 Why were Americans so much more racist than 19th century? You have said that Americans were so much more individualistic back then. Yeah, there was definitely, Americans were definitely, you know, it was this real struggle within America, I think, in the 19th century. On the one hand there was this strong element of individualism, but it was bounded within certain groups. And I think it's a sad feature of America, but as America matured, it got rid of that. So, certainly a lot of Americans were now racist in the North, and that's why they were willing to fight a war to stop enslavement. But if you think about racism in a broader sense, think about the hatred of the Irish for the Italians, and the hatred of the Italians for the Irish, and the hatred of both of those for Jews, and the gang wars that happened in New York, and so on between the different ethnic groups, or between the different nationalities. And over time that went away and people became less and less. What American fused them with ultimately is the individualism. And the spirit of individualism is in the founding of this country, and in the spirit and the culture of this country. And in that sense, the South with the slavery and racism was anti-American, anti-founding fathers, and I'm going to have Brad Thompson on the show on Saturday to talk a little bit about that. We talked about it when we talked about his book. But the South was very European and very racist, and that somehow racism, there was always this tension, always this conflict between individualism, inherent in the founding of the country, and the racism that was part of the founding of the country. And that continued through the 19th century, and to some extent continues today. Yeah, Alex, I just picked this up off of Alex. It's nicely put. IQ measures a particular set of cognitive abilities. It doesn't mean you're stupid. It just measures proficiency at specific mental exercises. Absolutely. And then there's the whole issue of wisdom. Intelligence should not be confused with wisdom. There's a whole spectrum of even what intelligent constitutes, and it constitutes more than what IQ measures. All right, finally, oh my God, we've got immigration now. How are we going to do immigration? I don't know how we do immigration. By the way, one of the things that got me angry about this racism thing and why I brought it up today, I was doing this thing, I told you about the monkeys, this thing for a group of Israelis. And one of the people listening in was a guy from Hungary. I think Jewish guy from Hungary. And in the Q&A, he starts advocating for racism. He's Jewish. And what he's arguing for is the superiority of Ashkenazi Jews. Wow. Do you consider pick up a racist thinking back to what was said in the debate with the two of you in immigration? Absolutely not. And nothing he said during that debate, nothing he said during that debate would constitute racism. Racism, you can have objections to immigration that are not racist. And his objections were not racist. So no, no, and I, you know, Leonard is a good friend and my mentor and my teacher and no, absolutely not. Okay, so let me just say, and that blew my mind, a Jewish racist who thinks everybody else is beneath him. You think Jews would know better. You think, all right. Immigration. So there are a lot of objections to immigration. There are a lot of objections to immigration. I don't think any of them stand up to the facts. And I don't think, I don't think any of them, I think, but some of them are more reasonable than others. I do think, however, that much of the objections to immigration comes from racism. That's kind of the theme. It comes from xenophobia. It comes from the dislike of those who look differently than us. There's very little discussion of immigration from Europe. There's very little discussion, disagreement about European immigrants. And this has been true, again, for a very long time. The first anti-immigration bill was passed in the 19th century, in the late 19th century, 1890s, to specifically exclude Chinese. And then later on, immigration bills tried to exclude Southern Europeans, including Jews. And later on in the 60s, when it was recognized that past immigration bills were pro-European anti-other nationalities, the 1960s immigration bill tried to balance it out by swaying more favorably towards, let's say, Hispanics. People come from Latin America. But our immigration policies have always been influenced by race. They've always been racist, and there's no question in my mind that our immigration policies today are that those, not everybody, but those many people who want to restrict immigration are motivated by racial issues. And the loudest voices against immigration are the voices of the racists. They don't want people who look differently than them in this country. Now, I've said what I've said about racism, so I think that's enough. I won't talk more about it. I think that's a despicable, disgusting reason. I'm not saying that Americans are racist. I'm saying that a lot, because I don't think all Americans are anti-immigration, but I think a lot of the anti-immigration people are anti-immigration because they don't like to see a bunch of brown people cross the border. And then they're much more favorable towards Europeans coming, if they're coming illegally. Much more favorable to illegal European immigrants. And a lot of them, by the way, a lot of them, they just do it differently. Most illegal immigrants in the United States. This is a fact. You can check it out. You can check it out in the government websites. Most illegal immigrants in the United States come here with a legal visa and overstay their visa. They overstay their visa. It's not true that most illegal immigrants cross the border at night, smuggled in. Now, there are other objections to immigration. To, you know, more immigration, open immigration. One is the economy. It will hurt the economy. How? It'll take jobs from Americans. So first, let's separate out jobs from the economy. There is no case, economic case, right? No more super chat questions unless, unless they are on the issue of immigration. I don't want to see anything else because I'm not going to answer it. There's just not enough time. And I know people disagree with their immigration, so ask away. Ask me about all the things you've been wanting to ask me, Israel and Muslims and all that stuff. Ask me. Now is your chance. There is no basis for an argument that immigration hurts the economy. From a purely economic perspective, GDP, growth, innovation, economic growth, economic success. Immigration is a huge plus. Immigration is a huge benefit to the economy. Massive. And, you know, if I had the time, I could prove that to you mathematically. More immigrants is more minds thinking about more problems, solving more problems, consuming more goods, but more importantly, producing more goods. Creating more jobs. But what about the jobs of Americans? Oh my God, we need to protect those poor Americans. And does immigration lower wages? No. Not in the long run. It doesn't a short run for particular jobs. But in the long run, it doesn't. Almost all studies show that in the long run, wages don't move much when you have lots of immigrants. Well, here that, you know, we got more racists. Here's a good example, right? More Somali minds. Well, one of the most brilliant women I know. One of the most brilliant women I know is a black Somali. Her name is Ayan Hussi Ali. She's one of the bravest, smartest, most courageous woman you will ever meet. So yeah, you can latch on to the Somali label and pretend that that means anything. You're a disgusting racist. Yeah, she's Somali. So, I mean, she's a hero. We need more Somali minds. Absolutely. No, she's married. She's married to another amazing guy. Nile Ferguson, who is a historian and a really good thinker. I don't agree with him on everything. I don't agree with Ayan Hussi Ali on everything. And he's an immigrant to the United States. He happens to have immigrated here from the United Kingdom. He's white. She's black. How does that fit into some of your worldview? I'm not sure. Both immigrants, and I'm married. I'm speaking for a gated community. Actually not. I live in a condominium in Puerto Rico. What gated community? See, these are the kind of arguments people have against me. It's not Iran's wrong because of fact one, two, three. It's Iran lives in a gated community when I don't. I'm speaking for my condominium in Puerto Rico. All right, I'm going to do this. I think we're going to have our three-hour show today. Jobs, jobs. Long-term wages go up, not down. Long-term GDP goes up, not down. Quality of life standard of living goes up, not down. The things the immigrant produces, if their wages are lower, then costs less for you. So as a consumer, your quality of life goes up, not down. Immigrants are massive, plus. Not minus to economic success. But you say, we have a welfare state. And Milton Friedman once said, you can't have open immigration if you have a welfare state. Well, I hate to say it, but even Milton Friedman was wrong sometimes. And you can see this by asking the person who says to you, well, what about the welfare state? Say, okay, so eliminate the welfare state. Are you okay with open immigration then? And of course they're going to say no. Of course they're going to say no. So, yeah, the welfare state is problematic. I'd love to see, I'd love to see the passion, the energy of the anti-immigration people deployed to getting rid of the welfare state. I wish all those conservatives who want to stop immigration devoted the same attention, the same energy to getting rid of welfare. But they don't care about the welfare state. What they don't want is immigrants. And on top of that, immigrants are generally good for the welfare state. Because immigrants, not like Americans, not like people born in America, actually come to this country to work. They come to this country because they know what poverty looks like. And they come to this country to make a better life for themselves. So they tend to get jobs. They tend to work. They tend to pay into the welfare state and support Americans who grew up with all of this and still manage to screw up and land on the walls of welfare. Who do you think is worse? And then we're going to come here with grew up in horrible conditions and come here and maybe lands up on a welfare in America. Who grew up with this and lands up on a welfare? I resent America much more than I resent the immigrant. Alright, then there's culture. Somebody asked a question about this. Do you differentiate between racism and a conservative object into immigrants based on alleged culture degradation? Yes and no. I think there is a cultural question you can ask. I think it's often just a disguise for racism but you can ask the question. Yes, people bring their culture with them. And yes, their cultures are not as good as ours. I am not a multiculturalist. I believe our culture is better. But what conservatives ignore is, they choose to ignore, is that if our culture is so much better, which it is, why are we afraid of their bad culture? Why can't we just get them to convert to ours? And maybe the first generation more. Maybe the first generation, they'll have their culture. They'll have their music. They'll have their food. They'll have their attitudes. Maybe make a law that the first generation immigrants can never vote. But why should the second generation have that culture? If we truly believe that our culture is superior, if we truly believe that our culture is right, good, virtuous, noble, why don't we embrace them into the melting pot? Why don't we make them part of the melting pot? Why don't we teach them our culture? Well, we don't because of multiculturalism. But who invented multiculturalism? Was it immigrants or was it Americans? Who are the lefties who undermine America? Who are the lefties who teach that America is a bad country, that American culture is bad? Who? Immigrants? No, Americans. So why are you blaming the immigrants? Why don't we assimilate? Why don't we demand assimilation? Why don't we expect assimilation? I've spoken about this many times. You know, when I was sworn in as an American citizen, in 2003, George Bush was president, and he comes up on the big screen in this hall with thousands of people swearing their allegiance to America as new citizens. And he tells us we should embrace our old culture, we should teach our kids about our old culture. And what I'm thinking is, no, the reason I came to America was I don't want that old culture. Yeah, it's all about the Democratic Party. I mean, you guys, the tribalism is unbelievable. I'm not talking about political parties. Talk about reality, facts, logic. This is George Bush, Republican, who told me to embrace my old culture, told the thousands of people in the hall with me to embrace their old culture and teach their kids about it and not forget about it. And I'm going the exact opposite. You should demand that we assimilate. But imagine a world, would you agree? We'll skip that. All right. What did I want to... Okay, so culture, I believe American culture is strong enough to integrate and assimilate any culture thrown at it. Any culture thrown at it. If we're not, then it's our problem and we should get our act together. It's time to get our act together. Finally, and this was Leonard's objection, voting. Immigrants come here and they vote Democratic. And the Democrats are turning this country into a disaster. And I think the mistake there is empirical. One, most immigrants don't vote. Very few immigrants actually vote, actually go out and vote. Second, they vote Democratic for a reason. And that is because Republicans are anti-immigrants. Violently anti-immigrants. So why would they vote for somebody who's anti-them? Third, how about we pass a law that says that first generation immigrants can't become, can't vote? Would you then allow them in? Would you then allow them in? Finally, the answer is none of the above. The answer to immigration is individual rights. The only, the only job of government is to protect rights. The only job of government is to protect us from people who would violate our rights. If somebody's coming to America to work, if somebody's coming to America to take care of their life, to take care of their kids, whatever, they're not coming here to be a criminal or a terrorist. Then how is it your business? How has the government got to say in who should come and who should not? Where's the government's role? Where's the violation of rights by somebody coming here and taking your job? If you're not a right to a job, if you've got a question on Muslim immigration, ask it. So the only role of government is to protect our rights. So it should protect us from potential criminals, terrorists coming into this country. But beyond that, why is it the government's business? There's a super chat feature. You can ask a question in a super chat feature just like everybody else. Beyond that, what is the government's responsibility? If I want to go and hire a bunch of Mexicans to come and work in my factory and I take a pickup truck and drive down to Mexico and bring them up, why is it anybody's business? How is that hurting my neighbor? And if I don't allow them to vote, well, voting shouldn't be able to negate rights, but it does today. But that's again not the fault of immigrants. It's the fault of Americans. They instituted those laws. So let's see if we've got some immigration questions. Do you believe your views on immigration are the most individualistic? And don't you think Latin America has a problem with collectivistic ideology? Yes, Latin America is horrifically collectivist. But the better people in Latin America, the individualists among the Latin Americans are willing to risk their lives, are willing to travel thousands of miles to come and work in the United States. Yeah, you know, this is what I used to get. Here's somebody really smart. He got on my chat and he says, your analysis is superficial, Mr. Book. Well, why? Show me where it's wrong. Show me where it's wrong. Show me where it's wrong. Don't tell me it's superficial. Show me the depth. Because I can take this very deep. I can do a three-hour show on immigration. I have answered every question anybody's ever asked me about this. I can give you facts. I can give you the empirical data. I can give you the studies. I've read the books. Where? Where is this depth that I'm missing? Show me. There's a super chat feature. You can challenge me. So it's the better people who come here. And again, it's a cultural issue. The first generation might have a difficulty with the individualistic approach. But if we have decent education in this country, if we have a decent culture in this country, they assimilate and they become more individualistic. Just like when the Irish and the Italians came to this country in the 19th century, they hated each other's guts. And over time, they assimilated. They became Americans. And the Irish didn't care that the Italian was an Italian. The Italian didn't care that the Irish was Irish. And that's the ideal. The ideal is everybody treats each other as an individual. But Latin America screwed up because of its collectivistic culture. Let's give them a way out. Let's give them an escape valve. Come to America. Thank you for fighting the racist on both sides. Taking a vacation August 1st and thinking about Puerto Rico, do you recommend? Yes, absolutely. Yeah, maybe write to me at your on at your on bookshow.com rather than take up the podcast time. What about refugees? What should be the government's role in a matter of refugees? None. The government's role should be none with regards to immigrants. Somebody wants to come here. In an ideal situation, as long as they're not a threat, then they can come. They don't get help from the American government. The American government doesn't subsidize their travel. The American government doesn't give them housing. It doesn't hand them a check. Come get a job. If you don't have a job, stop. Or get private charity. But the government should have no role in refugees in the sense of promoting them, supporting them, bringing them to the country, and so on. We're not a charity. We're not an altruistic outreach program. And because you guys worry about welfare and all these other things, I've suggested an intermediate plan without open borders, where we only accept people into the United States who have jobs. That is, they have to show that some American is willing to hire them, with no restrictions otherwise. And then they get a five-year visa, which is renewed as long as they get a job. They can never vote, but they can live in the United States as long as they have a job. How about that? That's what I proposed into a step before we get open borders. I'm still waiting for some of your challenges, but you see they're too cowardly to actually put them in bold so I can see them. They just say, oh, Iran is superficial, but where's the question? Where's the deep question? To show how superficial I am. Iran, you said it best before. We want everybody to bring the best ideas and practices from their culture and leave the garbage behind. Yes, and part of how they leave the garbage behind is that we teach them to leave the garbage behind. We identify the garbage for them and said, that's unacceptable in America. All right, let's see. Does immigration remain beneficial in a welfare state where incentives to change culture in line with productive values are removed? No, a welfare state is unbelievably corrupting, evil and bad. Let's fight the welfare state. There's no reason to fight immigration. Let's fight the welfare state. And my proposal about allowing anybody in with a job should reduce your concern about the welfare state because they won't need welfare because they'll have a job. So again, don't allow people in completely openly but allow anybody in who has a job. Not a job that an American won't do, but any job. Somebody's willing to hire this person for an ex-salary and let's say a living wage just so they don't get tempted by food stamps. Then they get a job. How about that? A living wage for them, by the way, not a living wage for an American. Ban immigrants from getting welfare for their life. There are lots of ways you can deal with a welfare issue. Make welfare illegal for immigrants. But you see, most people are not really interested in that idea because most people just don't want immigrants. They don't like immigrants because they're xenophobes and they're racist or because they have the nationalists, whatever the hell that means. Or because they have some collectivistic reason not to want immigrants. I don't see that. Let's see. Frank asked a question about Grover Cleveland. I'm not going to answer it now. It's not on topic. I don't know the answer to your question because I don't know the details of what you're referring to. I'll research it and get back to you. What do you think about dual citizenship? Is it good, bad, and principle in practice? Does it present any problems, positives? I don't think so. I think the only time that it can present a problem is when you have dual citizenship the two countries are enemies of one another and then they should make you choose. So as long as they're allies, as long as they're generally, there's no conflict between the two countries, dual citizenship should not be a problem. It's only when they're antagonistic to one another, there's a real issue, then I think it's legitimate for them to say, you can be a citizen of the United States and the Soviet Union. We're pretty much at war here. You have to choose. Let's see, disregard my earlier question, joining late. Is there a downside to only allowing highly skilled immigrants, doctors, engineers, and not allowing immigrants to have larger... Yeah, absolutely. And that is that the jobs, the lower skilled jobs don't get done or that the cost of those lower skilled activities goes up which reduces our standard of living. It goes up artificially. So... And, you know, you're missing a lot of activity. I believe that low skilled immigrants create jobs for low skilled Americans. Yeah, you know, I'm sure lots of people who run, I don't know, businesses in California are illegal immigrants who came in low skilled, entrepreneurial, developed a business, and now some of the employees are Americans. So I think... I don't think there should be a bias for any particular type of business. It should be anybody with a job. One thing that drives me crazy is when people say I'm not against legal immigration. Well, if the immigration laws are irrational and just, why does it matter if it's illegal? Absolutely. And why aren't you advocating for rational legal immigrants' immigration which is much more open? Indeed, the opposite. The people who are against illegal immigration are always against more restrictive legal immigration laws. Do you know of an essay or other reference that compares the philosophies of Kant and Rand thanks to the high frequency of shows? Not directly, no. I mean, Ein Rand talked about Kant, but I don't know anybody who kind of third party who does that analysis. You might want to look at the companion to Ein Rand's studies that Greg Salamieri is one of the editors of. It might have something about Kant in there. Maybe, I seem to recall that Jason Rines, an objective philosopher, has an analysis of Kant versus Rand. And of course, Leonard Peacock does. I'm pretty sure in his dim hypothesis lectures, he has an analysis of Kant versus Rand. Okay, so I gave you a few sources there. What would border control's job be in an open borders? It would be to make sure the terrorists don't come in. It would make sure that enemy combatants, enemy citizens don't come in. So you could ban immigration from certain countries if they were an enemy of yours. Like you don't bring in Germans during World War II. But, so that would be their job. Make sure criminals don't come in through the border. And the other job is to make sure people carrying infectious diseases don't come in. So infectious diseases, criminals, and the third category would be enemies of the state. So terrorists, or spies, or just citizens of an enemy country. That's their job. I'll keep the question about Grover Cleveland for another time. I agree with you in immigration. My main concern is the consequence of opening the border while we have a large welfare state. I talked about that, so we've talked about that quite a bit. Do you think the fervor against immigration is driven by xenophobia? Yes, the logic degree. And by nationalism. And by false economics. The idea of zero-sum economics and the idea that I have a right to a job. So socialist economics. The whole idea of a right to a job is big. I hear it all the time on Facebook. But they'll take American jobs. There's no such thing as an American job. There's a job that an entrepreneur created. Jack writes, my dad immigrated here in the 60s. He had to be sponsored and was tested on American history. Do you think that should be done still? Yes. So, well, I think there are two different things. Two different things. I've said this. And some objectivists don't agree with me, but I think this. And this is a way, by the way, to solve the voting problem. I think it should be very, very easy to come to America and work in America. I think it should be very, very difficult to become a citizen. Citizen gives you voting rights. Citizens gives you all kinds of protections that noncitizens do not have. For that, you should really know the American system of government. You should really understand the system of values of America. Not the philosophy. Not whether you're pro or against particular points of view. But you should understand the philosophical foundations of America. In a sense of rights. Not that you agree with them necessarily. Because the government should be in the business of testing you on your ideas. It should be in the business of testing your knowledge about the country. And only people who pass that test should become citizens and vote and so on. By the way, I think we should consider having that test for natural born Americans before they vote. So maybe we can make it so that you cannot vote unless you pass the test. That would be interesting because why not have qualifications for people being able to test to vote. So I think citizenship voting is different than just living here. I think pretty much anybody should be able to live here. Few people should be able to vote. The test that they deploy now any fourth grade it could pass. It should be a serious test, a difficult test. A test that really challenged you. And that should be a test for citizenship. But not for work. I did the test. I went through the whole process. I'm an immigrant. As most of us, you know, many of us in Objectivism, you know, whether it's Leonard Peacock, he's Canadian. Uncle Gathe is Canadian. Ilangino is, I guess, Israeli, French. Yeah, a lot of Keith Lockheedge is Canadian. A lot of Canadians in Objectivism. But a lot of immigrants. John Rittbeth, of course, was, so a lot of immigrants are great for Canada. You know, the better Canadians come to America, generally. I just insulted a bunch of my listeners who stayed in Canada. And of course, of course, Iron Man was an immigrant. John Rittbeth never immigrated to the United States. He stayed in Canada. What we need today, what I call the new intellectual, would be any man or woman who is willing to think. Meaning, any man or woman who knows that man's life must be guided by reason, by the intellect. Not by feelings, wishes, whims or mystic revelations. Any man or woman who values his life and who does not want to give in to today's cult of despair, cynicism and impotence and does not intend to give up the world to the dark ages and to the role of the collectivist. Using the super chat, and I noticed yesterday when I appealed for support for the show, many of you stepped forward and actually supported the show for the first time. So I'll do it again. Maybe we'll get some more today. If you like what you're hearing, if you appreciate what I'm doing, then I appreciate your support. Those of you who don't yet support the show, please take this opportunity, go to Iranbrookshow.com slash support or go to subscribestart.com, Iranbrookshow and make a kind of a monthly contribution to keep this going. I'm not sure when the next...