking forward to debating him. I think it'd be a lot of fun or to have a conversation with him. He didn't act, you know, and but I recommend everybody follow Ben. You're not gonna agree with everything and he's definitely a conservative and he's definitely religious. But he is definitely better than any other conservative out there today in terms of popular commentators, better than anybody on Fox or any of these other places. So, you know, support him. He's a good guy. He's one of the good guys. Let's see. Yeah, so one of the reasons it's interesting how is the guy unmuting himself constantly? It's weird. All right. So one of the things that Ben Shapiro points out in his piece is that Trump, when he was asked about yesterday, why it took him two days to actually condemn the neo-Nazis to condemn the KKK. Trump said, well, I needed to get all the information and Ben Shapiro calls him on it justifiably completely. Let me give me a break. Really? I mean, everybody had the information. We all had the information. We knew exactly what was going on there. Well, at least good enough approximation and this is Donald Trump we're talking about. This is Donald Trump who tweets way before he has any information. But on this issue, where he's clearly trying to protect, trying to be nice, trying to play nice with the alt-right, he has to get more information. He can't comment. Really. All right. Then of course, he argues with a reporter and says, what do you say to the alt-right? Define alt-right for me. Define it for me. Come on, let's go. You define it for me. Really? Really? Everybody knows, particularly in that context, what they're referring to. And then he says, of course, and this is a point I referred to earlier, not all those people were neo-Nazis, believe me. Not all of those people were white supremacists. By any stretch, you had people who were very fine people on both sides. You had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists. I talked about this already. You march with neo-Nazis and white nationalists and KKK, you are one of them. That's what you are. Right, so don't give me this. There were good people there. Nobody is good who marches with neo-Nazis. You're sanctioning them. You're granting them. You're basically saying they're okay, which makes you as evil as they are. Almost as evil as they are. And finally, he says, and I know some of you won't take any criticism of Trump. I know, I know, that's just what can I do. There were people in that rally, he says. And I looked the night before. If you look at the video the night before, they were people protesting very quietly. And they were protesting, they're taking down of the statue Robert E. Lee. Have you guys seen the protest the night before with the tortures, with the KKK tortures? Have you seen what that looked like? That wasn't a quiet rally. They were yelling, they were fighting. They were yelling, we're gonna take them back this country from Jews. They were exhibiting, I mean, really very quiet and very fine people. These are very fine people. People mimicking a KKK ceremony. I mean, I have never been a fan of Donald Trump. I have been critical from day one. And yeah, you could argue, I criticize almost everything he does because he deserves it. But this is a new low. This is a new low for him to celebrate in a sense. The rally the night before, go watch the video. Watch the video. And luckily for you, Ben Shapiro has it up on his site. You can easily follow along. You can easily watch the video. And then of course, who do you think? Who do you think really celebrated Donald Trump's comments? It was David Duke from the KKK and Richard Spencer. They were the ones who celebrated because they know Trump's got our flank. Trump's got us. Now again, I'm not arguing the Trump is a white nationalist or the Trump is a neo-Nazi, but he does not want to offend those guys. He is protecting them and he is giving them cover and he is tolerating them. And that makes him like the marchers who marched with them who might not have been neo-Nazis. He is an apologist for them. And that's about as low as any president can get. I mean, you all got, you all went after Obama when he was an apologist for Black Lives Matter justifiably so went after him. Where are you now? This president has done the same thing. Same thing. And of course you all making excuses for him. All right, we've got a caller that must have stimulated. Hi, you're new on Bookshow. Who's this? Good evening, Dr. Brooklyn Scholar. Hey, Scholar, how's it going? Sorry I didn't take your call on Sunday, but I was running out of time. That is not your fault. And I had a good rant at the end of that show. So I had to get into it. Yes, it was worth it. But I remember a few weeks back, a few months back, you were saying you wanted a new name for liberals and conservatives and the left and the right. Why don't we just call them the altruist left and the altruist right? Because none of them are individual. Yeah, no, it's true. But I think collectivism is a better term for them because it deals with them as a political entity, right? Because they're also altruists in the middle, right? Everybody's an altruist. So what do you do with that? So I think if we just focus in on their political stand, which is collectivism, I think that's fine. And what I consider them all is collectivists and we're individualists. And that most Americans get, most people understand collectivism as individualism. If you take it one step down deeper into the philosophy, altruism versus egoism, that's much harder for people. And there are gonna be a lot of people who are basically individualists out there who don't ultimately consider themselves egoists. So that's why I think collectivism and individualism are the right terms to use in this context. Absolutely. All right. Thanks, Skyla. Keep listening. Thank you, Dr. Furrow. Keep calling. I really appreciate it. All right. So in other words, we need to call these people for what they are and call them, call them the collectivists that they are and not separate between the left and the right here. They're all collectivists, you know, of various forms. Some of them are worse than others. Some of them are more violent than others, both on the left and on the right. We are individualists. We stand for the individual, not for the group, not for the collective, not for the sacrifice of the individual, but for the freedom, for individual rights, for the freedom of individual to live based on rational values, to live his life, to pursue happiness, to flourish as an individual. That's the essence of egoism is the use of one's mind, the use of one's mind to pursue one's values for the purpose of one's own survival and flourishing. That's what egoism is, and that's what we stand for as opposed to the sacrifice of the individual to the group, the judgment of the individual by a group standard rather than by his character, by his nature as an individual. All right. So let's see, what have we covered? We've covered Trump's comments today. We've covered Ben Shapiro. We have done all that. I mean, there's still some fallout from the Google stuff. I will mention the Google march. There's a march on Google this week. It's gonna be interesting to watch and see what happens with all of that. And hopefully it doesn't get violent, but there's a good chance that it will. There's a good chance that the alt-right is behind these marches. Certainly the person who's organizing them is a former alt-right guy who supposedly has denounced alt-right and now is new right. But that is something to watch. Oh, that's right. I did wanna cover this one point that somebody raised some way or some point. Hey, we fight to preserve the term selfish. Why shouldn't we fight to preserve the term right? So, and there are people in objectivism who think that we should be defending the term right. Right really means individual rights. Right really means pro-lesific capitalism, pro-founding principles. Now, I don't see the point in all that. I don't see the point in fighting to preserve this term. This term has always been murky. It's never been clear. There is no clear definition of what right means vis-a-vis the left. The Nazis have always been considered right. Fascism has always been considered right or at least for a very long time. Now, I don't have a complete history of how far this goes back, but right doesn't, as a word, as a concept, it doesn't really mean anything. It's a, you know, it's a label for a certain political view. Selfishness is a profound word because it means something. It means taking care of self. And that's what the battle's about, morally. Should one take care of self? What does it mean to take care of self? How does one take care of self? Is taking care of self important? That's the fundamental question that we need the starting point in a sense in ethics. Who should be the beneficiary of one's actions? One's moral actions, oneself or somebody else. So selfishness captures it. It's a word worth preserving because it's a word that relates to self and the well-being of oneself. So selfishness, we have to fight for it. There's no alternative. If you give up on selfishness, you're finished. Now, does that mean you beat people over the head with the word selfishness? No, I think you can introduce them to the concept by using rational self-interest or by using rational selfishness. There are a variety of different ways one can introduce the term. But at the end of the day, you've got to get to selfishness because that's what it's about. It's about taking care of self. And I don't know if you saw, but there was a wonderful, wonderful, really good article in the New York Times of all places, right? And it was written by a mother who says, motherhood is selfish. Stop telling me it's all about sacrifice. It's all about suffering. It's all about eliminating self. This is, I love this. This is important to me. These are my values. Of course it's selfish. So that was good. And she used it for the most part correctly. I mean, the article could have been better. It wasn't, obviously it wasn't written by an objectivist. But the idea that the New York Times would publish an article by a woman arguing for selfishness in motherhood. Well, blows my head and might suggest that we're making some progress. Maybe we're winning a battle here or there. It's great. Let's not walk away from this word. People get it. People get it. Now, yes, they have to get over the emotion. Yes, they've been programmed to think it's an evil, nasty word. Yes, it's gonna take them a long time before they get over that emotional response. That's what we're there to help them with. We're there to help them with getting over that negative emotional response and filling that word called selfishness with content, with real content, you know? And here I encourage you. Read The Virtue of Selfishness by Enron. Read Peter Schwartz's In Defense of Selfishness. Educate yourself about what the word means, about the enemies of the word, what altruism really means. Defend it. Fight for it. Work for it. All right. We are going to take another very short break and then I wanna talk about I wanna talk about the backlash to Google, one of the backlashes. It looks like we're gonna have to, evolutionary for psychology, I think we're gonna have to give ourselves a little bit more time to do. We've only got about 20 minutes left. All right, we'll be right back after this. The mission of the Enron Institute is to promote Enron's philosophy of reason, rational self-interest and laudate their capitalism. It's rare for employment to offer you the opportunity to impact the culture and make history, but that's exactly what we do at ARI, each and every day. We are currently looking for talented, passionate and bright people who share a goal of raising awareness of Enron's ideas. Visit ari.enron.org to learn more about open positions and how to apply. That's ari.enron.org. All right, so we're gonna take one more call and then I wanna talk about this unbelievable, let me see if I can find it, unbelievable op-ed that I, not an op-ed, but I guess it's an op-ed that I read in town hall in terms of the conservative, A-conservatives, and it's not just any conservative, a conservative affiliated with Breitbart, a conservative, but it worries me because he's a big supporter and supported by Donald Trump. Anyway, let's take this call and then I wanna get to that because it's just, yeah. Hi, you're in the Iran Book Show. Who's this? Hello, 302 area code. I don't know why my- Oh, you're Scarlett, you're still there. All right, somebody else was calling and they must have disconnected and they were off, but let me talk about this op-ed. This is written by Kurt Schlichter, I think his name is, who was personally recruited to write conservative commentary by Andrew Breitbart. He is a trial lawyer, a veteran with a master's and strategic studies from the United States War College and a former stand-up comic. And I guess the only thing I can think of is that this piece is actually comedy, but I fear it is not, I fear it is not. Anyway, this is the title of the piece. This appeared in town hall and this guy I've seen his writings. He's not some nobody. This is a well-regarded person among conservatives. And I don't know, maybe this is just being, he's just being controversial for being controversial, but here's the title of the piece and you can look this up. It's titled, conservatives must regulate Google and all of Silicon Valley into submission. Here's the beginning of the piece. Google's fascist witch burning of an honest engineer. Witch burning, right? For refusing to bow down at the ultra politically correct lies was this final straw and unequivocal warning to conservatives that there's a new set of rules and that we need to play by them. Republicans at both the federal and state level need to reign in the skinny jeans, fascist social justice warriors who control Silicon Valley. And how do we do that? Through the kind of crushing regulation of these private businesses that we conservatives use to oppose. And he goes on. He gives a whole prescription of how they do this. Use antitrust. Google is too big. We need to break it up and he identifies Google, Facebook and Twitter. We need to break them up. We need to dismantle them. We need legislation. He says you don't need legislation to do that. He said Jeff Session is right there in the Justice Department. He can go after Google. He can go after Facebook and Twitter. He needs to break them up. He needs to destroy them. And we don't need legislation. The Trump administration can do that by itself. Here's another, but some things you do need. So he tells us one of the big problems with Facebook is they know everything about us and they're gonna use it against us. Now there's an issue of privacy and we can talk about privacy. I should have Amy Peacoff on some time to talk about privacy. But here's his proposal. Now again, I don't know if to laugh or to cry. Maybe this is comedy. How about the Algorithm Transparency Act, a law that bans these big internet companies from putting their fingers on the scale of discourse and requires them to make available online all of their operating algorithms. Oh, this isn't about privacy. This is about Google's search being biased and only populating the things that the so-called leftist at Google want to populate. So he wants an Algorithm Transparency Act, right? And then he says then once they're all available, we will allow an army of Davids to dig through Facebook and Google's code finding out why things the tech leftists don't want you to know are getting buried and then feeding that into info to trial lawyers who would then sue Google. The other legislation was, this was a legislation of privacy. We need to impose staggering, gut wrenching, monetary penalties, not only on active misuses of this information, but even for the mere failure to safeguard it, any failure to safeguard it, we must crush them. Crush them. You know, he says Silicon Valley Giants are just too big. We need to chop them up like Old Mar Bell. We need to get an army of lawyers busy breaking up these enormous bloated anti-competitive conglomerates. Now, he ends the piece with, not exactly old school conservatism, right? Well, it's not exactly old school America. Too bad. We like the old system, but you tech twerps decided to change it. So be it, too bad that for some reason, you thought we wouldn't change too. All right, so the left has become fascist. We are gonna become fascist. He even writes here, what is he, let me just find this section. He says free enterprise means enterprise generally free of government control. Now that's a pretty vague definition to begin with, but so be it. And it's stunning that the Silicon Valley people who hear, who we hear are so smart, don't foresee that when their enterprise morphs into a partisan political campaign, the people on the other side of the spectrum are going to leverage their own political power in response. Conservatives now need to savagely regulate companies like Google Facebook and Twitter. We need to use our political power in Congress and red state legislatures to incentivize Silicon Valley to return to a system where it's companies embrace political and cultural neutrality. He says, yeah, I know that heavy regulating private businesses is not free enterprise, but I don't care. All right, you know, what else can I say? You guys know, I ran, you know what I think. You know, what can you add to that? I mean, this guy is nuts, but he's not the only one. Because for the last two weeks or so, rumors have been coming out of the White House. Now again, the rumors, I don't know, but nobody's denied them. That Bannon, Bannon is strongly advocating within the administration for the heavy regulation of Google and Facebook. And then this appears, and this guy known as Bannon, because they worked at Breitbart together. I'm not a conspiracy theory guy, but you know, this is coordinated, you know it's coordinated. And it didn't just appear there, but there was also a story, where is this, there was also a story from the left saying the left has to recognize now. That you know, maybe it's time to say that you can't say certain things if you're an employee. And we can't have free markets and Silicon Valley. We can't have free markets within companies. These companies, the left is saying, we're gonna have to regulate them because there's these people out there who are saying really nasty things and that needs to be controlled. And since the government can control it, why can't the government control it? Because it's a violation of free speech or the government does it. We need to encourage companies to do it. And maybe there's a way we can regulate companies to incentivize them to control free speech within them. This is where we're heading, heading towards fascism. And Donald Trump is, and these people on the so-called right are marching us towards it. Not necessarily because they're fascist, but because the only logical extension of what they do advocate for is fascism. It is. I didn't vote for these guys. That's all I can say. I did not vote for them. Didn't vote for the other guys either. But I did not vote for fascists on the right or fascists on the left. And you know, I hope those of you who've been saying for months and months and months, but he's better than Hillary, I hope you're right. I really, really hope for the sake of all of us that you're right because if Bannon is not fired soon, if Bannon really has as much influence in the White House as I suspect he does, if the people, you know, if those are the people who really influential with Trump, then it's not obvious to me at all that this administration will land up being worse than Hillary, better than Hillary. And yeah, I mean, Donald Trump at the margins is doing some good things, not because Donald Trump is doing good things, but because he's appointed some good people who are deregulating, who are doing some good things in various departments from education to environment to energy to others. But whether that is enough to compensate for the damage that is being done now to the American spirit, to the American ideas, to the American way of life, to the association of America with, I have no idea, no idea if it's possible to recover, particularly if you really, if you get, the government trying to heavily regulate Google and Facebook if you get antitrust against these companies spearheaded by Jeff Sessions, Justice Department. I mean, we're, this is from the right, we're in deep, deep trouble. All right, I actually want to end on a positive note today for a change. No, well, not just a positive note, I wanna, you know, we, I've had this tradition of on the Iran book show of ending with recommendations of positive values. And I know that some of you don't like that because I know there's a big drop off when I start talking about music or film or anything like that. Big drop off of listeners once I start talking about that, but a lot of you like it a lot and I like it. And particularly, particularly when New Yorkers use this so negative and it's so depressing and there's so much bad stuff going on from the stupidity of the Google situation to what happened to the evilness of what happened in Charlottesville, it's good to remind ourselves that there are ways to, not to escape, but to alter, to refocus your environment, to refocus your mind on something different. All right, so I'm gonna take a quick break here and when we come back, I wanna talk a little bit on some classical music that I really love and why music in particular is a powerful, powerful tool when just stuff around politically and everywhere else just is really depressing and bad. I ran held that art is an indispensable need of human life and irreplaceable form of spiritual refueling. In the course, eight great plays available at AII campus, Leonard Peacock selects eight masterpieces of world literature and analyzes them as great works of drama and as works that convey philosophies of life. After completing this course, you will better understand how to reach a full objective evaluation of an artwork and how to grasp, evaluate and enjoy the values that great literature offers. Visit AII campus at campus.inrance.org today and enroll in eight great plays. All right, that was a great entree into what I wanna talk about which is aesthetics and the importance of aesthetics and that course by Dr. Peacock on the eight great plays is probably, I mean, it's probably my favorite in many respects, my favorite because it is, I learned so much that I didn't know at all and it added value to my life immediately. Reading those plays was a really profound experience. Those plays are amazing and then having Leonard explain them and not just explain the play but give you a whole approach to approaching a play. And for years I used to run movie nights where we would take the approach that Leonard used for plays and apply it to movies. And some of you probably attended my movie nights in San Jose or in Austin, Texas. And it was a blast and it was fun and it enhanced my ability to enjoy movies and plays and other forms of art. So I strongly recommend on AII campus for free. Leonard Peacock's eight great plays. It will have a, if you can read the plays, don't get lazy, don't just listen to his analysis, read the play and then listen to the analysis. And it will have an immediate impact on your life because it'll give you, art is fuel. Art is fuel for the soul. Art is fuel for the spirit. And particularly given how bad the news is and politics is and just the culture and the environment. And you're not gonna get good art unless you go seeking it, that's the other thing. Pop art, popular art is mostly, I don't wanna say garbage, but superficial at best. To get good art, it's not like ancient Greece, you just walked out your house and they were the sculptures. The theater was there every day with great theater. And it's not like the 19th century where you could go to a coffee shop and there's Chopin and List and Hugo and they're all there. And it's just there and it's the sculptures and the buildings are dawned with sculpture. There's a whole approach to aesthetics and to art. We don't have that. You walk out into the public space today and it's garbage, if they put anything out, it's garbage. And if you listen to the radio, it's okay. So some of it's pretty, but it's superficial. There is no great art or very little great art being produced today. And it's certainly, if it is being produced, you have to find it. But it's not just that you have to find, you have to find the great art of the past to give you that fuel. And Leonard Bikoff has a number of courses and lectures about this. There's one on poetry, there's the one on great great plays and there's one that he does on how great art with a evil philosophical theme is still a value and still fuel and still can energize you as a good human being. And actually that lecture was a consequence of a confusion paper. I'll tell you the story one day. But anyway, I would definitely recommend all of that material. Go listen to Leonard and of course read Romantic Manifesto. You have to read Romantic Manifesto. I know people are so focused on politics, they don't wanna, this stuff has direct impact on the quality of your life and your ability to enjoy your life right now in that pursuit of happiness. The art, these are life promoting values that you can benefit from without money because you don't need to be rich to enjoy them without, without, with some knowledge but without spending four years in college studying all of this other stuff. So I brought a somewhat random stack of CDs with me of stuff that I really like and it's a mixture but let me just say something about classical music. And some of you have heard this before but classical music in my view is just a different, different cultural level, different aesthetic level, artistic level than anything popular music can achieve. I do not think you can get the same emotional response, the same fuel from popular music that you can from classical music. Now, I'm not against popular music. I listen to it all the time but you've got it, have a place in your life or you should have a place in your life for classical music because it is profound impact. To me, when I listen to this news crap and all this other stuff, the best thing I can do and I have to admit I don't do this anywhere near often enough is to turn off all the lights and to put on some piece of music and just to try not to think about anything just to focus on the music, to focus on the experience of experience to music. This is my form of meditation is to just focus on the music and the emotions they're evoking in me. It's a form of introspection but it's focused on the outside because it's focused on the music but you're also focusing on the emotions at the same time. And just close your, and it's hard because what you'll find is your mind you want to drift to what happened during the day what you heard on the news, you know what your Ron said on his podcast or whatever you have to crush that, you have to suppress that and you have to really let your mind focus on the music to get the full experience. And I think this is generally to get the full experience of any arts you really need to be focused on the, on the experience is no accident that the best way to watch a movie is in a movie theater where it's dark and nobody talks and you're just experiencing it or you go to a concert hall and nobody talks and it's a little dark and there's a little bit of visual stimulation but mostly it's just the music and it's not an accident. I mean, it is an accident in museums I think distort this cause you're lots of people and it's noisy, sometimes noisy and many times the paintings are close to one another and it's hard to focus on any one piece and really devote the kind of energy and the kind of focus you need to that one piece. So look, when I'm in a combative mood like I am tonight, I, my favorite composer by far for this mood that I'm in right now is Beethoven. Now I know that I know that I did not like Beethoven and for good reason I think, I mean she considered him malevolent and there's definitely a malevolence there but Beethoven essential characteristic of Beethoven's music is conflict, it's struggle. And when you make that as a physical thing which is what odd does, it reflects metaphysical value judgment. So when you're making a metaphysical value judgment about conflict being at the core of existence that's malevolence. I could get that, but you know what? Give me Beethoven's seventh symphony on a night like this anytime. I relish it, it is so much energy and force and yeah, there's a fighting there. There's a fighting spirit and it energizes me to fight and to continue engaging in this so. Beethoven is one of the secrets, one of my secrets. For how I can sustain the seventh symphony, the ninth symphony, the fifth you're all familiar with, the third symphony is piano concertos three, four, four's my favorite and five, four's, you know, for the second movement of the fourth concerto leading into the fifth, the second movement is piano versus orchestra and it's piano versus orchestra and they're fighting and the piano's clearly the good guy and the orchestra's clearly the bad guy and the piano wins and then it sweeps in and it's very quiet and very subtle and then it sweeps into this magnificent final movement of the piece. Fourth concerto, a lot of people are their favorite is the fifth, the fifth is fantastic, fantastic. So third, fourth and fifth, but then I love Beethoven's cello sonatas and violin sonatas and his piano sonatas. Oh, some of it is so magnificently beautiful and romantic, some of it's not romantic, some of it is romantic, but powerful. There's power, real power in everything that Beethoven did and that clashing of that struggle to me is energizing. I get it if people don't like it. If you want a more positive, uplifting, also, you know, but sweeping, truly romantic in every sense and then you've got it, the piano concertos of two composers, right? And, you know, Ayn Rand talked about these, Rachmaninov and Tchaikovsky and both of them with Rachmaninov, my favorites, my far, maybe the two greatest piano concertos ever written are number two and number three. I mean, if you just wanna, you just wanna sink into the music and just drift with it, but just to be immersed in it with a power and the romance and the exhilaration. If you wanna get as close as you can get to Haley's piano concertos from Atlas Shrugged, Rachmaninov's second and third piano concertos and then the other ones I would recommend is Tchaikovsky's first and second piano concertos. Again, with Tchaikovsky, the first is well-known and Rachmaninov's second is well-known. I would heavily recommend Rachmaninov's third and Tchaikovsky's second. I also recommend Tchaikovsky's third and Rachmaninov's first and fourth. First is weak, but the fourth is also excellent. So just let it go, you know, let it just, and hey, you know, we can't argue about performances and stuff, I'm not gonna get into particular performances. There are lots of great performances of these, but wow. And that'll cleanse you. It'll give you a cleansing of all the garbage, of all the crap, of all the nonsense that you have to deal with in your conscious mind from the news and from just stuff that's happening in life. It'll just let you relax and refresh and be able to meet the world. And, you know, it gives you that sense of benevolence. So, yeah, there's a lot, and there's a lot of this stuff. I mean, the beauty of classical music is there's a ton of it, a ton of it. Thousands of compositions. I mean, I keep still discovering new things that I haven't heard before that is wonderful. So anyway, to me, there is no better way. And you can't get that from a movie because it doesn't immerse you quite to the same extent. Maybe partially because movies are modern. So they haven't been, you haven't seen greatness in movies yet, not in the same sense as Beethoven and Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov were great in music. You haven't seen the Beethoven of moviemaking, I don't think. So we don't know what's completely possible. So I think we're poor when it comes to movies. I mean, they're good movies and I enjoy movies, but I enjoy, I watch a lot of movies and I watch a lot of television, I enjoy a lot of television. I'm watching, I've recommended this show in the past, so I'll quickly recommend it again because I'm watching season three of it now. It's a French show called The Bureau, intelligent, smart, actionable without much action, just smart and slow, intelligent, good television, good, suspenseful, exciting, character-driven. So The Bureau, it's on iTunes, it's on Sundance TV. There are three seasons, I just started season three, so I recommend that. All right, thank you everybody. Thank you for listening. I hope to see you, hear from you, chat with you, whatever, next week. Follow me on Twitter, follow me on Facebook, subscribe to my YouTube channel, download my podcast, let your friends know, share, share, share. The only thing that matters in social media is not liking, it's not even commenting. The only thing that matters in social media is sharing. So please share the content and investing to share as the podcast on blog talk or on one of the podcast apps or YouTube. All right, thank you all for listening. We'll be back next week, well, maybe not at the same time, but same place. Talk to you then, bye.