 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Brookshow. Alright everybody, welcome to Iran Brookshow. We are back. You know, long time since we did one of these news roundups, we're back today, all of next week. We should be back on schedule at least until the end of July and I travel again. But that trip, I expect to do some shows so we should be relatively normal through the summer. Alright, let's see. We have a lot to talk about. Let me just say there was a lot of breaking news, interesting news, very positive news in some regards on the Supreme Court front. I'm not going to cover that today. What I'm going to do is get an expert to come in and talk about this court, the last court term, talk about some of those cases, and give you a layout of all of them. So we'll do one of the longer shows on the Supreme Court and cover the cases from last week. We would have covered in the news roundup generally, but I think that is good anyway. This last week, as you know, I was at Ocon. Ocon was amazing. It was really, really good. So yeah, thank you for all of you who participated. I hope you had a great time. I think you did. It looked like you did. It seemed like you did. But yeah, lots of people from the radio show, like I don't know, half of the conference was like you on book show fans. So it was really terrific and it was really, really fun. And I hope all of you come next year. I mean, there's no excuses, right? Next year is in California. The weather will be better than in Florida. And it'll be another, I'm sure, fantastic, fantastic conference. So a lot of you were there for the first time. I hope this was the first time of many, many, many more conferences in the years to come. So yeah, start thinking about Anaheim next year, bring the kids, and take them to Disneyland. Disneyland will be literally in walking distance from the hotel. There's no humidity in California, so that won't be a problem. It was one of the biggest conferences we've had, certainly on the East Coast. I think it's probably the largest we've ever had on the East Coast. West Coast conferences tend to be larger. And there were almost 500 people there, about 500 people there. So it was really fantastic. And I expect next year, I'm pretty sure next year, will be quite a bit bigger than that, given that it's in California. All right, let's jump in. Ben and Jerry, Ben and Jerry Ice Cream. You know, Ben and Jerry Ice Cream, they're owned by Unilever, the European company that owns a lot of different brands. You probably don't know Unilever, but you know a lot of the brands that they own, food and other household items and so on. They're massive, a little bit like Procter & Gamble, is in the sense of the diverse products that they sell. Well, Ben and Jerry is the ice cream out of Vermont, and I don't know how many of you know, but Ben and Jerry have been committed hippies, leftists for way back, way back. We're talking about the 1990s, I remember, Ben and Jerry. Ben and Jerry were way leftists back then. They're still way leftists. And on the 4th of July, they did what Ben and Jerry do. Nothing here surprises. They wrote, this 4th of July, it's high time we recognize that the U.S. exists on stolen indigenous land and commit to returning it. Learn more and take action now, and they give you a link to a Ben and Jerry website that basically articulates the story of the different indigenous people, and they particularly highlight the Mount Rushmore, where we've got the statues of four presidents, and they say, you know, this belongs to the, you know, Tunka, Sali, Skape, whatever, the six grandfathers, Sioux Nation, and we should be returning it to them. So they are generally, and then, of course, I saw some posts saying, hey, Ben and Jerry, are you returning some of your stores that are on so-called native land or the factory in Vermont, which is on so-called native land? You know, so they make a big deal out of the back hills and about, and they, you know, they keep, so the whole story is really about Mount Rushmore, but generally, give back the land. Give back the land. And of course, Wangui media went up a plaque take and they've announced a boycott of Ben and Jerry and Unilever stock as of this morning is down significantly, which I don't, you know, we'll talk about it, but it's down significantly, because this is, as the Wangui media has defined it, this is Ben and Jerry's Bud Light moment. This is Bud Light, and we're going to see now Ben and Jerry sales tank, and we're going to see, we're going to see Unilever stock tank and so on. And I actually don't think so. I think this is way overplayed in terms of the stock price and even the boycott of Ben and Jerry. The reality is, and it tells you a lot about the right, I think, the reality is I've been boycotting Ben and Jerry literally, I mean, they have delicious ice cream. I've been boycotting Ben and Jerry since the mid-1990s. They were crazy leftist, socialist, advocating for horrible policies they would regularly be interviewed on TV. They were CEOs and therefore they got some prestige from that and therefore people took them seriously. And I said, I'm not giving these bastards money because they're advocating for philosophy and ideology that I oppose and this is the brand that the brand is affiliated, associated with the left, the worst elements within the left. And then if you, and then when they sold to Unilever, I said, ooh, maybe now I can buy Ben and Jerry ice cream. But then Unilever basically established a special board for Ben and Jerry to maintain their kind of corporate culture and to maintain their advocacy and their continued leftist agenda and policy. So I basically have not eaten Ben and Jerry since the mid-1990s. And yes, their ice cream I think does taste good, although I don't eat ice cream anymore. Anyway, it's probably way too sweet for me, but yeah, I'm sure at the time it was definitely a good tasting ice cream. But you know what? There are lots of good tasting ice creams. There's no shortage in great ice cream in America. You don't have to buy Ben and Jerry. And everybody's known their crazy leftists from way back, from decades ago, 90s, 30 years ago. So what do they say here? They set a standard leftist line about indigenous people and about their land and we stole their land. All right, is this going to, is this change my assessment of Ben and Jerry? No, I mean this is no different than anything else they've said in the past. They hate capitalism, they hate Israel, they hate everything. They are very woke, they're pro-woke, they've always been politically correct when politically correct was the term. So yeah, they said in front of July which is par for the course for them. I mean they used to come on television in the 90s a lot, just slamming markets and capitalism and COP and everything about corporations. So my view is they've always been leftists. Suddenly people have woken up because it was the 4th of July, give me a break. So that's why I don't think this is going to be the issue. If Ben and Jerry had sent something pro-trans or pro-LGBTQ+, which I'm sure they hold, they have those views and made a big deal out of it, then I think the boycott would hold because I think the boycott is primarily driven not by these crazy leftists, not even by woke stuff. I think it's really driven by LGBTQ. That's why the successful ones are being Bud Light and Target because of their LGBTQ stuff which I thought was pretty lame. Here's a company, here's how lame the right is. Here's a company that has dedicated all of its energy towards radical leftist, crazy ideas for 30 years. And the right's like, blah, who cares? Oh, now they suddenly wake up, but I don't think it's going to have any impact. Yeah, they've had rainbow flavors, they're huge pride and everything, but the whole corporate stick is crazy left from the beginning. And the right has ignored them basically, nobody's boycotted them. I'm sure all these TV hosts, they all eat Ben and Jerry ice cream because it tastes good. But one little thing that Bud Light does with Mulvaney or whatever his name is, a trans person or Target adding some stuff, it is so, so, so obviously LGBTQ is freaking the right out and it's a leverage point and it is their thing. And that's why I don't think this will have an impact because this is too generic left. This is too, they've always been like this. And again, I've been boycotting because I do believe in boycotting companies that commit their profits to a social ideology. I mean an extensive social ideology that I'm opposed, I wouldn't be boycotting Bud Light other than the BS sucks. And I don't boycott Target because the corporation is not dedicated to ideology, dedicated to an ideology I'm opposed to. Ben and Jerry's whole, all their profits or significant portion of the profits are dedicated to promoting ideology that I opposed from beginning to end. And I boycotted them and I think you should too and I think everybody should. I don't think this is going to have as much oomph on the right as Targeted and Bud Light because it doesn't have that trigger. The trigger is what? LGBTQ issues. It's the same if you watch my talk at Ocon. It's what Putin knows, right? Putin knows that the right in America is obsessed by this issue. So in every single speech, he talks about the decadent right. How is the decadent because of gays and because of LGBTQ stuff? And to a large extent the American right supports Putin because hey, he's on our side on the most important issue of the day, most important issue in the world today, which is LGBTQ. And because of that, because I should have ordered the topics differently. So because that is, because I, you know, we talked about that, let's put DeSantis. Let's get DeSantis. We'll skip in my head a little bit. So anyway, that's Ben and Jerry. DeSantis, I don't know, a couple of days ago put out an ad. You probably saw this. I don't know if you saw the video. I highly recommend watching the video to really get a good sense of what this is. What the uproar was. So he put out a video ad. I guess his pack put out a video ad. And the video ad basically is making the case that Trump is pro LGBTQ plus. Indeed, Trump says in this video that he would add a trans to his beauty contest, that he didn't care which bathroom Caitlyn Jenner used at the White House. And a bunch of stuff like that. Right. So the idea is Trump is, has embraced Pride Monty's embraced LGBTQ community. I, on the other hand, Ron DeSantis are tough on them. I am super tough on them. And if you watch the video, it's spooky. The imagery is spooky. It's weird. It is, so it starts off okay with Trump saying these things related to LGBTQ. But then when it tries to focus on DeSantis, it's got DeSantis like, it's very dramatic. It's got, he's got lightning coming out of his eyes. You know, he's got these big tough sounding laws that he's passed. He is going to clamp out of them. He is going to crush them. He is going to destroy them. And then you've got images of men, real men, men's men, you know, not to be mistaken. You know, none of those guys, God forbid, are LGBTQ. So you've got DeSantis, of course, in your uniform, with his military uniform on. They've got Christian Bale, an image of Christian Bale, a man's man. It's just they, they got it a little wrong, I think, maybe they intended this. But the image is from American Psycho, where he plays a serial killer. They've got Brad Pitt as Achilles. And then they've got an image of the lead character in Peaky Blinders, one of my recommended shows on gangsters. But the guy's a gangster, kills people. He actually, the Peaky Blinders specialize in actually cutting people's eyes out and making them blind. These are the images and everybody, all the other guys are guys, guys, right? This is a campaign that DeSantis is a nut. I mean, he really is. I was hopeful. I was hopeful. Anything but Trump. But this guy's dangerous. He is a complete nut. He's got all in on woke. He's got all in of this is the only issue that matters. He doesn't talk about anything else. He, you know, he's defended this video. And he says the video is there to identify Donald Trump as really being a pioneer in injecting gender ideology into the mainstream. He was having men compete against women in his beauty pageant. What chance did man have in winning the beauty pageant if they compete against men? Bring him on. It's not like sports. Here they clearly have a disadvantage, clearly massive disadvantage. I mean, God. So LGBTQ has turned into the only issue that seems to matter to Republicans right now. They're fighting over who's tougher about it. Donald Trump, of course, in the campaign trail is no longer pro or sympathetic or moderate around LGBTQ. He's all in on bashing them, attacking them. They are the big problem. They are the big problem. You know, they are anyway, so LGBTQ, that's it. That's all these people care about. So that is the big issue on the right. And I guess they're willing to die on that issue because I do think they'll die on that issue. I do not think that's an issue that wins them the presidency or wins them significant votes in states that could go either way. I don't think senators and congressmen, you know, this enhances them. I think there's weakens of a Republican party significantly, but that has run the Santas for you, the LGBTQ warrior. That is how he has presented himself. All right, one consequence of affirmative action going away is the universities now have to figure out how to admit students. They can't use race as a qualifier. They can't use it to keep out Asians, which is the primary thing they used it for. And they now have to find an alternative. Now, you could assume that the alternative would be something like, I don't know, merit, Tescos, quality of essay. But there is now a push to use a new tool, a powerful new tool to take in new students and to guarantee that there is I guess some form of diversity among those students coming in into our universities. This is a new guidelines that has been pioneered by the medical school at University of California, Davis. Shocking that this is in California. And the new tool is just in case you want to show on how, you know, the significance and power and influence of altruism in our culture. The new tool is called the adversity score. So students will be scored based on how much adversity they faced. And head of admissions, he says, look, mostly rich kids get to go to medical school. I want kids to face adversity. I wonder if rich kids can face adversity. And if rich kids who face adversity count, or is it only adversity faced by poor kids? So they say that this advantage scale has helped turn UC Davis, this is from a New York Times article, into one of the most diverse medical schools in the country. And this is a consequence of the fact that in 1996, California banned affirmative action. So they used diversity adversity scores to replace affirmative action. So now the more you suffer, the more you can show that you're poor or you struggle or whatever, the more likely you are to get into med school. If I ever go to a doctor's office and I say diploma on the wall that says you got a degree at UC Davis, I am leaving. I am walking out. I do not want a surgeon to cut me open or a doctor to advise me who got into medical school because of adversity. And who knows, maybe the grades they get are based on their adversity. I don't know. There's no guarantee of that. So this is really spooky, really spooky. And it truly is scary. Darren says, why are you in favor of the rainbow cult? I'm not. I just think the right is nuts about it. That's all. I'm not in favor of the subjectivism. I'm not in favor of the nuttiness. I'm not in favor of the nihilism expressed by many in the LGBTQ community and by some of the kind of behavior in pride events. But I also think the right is gone crazy over this. And I'm just pointing that out. You can be against some of the nuttiness of the LGBTQ community without endorsing the bigotry of Rondesantis. Call it what you want to call it to compete insanity and panic, real panic, moral panic of Matt Walsh and what's the other guy, the 1220 guy, and Rondesantis. You could hold two things at the same time. These guys are bad and these guys are crazy for freaking out. Anyway, 20 schools have recently requested more information about the adversity score and about to implement it. So you are now going to have people graduating from college admitting into college at least and maybe graded in college. I don't know. Now based on their ability, and the scariest one is medical school, right? The scariest one is medical school. We now have to research who goes to medical school and how they're graded so that we know, right? And all based on how much you suffered. Now adversity could be a factor. Overcoming adversity is certainly a strong manifestation of a certain character and it's not bad to be somebody who overcomes adversity and that could be a plus and certainly should be and can be a factor in making a decision. I mean, but hopefully test scores, ability, commitment, grades, you know, some other measures of first intelligence and second, just commitment to the field, you know, an ability to communicate. There are lots of things that you need in order to be a good doctor. And those are super, super important. Add to that some factor for adversity. Fine. I don't have a problem with that if it's focused on the character building the individual. The relationship, maybe the most important story, the most important story of the week was that a judge in the, you know, there's a lawsuit going on from several state attorney generals, again, the Biden administration claiming the Biden administration violated the First Amendment by putting pressure on social media in terms of what was being said in social media, in terms of the content that was being presented and so on. The Twitter files helped expose this, but this was filed well before the Twitter files. And this is something we all knew was going on. I mean, social media, like Zuckerberg admitted that this was going on. Everybody knew this was going on. Indeed, Twitter files revealed very little that was surprising and new. I always said it was censorship, but censorship of the government, not censorship of Twitter. Twitter didn't censor. The government censored Twitter. The violation here is the government vis-a-vis Twitter, not Twitter vis-a-vis you. So, and I always said that, blame the government. When everybody went after Twitter, when everybody went after Facebook, I said, don't go after them. They're the victims. So, I'm right again. Anyway, the judge orders the Biden officials to limit contact with social media companies. So, judges ruled. It's not Owen Boyle. You don't understand the character of Owen Boyle. And you have no understanding of the character of Owen Boyle if you think these people are in Boyle's. Or if you think that it's an equivalent case. You just don't understand what Owen Boyle was. And you don't understand what Twitter and Facebook were actually doing. Anyway, a judge has just ruled that the Biden administration policing social media, likely, he hasn't ruled that it violated, likely, violated the First Amendment. And, you know, so he's putting an injunction on the ability by officials to contact social media and to be in touch with social media. This is already manifesting itself in, like, the State Department has canceled the Facebook meeting because they're looking for guidance. They're worried about this. This is a Louisiana federal court. You know, the story, of course, is a Louisiana federal court orders upending efforts to guard against 2024 election interference as if that is the issue. And again, they say likely. So let's see what happens. I hope that this ruling holds. If there's election interference, I have no problem with election interference. It's your responsibility as a consumer to figure out, you know, what's good or bad for you, what's right or wrong for you. It's not an issue for the government to decide these things for us. We need to decide it. The way that election interference is going on, and it is, there's no question that the Russians, and to some extent the Chinese, but the Russians just much better at this, interfered in the 2016 and 2020 elections to varying levels of success or lack of success. Let's see how this goes. It seems to be working. So the government has no business in meeting with social media. They can provide social media with information. I don't know about intelligence information, about known hacker or known misinformation farms coming out of China or coming out of Russia, but they need to leave it alone other than that. They have no business, no business telling social media what to include and what to not include. And as long as that is the idea, as long as this is really about censorship by the government, as long as the idea is the separation of government from social media. And that should always be, always be the case, right? Should always be the case, separation of government from social media, separation of government from the internet, more broadly. The government's only job on the internet is to protect it from, you know, foreign hackers from people doing criminal activity from overseas. So this is good. We'll keep following this story and see how it develops. I wouldn't be surprised if this case goes to the Supreme Court. And yeah, I think it's going to be an important, super important decision with regard to protection of free speech in the future. And the protection, by the way, of the social media companies free speech. Not, right? They're the ones whose rights are violated. Not me, not you. Social media, their rights are violated because they should be able to decide whether to accept what you say or not accept what you say at their discretion, not at the governments. So it's not about what social media did to you. It's about what the government did to social media. And if that's the focus, this could be a really, really important ruling ultimately. All right. Finally, quickly on France, we've got riots in France that have been horrific. I mean, you know, again, poor people burning down their own neighborhoods is kind of sad to see. But these riots have been horrific. I think it's six, seven days in a row. And all is a consequence of the fact that police killed a 17-year-old who, I guess, was refusing to stop and seemed to be escaping a scene and they shot at him and killed him. And now we've got, you know, we've got massive riots there primarily by North Africans, primarily by the Muslims in the outer wing of Paris, Marseilles and other places. And one of the things to note here is that this is, I think, to a large extent, a consequence of the ongoing frustration within these communities or the ongoing failure within these communities to integrate them into French society. These neighborhoods and neighborhoods that the French police won't even go into. What crimes are committed and the French police do nothing. What people call the police and the police don't come. You want anarchy? You believe in a so-called pretend and alcohol capitalism? These neighborhoods have anarchy. And as a consequence, people are afraid to leave their homes. The gangs run them. There is violence everywhere. It is horrific and people are super frustrated and super upset. So the no-go zones, same thing as Sweden, when you have no-go zones, when you refuse to bring the rule of law to certain communities, you are guaranteeing more crime. You are guaranteeing more lawlessness. You're guaranteeing, you know, more violence. And that's what we're seeing. We're seeing the failure of the French police, the French government, to bring the rule of law to these neighborhoods. They want immigrants, come over, but then they stick them in these neighborhoods and they pretend they don't exist and they lead violent gangs and Islamist terrorists control these neighborhoods. So I don't think... Now this is not growing pains of immigration. To the contrary. You don't see this in the United States because the United States doesn't allow for no-go zones. It's not that ethnic groups don't cluster. They do. But in the United States, we apply the law everywhere, or at least try to, or aspire to. And ultimately, ultimately, we expect people to assimilate. Not, we don't do it as well as we used to. And yeah, when the Italians came, we had a mafia, and when the Irish came, we had the Irish mafia, and when the Jews came, we had the Jewish mafia. So violence, unfortunately, is associated to some extent with immigration, but all of that could be dealt with, was limited in scope because we didn't just ignore it. We fought it. Unless the fence starts bringing the rule of law into these neighborhoods, same thing in Sweden, they will only have more and more and more trouble and more and more and more violence. So it's worth watching, seeing how this develops, seeing how this evolves. But it's tragic. It's tragic for everybody. It's tragic for the innocent French bystanders. It's tragic for the people in these neighborhoods who are not actually via, who are not part of these gangs or not participating in it. They're destroying their own neighborhoods. But it's tragic also for the young kids there who don't have a life because the French authorities have completely abandoned them to the gangs. Sorry, I'm still not sure about that. We'll see. I'll try to go over all of them. These are supposed to be my short programs. This is going to be a long one. We've also raised money more closer to the 650 goals. So let's institutionalize that. We're only $100 short of the 650 goal. So we've blown through the $250 goal. So thank you to everybody. Let's start with $200 questions. One by James. James says, thank you for all your hard work and insight. I look forward to becoming a monthly supporter. It appears more bankruptcies now for businesses than 2020. Therefore, how do small businesses compete with big businesses with government support? Also sending a new finance video. So yes, I mean, this is going to be it already is. And it's going to be a very difficult period for businesses. And it's going to be a difficult period for small businesses and mid-sized businesses, more so than large businesses that the government always seems to come in and bail out. Although there is also, it's going to be, if there's a recession, it's going to hit big businesses as well. Sorry, I'm still not sure about that. Whether we go into a session or we just enter this period, which I think we've already entered or entered 15 years ago, of just permanent stagnation or slow economic growth. I think it's horrible and it's very difficult for small businesses. Regulations generally hurt small businesses and what do you call it? And support. Why is Siri going off? I didn't hear Siri. Where's Siri? Siri is disrupting the show. Where? Siri is, huh. Still, you can still hear Siri. I don't even, I'm not even wearing my watch. It's not on my, oh, there she is. Okay. There's Siri. Sorry, I'm still not sure about that. Siri, go away. All right. I don't, well, I don't want to mention either one of their names so that they don't start up again. What were we talking about? We were talking about small businesses. I mean, small businesses struggle because of regulations, because of taxes, the complexity of taxes. The more complex, the more you have to pay to accountants. Regulations, eat up a huge amount of money. All these things are fixed costs that a small business can't really afford. Big businesses can. The system as it exists today in the United States, without question, favors large businesses over small. Large businesses are more likely to get a bailout, more likely to get subsidies. They favor large businesses over small, and that is unbelievably, unbelievably destructive to the U.S. economy, destructive to what makes the U.S. economy so vibrant and dynamic. And yet as bad as things are, I keep saying this, it's pretty amazing that the U.S. economy is doing as well as it is, given how many bad things are going on. Michael, $500. Thank you, Michael. A federal judge has ruled that the Biden administration likely violated the First Amendment by censoring unfavorable views on social media, calling it a well-earned and issued a preliminary injunction. Will the courts bias more time than technological progress? There's no question that the courts on certain issues are probably going to bias a lot of time. They've robbed many, many women of time with a ruling against abortion. So women have not bought time. Women are being sacrificed in the altar of the right, and this court did it. But this court is also favorable towards certain aspects of economic liberty, and some of the other courts are too, and we'll see what happens when this goes to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court has been favorable to free speech for a few decades now. We got a lot of very positive free speech rulings in the Supreme Court. And the courts generally still try at least to uphold the Constitution, at least reference the Constitution. And as such, yes, they are buying us time, and that time bought is time for us to advocate for the proper ideas, time for us to try to move the world in a sustainable pro-freedom direction and not case-by-case once in a while the court does this or that. And of course, every time the court does that, the legislature can probably find ways around it by passing irrational laws. All right, Hopper Campbell. Is one of the reasons Asian countries have such a low crime and obesity problems because they have very strong shame cultures, intense feelings of shame preventing individual acting out. Isn't reason better than shame, but shame is better than nihilism? Well, shame is probably better than nihilism, but I don't know, what is shame? If you steal something and get away with it, how are people going to shame you? You feel guilty, so they have maybe strong guilt cultures in a sense that people feel guilty. But I think they generally have the positives and negatives to Asian cultures in this sense. For example, one of the negatives is the rule followers. They are law followers, so if the law says don't do acts, they don't do acts. Not because they have understanding, not because they really understand the morality of it, not because they have a greater respect for property rights. It's because, I don't think it's a shame, it's just, it's like when I was, I think I told you this at the time, when I was in, last year when I was in Korea and Japan, and this is September of last year, right? Everybody was wearing masks, indoors and outdoors, everybody. It wasn't even required, but certainly not outdoors. But kind of the social rule was everybody should wear a mask, so nobody wanted to look different, nobody wanted to challenge the consensus, and therefore they didn't wear masks. So I think it's more collectivism and it's more collectivism, it's more this idea of following the rules, conformity, conformity is the right word. And that's not a good thing, it's not a good thing. You know, one of the reasons you have high-acquiring in the U.S. is that people have more ambition and finding more ways to manifest that. They are less conformist, they'll do stuff even though it's not acceptable to do. I think there's a bunch of different things like that that cause, that part of our culture, it's not individualism, but it's kind of a non-conformist, which is not individualistic. Non-conformist doesn't mean it's egoistic, but there's a non-conformist in America, they're not standards, and shame is part of that, shame is part of it. You are shamed if you don't conform. But it's internalized, it's not external. So is that better than nihilism? Sure, but it's not good, it's very bad. Alright, laboratory else says, it's good to see a show again. You mentioned that a soul is something that you have to build yourself. Can you elaborate on that further? Yeah, I mean, there's an excellent article by Ankar Ghatay about this. Iron Rand, of course, talks about this, but Ankar has a whole article about this in the companion to Iron Rand, the book that Alan Godhelf and Greg Salmieri edited. The next little article that really goes into detail on this and what it really means. But in short, your soul is basically the product of the choices you have made. It is a product of the values that you pursue, and those values are a consequence of a choice. The values that you have chosen. Now it could be that you don't make those choices. You just accept the values that the society has given you. You just conform, you just meld in, you don't spend too much thinking. And then you don't really have a soul. It's just a mishmash of stuff in there. To really have a soul, I think a soul is an integrated set of values, an integrated set of choices that shape you. And by doing so, your emotions and your reason and your thinking are in sync. One value builds on another, they're not crashing, they're not in conflict, all guided by reason. And that's the process by which you build a soul. You choose your values carefully. You make sure they're not in conflict. If they are in conflict, you resolve it by using reason. This helps over time shape your emotional state, which then again feeds into your values. And you're constantly thinking and you're constantly building and you're constantly shaping. And that's a person with a soul. I think most people out there don't have a soul in that sense, because it's just a mishmash of stuff. And it's time to lean conflict. This is why there's so much unhappiness. This is why people are miserable. This explains much of the problems that we see in the world. This is the people who haven't taken responsibility. And this is the deepest sense of personal responsibility. The deepest sense of personal responsibility is you're responsible for your own soul. You're responsible for your own being, for you, for what you are and who you are. You're responsible for building a soul. I might have on-course sometimes, come on and just talk about that essay and what it means, because it's really profound and really important. Amir Katz says, As a consumer, I usually tolerate leftist cringe until it comes to Israel. Not gonna lie, I miss their ice cream. I eat it whenever I'm in Israel as the local branches owned by a different company. Yeah, it is now. I just don't eat their ice cream. Israel was one of the issues, but it wasn't a primary one for me. For me, it was all the anti-capitalist, I mean explicitly, wasn't just a throwaway here and a throwaway there, corporate social responsibility or some meaningless statement. No, it was constant stream of propaganda coming out of Ben and Jerry's to undermine capitalism everywhere. James, from your view, which of the following no income states are on the right path for growth in the next decade? Besides Texas and Florida, the other states are Arkansas, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Washington and Wyoming. Any states on your list to live besides California? Let's see. I mean, if we go from the end, I mean, Washington might not have income tax, but it is strongly leftist, so in every other respect, it's leftist. I don't know how it ranks in terms of regulation. It also rains a lot in Washington. I mean, I wouldn't mind living in Seattle for three months a year, basically June, July, August or something like that, maybe September, maybe four months a year, but that's about it. Tennessee seems like a nice place to live and certainly in the right direction. Wyoming is kind of the middle of nowhere and super cold in the winter, but relative sanity, I guess, in terms of regulations and taxes. South Dakota, probably the same, but again, super cold and hard to live, very harsh. New Hampshire is probably a growing state. It's not far from Massachusetts where there's a lot going on. It has low regulations. It has low taxes, as you've said. Nevada, you know, probably Nevada is desert hot in the winter, hot in the summer, cold in the winter. But if you like the desert, an amazing place to live and you pay no taxes and relatively low regulations. Arkansas is an amazing place. AK is Arkansas, right? I didn't know they didn't have taxes or state income taxes, but Arkansas is generally a good place to live. It's got good weather. It's booming, Northwest Arkansas is booming. Very, very dynamic environment. Oh, so, so AK is Alaska, so forget Arkansas. Alaska, I mean, Alaska's not going to grow. It's too cold. Yeah, thanks, Jennifer. Yeah, AK, yes, AR is Arkansas. So Alaska's not going to grow fast. I mean, it's too cold. To hell with taxes, it's just too cold. How can you live there? So of those, probably the most habitable is Tennessee and New Hampshire. But the others will attract population. People will move there because of the low taxes and the low regulations and the beautiful scenery of Wyoming and so on. So, again, pluses and minuses. Are there any states on my list besides California? I don't know. I can't live in the south. Much of the south, not all of the south, much of the south. I find it too Christian. I find it too Christian and too, I don't know, too Christian, I guess is a good way of putting it. And so New Hampshire's too cold. Nevada's too hot. Maybe Tennessee would be on my list. Texas is on my list. I mean, again, I wish I could live in Washington or even Oregon. Beautiful, beautiful places, but too much rain. So, you know, not many, not many lists. The Bible Belt is out. The only place in Texas I would probably live is Austin, maybe Dallas if I had to, but I wouldn't live anywhere else. So, yeah, it's difficult. You know, the reality is California is in terms of many things among the best places in the world to live, other than the regulation and the taxes. Shahzad, have you heard about the cocaine found in the White House? I have. It's not mine. I haven't been to the White House. No, I mean, nobody knows who's it is. They probably will never find out who's it is. I don't really care that much about who's it is. You know, the culture in Washington D.C. is, you know, do politicians and the aides and others in government do a lot of drugs? Probably. Recreational drugs? Probably. Certainly, there's a lot of drugs in Wall Street. There's a lot of drugs in Silicon Valley. And I'm pretty sure there's a lot of drugs in Washington D.C. Is it Hunder Biden's? Maybe, but it could be, as I've told you, Hunder Biden's behavior on all fronts is not the exception. It tends to be the rule of, in these kind of families and particularly in D.C. So it doesn't surprise me at all. It so not surprised me that I didn't think it was newsworthy. Laboratory L, the opposition to the LGBTQWTF goes far beyond the right at this point with some of the old far left feminists being very vocal about it. This is an issue that even old school leftists agree is BS. Yes, I agree. I mean, I'm a big supporter on this issue of J.K. Wallace. I do think that there is a real issue here. I just think the right is irrationally nutty about it. They go berserk about it. And it seems like these days the only issue they really care about. And that I think is bizarre and weird. But yeah, there's a real legitimate issue. I'm not a fan of the nutty LGBTQ plus whatever. Once you get, what do you call it, gay marriage, you're mostly done. You're mostly done. And culturally, a culture where we don't discriminate against gays, then you're mostly done with those issues. You don't want to treat people with these problems, the various trans issues. You don't want to treat them badly. But that doesn't mean they have to be elevated in a pedestal and made the model for humanity. There's something very abnormal about them and that needs to be recognized. And I think for many of them, real psychological problems and that should not be normalized. They need help. I feel sorry for them more than anything else. I am male cats. Hey, Iran, do you support building a great, big, beautiful wall between the government and social media? Yes, absolutely. I'm a big wall guy. I love walls. I do believe in building walls, just not on borders. I'm a big supporter of a wall of separation between church and state, religion and state, ideas and state, education and state, social media and state. Science and state, and we could go on. Those walls are beautiful walls. Beautiful walls. And we can make them a digital wall. It doesn't have to be even a real wall. It'll be a lot cheaper. It won't have to spend a lot of government resources on it. Let's just make it a digital wall. Dave, thank you, Dave. It used to be people would read Iran and then discover your show. Now people are discovering you first and then exploring Iran's work. Keep up the consistency. It's working. Yeah, I think that's right. I met a lot of people. I met a lot of people at Okon who told me they discovered objectivism because of my show. So, wow. I mean, I am excited by that, motivated by that for all of the people who came up to me during Okon and talked and described their path and thank you for coming up. Thank you for talking. You know, sometimes I'm rushed. Sometimes I seem distracted because there's so many things going on. But I just want to reassure all of you and really say thank you and that I really do enjoy those conversations, enjoy hearing from you and please don't stop letting me know and please don't stop coming and saying thank you or just saying hello at Okon. Hiram, believe it or not, almost every ethnicity on earth has had some kind of organized crime and their own nickname for it. No kidding. Italians and mafia's popular culture is mostly due to romanticism. Yeah. And even, you know, yes. And it's been kind of institutionalized into movies, right? And the particular movies that represent it. But there are certain ethnic groups that are associated with, with, you know, more organized crime than others. But whether that is a reality or not is dubious because as you say, every country has its organized crime. Every single one of them. Right. Jacob says hello from Norway. Hi, Jacob. Great to see you. Where to? Good contingency from Norway? Where to even, I think, bigger contingency from the Netherlands? It was a very international group. Mexico, Argentina, Brazil. It was very international group. So Europeans, it was just a lot of Israelis, as always. Steven says, I had a great time at Okon. It was nice to meet you again. Absolutely. Thank you, Steven. Robert Nasir. Nasir. I've been working on it. Okon 2023 was epic. The talks were powerful and personal, personally applicable. Attendees and presenters were approachable, pleasant, fun. See you all in Anaheim. Yeah. Let's go Anaheim. Roland said, unfortunately, I missed out on Okon this year, but I'm already looking forward to next year's one. Hope to see you there. Liam says, thoughts funny in his closing remarks that Okon said, we're trying to create Heaven on Earth. Is this the right formulation, given that most dystopian movement claims to bring about Heaven on Earth? It's okay. I mean, you're right, in a sense. I wouldn't have used those terms, but it captures everybody in the context. It's capturing the context. The context is that we're trying to create this amazing place on Earth. We're trying to bring moral perfection and moral ideal to Earth. Liam says, the interview with Yomni Park was amazing. Is she an objectivist? I don't think she's an objectivist. She's certainly sympathetic. She's read a lot, a lot of Iran. And she was very good as always. I am working on having on the Iran book show. So I got permission to email her and to try to coordinate an appearance on the Iran book show. So I'm hoping to have Iran in the next few weeks, months. But yes, Yomni Park is on my list of people to bring on for an interview. So that'll be a lot of fun and I think it will be really interesting. So you can look forward to that. All right. Kana says, Kemi Badanak. Yeah, my favorite British politician, I thought. As business secretary canceled the plans to remove all EU regulations, she defended the move by saying I'm a conservative, not an arsonist. So much for being the next Margaret Thatcher. Yeah, it's sad. Remember, Margaret Thatcher got rid of very few regulations? Reality. I mean, she did privatize a bunch of stuff. She did do some regulatory vote. But look, the thing is not to get rid of all EU regulations all at once. And it was a stupid promise to begin with. What Kemi and what the conservatives should do is have a plan, a three-year plan, a four-year plan, a two-year plan, whatever. Here are the regulations and here how are we going to get rid of them? And so everybody knows, the businesses knows, individuals knows, we need a transition, but we need to explicit and we need it fast. And that's what they claim they're going to put together. But, you know, yeah, I mean, I'm saddened, but the reality of politics in England is such that even if you are the next Margaret Thatcher, you probably can't win and you probably can't get the stuff you want to get done done. Hopper Campbell, in a free society, if someone doesn't voluntarily pay their taxes, could he be denied a public defender if he goes to court? Yes, I mean, there are a lot of things that can be done. Could be denied a public defender if they decide if there's going to be public defenders in a laissez-faire country. I'm not sure they would be, but if they are, you know, he could be denied the vote. You know, voting is not, you know, I don't think an essential, you know, you might have to pay your taxes for four years, pay into the government for four years to be able to vote. I don't think that would be a violation of rights. James Taylor says Miami is humid and gross, but the infrastructure in Floridian cities is so much better than California. No, it's not. I mean, maybe the roads, but even the roads are terrible. God, Miami roads and traffic jams and all of that are unbelievable in Southern Florida. I don't know in what part, what part of the infrastructure is better in Florida than California? Maybe it is. I'm not saying it is. I just don't know where and how. I never had, other than the lack of roads, never had, and traffic jams, never had much of a problem with the California infrastructure. Andrew, adversity scores show how ideas trump the law. That's right. Egalitarianism and altruism will always find their way until we determine them as evil, as wrong, as morally wrong. The Godfather says besides open versus closed systems, what are other ongoing debates going on within objective circles? There is no debate going on about opening closed. There is no debate. There are people who advocate for dishonest position. That's not a debate. That's why I wouldn't have debated it. I don't think it's worth debating. There are lots of philosophical discussions. The split with Kelly, for example, is not over open or closed. The split was open, factorist was valued. But there are many, how to understand Ayn Rand on a particular epistemological point, there are dozens and dozens of different discussions and debates going on about different points about the philosophy itself and then about how to apply it. Could ARI create an Objectivism cable channel? I mean, why? Who would watch it? Objectivists? I mean, we need to get lots and lots of podcasts. That's the modern way to do it, not to do conventional TV. We don't have enough audience. When I have 5 million subscribers, then we can talk about it. Clark says, is left versus right socialism versus fascism? Oh really, it's fascism versus fascism. Well, it's two different things. I think socialism versus fascism is not bad, but in a sense fascism is a form of socialism. You know, they have also different manifestations in the control of our bedrooms, of our lives, social lives, not just over the economy. I mean, both are forms of collectivism. So left and right today are both forms of collectivism. How you label them depends on a specific context, the specific issues that a particular leftist or a particular right-wing raises. By the way, we're $1 short of the $650 goal. Pretty amazing. Johannes, I'm trying to grasp Rand's immortal robot example. If I was immortal, I'd imagine valuing pleasure, hedonism and curiosity, even though life is not the standard of value anymore. What am I missing? Well, but there is no value to pleasure outside of an evolutionary context in which pleasure is aimed towards life. That is, pleasure develops in order to encourage you to do the things that are pro-life for the most part, right? Nature sometimes fool you. So once the pleasure mechanism, once life is no longer the standard biologically, that is, you can't die. You're literally immortal. You can't die. You can't kill yourself. You can't be shot. You just can't die. Then that mechanism is unnecessary. And then for that mechanism, evolutionary, it goes away. So there is no meaning to pleasure outside of the idea of life as the standard. There's no purpose. So hedonism would be for what? You're enjoying something, but why are you enjoying it? Biologically, I don't think you would enjoy it. Yeah, and curiosity even more. Why be curious? What's the purpose of curiosity? What for? What would be the value gained by learning something new if your life is not the standard? Thank you to those of you who are putting in a dollar. We got four of you to get us over the top. Thanks. Andrew says, do you find LGBTQ issues once taboo, now boring? Prior chat, I'm not sure I made it, was that adversity scores. Yeah, I got that. I got the prior chat. I don't find it boring. I mean, some of them I think are challenging. I think how to deal with trans issue is challenging because there is, for some people, a biological element. There's certainly psychological elements, and I do think it's challenging. What I find is, and I've talked about this and I will talk more about this in the future, I find the right obsession around it revealing. They found a hook where their anti-pleasure, anti-life, anti-sex authoritarianism manifests itself. And I find that very revealing of the right and important to point out on the rights of people now. I mean, there is going to be an issue one day, 100 years from now, 1000 years from now. Will you be able to change your sex when we have a fuller understanding of all these things without any kind of bizarre surgery or without, and where things will be a lot more, I mean, as I said, you can create a human embryo with no man and no woman involved. You can create it from a skin cell. So there are going to be some interesting issues as we move forward about these kind of things. And I certainly think the right would like to kill that science and like to kill that progress because they can't handle it because of their Puritan kind of mentality. But that's way in the future. It's not relevant today. And I think generally we live in a super prudious society about sex and about a lot of things. That gets manifested in a lot of these attitudes, particularly on the right. And the left has this nihilism going, and that's what you see in terms of their attitude towards LGBTQ and there's really no rational position with regard to LGBTQ issues. The Godfather says, I know you don't like anime, but you love art. There is a new anime, Vampire in the Garden, that is about how art is a driver and mechanism to freedom. I thought you would give it a chance. I'll look it up, Vampire in the Garden. Michael says, why do you think Hispanics in America are only rich in Miami and poor in every other major city? Well, that's not true. None of that is true. I mean they're rich Hispanics everywhere. They're super rich Hispanics in Texas. They're super rich Hispanics in California. Everywhere we Hispanics are basically being there for a while and built up capital. They tend to be rich. They're very rich Hispanic families all over the United States. They're Hispanic individuals who are lawyers and doctors and entrepreneurs and CEOs. It's completely bizarre. A number of publicly traded companies are run by Hispanic CEOs. So it's silly to categorize things like that. I mean they're more wealthy in Miami because in Miami a lot of the Hispanics there are the wealthy of Latin America. They live part-time in Miami, part-time in whatever other country they are in. In Miami is the escape valve. Miami is the place where they can escape to. But that is not to diminish the fact that they are super rich Hispanics everywhere in the country. Is there any chance you could, Jeff says, is there any chance you could cover the current Canadian news story sometime about the confrontation between Trudeau and Google, Twitter and Facebook and fallout from Bill C-18 passing? I mean I covered it a little bit on one show with a guy on Facebook. I will check it out. I don't get kind of Canada doesn't jump out in my newsfeed. But I can certainly take a look at it and see. But I know Facebook, there was a real consequence of the Facebook but I don't know about the others. Michael says, we think of the Holocaust as an unequally evil event but the Dark Ages were 1,000 plus years of constant Holocaust. The Nazis would attempt to return man to the constant state of slaughter. Well, that's not how the Nazis viewed it. They just want to get rid of certain people so that they can manifest themselves as positives. And while the Dark Ages involved slaughter, it wasn't organized, mechanized, and the intent was not slaughter. There were wars and people killed each other and there were a lot of wars and there was a lot of killing and there was a lot of murder and there was a lot of crime. But there wasn't this industrialization of murder and the murder, the wiping out of a whole people. There was some pogroms on the Jews but the scale of the Holocaust is unique and the intent of the Holocaust I think is very much unique. There have been ethnic cleansing in the past. There has been the slaughter of a particular ethnic group in the past. I don't know that the Dark Ages are particularly a place where that happened more than others. Daniel says, Mark Andreessen was on Sam Harris podcast, great episode, can Mark be forgiven for his sins? Maybe, maybe. Yes, I mean, in this environment, yes, because we need all the voices we can to talk about AI. Midwest, the thoughts on child predators and the death penalty. I'm generally favor the death penalty when it's unequivocal. It's beyond just beyond a reasonable doubt. It's beyond any doubt. And that includes child predators, that includes murderers, it includes quite a bit but it really, the focus, it really has to be that you're not killing people who might be innocent. And we saw with DNA testing how many people in death row actually are innocent. So, child predators is one of the worst offenses possible. Yeah, I have no problem with the death penalty for certain people who do this, who are child predators. Apollo, Zeus, you were at the gym in Miami, what did you do? I basically had Tom from UK, who's a physical therapist and a trainer, just try to push me and push me and push me to my limit. He's great. If you need a personal trainer, you should use him. He also does advice Zoom and worked on strength, both upper body, lower body strength, lifted weights, used the machines, did a lot of that. All right, thank you everybody. We reached our 650 gold, which is terrific. There will be a show tomorrow at 3 p.m. East Coast time, and then next week we'll get back on our normal schedule, Monday through Friday, around 1 p.m. East Coast time, a news briefing, and then Tuesdays and Thursday in the evening, our usual show. And I can't remember if next Thursday I have an interview, but probably we're trying to get back on schedule in terms of interview, and I also have a show. Actually, I got a show sponsorship from Alex Epstein, so I will be doing a show that he asked me to do and a topic he asked that will probably be Tuesday. Oh, yes, I'm looking forward to this. On Thursday, the 13th, I will be interviewing Jim Lennox. Jim Lennox is a philosopher of science from the University of Pittsburgh, been involved in objectives of a very long time. He is, I think he's an emiratus, I think he's retired, but he's an expert on evolution and Darwin, and I want to talk to him about evolution, evolutionary psychology, and topics like that, so I think that one. Wow, I would definitely listen to that one. I'm really looking forward to that, because it's like, here's a world-class expert on something that I have a vague notion of what my critique of it is, and then, of course, evolution and Darwin. Amazing to have somebody who can really talk about that from a fully scientific slash philosophical perspective, so I'm looking forward to that. So those are the shows next week. I'll do the Alex Epstein one on Tuesday and Jim Lennox on Thursday. Alex is not on the show. He's just asked me to cover a particular topic relating to environmentalism that I will cover. I think he's using it to kind of get thinking about certain topics and get some ideas about it. All right, thank you, everybody. I will see you all tomorrow at 3 p.m. Have a great weekend. Have a great rest of your Friday. Bye.