 Alright, welcome to your Unbrook show, and today I am broadcasting from Paris, France. And we're going to talk about a bunch of different things today, but thank you for joining me. I know, well, it's late over here. This is actually fairly reasonable for most Europeans who I often am doing the show kind of in the middle of the night or in the middle of the morning. It's 10.30 here Paris time. I know it's late afternoon in the east coast and early afternoon in the west coast. Thank you all for joining. I am broadcasting this, by the way, live. I hope it'll all work on Facebook, live on Periscope, and live on YouTube. I'm running this all off of my little MacBook. So hopefully all these streams going through the, you know, Paris Internet, the French Internet, all reach, all these streams reach their goal and don't create too much problems here. I'm not going to be able to follow the chat too much today on Facebook and blog talk and on the rest just because my screen is too small to carry the streaming software, the blog talk radio software, the integrating software that allows me to stream on all these different platforms, their Facebook live page with the stream of comments and the blog talk radio page with the stream comments. It's just, I need like a, my dream, my dream setup, I don't know if we've talked about this, but my dream setup, I walked into Best Buy the other day and I saw my dream setup. My dream setup is two curved 34-inch monitors connected together. So it just creates a semi-circle around you, fully immersive, massive screens. I can put on multiple articles and all the software needed to stream and get the show to you and everything else all at once. That's my dream setup. The dream setup that's coming soon, starting sometime in December, January, that is a setup I'm going to start using, two massive 34-inch curved screens attached together. It's supposed to be for gaming, but hey, this radio show and everything I do in life is one big game, right? So this is perfect for me, perfect for me. All right, so hopefully the lighting here is not too oppressive. It's kind of, it's dark, it's nighttime in Paris, it's romantic. All right, what I thought I'd do is I want to give you a quick update on kind of the things I'd be doing in Europe. The last show I did for the Blaze, I hope you all listen to it. It's available on all the podcasting apps, it's not on YouTube because I didn't videotape, I didn't video that, it was just on Facebook, but it is on BlockTalk Radio and podcasting apps, so feel free to listen to it. It was interesting, talked about my experiences in Georgia, in Tbilisi, in Georgia, and in Baku, Baku, Azerbaijan. And I have to say, I for one never ever thought I would be in Baku, Azerbaijan, never mind do my own radio show out of Baku, Azerbaijan. Fascinating place, interesting place, I also posted some photos on Facebook, and I have more photos, but I posted some photos on Facebook. And really fascinating, really interesting, as I mentioned on the show and I'll just mention a few highlights here. You know, very much an Islamic country, in a sense that, well, not an Islamic country, a country of Muslims, that is in the sense that 60, no, sorry, 80 plus percent of the population are Muslims. And yet it is a secular country, it is a country that Iran hates because of how secular it is. It's a country that Iran is constantly trying to interfere in the internal affairs, constantly trying to infiltrate, constantly trying to radicalize, because it is a secular Muslim state. Not only that, but 25 million Azeris, people of the Azeri tribe, ethnic group, whatever you want to call it, live in Iran and Iran is petrified that they will demand the kind of secular state that their cousins. Have in, that their cousins have in Azerbaijan, so the Iranians are very afraid of Azerbaijan, the Russians would like Azerbaijan because it has large quantities of oil and natural gas, and the Turks are getting radicalized, the Turks are Sunnis, most of Azerbaijan is Shiite, Shi'ite, Shi'ite, and of course Iran is Shiite. The Turks are putting pressure because they would like to see radicalization and the Saudis are pouring money into madrasas and mosques in Azerbaijan to try to radicalize young people. I mean the trip only reinforced to me the fact, and talking to Azerbaijanis they confirmed, the fact that the real enemy, the real threat comes from these two countries, Iran and Saudi Arabia, even who are trying to turn the world, including the Islamists. And I've been saying this of course since 9-11, I've been saying that the real threat to the West, the real threat to the world, is both Iran and Saudi Arabia. By the way, given that I was in Azerbaijan and Islam, it also confirmed to me that it is quite possible to have a moderate Islamic state, that it's quite possible for Muslims to live in a secular state, moderate Islamic I mean, by secular. It's quite possible to have a separation of church and state even with Muslims living in a place. This was true to some extent, or to a large extent in Turkey before the current regime, it's true in Azerbaijan, it's true in Albania, another very secular Muslim state. Alright, so as I said on the show, I did four talks in Georgia, very well received, very positive, a lot of books are in Georgian and they just translated with the living, so that's coming out, capitalism not on a deal is on the way, virtue of selfishness will probably be after that. Atlas Fountainhead already in Georgian, a lot of energy around Georgia, a lot of interest in Georgia and Iran's ideas and I'm very optimistic about the prospects of objectivism in Georgia. There's a university there, free university that is completely committed to kind of free market classical liberal ideas and are very interested in working with the Iran Institute, working with me in promoting Iran's ideas at the university. So, a lot of interesting efforts there. And Azerbaijan, not so much, not a lot of interest, some interest in Iran, there's some groups there, I did speak at a university there, but it was interesting. The university there is mostly didn't know much about Iran, the people who came were what I call virgins when it comes to these ideas were quite shocked by much of what I said, but it was great. You know, I love talking to people who know nothing about these ideas and there's a lot of upside potential. The books are not in Azeri, but hopefully we can work on that and even one day maybe in Persian. And it was fascinating. Again, it was interesting to be in a secular country that is dominated by Muslims. It was interesting to be at a university, at a secular university in Azerbaijan, women were not covered. You should have seen the sexy clothes most of women were wearing all over the streets everywhere. The only people who were wearing the hijab, you know, the full covering were actually tourists from Iran or from Saudi Arabia. They were the ones who seemed to be covered the most. So they were the ones, other than that, everybody was wearing very much European clothes, very much American clothes, very revealing clothes, absolutely no problem at all. So, you know, the university was secular, completely secular. I met with the president of the university and the president of the university was very much, you know, religion is the problem in the world, all religions are problems. It's all about science, it's all about reason, it's all about engineering, it really is a scientific method and applying the scientific method is really what is crucial even to this president of this university. So, what are the questions I got during, you know, when I presented at the university? What are the same kind of questions you would get anyway? They were the kind of secular questions. They were the kind of questions you would get at any American university, the same kind of questions you would get at any European university. I wanted to know about, you know, why the Great Depression was caused by capitalism and what about finance and there was nothing particularly, you couldn't tell that you were not in any other European country, you couldn't tell that you were not in the United States based on the questions that were being asked. There were typical Keynesian, soft Marxist kind of questions and, you know, that was Azerbaijan. Now, I'm in Paris now. I've been in France for a few days. I did an event that was, a broadcast that was live streamed on Facebook a few days ago here in Paris. The topic of the seminar was, Ayn Rand, why does France need Ayn Rand? I shared the platform with the person who has been responsible for the translation of Ayn Rand into France, has been talking and writing about Ayn Rand for many, many years in France. And who, you know, is kind of responsible for the publication of Atlas Shrug together with an American businessman who really funded the translation. Atlas Shrug now has a good translation in French. And what is interesting, what I've been told and what I think any from A.R.I. Europe can confirm is there's been massive interest suddenly in Ayn Rand in France, which is stunning. So right now, over the last, I guess, few weeks, few months, there have been many articles about Ayn Rand in the newspapers. There have been discussions about Ayn Rand in magazines and in various forums. And Ayn Rand is kind of a major topic of conversation in France right now. And it's really, it's fascinating, right? This is the country of postmodernism. This is a country of neo-moxism. This is the country of still that is sympathetic to socialism and even has a small communist party. It's funny, somebody told me that the communist party headquartered because the communist party is so short on funds because it's so weak and so small in France today that they have this beautiful building in Paris. And what they are doing with this beautiful building is that they are basically running it out. They are basically running it out for money to any kind of organization including like free market organization, classical liberal organizations, as long as they can get some money. So the commies, if you will, desperate to integrate, you know, to take advantage of capitalism, to take advantage of their private property, to take advantage of the fact that they own this building in order to make some money so that they can afford to sustain their communist nonsense. So that's kind of France of today. I arrived here on the 12th. There was supposed to be a big strike in Paris. And I don't know how many of you guys old enough to remember when a strike in France meant a strike in France. It meant everything was shut down. Everything was gone where there was literally nothing. That used to be the case. That used to be kind of what it meant for there to be a strike in Paris. And I arrived in Paris. I was afraid that my flight wouldn't fly into the airport because the air traffic control would be on strike. That didn't happen. The flight was fine. I was afraid that my baggage wouldn't get off the plane because there would be a baggage handling strike and they would be striking. And that didn't happen. So all my fears about a strike in Paris, all my recollection about what it meant to have a strike in Paris in the old days, it just didn't happen. Taxis were running. Shops were open. There was some demonstration some way. It didn't really seem to affect. Traffic was bad. So things actually quite kind of shut down as a consequence of that. But other than the fact that traffic was bad, it didn't seem any kind of consequences to any kind of problems with this strike in Paris. And the strike was there because Macron, the current president of France, has said that he was going to institute some new minor marginal labor reforms to free up the labor market a little bit. And of course some of the labor unions free up. But it turns out that two of the three largest labor unions actually support Macron in this. So we live in a new era when it comes to France. It really is a new era. It's an era where the socialists do not have as much power as they used to. Where the unions do not have as much power as they used to. Where it seems that it is somewhat acceptable to challenge the unions and it's possible to challenge the unions and to question the unions. So France is changing. Now we'll talk about how much and how significant it is in a minute when we talk about the death of Europe. But it's definitely not the same France as 5, 10, 15, 20 years ago where the unions had everybody by the Cajunas where basically they controlled everything and where you could do anything without the unions signing off and without the unions permitting. So that's good news. I mean that is really good news and now it's a question of where France goes from here and unfortunately Macron is a pretty middle of the road plain vanilla type of, I don't know, not quite leftist but not any kind of radical leftist but not radical anything. Certainly not a radical free marketer which is what France actually needs. There's some radical free market stuff. But as I said, lots of interest in Ayn Rand. Annie is posting some of these in the comments on Facebook. Lots of articles on Ayn Rand recently and as I said I did this event in Paris in the offices of a free market kind of classical liberal institute here in Paris. And about 40 people showed up, good group and I gave kind of a new talk, a talk I hadn't given before on why France or why more broadly Europe or why more broadly than that western civilization needs, desperately needs Ayn Rand. I thought it was some new observations, some new things and I'll talk a little bit about that later on in the show. So I talked about why Ayn Rand is so desperately needed. Not completely. So that talk will go up as a podcast sometime in the near future. We're waiting for a good clean recording of it. Although there's something up on YouTube now but you never see my face. It's a video with you see my neck down. It's kind of a weird positioning of the camera. Anyway, that'll go up as a podcast. On Saturday tomorrow I'll be talking at a conference, a full day conference. I think they go from 10 o'clock until 6 in the evening. All on Ayn Rand. Who is Ayn Rand is the name of the conference. That's what they've titled it. So it's a full day and I'm looking forward to, I'm there I guess the keynote speaker at the conference. A bunch of other people speaking there who I won't be able to tell if they're saying good things or bad things because I don't speak French and most of this will be in French. But again it should be interesting and the very fact that there is a market for a full day conference on Ayn Rand is pretty cool. They're expecting anyway from 50 to 100 people. And that'll be great. I'm giving a talk and then I'm doing a Q&A and I'll be talking for over two hours, two and a half hours. I'm sure that'll be videotaped. It'll probably be live streamed and you can watch some of it and I'm sure we'll get the audio and put up the audio both as a podcast and maybe on YouTube as well we will see. So there's this revival, not revival because Ayn Rand has never been of interest in France. So this is completely new. This is absolutely new phenomena. This interest in Ayn Rand in France. So I think it's quite exciting and I think it's very promising and hopefully this is something that can be sustained, this interest. Again the media seems to be particularly interested right now in Ayn Rand for whatever reason. So one can hope that this will indeed continue and that this level of interest will be sustainable. So that's kind of what I'm doing. Let me just fill you in on the rest of the trip. I'm heading to Geneva on Sunday. I give a talk at the University of Geneva on Sunday night. I then go to Copenhagen where I will be doing an event with Fleming Rose on multiculturalism and free speech. I want to talk a little bit about this idea of multiculturalism, the relevance of it in a little bit. And then I will be in, let's see from Copenhagen, I go to Kiev where I will be doing two events. One at a business school, one at a major talk at a business school. Supposedly they're inviting all their alumni. And then another major talk in front of hundreds of people I expect at the, also in Kiev at the Students for Liberty regional conference over there. So it should be really interesting. Good week and a lot of activity here in Europe. And since I'm in Europe, I thought I'd talk a little bit about kind of the state of Europe, the problem of Islamic immigration into Europe, and you know, kind of Europe dying and to what extent this is a problem. And what is the real cause of it? And I was reading, I was reading something fascinating that I will share with you. Okay, there is this question of, is Europe dying? And if so, what is killing Europe and to what extent there's Muslim immigration into Europe? Not just the current mass migration, but Muslim immigration over the last few decades into Europe. To what extent is that, you know, the cause of the death of Europe? And there's an interesting book that's come out by Douglas Murray. Douglas Murray is a British intellectual who works for London's Henry Jackson Society. I don't know much about that society. But I've seen Douglas Murray interviewed. He's done the circuit of all the right wing kind of, not all the right wing kind of on a bunch of different podcasts. He's been on Sam Harris, he's been with a bunch of other people, and a really intelligent guy and interesting guy. And he has written a book called The Strange Death of Europe. And he's been working on this book for a long time. And it's an incredibly well documented book. And it documents kind of the problems Europe has with the Muslim migration. It documents the problems Europe has with the lack of assimilation of Muslims into Europe. And it documents kind of the cultural decline of Europe or European's attitude towards their own culture and towards what their culture actually represents and what their culture actually means. So it's a book that actually is trying to document this death of Europe. And at the same time also document the lack of integration and the lack of assimilation of Muslims in Europe, in all of Europe, in France, in England, in Germany, really across the board. And I've skimmed the book. I haven't had a chance to read it yet. I've skimmed some reviews. I've watched some interviews with him. And I just read a fascinating review in commentary magazine about the book, which is fascinating. And connecting this, the book, and the review of the book to the talk I gave about why France or more generally Europe or more generally Western civilization needs Ayn Rand. Why they desperately need Ayn Rand. There was this really beautiful connection between the talk and the points made in this book. The points made in this book, not because they often knew what he was saying, but because of the way I interpret what he's saying. So here's a story based on Douglas Murray. And hopefully I'm doing the book justice, but I think I've seen enough of the interviews and I've skimmed enough of the book. And I tend to read the whole book. And now I've read enough reviews of the book that I think I'm capturing the essence of it. And it's not that the essence of it is not that foreign. Other people have written about the same thing. So here's the essential point that Murray is making. Millions of Muslims that migrated into Europe over the last 50 years, from really from the 1950s the mass of Turkish migration into Europe, into Germany in particular. The North African migrations that happened primarily to France of Muslims from Algeria and from Morocco. Throughout the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s to this day, massive migrations of Muslims from other parts of Africa into Italy and into France and into the rest of Europe. Sweden of course, recently with the migration of Muslims from Syria and Iraq and Afghanistan and really all over the Muslim world. There's no question that over the last 50 years there's been this massive migration of Muslims. Millions of Muslims live today in Europe who do not live in Europe at the end of World War II. And Murray suggests, and there's plenty of evidence beyond Murray's book, but Murray suggests that these Muslims have not for the most part, there are exceptions of course, but have not for the most part, assimilated into European society. That no matter what has been tried, the integration models, the assimilation models that Europeans have tried have all failed. Now, he argues, and I think correctly, that all the assimilation models were half-hearted. All the assimilation models lacked any kind of political will. All the assimilation models lacked any kind of European backbone, any kind of European confidence in absorbing these new immigrants into European society. He gives an example of, for example, in England, there are kinds of laws, for example, against female genital mutilation. But nobody, nobody applies those laws. There are no prosecutions. And he estimates, and again, I believe his estimates, I think he's a reasonable guy and is doing his homework here, he estimates 130,000 British women have their genitals cut and not a single case has been successfully prosecuted. So here you have a case in which there's a law against a particular cultural norm that some of these Muslims have brought into the country. There's a law against this norm in an effort to assimilate these people, but it's not prosecuted. Nobody applies and nobody does anything about it. The rights of these women are ignored by the state. And it's not serious. There are no consequences to the negative behavior. There was this ring of Pakistanis in England. I forget the name of the town in England, Northern England. They were literally raping little girls and there was a whole ring of them and they were kind of raping. I mean, it's so disgusting. It's hard even to talk about it because it's so... And everybody went out of their way to apologize for these people. It's not emphasized that they were Muslims. It's not emphasized that they were from barbaric culture. It's not emphasized their cultural origins. It's not emphasized anything. And in a sense, whitewashed the whole thing. It's just unbelievable, right? So they talk assimilation. They talk integration. But they do nothing. They don't hold these Muslim immigrants to western standards, to the standards of civilization. And part of holding them to those standards is stopping their barbaric behavior, is prosecuting them. When they engage in barbaric behavior that harms the rights of other individuals. So that's not assimilation. So he talks about...Mahri talks about all this. I mean, he even brings up the point. And again, I'm getting a lot of this from this review by probably a Muslim. Sohab Ahmari in commentary magazine. Really an excellent review. But we'll get to where I disagree with all this. Where I disagree with the thrust of this in a minute. It's also, he brings up the point that it's ironic and sad and depressing and horrific. That when Ayin Hussali, the Somali-born, fierce, amazing defender of enlightenment values, is threatened in the Netherlands, in Holland. It is she who has to leave Holland, not the people threatening her. She is the one who has to flee to the United States, not the people threatening her. I mean, that tells everything you need to know about, in a sense, the state of things in Europe vis-à-vis Islam. And he also points out, Mahri does, there's not been any debate about this. You can't talk about immigration. When I was in Sweden a few years ago, you can't even bring up the question of Islam. You can't even discuss it. People basically say, you can't talk about that. I mean, even if they agree with you, it's not acceptable to talk about that. So there's no debate, there's no discussion about what are Western values, what are the values of civilization, and what do we want to assimilate them to? There's no discussion of that. You can't discuss Islam. You can't discuss immigration. You can't discuss any of these issues in any kind of polite company. So there's a complete default, complete default, on this issue in European society. So the elites, the newspaper, the politicians, the intellectuals, will not let you, because I think of multiculturalism, because of a topic I'll get to in a minute, they won't have any kind of discussion that suggests that there's an Islamic problem, that suggests that immigration is a problem, that suggests that Islam is a problem. Nothing. No discussion of this. Everything is whitewashed. Every problem, it's like those rapes that happened, and the sexual assaults that happened in Germany, what was it, a year and a half ago. I mean, hundreds of women were assaulted. And at the beginning, there was a complete attempt to whitewash this, to make this go away, to pretend that it didn't happen. To pretend that it didn't happen. And, you know, again, this is not assimilation. This is an effort, a constant effort, by the intellectual elites in these countries, not to blame Muslims, not to blame these immigrants for anything bad that they do. In the name of, we'll get to it. In the name of what? Now, what is interesting, and this is, I think, the most important issue, what is interesting is that Moe is honest enough to say that he could imagine a parallel universe in which these Muslim immigrants would have been assimilated and integrated into European society. And this is why I think he's particularly courageous and good for him. And I think he gets it all wrong, but the idea, he says, that you can't assimilate Muslims is ridiculous. And his view is that if Europe stood by its culture, if Europe stood by what it means to be European, if Europe defended Western civilization, prosecuted the barbaric behavior of these immigrants when they came, made it clear what the expectations were of civilized behavior, and did not apologize for its own success. And, Moe says importantly, had a strong sense of the value of Christianity, and this is where I think it really gets interesting. According to Moe, Europe needs a strong sense of its Christian origins in order to combat Islam, in order to combat the strong passionate advocacy and belief that these Muslims have. It needs an alternative. And the only alternative you can see, and the only alternative that a viewer in commentary magazine can see, is somehow a return to Christian tradition, somehow a return to Christian values, somehow for Europe to present to the Muslims an alternative, and the alternative being a Christian alternative, the alternative of Christianity. The problem the author says is that with the abandonment of Christianity, with the secularization of Europe, Europe has nothing to assimilate these Muslims into, because its civilization, he says, is based on Christian values. The civilization, he says, is fundamentally Christian. So yes, Europe has abandoned Christianity as a religion, and as a consequence, leaves itself completely open to an alternative set of ideas. And that alternative set of ideas is Islam, which is far more attractive to young Muslims, than is secularism, and he views that as inherent, because secularism has nothing to offer, really, other than cynicism and pessimism and nothing, that the only way to combat the appeal of Islam is to present an alternative, which is a Christian religious alternative. He tells a story about the European constitution that did not get passed because two countries objected, that the Pope objected to the European constitution, and the Pope objected to the European constitution at the time. This was Pope, which Pope was it? I don't know. I think it was John Paul. This is the second. This is the Polish Pope. The good Pope, everybody says, right? So Pope John Paul II objected to the European constitution because it didn't anchor Europe and the ideas of a European constitution in Christianity. That is the fundamental problem. Now, this is the challenge in Europe as Marie, and as the reviewer of the article present. The problem is that, in a sense, there's no going backwards. It's impossible to convince Europeans to adopt the Christian religion again. Now, I'm not convinced that it's impossible to convince them, but he says it's impossible to convince them. We've passed that line. They are now secular. They are now atheist. They have now given up on Christianity. And yet, Christianity is the only hope for Europe. For Europe, Marie tells us. So what can you do? How do you get these Europeans to defend their civilization if they won't defend Christianity? According to Marie, their civilization is Christianity or is anchored in Christianity. How can he compete with what he calls an energetic and virile Islam? Now, Marie says this is why Europe is dying. It's dying because it can't go back to Christianity, but it has no alternative to Christianity presented to it other than Islam. And he even says he encourages people, and so does the author of this reviewer. He says things like, look, even if you don't believe in God and European, start going to church. Start going to church so you can anchor your civilization. So you can get a sense of what your civilization is about. And he's hoping that that would help. And ultimately he says, you know, this is the reviewer writing, but look how weak this is. Look how weak this is in terms of advice for Europe to defend itself in a civilizational existential battle against Islam. He says, Marie wonders whether the answer lies in art. Maybe in beauty Europeans can recover the fulfillment and sense of mystery that their ancestors once found in liturgy. So notice that it's the sense of mystery and fulfillment that, I don't know, that it required civilizationally to defend Western civilization against Islam. He laments the contemporary European art as, quote, giving up that desire to connect us to something like the spirit of religion, unquote. Now, European art is in shambles, but not because of that. Though it is possible that the current period of crisis will engender revival, a revival in art somehow will revive what? In the meanwhile, Marie has suggested that nonbelievers should go to church as a way to mark and show gratitude to Christianity's foundational role in Europe. Now, this is the problem. This is the problem, right? That Christianity's not at the foundation of Europe. Not Europe as a civilization. Not Europe as the civilization we admire and respect so much, at least since the Renaissance. And this is the false alternative that is presented. And I want to argue that it is Christianity that is killing Europe. That it's Christianity that's been killing Europe all along. That it's Christianity that makes it impossible for Europeans to defend civilization and to defend their own culture. It is Christianity that makes European weak in the face of Islam because of Christian altruism, because love thy neighbor and turn the other cheek. But it is more fundamentally this idea that only religion can form the basis for a robust defense of civilization. If you believe that you are lost, if you believe that you don't understand what Western civilization is about, if you believe that you've missed the whole point of Western civilization. And that's exactly what they've missed. And this is exactly what they're arguing, though. This is exactly the claim that they are making. And this is a claim made in the United States. This is a claim that Dennis Prager makes. This is a claim that Ben Shapiro makes. This is a claim that most conservatives makes. And this is what conservatives, the right, is ultimately going to kill America. Because if the alternative is this, you've got three choices. In America it's only two, but in Europe it is three choices. One choice is Islam. The second choice is leftist, relativist, subjectivist, nihilist culture. And the third choice is Christianity. If that's what you got, then we're finished. Then what's the good choice exactly? Yeah, I know. A lot of the alt-right would tell us, even the alt-right that claims to be fans of Internet, would say, well, Christianity is the best of the three, so let's go with Christianity. Well, two problems with that. Christianity really sucks as an alternative. It's not a good set of ideas. But more than that, you cannot go back to Christianity, not in Europe, maybe in the US. Not in a health, not in any way. Because Christianity is essentially weak. Christianity essentially is turned out of the cheek. Christianity essentially is altruism. And these poor suffering refugees, these poor suffering Muslims, you have to let them in. You don't have any option to let them in. So, those are the three alternatives. You're dead. If you think that Western civilization is about Christianity, you're finished. You're finished. You're missing the whole point. What is the real alternative? To put it in European language, so not to put it in objectivist language. To put it in European language, the alternative is the enlightenment. The alternative is the age of reason. The alternative is the enlightenment. The 18th century. That's what made Western civilization Western civilization. That's what made Europe, Europe. That's what made our culture, what it is, what it has been over the last 200 years. So, here's the way I look at history. And I'm sure I've got this. I'm sure this is in Amnesty Palo's or in anyone's writing. But here's one way to look at European history of the last 250 years. We had an enlightenment. An enlightenment brought forward two core ideas. Reason is efficacious. Reason is man's basic means of survival in objectivist terms. And individualism. It is the individual who reasons. Every individual has the capacity to reason. And the individual is sacred. The individual is and in himself and the role of the state to one degree or another to various thinkers and so on is to protect the individual, is to allow him to live a good life. And as a consequence of the enlightenment, we got America. The founding of America. Not from Christianity, but from the enlightenment. Founding of America. The ideas that made America, the ideas of the enlightenment. The American founding fathers were men of the enlightenment. They were not primarily Christians. They were primarily enlightenment thinkers. Men of reason. Men of the mind. So as a consequence of the enlightenment and creation of America, we got this push, this incredible momentum that lasted through the beginning of the 20th century. That resulted in the industrial revolution. That resulted in the greatest wealth creation in the world that I've ever seen. That resulted in everything in the industry. You know this. The life expectancy doubling and wealth going through the roof and the creation of a middle class and the creation of real wealth and the creation of technology and just the ability of human beings finally to pursue happiness because they had the time, they had the ability, they had the wealth, they had the resources to actually pursue their own happiness. Before that, nobody pursued their happiness. You know, maybe some aristocrats but nobody could pursue their own happiness. They didn't have the means, they didn't have the resources. So you get this 150 years of incredible advancement and not only that, during those 150 years, you get a flourishing, just an amazing flourishing in the arts. You get the creation of some of the most magnificent artworks in human history. Whether it be literature and Victor Hugo, whether it be sculpture, I'm here in Paris and Moussel d'Orsay is just fabulous. I mean, it has some of the most beautiful sculptures ever made and you know, there's a sculpture they've young Aristotle, I put it up on Facebook. It's just beautiful, one of my favorites. But there's also some female nudes there that are just gorgeous, just sexy and gorgeous and pro-life and pro-sex and fun, right? And inspiring. And you know, all these other sculptures are just magnificent, the human figures that are just gorgeous and just celebrating human life and human happiness. That is the enlightenment. That's the projection of enlightenment values through the 19th century, throughout it. But, as we know from reading Ayn Rand and Lena Peacock, these enlightenment values come under attack at the end of the 18th century, primarily by Kant, by Rousseau, by Hegel, Schopenhauer, Marx, Nietzsche, a whole string of primarily German philosophers. And they are slowly chipped away at. And I think the combination, essentially, if the founding of America is the culmination, the supreme achievement of the enlightenment, then World War I is the end of that. It's the destruction of the enlightenment. Now, the enlightenment is so strong. The values of the enlightenment are so strong. They're so embedded in European and American culture during this period from 1750 to 1914. They're so deeply embedded in what it is to be an American and, to some extent, what it means to be European. That they continue to this day. And I want to say this because it's important to know that Europe is still a wealthy place. That I walk around Paris and you couldn't tell there was a Muslim threat or that Europe is dying. You know, I'm going to Copenhagen, there are flourishing cities. People are working hard. You know, you couldn't tell that the world was falling apart. Yes, there were two terrorist attacks today. One in London, one here in Paris. But life goes on. And life goes on in a productive way. People are still seeking out their own life, their own happiness. It's superficial, silly ways. You know, there isn't a depth, there isn't the art, there isn't a culture, there isn't the intensity of seeking out happiness that there was in the 19th century. But it still goes on. It still goes on. Because those Enlightenment values are so strong, their remnants still exist throughout Western culture in spite of the fact that as an ideology, as even a sense of life as a way of living as a cultural dominance that is integrated throughout the culture, not just in day-to-day life, but in everything in the culture, it died with World War I. And it died because of that intellectual heritage that was created by the Germans, by, you know, content as followers. And it manifested, right? It manifested in two regimes. This anti-Enlightenment, I would say anti-European, anti-Western civilization, manifested in two regimes. The Soviet Union, which, no accident, arises during World War I, right? This is the ultimate manifestation of anti-Enlightenment. It's collectivism and it's mysticism. The mysticism of the proletariat. It arises out of that horrific war that millions and millions and millions of people died for nothing. Nothing, horrible war that basically shatters a whole generation, destroys a whole generation and shatters a whole enlightenment way of life. Forever. It's destroyed. And we're hopefully not forever, but for a long, long time. That joie de vie, that love of life, that celebration, that man is heroic, not in the physical, military sense, but in the spiritual sense, in the sense of pursuit of values. That dies in World War I. It dies in the trenches in France in Germany. It dies with a whole generation being brutally slaughtered for nothing. In the name of old, old, old ideas in the name of collectivism in the name of anti-Enlightenment values. So World War I is both a symbolic and a material destruction of the enlightenment. And then the rise of the Soviet Union is just its political manifestation at the end of the enlightenment. And then, just a couple of decades later, of course, the rise of Nazism is further the same thread of anti-enlightenment of destruction. Now, the remnants of the enlightenment, the shattered remnants, defeat Nazism and ultimately defeat communism. Or more correctly, one would say communism defeats itself. Communism communism is untenable and it self-destructs. It self-destructs relatively quickly in the context of history and in the context of let's say the dark ages and the potential dark ages, how long it could take to self-destruct. Communism self-destructs quickly. 70 years. 75 years. By the way, it's 100 years this October to the communist revolution in Russia. So, which is an important important time to remember. So, here we are today having destroyed the most consistent consistent representations of the anti-enlightenment values. Here we are today in a civilization that has lost its enlightenment values, has no enlightenment values, is drifting with no values, post-modernism, everything's shattered, nihilism, there's nothing. People are still living off of the enlightenment literally living off of the enlightenment. You know, the elements, the extent we have capitalism, it is a a leftover. It is a leftover from the days of the enlightenment. But really, we have nothing. Those values are gone. Those values are forgotten. Those values don't exist anyway. Which means we're completely susceptible to the rise of any alternative set of values to capture us. And this is, I think, how you explain the re-emergence of socialism and the re-emergence of fascism in Europe and the United States. Because there's nothing, there's a void. There's a complete and utter intellectual void. And of course in Europe to fill that void come the immigrants. Immigrants from Muslim countries who I think many of them, particularly those who came early in the 50s, 60s, 70s, didn't come with the intention of conquest, didn't come with the intention of sustaining their Islamic values. They actually came to better their lives and were quite willing, I think, to assimilate. But once they got to the West, realized how void of any values it was, realized that the West was void of anything to offer, really, as an alternative. That there were these fragments, those pieces that there was in some hung on to those pieces, but most people are just not strong enough to hang on to pieces. They need a philosophy. They need a set of ideas. They need an ideology. And they clung to their own Islam and they clung to their own little neighborhoods partially because the Europeans didn't want them. The Europeans accused Americans of being racist, but Europeans are far more racist than Americans are. And they put the Muslims in their own neighborhoods. They put the immigrants in their own communities, and they didn't try to assimilate them. They didn't hold them to high moral standards. They didn't hold them to high legal standards. And the Muslims came to the conclusion, which I think is right, that Europe has, in its current form, has little to offer. They're pathetic. They're weak. They stand for nothing. They don't believe in truth. They don't have inspiring art, as Douglas says. I think that's true. They don't believe in beauty. The nihilistic nothings, the emptiness, the worshipers of the zero. So, yeah, so Muslims were radicalized. So the alternative between, now the alternative between you know, nihilistic nothingness and between Islam, for most young Muslims, they've chosen Islam. And there is no strong Christianity in Europe. So that is not an alternative. And there's nothing. So what you're getting today is a return to not so much Christianity, but to return to nativism. A return to nationalism. A return to old European collectivism, something that never really went away. I mean, one of the things that's striking when you go to Georgia and Azerbaijan is even among the people who are nominally individualists, how much being Georgian matters, how much being Azeri matters, how much where the border exactly runs between Georgia, Azeri and Armenia, and Armenians both the Georgians and the Azerbaijanis claim of the bad guys, where exactly the border runs is the most important thing in the world. How collectivistic and unnationalistic they are, even those who are classical liberals. And this is all over Europe. There's a resurgence in this nationalism, in this tribalism, in this return to a pre-enlightenment era, because let's go back and what was the enlightenment about? I said it was about reason and individualism as opposed to what? The enlightenment is about the rejection of Christianity, at least in epistemology and metaphysics. It's about the embrace of science. It's about the embrace of reason over mysticism and individualism over tribalism. Europe had gone through decades of religious war and tribal war, where as a percentage of the population far more people died than in World War I and World War II. The 30-year war, the 100-year war these were barbaric wars. And by the 18th century Europe had had enough and luckily they had a few centuries earlier discovered Aristotle. They had an anchor for a new set of ideas. It's called the enlightenment. And in rejecting Christianity, in rejecting religion and in rejecting mysticism of all sorts and then rejecting tribalism Europe achieved a real pinnacle of civilization. A rebirth of the ideas of Greece. Western civilization is not anchored in Christianity. Now, yes, you can find good things about Christianity. You can find good things about any religion. There are passages in the Quran that are not that bad. There are passages in the Old Testament that are not that bad. But Western civilization is not anchored in Christianity and thinking that will destroy any remnants of the enlightenment and any remnants of Western civilization. In that sense, Christianity is killing the West. The idea that Christianity is the West. The idea that Christianity is civilization. The idea that Christianity anchors civilization is killing civilization. Because instead of searching for what truly is Western civilization the enlightenment instead of searching for what those values really are and resurrecting them or at least trying to resurrect them trying to relive in them our best intellectuals are hocking back to religion. I mean I'm exaggerating here, but Douglas suggested you know in a sense Darwin is the villain because Darwin nails it for Europeans in terms of secularism. Once evolution is there and we know where man came from Christianity is dead in Europe. By that thinking, by that way of thinking Darwin is the bad guy. Now that is nuts. That is nuts. And if that's the only alternative if that's the savior of Western civilization this attitude then that's crazy and we can't succeed and we never will succeed. So that's one sense in which Christianity is killing Europe. And I agree with Douglas A strong a strong sense of Western civilization would, Islam would not be a problem Muslims would be no threat. Islamic immigration in whatever numbers would not be a threat to a strong confident philosophically robust Europe. I mean it's a joke a bunch of barbaric Muslims would be a threat to that. A because you would actually defend yourself you wouldn't turn another cheek. You would actually prosecute it when they lived their barbaric lives that violated rights. And because you would be projecting something to them that they would want to be one of the things I learned in Azerbaijan was when they first founded the state of Azerbaijan in 1918 didn't last for long because the Soviet Union took them over in 1920. They founded under the principle of trying to create the Paris of the Caspian sea. They were trying to create Western civilization in you know the border between Asia and Europe. They were trying to create Western civilization in a Muslim country. They wanted enlightenment explicitly said they wanted enlightenment values. They wanted they started an opera house. Later on they emphasized playing jazz. There's a huge tradition in Azerbaijan of jazz. Who would have thunk they were playing Azerbaijani jazz to me on the radio. But they were too late. The poor Muslims were too late. By then the West was committing suicide. They were committing suicide. By then there was nothing to emulate. By then the enlightenment was dead because the Europeans had killed it because the Europeans were killing it. And the Europeans had given up on it. And they were busy slaughtering each other and busy enslaving one another. So it was too late even for the best Muslims to embrace Western civilization. Now they stayed secular but they faced the same challenges in Azerbaijan. Muslims are likely to be radicalized because there's no alternative. There's no alternative. What's killing the West is us. I say in the history of the Middle East this course I gave a short history of the Middle East which by the way is out now at podcast. So if you subscribe to my podcast go to any podcasting app. Look up your own book show. You'll find the history of the Middle East, the short history of the Middle East. It's a five episode, five podcast length that I did years and years ago. But I think you'll really enjoy it. I think it's a it's crucial, it's educational and it's stuff you won't hear anywhere else and essentialized history of the Middle East. Really from the rise of Muhammad or the rise of Islam all the way till today. As I mentioned there, I think I mentioned this. In the 19th century rich Muslims wanted to take the West and they sent their kids to European universities because they wanted enlightenment values, they wanted great art, they wanted they wanted the economy the free economy, they wanted respect for individuals, they really wanted this and they sent their kids to the West so they could learn about it. And what did those kids learn? They went to school in Germany and Paris and you know this is this is the greatest tragedy ever and of course American kids did the same thing. They went to Paris and Berlin and Hamburg and what did they learn? They learned socialism and fascism they learned they learned Kantian mysticism they learned tribalism European style, call it nationalism and they brought it back to the Middle East and people say oh after World War One the European powers just drew up a map and created these countries but the Arabs wanted it. They wanted countries, they wanted nations they were nationalists they learned from Europe the tribes should have their own nation so Islam is nothing in competition with the enlightenment Islam would fall in an instant with the enlightenment. There is no competition western civilization would destroy and win if it stood for something if it embraced its own tradition the enlightenment. So yeah Europe is dying because it's intellectuals are presenting Christianity as the only alternative to Islam that's why it's dying and it's dying other intellectuals have destroyed the enlightenment one in the name of Christianity and others in the name of Kantian post-modernism not that Kant was a post-modernist but Kant ultimately leads the post-modernism so you got post-modernism on one hand and religion on the other hand and Islam on the third hand Islam is going to win. I can tell you that no question hands down Islam is going to win there's one other sense in which in which what do you call it which Christianity is killing the west and that's in the sense that Christianity has embedded altruism in the culture everywhere across Europe and in the United States it is Christian altruism that is truly destroying the world today it is I think we're dying from an orgy of altruism it's and it's this altruism that also says oh yeah, you want a two million immigrants a million or whatever it was, a million and a half Muslim immigrants come in right now yeah sure it's altruism causes Europeans to feel guilty it's altruism causes Americans to feel unearned guilt it's altruism that does not allow us to eradicate ISIS and to eradicate al-Qaeda and to eradicate the forces of both Saudi Arabia and Iran it is altruism that prohibits us from winning the actual war with Islam and that's Christian altruism Christianity is the ultimate source for the kind of altruism that's prevalent today the kind of altruism that tells us to turn the other cheek the kind of altruism that says that the meek shall inherit the earth the kind of altruism that does not allow us to have self-esteem and to stand up for ourselves and to fight for our values the kind of altruism that basically makes impotent the enlightenment and indeed the weakness of the enlightenment one of the weaknesses of the enlightenment one of the most significant weaknesses of the enlightenment is that they never gave up on that altruism that they never completely abandoned Christianity that they they didn't completely reject it particularly its morality particularly its ethics they rejected it to some extent to some extent epistemologically and metaphysically but never its morality again to some extent even its morality because you do have in the Declaration of Independence the nearly able right to pursue happiness but Thomas Jefferson when he creates the Jeffersonian Bible he takes the New Testament and he cuts it up and he throws out the stuff he doesn't like which is all the mysticism but he keeps a similar amount and he keeps Jesus' moral teachings and that's it that's the end of western civilization once you do that well it's not because it's a great improvement and if the enlightenment continued if they had been more great philosophers in post the founding of America then they would have undone that they would have caught up and would have reformed ethics and this brings me to the point of my talk the other day here in Paris why the French why Europe why western civilization needs Inland because Inland completes the enlightenment Inland is the only voice in the last 70 years that stands for the enlightenment unabashed defends it and not just defends it but completes it she she completes the defense of reason the enlightenment defended reason but couldn't quite go all the way because it didn't have a theory of concepts it didn't have a theory of universels it didn't have a theory of induction and Ein-Ren has that and she brings that forward and completes the defense of reason or at least even if you don't believe it's complete I'm sure there's more work to do in epistemology she certainly advances dramatically the defense of reason advances dramatically our knowledge about reason, our understanding of reason the definition of reason she then morally establishes the framework for individualism for morality of individualism not just individualism as a political idea detached from morality but as a moral idea that individuals should live by that individuals must live by in order to flourish in order to be happy and as a consequence of a morality of individualism a morality of selfishness a morality of self-interest she establishes philosophically in grounds and morality a political system of freedom a political system of enlightenment a political system of capitalism nobody had ever done that before so she truly and of course she adds on to that that because of an understanding her understanding of the human soul because of an understanding of human reason and the needs of human consciousness both the psychological and the psychopistemological needs the epistemological needs of human consciousness she establishes the importance of romantic art the art of the 19th century the art in my view it comes after the enlightenment but that's because it takes time for the philosophical ideas to get embedded into the psyche of the artists and then they create the art the romantic art she finally gives it a voice gives it a philosophy gives it a grounding in enlightenment ideas Inran is the only voice defending the enlightenment and completing the enlightenment justifying the enlightenment and she does it like like no enlightenment thinker did better than any enlightenment thinker if we are to defend western civilization against barbarians from within within its geography not from within civilization the collectivists the nihilists the socialists and barbarians from without the islamists we must study study learn and advocate for Inran's objectivism I mean these libertarians are delusional if they think they have the intellectual ammunition to change the world they do not they have nothing economics and political theory do not change the world the enlightenment was not primarily about political theory and economics it was primarily about the rejection of mysticism and the embracement of individualism and the rejection of collectivism but libertarians can be collectivists libertarians can be mystical libertarians can be whatever the hell they want to be but that's not that's not the way to fight for freedom that's not the way you can fight for freedom it's not the way you are going to win you have to be able to present a philosophy and the only philosophy the only philosophy that's pro-man, pro-freedom pro-capitalism, pro-liberty is the enlightenment philosophy fully realized in Inran's philosophy of objectivism and until that mantle is picked up by a significant number of intellectuals we will lose I've said this somewhere I think the greatest tragedy I don't know maybe I'm exaggerating but the greatest intellectual tragedy I don't want to compare this to the concentration camps of the 70 years of communist gulags of slaughter of tens of millions of people but the greatest intellectual tragedy of the 20th century is the fact that so many unbelievably smart creative intellectuals did not embrace Inran it's the fact that the Mises and the Hayek's and the Freedmen's and their modern equivalents the so-called classical liberals did not study Inran did not understand Inran did not engage with Inran did not engage with Inran and ultimately did not embrace him that's a tragedy of historical proportion that the human race will pay for with decades of unneeded and unnecessary suffering because I think that if the real giants of the 20th century if some of them if some of them had taken these ideas seriously if some of them had embraced these ideas the world would be a different world today and the future we face today would be a completely different future so that's my picture of Objectivism go read Inran go study the philosophy implement the philosophy and ideas into your life make them yours, make them real make the enlightenment part of your life bring in the beauty and the arts of the 19th century because there's very little beauty and arts of the 20th or 21st century bring in beauty into your life but more than that bring in the values of the enlightened so reject mysticism reject Christianity it's not the alternative reject subjectivism subjectivism is wrong and can never can never win in this world it all it leads to is force all it leads to is truth versus your truth and the only way to win is with a gun I got a bigger gun than you if there's no objective truth and there's no reason by which to convince then it's all violence then it's all violence by the way there's a good up add I don't have time today to talk about it I'll talk about it I'll talk about it on Sunday on the blade show but there's a good up add in the Huffington Post published let's see I think it was today the 15th the ideology of violence by Peter Schwartz so I recommend the ideology of violence by Peter Schwartz and it's exactly that the ideology of violence is the ideology of anti-reason the ideology of violence is the rejection of reason when you reject reason you have force and Christianity is a rejection of reason at some point to some extent it's a rejection of reason and to that extent it leads to force the left has rejected reason and modern intellectuals have rejected reason left and right and it's tragic and I know I can see people in the chat the the contemporary philosophy of the 20th century is a disaster the philosophy embraced by Ludwig von Mises the philosophy embraced by Hayek and the philosophy embraced by Milton Friedman were a disaster they were great economists but they were all lousy second-handed unoriginal philosophers they embraced the philosophy that was destroying the west they embraced the philosophy that made socialism possible and as brilliant as they were when it came to economics they could go no further than economics and they would never they will never change the world they will never have the impact Ein Rand will have when the world changes when western civilization wakes up when we embrace freedom and liberty and capitalism properly it will be because of Ein Rand not because of Hayek, not because of Mises not because of certainly not because of Murray Rothbard not because of any of these intellectuals because they embraced a false philosophy whether it's populism whether it's Kantianism whether it's subjectivism whether whatever it is if you go and you dig into the roots of their philosophy it is wrong it is evil, it is bad and it is what is destroying the west today and you can couch it you can wrap it into a pro-liberty economic theory but economics never trumps morality economics certainly never trumps epistemology and as much as I love Mises and I love Mises it is an unbelievable tragedy for him but mostly for the rest of us that he did not embrace Ein Rand's philosophy and integrate his economics into her philosophy and instead try to create praxeology without a disaster and complete without a mess but my point is not to attack the best classical liberal thinker of the 20th century my point is to emphasize emphasize that it is only with the discovery of Ein Rand's philosophy that the west can win the west needs Ein Rand and I know that a lot of people out there that are laughing think that's ridiculous but she is the only philosopher of the 20th century there was a truly enlightenment philosopher and again did much more than that she developed the enlightenment she expanded she grounded it she she put it on sound footing for the rest of history and when the world recovers from this disastrous period which we're living in today I don't even know how to call it philosophically at least it's a wonderful period it will be due to her alright that's it for today I'm here in Paris the next show is going to be for the blaze on Sunday at 1pm wait a second 11am pacific time I'll be doing the show from Geneva from my hotel room in Geneva on Sunday night I'll be giving a talk on Monday night for those of you in the area please come and I will be talking about Peter Schwartz as I say but there's a lot more stuff I want to talk about that I didn't get to today and and there's a lot more happening in the world I want to talk about the Dreamers and Donald Trump's new immigration plan with the Democrats and so on so you know and I'll also fill you in at some point about how the day long event on who is Ayn Rand which is happening tomorrow in Paris how that all went I'll also be doing another Living Objectivism from somewhere in Europe next week maybe Copenhagen maybe Kiev we will see we will see what works and good and until then have a good weekend I hope you enjoyed the show sorry for the technical difficulties and I will talk to you in a couple of days bye