 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Brookshow. All right, everybody. Welcome to Iran Brookshow. On this Thursday, December 21st, we did a show in Hebrew earlier. So if I slip once in a while and can't pronounce, can't think of words, it's because I'm still influenced by the Hebrew I spoke before. It's so much harder to speak Hebrew than it is English. God, English is so much easier. Anyway, a lot going on. Let's jump right into it. And as we speak, there is a breaking story out of Prague in the Czech Republic. I don't have a lot to say about this, but I figured I couldn't really do a new show without commenting on it. But it turns out a student at Charles University in Prague. Charles University is a fairly large university with 50,000, 60,000 students in Prague, but its buildings are all over the place. And this is, I think, in the humanities, social science building. He's a history student, and he came in with a gun and started shooting. At least 11 people are killed, including the gunman himself. Maybe more, I've seen as high as 15, really horrible. This is a building, I'm looking at pictures, a building I've walked by, passed in Hungary, in Prague, in the Czech Republic, one of the more beautiful cities in the world. I mean, it really, it's an Ardeco city. It's beautiful. It was not destroyed in World War II, so it preserved a lot of the buildings, the sculptures, the streets from the early part of the 20th century and late 19th century. And yeah, just it's sad. There's no real information. I think it's pretty clear. It seems clear. He's not a Muslim. It's not a, quote, terrorist attack. As far as we know, it's not clear what the motives were. He might have killed his father before he did this, so there might be more going on, but it is sad. And I've spoken at universities. I don't think I've ever spoken at Charles University, but I've spoken at universities in Prague. So horrible to see young people have to run for their lives like that. All right, I was going to start with this incredible positive story out of Argentina. I mean, I have been cautiously optimistic about Melee from the beginning. And I was a little worried, I have to admit, early on, because he seemed to be hiring for his cabinet, people who were more middle of the road than he was, less radical than he was. And I was worried about his willingness and ability. Well, I'm still worried about ability, but his willingness to be radical and to do what was necessary to truly liberate the economy and society more broadly, again, given that he was hiring and putting in cabinet positions people who I do not think necessarily shared his radicalism. But he gave a speech yesterday, and he listed his program for the next few days, which both executive orders and a legislative program, which was truly inspiring and much better than anything I would have expected, particularly the speech itself. The economic program we'll see, and a lot of this has to be approved by parliament, which is not going to be easy. But the speech was fantastic. He basically blamed Argentina's problems on decades of collectivism. He used that name. He used that term, collectivism. Collectivism was at fault. And what was needed was more individualism, was more focus on the individual, liberty and freedom. I mean, this was one of the most philosophical talks I've ever seen a politician give. It was inspiring. And he was surrounded by, I guess, cabinet ministers. He was reading. The talk was obviously had been prepared in writing, so he wasn't his usual crazy all over the place yelling and throwing things chainsaw style. This was a very presidential. And the press doesn't know what to do with him. First of all, almost all the reports and the speech only deal with the changes in economic policy. They don't talk about the content of the speech, the philosophical context of the speech, or anything like that. The focus is exclusively on the program. They've stopped, interestingly enough, most of the media that I've seen, at least with regard to this, stopped comparing him to Trump and Bolsonaro. Because clearly, he's no Trump or Bolsonaro. He's thoughtful. He's articulate. He's reading his speech as well. And he has an agenda, a clear and equivocal agenda. So they're starting to call him a libertarian. They're just calling him a libertarian, which is not what was happening when he was elected. It was the far right, Trump-like candidate. So this is fantastic what he's doing, how he's presenting it is more important than actually what he's doing. He's presenting it as undoing of collectivist policies, decades worth of collectivist policies, using that term. I love it. I love it. It's philosophical. It goes to the heart of it. It goes to the essence of it. He's not coming across as a crazy anarchist. He's working within the law. He's asked the Congress, the Argentinian Parliament, to come into emergency session to approve the things that need approving. Some of this stuff is just going to be passed by executive order where he has the authority to do it. He's not acting as an authoritarian. Now, whether he can get it through Congress, we'll see, but I think he has the momentum. So far, there's been one demonstration in the streets about him. He has, he did pass a law that was criticized by, again, the mainstream media, that banned demonstrations that obstructed people's lives. So he banned demonstrations that obstructed traffic and that obstructed the ability of regular Argentinians to live their lives. Argentina has been riddled with demonstrations when people have tried to do better things, like Marci, six, seven years ago. So he's learned the lesson. He's banning it. We'll see if he can actually implement that ban and what it will take. But so far, so good. Now, some of the things he announced, he's talking about a modernizing, modernization of labor legislation to facilitate the real creating of jobs. So getting rid of a lot of labor regulations. He's talking about deregulating the industries that, you know, like tourism, pharmaceuticals, wine production, and maybe most importantly, foreign trade. He's eliminating many of the barriers to export. You know, Argentina plays barriers. Most countries place barriers for imports. Argentina barriers for export. All in the name of rebuilding the country and in a sense, starting from scratch, getting rid of a lot of the what that is accumulated over decades and decades. You know, we'll see. People, you know, the politicians in Argentina are already saying that deregulation decrees are unconstitutional and that he has no power to appeal. These laws are the ones that he's done for executive order. And again, he's going to face a real opposition in the parliament. But I think he has momentum. Again, there haven't been that many demonstrations. He won by a big margin in the election. The people, in a sense, have spoken. And it's great. I mean, this is part of the speech. He says, that doctrine that they call leftism, communism, fascism, or socialism. I love that he puts them all together, right? And that we call collectivism. I mean, just that is a revolution. So that doctrine that they call leftism, communism, fascism, socialism, and that we call collectivism is a way of thinking that dilutes the individual in favor of the power of the state. It is based on the premise that the reason of the state is more important than the individual. That the individual must submit to the state and that, therefore, citizens owe obedience to their representatives, the political cast. He said in the speech, they rejected the doctrine that politicians are God. Not only are they not God, but they are the cause of our problems. He said it was wrong that a, quote, group of bureaucrats can plan the lives of human beings. So the only reason I can read you this is that this is from the Buenos Aires Times, which has a long article in this that actually cites him. None of the US publications, most of them ignored the speech. And those who did cite him, just a list of the programs he wants, just a list of the programs he wants. He also said, these are forms of which I have only mentioned 30 of the more than 300 included are some of those complemented in the decree. So seven laws will be struck down by decree. So eliminated, the laws will be eliminated. And that includes laws governing rental or private properties, i.e., rent control, and supply of items at supermarkets. I have no idea what that law is, but it's going away, which sounds fantastic. So yeah, I mean, super exciting details. We'll still find out. But here's some of the things. He's decreeing that all state-owned companies be prepared for privatization. Authorize the shareholder control of the Argentinian airlines to be partly or completely transferred to private parties. He's going to deregulate satellite internet services to allow SpaceX's Starlink to operate in Argentina. He's going to eliminate price controls on prepaid health care plans. He's going to eliminate the monopoly of tourism agencies to deregulate the sector. Repel the current rent law that limits price increases in a bid to normalize the real estate market. Repel the current land law that limits ownership of land by foreigners in a bid to promote investments. I mean, that's a shocker. He's actually going to allow foreigners to own land in Argentina. I mean, even in the US, that's controversial, right? He's going to scrap the current supplier law that allows the government to set minimum and maximum prices and profit margins for goods and services of private companies. He's going to eliminate the economy ministry's price observatory to avoid the persecution of companies. I mean, any time you have repeal, repeal, repeal, I love it. Imagine a US president coming in and saying, OK, here are the laws I'm going to repeal. Here are the laws I'm going to work with Congress to repeal, not Obamacare without offering anything or not even succeeding doing that. But imagine, I mean, this isn't Trump. This isn't Bolsonaro. This isn't anybody we are familiar with. I mean, maybe Thatcher at her best. But I think, and Thatcher, of course, actually, Thatcher made some pretty philosophical speeches. So Thatcher was good in this trek. But there's nobody in the US. And Thatcher wasn't as aggressive as this and wasn't as definitive. And this is just the first step. And this is just 30 of 300 that he plans to do. And yeah, I think it's really exciting, really, really revolutionary. This is not just a tinkering with the economy. This is not just mealy-mouthed. There are a few changes here and there. This is real. This is real. So good for mealy. Good for Argentina. Pack your bags, guys. Bags, guys. You might be moving to Argentina soon. Maybe that's where the future is. But yeah, I'm excited. I want to see what comes next. And I want to see how it's implemented. And I'm excited to go to Argentina and to experience some of this firsthand. I'm hoping that part of the South American trip is going to include, in March, April, is going to include a visitor on Argentina. Oh, right. Elbel, Inc. Elbel, Elbel, Inc. $100. And he says, let Freedom Ring. And it's his first super chat. Here's the hose. First super chat. Thank you. That is fantastic. Really, really, really appreciate the support. First super chat, $100. That is a great way to start. All right. That was mealy. OK, Ireland. You remember a few weeks ago, there was some deranged guy who turned out to be a legal immigrant who had actually been naturalized in Ireland and was a citizen of Ireland for 20 years. He actually attacked three children and a teacher. Stabbed them. I think one of them died. And as a result of this, an Irish mob went into the center of town in a kind of anti-immigration tirade. And no room here kind of became the slogan. But they burnt cars and they created a lot of damage. And they rioted. They rioted for a whole night in Dublin. That was, let's see, that was on November 23rd. So it's a little bit more. It's a month now, a month ago. Anyway, the response now of the Irish government is, which drives me nuts, but this is the response. And the response of the Irish government to that whole episode is to try to pass really stringent hate speech laws. Of course, all of Europe has hate speech laws. But Ireland is committed to particularly restrictive hate speech laws. And how this is going to deal with kind of these islands is full anti-immigration activists. I have no idea. And everything else. But the government there is passing hate speech laws. And the burden is going to be, the burden of proof in a sense is going to be on those, you're not innocent. It's a proven guilty. I mean, it's particularly bad hate speech laws. But how do you define hate speech laws? What counts as hate speech? What are the boundaries? Hate to whom? Under what circumstances? Hate towards whites? Heterosexuals? The second account is hate? It's a completely subjectivist attempt to silence people that you'd happen to not agree with. And it's horrible. And it doesn't belong in any civilized country. There should never be hate speech laws. It is the path to authoritarianism. Ireland is an interesting country. But it is now being overrun by much of the kind of radical left, the extreme left. And these hate speech laws are part of that. Yeah, it's kind of sad, sad to see. I mean, I've talked lots of other places about the importance of free speech, about how speech is crucial to civilization. It is the bedrock of civilization in terms of the values. And any attack on free speech is an attack on freedom, on all freedom. All right, let's see. Yeah, Harvard University. I mean, Harvard is now, Harvard is standing by its president, Claudine Gay, who is the president of Harvard. She is one of the three presidents of universities who did a pathetic presentation before Congress that couldn't answer simple questions, couldn't articulate a simple position with regard to speech and with regard to harassment on their campuses. One of those presidents, the president of University of Pennsylvania, has been fired as a consequence of it, or she resigned as a consequence of pressure. But Harvard has stood by Claudine Gay. Now, in the process, it's been revealed that Claudine Gay, who was a professor at Harvard and a dean at Harvard, is also being accused of plagiarism, that she copied and has verbatim whole passages from other authors in some of her articles that got a tenure, that even in her dissertation, and that are in articles. And in the last couple of days, it's been discovered that in many more articles. She is, they don't call it plagiarism. What do they call it? They call it, she uses duplicative, I can't believe this is true, they call it duplicative language, which I guess is PC for PC when the person doing it is considered a good guy, that's what plagiarism means. She uses duplicative language. So massive criticism, not only about the response to antisemitism of the university, and then the response to antisemitism that she, how she presented it in front of Congress, but now, she's getting significant criticism over her scholarship, put aside the quality of her scholarship, which I'm pretty sure is horrible, but the idea of plagiarism. Now, we're not talking about some third-rate college somewhere, we're not talking about some anonymous university somewhere, we're talking about Harvard University. We're talking about one of the premier institutions in the world, the most prestigious university in America. And you'd think the president of that university would not only be a really experienced administrator, a well-established prominent academic, and with an impeccable track record of academic integrity, not at Harvard. I mean, that is true of the president before Claudine Gay, and probably the president before that, and before that, that is true of the history of presidents at Harvard. But it's, I think, becoming clearer and clearer. The Claudine Gay is the president of Harvard because of her adamant advocacy for DEI, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and because she is a DEI appointment, both a woman and she's black. The reason the president of the University of Pennsylvania, maybe you could argue, was asked to resign as she's white. Claudine Gay is black. The reason why everybody's so lenient with the gladiator plagiarism is not because this is not viewed as a serious offense in academia. It is. It should be particularly at a prestigious university like Harvard, but it's because she's black. They won't fire her because they'll be accused of racism. Indeed, 80 black Harvard University professors have written a letter basically saying that. You fire her, you're racist. Claudine does not have the, I don't know, integrity to resign herself. Obviously, she's not the best candidate for a position like this. But the board of trustees of Harvard University is sticking by her. She is now in the process of what's it called, revising her dissertation, putting in the citations, correcting. But the reality is there's a really good essay on this by Jason Riley in today's. No, two days ago on The Wall Street Journal, which I recommend, why Harvard can't fire Claudine Gay to admit she has performed poorly is to raise basic questions about the entire diversity enterprise. I mean, she is a DEI activist. That is her shtick. Not only does Harvard admit students not based on ability, but based on DEI standards. But there's every reason to believe that it hires its professors, not based on ability, but based on DEI standards. And now it's probably the case that it hired its president, not based on DEI standards, but based on ability, but based on DEI standards. Horrible to see such a great academic institution lower itself to this position, but this is the consequence of embracing this kind of leftist, altruistic, racist ideology that is DEI, that places waiting, waiting in hiring, in admittance, in every aspect of academic life on somebody's race, which should be irrelevant. Gone is the standard of colorblindness. Gone completely. And we see that in this pathetic display at Harvard. So sad. Sad. Wall Street Journalists are right that she is updating her PhD dissertation. But the school, as of today, this morning, as of December 21st in the morning, the university is standing behind us and calls all the claims about her lack of, I don't know, academic qualifications and shoddiness of academic work and plagiarism. It claims a meritless, even though these are clearly documented and seem to be pretty clear-cut. But Harvard will stand behind her. Would they stand behind her if she was a man? Would they stand behind her if she was white? I don't think so. And again, it's not an issue of hypocrisy. It's an issue of philosophy. The entire philosophy, in that sense, they have integrity, right? Integrity to their irrational philosophy. Not integrity in the full objective sense. They're not hypocrites. They're abiding by their philosophy. And that is that the standards you apply to those who come from an oppressed history, from an oppressed context, are different because you have to establish equity. And the only way to establish equity is to penalize those who come from the oppressor background and to elevate, by whatever means, those who come from their oppressed background. And one of the great tragedies of this and the great victims of all this, and this is true of affirmative action, and Ein Rand was writing about this in the 1960s, is that blacks of ability, minorities of ability, of ambition that are truly worthy because of merit will be looked on with suspicion. Nobody will know exactly. Did they have that position because of their merit, because of their achievements, because of their talents, because of their skills, or because of the color of their skin? Because of DEI. All right. Well, we're getting a lot of first-time superchatters. Thank you. Camilla, I'll just do this quickly. Well, I mentioned Elle Bell, who came in the first-time superchatter. And Evan Grassley, first-time superchatter. Thank you. Wow, that's fantastic. Really, really appreciate your support. All right, finally, Vladimir Putin. Vladimir Putin is paying attention. He is a smart operator, as most evil dictators are. And they pay attention, in particular, to the weakness of their enemy. Putin sees the disintegration of support for Ukraine. He sees the pressure under which Israel is placed to compromise, to modify, to restrain itself. Not to win. I did a show in Hebrew earlier today about can Israel win and will Israel win. I'll do that in English maybe in a few days. But clearly, the West does not want Israel to win and is doing everything it can so it won't win. I think the Kremlin is looking at the Houdis in Yemen and in significant military force, which is holding the entire world hostage, which has basically stopped trade between Asia and Europe. The Chinese, too, are looking, even though there are somewhat of the victims here because it's their trade that's being blocked, they're kind of looking at the West. What are they going to do about it? The West has this mighty armada off the shore of Yemen. They can't escort every single ship. They can't knock down every single drone. Can't knock down every single missile. Will they attack Yemen? Will they defend the shipping route? Will they do anything? Putin is looking at the Biden administration. He already knows they're weak. But he sees that they can't even pass a support package for Ukraine. He sees Republicans as his allies in the war in Ukraine. He sees the possibility Donald Trump gets elected going up. And what's that doing is it's making him bolder and bolder. He's now more than ever saying exactly what he wants. He's talking about Ukraine as part of Russia, the Ukrainian people as Russian people, which he talked about before the war as well. But most of the people commenting on the war completely ignore him. He talks about the people in Lviv. They're not Russian. They can go back to kind of the Austrian-Hungarian empire. They can go back to, they can be part of Poland. Maybe we don't want them. But we want the rest of Ukraine because they're Russians and it's Russian land and it's Russian soil and it's the Russian people. By the way, that same argument could be made about Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, which have large Russian populations and could be viewed as part of the Russian empire. The same argument could be made on vast parts of Poland, Moldova, and much of Eastern Europe. Many of the Kremlin surrogates from the head of the Russian Orthodox Church are now talking about the importance of Russia and Russian and being Russian, which might be a problem. We'll see how this resolves because it contradicts a little with Putin's multicultural message because Russia, of course, is a hugely multicultural nation, particularly in its east. The Russian Orthodox Church is making a big deal out of an anti-migrant xenophobic message about being purely Russian. And the Russian, you know, Russia is a land of Russians. Putin has also said, and the spokesman for the Kremlin has said, that Russia has no interest in negotiating with Ukraine. And it will not negotiate that its plans are the plans that it had on day one. At the end of the day, the plan are to take as much of Ukraine as they can. So I think the last few days, last week or so, Putin has been the most explicit he's been since before the war started, in terms of his aims, his goals, and his nationalism, and his seeking empire, and all of that. And this is a direct consequence of every signal out there that you could see of the weakness of the West. Oh, the other thing that happened, of course, is the EU couldn't get an aid package approved for Ukraine because of the veto placed on it by Orban from the president of Hungary. So the EU can't, nobody's supporting Ukraine right now. The EU doesn't. The US doesn't. Ukraine is on their own. So why shouldn't Putin just say it like it is? His right wing apologists in the United States, from Tucker to Jordan Peterson, to Candace Owen, to the rest, they don't care what he says. So you can just lay it out exactly what he believes and exactly what he thinks. This was always about Russian empire. And it's clear that it is Russian empire that he seeks. All right, let's take a look at your superchats. We've already reached the goal, so thank you. You guys are very generous today. We got a lot of people watching, so thank you. If there are people out there watching who are not subscribers, please consider subscribing. That would be great. You'll get announcements about shows. And yeah, the more subscribers I have, the more the algorithm treats me better. So please consider subscribing. Please like the show before you leave. Give it a thumbs up. Doesn't cost you anything. Just press that like button. And it's great. And feel free to participate by asking questions and by engaging in the superchat. What else? Remind you that the Einwand Institute is a sponsor of today's show. And that if you'd like to register for the Einwand conference in Austin, Texas, at late March, you can do so now if you are a student or interested in becoming a future intellectual or just interested in significantly deepening your understanding of objectivism. You can apply for a scholarship. You can do all of that, apply for the conference, the scholarship, get information, all of that, on einwand.org-slash-start-here, einwand.org-slash-start-here. All right, so I'm going to read this comment because I hope this is true. And it's an inspiration if it is. Fernando from Argentina writes, greetings from Argentina. Here, you've been one of the voices that helped to change our mentality about capitalism and free market. Your video talking in an English class, I remember that. English class, maybe I don't remember that. Anyway, in an English class, it was very popular and helpful. Thank you, I don't remember which video that is. But that's great, that's great to hear. I've been coming to Argentina, God, for over 10 years now. I've given quite a few talks, I've done debates, I've done quite a few things in Argentina. If I've inspired a few people to take free market ideas more seriously and to embrace them, and if that had even a marginal impact on Millay getting elected and Millay being better than he would have otherwise been, you've made my day, my week, my month, that is fantastic. So, you know, Fernando says, many of us, you know, they discovered Ivan's books, I guess as a consequence of the video and my being there. So, amazing. And as I said, I think, I hope, that I will be in Argentina again in April. And it should be really interesting, because, you know, everything has changed. Everything has changed. We'll be going to a country where we'll pro the government. Never happened to me before. All right, let's jump in to the Super Chat. Adam, $100, thank you, Adam. It was fantastic, Adam. This year has been one of the most, one of the best contributors to the Iran Book Show using Super Chats. I am in late with my tech comment. Without free markets, the alternative to dollar stores is $100 dollars stores. With $100 is for stale bread. That's Argentina, right, where you have inflation. And not fancy bow ties. His rand had a Marie Antoinette vibe, let them shop at sacks. Thanks for pointing out this evil stance. Absolutely, Adam, great point. And that's the reality. The reality is, wow, you can still buy stuff for a dollar. I mean, as bad as inflation has been in the United States. But think about the alternative. The alternative is not being able to buy anything. And everything, being like in Argentina, worth a lot more. Stateism leads to inflation. Stateism leads to stagnation. Statehood leads to decay. What Tucker Carlson is advocating for. What he's proposing. What he's promoting. What he stands for is decay. Stagnation. Stateism. Socialism, he even said, you call me a socialist. I don't care. Yeah. I mean, status is a better word because it's broader. Michael, Michael wins on asking the most questions and probably wins 2023 on certainly the most super chat questions. Probably the most dollars. Just if you add them up. Most dollars probably put in in super chat in 2023. Probably goes to Michael. I don't have the means. YouTube does not give me the means kind of to download the list of everybody. It's kind of aggregate. So this is kind of just me guessing. But educated guess. While the objective is moving, it's still very young. Does it feel more like a lean, mean fighting machine than it did 20 years ago? It seems to be much more organized and knows what direction to take. I mean, I think that's right. I mean, what we don't have is Leonard Peekoff. We don't have that kind of intellectual powerhouse that Leonard was. So that is not, we don't have that on our side right now. But I think we have numbers. We have depth. We have organization. We have a program. I think we know what we're doing. And there's a plan. There's a long-term plan to really have an impact on the world. And hearing this about from Argentina, we've been doing this for a long time. The things that you do, the places you go, the speeches you give, sometimes the audience is small. Sometimes the audience is big. Hopefully it's recorded and it's put up online. You just don't know who it's gonna reach and what impact that the margin it's going to have. And I think we are slowly, systematically, we are changing the world. It's one mind at a time. Some of those minds are here in the Iran Book Show. Some of the minds now are at Ironman University. Some of those minds are in Argentina, maybe even working for Mille. I don't know. Some of the minds are all over the world. In Europe, in Eastern Europe, in all over Latin America. And over time, we will prevail. We will grow and the knowledge will increase. The number of activists will increase and we have truth on our side. We have this amazing philosophy on our side. And what we're trying to do, what you're trying to do short-term is buy time so that long-term we can change the world. Federico says the video I was referring to is the subject about exploitation in China. The argument about the $2 labor job and how the free market works. Yeah, so that was a video that I actually recorded at Exeter University. Exeter University in the UK years ago. I think it was my second talk there. It was a talk on inequality. And that video, in a variety of different formats, it was sliced and diced by all kinds of people, often not even putting my name on it. So I can't remember if it was Students for Liberty or they used this video all over the place without giving me credit, which is pretty pathetic. And, but it was literally viewed by millions of people. It's the video that has gone more viral than anything else. But I think for some people led them from that to my morality of capitalism talks and to Inran's lectures. But yes, having a video like that go viral to millions of people, it has an impact. It has influence in the world. If only we could get more, if only we could get more of my videos to go viral like that, it would be pretty great. We're working, we've hired an artificial intelligence app to try to create viral short videos of mine. We'll see how it works, but there's an artificial intelligence app that claims that they can do that. So working with artificial intelligence to make it happen. All right, Michael asks, why is the ethics of Christianity so much harder to challenge than a metaphysics and epistemology of Christianity? I think because nobody's challenged it, right? I think the epistemology of metaphysics of Christianity being challenged by many, many people throughout the scientific revolution. And it's hundreds of years of challenges from the Industrial Revolution to the Enlightenment. The ethics have just not been challenged other than with Inran. But Inran is relatively new. And Inran was one voice. What we need is a movement. A movement that you could even imagine within this general trend, people disagreeing about the specifics. But generally an intellectual wave of people arguing for some form of egoistic ethics. And you're already seeing a little bit of that. You're seeing some virtue ethics writers and challenging kind of the conventional dogma. But what we need to see is a lot more challenges to the Christian ethics. And there wasn't much. There was some in the Enlightenment, but they couldn't really call us around an alternative. They couldn't really propose an alternative. And it was, even alternatives, they were proposing, well, little Christian. So it's too young. You know, they went from Christianity, Christian ethics through utilitarianism. Just another form of altruism. So the metaphysicism personality were challenged explicitly by the Greeks. And then throughout, there were always people who challenged them, right? There were always, and again, during the scientific revolution and the Enlightenment and through the 19th century, many, many, many voices challenged that because, you know, it's relatively easy because you can see it, right? And where's the proof of God? Where does God come from? But even then, epistemologically, maybe religion has been challenged, but it's not like a rational epistemology has been proposed in its place. That requires a grand again. And so there is no embrace of a rational epistemology, just like there's no embrace of a rational morality. Morality, of course, is also much more entangled in human action, and therefore much more difficult to untangle. Camilla, what do you think about grown-ups who choose to identify themselves as the opposite gender, trans? Does this align with objectivism? Does it conflict with the law of identity? I think it does conflict at some level with the law of identity. Now, granted, there are people, a small minority of people, who are born with all kinds of genetic weirdness that are indeed not clear-cut one or the other, where it is, the option is not A or B, but A, B, C, D, but there are other options. And there are all kinds of circumstances like that, all kinds of intersex circumstances, all kind of genetic deviations that cause people to, even a straight biological perspective, they're just not easy to define as a particular gender, a particular sex. There are XXY males, but there are all kinds of deviations, and I don't wanna get into all of this. I also think, and some of that is real, and that is not a negation of reality. Acknowledging it is acknowledging reality, acknowledging that some of our inclination sexually might have a genetic basis I don't think is wildly speculative, I think it's fairly reasonable. So there is that that you have to think into account of. I also think that there are psychological issues that people who really are psychologically above and beyond whatever the genetics are, that they identify psychologically as something else. I think that's a psychological problem. I think it's a real challenge. It's saying to them, A is A doesn't solve that problem for them, they still have to deal with that problem. I think it's horrific to deal with that problem by mutilating yourself, but that's how some of them do. And you know, I think we have to recognize that it is a problem that they are looking for a solution for. And I don't know what the solution for them is. I don't know what the solution is for them. It's a challenge. But that does not mean that there's no such thing as a woman and no such thing as a man. It does mean that there's some borderline cases that are not clear. It also does mean that sexuality and gender identity, whatever you wanna call it, is significantly impacted by a psychology and where psychology is messed up for whatever reason, that's gonna have an impact. That's gonna have implications. And as I've told you, I know of an economist who is trans, a man who became a woman, incredibly productive, incredibly creative, disagree with her on a lot of things. But I call her her because that's what she wants to be called and psychologically, and that's what she looks like at this point, right? So there's no reason to fight this. It's, you have to somewhat feel for them. I mean, it's a real challenge they faced. The problem is psychological and it's significant, right? Daniel, have you heard of Zettelkasten method? My basic understanding is that it's a bottom-up approach to note-taking and learning, books like how to make smart notes, unpack and apply it. No, I've never heard of it. I know there are a lot of these kind of methods to take notes and to organize yourself and to do lists and all kinds of stuff like that. But I'm not familiar with that one. I'm not familiar with others. I apply my own method, good or bad. I haven't gotten into those kind of methods, so I really, I don't know. But having a method to take notes, for example, is a good thing, right? It's a positive thing. You want to be efficient at that. It's a real value. We've got another first-time super chatter from Tev-Fell. Thank you, Tev-Fell. Really appreciate the support. Yes, we've got a lot of people watching right now. Please subscribe if you're not a subscriber. Press that subscribe button. Don't forget to like the show, but subscribe. Really be great and you'll be notified when I go live. And our future shows. Evan says, hey, Iran, I think I figured out why you keep saying support instead of membership to donate money. The preview slide says support, which has the page not found. Maybe redirect to your website. Yeah, thank you, Evan. I'll have somebody redirect that, the support thing to the proper membership. I've started to say iranbrookshow.com slash membership, but for years and years I said support and nobody told me that's not the right website. So where is Christian? That's his job. He's supposed to tell me these things. Michael, Millay got rid of rent control. Yes, among many things that he got rid of. He got rid of rent control, which is fantastic. Michael also says with all these free market think tanks churning out these ideas, are we going to see more Millays pop up in different small failing nations around the world? You know, I don't know, maybe. But I think Argentina is unique in that it's failing in dramatic fashion. I think it's unique in that it is a fairly advanced country, civilized country as an education system. You know, Inran's ideas, free market ideas, unknown in the country. It's not a backward country just coming out. It's a country that was very advanced that's decayed, which gives it a different dimension, dynamic. So whether this is the beginning of a trend or one-off, I just don't know. The trends everywhere else seem to be towards populism and nationalism. Look at, you know, it'll be interesting to see for example, if in the next cycle in Brazil, the candidate, they put up a free market candidate, then it's the beginning of real change. If Argentina could translate into something like that in Brazil, because Brazil, bigger country, maybe not as bad shape as Argentina, but still a poor country and very corrupt. Also, you know, as had a right-wing populist, Bolsonaro now as a left-wing populist, Lula actually could be, you know, it's time now for somebody like a real free market. So if Milay succeeds, the impact could be on some of the neighboring countries, maybe the next election, even Chile, you would see maybe move towards more free markets. Maybe you'll see a backlash against socialism in Colombia, which has just elected its first leftist president ever. And some of the other countries in Latin America. So it's certainly interesting, certainly something to watch, whether this is the beginning of a wave, I just don't know. Milay is also a character, right? Milay has a charisma that very few other people have. Milay is a showman in a way that very few other free marketers are. And one of the really reassuring things for me is to see Milay the showman really present himself since he became president as a statement. You know, gone is the state chainsaw. He's not jumping up and down. You know, he's got his hair combed. He's, you know, and he's got a, and he's written out notes and he's giving smart, well-crafted speeches to kind of bring Argentinians together against the prevalence of collectivism in Argentina. And I think it's a really smart strategy. All right, Michael says, is there a real possibility both Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump end up behind bars? I mean, I think so. Rudy just got a $148 million verdict against him. We'll see how that plays out. There's a good chance he lands up in some prison somewhere. Trump is more difficult because it's hard to jail a former president. And, you know, he could be president by this time any kind of guilty verdicts come about. And then he's not gonna go to jail. So Trump is a really difficult situation. And I still hope, I think it's a very small hope. I think it has very little chance. I still hope he's convicted and he fears going to jail and he cuts a deal not to run and gets pardoned by Biden or something like that. That would be great. Michael says, fear is a reaction. Courage is a decision. I think that's right. Michael says, how do you know when to stop looking for happiness in the same place you lost it? Well, there's no answer to that. I mean, what does it mean you lost it? How did you lose it? Under what circumstances did you lose it? You have to understand the cause, cause and effect. Can you recreate the cause that led to the happiness that you had? Is that cause createable? I mean, there's a lot of questions you have to ask yourself and answer. But happiness is not lost and found. Happiness is a state of being. It doesn't just go and come and go and come. And so it's a whole attitude and you need to view it that way. And you need to recreate the causes that led to you being happy. Tony says, I've sent letters to Penn, Harvard and MIT leadership and many more demanding they take action against anti-Semitism. Publishing in my series, Letters to Leadership on Amazon Kindle by Anthony Remis, R-E-M-I-S. You can find his letters on Amazon Letters to Leadership. Yeah, I mean, I salute you for doing that. I think more people need to do that. And even more so, I think parents need to completely rethink their children's applications, stop sending your kids to Harvard, stop sending your kids to MIT. Their alternatives, if they can get an MIT, they can get into pretty much anywhere in the country. Focus on schools that have a more sane approach to hiring professors. Because the fact is that education might not be as good because of how they're hiring people. If they're using DEI to hire, then you're not getting the best professors. You're not getting the best teachers. Your kids won't get the best education. Mary Aline says, isn't Harvard's position in dealing with Dr. Gray insulting, demeaning and degrading to blacks, also patronizing to blacks? Absolutely. Absolutely. They need different standards. It's a racist attitude and the racism is always demeaning and patronizing to the other side. It's pure racism. It should be denounced as racism. J.J. Jigby says, I recently found out I'm going to be inheriting a lot. Lot, he says, he capitalized a lot. I wonder what a lot means of money. What's the right attitude about getting money I didn't earn myself? How should I approach life with a large, newfound financial freedom? Well, I mean, you can suddenly up the super chats, right? You can join the $100 to $500 club in the super chats. I mean, it's a great question. And it's a challenging question. It's not only inherited money, but I know people who are in their 20s and sometimes in the early 20s have made hundreds of millions of dollars. And it's hard to know what to do at that point. Hard to know what to do at that point. So what you need to do is make sure that it doesn't diminish your ambition. Your productive ambition, to pursue a productive career of your choosing. Now, what it gives you is the freedom to choose that productive career in a way that you might not have if you're struggling to make a living. Find the thing that you really want to organize your life around. And now you have the flexibility to do it. Use the money to the extent that you can to further that career. If you want to start a business, then this could be seed money or some of the seed money to starting the business. So even though it's unearned, it's yours. It's earned in that sense. It's earned that somebody thought you were the year of giving it to you. And therefore it's earned in that sense. So you shouldn't have any problem with it. The challenge is not to diminish your ambition and your focus on career. Now the career can be different. The career even can be one that doesn't make you any money. But it has to be something productive, right? And that is that you are passionate about and where you can exercise your reason in pursuit of goals. In pursuit of values. Put some of it away for rainy day. If you can put it away not to be touched so that if the world collapses, you've got some money and increase your consumption so that you're living better. But mostly use it to make it possible for you to pursue your real loves in life. Federico says in Argentina we need more investors and entrepreneurs so come over to Argentina and bring your money. I know some American businessmen I was talking to one the other day and who are looking now at Argentina as a place to invest. So he might be coming down and try to meet with malaise people and try to figure out how to make significant. I mean we're talking about big money, significant investments in Argentina maybe in the oil and gas sector. In Argentina, Argentina has the potential to be a big fracking place. There's a lot of shale oil in Argentina and I think the shale, the guys who built up the North Dakota shale and the Permian Basin in Texas are now eyeing Argentina. And if Milay is truly committed to private property and to the rule of law, then Argentina is gonna get a bunch of investment from the United States. Miguel says, you're on. How can I attend the objectives conference in Argentina you mentioned for next year? I don't know because I don't know that it's happening. I don't know when, I don't know where, I don't know anything about it yet. But when I do, you can attend. So when I do, I will announce it on the show, I will have it on my website, I will let everybody know about it. So be assured that we will advertise it and let everybody know about it when the time comes. I still don't know that it's happening. It could be that we're going to Brazil and not Argentina. I don't know, somebody else is organizing it, not me. So to some extent, I'm kind of in the dark right now. I'm trying to get more information. As soon as I have it, I will share it with you guys. But yes, certainly if I'm gonna be doing something in Argentina, all of you will be invited, I assume, right? That reminds me, I will be in Denver on January 12th to give a talk. It's gonna be a talk about living a great 2024. That is a talk about, a positive talk about applying the objective's virtues to your ambition and to having a great future year. It will be on January 12th, which is a Friday at 5.30 p.m. Mountain Standard Time, that is Denver Time. It will be at the Village Workplace and Event Center in South Havana Street in Centennial, Colorado. You can sign up for it on Everbright just to look up your on-brook, ambitious 2024, Denver, Colorado, and Google will get you to the site. I'm gonna put the Invite website here. And then I'll remind you that I will be in Michigan. Whoops. Remind you that I will be, I copied and pasted the wrong thing, obviously, that I will be in Michigan later in January and giving two talks in Michigan. One at the University of Michigan and one at a university in the North. And then that I will also be in, God, why will it not, let me link this. It's the URL is too long. Okay, you'll have to find it on my website at some point. All right, and then Michigan, I'll be two events in Michigan and then there'll be an event at Northwood. Thank you, Jennifer Northwood and University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. And I'll be also speaking at University of Texas in Austin on the Friday. So this is in the final week in, in January, well, the week before last, Northwood is in Midland, in North, North Michigan. Even though it's in Midland, it's really in the North. Ovid says, I find that people in general find objectivist off-putting cause of the self-esteem and suddenly in regard to the world, thoughts sounding light and happy today, you aren't cheers. Yeah, I mean, I think that's right. I think we off-put with our certainty. I think you have to be careful and figure out how to do it properly and communicate in ways that are helpful for the communication itself, right? And yeah, so I encourage everybody to think about how you communicate, not just to do it automatically. You know, one of the great things about Argentina is that all of Inran's books are in Spanish. They're all available in Spanish. Bash Bandigan says, did Leonard Peekov mentor anybody? Not really, not in philosophy. I mean, he taught a lot of people and I think he tried once or twice to mentor people, but he never actually got one star student that he mentored. Evan, thanks, Iran, may reason be with you. Thank you, Evan, really appreciate that. Robert says, any advice for people who have been productive and have achieved their goals and values, but choose to remain unhappy, usually orient to either psychological, ideological baggage or both. Get a good therapist and read on your end. I mean, I don't have any more advice than that. I mean, if it's psychological problem to get a good therapist, if it's philosophical problem, you read on your end, you should read on that while you're going to therapist anyway, but read at the shrug, read the fountain head and read the books, but therapy is important. I mean, the fact that you hold the right philosophy, you have the right ideas, you do the right things is not gonna guarantee that you're happy. You need to have the right psychology and sometimes you need help in calibrating that and a good therapist can really, really help with that. Adam says, Millay getting rid of the land law, bilocal law and supermarket shelf law. I mean, aren't those great? Those are all collectivist Wesley Mouch. I mean, Adam Campbell calls them Wesley Mouch or Tucker's dream, Tucker's wet dream. Yes, Millay is basically slapping Tucker in the face. Even though Tucker did an interview with Millay and when he did the interview with Millay, Tucker pretended to be kind of libertarian friendly. It just shows what a nothing, Tucker really fundamentally deep down is and the whole ideology of right wing populism is just empty and contentless. He could be whatever he wants to be on any particular day. All right, we're still going. J.J. Jigby says, I met you in Hong Kong in 2019, meeting you again in Argentina would be really cool. I'm highly considering a trip there. Where do you live now? Are you still in Hong Kong? Hong Kong, it's time to leave. If you're in Hong Kong, it's definitely time to leave. So, yeah. Tucker cost us should not get credit for having an objectivist on any more than anybody else should get credit for having an objectivist on. I've been on shows, left wing, socialist shows. I forget the guy's name, and does he get credit for, I mean, Chris, mild, but it doesn't change your evaluation of the person and his ideas. I've been on lots of shows, lots of hosts have had me on. Does that change my evaluation of the fundamental ideas? No, Tucker is a nothing, I mean, ideologically. He's a zero, and he admits to being a zero. And that he's that way needs to be emphasized. He's no friend of liberty. He's no friend of freedom. And when he pretends to be a friend of freedom, he only does freedom harm. Andrew, when Trump presents himself as a victim, do you view that as an expression of a lack of self-esteem? How does strongman a victim fit with the ethics of intersectionality? Well, he's not playing the intersectionality game, but it's not a, it's unnecessary lack of self-esteem. It's marketing. He's playing to his audience. Love is a victim. The audience is, in that sense, Christian. It's not intersectionality, just plain altruism. And he's playing to the evil elites. Everybody's trying to get him. The world doesn't get him, but not only against him, I guess. All the supporters, it's against all of those, you know, it's all the elites. And he's a victim, and they're the victims. And he's playing as he is taking the brunt of what is really targeted at them. And that's how we, so he's a brilliant marketer. It's the one thing Trump is brilliant at, is marketing. Marketing, right? Yeah, well, we'll be talking a lot more about Trump in the weeks and months to come. All right, everybody, thank you. We did great, super chat-wise, I mean, phenomenal super chat-wise, so thank you. And I will, let's see, today is Thursday. So, no show tonight, because we did it yesterday, but there will be a show tomorrow, approximately the same time. It will be a news roundup, like today. Frederico says, one of the online bookstores that emerged during 2020, Libres Libertarios, had two Iron Man books that sold very well, Atlas Shrugged and The Virtue of Selfishness. Millay always recommended it. And yeah, and they were Spanish. There's also Objectivismo, which is a website in Spanish, with a lot of Iron Man essays translated it. So there's an immense amount of resources for anybody interested in Iron Man in Spanish. And more and more so in Portuguese as well, for the Brazilian audience. When it's Spanish, everything is there, so there's no lack of content and material. And there is Iron Man Center Latin America. Frederico, I hope you follow Iron Man Center Latin America. All of you, if you're in Argentina, if you follow Iron Man Center Latin America, you'll find out about any events we do in Argentina. And also, all the programs that they do, they do a lot of online programs with simultaneous translation of Spanish and a lot of other stuff, right? Stringer Bell, 314 says, hello, your honor, I've viewed an old lecture from Jordan Peterson and he stated that self-esteem and emotional intelligence do not exist. How do Objectivists determine that self-esteem does exist? Introspection, observing other people's behavior, understanding of human psychology at the very basic level. I mean, Jordan Peterson is, I mean, certainly he also doesn't believe a self exists or that you can be selfish because next year you have a different self. So how can you, there is no, what does it mean? Is a self today include the self of a year for now? Is it different? And is a self today the same self as you had a year ago? I mean, it's silly. He is not, I mean, I know I'll be ridiculed for this, but he's not a serious thinker. He's not a deep thinker. He comes across as deep, but a lot of what he says is, I mean, Dennis Pagas, there's a whole video of Dennis Pagas channel, Pagas U, about the fact that there's no such thing as self-esteem. And the self stuff is from other philosophers. It's not Jordan Peterson originally. And it's just not that. We know self-esteem, I mean, read the psychology of self-esteem by Nathaniel Brandon, which he wrote while he was still connected to Ayn Rand and Ayn Rand had a big part in editing that book. The psychology of self-esteem is a really, really important book. And I think he outlines there what self-esteem means and that you can observe your own self-esteem by looking inside yourself through introspection, but also through observing other people and understanding, having a basic understanding of psychology. And the fact that he, a psychologist, doesn't have that, I have to say, it's kind of shocking. I mean, self-esteem is a pretty foundational principle in psychology. Or he says, what explains a massive rise in demand for Ayn Rand novels? Talk about a positive story. Is there a massive rise in demand for Ayn Rand novels? Recently? I don't know. I mean, Ayn Rand novels go up and down over the years, but Ayn Rand sells really, really, really well during times where people are searching for answers, where there's some existential angst during the early Obama years, the Tea Party years, Ayn Rand sold the most that she'd ever sold, huge amounts, just unbelievable amounts for a dead author. There's a lot of demand right now from students. And I think that is just because the Ayn Rand Institute and everything we've done, just her name is out there in the culture, global culture, and this is in Europe and even in Asia, South America. People just know about her and the Institute is now offering them free books, books for free, and they're taking them up on it. And there's a huge demand for the free books program from the Ayn Rand Institute. And that's just because exposure, it's just getting the ideas out there, it's speaking, speaking, speaking and exposing people to the ideas. That's what does it. And then I think we've also got a big campaign online and social media to get people to read Ayn Rand. So it's just marketing. String a bell through and forth. JP rationalizes that self-esteem is just part of a big five personality traits. I mean, it's not a personality trait, it's a value. See, the problem is that Jordan Peterson doesn't really believe in values in things that you strive towards, right? Self-esteem is something you achieve by acting based on a particular morality, a particular virtues, lead you to have it, lead you to have it, right? So it's not something you just have. It's something you have to act again or keep. And that's what he rejects, like he rejects happiness, right? Human beings have control over their soul. I don't think he really believes that. And part of that controls means that you need to shape your soul, you need to shape your personality, you need to shape who you are. And to do that, you have to choose your values. And you have to use the virtues, you have to act on the virtues to achieve those values. And self-esteem is a value. It is something you have to act to achieve. He doesn't get that at all. And nobody in the culture really does. It's kind of, you have it or you don't. Or you get it from the outside, people give it to you. You get ribbons. So in the sense that self-esteem is a phenomena that you get from ribbons, ribbons that your teacher or your parents or whatever give you, there's no such thing. But as a real psychological phenomena that you grant yourself through achievement and through pride, it's a real thing. All right, everybody, thank you. I appreciate it. All the superchatters, all the supporters, don't forget to subscribe. Don't forget to like the show before you leave. I will see you all tomorrow for another News Roundup. Bye, everybody.