 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Brook Show. All right, everybody. Welcome to Iran Brook Show on this Monday, September 11th. We'll get to that in a minute. Hopefully, everybody's having had a great weekend. The weekend is off to a good start for the week and looking forward to a terrific week. All right. Today, we will talk about 9-11. 22 years later, we'll talk about a couple of stories around free speech, important stories, I think. We'll talk about a mass of lithium discovery and some other efforts to get different crucial materials particularly for, I guess, the so-called clean energy revolution. We'll talk about drugs in Denmark. And lastly, we'll talk about a fascinating case in front of the Supreme Court in Israel and what that is all going to play out. All right. Do I have any reminders? I guess the one reminder is I'm still looking for a few more people for the public speaking seminar that I will be doing in London on October 18th. I'm still looking for a couple more people. So if there's anybody interested in that, please let me know and join us. Of course, comments on how the sound sounds, volume, all of that, appreciate it as we're trying to get this new equipment all up to speed. I take it that the reverb and the echo are gone. Now it's just a question of what the quality of the actual sound is. All right. Yeah. So those of you who might be interested in the public speaking seminar in London, small group, lots of attention, lots of my attention, write to me at youron at youronbookshow.com. Youron at youronbookshow.com. All right. Cool. Let's see. Let's talk about 9-11. So 9-11, of course, is God. It's hard to go through a 9-11 without a flood of memories and a flood of emotions. Some of you, probably a significant number of you, probably were born after 9-11. Some of you were so young that maybe it didn't really resonate and it didn't really have an impact on you on that day and maybe never again other than the kind of geopolitical upheaval that it caused. But for many of us, this was a defining moment and a defining time. I think ultimately it will go down in history as one of the defining events of American history, certainly setting off a cascade of events through the 21st century that has had a profound impact on American politics, on American foreign policy, and on the world more broadly. I mean, 22 years ago, 3,000 Americans died in a terrorist attack on American soil. You know, unusual, rare. It never happened before, really. American soil, particularly in the 48 states on the mainland, have not seen an attack by any kind of foreign power. The response of the US government was weak, pathetic, involved lying, evasion, pretending that the enemy was different than it was, involved basically a repudiation of reality. The Bush administration from top to bottom, from the generals to the political leadership, failed. Failed American people. And I think was the first opportunity for people to really become cynical about government. I mean, people have been cynical about government forever, but 9-11, I think, took it to a next level and expanded it, expanded its reach dramatically. Lewis Phillips knows as Dick Cheney-Powgrip. There's no Dick Cheney-Powgrip at all. 9-11 represented a real lie in terms of primarily who did it. The word Islam almost never made it into the vocabulary other than to tell us that it was a religion of peace or that it had nothing to do with 9-11. And that lie resulted in the failures of the years to come. Americans were lied to with regard to Iraq, with regard to the purpose of war, the meaning of the war, the success of the war, and everything else that Black sites and everything else that kind of led from that. And the consequences. To this day, we are still dealing with a threat emanating from the same source of 9-11. The al-Qaeda and ISIS are regrouping in Afghanistan, and there's no reason to believe they're not terrorist training camps in Afghanistan today under Taliban rule. I mean, in a sense, we're back to where we were. Nothing's happened. You know, 11 years, 20 years of war in Afghanistan did nothing to change that fact. ISIS is still active, and al-Qaeda are still active in Syria. We still have American troops in Syria. We still have American troops in Iraq. ISIS and al-Qaeda are very active in North Africa. There was just a terrorist attack today, multiple attacks today by either ISIS or al-Qaeda in Mali. Not far from Niger. We talked about Niger a few weeks ago. So throughout all of this, ISIS and al-Qaeda have sustained themselves. They're weaker than they were on 9-11. They're significantly weaker. They're weaker than they were 10 years after 9-11. But they're still there, still waiting for their opportunity, still ready to pounce when the time is right, still ready when America's guard is down. And indeed, they will. The threat is real and forgotten. And yet, we still have troops in dozens and dozens and dozens of countries under the excuse of 9-11. Under the pretense of protecting us from 9-11. And yet, we won't. Our leadership will not admit that to the American people. Leadership will not admit that there's anything going on. When our soldiers die in God-forsaken corners of the Earth, nobody says a word. And until there's another major terrorist attack, nobody will care. And nobody talks about it. It's just null. And it's sad. It's sad because you would have thought that there was a real chance that 9-11 could have woken the American people up to the horrors of its own government and to the challenges that America as a country faces. And we could have embraced them a rational positive foreign policy. But we did not. We did the opposite. Everything is gone. Everything is gone in the opposite direction. So it's a good time to reflect on the casualties, to reflect on the causes. Of course, this is not the time to talk about it, but the cause of 9-11 was appeasement leading up to it. It's a good time to reflect on American foreign policy and the disgrace that it really is. All right, let's turn to another disgraceful topic in terms of the state in America, although there's some positive news. Free speech. I told you about the district courts. That was the district court's decision, I can't remember, two months ago, to bar the Biden administration from communicating with social media platforms because it had found that the Biden administration, the Biden White House, had likely violated the First Amendment. And so it barred vast swaths of the federal government from communicating in any way with social media. It was a temporary ruling. I mean, there still needs to be a whole trial and a whole process, but it was a temporary injunction. But the indication was that the judge viewed seriously this idea that the pressure put on social media, particularly around COVID, but around other issues as well, including the Hunter Biden laptop, constituted violations of the First Amendment. And that was a crucial and very, very important ruling, and I think a correct ruling. Well, the Biden administration appealed this, and it was appealed to the Fifth Circuit Court, where a panel of three judges reviewed it and they issued their decision, I think it was on Friday, and they agreed with the court. They agreed with the lower court. They basically agreed that the Biden administration, and generally the federal government, had likely, they're not making a definitive claim, but had likely violated the First Amendment. They did reduce the entities. So the lower court had given the sweeping, pretty much the entire federal government couldn't talk to social media. This court has limited the number of agencies that are restricted from talking to social media in particular. They're ruling to restrict contact between the government and social media is limited to the White House, the Surgeon General's office, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the FBI. It's removed restrictions that had been imposed from state, homeland security, and health and human services, and on agencies including the U.S. Census Bureau, the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and the Cyber Security and Infrastructure Security Agencies. The judges wrote, and I'm reading from a new story in the Washington Post, that the White House likely cursed the platforms to make their moderation decisions by way of intimidating messages and threats of adverse consequences. They also found the White House significantly encouraged the platform's decisions by commandeering their decision-making process, both in violation of the First Amendment. So, I mean, this is huge. You know, I think pretty much every branch of government right now is dedicated to restricting free speech. Certainly, our executive branch is, and it doesn't matter who the president is. This is true under Trump, under Biden, and in future president. I think Congress has in mind different ways in which they want to restrict free speech. For the courts to come out unequivocally like this around this issue is so crucial. The courts in many respects are last bastion to maintain freedom, the freedoms that we have. Let me just see. Yeah, the appeals court, I'm reading for the article again, the appeals court judges found that pressure from the White House and the CDC affected how social media platforms handle posts about COVID-19 in 2021 as the Biden administration sought to encourage the public to obtain vaccinations. The judges detail multiple emails and statements from the White House officials that they say show escalating threats and pressure on social media companies to address COVID misinformation. The judges say that the officials were not shy in their requests, calling for posts to be removed as soon as possible and appearing persistent and angry. The justices detailed a particularly contentious period in July of 2021 which reached a boiling point when President Biden accused Facebook of killing people. To quote the judges, we find, like the district court, that officials' communications, reading them in the context, not in isolation, were on the whole intimidating. The judges also zeroed in on the FBI's communication with tech platforms in the run-up to the 2020 elections, which included regular meetings with tech companies. The judges wrote that the FBI's activities were not limited to purely foreign threats, citing instances where the law enforcement agencies targeted posts that originated inside the United States, including some that stated incorrect poll hours or mail-in voting procedures. The judges said in the ruling that the platforms changed their policies based on the FBI briefings, citing updates to the terms of service and et cetera. Now, this is interesting, some of you might find this somewhat entertaining. The judges, however, found some of the government communications enjoined by the district court to be permissible, including those by former Chief Medical Advisor to President Anthony S. Fauci. They said the record did not show that Fauci communicated directly with the platforms and said his effort to promote the government's scientific and policy views did not, quote, run afoul of the First Amendment. So everybody's most hated scientist has been, you know, a little, just marginally a little bit vindicated by this court. All right, so that's great news. It's super important and super interesting and super encouraging for the future of this country to have a court that is willing to stand up to the federal government and say no, you're in violation of the First Amendment, you cannot continue to do this. This is likely to be appealed again, and this time to the Supreme Court. It'll be fascinating to see what the Supreme Court does with this. I think they will back the Court of Appeals. But if the Supreme Court actually lays out a consistent statement about what is permissible and what is not permissible in terms of communication between government and media, social media, I think this will be an incredibly valuable tool for preserving free speech as we move into the future. So this is really all good and, yeah. All right, let's see. Yeah, a second story about this. This one's a little bit more ambiguous, so it'll be interesting to see how this plays out. But Twitter, X in other words, has sued California over California's content moderation law claiming it violates free speech. The suit challenges the constitutionality and legal validity of the law. They were signed last year, which requires social media companies to publicly post their policies on hate speech, disinformation, harassment, and extremism on their platform. So the question is, does that constitute a violation of free speech? It'll be interesting to see how the Court rules on this one. You know, the suit reads, quote, AB 587, this law violates X Corp's First Amendment right to not speak about controversial topics and to decide for itself what it will say or not say about these topics. So that's good. That's excellent. This is what Governor Newsom said when the law was signed in this reeks of violation of free speech, quote, California will not stand by as social media is weaponized to spread hate and disinformation that threatens our communities and foundational values as a country. What does that mean? Will not stand by. People have every free speech right to spread hate and disinformation. To quote Newsom, some more Californians deserve to know how these platforms are impacting our public discourse and this action brings much needed transparency and accountability to the policies that shape the social media content we consume every day. So can the government force them to have policies and to disclose those policies publicly? That is what is there on the agenda. It's going to be really interesting to see how the Court rules on that one. That's even a broader definition of the First Amendment which would be really powerful if the Court stood by that. All right. So good news on the free speech front. Courts are fighting back. Lithium, lithium, lithium of course is a crucial material for batteries. As we know, lithium is in massive demand right now and a lot of countries are searching for lithium deposits. China controls the production of a vast majority, I think over 70% of all lithium batteries in the world and it has access to vast lithium resources whether in China or through contracts. Well, it turns out that potentially the biggest lithium deposits ever, biggest lithium deposit ever, it was just found in the United States. It was found on the border between Nevada and Oregon. So in very northern edge of Nevada on that border, it is kind of in volcanic claystone which is very unusual. It's in a volcanic crater and this claystone has between 1.3 and 2.4% of lithium which is almost the double the amount of lithium that is usually present in other materials like clay materials. So this is huge. Of course, the challenge is going to be here, will they let the mine, the environmental issues but the potential for the United States to have the largest deposit of lithium in the world is fantastic. Of course, there's also lithium in Australia and South America, in parts of Africa and in Asia, particularly in China. But very exciting. There is a real lithium rush and let's hope that America, the regulatory apparatus, the environmentalist will allow for the actual mining of this lithium because it would boost I think national security significantly and less dependency on China more generally and particularly as the United States seems to be intent on investing heavily in expanding its capacity, manufacturing batteries. You know, having additional, a diversified sources for lithium would be a definite advantage. But there's another really, really, really interesting story about minerals and the search for minerals which is exploding around the world. It turns out the United States is in negotiations with Saudi Arabia to team up to secure the metals required for batteries, for a variety of different batteries. So this is quoting for the Wall Street Journal article. The US and Saudi Arabia in talks to secure metals in Africa needed for both countries energy transitions. You know, as the White House tries to coerce China's dominance in electric vehicle supply chain. And the kingdom, you know, wants to basically invest heavily in global mining. So why does the US need Saudi Arabia to do this? Saudi Arabia doesn't have any minerals. Indeed, the collaboration is to access minerals in Africa. We're talking about cobalt, lithium, other metals like that. Why does the United States need Saudi Arabia as a partner to go after minerals in Africa? I mean, that seems bizarre. Really weird. But this is how global politics gets done. Listen to this. Why does the US need Saudi Arabia? Quote from the Wall Street Journal. Saudi Arabia would likely have more flexibility to invest in countries where corruption is rampant, insulating US companies from that risk. The kingdom is also less bound by environmental, social and governance concerns that crimp other investors' ability to deploy capital there. So in other words, Saudi Arabia could go into Africa, violate individual rights, steal stuff, enslave people. They can bribe everybody in the government and everybody around there and the gangs and their warlords that control some of these mining operations. And that's OK as long as America is in the background, as long as America is not at the forefront of it. As long as America is just casually in an alliance with the Saudis but not explicitly doing it. I mean, the hypocrisy, the absurdity of the whole thing. I mean, if the United States deems it OK to violate rights and do all that for the sake of these metals, why is it using Saudi Arabia as a frontman? Have some balls and just say it. But the reality is, again to quote the article, much of the world's corporate lies in difficult business environments. It's an understatement of the century. Such as Congo, where Western companies' business practices have resulted in justice department allegations of bribery. Again, to quote the article, the effort would jump starts by Saudi Arabia, a massive defender of individual rights and freedom around the world. Plans by Saudi Arabia long the world's dominant oil power to delve into the world of mining, digging for its own minerals and metals at home and buying up stakes and projects around the world. It is part of an economic diversification effort that involves building its own EV industry, creating massive solar farms and setting up high tech industries such as artificial intelligence. The White House is seeking the financial backing of other sovereign wealth funds in the region. But talks with Saudi Arabia have progressed the furthest. There we go. So the United States is fine with violating people's individual rights. It's fine with bribery. It's fine with enslaving people to pull out this stuff from the ground. As long as American companies don't have to get their hands dirty. As long as somebody else is doing the dirty work, the U.S. has no problem with it. It's just mind boggling, mind boggling how pathetic U.S. policy really is and how inconsistent and how just disgusting, just disgusting. All right, Denmark. This is a kind of cool little story from Denmark. By the way, on Saturday, it appears, I talk about Denmark, I will be interviewing Fleming Rose from Denmark on Saturday, on the Saturday show. Instead of Thursday, I'll be interviewing him Saturday. We had to move Harry Benzwangi's interview to October. So he'll be, we'll be doing Harry on the first week in October. But Fleming Rose will be on Saturday. I'm super excited. Fleming's a friend. And Fleming is the guy who published the Danish cartoons. So he is the guy who commissioned them, published them, stood by them. I have done many, many, many free speech events with Fleming over the years, all over the United States and in Europe, including in Denmark, where we had unbelievable security all around on the roofs. It was pretty amazing. But so I'll have Fleming on. I haven't talked to Fleming in a long time since before COVID. So it'll be fun to catch up with him. It'll be fun to talk to him and it'll be fun to hear what he's doing. But also interesting to find out what he thinks about the ban on burning of the Quran and what he thinks generally of the state of free speech in Europe, basically, you know, 22 years after 9-11. And I can't, you know, the Danish cartoons came up in, I forget. Anyway, I'm excited by it. I hope you'll join us Saturday. I think it's going to be 1 p.m. East Coast time. I'll let you know as the plans solidify. Yeah. And bring your European free speech questions to the table. All right. With regard to Denmark, it turns out that Denmark is the home to two companies. That are making what appears to be right now the most popular drugs, legal drugs, not illegal drugs in the world. Azemepik and Wogovi. These are both drugs that have been approved to work in reducing weight. And that is reducing obesity. They reduce obesity. They improve high blood pressure, high cholesterol. They reduce cholesterol, high blood sugar. Everything related to obesity, all the diseases related to obesity are reduced dramatically, dramatically by taking these drugs. And they are immensely popular. They're being bought all over the place. And Azemepik is a diabetic drug. Wogovi is explicitly for treating obesity. But both of them receive sales just skyrocketed, right? Skyrocketed in the United States and all over Europe and all over the world, really. Including in Uzempik. Uzempik, Iron Man fan club tells me it's pronounced. All right. Anyway, these stocks, this has just gone through the roof. Sales have risen 30% in the first half of this year. Profits are 40%. And the company is having to ration supply as production struggles to keep up with growth in orders. But what's fascinating to me is that if you, I mean, this is Denmark's a small country. If you take out the pharmaceutical industry from Denmark's GDP, if you don't count it, then Denmark's GDP is shrinking. It's shrinking about 0.9% a year. But with the pharmaceutical companies producing these drugs, the GDP is up 1.1%. Just to show you how big this is. How big this is, right? And the nice thing is, you know, it's coming in in euros and, sorry, in dollars. It's causing the economy, you know, this part of the economy to boom. It's pushing Denmark's economy from basically the recession that is happening all over Europe. I mean, you see charts of sales of this thing. It's just phenomenal. So good for these Danish companies. I mean, drugs that can reduce obesity desperately needed all over the world if you see how many obese people they are out there. All right, finally, a story that's been brewing and that is coming, going to come to a climax here in the next few weeks in Israel. If you remember, the Israeli government passed a law a few weeks ago that basically limited the Israeli Supreme Court. It basically said that the Israeli Supreme Court could no longer use the reasonableness doctrine in order to overturn decisions by the government. So basically, the court could no longer say this decision by the government is so unreasonable, so defiant of logic and of reason and of precedent and of, you know, of good of the way you're supposed to run a government. In the past, they could overturn that. For example, there was an appointment to a ministerial position in Netanyahu's government of a person who had been convicted for embezzlement and he was going to be a minister in the government. And the Supreme Court said, you can't do that. They can't say I'm constitutional, but that fails the reasonableness test and we are preventing the government from appointing this guy and he needs to leave. Anyway, the government passed a law that said the court could no longer do that. It cannot do it. In other words, it dramatically or significantly, I don't know if dramatically, but significantly shrunk the scope of oversight that the Supreme Court has over the government. Well, this has been challenged by certain elements in Israeli society in front of the Supreme Court. So the Supreme Court is now going to rule whether a law limiting its power is, I can't say I'm constitutional because Israel doesn't have a constitution, is okay, is reasonable. Yeah, I can't use the reasonable standard. So something, right? Now, you know, this is a huge case never before has a case like this come to the Israeli Supreme Court. All 15 judges, the Israeli Supreme Court has 15 judges are going to be present. The judges include secular liberals, religious conservatives, West Bank settlers, and one Arab Israeli, one Arab citizen of Israel. And it's going to be fascinating, right? It's going to be fascinating to see how they rule. Because if they rule that the government is within its power to do this, then nothing will happen. And it is what it is, right? But what if they rule that the government does not have the power to limit the power of the Supreme Court? Then you have a constitutional crisis. The government is saying, of course we have this power. The court says you don't have the power. And there's nobody to resolve it. There's nobody to resolve it. So a decision is going to be made in the next few weeks, maybe months, has to be done before January 16th. And you know, the Supreme Court could uphold the law, of course. That would be the simplest case. It could overturn the law. That completely throws the country into a state of chaos and into real challenges. The Israeli parliament could then ignore the Supreme Court reversal if it reverses it. What happens then? I mean, this is what happens when you don't have a constitution. But it is also suggestive of what could happen in the United States. What happens if a president says to the Supreme Court, I don't care what you will, I'm not going to abide by it, as I think Trump is threatened to do, but as some conservative judge, but lately liberal judges have encouraged Biden. A number of legal, liberal legal scholars are encouraging Biden to ignore the court because the court is too conservative. And just ignore him. What happens then? How do you resolve that? Does the military then intervene? Does the Justice Department? Does Congress? Does Congress have the power? So Israel might be at a forefront of this conflict between the judiciary and the executive, the legislature. How those kind of disputes get resolved is going to be key to maintaining political freedom in the West. Key to maintaining political freedom in Israel, but ultimately, same kind of crisis could happen in the U.S. I mean, literally, there are legal scholars writing papers right now about how it's okay for the executive when the court is unreasonable to ignore the court. And of course, this has a history going back to FDR who threatened the court with court packing, with expanding the court and packing the court in order to basically subdue it and force the court to align with his interests. So this has happened in American history, but I think it would be a lot worse if it happened today. A lot worse. All right. Let's jump into our question period. To remind you, you can use Super Chat to ask questions and steer the show in the direction you want. It can also be used to support the show with a question, but you can also do it just to support the show with what's called a sticker. So it's right under the chat there. Please use it. We have a goal for these morning shows, $250. It would be great if we could achieve that goal, but that is in your hands. We have 80 people watching right now. It would be great if some of those people traded value for value by supporting the show in one way or another. All right, James, $50. Thank you, James. That's terrific. Have you spoken to cadets at any military schools like West Point? Have you spoken to any military colleges overseas? It appears to me a great place to get message out about Ayn Rand. Also, do you see another attack on U.S. soil in your lifetime? I have not spoken at West Point. I'm trying to think. I've spoken at the, and there's a video of me speaking. It might be only audio. I'm speaking at the Air Force Intelligence School or facility in one of the big Air Force bases after 9-11. I gave a talk there, which was, I think, very well received. But I've never spoken at any of the big schools. And the reason is they've never invited me. That is, I've tried. I've encouraged. You know, the closest that came was I debated the chairman of the philosophy department at the Air Force Academy, but the debate was held at UC University of Colorado Boulder, not at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. So I've never actually been invited. I've tried. I've encouraged people. We came close at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, but we never actually succeeded. It might be the case. I think it's the case that Elan Juno spoke at the Naval Academy if I'm not mistaken. I did a company, Leonard Peacock, when he spoke at West Point after 9-11. And the talk they received, some very positive. It was a great talk. It received some positive. But it was also a lot of hostility primarily from the faculty. This, I think, was put on by the philosophy department over there, philosophy department that is very, very, very pro-just-war theory, which is a horrific altruism in military, altruism in foreign policy. So West Point Naval Academy and the Air Force Academy all influenced by just-war theory. They all have the same curriculum by Michael Walzer. It's altruism with regard to running a military, all of them. Again, this was the topic of my debate with the head of the philosophy department at the Air Force Academy, just-war theory. So theory articulated by St. Augustine and later developed by Aquinas that has been modernized and secularized by philosophers. And Michael Walzer being the main philosopher over the last 30, 40 years to written about this and he has a book on just-war theory. Anyway, faculty in these places are very hostile to us, very hostile to, you know, to Ayn Rand and to our perspective on war. Unfortunately, the debate I did with the philosophy professor at UC Boulder, the philosophy professor was from the philosophy chairman, the chairman of the philosophy department for the Air Force Academy, I'm pretty sure was not recorded tragically. It was a great debate. Leonard Peacock was in the audience, that was fun. He was living in Colorado back then and he was in the audience and he thought I did really well. And so, yeah, it was, it's not, it's a great place in terms of the cadets, not a great place. And so the faculty and the faculty keeps us away. But if I got an invitation to speak at West Point, I'd be there in an instant. You know, I'd love to speak at West Point. I'd love to speak at any of the academies. I have not spoken at academies in Israel, outside of the United States. And just speaking Israel, again at the intelligence, one of the intelligence things, I forget what it's called, but it's a kind of intelligence museum, which the intelligence agencies operate. Anyway, do I see another attack on your soul in your lifetime? I certainly think it's possible. I don't know because generally my view of Islamic terrorists is that they're pretty stupid. They're pretty dumb. They really lucked out in 9-11. There were multiple opportunities where the FBI or the CIA could have prevented it. They came so close so many times. I mean, it's a massive failure of intelligence, massive failure of coordination, massive. So 9-11 was not so much a success by these planners, but it's primarily a consequence of massive failures on the United States as part. Could that happen again in terms of the kind of failures that happened? Sure. But probably not on the scale of 9-11. So will there be another attack on your soul? Yes, but it might more likely be a one-man operation, somebody shooting up a place that's happened since 9-11, a car bomb or something like that. But something on the scale of 9-11 I think is unlikely because the American intelligence agencies have learned, to some extent have learned their lesson, in terms of coordination and being on top of things in a better way. And partially because I think that Muslim terrorists generally are just not that smart, not that good. Now, it's easy to be wrong on this. I remember arguing, one of the arguments I had once with Leonard Peacock was we were sitting, this is 1997, I think. I think it's 1997. Yeah, 1997. We were sitting at a restaurant in Santorini on the Greek island of Santorini, one of the most beautiful places on planet Earth. And Leonard basically said, we're going to have a massive terrorist attack on the U.S. soil. And I said, no way. They couldn't put it together. They're not sophisticated enough. They're not smart enough. U.S. intelligence would be on top of it. They wouldn't be able to pull it off. And he said, no, it's going to happen. And he was right. I was wrong. And it did happen. And just four years later. So I might be wrong again. I still hope that we've learned something from 9-11 and the intelligence agencies at least on top of it. But who knows? Who knows? And it's not like we disagreed about the threat or we disagreed about the organization. I think we disagreed about the competence of the terrorists and the competence of the U.S. intelligence agencies. All right. We're still quite short of our goal. So if you guys would consider supporting the show, I'd really, really appreciate it. Some stickers. We've got 80 people watching. 160 is two bucks a person. Value for value would be fantastic. I'm not going to mention it again. But if you could support the show, that would be great. Get this week off to a fantastic start. Andrew says, why do you think competing with other nations is an acceptable motivation for U.S. productivity as against other reasons? For example, concern in regulating AI is not that it might throttle its benefits but are falling behind China. Well, you have to separate a couple of things, right? So I don't think there's any time there is legitimacy for the idea of competing with other nations if that competition is purely economic. There is no such thing as economic competition between nations. Nations don't produce anything, don't create anything, don't build anything. And indeed, when they try by subsidizing, by tariffs, by restraining trade, by doing others, they get the opposite result. So it's never legitimate to compete purely in economic terms, just in terms of what are the economics of a particular thing. The bigger question, or the question I think relevant to AI and relevant to a lot of the discussions about China, but not all. For example, the United States is trying to compete against China with regard to electric vehicles. Why? I mean, why don't we just buy cheap electric vehicles from China and finish? Why are we concerned about electric batteries? I mean, but AI is different and AI advanced microprocessors is different only because they use in military applications. So to the extent that you have a country that you view as hostile, that you view as a potential enemy, that you think you might land up going to war with, then it makes sense to say, look, we need to be careful because they can use microprocessors in advanced weapon systems. They can use AI in weapon systems. And we need to be on top of that. We need to have better. So it's like an arms race, but arms race now enveloping a broader set of products because these products can be directly used in weapon systems. And that's the sense in which we compete against China around microprocessors. We compete against China around AI, maybe even around high powered lasers, because all of these things are potential weapon systems. And that's the only legitimate way to think about it. And it's most of what we think about, but it's not totally. I mean, unfortunately, people in DC, our central planners think about it in broader terms in terms of economic activity, in terms of auto sales, in terms of electric vehicles, batteries, all these other things that are less issues, significantly less issues of national security and much more just issues of, I don't know. I mean, there's a big deal made out of the fact that China might be a bigger economy than the United States. Why does that matter? How big an economy is? What matters is how much growth and how much prosperity is being generated in your own country that your own citizens are benefiting from. And if some of that prosperity is generated because you're trading with another country that is growing and going to be bigger than you, why does that matter? It's a win-win world, not a lose-lose world and not a win-lose. It doesn't have to be except when it comes to national security. That's the one area where it can be lose-lose and you want to avoid getting into that situation. All right, Wesley, you've spoken before about zombies. If a zombie virus were real, would lockdowns, quarantines, and mandatory vaccines in response be justified? They can't be zombies, right? I mean, it's not possible, but look, if there is a clear and imminent threat to the lives of people and in order to combat that threat, you have to ask people to stay home so you can destroy the enemy. Then yes, if the virus is such that people leaving their homes, people are going to die left and right. They're just going to drop dead or become zombies. Then emergency measures are appropriate. If you've got this virus, you can't just go outside and infect everybody. There's still an issue of innocence or proven guilty. There's still an issue of locking down healthy people and what legitimacy you have of doing that. But you can imagine, I've said this in realistic examples, if there's a terrorist in a particular neighborhood and he's going from place to place trying to kill people and the authorities know this and sending in a special forces team to kill these terrorists. And in order to do this safely, you tell everybody to stay home. You lock the neighborhood down so that you can find the terrorists and kill them effectively. But you do it for a finite period until the terrorist is found. And you don't lock down the entire state. You don't lock down the entire country. You lock down the neighborhood where you think the terrorist is. Finite for a specific purpose. Then it's legit. Alright, James says, the USA produces a lot more drugs than other countries, yet FDA blocks so many of them. Have you seen any countries that do not have their own FDA? My guess is a lot of countries around the world don't have their own FDA. But what they do is they piggy bank off of the US or off of Europe or off of one of the civilized worlds, FDAs. But there's no country as far as I know that has no constraints on the drugs that one can sell within their country. I might be wrong, but I don't know of one. Most other countries have much more liberal policies in terms of prescriptions and in terms of what drugs are available. I know South America certainly does and other places. But a lot of countries, and again, a lot of countries use trials and evidence from other countries. Or if it's approved by the FDA, it's approved over here. If it's approved by the Europeans, it's approved over here and so on. So, yeah, I don't know of any countries that have a complete openness. James asks, does Asia and Europe have more potential to be more economically or socially free based on your trips the past five years? Well, I used to think that the future was Asia. I used to think that China would be heading in the right direction and it would basically move the whole of Asia in the right direction. And you've already got Korea and you've got Taiwan and Japan and used to have Hong Kong and to some extent Singapore. But I no longer think that given the turn that China has taken, although, of course, that could be reversed. I used to think that the UK had a really good chance. It has very educated people. It has a decent educational system, much better than the U.S. And it has, Ayn Rand is there. Ayn Rand really has a presence in the UK, even in the schools in the UK. So I thought they had a real potential, real possibilities. But I just don't see either one of them doing particularly well over the next few years. It just seems to win the spiral of collectivism everywhere and a spiral of authoritarianism, spiral of statism everywhere. And I don't think any of those places are escaping it, sadly. Michael, does life itself have no meaning? It's only an opportunity to create meaning. Well, life has meaning in a sense of the meaning of life is life. The meaning of life is the opportunities that it creates. That's its meaning. The meaning is that value is necessary to sustain it. That's what it is. But it's, I don't know, maybe it's just a tautology. Maybe life, yeah, there can be meaning outside of life. Life makes meaning possible. It's not an opportunity to create meaning. There's no such thing as meaning outside of life. Life makes meaning possible. Michael, I've been watching some of Javier Miley's, Mille's, Fiery television interviews. It sounds like he's quoting right from my Inman's novels. What are the chances a free market revolution comes from Latin America, from a Latin American country? We will see. I mean, he has to win. He then actually has to put together a revolution. That is, he has to have the legislature actually pass the things that he wants to pass. It's not going to be easy to dollarize the economy and to get rid of a central bank without the legislature's help. It's going to be very difficult to deregulate and get rid of the taxes and the tariffs and all the other things that prevent Argentina from coming a free market. But it's quite possible that out of sheer frustration, he does win, sheer frustration of the Argentinians with everything else. Now, again, he's mixed on many things, but at least on free markets, he's as good as he gets. And we will see what happens, but I don't know how to play the odds of him winning and then how to play the odds of him actually having a positive impact. One of the challenges is as you liberate an economy, how do you do it smartly so that you maximize the benefits and minimize the pain because some pain is going to happen? Does he have the right advisors? Does he have the right economists around him? Have they worked out a plan? Will he work out a plan? I hope so. I hope so. He's smart. And there's smart people in Argentina who've been fighting on the side of Liberty for a long, long time. Fighting on the side of freedom for a long, long time. Hopefully they all come together and they come up with a plan and they put it together. But you need a lot of allies in the legislature. I don't know if he has them. How much can he do through executive order? I just don't know. I don't know enough about Argentinian politics. Michael says, when leftists say hate has no home here, are they really saying judgment and logic? Yeah. I mean, I have no home here. Yeah. I mean, they're basically saying judgment. The one thing that is taboo is moral judgment. You cannot morally judge people. And that is what they're primarily referring to. It's not the issue of hate. It's the issue of moral judgment. Don't judge. Gotta go with the flow. Richard. Nice to see you, Richard. It seems like we're in a volatile economy. Oh, by the way, Richard, I never got an email from you about the public speaking thing. It seems like we're in a volatile economy over the next few decades. Yes. I know that was before your time, but how would you recommend 20-somethings, prepare and plan for their future? Does it seem like a repeat of the 70s? I don't know if it's a repeat of the 70s. I doubt that it is a repeat of the 70s. History doesn't repeat itself quite that way. Inflationary forces are different. And in many ways we're less resilient than we were in the 70s. And there's less of a quiet for liberty. How do you prepare for it? I think the best way to prepare for it is to accumulate saving and at the same time to get a good job or to start a business that you have some control over. To basically try to minimize the impact of these externalities on you. So get a good job, find a solid business, start a solid business, and just be prepared. Be prepared for volatility. Save. Have some cash reserves and save money for the ups and downs of what's coming. There could be inflation. There certainly, as I said, is likely to be stagnation. But we could also have a major economic collapse. That is possible. I just think it's relatively unlikely, but it's still possible. So you just have to be ready for whatever the outcome is. So have reserves, cash reserves, in a sense, so that you can sustain a significant downturn. I still think long-term you want to be invested in the stock market. But I also think you should also have some cushion in cash in liquid savings. Richard said thank you. Also I sent the email to your YBS account. Alright, make sure to send the emails to youron at youronbrookshow.com. I haven't seen an email from you in that address. So if it was a different address you send it to, then please resend it to that account. youron at youronbrookshow.com. Andrew says, do you think the libertarian critique of the Patriot Act is rational on how would you defer? I think for the most part it's rational. I think it's mixed. Put it this way. I think the parts about privacy and about violation of the privacy of Americans and about the risks that they're poses and the threat that they're poses from big government is all true. I think it's overboard the fact that the United States has secret courts, federal courts is absurd and ridiculous for a country that perceives itself as free. So I think elements of the critique are right and true and other elements are a little bit overboard in terms of having complete disregard for national security. There should be a lot more profiling and there should be a lot more consideration of who is a threat and who is not before you kind of go out and blanket eavesdropping people. So I think the Patriot Act is a disaster and it's partially a disaster because the Bush administration and then nobody after that wanted to define clearly who the enemy was. Michael says, what does it mean to understand the nature of something? It means to understand how it functions, to understand the causal relationship that relate to that some things and its behavior and its continued existence. I think that's what it means to understand the nature of something and to be able to concretize that, to be able to show that in the concrete reality. Frank, today all Muslims should hide their faces of shame. I mean, I don't accept that. I don't like that. I don't buy it. Not all Muslims hold the same ideology as the people who attacked us in 9-11. Many Muslims have condemned those attacks. I think the idea of collective guilt in that sense is wrong. I think totalitarian Muslims, jihadists, Islamists should definitely be hiding their faces and we should be at war with them anyway. But yeah, I don't like this overly generalized, you know, a lot of Muslims in the United States are very pro-U.S. There's some Muslims, quite a few Muslims in the U.S. military. Let's not fall into the collectivist trap. James, will you do another show this month on the economy based on the data? Most people are only surviving with credit cards, a credit card's moral or ethical. Absolutely. I have tons of credit cards. What is wrong with credit cards? It's nothing wrong with credit cards. Credit cards are a way of providing yourself with either short-term or long-term financing. It's a personal decision. Why not take on debt? Why not smooth out your consumption over the long run? But also, why not take on short-term debt? If I can buy something now and only pay for it a month from now, that helps me manage my cash flow. I mean, I use credit cards all the time and every way possible because I don't take on long-term credit card debt because the interest rates are too high. But short-term credit card and paying it off every month is a great way to manage your cash flows and to control the way you spend your money. But also, you get a report of how you spent the money. I mean, I see no downside, zero downside of credit cards. And I don't believe the data about people only surviving with credit cards. I don't believe the data. The data and when you look at it deeply, the questions they ask, how they ask the questions, always whenever I've looked at the data about this, $400 would put me into debt, $400 emergency spending would put me into debt. It doesn't match, you know, the data is being misused and abused, which is not surprising, data has done that all the time, to make the economy look much worse than it is. Now, it is true, the economy is not in great shape for a lot of people, but as compared to pretty much everywhere else in the world, we're doing fine. And I think a lot of the complaining is just taken out of proportion. And I know, again, if I were complaining about the economy constantly and predicting its collapse tomorrow, I'd have a lot more followers. But I try to look objectively at the world. Now, I do think we're heading towards more difficult times. We're heading towards stagnation. Stagnation is not good for anybody. I don't see it collapse, but I see it. And that's, it's very difficult to navigate and it's, you know, growth is so essential for the mood, for the self-esteem of individuals. And stagnation will make a lot of people in the U.S. be losers. James says, how will BRICS take on NATO? They won't. BRICS will never take on NATO. I mean, BRICS is just hype. It's hype. There is no BRICS. China is a threat. Russia is obviously a threat. That's it. India and China are not going to be on the same side of anything, not in any prolonged thing. India and China, as you say, India and China have a border dispute. They're fighting over and they dislike each other and distrust each other significantly. South Africa is a poor country that has nothing to contribute. You know, Saudi Arabia is not going to fight against the United States and NATO. It gets all its weapons from the United States. It has a military alliance with the United States. United Arab Emirates just joined BRICS. It's not going to side against NATO. So, no, the whole thing is ridiculous. The whole talk about BRICS is just an opportunity for people to fantasize about a world with American decline. But you can believe a world with American decline, which to some extent I do, without believing BRICS on the rise. That is, America is in decline and the world is in decline. We're living in a period of global decline, moral decline and economic decline. And the United States is part of that, a big part of it. All right, thanks everybody. Really appreciate the support. Thank you all the superchatters. Thank you for being here. Thank you to, yeah, we will be doing this again tomorrow. I think at the same time, same place. Also, we'll have a show tomorrow night at 8 p.m. Don't forget, if you want to write to me about the public speaking seminar, Iran at Iranbrookshow.com. All right, everybody, if somebody wants to throw up 20 bucks as a show support just to get us to target, that would be fantastic. But otherwise, I will see you all tomorrow. Thanks everybody. Bye.