 the radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Book Show. All right, everybody. Welcome to Iran Book Show on Saturday, today's Saturday. Hope everybody's having a good weekend. I have to admit, I am down. I am depressed. I don't know. I think I made the mistake over the last couple of hours, spending too much time on Twitter. God, what a sewer. What's trending right now on Twitter is really terrorists. Don't click on it because it's just horrific. Then you've got everything. You've just got everything else that's on there. There's this guy who does the Twitter community audio chat thing, and he presents himself as this objective guy, and he's putting out the news, and he's so biased. He's so anti-Israel, and it's so horrible to watch. The whole place is just teeming with this hatred of the West, even from people who you wouldn't expect it from. It's just horrible. Anyway, that's why I'm doing a show now on all the horrible things in the world so I can vent and let it all loose and get over the whole thing. Let's see. So today we'll talk about the enlightenment. We'll talk about it in a minute about the anti-enlightenment. What else do we want to say matters pertaining to objectives. I don't know what that means. What else did I want to say? Yeah, the usual stuff. Please use the super chat to both ask questions, that way you get a shape to show, to support the show. It's a great way to support The Iran Book Show. This is the funding that makes the show possible without it. The show is not possible in addition, of course, to the monthly contributions. The many of you make and hopefully more of you will make on Patreon and iranbrookshow.com. I am putting a lot of thought into and talking to a bunch of different people about how to grow the show. So we'll see what comes of that in the days, week, months to come. But there's a lot of, kind of in the background. I'm eager to figure out how to take this to the next level and I'm excited about that. Other than that, let's just jump in. Before we go to enlightenment though, although it's related. I noticed something this morning on Twitter, of course, as I was getting depressed by everything else, this added to my, I noticed on Twitter today that Ben Shapiro and, what's his name? Yom Khazoni, the national conservative guy. Both of them came out today defending Elon Musk. They both came out, oh, God, Elon Musk. He's no anti-Semite. They are anti-Semites, most of them on the left. There are a few on the right, but mostly on the left. And Elon Musk, again, he's no anti-Semite. The fact that he retweeted a tweet that suggests anti-Semitism by a explicit anti-Semite. No, no, he's not anti-Semite. He's not anti-Semite without explaining why he tweeted what he tweeted without explaining anything. And it was actually quite funny because it came across as this guy pays the bills. No, no, we're going to defend him to the letter. You could have said, look, we know Elon Musk is not anti-Semitic. Once in a while, he retweet stupid things. He really shouldn't. And in this case, clearly he retweeted something stupid, something more than stupid, something anti-Semitic, something by an explicit anti-Semite. He really should delete it, or he should explain what he did. But it's Elon Musk. Sometimes he does these things without thinking. But look, we know he's not anti-Semite, but he should really stop doing these silly things, or these stupid things, or these lack of thinking things. But that would require, I don't know, objectivity. That would require thoughtfulness. That would require not wanting to suck up to the richest man in the world. That would require not being tribal, i.e., we're on the right. We're all on the right. We don't want to criticize somebody who's also on the right. And that is more than one can expect, I guess, sadly, from even Ben Shapiro and Yoram Khazani, much more interested in appeasing their tribe than on being right. But the reality is that Elon Musk was irresponsible and he tweeted it. He retweeted it. It was a tweet by a known anti-Semite. He should have just stayed away from it. Once he discovered it was a known anti-Semite, he could have backed off of it. He could have deleted it. He could have done a lot of things, but he didn't. It's just irresponsible. I don't think Elon Musk is an anti-Semite, but it's irresponsible. It feeds those people out there who are anti-Semitic. And it feeds those people out there who are sitting on the fence. And are not generally anti-Semitic, but could be seduced by that. All right. Anyway, that's one comment I had. A second comment I had before we get, although everything's related, but before we get to the anti-enlightenment. Jordan Peterson. So I was going to do the show today, and I'm sure I would have got like a zillion more views if I had done it. I was going to do the show today. I was going to title it. Jordan Peterson is wrong. And it was going to critique what Jordan Peterson had to say about Ayn Rand in a very strange, generally strange interview he had. He did with the CEO of Heritage Foundation. He spent quite a bit of time attacking and ridiculing Ayn Rand. It strikes me as there's an effort on the right, there's an effort among the right represented by Jordan Peterson and maybe the Heritage Foundation to make sure Ayn Rand is not part of the movement, is not part of whatever it is they think they have. And to distance themselves clearly from Ayn Rand and not have anything to do with Ayn Rand. Because it was strange how kind of out of nowhere suddenly Ayn Rand's name comes up and they're talking about think tanks and what think tanks do under the Heritage Foundation and conservatism and subsidy reality and whatever. And then Ayn Rand comes up and Jordan Peterson, I guess, is reading Atlas Shrugged for the nth time and he still doesn't get it, which is stunning. Right. Anyway, I was going to do a show on Jordan Peterson is wrong and I was very tempted. But the reality is that Ilan, sorry, Uncle Gatté and Ben, Ben, a bear, did an excellent show yesterday on exactly that topic and they basically covered it. I would have covered it a little differently. I would have been a little less nice to Jordan Peterson. I would have been, I would have been more, you know, you know me, they know me, you know, I would have been what I would have been. But in the end of the day, I would have said exactly the same thing they said. And it just seemed super fearless. If I was just interested in, you know, if I was just interested in getting views, then I would have done it anyway. But I figured I really had nothing to add. And what I want you to do is I encourage you to go listen to it because I think it's really, really good and really, really indicative. Miroslav has just posted on the chat the video of Uncle and Ben critiquing Jordan Peterson. You know, Jordan Peterson was really, really, really bad. I mean, really bad. Now, nothing he said he hasn't said before. And indeed, there are videos out there of me critiquing Jordan Peterson for saying exactly the same thing in the past about, you know, there's no self because there's a future self. And, you know, he did a whole stick on that at some point. And about self interest being, you know, hedonistic, I mean, self interest, he's done all that before. Nothing in what he said the other day is new in terms of what Jordan Peterson, we know what Jordan Peterson thinks about Iron Man. It's all completely 100% consistent. And he hasn't changed his mind. What's shocking about the new video is that he he's reading Alashrugged again. He's in the middle of Alashrugged and he still just says things that are just completely on their face untrue. Like he says, Iron Man never defined what self interest is. And for the characters, it comes across as, you know, do whatever, whatever you feel like doing, do whatever that you want to do. And God, I mean, she wrote a whole essay on what self interest is, the objective statics in the virtue of selfishness. I mean, she literally defined it, explained it, philosophically argued for it, presented it as the way to solve the is art. I mean, God, she wrote a whole essay and really a whole book and really lots of books. Ultimately, if you understand, I ran and you read her, lots of books explaining exactly what you meant by, you know, egoism, selfishness. There's really no excuse except intellectual laziness or fear of engaging with these ideas seriously. No excuse. You know, say I don't agree with Iron Man, but to dismiss it as she never defined what she meant by self interest is just intellectual laziness and maybe cowardice because maybe he doesn't want to go there, which I think it probably is. I think Jordan Peterson is a coward in there. And he doesn't want an alternative to his, you know, Christian based altruism. He doesn't want an explanation for the ghibli-gu nonsense that he speaks often. And particularly in this video that he spoke about multiple selves and self in the future. And in game theory, he throws out the game theory as if that's as if that gives him some scientific cred. Game theory would suggest that there's no difference between your future and other people's future, which is just BS even in the context of game theory, which I know a little bit about, but God, it's anyway, what an awful video. And then the guy from Heritage is there and he's like, yes, and absolutely. And Iron Man is this and Iron Man is that. I mean, it's not even worth commenting on him because clearly he's just, I mean, would he dare to disagree with Jordan Peterson? Of course not. And, you know, he used to run the, I think the Texas policy, something, something network and I know one of the donors to that probably asked him to read Atlas Shrugged and he's probably read Atlas Shrugged because of that. And he probably told the donor he loved Atlas Shrugged and that's why the donor gave him more money. Now he's at Heritage and he can't hide that. He can't hide his real alliance anymore. Heritage, it's interesting that under his leadership, Heritage went from a eclectic, kind of dedicated to kind of a religious conservatism, but also had some free market types and just kind of an eclectic group, some good people on from policy, some good people on certain regulatory issues, some free market people, you know, quite a few small L libertarians. And then this guy's leadership, it has gone full on, full blown, unequivocal, unapologetic, national conservative and super religious and indeed the better people, at least the ones that I follow, have all left Heritage. They've all gone elsewhere, right? Because Heritage cannot tolerate them. So Heritage has become has become a terrible, terrible, terrible place. It had some redeeming features in the past, although it of course was responsible for, you know, ultimately for Obamacare, for Romney care, but, you know, the Heritage people now under this leadership, the new leader, I mean, he's been there for a few years, but it's completely dedicated to the national conservative agenda. He speaks at the conferences and again, the better people are gone. We're interested in that. I don't think that was something they discussed. Let's see. And yeah, free markets out. There's no free market people left at Heritage. They're all central planners now, but central planners for the purpose of managing our lives from the rights perspective. Indeed, if Donald Trump wins, and maybe if any Republican wins, Heritage will play a huge role in staffing the next administration. Heritage is massive. It has connections to a lot of people. It will staff the next bureaucracy and God help us. All right. Let's see. Oh, I want to say one more thing. Yes. As I'm speaking, I am competing with, so I apologize for this, but this is my schedule. You guys interrupted. With the Austin Health Care event, I hope some of you are there. Maybe somebody can put a link in the chat for the event. I encourage you all to go over there and listen to some of the talks. It is hosted at the Salem Center by Greg Salmiere at the University of Texas in Austin. There are talks, panels, discussions about how to move healthcare towards free markets, how to move healthcare, desocialize healthcare. I think they're calling it. I encourage you to jump over to the Salem Center once in a while. If maybe Miroslav or somebody mentioned this, Rob maybe can post just a link to where that is happening. It would have been great. Rob says, Joanne, you could have cheered yourself up by watching Greg Salmiere's talk. His passion and eloquence was something to behold. That's great. I'm really, really happy. I have to say, let me take a little bit of credit for that, not for the content, not for his eloquence, not for Greg's brilliance. I have nothing to do with any of those. But I think I have a little bit to do with his passion. I think Greg will admit. I think I brought passion to these things. I'm really, really glad to see Greg be particularly passionate. I'd like to see all of our speakers be more passionate, particularly on a topic like this, which is so crucial, so important. Passion is my thing. It's my shtick. It's what I bring to at least the public speaking objectives, public speaking. Let's see. So, yes, I didn't do Jordan Peterson's wrong. Instead, I've been thinking about doing this for a few days. I want to do, we're going to talk about the anti-enlightenment. So this would be historical and I'll wrap up with the enemies, as I see them today, that we all face. And part of this, I want to summarize where we stand and who the enemies are. Again, I don't know that I'll be much new in what I have to say. And I do promise this because I need it as much as you, I think, need it. Starting next week, I will dedicate at least one show a week. I'll try. I really, really will try, given world events. One show a week to the positive. To just a positive topic, either it was for life or something positive in the world or something great in the culture or maybe art or something. And if you guys have ideas for positive shows, for things I can talk about that are positive, please send them to me. Iran at Iranbrookshow.com. I'm eager to do some positive stuff. So we'll start doing that next week and cover that. And cover that. So I'm excited, I'm excited about, I'm excited about that. Shifting a little bit from all this depressing stuff. Yeah, I can do it once a week. We can do something once a week, rules for life or something. Maybe Stephanie's already saying maybe once a month is not that much good in the world. Okay, now I have to do it. Maybe once in two weeks. Anyway, we'll figure it out, but we'll start next week and we'll go for it and we'll try to do as many as possible. So and this, the Thanksgiving is a great time to do something positive. So definitely for Thanksgiving, I will do a positive show. Maybe who knows about productiveness or something like that. We'll do it. Anyway, there was an article published. I don't even know where it was published. Where did I see this? In Quilet. It's an article published in Quilet that really was very good, very well written. I agree with it. Mostly there's one or two things I disagree, but mostly I agree with it. I've now bought the author's book. He's got a book on this topic. So I'll let you know what I think of the book. Unfortunately, it wasn't an audio book. It was only on Kindle. So I'll have to read it on Kindle. He can join a long list of books that I'm reading in the middle of in Kindle. Like I don't complete them. I am all in the middle of a bunch of them. Anyway, this is an article by Adam Wakeling. I think I'm pronouncing that right, Wakeling. It's called Anti-Enlightenment Thinking Past and Present. And he says the Enlightenment was remarkable as it was unexpected, but it led directly to the benefits we enjoy today. So it's very much in the pinker, in the Stephen Pinker frame. And as you know, I am a fan of pinkers on multiple levels. I think he's one of the best thinkers out there that's not objective thinkers out there, far better than anybody really on the right. I think if I had to guess, Adam is probably somewhere, same place as Pinker kind of on the center left. But this is really good. And it really struck me because you know, everybody's telling us, I in history, Ali told us, and I think this is quite popular out there. Everybody's telling us that everything good we have today in the world is a consequence of the Judeo-Christian tradition, some kind of Judeo-Christian tradition. And it exactly that elements of that tradition, that the Enlightenment set out, the Enlightenment set out to eviscerate, to eviscerate. And you know, it's so, I think, offensive and disturbing and problematic to see kind of the Judeo-Christian tradition to credit for everything good in our world today. So Adam Wakeling starts his essay with this, you know, fantastic story and he tells it in great detail. And it's definitely worth reading. I encourage you, it's called Anti-Enlightenment Think He Passed and Present. And it's the story of Michael Servetus. Servetus, yes, or Miguel Serveto as he was known in Spanish. He was a Spaniard after all. And Michael Servetus was a Spanish polygum. He was a scholar. He was a theologian. He was a scientist. He was a real Renaissance man. He lived in the 1600s, the early 1600s, and he was a real Renaissance man. He is indeed the first person to write a book about the human circulatory system and understanding that blood flows from the heart to the lungs. You know, an Islamic scholar had written a book about this earlier, but he is the first in the West to have written such a book. However, Servetus came to challenge one of the key propositions in Christianity. He came to challenge the proposition that there was a Holy Trinity, that there was one God in three persons, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He believed, and think about this, he believed that Jesus was the Son of God, but he didn't exist until God created him in Mary's womb. So where Christians described Jesus as the eternal Son of God, he's always there. He's always been there. He is an inherent part of God. He's inseparable from God. He's one of, you know, God of the Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It's all one. His view was that he was just the Son of God. He was an eternal and that he did indeed that this was crucial to understanding of this concept. So he viewed it as Jesus was the Son of the eternal God, not the eternal Son of God. Now, this sounds like a big deal. This sounds like a trivial issue, right? I mean, he still believed in Jesus. He still believed in Christianity. He stole to his dying breath, prayed to Jesus. He believed Jesus was the Son of God. He believed in Jesus, sacrificed himself for the sins of all of us. He believed in everything, but he had this one little disagreement with Christian theology. And as a consequence, in the morning of the 27th of October, 1553, in the city of Geneva, under the rule at the time of Calvin, he was burnt to death. And not only was he burnt to death, but the wood they used to burn him to death was purposefully green. In other words, it was burnt slowly. This is in Calvin's Geneva. This is at a time at the birth of Protestantism, or the beginning of Protestantism, where Calvin's people and other Protestants were being burned to death as heretics by the Catholic Church. And yet, Calvin was burning to death someone who, by the way, was his friend, who had exchanged letters with him for years, who had been quite close to him when they were young, was burning him to death slowly because he disagreed with Calvin on a small issue of theology. And indeed, if you think about the difference between Protestants and Catholics, I read this book about the Reformation. I mean, most of it is pretty bizarre disagreements about minute issues that are not relevant really to any of our lives, minute issues relating to theology. Now, this is just one symbolic story, but it represents a century, the 16th century and much of the 17th century in which Christianity, the Judeo-Christian tradition manifested itself in some of the most brutal wars in all of human history. I mean, what Hamas did to Israelis on October 7th, Catholics were doing to Protestants, Protestants were doing to Catholics, some Protestants were doing to other Protestants, who were doing it back to them. This was the state of life, the barbarism of a pre-enlightenment era. This is how people behaved, rape, pillage, burning people alive. For any slight disagreement about theology, who rules where and why and when, 30-year war, which was fought during this period in the 16th century, was the 17th, early 17th century, saw more people die per capita in Europe than maybe more than World War I or World War II. And most of them civilians, most of them raped, pillage, brutally tortured, slaughtered, because they didn't quite qualify as the exact right kind of Christianity. And this was, you could argue, this was the pinnacle of Judeo-Christian tradition, the pinnacle of Judeo-Christian civilization, if you can call it civilized. This is when Christianity dominated the Western world. It was holding back the Ottomans, it was pushing back on Islam, it had recaptured the entire Bering Peninsula, it was peak power. Now, it was fragmented internally because of all these disagreements about these little theological issues. But that is the Judeo-Christian tradition, that those disagreements. But it chose to deal with those disagreements with some of the most brutal violence in all of human history. And then as a response to this, to some extent, as a response to this, the writers of the mid to late 17th century and then the writers of the 18th century rebelled, objected, were willing to think out of the box, were willing to engage in original thinking, because what they were observing in the world was insanity, was chaos, was brutality, was by anybody standard barbarism. And whether, you know, how you date the exact start of the Enlightenment to 1650, 1700, it doesn't really matter. Clearly, things were already starting to bubble up through the Renaissance. And certainly by 1650, there were significant thinkers make significant contributions to the ideas that then got solidified in the 1700s. But these ideas that are rejecting, rejecting the path that the Judeo-Christian tradition had taken the world and proposing something completely utterly new. Now, can you find hints of this newness somewhere in the Old and New Testament? Sure, you can find anything you want in the New or Old Testament. They're written in pretty grandiose terms. And can you find it in Christian thinkers throughout the centuries here and there? Sure. But did they have any influence? No. And can you find them as an integrated whole anyway? No, as an integrated whole. This is a new phenomenon. And if you actually wanted to take its roots back, then the roots go back to the Greeks, to Greek philosophy, not to the Judeo-Christian tradition, which manifests itself again in the barbarism of the 16th and 17th century. The Enlightenment is a rejection of all of that. The Enlightenment is an embrace of reason. It's an embrace of science. It's an embrace of man as an individual and a sanctity as an individual. And in its radical form, which only really gained traction in the later part of the 18th century, it is an embrace of political liberty, political freedom. The Enlightenment is reason and science. It is individualism. It is political liberty, political freedom. It is that which made it possible for that kind of violence to stop for about a hundred years as people integrated ideas of reason and individualism and political liberty into their lives and into their political lives and into the culture, the world became peaceful. And not only did it become peaceful, stunningly enough, the consequence of embracing reason and embracing science and embracing individual and embracing permissionless society, political liberty was unbelievable, unthinkable to that point, economic growth, progress, technology, industrial revolution. None of that happens because of the Judeo-Christian tradition. It happens because of the Enlightenment, because of indeed a rejection of that tradition, an embrace of new ideas or old ideas, but old ideas emanated from Athens, not from Jerusalem. Old ideas about reason and efficaciousness modernized by Enlightenment thinkers, new ideas about the individual, which, yes, are inspired by some elements in Christianity, by some Christian thinkers, by some Greek thinkers, but again integrated a new, formulated a new during the Enlightenment into the idea of the sanctity and efficaciousness, importantly, because he has reason of the individual. And finally, the fact that individuals are efficaciousness and can reason why shouldn't they be able to choose their own political leaders. And that was a revolution. But from the beginning of that revolution, the anti-Enlightenment, those who opposed, those who wanted to go backwards, who wanted to save the Judeo-Christian tradition, and everything that implied fought it. Reason, efficacious, Kant tells us, no, reason is not connected to reality. Reason in some ways is just a game we play inside our heads. It's not connected to real, the real world. Science and therefore in that sense is only, you know, it's not that valuable. It's not that important. It's not where you find real truths, individualism, political liberty, really fully understood. And you get every philosopher pretty much in the post-Enlightenment era is attacking the Enlightenment. Whether they're attacking reason, Hegel contradictions, and Hegel's philosophy contradictions are just fine. No problem with contradictions. The whole basis of logic and reason is the fact that contradictions cannot exist. The part of your job as a thinker is to figure out why this seems like a contradiction when it cannot be, because there cannot be contradictions. A cannot be non-A at the same time. So individualism, individualism is evil. It's bad. Say the German conservatives who want to preserve Christianity, preserve the old way of living, the old ways of living, and want to preserve the collectivism of the past, and says Marx, who wants a new form of collectivism, not centered around religion, not centered around little towns and villages, but centered in the factories around the Polaterian, around the worker, around muscle, from the birth of the Enlightenment, or really more accurately from the peak of the Enlightenment, 1776, one could argue. The anti-Enlightenment forces are being arrayed and ready for battle. Christianity has never left us and has been fighting Enlightenment values for the last 200 years. Kant has created a whole battalions of secular collectivist, irrationalists, emotionalists, anti-Enlightenment people to fight in its effort to fight the Enlightenment, whether it's communism or socialism or fascism, whether it's woke or CRT or white nationalism, national conservatism, or integrationalism. We are surrounded by people who reject the Enlightenment, reject reason as man's basic means of survival. Reason is our tool for knowing the world. Reason is our only guide to action. Reason is the foundation of thinking and of all science. This is constantly under attack. Science is constantly under attack by everybody. Everybody wants to control it, but they don't want to understand, they don't see its value. They want to use it for control. You know, best example of this is probably COVID, all sides of the COVID story. Nobody was interested in objective truth. Nobody's interested in actually what was going on. Nobody interested in the actual science. It was just an issue of control and anti-control. The same thing with climate change, the same thing with stem cells, the same thing with almost every issue today in science that has application to human life. How can I control it? Is it left or is it right? Can I use it against people? Can I use it to control people? Marxism comes from exactly the opposite of Enlightenment thinking. Marxism comes out of Hegel. Hegel is a reject of the Enlightenment. It's easy to see that, just read Hegel. He rejects reason. He rejects individualism. We're all one. And he rejects political liberty. Hegel comes out straight out of Kant, who in spite of how everybody categorizes him is the enemy of the Enlightenment. Marx is the anti-enlightenment manifest as at the end of the day is Nietzsche, as at the end of the day is every single one of the philosophers. Foucault, the entire left rejects reason, all of them, every single one of them. If you don't understand that reason is the essence of Enlightenment and you don't understand that Foucault and Marx and even Nietzsche are all fundamentally anti-reason, then you don't get it. You don't get what's at stake. You don't get what's going on in the world. See, people, again, can only think in dualities. So to them, Enlightenment is secular. The anti-enlightenment, the good guys, are religious. And therefore everybody who's secular is from the Enlightenment. But that is bizarre. That is non-thinking. It's anti-thinking, which is anti-enlightenment. There is unreason and there is reason. There are all kinds of forms of unreason. Some of them religious and some of them secular. There's not just one form. As I think Aristotle said, there are many, many, many paths that Foucault can travel on. There's only one for truth. Many, many, many, many flavors, 64 flavors, wonder Freeman says, to force it. Only one to truth. So when it comes to unreason, the negation of reason, there's a million different ways in which you can manifest itself. And all you have to do is read. The fact that Marx calls it scientific socialism doesn't mean it's scientific. It's not. It's indeed quite mystical and relies on mysticism and relies on the epistemology of mysticism, ultimately revelation, which is what Kant's ethics relies on. Imperatives that are somehow just there. Somehow we just know them in modern terms. Intuitions that we just know. Moral intuitions. Just mysticism. Just another form of anti-reason. And look, there are a lot of thinkers who are mixed. Now, Hume is a good example. Mixed in terms of reason and anti-reason. But some are clearly anti-reason. Kant, Hegel, Marx, Schopenheim. All of the post-moderns. All of the lefts. And of course, Christianity. And nationalism. Anti-enlightenment. Nationalism replaces the nation, the tribe above the individual that doesn't believe in the sanctity of the individual. Doesn't believe in reason because truth comes not from reasoning, but from affiliation with the right tribe. Affiliation with the right group. Mystical revelation from the right leader. Once enlightenment thinking was unleashed on the culture. The culture embraced it and ran with it in a way that is historically unprecedented and stunning. Now again, in a sense, the culture had been ahead of the thinkers to some extent, particularly in the form of art and aesthetics. But once these ideas were made explicit, once these ideas made them into the culture, what you had as an industrial revolution, a scientific revolution, a technological revolution, and everything good in the world around us is the result of exactly that. As it was happening, as this amazing enlightenment was impacting the day-to-day lives and the historical events of the day, it was immediately under attack. Again, from the Christians, the conservatives who didn't want us to embrace capitalism, to change its revolution, weren't we better off in little villages farming, subsistent farming, communists who wanted to destroy it and embrace the collectivism, fascists who wanted to destroy it and embrace nationalism. Indeed, the 20th century saw a massive assault in the Enlightenment by collectivism, by collectivists of the left and collectivists of the right, by fascists and socialists and everything in between. And that collectivism was defeated. It was defeated by the nation that most stands for the Enlightenment, the United States of America, or stood for the Enlightenment. Those forces were defeated. Collectivism in that form, it's shocking that anybody still takes it seriously, but they do. Because it was crushed, it was shown to be empty. And the Enlightenment values went out by a long shot, by a long shot. And what is truly shocking about the world as I look at it today is that the versions of collectivism or the versions of anti-lightenment that we see today are far less sophisticated, either far less sophisticated than the ones that were defeated in the 20th century, or they're the same as the ones defeated in the 20th century. They've just come back, and today the Enlightenment is weaker than ever. Whatever Enlightenment values still exist in the culture are disappearing and they're weak. Who are the enemies of the Enlightenment today? Islamists talk about barbarism, talk about a call from the past, the fact that we tolerate this, the fact that the West is willing to let them and let there be no question about this, let them attack us, challenge us, kill us, slaughter us, rape, pillage, it's just unbelievable. Any people, any people in the world with any kind of self-esteem would eradicate this threat by taking out those dedicated to murder and destruction, taking them out by any means necessary. We have the most barbaric form of religion, the thing that the Enlightenment was a response against, rearing its ugly head to challenge us, not in the 16th century, not in the 14th century, in the 21st century. Here we are, 21st century, we've learned nothing. And what is our response? What is the response of intelligent people in the country that represents the Enlightenment more than any other? We must embrace our Judeo-Christian roots. We must engage their barbarism with our own. You see, Amir Hussaini Boushey or whatever his name is, he thinks in dualities, right? It's just on the chat. There's religion and there's non-religion, that's all there is. The Enlightenment's not materialistic, not in the sense of everything is material, not in the sense of anything determined, that's not the Enlightenment. But all you can think about is religion versus materialism, that's all he has. That is the limit of his cognition. But that is Aesthetical, Aphilosophical, it's just wrong, it's just not how the world works. But it's simple and it's easy, and it's easy to categorize everything like that. So even though it is religion that is destroying the modern world today of one religion or another, it is religious thinking, it's a religious mentality that is destroying the world around us, he is a fan of religion, as so many are in our culture. So the response of America, the land of the Enlightenment towards Islamic barbarism is let's become Christian, or others in America, let's join Islam. I don't know if you saw this story on Free Press today, Barry Weiser's publication today, is there's a huge spike in young women converting to Islam in America post October 7th, the response of young women to the October 7th barbarism, and maybe to be in Latin's letter, I don't know, is to become Muslim. I don't know how big this phenomenon really is, but it made the main story on Barry Weiser's website today. But more than that, what you've got the barbarists of the left were just religionists of a different form, who have the religionist mentality, you can see it in their dogmatism, you can see it in their belief in original sin, you can see it in their elevation and worship of victimhood, that they were learned from Christianity. I mean, I told you, I'm reading Dominion's book about Christianity and its impact on the modern world, and so far, the great contribution of Christianity to the world, he doesn't say it this way, this is me, is altruism. It's altruism. It's the veneration of victimhood, the veneration of poverty, the veneration of suffering, the veneration of the weak and the meek. This is the book that everybody cites, including I in History at least cited, and so far at least, that is the number one contribution. And any positives that they come out of that, you know, they're against slavery, they're for equal rights in some sense, is just a consequence of the altruism, not a consequence of a positive perspective on the individual human being, and as an individual, and his capacity to take care of himself, not of that. He's a victim, we can't have victim, we can't have suffering, we have to elevate them up, and those who have must sacrifice to those who don't. I mean, it's so communist, Christianity in its early days is so explicitly communist. I mean, any one of the early Christians could have said to each, according to his needs, from each according to his ability, if you had said that to a Christian in the early days of Christianity, they all would have said, absolutely, that is Jesus's doctrine. This idea that somehow Jesus is a capitalist is so bizarre. Christianity is thoroughly socialist, thoroughly communist, and indeed, I mean, the whole monastic orders were communist. The whole idea is in the kingdom of heaven, there is no private property in the kingdom of heaven, in the kingdom of heaven. Everything is shared equally. Now, of course, they distorted and perverted and never lived up to it, i.e., look at the popes, but their moral ideal was communism. Just read Augustine, Augustine, Augustine. Christianity is not about Jordan Peterson's idea about merit, not at all. There's no merit-based outcomes to each, according to his needs, from each according to his ability. All right, so here we have a left that is so mystical, so focused on Christian altruism, so dedicated to the poor, the oppressed, the colonized, however you want to fill it in, that they now are siding with the barbarians, the Islamic barbarians as it has to be, and their enemy, they claim are the Christian barbarians, but they're all enemies of enlightenment, all enemies of enlightenment. The idea of reason, rationality, individualism, science, and political liberty, we have no allies on those. I mean, there are individuals here and there, luckily, and very much I think still there's an element of that spirit in some Americans and some Western Europeans, but when you look out into the streets and you look at Twitter and you look at both sides, all you see is the ugliness of 1553. All you see is the ugliness of anti-reason, the ugliness of anti-individualism, the ugliness of mysticism. Mysticism, these leftists in the streets are mystics, mystics of muscle, mystics of victimhood. I mean, we are living through what seemed to be the dying, really the dying convulsions of enlightenment. I mean, there's still great innovations happening, there's still new amazing medical stuff being presented, there's still production happening and wealth being created, but at the heart of our civilization today are the enemies of all of that, are the enemies of enlightenment calling us to Jesus or calling us to Muhammad or calling us just to die, to communism or fascism, but they're not even that many communists or fascists that are that explicit. It's mainly calling us to religion or calling us to nothingness, to the nihilism, nihilism of the left. So, when Israel is fighting, it's fighting for whatever remnants of enlightenment they still have. When we support Israel, when we support Ukraine even, we are fighting for whatever remnants of enlightenment they still exist, Putin, Hamas and much of the American right and left, are dedicated today to the destruction of the enlightenment and everything that it represents and everything that it means. They are pockets where we can still defend ourselves and still fight. It's so crucial now more than at any time during my lifetime to stand up and declare where you stand, to stand up and declare your values and declare what you're fighting for. What are we fighting for? You know, there was this documentary after World War II or during World War II that Frank Capra made, I think it was Frank Capra. No, it wasn't Frank Capra. Of course not Frank Capra. It was John Ford, the John Ford made, and why we fight. Well, we need to figure out why we fight. And I fight for my life. My life as an individual, my way to use my mind in the pursuit of my values, in the pursuit of my happiness, it was Capra who obsesses. Okay, it was Capra not John Ford. So was John Ford. I think you're right. Anyway, and I don't think you got to write into this why we fight. I'm telling you now why we fight. And this is it. There is no other fight. And the enemies are everywhere. The enemies are everywhere. And if we are not clear on who we're fighting, not clear that there are enemies everywhere, not clear on standing by our principles and our compromising them and not relying ourselves with the enemy, then we lose quickly with no remnant. If we have any chance of winning, it's to stand on principle. If we have any chance of winning, it is to declare all enemies of enlightenment, enemies. Scott can go form his coalitions with whoever he wants. He can sell out. He can compromise. And when the fascists come to power, we can thank Scott for that. But I will not. The corruption is everywhere. It is on the left. It is on the right. It is in the center. It is in Islam. It is in Christianity. It is in the left. And yes, the Muslims are far more barbaric than everybody else. For now, look at the Russians, though. How far behind are them? Are they? Did they not reap in pillage when they controlled parts of Ukraine? Did they not flatten whole cities? No, the only reason they didn't do more of that is fear of the West. So the barbarism is there in the Christian right with Putin and his thugs with his Christian orthodoxy. It's there with the left. Do we have any doubt that if they could really thought they could get away with it, they wouldn't burn civilization down right now? They wouldn't reap in pillage and murder? They're being held back by a thread. They wouldn't take much. Just remember BLM and what they did and look at these crowds out there defending Hamas. And yes, the Christian right today in America is far more civilized. But if the Christian right is the solution, if that's what's going to be reinforced, how long do you think that civilized notion will last? Not very long. Not very long. We'd better be offering alternative. And we'd better be willing to fight for that alternative. And we'd better be willing to stand up for that alternative. The alternative is the Enlightenment and the woman who has rescued the Enlightenment and solidified the Enlightenment and giving us a full context for the Enlightenment and a full philosophy for the Enlightenment who is Iron Man. And that is why it is so revealing that somebody like Jordan Peterson would just completely misunderstand her. One could argue on purpose or not, but completely not get it because she is so completely philosophically removed from her. If we don't fight for Iron Man's ideas, if we don't fight for true individualism and reason, if we soften it, compromise it, ally ourselves with mystics and collectivists, then there is no hope. The only hope is to stick about principles and fight for them and fight, fight, fight. And support those who fight the physical battle because that physical battle buys us time for the intellectual battle. All right. I think I am talked out. Barry, thank you for the $50. Really appreciate it. Let me see a bunch of stickers here. Let me just do the stickers quickly. One's without any comments. I'll get the comments one in a minute. Steven, thank you. Stephen Harper. Barry, who have I said? Yeah, we're good. So we can turn to questions now. You can still ask questions. You can still support the show with a sticker. If I do a lot of the fighting for some of you, I know I'm a voice for some of you. So help me get it done. Help me get it done. All right. Let's see. We have Richard with $100. Oh, can't stay. I'll catch up later. This is a down payment on the positive shows. Thank you, Richard. I appreciate that. Oh, we have $350 questions. So let's start with those. Harper Campbell says, you say there can't be another Dark Ages because of the widespread knowledge easily transmitted through the internet. But what if the status destroy electricity grids? How much knowledge of science and engineering is ever stored non-digitally? Oh, there are books. There are libraries. There's a lot. Look, my point is not that it's the internet preventing us from another Dark Ages. My point is that knowledge of civilization, including engineering knowledge, but knowledge of civilization is now so widespread that it's hard to believe that the entire globe goes dark, that the entire globe embraces a new Dark Ages. Now, it's not impossible, I guess, but I think it's likely it's not like five libraries have it all. There are thousands, hundreds of thousands of libraries. There is the internet, and the internet might go down in some places, but might not go down in other places. It's a fact that we live in a big world that can be disconnected, and civilization can sustain itself in some remote parts of it. So, you know, when the Dark Ages happened, basically, it happened everywhere, at least everywhere in the West. And, you know, there's a sense in which the East, because it never had, I just thought of primarily, but Greeks, generally, never had what was possible, what Greeks made possible. They never had it. But today, they are every part of the world. They are, you know, the billions of people who know at least something about civilization, who knows something about what's possible, who knows something about what's possible in terms of skyscrapers, what's possible in terms of art, maybe, in terms of what's possible in terms of engineering, in terms of science, in terms of building, in terms of wealth, in terms of the kind of life. I'm not saying it's impossible that all disappears. I just think it's unlikely. The more people they are, the more they're connected, the more they have the realization of it, the more they see it, the less likely it is that everybody gives up on it. Now, who are the people who are going to preserve this? I do not know. I do not know. But look, at the end of the day, yes, Dark Ages are possible, even if unlikely, because ultimately what drives the world are ideas. My argument is that even ideas, like Aristotle disappeared, or much of Aristotle, disappeared from the West and was never read in the East. It's very unlikely that that would happen today. Now, Inran might disappear, but Locke, and Adam Smith, and Spinoza, and a lot of the other thinkers, and the ideas behind those thinkers, and Newton, and Aristotle, and Plato, and those going to just disappear in a world where every library in the world has their books, they're all out there, they're all available. Could all of them be burnt? I guess so. Now, of course, Inran won't disappear, but Inran's not prevalent enough, so theoretically. But even Inran today is translated into what, 30, 40 different languages? Even if Inran to disappear, it would take something almost unthinkable. So the good ideas are out there, to be discovered by people and to be lived by people. So it's pessimistic as I am. I'm not quite there yet, I'm not quite at the end of the world yet. Hopper Campbell, it seems like states with no income tax, away all the dumb and educated people are. These areas allow for rich, for tax breaks, in order to bring the smart people in. Once they're enough competent people to parasitize, they impose oppressive taxation again. I mean, you could argue that. It certainly looks like that is going on. I would say we don't have a lot of data points here, right? And we don't have a lot of time on which this happens, so we don't really see it. But it is pretty interesting that states with no income taxes are not necessarily the most productive states. Well, I mean, and that they do change over time. And that low income tax is not to attract people to there. It's a variety of historical reasons lead some states not to have income taxes. Washington State, for example, has a no income tax, and they're very productive and very, but they're also very blue. The more interesting division is not income tax. The more interesting division is why is it that red states are less productive? Generally, less states are lower life expectancy, higher rates of suicide, higher rates of deaths of display. And in red states are, you know, yeah, I mean, obesity, life expectancy, deaths of despair, and lower income generally, low income. Yeah, that includes Florida. Much of Florida qualifies their rates of rates of obesity are high. You know, it's okay, productively, it's mainly a place where people retire to. It's not exactly Florida is not exactly known for production. It's a little better now because a lot of people move down, younger people and move down from New York. But you know, that's because of immigrants from blue states coming there. But it's not not there. I mean, the only state that has any kind of industry and wealth creation, substantial wealth creation is, you know, Texas, parts of Arkansas, you know, the rest is nothing really to write home about. Maybe religion is not good for you. After all, maybe California is incredibly productive. Big chunk of American GDP comes out of California, blue state, you know, New York, incredibly productive, big chunk of American GDP comes out of New York, blue state. Again, the exception is Texas and there, historically, the exception was the result of oil. And in again, in the last 20, 30 years, there's been a huge movement of productive people into Texas and away from those blue states. But you know, there you are. It is interesting, though, that the states, how they evolved, how they developed, maybe, maybe all that religiosity is actually not good for people. Oh, I'm just seeing this from Alexis. Yeah, sorry, I did see the request. Sorry, I have, I had forgotten about it. So I apologize, Alexis, you're right. The timing was awful. Once October 7 happened, I became single-mindedly focused on other stuff. But actually, that movie is so relevant right now. I have to rewatch it to do a proper review of it. I've seen it before, of course. I have to rewatch it to do a proper review of it. But I promise I will get to it. I'll try to get to it soon. I owe everybody. Some people have sent me in questions via email that I owe you answers to. And I know that. I apologize. They're still out there. I've got an album to review, a song to review, and another movie to review. I have to review the movie Wrath of Khan. I promise I will get to that. I did this anti-enlightenment thing. Get it off my chest is kind of the combination of the stuff I've been doing recently. Let me turn to some of these more standard things that I want to do. And indeed, first they killed my father, is perfect for the times we live in right now. Michael says, have you seen some of the interviews of captured Hamas operatives on October 7 massacre by the Shin Bet? They seem like normal guys in the early 20s. They were somehow convinced to engage in the lowest form of medieval carnage. Yes. And this is, you find this, if you watch interviews of Nazis, of gods in the concentration camps, of SS, you know, officers, not maybe the top echelon, but even Eichmann. I mean, it's worth watching video of Eichmann in his trial in Israel, what was it, 62, something like that. I mean, he could be just an average guy. He could be an ordinary person. And you say, look, I just followed orders. I'm a nobody. I'm a nothing. I'm nothing special. Human beings who are not grounded on positive values. Human beings who do not have a respect for human life. Human beings who do not have a fundamental deep respect for their own life and have some semblance of values around their own life are easily manipulated into acts of horror. Human beings who are, who believe the truth ultimately comes from authority which is the same as believe the truth ultimately comes from a God or from a religious easily manipulated into doing the most horrific things you could imagine. And sadly, we live in a world in which a lot of people out there are this close from being barbarians. I mean, this is true. This is true in Germany, in the Nazi period. And this is true in the Islamic world today. What's scary is the question of how true is it in America today? How true is it in London today? And I'm not just talking about the Muslims in America and in London, I'm talking about Americans and Brits where that connection to real values, to self esteem, to self value, to values is gone. Now because they've given up on religion, indeed religion is often the impetus for the worst horrors in all of human history. Now because they've given up on religion. But because they haven't given up on religion, because they sustain the religious form of thinking, which is fundamentally do what you're told, follow commandments, follow instructions from God or His representative on earth. Do what you're told. Don't think for yourself. Don't ask God why. Just do it. That mentality in the 21st century, the fact that that still exists after the enlightenment, after science, after the industrial revolution, that is scary. That is scary. And it exists all around us. And it's what dominates the left. But that's not the opposite of religion. That is religion. That is the consequence of religious thinking. That's the consequence of Jordan Peterson at the end of the day. It's going to be. There's no question of what kind of people he is educating, if you want to call it that. Those will be on the right, whether they're believers or not. But it's what we're uncocating, what we have uncocating. Now youth is a religious form of thinking, if you can call it, if you can give it that term of thinking, that's it. Yeah, Andrew Tate, there's a good example. What did Andrew Tate just tweet? That the solution is a conversion to Islam? Andrew Tate? That's religious thinking. And he's adopted religion as a consequence. Thugs like Tate, who admired, admired by so many, Candace Owen, loves Andrew Tate. Well, maybe loves this a congratulation, but he defends Andrew Tate constantly. That's our ally. That's the enlightenment. That's anti-enlightenment through and through. That is the enemy. Yeah, he was giving advice to men. Yeah, he was a barbarian, giving advice to men. Absolutely. You could pluck anybody out of the Middle Ages and they would give advice to men on how to be men. Disgusting and despicable and terrifying. Andrew Tate is the embodiment of barbarism. Michael says, can you believe in Tel Aviv and Haifa? They're still not allowed to purchase a weapon for self-defense. You can live in what the government deems a dangerous area before they'll consider giving you a permit to defend your life and property. I mean, yeah, it's pretty shocking. Everybody in Israel should be deemed that way. It's pretty shocking and dangerous, right? Everything is dangerous, I think, in Israel. It's pretty shocking that you can't defend yourself. They're not allowing that. You've got a pretty right-wing government and they're still not permitting it. I don't quite understand it. I don't quite get what they're doing. I will say this, though. The fact that the settlers on the West Bank have weapons, some of these right-wing religious barbarians, is very unsettling and very dangerous because while they need those weapons to defend themselves, they're also using those weapons to inflict violence, uncalled for violence, on the Arab population in the West Bank for no reason, for completely arbitrary purposes other than revenge or to satisfy their own irrational, emotionalist, religious whatever. Israel, look, Israel is a flawed country. It's a flawed country. There are a lot of crazy people in Israel. Most of them religious, but there are a lot of crazy people in Israel. It's still on the scale of enlightenment. It's still on the side of the enlightenment for the most part. Not that, not those crazy religionists. They're on the side of the anti-enlightenment, but the majority in Israel is still on the side of the enlightenment, I believe. All right, we have got a million questions, so this is going to take a while. Michael, but thank you. I mean, we're doing fantastically well on the super chat. Michael says, how is really so warm, caring and loving despite being surrounded by monsters who want to kill them all? Well, it's just that it's a friendly society. It's an open society. I think that comes from freedom. I think that comes from the fact that in spite of all of that, they live in a country that is dedicated to defending them, and they really feel like they are part of something that is this real act of self-defense, that is real. They feel safe in spite of the barbarisms around them. They feel safe because it's a country that's dedicated to them. They've got the right ideas, and they're optimistic about the future. I'm sure they're less warm and less friendly right now, sadly, because what's happened is really taking the wind out of them. But there is a certain warmth also to people in south of Europe and other places. There's something in the culture that is friendly and warm. All right, Kulak Young says, the rapid uptick in ARI's subscriptions of Jordan Peterson's feeling the need to attack Rand on his podcast could be an indication of the exponential growth point starting to happen. We can hope. I'm not convinced, but certainly our visibility is increasing. Jordan Peterson has been talking about IronRand for a long time, but people have been talking about IronRand. Forget that there was a period in the early 20s where everybody was talking about IronRand. She was on the TV, she was on radio, she was on... I mean, everybody wanted to talk about IronRand, comment on IronRand. Atlas Shrug was selling as if it was a brand-new bestseller, and that faded without bringing any kind of exponential growth. Maybe this time it's different. I don't know. We will see, but we can certainly hope so. James Taylor, too often the culture idealizes middle stands as more rational, more fair, more loving. People wear it as its own kind of moral superiority, but virtue is not synonymous with neutrality. Integrity demands choosing a side. Absolutely. And integrity demands choosing a side and standing at the side and fighting for that side. Indeed, grayness and middle and non-committal, and what did you call it? The idealization of the middle is part of the current sickness, and it's all because of altruism again. Who are you to assert yourself? Who are you to stand for the good? What do you know about the good? What altruism ultimately does is it undermines self-esteem, it undermines self-confidence, it undermines reason because it undermines you as a human being and you as a value to you. You shouldn't live for yourself. Live for other people. You're not worthy of it. You're not worthy of living for yourself, in a sense. Okay, if I'm not worthy, how can I have integrity? How can I stand by my side? And you can't have integrity if you're an altruist because being an altruist and having integrity means dying. Clark, what drives me nuts about Jordan Peterson is that he thinks so low of human beings that morality to him has to be centered around fighting, suffering, rather than achieving happiness. This could be a window for you to be in this program. I mean, there are plenty of windows to be in this program, and he knows who I am and he knows, so it's a choice he's making here. Hopefully, I can get on the show one day. We will see. But yes, it should be about achieving happiness, but it's all centered around fighting, suffering. It's all centered around a negative. And that's fundamentally because he holds deeply onto this sort of altruistic morality of unchosen responsibilities. You have a responsibility to yourself, but ultimately, you have a responsibility to your country and responsibility to God, or to your family, unchosen responsibilities. That is the essence of altruism and is the essence of decay and the essence of suffering and the essence of pain. But if you uphold the morality of unchosen obligations, then you have to embrace the suffering. You have to embrace the pain because that's part of what happens when you pursue responsibility that is unchosen, that is not chosen based on your self-interest, but chosen based on what is quote right, what is quote moral. Yeah, it's sad, sad that you could go in a positive direction with some of John Peterson's ideas. But Ryan says, what do you think of William Adolf Bouguereau's paintings? Do you know like them? They are of the rush realism school. He wanted to show people, as they are largely, I believe, but also show man, woman, very beautiful and ideal. Yeah, I mean, I'm a huge fan of Bouguereau's paintings. I've seen Bouguereau paintings all over the world. I know collectors of Bouguereau originals. There's one in Fort Worth, Texas, whose offices have these giant Bouguereau originals. I've had, I don't know if I still have, but I've had over the years, Bouguereau paintings up on my wall, not originals, unfortunately, posters of them. So I don't think he's a realist because he's not portraying the world as it is. He's clearly portraying an idealized version. Unfortunately, he is part of a movement from the 19th century that idealized and portrayed as beautiful and idealic, in a sense, anti-enlightenment, but the primitive life, farming, are being connected to the ground. So Big Ed says, boring. I don't think they're boring, but you could see boring kind of topics, day to day life, but of peasants. Now imagine if Bouguereau had used his skill and ability to paint the glory of the industrial revolution. I mean, wow. But nobody did that. There were no painters like that. There were lots of painters who beautifully, idealistically painted the beauty of peasants and of man in nature and did some things about love. And I don't find Bouguereau boring, although if you see too many of them all at once, it's certainly repetitive. But there's a beautiful exhibit of Bouguereau in San Diego a few years ago, at the San Diego Museum a few years ago, and it was magnificent. There were a lot of Bouguereaus I'd never seen before. So they weren't boring at all. They were truly, I mean, his paintings are magnificent. They're idealized. The beautiful beauty is not boring. But the themes are not that interesting. There's only one painter I know that actually painted the industrial revolution, the scientific revolution. And that was painted by the name of Wright of Derby, his British painter, Wright of Derby. And there's one of his paintings, beautiful, beautiful painting in the National Gallery. I've seen books of his. I don't know exactly where all of his other paintings are. I should find out and try to hunt them down and go see them. But he's unique. There really is nobody else. Imagine if Layton and Almatidema and Bouguereau and Jerome and the greatest painters, some of the greatest painters who ever lived of the 19th century. Imagine if they had dedicated the themes of their paintings to the heroism of the industrial revolution, the heroism in the scientific revolution, the heroism even of the age of discovery. Wow. I think the world would be different because I think their paintings would have helped educate people to the greatness of what they were living through. And I think that we missed that opportunity. Instead, you got Dickens, right? Dickens got to educate us about the industrial revolution. That's the vision of the industrial revolution we got through Dickens. And that has tainted the benefits and the grandeur and the heroism of the industrial revolution forever. It's so hard to undo. Art plays an important crucial role in a sense in writing history. And the Christians certainly understood this. And we didn't get that done in the 19th century. It didn't get done in the 19th century. The themes were wrong. The themes were not the right themes. They were enamored by Orientalism. They were enamored by the Greeks and the Romans. They were enamored by the peasants. They were enamored by mythology. The one thing they weren't enamored by was right in front of their face, the revolution that was happening in the world in front of them. And that is tragic. That is tragic. That's an interesting whole topic about the history of art. And that's true painting, but also literature. Michael, has have you read Alejandro Alessandro Manzoni's The Betrothed? Setting is in part the 30-year war riots plague in Milan. I haven't. I haven't. I assume it's good. You're recommending it? I'll put it down as something to read. Thank you, Michael. Andrew, whoops, pressed the wrong button. Andrew, one can't think through emotions, yet emotions are a consequence of thoughts. They are sometimes tightly automatized together. How does one disentangle one's emotion from one's thought to check if one is being rational? Well, the separate thoughts and emotions are separate. And it's work, but that's the kind of work that we're talking about with Jean, about introspecting and figuring out, when do I feel this emotion? What is this emotion about? What does it represent? Where does it seem to come from? And thoughts, I mean, particularly if you think on paper, as Jean recommends, what is the logic of what I'm thinking? What is the logic of what I'm arguing? What is the sequence here? I think you can break them apart. You can separate them. And actually writing down stuff really helps with that. Because emotions, you know, once you start having to use words, concepts, it really forces you to think about things. It really forces you to figure it out. And waiting has a reality, in a sense, that is very different than the spoken word. You can't wait unless you really have a deeper understanding of what it is. So it forces you to really consider and think about it. I don't know if I answered your question, Andrew. For some reason, I sound confused to myself. I can't let you tell me if that made any sense. James says, Ioanna sent you an email with more detail, would love if you could get it at some point, what level of compromise and crucial value should one expect in long term romantic relationships? All right, well, might as well do it now. Because you brought it up and it's right here in front of me. So here's the full question that James is asking. He put $50 into it, plus he sent me some money on PayPal. So he says, on relationships, I'm in my early 30s and feel like I'm reaching a pinnacle with my own personal success and well-being, mental capacity, level of health, career finances, all are spectacular. These three things are my top values and have been for quite a while. I am chasing a level of excellence with them for a long time and struggled hard to get to where I am. Still more to do, of course, I reach what I aspire to in these areas. Now I've started actively dating. I do find joy in close romantic relationships and want to find someone with the same moral ambition. I'm finding people who have some of these things aligned with me, but it seems challenging to find someone who takes these values seriously. Parenthetically, marriage and kids come up a lot. I would get married with a prenup because people do change over time and I'm not sure of my view on kids. I find it hard to see how I could achieve the long-term goals I have for my own life and also make money, time money, needed for kids. What are some thoughts on which things one should be willing to compromise on in relationships to maintain the relationship? I'm aware of my thinking here and also trying to fight against rationalism. I have to do hard work and never compromise or on the flip side, I have to compromise on everything which I know is a false alternative. But I'm building these emotional connections with people and then some issue in relationship comes and impasse and the relationship ends and it's emotionally difficult to keep recovering from that. I mean, this is a super complicated complex question and it's hard to really answer it without kind of, in a sense, having a Q&A with you and figuring out what you mean by a lot of these things. But let me take a few ideas here. I mean, you have certain values, your mental capacity, your level of health, your career, your finances and these are your top three values. You might not find somebody else who has those top three values and I'm not sure you'd necessarily be attracted to somebody who has those top three values. I mean, you obviously want somebody who takes their mental capacity seriously and they're just interested in health, broadly speaking, but how intense they are about it in any particular point in their lives is that necessarily a top value for you, for you and them, right? And you maybe, but are you only going to have a relationship with somebody who has that as a top value in them? Do their values have to, this is the point I'm trying to make. Do their values as applied to actual life have to mirror your values? And my argument is no. Their moral values need to be the same as yours. Their attitude towards honesty, their attitude towards integrity, their attitude generally towards rationality, their attitude generally towards pride, their moral values should somewhat mirror your values or to a large extent mirror your values. Otherwise, you're going to have real conflicts. But how they have chosen to apply their values to specific material aspects in life might be different than yours. For example, they might be thinking about raising kids and viewing kids as an important value for themselves. And they might be willing to take the significant part of the burden that that entails on themselves and free you up to focus on your career and finances. You're not looking for a mirror for the concrete values that you've chosen in life. You want somebody who values integrity, rationale. Again, the moral values. But do they literally have to exercise as much as you do? Listen to Peter Tia as often as you do. I'm making stuff up, but you know, I think you know what I'm talking about. And maybe their idea of a career right now is children. Is that bad? Is that an impasse? Again, you have to find somebody that you can love, but you have to be able to liberate yourself from the idea that your chosen manifestation of your moral values and how you live at the concrete level is not going to be the same as your partner. And that's probably at least for some of these things kind of good because you want kind of a compliment. You don't want exactly you and don't look for exactly you. And it's not a compromise. It's just a different focus that different people have. Do all your best, do all your friends have exactly the same focus that you have on these particular values? So it's not about compromising. I mean, compromise is fine on non-moral issues, on non-crucial issues to your life. She likes Italian food, you like Chinese food. That's compromise. Eating Italian food once in a while when you like Chinese food is okay to compromise. Objectivism is not against that. You don't compromise on morality. And you might have different interests. You're going to have different interests. You're going to respond differently to different things. And that's part of what makes life interesting. It's part of what makes the relationship interesting. Think of it more as complimenting one another than you know, what do you call it, exactly mirroring everything. Because if you're looking for another you in a sense, if you're looking at somebody who on most concrete issues is going to have the same values as you, you're not going to find it. It's going to be very difficult. It's hard enough anyway to find somebody who won the important stuff. But you know, what you want is somebody who values in you the fact that these things are valuable to you and you take them so soon. That she loves you for that and that you need to find somebody that you love for the things that they value that they are really, really, really passionate about. Maybe she's an artist and finances are not that important to her. Maybe you know, maybe right now thinking about health because she's in her early 30s, you know, is not a high priority. You know, there are lots of things. And what does it mean to have mental capacity, right? I mean, so, I don't know. That's the best that I can do in the setting. I'm not sure. I hope that makes sense, right? But you need to look for somebody who you will enjoy that you will have a good time with on a day to day basis. Somebody who will compliment you will make your life better than living by yourself. And somebody who will mirror back to you fundamentally your most cherished values, which I think ultimately are your personal values, your moral values, and your personality, and who will respect and love you for the things that you choose. I'm repeating myself. So somebody who likes the fact that you're so focused on mental health and career, but that they might be focused on different. Yeah. So I mean, it that needs to be for the compromise. It concretize and it would be good to talk to a psychologist to probably would give it a different different more dimensions to it. Dr. Brooke, Dr. Brooke, what is that about? I'm not sure. All right. Not sure what Wonder Friedman's talking about. Maybe because I'm being a doctor. God, we've got so many questions. Okay. Michael says, is it a hard for society to collapse? Objectives tend to think if some evil trends like anti-semitism or inflation, where they're on the head, that means another dark age is around the corner. It is hard for society to collapse. That is they don't collapse quickly. Even Rome collapsed slowly and it took a lot of time for it to collapse. But they can collapse in the end. And inflation and anti-semitism are definitely signs of heading in that direction. Some societies collapse pretty quickly, but the ones who collapse really quickly look at Germany collapsing into Nazism are probably not that good to begin with. That is there's probably some real problems to begin with. I think America, good societies are much harder to collapse and they take longer than a lot of people expect. That doodle bunny, when my girlfriend left me and meant to said to me, don't be afraid to lose what was never meant to be. How do you know if something was never meant to be if they are still feeling, if they're still feelings there? There was no such thing as meant to be. I mean, what does that mean? That assumes a certain determinism. People change. Things happen. There is no deterministic fate you're meant to be with this person. That's nonsense. There is no such thing. So, it's funny, my Apple Watch, Apple has this feature where it lets you know when the environment you're in is very loud and doing damage to your ears, above a certain decimal. And the only time it ever tells me that is while I'm doing the Iran book show and I'm yelling. It's not, don't be afraid to lose what was never meant to be. There is no such thing as meant to be. I mean, sometimes we lose. And it sucks. And you've got to embrace the fact that it sucks. You wanted to be with her. You loved her. Love her still. She left you. You have no control of what she does. She's an independent human being. And therefore, it is what it is. It's not going to happen. You have to embrace that. You have to integrate that. You have to accept that and move on. And it's going to be hard and it's going to be painful. And there's no short-circuiting that fact. But saying, well, never was meant to be, what does that even mean? How do you know it wasn't meant to be? Maybe if you'd behaved differently, it wouldn't have happened. I mean, that's one of the things you should be doing is not obsessing. But thinking about is the other things I could have done. But the mistake is to assume that it had to have done and somehow it didn't. Michael says, pick up an understanding of objectivism referring to intrinsicism and altruism, page 310. God, I don't have it in front of me. If you believe in a facing consciousness in epistemology, you will face the self in ethics. Yes. And that's really powerful. That's a great way to put it. Yes. If you don't believe in your mind, if you don't believe in your mind's capacity to guide your life, then you won't live a life guided by your mind. You won't live a life focused on your well-being. Because you don't believe you can. Because the mind, such a life depends on that mind. That's a great Leonard Peacock point. Yeah, it's such a perfect quote from Leonard. It's so beautifully succinct. It captures so much. Leonard was so brilliant in doing that. I mean, Opa is filled with that. Sentences are like, wow, there's so much here. It's so true and it's so much here. All right, Tessa, thank you, Tessa. Appreciate the support. Tobias, you should have your people reach out to tick history. He is looking for the objectivist approach to history. His channel is at 330,000 subscribers and his milestone, Stalingrad series one, I believe, is the new gold standard for history. Yeah, I'm happy to reach out to him. How do you know he's looking for an objectivist approach, as he said that on a show? If you tell him, I'm happy to come on his show and talk about it. Talk about the objectivist approach to history. So, you know, I'd be happy to, if you want to make an introduction, if you want to post on a show, if somehow make the connection, that'd be terrific. But yeah, that'd be great. All right, let's do these. I've got a bunch of these two, five, $10 questions. Let's go through quickly. Robert, thank you. Michael says, the man who killed the Jewish guy during the pro-Israel protest in 1000, in 1000 O'California turned out to be a Muslim college professor, unbelievable. Our children are being taught by radical nihilists. Well, he's an emotionalist at the very least, right? We don't know exactly, but he's an emotionalist who let himself get carried, you know, get emotional and he whacked the guy. I don't think he was trying to kill him, but violence is violence and he should suffer the consequence. James, the purpose of propaganda is to make one set of people forget that the other set of people are human. Yes, particularly propaganda centered on genocide, the purpose of God, a propaganda in war, when the goal is genocide, is to dehumanize, is to make people believe that what you're really killing is an animal, not a human being. Ali says, thanks Ali. Yvonne, any comments on the Candice and Shapiro feud? I did a half a show on that two, three days ago, so look it up. I think it's a Tik Tok Bin Laden show, and then I talk about Ben Candice and then Tucker Carlson, all related to this issue. You know, my quick thoughts are, I'm on Shapiro's side. I think Candice is awful, just awful. And, you know, I don't know what the contract is between her and Ben Shapiro, but if there's the possibility, then Shapiro should fire her. Liam says, thoughts on Sinek Uga of the young Turks. He's a swami, unintellectual, you know, kind of disgusting human being. I don't know him well, but the little I've seen of him is just so condescending and swami and pretence of knowing, know it all, when he really is awful. He's just horrible. Ali, definitely check out that show. I go into a lot of detail. And then I talk about Candice and Tucker Carlson, and they're interchange, so there's a lot of good detail there, I think. You'll like it from, I think two or three days ago. Maybe somebody who's on right now can find that and put the link in the chat. WCZN says, I found objectives one year ago from Jordan Peterson praising capitalism on Rogan. Stupid Vosh reaction, Vosh versus Econ Boy, Iran versus Econ Boy. Now JP Morgan rejects the free markets. Things have changed so quickly. Yeah, I mean, he never really embraced the free market. He never was really committed to the free market. So yeah, I mean, it doesn't surprise me too much. His commitment is clearly not to the markets. But I don't think it ever was. I don't think really it ever was. He kind of said some stuff about capitalism on Rogan, but he never was committed to capitalism and never understood what he really was. But yes, I'm glad I did the thing with Econ Boy as ridiculous as that was in many respects, because that got you to read on your hand. There you go. You never know. You just never know. You got to put stuff out there and see what happens. All right. Liam says, thoughts on Megan Kelly. She's been great on Israel. She's good on Israel. You know, I don't know. I don't really follow Megan Kelly. So I don't really have an opinion. I can't even remember what she's not a fox anymore. I'm not sure where she is now. Yeah, I don't know. As I said, I don't watch television news ever. So I don't know much about these television celebrities. I'm Mikat. So people are praising Osama on social media. The civilization really left far down the toilet. I don't want to live in this planet anymore. Oh, come on. There's still a lot of good stuff on the planet. Ignore social media. That's the solution. You've still got a lot of good stuff, good years ahead of you, and a lot of good stuff to do. On the same show where I talk about Ben and Candace and Taka, I also talk about Bin Laden and TikTok and that stuff. You should listen to it. I think it was, and then, I don't know if you know, but TikTok took all those videos off and has banned the use of the hashtag Bin Laden letter and has gotten pretty tough with all the pro Bin Laden crowd. So there was a backlash. That's good. So not everybody is completely and utterly nuts. Nihilistically nuts, even was. Michael says, I'm being emotional and being passionate at the same thing. Aren't both good things to well integrated individuals that take life and ideas seriously? Yes. I mean, passion is one form of being emotional, but there's nothing wrong with being emotional. It's being an emotional list that is acting based on emotion, that is a real horror, that is bad. So as long as feeling emotions, feeling emotions, expressing emotions, not a bad thing, it's acting on emotions, using emotions as cognition, as if it's cognition to make decisions, that's an emotional list, living by his emotions. Bree says, positive topic that might stir the part, an essay on a warm, beautiful green world of the future with plenty for food and land, no more humanity struggling to survive on a freezing death world. We basically already have that. I mean, there's almost nobody who's embraced even a little bit of freedom who's struggling to survive on a freezing dead world. We already have a beautiful warm green planet. That's the world in which we live for that portions of humanity that have chosen to be semi-free, even a little bit of freedom goes a long way. Huppercamber are the Islamists and Russians both directly influenced by Nazi ideology? No, I don't think so. I mean, Russia more than Islamists, Islamists are sympathetic to certain aspects of Nazism, particularly the hatred of the Jews. But that's only a minor phenomenon. Islamism is more ancient than Nazism. I don't think they particularly read Mein Kampf that much. I mean, they use it just to illustrate how anti-Semitic they are, but they're not inspired by it. You need to read Hassan and Banna, who's the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, or Sa'id Qubd. They get their intellectual source material from Islam, from Muhammad, from the various writings about the Quran and the various interpretations over the millennium of the Quran. They don't even hate Jews that much. If you go back to the origins, they just want Jews to be subjugated to them, subservient to them. They hate pagans much more than they do Jews. So they, you know, pagans would just kill, Jews would just tax a little bit, Christians would tax a little bit, but pagans, including Hindus, anybody who doesn't worship kind of the Jewish, Christian, Islamic, what do you call it, prophets or God, that God is put to the sword. So they hate them more than anybody. Hatred of Jews to the extent that it exists today is a minor phenomena. And it comes from, they learned it from the West in the 19th century, and then Israel pisses them off, and then, you know, they've learned it a little bit, they've learned it from the Nazis, but the Nazis are not an enormous influence on them. And I don't think on Russia that much, although they're much more of an influence on Russia, because Russia actually fought the Nazis. The Nazis are part of its culture, in a sense. But again, Russia has its Russian empire and its Russian mysticism and its Russian orthodoxy. It doesn't gain much by adding Nazis to it. Liam says, is Obama an anti-Semite? I don't think so. He's just a, you know, just a bad leftist, kind of a moral equivocating leftist. I don't think he's anyway as bad as a lot of the leftists today. You know, I think he came out with some good statements about CRT and the such. So he's not anywhere near as crazy left as they are, but he's definitely a hater, you know, a hater of America, a hater of the West, a kind of a, he's the Galitarian, a softy Galitarian versus the strong Galitarian, the hardy Galitarians of the left today. I don't think he's an anti-Semite. There are some things that money just can't buy, like Manor's models, integrity. That is true, although you can certainly use the money to go to Manor's school, but it doesn't buy you morality or integrity. That's true. Michael, it baffles me how evil is able to completely penetrate every level of power, like in Nazi Germany, there weren't any halfway decent, somewhat life-valuing intellectuals to stop them. There were halfway decent, somewhat life-valuing intellectuals, but they couldn't stop them, because the majority of the culture was primed to go all the way in on evil. Frank, are you seeing New Napoleon movie of Ridley Scott? He did a lot to make fans in modern country, but did he have any connection to the Enlightenment? I will see Ridley Scott's Napoleon movie. I like historical movies, and Ridley Scott is a director I like to see. I don't always like his movies, but some of them I do, so I like to see his stuff to see what I like and what I don't. There's no question that, I think there's no question, I'm not an expert, but Napoleon was influenced by the Enlightenment. He viewed himself as an Enlightenment figure, but power got to him, and in the end he abandoned the Enlightenment for power. But he definitely, certainly when he was young, was inspired by the Enlightenment, thought he believed in the Enlightenment. He came to power believing he was a figure that would bring the Enlightenment to Europe, but he ended up being just a thug, famously Beethoven, believing Napoleon was this man of Enlightenment that was going to liberate Europe and liberate them from the thugs that were ruling Europe and bring Enlightenment values to Europe, wrote the Eroica symphony for him. But by, and it was called the Napoleon symphony, but by the time he had finished the symphony, he came to realize Napoleon was a thug and therefore changed the name and called it the Eroica symphony, and that's his symphony number three. So there was definitely a view in Europe, there were a lot of Enlightenment figures in Europe that thought Napoleon was a good guy and then changed their minds very quickly as he manifested his power lust. All right, Andrew, do you think objectives typically allow themselves enough self-esteem for learning and accepting objectivism? It takes a lot of work and I think intellectual courage. I don't know what I don't know what allow enough self-esteem is, but I guess what you're getting at too is do they give them enough to give themselves enough time? Are they patient enough with acknowledging their knowledge? Do they appreciate what an achievement it is that the knowledge that they have? No, the answer is no. I mean, because there's no way to know that until you finish your journey, right? I mean, there's no way to know it, so I don't think people fully appreciate what an achievement it is that they're engaging in as they pursue that journey and how long it's going to be and how hard it's going to be. There's just no way to convey that to people, but if they're healthy generally, then they get self-esteem from every step that they take because they will acknowledge that they have achieved something. They might have estimate their achievement because they don't know what more there is, but they're still gain from it. Duda Bunny says, I have no problem with arm resistance if things get bad enough. Yeah, but then things will get a lot worse. Arm resistance is really, really bad. You're probably going to die. Lee says, title suggesting suggestions for your upcoming positivity series, instead of rules, you're under 12 reasons for life. A reason for life. Oh, with the dual meaning for reason. I like that reason for life. Reason for life. Okay, wrote it down. Interesting. I'd have to think about the content, but yeah, I like reason for life because it has both reasons for life, but also the need of reason for life, right? You need reason for life, so it's got that dual meaning, which is nice. Matthew says, show idea. Iran's fuel for life, a series of art reactions and analysis. Yeah, how many people do you think are interested in that? I'm curious. I mean, maybe, but yeah, people are really interested in just my responses to art. I mean, we do that a little bit with the movie reviews and the song reviews, although I wish you'd pick stuff that I have more positive responses to, but you know, it's more valuable to do unpositive stuff than it is to do, I think, on negative stuff. Jaype could call in, I work in manufacturing and automation. The culture of brainlessness and evasion makes innovation and production so much harder than it should be. Yeah. In everything, in every aspect of life, it makes everything harder than it needs to be and should be. Matthew, I'd love to see a show on Westerns. Oh, that would be fun. Some of the most political philosophical stories loaded with values reflecting the values of creators in the true American art form. I mean, the challenge with Westerns, the challenge of doing movie reviews, really, is you've got to watch them too, right? So I could do something where I say, okay, everybody watch high noon, and then I'll do a show on high noon. And maybe we can do that. Maybe that's not a bad format to do stuff, because that would be fun. Because otherwise, I'll be talking about this movie and giving spoilers and analyzing it. And half the audience hasn't ever seen it and doesn't know what I'm talking about. But so maybe I did a review of Hombra a long time ago. But maybe we can do that. Maybe I can let you know, like we can advance. And you guys can try to watch the movie before. And then we can discuss it. Yeah, good ideas. Thanks, everybody. This is great. If heard from the right say that people in the past lived as long as we did, if you take away infant mortality, to what extent is this true? It's not true. It's not true. They live longer than the 39 years, or the 29 years in some cultures, that, you know, life expectancy represents. But if you take away infant mortality you get, to they live maybe 49 years. But we live to be 80. If you have to take care of yourself, well into your 80s, right? So no, I mean, it's just not true. It is true that it looks better if you take away childhood mortality. But it's not clear why you should do that. That's part of their life with infant mortality. But even if you take that away and you can look it up online, life expectancy from year one, from once a baby is born and lived through its first year. And I think you could find those statistics. I don't know them off the top of my head, but they certainly are not equal to what we have today. All right, Hector is a member, or you're a member for one year. That's right. 12 months. Excellent. Thank you, Hector. Thanks for being a member. All right, two hours and 10 minutes. Cool. One of these days will hit that three hours, but you're gonna have to keep on going with the super chat questions to get to the three hours. But maybe it'll happen. Which reminds me, I am looking for somebody, anybody who wants to do a match for the New Year's Eve show. I don't have a match this year. Last year we had somebody do $10,000 as a match for New Year's. If somebody wants to do something, $1,000, $5,000, $10,000, drop me an email, let me know that you would like to do it. But I am looking for matches for the New Year's Eve show. Those shows are typically like three hours, and we raise a lot of money for the Iran book show we did last year. We'll do even without a match, but a match always makes it more exciting, interesting, motivating, and so on. So big head, you can keep you $2. But yeah, anybody who wants to do a substantial amount is a match for the New Year's Eve show. Let me know, drop me a line. All right, everybody. I will see you all Monday taking off tomorrow. Tomorrow, I haven't had a day off in a long time, so I'm taking tomorrow off. No Iran book shows, no speaking, no traveling. Tomorrow is a day of rest and relaxing. Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe I can even bring myself to no Twitter. That would be fun. So I will see you all on Monday. Bye, everybody. Have a great rest of your weekend.